I am extremely rejoiced to hear, that we shall so soon have you in town
after so long an absence. You will be the more welcome still, if what
report says, be true; which is, that you are actually married to the
fair lady upon whom we have heard you make such encomiums. Mrs. Doleman,
and my sister, both wish you joy if you are; and joy upon your near
prospect if you are not.
I have been in town for this week past, to get help if I could, from my
paralytic complaints; and am in a course for them. Which, nevertheless,
did not prevent me from making the desired inquiries. This is the
result.
You may have a first floor, well furnished, at a mercer's in
Belford-street, Covent-garden, with conveniencies for servants: and
these either by the quarter or month. The terms according to the
conveniences required.
Mrs. Doleman has seen lodgings in Norfolk-street and others in
Cecil-street; but though the prospects to the Thames and Surrey-hills
look inviting from both these streets, yet I suppose they are too near
the city.
The owner of those in Norfolk-street would have half the house go
together. It would be too much for your description therefore: and
I suppose, that when you think fit to declare your marriage, you will
hardly be in lodgings.
Those in Cecil-street are neat and convenient. The owner is a widow of
a good character; and she insists, that you take them for a twelvemonth
certain.
You may have good accommodations in Dover-street, at a widow's,
the relict of an officer in the guards, who dying soon after he had
purchased his commission (to which he had a good title by service,
and which cost him most part of what he had) she was obliged to let
lodgings.
This may possibly be an objection. But she is very careful, she says,
that she takes no lodgers, but of figure and reputation. She rents two
good houses, distant from each other, only joined by a large handsome
passage. The inner-house is the genteelest, and very elegantly
furnished; but you may have the use of a very handsome parlour in the
outer-house, if you choose to look into the street.
A little garden belongs to the inner-house, in which the old gentlewoman
has displayed a true female fancy; having crammed it with vases,
flower-pots, and figures, without number.
As these lodgings seemed to me the most likely to please you, I was more
particular in my inquiries about them. The apartments she has to let
are in the inner-house: they are a dining-room, two neat parlours, a
withdrawing-room, two or three handsome bedchambers, one with a pretty
light closet in it, which looks into the little garden, all furnished in
taste.
A dignified clergyman, his wife, and maiden daughter were the last who
lived in them. They have but lately quitted them, on his being presented
to a considerable church preferment in Ireland. The gentlewoman says
that he took the lodgings but for three months certain; but liked them
and her usage so well, that he continued in them two years; and left
them with regret, though on so good an account. She bragged, that this
was the way of all the lodgers she ever had, who staid with her four
times as long as they at first intended.
I had some knowledge of the colonel, who was always looked upon as a man
of honour. His relict I never saw before. I think she has a masculine
air, and is a little forbidding at first: but when I saw her behaviour
to two agreeable gentlewomen, her husband's nieces, whom, for that
reason, she calls doubly hers, and heard their praises of her, I could
impute her very bulk to good humour; since we seldom see your sour
peevish people plump. She lives reputably, and is, as I find, aforehand
in the world.
If these, or any other of the lodgings I have mentioned, be not
altogether to your lady's mind, she may continue in them the less while,
and choose others for herself.
The widow consents that you shall take them for a month only, and what
of them you please. The terms, she says, she will not fall out upon,
when she knows what your lady expects, and what her servants are to do,
or yours will undertake; for she observed that servants are generally
worse to deal with than their masters or mistresses.
The lady may board or not as she pleases.
As we suppose you were married, but that you have reason, from
family-differences, to keep it private for the present, I thought it not
amiss to hint as much to the widow (but as uncertainty, however);
and asked her, if she could, in that case, accommodate you and your
servants, as well as the lady and hers? She said, she could; and wished,
by all means, it were to be so: since the circumstance of a person's
being single, it not as well recommended as this lady, was one of the
usual exceptions.
If none of these lodgings please, you need not doubt very handsome ones
in or near Hanover-square, Soho-square, Golden-square, or in some of the
new streets about Grosvenor-square. And Mrs. Doleman, her sister,
and myself, most cordially join to offer to your good lady the best
accommodations we can make for her at Uxbridge (and also for you, if you
are the happy man we wish you to be), till she fits herself more to her
mind.
Let me add, that the lodgings at the mercer's, those in Cecil-street,
those at the widow's in Dover-street, any of them, may be entered upon
at a day's warning.
I am, my dear Sir, Your sincere and affectionate friend and servant,
THO. DOLEMAN.
You will easily guess, my dear, when you have read the letter, which
lodgings I made choice of. But first to try him, (as in so material
a point I thought I could not be too circumspect,) I seemed to prefer
those in Norfolk-street, for the very reason the writer gives why he
thought I would not; that is to say, for its neighbourhood to a city
so well governed as London is said to be. Nor should I have disliked a
lodging in the heart of it, having heard but indifferent accounts of the
liberties sometimes taken at the other end of the town.--Then seeming
to incline to the lodgings in Cecil-street--Then to the mercer's. But
he made no visible preference; and when I asked his opinion of the
widow gentlewoman's, he said he thought those the most to my taste and
convenience: but as he hoped that I would think lodgings necessary but
for a very little while, he knew not which to give his vote for.
I then fixed upon the widow's; and he has written accordingly to Mr.
Doleman, making my compliments to his lady and sister, for their kind
offer.
I am to have the dining-room, the bed-chamber with the light-closet, (of
which, if I stay any time at the widow's, I shall make great use,) and a
servant's room; and we propose to set out on Saturday morning. As for
a maid servant, poor Hannah's illness is a great disappointment to me:
but, as he observes, I can make the widow satisfaction for one of
hers, till I can get a servant to my mind. And you know I want not much
attendance.
*****
Mr. Lovelace has just now, of his own accord, given me five guineas for
poor Hannah. I send them inclosed. Be so good as to cause them to be
conveyed to her, and to let her know from whom they came.
He has obliged me much by this little mark of his considerateness.
Indeed I have the better opinion of him ever since he proposed her
return to me.
*****
I have just now another instance of his considerateness. He came to me,
and said that, on second thoughts, he could not bear that I should go up
to town without some attendant, were it but for the look of the thing to
the London widow and her nieces, who, according to his friend's account,
lived so genteelly; and especially as I required him to leave me so soon
after I arrived there, and so would be left alone among strangers. He
therefore sought that I might engage Mrs. Sorlings to lend me one of her
two maids, or let one of her daughters go up with me, and stay till I
were provided. And if the latter, the young gentlewoman, no doubt, would
be glad of so good an opportunity to see the curiosities of the town,
and would be a proper attendant on the same occasions.
I told him as I had done before, that the two young gentlewomen were so
equally useful in their way, and servants in a busy farm were so little
to be spared, that I should be loth to take them off their laudable
employments. Nor should I think much of diversions for one while; and so
the less want an attendant out of doors.
And now, my dear, lest any thing should happen, in so variable a
situation as mine, (which at present are more promising than ever yet
they have been since I quitted Harlowe-place,) I will snatch the
opportunity to subscribe myself
Your not unhoping and ever-obliged friend and servant, CL. HARLOWE.