At nine o'clock on the following evening, Ponsonby entered the room,
an altered man. He was one of the very few persons I have met with in
my life, who, from the natural extreme reserve and shyness of their
disposition, absolutely required to be a very little tipsy before they
can give their brilliant imaginations fair play. Ponsonby had slept,
drunk a little more claret, and, what lately had been unusual to him
owing to his father's lingering illness, had put on an evening dress. He
appeared now so much more beautiful than I had ever imagined any mortal
mixture of earth's clay, that I began to lose my confidence in myself
and tremble. There was too a look of success about him, for indeed the
humblest man on earth must have borrowed courage from the reflection
of Ponsonby's looking-glass on that evening: and there he sat for half
an hour, laughing and showing his brilliant teeth, while he related
to me many witty things which had been said by his uncle, whom he had
just left--the George Ponsonby, now no more, who spoke so well on the
Opposition side.
"Can one endure this any longer," thought I. I was getting into a fever.
"Perhaps he does not love me!"
"You are so proud of being dressed to-night!" I remarked with some
drollery, and I thought he never would have ceased laughing at me.
It was very tiresome.
"The fact is," said Ponsonby, in his sweet voice, the beauteous tones of
which nobody ever did or will dispute, "the fact is, I really am proud
of it; for I have not worn shoes before for these last three months;
but," added he, "do you know what I am most proud of in the world, and
which, poor as I am, upon my honour, I would not exchange, at this
moment, for a hundred thousand pounds?"
"No!----"
"I will tell you,--my place in your heart and your arms this evening."
He put his arms round my waist, and my lips were nearly touching his.
Ponsonby's cheek was now tinged with the glowing blush of passion; yet
he turned from my kiss like a spoiled child.
"No!" said Ponsonby, shaking his head, "I have a thousand things to tell
you."
"I cannot listen to one of them," said I, faintly, and our lips met in
one long, long delicious kiss! so sweet, so ardent! that it seemed to
draw the life's warm current from my youthful heart to reanimate his
with all its wildest passion.
And then!--yes, and then, as Sterne, says,--and then we parted.
The next day, at past three o'clock, Fanny found me in bed.
"How abominably idle!" said Fanny.
I answered that I was not well.
"You do not look very bad," Fanny replied; "on the contrary, I have not
seen you look so well, nor your eyes so bright, for some time."
"Well," said I, "if you really think me out of danger, I will get up."
"Come!" answered Fanny, "shall I ring for your maid? I want you to take
me to Julia's."
While I was dressing, Fanny informed me that she had given up her own
house to go and live with Julia.
"I rather prefer living alone," she continued, "but Julia is so very
dull, and my paying half her rent will also be of service to her."
"And some of your beaux may perhaps be brought to flirt with her, poor
thing!" added I, "for really their neglect is very hard upon her."
Much more beauty, it should seem, is required to please without virtue
than with it, since, it is said, that Julia at her mamma's made
conquests every where and every hour. Even the Regent himself once said
he would travel a hundred miles to have the pleasure of seeing her dance.
Her dancing, we both agreed, was perfection: speaking of what was most
truly graceful, effeminate and ladylike.
"Brummell has been with her, making strong love lately," said Fanny.
"Oh, the shocking deceiver! Tell Julia not to believe one word he says."
I inquired how Amy and Sydenham went on.
"Pretty well," answered Fanny. "Sydenham is not only a very
good-natured, but a remarkably clever, and well-bred man. Amy tries his
patience too, a little, with his passion for books; she is always taking
them out of his hand, and making him look at her attitudes before the
glass, or her attempts at the shawl-dance."
"What does Sydenham do for the Marquis of Wellesley?" I asked.
"Everything, I believe," Fanny replied. "He appears to write all his
letters and papers, in the shape of business; and so I believe he did in
India; but I know that Wellesley does nothing except by his advice."
"Pray does Lord Wellesley make his love too, as well as his reputation,
by proxy?"
"I do not know," answered Fanny, laughing, "although, I believe he
passed a good deal of his time formerly with the lady they call Mrs.
Moll Raffles," as Fanny designated her in her zeal to be civil.
"I never saw anybody in such spirits as you to-day," Fanny remarked to
me, when we got into the carriage. "I am afraid there is some mischief
in the wind. What has become of Lord Ponsonby?"
I was too happy to talk about it, so I contrived to change the subject.
"Where shall I take you to?" I inquired.
"To Julia's, where I am now settled. I went there yesterday," was
Fanny's answer.
"This world is really made to be laughed at," said Fanny, suddenly
leaning her head out of the carriage window.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"That man," said Fanny, "with his grave face and his large board,
hoisted up, standing there, challenging the world, as if he were Don
Quixote come to life again."
"What for?" said I.
"Bayley's Blacking. Can one conceive anything so absurd?"
I set her down as desired, and begged her to make my excuse to Julia,
who was at her window with Horace Beckford, the handsome nephew of Lord
Rivers. He appeared inclined to pay her attention, if one might judge
by the soft smile which was playing about his features: but then he was
eternally smiling.
I found my very constant and steady admirer, Lord Frederick Bentinck,
waiting for me, prepared, as usual, to give me a world of advice. He
told me that I was going on in a very bad way, and asked me whither I
expected to go?
"Where are you going to?" said I, as he walked into my dressing-room,
and seemed to admire himself in my large glass.
"I am going to see the Duchess of York," said Fred Bentinck.
"What of that!" I returned. "Where are your gloves?"
"I never wear them, unless at court; but I have got on a new pair of
leather breeches to-day, and I want to see now they fit by your glass."
Brummell at this moment was announced.
"How very apropos you are arrived," I remarked. "Lord Frederick wants
your opinion on his new leather breeches."
"Come here, Fred Bentinck!" said Brummell. "But there is only one man on
earth who can make leather breeches!"
"Mine were made by a man in the Haymarket," Bentinck observed, looking
down at them with much pride; for he very seldom sported anything new.
"My dear fellow, take them off directly!" said Brummell.
"I beg I may hear of no such thing," said I, hastily--"else, where would
he go to, I wonder, without his small-clothes?"
"You will drive me out of the house, Harriette," said Fred Bentinck; and
then put himself into attitudes, looking anxiously and very innocently,
from George Brummell to his leather breeches, and from his leather
breeches to the looking-glass.
"They only came home this morning," proceeded Fred, "and I thought they
were rather neat."
"Bad knees, my good fellow! bad knees!" said Brummell, shrugging up his
shoulders.
"They will do very well," I remarked. "Fred Bentinck do start a new
subject, for first with my latter end and then with your own, this is
quite worn out."
"I am sorry," said Fred Bentinck, "very sorry to say that I am afraid
you will turn out bad."
"What do you call bad?"
"Why profligate! and wicked."
"Oh! you don't say so? what do you mean by wicked?"
"Why--why, in short," continued Frederick--"in short, shall I drive you
down to Greenwich to dinner?"
"And suppose I should grow wicked on the road?" said I.
"Do you know what the Duke of York says of you Fred?" said Brummell.
"The Duke of York talks in a very nasty way," said Fred Bentinck,
"I--I, for my part, hate all immodest conversation."
"And that is the reason why I save up all the odd stories I can learn,
for you and for you only," I observed. "And yet you come here every day?"
"As to you," said Fred, "you are a beautiful creature, and I come to try
to reform you, or else what will become of you when you grow old?"
"Age cannot wither me, nor custom stale my infinite variety:" was my
reply.
"You are mad!" said Fred Bentinck.
"And you are monstrous top-heavy! and madness being often
light-headedness, I wish you would go mad too."
"Apropos, Mr. Brummell," said I turning to him. "I have never yet had
time to acknowledge your effusion; and I have the less regret on that
score, because I learned from Fanny to-day that you are false-hearted."
"Julia and I," said Brummell, "are very old friends, you know."
"True," said I, "which, I suppose, accounts for her preference of Horace
Beckford."
Brummell's pride appeared to take alarm as he inquired if Julia really
admired Horace.
"I know nothing whatever about it," answered I, "except that I saw them
both at the window together to-day."
Brummell seized his hat.
"Take Fred Bentinck with you," said I.
"Come Fred," said Brummell; "but you have not heard what the Duke of
York says of you."
"I can guess," replied Fred, trying to make his goodnatured face severe
and cross.
"Oh! he has accused you to your face, I see," reiterated Brummell.
"So much the better," said Fred Bentinck, "a man cannot be too virtuous."
"Talking of virtue," I remarked to Fred, "really that brother Charles of
yours made himself rather too ridiculous by writing those letters to
Lady Abdy about his intention to die, in case she continued cruel."
"I have no more patience with Charles Bentinck than you have," said
Frederick, "particularly with his bringing Lady Abdy to my brother's
house. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself."
"I do not know anything about that, I only allude to the folly of a
strong young man like Charles Bentinck, sitting down to his muffins and
eggs in a state of perfect health, and, with his mouth crammed full of
both, calling for half a sheet of paper to write to Lady Abdy, that he
was, at that present writing, about to die! and therefore took up his
pen, to request her to be kind to his daughter Georgiana when he should
be no more!"
"I do not set up for a remarkably clever fellow," Fred Bentinck
observed; "but if I had made such a fool of myself as Charles did in
that business, I would blow my brains out!"
"You are helping him out of it nicely," Brummell observed to Fred
Bentinck.
"I have no patience with people who expose themselves," continued Fred
Bentinck; "because it is in everybody's power to be silent: and, as to
love-letters, a man has no excuse for writing them."
"There's no wisdom below the girdle, some philosopher said in old
times," I remarked.
"I wish I could break you of that dreadful habit of making such indecent
allusions, Harriette!" said Fred Bentinck.
"I never make them to any one but you."
"I'll give you ten pounds if you will let me burn this book," said
Bentinck, taking up Fanblas.
"In the meantime," I continued, "you seem to be glancing your eye over
it with something like satisfaction, for a man, such as the Duke of
York describes, of unblemished reputation for chastity! But, to revert
to your brother's dying, with the hot muffins in his mouth, for Lady
Abdy. Would not a man, who really and seriously had made up his mind to
die for love, have written a little note and, after sealing it with a
death's head or something of that kind, have hidden it somewhere, to be
delivered when he should be defunct--instead of talking of death, like
Shakespeare's
'----certain Lord, neat and trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom and his chin new reap'd.'"
"Thank God," said Fred Bentinck, laughing, "I shall never be in love!"
"Why you adore me, and have done so for the last twelvemonth," said I;
"but I want you to transfer your love to a friend of mine."
"Do Fred," said Brummell, taking up his hat, "moderate your passion if
possible, and be sure to burn those leather breeches of yours."
"I want you," continued I, after Brummell had left us, "I want you to
fall in love with Julia Johnstone."
"She is a fine woman," answered Fred Bentinck; "only I am so afraid she
should love me in return; and if you, Julia, or any woman were to love
me, I should be sick directly."
"How do you know?" I asked; "who on earth ever tried you that way?"
"Why, there was a woman six years ago," said Frederick, "who certainly
did love me."
"How very extraordinary!" I remarked.
"At least," continued Bentinck, "she gave me such proofs as no man could
doubt, and I assure you I was never so sick, or so disgusted, in my
whole life; and so I am now whenever I happen to meet her."
"_Fiez vous à moi, donc_," said I, "for here you shall ever find safety."
"I know it," answered Bentinck, "and that is why I like you."
He now recollected his intention of visiting the Duchess of York, and
took his leave.
Lord Ponsonby and myself met every evening, for more than a week. We
were never tired of conversing with each other. His humour exactly
suited mine. In short, though I have been called agreeable all my life,
I am convinced that I was never half so pleasant or so witty as in
Ponsonby's society. We seldom contrived to separate before five or six
o'clock in the morning, and Ponsonby generally came to me as soon as
it was dark. Nor did we always wait for the evening to see each other,
though respect for Lady Ponsonby made us ever, by mutual consent, avoid
all risk of wounding her feelings; therefore, almost every day after
dinner we met in the park by appointment, not to speak but only to look
at each other.
One morning, being greatly struck with the beauty of a young lady who
drove by me in a very elegant little carriage, while I was expecting to
see Lord Ponsonby, I inquired of the gentleman who was walking with me
if he knew who she was! It was the man well known in the fashionable
world by the appellation of Poodle Byng, the title of Poodle having been
bestowed on him owing to his very curly white locks, in defence of which
he always declared that his head was the original from which all the
young men and their barbers took base copies.
"It is," answered Poodle, "that most lovely creature, Lady Fanny
Ponsonby, whom we are all sighing and dying for."
She was indeed very lovely, and did not appear to be more than eighteen.
I considered her with respect and admiration, unmixed with jealousy.
This was not the rose; but she had dwelled with it. I thought that she
resembled Lord Ponsonby, and I felt that I could have loved her dearly.
"Thank heaven," thought I, "this beautiful girl appears quite calm and
happy; therefore I have done her no harm."
In the evening I was eager to praise her to her husband. "She possesses
all the beauty of the Jerseys," said I to him; "and what a pretty
little foot!" This I had observed as she got out of her carriage in
Curzon-street.
"How very odd!" Ponsonby remarked,
"What is odd?"
"Why, I do believe you like Fanny!"
"Be sure of it then," I answered. "I like her as much as I should
dislike any woman who did not love you dearly. Listen to me, Ponsonby,"
I continued, taking his hand, and speaking with steady firmness. "All
my religion is from my heart, and not from books. If ever our intimacy
is discovered so as to disturb her peace of mind, on that day we must
separate for ever. I can but die, and God, I hope, will have mercy
on me, very soon after our separation, if ever it should be found
necessary; but we are not monsters! therefore we will never indulge in
selfish enjoyment at the expense of misery to any one of our fellow
creatures, much less one who depends on you for all her happiness."
"And she is very happy, thank God," said Ponsonby, "and I would rather
forfeit my life than destroy her peace."
"Be firm in that I entreat you," I replied, "for there can be no rest
here nor hereafter without the acquittal of our hearts. Mine was devoted
to you with that sincere ardour and deep character of feeling which is
so natural to me, before I knew that you were married. I know it now,
too late to endure life when you shall have left me; but I can die when
her happiness shall require it." Alas! I knew not half the anguish and
suffering the human frame can endure, and yet survive!
One night, about a week from the day Ponsonby first visited me, when I
did not expect him till midnight, I retired to bed and fell fast asleep,
which said long nap neither Ponsonby nor any one else had disturbed.
When I awoke, the sun was shining through my curtains. My first thoughts
were always on Ponsonby, and I recollected, with a deep feeling of
disappointment, that he had promised the night before to come to me
by midnight, and I had desired my maid to send him up into my room as
soon as he arrived. I felt for his little watch, which I always
placed under my pillow; judge my astonishment to find, attached to it,
a magnificent gold chain of exquisite workmanship. I began to think
myself in the land of fairies! and still more so, when I observed a very
beautiful pearl ring on one of my fingers. I rubbed my eyes and opened
them wide, to ascertain beyond a doubt that I was broad awake. A very
small strip of writing paper, which I had drawn from under my pillow
with my watch, now caught my attention and I read, written with a pencil
in Ponsonby's small beautiful character: "_Dors, cher enfant, je t'aime
trop tendrement, pour t'éveiller._"
[Illustration: BYNG-CO]
It was very sentimental and affectionate; for Ponsonby knew how much
I required rest. I was very grateful, and yet I thought it altogether
exceedingly provoking! How could I be so stupid as not to awake, even
when he had his hand under my pillow, in search of my watch! I rang my
bell, and inquired of my maid how long she thought Lord Ponsonby had
stayed with me the night before.
"More than an hour," was the reply.
"Dear Ponsonby," said I, as soon as she had quitted the room, while I
bestowed a thousand kisses on the beautiful watch and chain, "you are
the first man on earth who ever sacrificed his own pleasure and passions
to secure my repose!"
Lord Ponsonby's father still continued another fortnight in the same
hopeless state. His favourite son deeply lamented his illness, and had
been indefatigable in his attentions; refusing to visit me or anybody
as long as there was hope, or while his father could derive comfort
from his son's affections; but, when nothing more could be done, he had
sought comfort in the society of the person who loved him best. I should
do Lord Ponsonby great injustice were I to say that he ever forgot or
neglected his father.
I asked a friend of Lord Ponsonby one day why he did not adore his
beautiful wife? He had no idea that I was acquainted with his lordship.
"Lord Ponsonby is always very kind and affectionate to her," was the
reply.
"True," I continued; "but I have heard that he does not fly to her for
consolation when he is melancholy, nor consult her, nor make a friend of
her."
"Lady Fanny is a sweet-tempered child," said he; "but not at all clever:
and then, poor thing! she is very deaf, which affliction came on after a
violent attack of scarlet fever."
"What a beautiful, sweet and calm expression of countenance she
possesses," I remarked, "so pale, that her features at first sight
appear only pretty; but on examination they are found perfect; and her
dark, clear, brown eyes----"
"So like your own," said the gentleman, interrupting me.
"I have heard that remark made before," I replied, blushing deeply; "but
I am not vain enough to credit it."
"With all their beauty," remarked Ponsonby's friend, "men soon grow
tired of those Jerseys, with the exception only of Lady ----, with whom
the wicked world say the Duke of Argyle has been in love more than
twenty years."
"Is not the boy they call Frank supposed to be a son of the duke?" I
asked.
"I have heard so; but let us hope it is all vile scandal."
"With all my heart; but how does Lady Fanny Ponsonby pass her time?"
"She draws prettily," he observed: "and she has now got a little
companion she is very fond of."
"Who is that?" said I.
"A mouse, which, having one night showed its little face to her ladyship
in her drawing-room, she so coaxed him with her dainties for three weeks
together, that she contrived to tame him: and now he will eat them out
of her lovely hands."
"But then after the mouse is gone to bed," said I, "how does her
ladyship amuse herself?"
"With her younger sister, or in writing or drawing. Lady Fanny does not
much care for society."
"She is not a flirt, I believe?"
"What man can she think it worth while to flirt with," answered he,
"being married to such a one as Ponsonby."
I was charmed to hear my own sentiments from the lips of another, and
one of his own sex too.
"You admire Lord Ponsonby then?" said I.
"Admire! depend upon it there is nothing like him in all Europe. I speak
of him altogether, as to his beauty, his manners, and his talents; but
Lord Ponsonby," he continued, "owing to his extreme reserve and his
excessive shyness is very little known. He never desires to be known or
appreciated but by his own particular friends: yet I know few so capable
of distinguishing themselves anywhere, particularly in the senate, as
his lordship: his remarkably fine voice, and his language, always so
persuasive and eloquent, besides he is such an excellent politician. He
will now, shortly, by the expected death of his father," continued the
gentleman, whose name if I recollect well, was Matthew Lee, "become one
of the peers of the United Kingdom. I was telling him, the other day,
how much we should be disappointed if he did not take a very active part
in the debates. 'God forbid!' said Ponsonby. 'It is all I can do to find
nerve for yes or no, when there is a question in the House, and that in
a whisper.'"
"How came he to be so shy?" I asked.
"And how came it to become him so well?" returned his friend, "for it
would make any other man awkward, and Ponsonby is most graceful when
he is most embarrassed. I have known him from a boy. We were at school
together. The ladies were all running mad for him before he was fifteen,
and I really believe, that at eighteen Ponsonby, with the true genuine
Irish character and warmest passions, had not looked any woman full
in the face; and to this day his friends are obliged to make him half
tipsy in order to enjoy his society. Yet, with all this timidity," he
went on, observing that I was never tired of the subject, and could pay
attention to no other, "Ponsonby has a remarkably fine high spirit. One
night, very late, near Dublin, he met two of his brothers just as they
had got into a violent row with three raw-boned, half naked Irish pats.
Seeing that his brothers were drunk, Ponsonby began to remonstrate with
them, and strove to persuade them to come home quietly, when one of
those ruffians struck his youngest brother a very unfair blow with a
stick.
"'Now, d--n your hearts and bl--ds!' said Lord Ponsonby, stripping and
setting to with the strength and spirit of a prize-fighter.
"His own mother at this moment could not have known her son: the
metamorphosis was nearly as laughable as it was astonishing."
I asked how long he had been married?
"Not five years."
"And Lady Fanny's age?"
"Twenty."
I then asked if he married her for love or money?
"Money!" said Lee, indignantly. "It is now clear to me that you do
not know Lord Ponsonby. I was just beginning to suspect from the
multiplicity of your questions that you did."
"He was very much in love with her then?" I inquired, without attending
to this observation.
"She was not fourteen," answered Lee, "when Ponsonby first met her at
her mother's, Lady Jersey's. He was of course, like everybody else,
speedily struck with her beauty. She was not deaf then, but shortly
afterwards she had a violent attack of scarlet fever, during which her
life was despaired of for several weeks: indeed, there was scarcely a
hope of her recovery. I remember Ponsonby said to me one night, as we
passed by Lady Jersey's house together--'The loveliest young creature
I have ever beheld on earth lies in that room dying.' The first time
Lady Fanny appeared in her mother's drawing-room she resembled a spirit
so fair, so calm, so transparent. All her magnificent hair, which had
before reached and now again descends much below her waist, had been
shorn from her beautiful little head. She often took her lace cap off
and exhibited herself thus to anybody, to raise a laugh; or perhaps she
knew that she was, even without hair, as lovely as ever.
"Lord Ponsonby, as he has told me since, was present when her ladyship
first left her room, and soon discovered that she was now afflicted
with deafness. He felt the deepest interest, admiration and pity for
her. He considered with horror the bare possibility of this sweet,
fragile little being, becoming the wife of some man, who might hereafter
treat her harshly. Added to this, I fancy," continued Lee, "Ponsonby
had discovered that he was not indifferent to her little ladyship; so,
to secure her from any of these evils, he resolved to propose for her
himself. I need not add that he was joyfully accepted by both mother and
daughter. He might have done better," added Lee, "and I fancy Ponsonby
sometimes wishes that his wife could be his friend and companion: but
that is quite out of the question. Her ladyship is good and will do as
she is bid; but, besides her deafness, her understanding is neither
bright nor lively. Lord Ponsonby shows her the sort of indulgence and
tenderness which a child requires; but he must seek for a companion
elsewhere."
Mr. Lee then took leave of me: and a very few days after this
conversation had taken place, Lord Ponsonby's father breathed his last
in the arms of his son, who immediately left town without seeing me; but
he wrote to me most affectionately.