_Nov. 3._--In the morning I had the honour of a conversation with the
queen, the most delightful, on her part, I had ever yet been indulged
with. It was all upon dress, and she said so nearly what I had just
imputed to her in my little stanzas, that I could scarce refrain
producing them; yet could not muster courage. She told me, with the
sweetest grace imaginable, how well she had liked at first her jewels
and ornaments as queen,--“But how soon,” cried she, “was that over!
Believe me, Miss Burney, it is a pleasure of a week,--a fortnight,
at most,--and to return no more! I thought, at first, I should always
choose to wear them, but the fatigue, and trouble of putting them on,
and the care they required, and the fear of losing them,--believe me,
ma'am, in a fortnight's time I longed again for my own earlier dress,
and wished never to see them more!”
She then still more opened her opinions and feelings. She told me
she had never, in her most juvenile years, loved dress and shew, nor
received the smallest pleasure from any thing in her external appearance
beyond neatness and comfort: yet did not disavow that the first week
or fortnight of being a queen, when only in her seventeenth year, she
thought splendour sufficiently becoming her station to believe she
should thenceforth choose constantly to support it. But her eyes
alone were dazzled, not her mind; and therefore the delusion speedily
vanished, and her understanding was too strong to give it any chance of
returning,