Tunbridge Wells is a place that to me appeared very singular; the
country is all rock, and every part of it is either up or down hill,
scarce ten yards square being level ground in the whole place: the
houses, too, are scattered about in a strange wild manner, and look
as if they had been dropt where they stand by accident, for they form
neither streets nor squares, but seem strewed promiscuously, except,
indeed, where the shopkeepers live, who have got two or three dirty
little lanes, much like dirty little lanes in other places.
In the evening we all went to the rooms. The rooms, as they are called,
consisted for this evening, of only one apartment, as there was not
company enough to make more necessary, and a very plain, unadorned, and
ordinary apartment that was.
The next morning we had the company of two young ladies at
breakfast--the S. S. and a Miss Birch, a little girl but ten years
old, whom the S. S. invited, well foreseeing how much we should all
be obliged to her. This Miss Birch is a niece of the charming Mrs.
Pleydell,[105] and so like her, that I should have taken her for her
daughter, yet she is not, now, quite so handsome; but as she will soon
know how to display her beauty to the utmost advantage, I fancy, in a
few years, she will yet more resemble her lovely and most bewitching
aunt. Everybody, she said, tells her how like she is to her aunt
Pleydell.
As you, therefore, have seen that sweet woman, only imagine her ten
years old, and you will see her sweet niece. Nor does the resemblance
rest with the person; she sings like her, laughs like her, talks like
her, caresses like her, and alternately softens and animates just like
her. Her conversation is not merely like that of a woman already, but
like that of a most uncommonly informed, cultivated, and sagacious
woman; and at the same time that her understanding is thus wonderfully
premature, she can, at pleasure, throw off all this rationality, and
make herself a mere playful, giddy, romping child. One moment, with
mingled gravity and sarcasm, she discusses characters, and the next,
with schoolgirl spirits, she jumps round the room; then, suddenly, she
asks, “Do you know such or such a song?” and instantly, with mixed grace
and buffoonery, singles out an object, and sings it; and then, before
there has been time to applaud her, she runs into the middle of the
room, to try some new step in a dance; and after all this, without
waiting till her vagaries grow tiresome, she flings herself, with
an affectionate air upon somebody's lap, and there, composed and
thoughtful, she continues quiet till she again enters into rational
conversation.
Her voice is really charming--infinitely the most powerful, as well as
sweet, I ever heard at her age. Were she well and constantly taught,
she might, I should think, do anything,--for two or three Italian songs,
which she learnt out of only five months' teaching by Parsons, she sung
like a little angel, with respect to taste, feeling, and expression; but
she now learns of nobody, and is so fond of French songs, for the sake,
she says, of the sentiment, that I fear she will have her wonderful
abilities all thrown away. Oh, how I wish my father had the charge of
her!
She has spent four years out of her little life in France, which has
made her distractedly fond of the French operas, “Rose et Colas,”
“Annette et Lubin,” etc., and she told us the story quite through of
several I never heard of, always singing the sujet when she came to the
airs, and comically changing parts in the duets. She speaks French with
the same fluency as English, and every now and then, addressing herself
to the S. S.--“Que je vous adore!”--“Ah, permettez que je me mette a
vos pieds!” etc., with a dying languor that was equally laughable and
lovely.
When I found, by her taught songs, what a delightful singer she was
capable of becoming, I really had not patience to hear her little French
airs, and entreated her to give them up, but the little rogue instantly
began pestering me with them, singing one after another with a comical
sort of malice, and following me round the room, when I said I would not
listen to her, to say, “But is not this pretty?--and this?--and this?”
singing away with all her might and main.
She sung without any accompaniment, as we had no instrument; but the
S. S. says she plays too, very well. Indeed, I fancy she can do well
whatever she pleases.
We hardly knew how to get away from her when the carriage was ready to
take us from Tunbridge, and Mrs. Thrale was so much enchanted with her
that she went on the Pantiles and bought her a very beautiful inkstand.
“I don't mean, Miss Birch,” she said, when she gave it her, “to present
you this toy as to a child, but merely to beg you will do me the favour
to accept something that may make you now and then remember us.”
She was much delighted with this present, and told me, in a whisper,
that she should put a drawing of it in her journal.
So you see, Susy, other children have had this whim. But something being
said of novels, the S. S. said--
“Selina, do you ever read them?”--And, with a sigh, the little girl
answered--
“But too often!---I wish I did not.”
The only thing I did not like in this seducing little creature was our
leave-taking. The S. S. had, as we expected, her fine eyes suffused with
tears, and nothing would serve the little Selina, who admires the S. S.
passionately, but that she, also, must weep--and weep, therefore, she
did, and that in a manner as pretty to look at, as soft, as melting, and
as little to her discomposure, as the weeping of her fair exemplar. The
child's success in this pathetic art made the tears of both appear to
the whole party to be lodged, as the English merchant says, “very near
the eyes!”
Doubtful as it is whether we shall ever see this sweet syren again,
nothing, as Mrs. Thrale said to her, can be more certain than that we
shall hear of her again, let her go whither she will.
Charmed as we all were with her, we all agreed that to have the care of
her would be distraction! “She seems the girl in the world,” Mrs. Thrale
wisely said, “to attain the highest reach of human perfection as a man's
mistress!--as such she would be a second Cleopatra, and have the world
at her command.”
Poor thing! I hope to heaven she will escape such sovereignty and such
honours!