_Monday, July 24_--Having now journalized for one complete week, let
me endeavour to give you, more connectedly, a concise abstract of the
general method of passing the day, that then I may only write what
varies, and occurs occasionally.
I rise at six o'clock, dress in a morning gown and cap, and wait my
first summons, which is at all times from seven to near eight, but
commonly in the exact half hour between them.
The queen never sends for me till her hair is dressed. This, in a
morning, is always done by her wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thielky, a German,
but who speaks English perfectly well.
Mrs. Schwellenberg, since the first week, has never come down in a
morning at all. The queen's dress is finished by Mrs. Thielky and
myself. No maid ever enters the room while the queen is in it. Mrs.
Thielky hands the things to me, and I put them on. 'Tis fortunate for
me I have not the handing them! I should never know which to take first,
embarrassed as I am, and should run a prodigious risk of giving the gown
before the hoop, and the fan before the neckkerchief.
By eight o'clock, or a little after, for she is extremely expeditious,
she is dressed. She then goes out to join the king, and be joined by the
princesses, and they all proceed to the king's chapel in the Castle, to
prayers, attended by the governesses of the princesses, and the king's
equerry. Various others at times attend, but only these indispensably.
I then return to my own room to breakfast. I make this meal the most
pleasant part of the day; I have a book for my companion, and I allow
myself an hour for it. At nine O'clock I send off my breakfast things,
and relinquish my book, to make a serious and steady examination
of everything I have upon my hands in the way of business--in which
preparations for dress are always included, not for the present day
alone, but for the Court-days, which require a particular dress; for the
next arriving birthday of any of the royal family, every one of which
requires new apparel; for Kew, where the dress is plainest; and for
going on here, where the dress very pleasant to me, requiring no
shew nor finery, but merely to be neat, not inelegant, and moderately
fashionable.
That over, I have my time at my own disposal till a quarter before
twelve, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when I have it only to a
quarter before eleven. My rummages and business sometimes occupy me
uninterruptedly to those hours. When they do not, I give till ten to
necessary letters of duty, ceremony, or long arrears;--and now, from
ten to the times I have mentioned, I devote to walking. These times
mentioned call me to the irksome and quick-returning labours of the
toilette. The hour advanced on the Wednesdays and Saturdays is for
curling and craping the hair, which it now requires twice a week.
A quarter before one is the usual time for the queen to begin dressing
for the day. Mrs. Schwellenberg then constantly attends; so do I; Mrs.
Thielky, of course, at all times. We help her off with her gown, and on
with her powdering things, and then the hair-dresser is admitted. She
generally reads the newspaper during that operation.
When she observes that I have run to her but half dressed, she
constantly gives me leave to return and finish--as soon as she is
seated. If she is grave, and reads steadily on, she dismisses me,
whether I am dressed or not; but at all times she never forgets to send
me away while she is powdering, with a consideration not to spoil my
clothes, that one would not expect belonged to her high station. Neither
does she ever detain me without making a point of reading here and there
some little paragraph aloud.
When I return, I finish, if anything is undone, my dress, and then take
Baretti's “Dialogues,” my dearest Fredy's “Tablet of Memory,” or some
such disjointed matter, for the few minutes that elapse ere I am again
summoned.
I find her then always removed to her state dressing-room. If any room
in this private mansion can have the epithet of state. There, in a very
short time, her dress is finished. She then says she won't detain me,
and I hear and see no more of her till bed-time.
It is commonly three o'clock when I am thus set at large. And I have
then two hours quite at my disposal: but, in the natural course of
things, not a moment after! These dear and quiet two hours, my only
quite sure and undisturbed time in the whole day, after breakfast is
over, I shall henceforth devote to thus talking with my beloved Susan,
my Fredy, and my other sisters, my dear father, or Miss Cambridge; with
my brothers, cousins, Mrs. Ord, and other friends, in such terms as
these two hours will occasionally allow me. Henceforward, I say; for
hitherto dejection of spirits, with uncertainty how long my time might
last, have made me waste moment after moment as sadly as unprofitably.
At five, we have dinner. Mrs. Schwellenberg and I meet in the
eating-room. We are commonly tete-a-tete: when there is anybody added,
it is from her invitation only. Whatever right my place might afford
me of also inviting my friends to the table I have now totally lost, by
want of courage and spirits to claim it originally.
When we have dined, we go upstairs to her apartment, which is directly
over mine. Here we have coffee till the “terracing” is over: this is
at about eight o'clock. Our tete-a-tete then finishes, and we come down
again to the eating-room. There the equerry, whoever he is, comes to tea
constantly, and with him any gentleman that the king or queen may have
invited for the evening; and when tea is over, he conducts them, and
goes himself, to the concert-room. This is commonly about nine o'clock.
From that time, if Mrs. Schwellenberg is alone, I never quit her for a
minute, till I come to my little supper at near eleven. Between eleven
and twelve my last summons usually takes place, earlier and later
occasionally. Twenty minutes is the customary time then spent with the
queen: half an hour, I believe, is seldom exceeded.
I then come back, and after doing whatever I can to forward _my_ dress
for the next morning, I go to bed-and to sleep, too, believe me: the
early rising, and a long day's attention to new affairs and occupations,
cause a fatigue so bodily, that nothing mental stands against it, and to
sleep I fall the moment I have put out my candle and laid down my head.
Such is the day to your F. B. in her new situation at Windsor; such, I
mean, is its usual destination, and its intended course. I make it take
now and then another channel, but never stray far enough not to return
to the original stream after a little meandering about and about it.