The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
Chapter 137 : "You tired!--what have you done? when I used to do so much more- -you tired! what

"You tired!--what have you done? when I used to do so much more- -you tired! what have you to do but to be happy:

Page 216

--have you the laces to buy? have you the wardrobe to part? have you--you tired? Vell, what will become next, when you have every happiness!--you might not be tired. No, I can't bear It."

This, and so much more than it would be possible to write, all uttered with a haughtiness and contempt that the lowest servant could not have brooked receiving, awoke me pretty completely, though before I was scarce able to keep my eyelids a moment open; but so sick I turned, that indeed it was neither patience nor effort that enabled me to hear her; I had literally hardly strength, mental or bodily, to have answered her. Every happiness mine!--O gracious heaven! thought I, and is this the companion of my leisure--the a.s.sociate of my life! Ah, my dear friends, I will not now go on--I turn sick again.

A ROYAL JOKE.

Sept. 29.-The birth-day of our lovely eldest princess.

It happens to be also the birth-day of Miss Goldsworthy; and her majesty, in a sportive humour, bid me, as soon as she was dressed, go and bring down the two "Michaelmas geese."

I told the message to the Princess Augusta, who repeated It in its proper words. I attended them to the queen's dressing- room, and there had the pleasure to see the cadeaux presentations. The birth-days in this house are made extremely interesting at the moment, by the reciprocations of presents and congratulations in this affectionate family. Were they but attended with less of toil (I hate to add ette, for I am sure it is not little toil), I should like them amazingly.

COLONEL GOLDSWORTHY'S BREACH OF ETIQUETTE.

Mrs. Schwellenberg has become both colder and fiercer. I cannot now even meet her eyes-they are almost terrifying. Nothing upon earth having pa.s.sed between us, nor the most remote subject of offence having occurred, I have only one thing on which to rest my conjectures, for the cause of this newly-awakened evil spirit, and this is from the gentlemen. They had all of late been so wearied that they could not submit even for a quarter of an hour to her society : they had swallowed a dish of tea and quitted the room all in five minutes, and Colonel Goldsworthy in particular, when without any companion in his waiting, had actually always fallen asleep,

Page 217

even during that short interval, or at least shut his eyes, to save himself the toil of speaking.

This she brooked very ill, but I was esteemed innocent, and therefore made, occasionally, the confidant of her complaints.

But lately, that she has been ill, and kept upstairs every night, she has always desired me to come to her as soon as tea was over, which, she observed, "need not keep me five minutes." On the contrary, however, the tea is now at least an hour, and often more.

I have been constantly received with reproaches for not coming sooner, and compelled to declare I had not been sooner at liberty. This has occasioned a deep and visible resentment, all against them, yet vented upon me, not in acknowledged displeasure--pride there interfered--but in constant ill-humour, ill-breeding, and ill-will.

At length, however, she has broken out into one inquiry, which, if favourably answered, might have appeased all; but truth was too strongly in the way. A few evenings after her confinement she very gravely said, "Colonel Goldsworthy always sleeps with me! sleeps he with you the same?"

In the midst of all my irksome discomfort, it was with difficulty I could keep my countenance at this question, which I was forced to negative.

The next evening she repeated it. "Vell, sleeps he yet with you- -Colonel Goldsworthy?"

"Not yet, ma'am," I hesitatingly answered.

"O! ver vell! he will sleep with n.o.body but me! O, i von't come down."

And a little after she added, "I believe he vill marry you."

"I believe not, ma'am," I answered.

And then, very gravely,, she proposed him to me, saying he only wanted a little encouragement, for he was always declaring he wished for a wife, and yet wanted no fortune-" so for what won't you not have him?"

I a.s.sured her we were both perfectly well satisfied apart, and equally free from any thoughts of each other.

"Then for what," she cried, "won't you have Dr. Shepherd?" She Is now in the utmost haste to dispose of me! And then she added she had been told that Dr. Shepherd would marry me!

She is an amazing woman ! Alas, I might have told her I knew too well what it was to be tied to a companion ill-a.s.sorted and unbeloved, where I could not help myself, to

Page 218

make any such experiment as a volunteer!

If she asks me any more about Colonel Goldsworthy and his sleeping, I think I will answer I am too near-sighted to be sure if he is awake or not!

However, I cannot but take this stroke concerning the table extremely ill; for though amongst things of the very least consequence in itself, it is more openly designed as an affront than any step that has been taken with me yet.

I have given the colonel a hint, however,-that he may keep awake in future. . . .

ILLNESS OF MRS. SCHWELLENBERG.

Oct. 2.-Mrs. Schwellenberg, very ill indeed, took leave of the queen at St. James's, to set off for Weymouth, in company with Mrs. Hastings. I was really very sorry for her; she was truly in a situation Of suffering, from bodily pain, the most pitiable. I thought, as I looked at her, that if the ill-humours I so often experience could relieve her, I would consent to bear them unrepining, in preference to seeing or knowing her so ill. But it is just the contrary; spleen and ill-temper only aggravate disease, and while they involve others in temporary partic.i.p.ation of their misery, twine it around themselves in bandages almost stationary. She was civil, too, poor woman. I suppose when absent she could not well tell why she had ever been otherwise.

GENERAL GRENVILLE'S REGIMENT AT DRILL.

Oct. 9.-I go on now pretty well; and I am so much acquainted with my party, that when no strangers are added, I begin to mind nothing but the first entree of my male visitants. My royal mistress is all sweetness to me; Miss Planta is most kind and friendly; General Bude is ever the same, and ever what I do not wish to alter; Colonel Goldsworthy seems coming round to good-humour; and even General Grenville begins to grow sociable.

He has quitted the corner into which he used to cast his long figure, merely to yawn and lounge ; and though yawn and lounge he does still, and must, I believe, to the end of the chapter, he yet does it in society, and mixes between it loud sudden laughter at what is occasionally said, and even here and there a question relative to what is going forward. Nay-yesterday he even seated himself at the tea

Page 219

table, and amused himself by playing with my work-box, and making sundry inquiries about its contents.

Oct. 10.-This evening, most unwittingly, I put my new neighbour's good-humour somewhat to the test. He asked me whether I had walked out in the morning? Yes, I answered, I always walked.

"And in the Little park?" cried he. Yes, I said, and to Old Windsor, and round the park wall, and along the banks of the Thames, and almost to Beaumont Lodge, and in the avenue of the Great park, and in short, in all the vicinage of Windsor. "But in the Little park?" he cried.

Still I did not understand him, but plainly answered, "Yes, this morning,; and indeed many mornings."

"But did you see nothing--remark nothing there?

No, not that I recollect, except some soldiers drilling."

You never heard such a laugh as now broke forth from all for, alas for my poor eyes, there had been in the Little park General Grenville's whole regiment, with all his officers, and himself at their head! Fortunately it is reckoned one of the finest in the king's service : this I mentioned, adding that else I could never again appear before him.

He affected to be vehemently affronted, but hardly knew how, even in joke, to appear so ; and all the rest helped the matter on, by saying that they should know now how to distinguish his regiment, which henceforth must always be called " the drill."

The truth is, as soon as I perceived a few red-coats I had turned another way, to avoid being marched at, and therefore their number and splendour had all been thrown away upon me.

(278) "Cerbera" was f.a.n.n.y's not inappropriate name for Mrs. Schwellenberg.-ED.

(279) By William Falconer, born at Edinburgh in 1730. His poem, "The s.h.i.+pwreck," was suggested by his own experience at sea, and was first published in 1762. Falconer sailed for Bengal in 1769, the vessel touched at the Cape in December, and was never heard of more.-ED.

(280) In the "European Magazine" for May 1788, appeared an article from the pen of Baretti, headed "On Signora Piozzi's publication of Dr. Johnson's Letters, Stricture the First." It is filled with coa.r.s.e, personal abuse of the lady, whom the author terms "the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi." "Stricture the Second," in the same tone, appeared the following month, and the "Third," which closed the series, in August of the same year. In the last number Baretti comments, with excessive bitterness, on Mrs. Piozzi's second marriage.-ED.

(281) "Original Love-letters between a Lady of Quality and a Person of Inferior Station." Dublin, 1784. Though by no means devoid of "nonsense and romance," the little book is not altogether undeserving of Colonel Digby's encomium. The story is very slight, and concludes, quite unnecessarily and rather unexpectedly, with the death of the gentleman, just as his good fortune seems a.s.sured.-ED.

(282) Robert Raikes, who was born at Gloucester in 1735, was a printer and the son of a printer. His father was proprietor of the "Gloucester journal." In conjunction with the Rev. Mr.

Stocks, Raikes founded the inst.i.tution of Sunday Schools in 1781.

He died at Gloucester in 1811.-ED.