第51章 CHAPTER X(9)

And after this positif declaration, which reflex honor on her ladyship (long life to her! I've often waited behind her chair!)-- after this positif declaration, that, even for the porpus of DEFENDING her missis, she was so hi-minded as to refuse anythink like a peculiarly consideration, it is actially asserted in the public prints by a booxeller, that he has given her A THOUSAND POUND for the Dairy. A thousand pound! nonsince!--it's a phigment! a base lible! This woman take a thousand pound, in a matter where her dear mistriss, friend, and benyfactriss was concerned! Never!

A thousand baggonits would be more prefrabble to a woman of her xqizzit feelins and fashion.

But to proseed. It's been objected to me, when I wrote some of my expearunces in fashnabble life, that my languidge was occasionally vulgar, and not such as is genrally used in those exqizzit famlies which I frequent. Now, I'll lay a wager that there is in this book, wrote as all the world knows, by a rele lady, and speakin of kings and queens as if they were as common as sand-boys--there is in this book more wulgarity than ever I displayed, more nastiness than ever I would dare TO THINK ON, and more bad grammar than ever I wrote since I was a boy at school. As for authografy, evry genlmn has his own: never mind spellin, I say, so long as the sence is right.

Let me here quot a letter from a corryspondent of this charming lady of honor; and a very nice corryspondent he is, too, without any mistake:

"Lady O---, poor Lady O---! knows the rules of prudence, I fear me, as imperfectly as she doth those of the Greek and Latin Grammars: or she hath let her brother, who is a sad swine, become master of her secrets, and then contrived to quarrel with him. You would see the outline of the melange in the newspapers; but not the report that Mr. S--- is about to publish a pamphlet, as an addition to the Harleian Tracts, setting forth the amatory adventures of his sister. We shall break our necks in haste to buy it, of course crying 'Shameful' all the while; and it is said that Lady O--- is to be cut, which I cannot entirely believe. Let her tell two or three old women about town that they are young and handsome, and give some well-timed parties, and she may still keep the society which she hath been used to. The times are not so hard as they once were, when a woman could not construe Magna Charta with anything like impunity. People were full as gallant many years ago. But the days are gone by wherein my lord-protector of the commonwealth of England was wont to go a lovemaking to Mrs.

Fleetwood, with the Bible under his arm.

"And so Miss Jacky Gordon is really clothed with a husband at last, and Miss Laura Manners left without a mate! She and Lord Stair should marry and have children in mere revenge. As to Miss Gordon, she's a Venus well suited for such a Vulcan,--whom nothing but money and a title could have rendered tolerable, even to a kitchen wench. It is said that the matrimonial correspondence between this couple is to be published, full of sad scandalous relations, of which you may be sure scarcely a word is true. In former times, the Duchess of St. A---s made use of these elegant epistles in order to intimidate Lady Johnstone: but that ruse would not avail; so in spite, they are to be printed. What a cargo of amiable creatures! Yet will some people scarcely believe in the existence of Pandemonium.

"Tuesday Morning.--You are perfectly right respecting the hot rooms here, which we all cry out against, and all find very comfortable-- much more so than the cold sands and bleak neighborhood of the sea; which looks vastly well in one of Vander Velde's pictures hung upon crimson damask, but hideous and shocking in reality. H--- and his 'elle' (talking of parties) were last night at Cholmondeley House, but seem not to ripen in their love. He is certainly good-humored, and I believe, good-hearted, so deserves a good wife; but his cara seems a genuine London miss made up of many affectations. Will she form a comfortable helpmate? For me, I like not her origin, and deem many strange things to run in blood, besides madness and the Hanoverian evil.

"Thursday.--I verily do believe that I shall never get to the end of this small sheet of paper, so many unheard of interruptions have I had; and now I have been to Vauxhall, and caught the toothache.

I was of Lady E. B---m and H---'s party: very dull--the Lady giving us all a supper after our promenade--'Much ado was there, God wot She would love, but he would not.'

He ate a great deal of ice, although he did not seem to require it: and she 'faisoit les yeux doux' enough not only to have melted all the ice which he swallowed, but his own hard heart into the bargain. The thing will not do. In the meantime, Miss Long hath become quite cruel to Wellesley Pole, and divides her favor equally between Lords Killeen and Kilworth, two as simple Irishmen as ever gave birth to a bull. I wish to Hymen that she were fairly married, for all this pother gives one a disgusting picture of human nature."

A disgusting pictur of human nature, indeed--and isn't he who moralizes about it, and she to whom he writes, a couple of pretty heads in the same piece? Which, Mr. Yorke, is the wust, the scandle or the scandle-mongers? See what it is to be a moral man of fashn. Fust, he scrapes togither all the bad stoaries about all the people of his acquentance--he goes to a ball, and laffs or snears at everybody there--he is asked to a dinner, and brings away, along with meat and wine to his heart's content, a sour stomick filled with nasty stories of all the people present there.

He has such a squeamish appytite, that all the world seems to DISAGREE with him. And what has he got to say to his delicate female frend? Why that--Fust. Mr. S. is going to publish indescent stoaries about Lady O---, his sister, which everybody's goin to by.

Nex. That Miss Gordon is going to be cloathed with an usband; and that all their matrimonial corryspondins is to be published too.