CHAPTER XXII

In a few days after this event we were on our road to London, where I soon learned all the most minute particulars of my sister Sophia's marriage with Lord Berwick from Fanny, who, with Colonel Parker, was still in town. Sophia, I am sure, never had it really in her contemplation to refuse so excellent a match; yet she had for several weeks delayed the ceremony, merely as I imagine for the honour and glory of having it said of her afterwards that Lord Berwick had obtained her fair hand not without difficulty. The thing had struck Fanny in the same light; and therefore, in view of hastening what certainly was a desirable event, she one day remarked to Sophia that she had observed a degree of coolness in his lordship's manner for several days past, and that she really fancied he was considering how he should get off the marriage honourably.

Sophia reddened in evident alarm.

Fanny affected not to have remarked her sister's anxiety. "It is lucky, my dear Sophia," she went on, "that you do not wish to be Lady Berwick, otherwise this change in my lord's sentiments might have caused you the greatest misery."

"Oh, no; not at all; not in the least, I assure you," hastily answered Sophia.

"My dear," continued Fanny, "why do you take such pains to convince me of what you know I have never had cause to doubt? On the contrary, since I have now such good reason to believe that the match has become equally disagreeable to both parties, I propose, in order to spare your pride the slightest wound, that you commission me to declare off for you in the most decidedly unequivocal terms, declaring in your name, that you will leave him for ever, on the very first moment that he renews the disagreeable subject."

"Why no,--I think--you had better--better say nothing about it," said Sophia, with ill-disguised anxiety and evident confusion.

"Why, pray?" inquired Fanny, affecting surprise.

"Why--why--the fact is, it would seem----"

"What would it seem?"

"Seem--seem--so very ungrateful."

"Ingratitude is to be sure a heinous sin," said Fanny shaking her head, and laughing incredulously.

The next day, Lord Berwick received Sophia's permission to write to her father, stating his wish to become his son-in-law, and further begging my father to be present at the ceremony which, with his permission, was to take place on the following day, for the purpose of giving his daughter away, that fair lady being under age.

My father was a proud Swiss, rather unpopular, and a deep mathematician. We were never in our youth either allowed to address him or speak in his presence, except in low whispers, for fear of driving a problem out of his head. He valued his sons according to the progress they made in that science. For the girls, he felt all the contempt due to those who voted plus _x_ minus _y_ a dead bore.

He was remarkably handsome, with white teeth, expressive eyes, and eyebrows which used to frighten us half out of our senses.

Lord Berwick, as well as many more, has often declared himself to have been much struck with that noble air for which my father was particularly distinguished.

The good gentleman was of course flattered on his own account, and probably thought, with the man in Bluebeard, that,--

'Tis a very fine thing to be father-in-law To a rich, and magnificent, three-tailed Bashaw.

But I do not mean to say he did not rejoice in his daughter's welfare for his daughter's sake too, as that would be to decide harshly of any father, much less of my own. We will therefore take it for granted, that, on this day at least _monsieur mon papa se trouvait d'une forte belle humeur;_ nay, my little sisters have since informed me that, when one of them, having had the misfortune to upset a box full of playthings, which made a violent noise in the room where he was, as usual, puzzling over a problem, just as they expected little short of broken heads, and were all running into the most remote corners of the room, until of the opposite wall they seemed a part, he surprised them to the greatest possible degree, by saying, "_n'importe, petites imbéciles, viennes m'embrasser!_"

Sophia was to be married at St. George's church.

My father had a neighbour, who once insulted him with remarks about the profligacy of his daughters, and, though the man had made very humble apologies, and my father had shaken hands with him, yet he never forgot it. This neighbour was a tradesman in a large way of business, who lived in a very respectable style of comfort. He had several daughters, the ugliest perhaps that could possibly come of one father. There was no such thing as getting these off anyhow, by hook or by crook, by the straight paths of virtue, or the intricate road of vice. Not that I mean to say the latter had been attempted; but of this I am certain, if it had been, it must have been ineffectual.

On the eve of Sophia's marriage, as soon as my father had received Lord Berwick's polite invitation, he went to pay his good neighbour a visit.

"How do you find yourself this evening, my very excellent neighbour?"

"Purely, purely, thank you."

"And your amiable daughters? Any of them married yet? Any of them thinking of it, hey?"

G---- shook his head. "Husbands, as you well know, are not so easily procured for girls of no fortune."

"Indeed, sir, I am not aware of any particular difficulty. You know my daughter Paragon has long been respectably married to a gentleman of family; and, as for my daughter Sophia, I shall, please God I live, witness her wedding to-morrow morning before my dinner."

"Who is she to marry, pray?" asked G---- with eager curiosity; and which, my father answered, by putting Lord Berwick's letter into his hands, to his utmost astonishment; and, before he had at all recovered from his fit of envy and surprise, my father took his leave, saying that he had many preparations to make for the approaching marriage.

Next morning, as my father was stepping into the carriage which was to convey him to Lord Berwick's house in Grosvenor Square, well-dressed and in high spirits, he was gratified by the sight of his neighbour, who happened to pass his door at that very moment.

This man, naturally envious, and having hitherto looked down with pity on my father's misfortunes in having such handsome daughters, or, at least, he affected to do so, although, in his heart perhaps he had not despised his children the more, supposing it had been the will of heaven to have bestowed on them countenances less forbiddingly ugly, this man, I say, could not, under the pressure of existing circumstances, help giving some vent to his spleen, exclaimed, "Don't hurry! don't break your neck!" and then passed on, ashamed as well he might be at the littleness of his envy.

Just before Sophia's marriage, Lord Berwick spoke to her, to this effect:

"My beloved Sophia, you are about to become an innocent, virtuous woman, and therefore you must pass your word to cut your sisters dead for ever and at once. I allude particularly to Fanny and Harriette."

"Yes--certainly--very well;" was Sophia's warm-hearted answer.

"And you will oblige me by neither writing to them nor receiving any letters from them."

"Very well; then I will give them up altogether," said Sophia, with much placidity; and yet we had never been, in the slightest degree, deficient in sisterly affection towards her; and Lord Berwick expected to inspire with affection this heartless thing, who, for a mere title, conferred on her by a stranger she disliked, could at once forget the ties of nature, and forsake for ever without an effort or a tear her earliest friends and nearest relations; and not because she was more virtuous than they were, since, on the contrary, she had begun her career before other girls even dream of such things. She had intruded herself on a cobbler at thirteen, thrown herself into the arms of the most disgusting profligate in England at fourteen, with her eyes open, knowing what he was; then offered herself for sale at a price to Colonel Berkeley, and, when her terms were refused with scorn and contempt by the handsome and young, she throws herself into the arms of age and ugliness for a yearly stipend, and at length, by good luck, without one atom of virtue, became a wife.

This from me may appear to strangers like personal pique, but all who know me will acquit me of having ever, in my life, coveted the society of fools. I certainly, being naturally affectionate, should never have been induced to forsake my own sisters while they were kindly disposed towards me: and in short, had a man to whom I was to be married requested anything so unnatural of me, I should have disliked him ever afterwards for the wish, so far from complying with it. Yet I do feel irritated against Lady Berwick I confess it: but it is for her slights, or what I fancy was her neglect of my dear departed mother. As for her having forgotten me, our indifference being mutual, I am no longer at all disposed to find fault with it. I should in like manner have ceased to love my mother, had she but felt it in her power, or had it for an instant been in her contemplation to forsake me for ever.

Nothing particular occurred on the day of Sophia's marriage, which passed off very quietly, and Sophia ate a hearty dinner after it, which was what usually happened to that interesting young lady every day of her life at about six o'clock.

Sophia, having the command of more guineas than ever she had expected to have had pence, did nothing from morning till night but throw them away. She would go into a shop and ask for two or three Brussels veils--send a beggar's family to an expensive tailor to be clothed--build a little island on a pond--buy a dressing-box of fifteen hundred pounds price, and all within a week. Lord Berwick was often reminded that this silly girl would ruin him without comfort or benefit to herself; but his answer was, that he could not endure to scold the innocent creature, but must trust to her common sense for shortly finding out that all this extravagance could not last, even if he possessed four times as large an estate.

Sophia, finding that money was poured into her lap just as fast as she could ask for it, and seeing no end to it, thought that nothing could be more easy to practise than generosity. She was however nearly four months in the habit of throwing away money by wholesale before she made an attempt to be of the least service to her mother, though she knew well how harassed that dear parent was with her very large family. At last she amused herself at her country-house by sending her mother cart-loads of dishes, plates and saucepans, proposing to furnish her a house.

Lord Berwick's agent having sold Sophia's house in Montagu Square for two thousand pounds, and presenting it to her when she really knew not well what to do with it, Sophia sent it to her mother. I mention this circumstance merely as a matter of justice to a little, uninteresting being, whom I rather dislike than otherwise, and will repeat it as often as I have an opportunity to do so.

Lord Berwick, in less than twelve months after his marriage, was so involved, as to be under the necessity of making over the whole of his property to his creditors, for I do not know how many years.

Our young sister Charlotte, then about seven years of age, was a sweet, lovely little creature, and promised to be one of the finest dancers of the age. She had been some time a pupil of Monsieur Boigera of the Opera House.

It was not the profession my mother would have preferred, but Charlotte promised to do wonders in it, and, with her striking beauty, there could have been little doubt of her marrying well from the stage; and a mother, who has fifteen children to provide for, cannot do as she pleases.

Charlotte had already made her _début_ as Cupid, and delighted everybody who saw her, when Lord and Lady Berwick, seized with a fit of pride which they nicknamed virtue, begged leave to snatch the child from such a shocking profession, and they undertook to bring her up and provide for her under their own eyes. My poor mother joyfully closed with this apparently kind offer, and immediately made Charlotte forsake the profession, which, with her talents, must have made her fortune, with or without marriage, to go and live with Sophia.

The child, when at her country seat, became a great favourite with the wife of Lord Berwick's brother, Mrs. Hill, and all went on charmingly, till Charlotte began to look like a woman, and one of such uncommon loveliness, as to attract the attention of all the elegant young men in the neighbourhood. Sophia could not endure this. Even at the Opera, many a man has preferred offering his arm to Charlotte; nay, it was said, a country gentleman of very large property was expected to make Charlotte an honourable proposal. This was too much. Poor Charlotte, after having forsaken the profession in which she must have succeeded, to be bred up in luxury among nobility, who looked on her as half an angel, was bundled off to a country school, there to earn her daily bread by birching young, vulgar misses, and teaching them their French and English grammar, and there has poor Charlotte been forced to bloom unseen, wasting her sweetness on the desert air ever since.

Patronage is a fine thing!

I should like to know what Charlotte says about it as she sits darning her cotton stockings on a Saturday night.

* * * * *

My time in London passed on pleasantly enough at this period, as I went wherever I pleased. The only drawback to my comfort was that the Duke of Beaufort did nothing but write and torment Lord Worcester to leave me, while Worcester's love seemed to increase on the receipt of every scolding letter. He daily swore to make me his wife, and professed to be wretched, whenever I desired him not to think of marriage.

Her Grace of Beaufort's letters to her son, which I always had the honour of perusing, were extremely eloquent on my subject. The duchess, unlike Lord Frederick Bentinck, was fond of hard words. "This absurd attachment of yours for this vile profligate woman, does but prove," wrote this noble personage, "the total subjugation of your understanding."

In answer to this nervous paragraph, one of Her Grace's epistles, I beg leave to correct the word subjugation. Not that there is any harm in it, on the contrary it is a very learned kind of a full sounding expression and looks handsome in a letter, but then it is too learned to be so ignorantly misapplied. Her Grace, in her zeal to be fine, must have mistaken it for something else, since I can offer an unanswerable reason why her hopeful son, Worcester, could not have his understanding subjugated even by the wonderful charms of Harriette Wilson, and that in four simple words:--He never possessed any.

Her Grace, in her infinite condescension, then goes on to state that the said Harriette Wilson is the lowest and most profligate creature alive. In short, so very bad, that she once sent for her own immaculate brother!--alluding to my having ordered up that worthy man to Marylebone Fields, one morning before breakfast. After continuing this most ladylike style of abuse in detail, enlarging on my former little sins and peccadillos, she writes, in a postscript: "Of course, Worcester, your own sense"--she forgot that it was subjugated--"will teach you to conceal this letter from the person of whom I have spoken so freely."

"It is very hard upon me!" said I one day to Lord Worcester, after reading one of Her Grace's flattering letters, "I was well disposed towards you, and towards your family for your sake. I have constantly refused to accept expensive presents from you, and I have saved you from gambling, and various other vices and misfortunes to which you would otherwise have been, shall I say, in humble imitation of Her Grace, subjugated? I have refused to become Marchioness of Worcester over and over again, believing that such a marriage would distress your family, and, in return, your duchess-mother, with the usual charity of all ladies who either are or pass for being chaste, insists on my being at once turned adrift into the streets and entirely unprovided for."

At last there came another very severe letter from the Duke of Beaufort, insisting on Lord Worcester immediately joining him at his seat near Oxford.

Worcester declared that he would not go, while I insisted that he should not disobey his father.

"Do not irritate His Grace," said I; "but, on the contrary, strive to set his mind at rest, by assuring him that I wish you too well to marry you. True, the duchess is very abusive, rather vulgarly so perhaps, all things considered; but I have no wish to deserve harsh language from your mother, in order that I may think of it with calm indifference."

Worcester spoke very handsomely on this subject. "I love my father and mother," said he, "and it would go to my heart to disobey them, if I saw them inclined to act with justice and humanity towards you. As it is, I could not resign them for ever without the deepest regret: at the same time, I solemnly declare to you, upon my honour and soul, if it were necessary to make a choice, and I must lose for ever either you, to whom I conceive myself bound quite as sacredly as though we were really married, or my whole family, I would not hesitate one instant, not even if they could cut me off with a shilling. I should prefer, ten thousand times over, driving a mail coach for our daily support, and living with you in a garret to any magnificence that could be offered me without you."

His lordship was miserably agitated, when he found that I seriously insisted on his leaving me to join his father, and perhaps he had, for this once, ventured to disobey me, had not his uncle, Lord William Somerset, at the Duke of Beaufort's request, called on us, and insisted on not leaving the house till he had seen Worcester safe off in the Oxford mail.

I forgot to mention a little circumstance which happened on the day previous to Lord Worcester's departure for Badminton, which is the name of his father's country-seat. We were sitting near one of the windows together, when a man on the opposite side of the way attracted my notice. Surely methought, I must have seen that man before. He was standing quite still, and for several minutes I could not for the life of me catch a second glimpse of his face, which had been turned towards us for an instant. At last he seemed as though he were making for my door.

"That is the man!" I abruptly exclaimed; "that is the madman!"

I spoke from the sudden impulse of the moment, and regretted no less instantaneously, but nothing I could say or do had power to detain Lord Worcester, who immediately darted across the street, and inquired of the man what his business had been with me, and why he had presumed to enter my house?

The man answered, that he had no business with me, and had never dreamed of entering my house.

Worcester called him a d----d liar, and throwing his card at him, at the same time, asked him who he was, and where he came from?

The man refused to satisfy this inquiry and fixed his eyes on Worcester with a vacant gaze.

"You won't tell me your name then?"

"No," said the man, at last, adding that he did not choose to have his name handed about in such company.

Worcester remarked that he rather fancied no one would ever hear his name as a fighter; but, if he was ashamed of his name, and felt conscious that his rank was too low in life for him to meet in a duel, without disgracing himself as a gentleman, he was ready to turn into the next field with him, and set to work with their fists, in the way most suitable to a blackguard like him!

The man declared that he was not a bruiser, and refused to stir.

Worcester struck him with his stick, when the man put himself into an attitude of defence; but not at all scientifically.

The fight lasted full twenty minutes. It took place in a public street in the broad face of day.

I did not see the end of the contest, but Worcester, on his return, informed me that he had been victorious, and then retired to wash the blood from his hands and nose.

The Honourable Berkeley Craven, who at all times can smell out a fight as often as such a thing occurs within ten miles of him, was present, I presume, at this mighty encounter, since he afterwards mentioned the circumstance to me, declaring that he knew Worcester's antagonist to be a young man of good family, who had twice made his escape from a mad-house.

Poor fellow! however he appeared to be of such muscular strength, that I do not think Worcester could have done him any material injury; notwithstanding his lordship was a pupil of Jackson.

* * * * *

Worcester shed tears in abundance at parting with me. His uncle, Lord William Somerset, placed himself in an easy chair, swearing he would not stir without his nephew.

Worcester declared to his uncle, that he was a d--m--n bore, and ought to be sensible how desirous he naturally must be to pass an hour or two alone with me, previous to his departure for Badminton.

Lord William Somerset remained firm as a rock, and took Worcester out of the house at half-past seven in the evening; which happened to be just in time to secure his place in the Oxford mail.