Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 136

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Jan. 1844.

The day before yesterday Fanny and I walked to see Mrs. Napier, all in black for Lady Clare&mdash;the suddenness of whose death, scarcely a moment's interval between the bright flash of life and the dark silence of death, was most striking and awful.

Yesterday we went to see dear Lady Elizabeth Whitbread, all as it used to be, beautiful camellias, but she herself so sad&mdash;Miss Grant is dying. Nothing can surpass her true tenderness to this faithful, gentle, sincere old friend. All these illnesses and deaths are the more striking I think in a bustling capital city, than they would be in the country surrounded by one's family. There is something shocking in seeing the bustling, struggling crowd who care nothing for one another dead or alive: and they may say, so much the better, we are spared unavailing thought and anguish, and yet I would rather have the thought and even the anguish&mdash;for without pain there is no pleasure for the heart no prayer for Indifference for me! Every memento mori comes with some force to me at seventy-seven, and I do pray most earnestly and devoutly to God, as my father did before me, that my body may not survive my mind, and that I may leave a tender not unpleasing recollection in their hearts.

Though I have written this, my dear mother, and feel it truly, I am not the least melancholy, or apprehensive or afraid of dying, and as to the rest I am truly resigned, and trust to the goodness of my Creator living or dying.

Jan. 13.

Thursday evening at Rogers's&mdash;the party was made for us and as small as possible, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Davy, Mr. and Mrs. Empson, and Mr. Compton and Lord Northampton. Mr. Empson is very little altered in twelve years: the same affectionate heart and the same excellent head. Lord Northampton is very conversable; and Mr. Compton brought me sugared words from troops of children.

HALF-PAST SIX P.M.

Just returned from Mrs. Drummond's&mdash;beautiful house and two pretty children&mdash;and we went to see Anna Carr's beautiful drawings of Ceylon, and no time for more.

Feb. 1.

Miss Fox's illness detained Lord and Lady Lansdowne at Bowood&mdash;she is rather better. We went to Lansdowne House yesterday, and saw Lady Shelburne for the first time, handsome, and very amiable in countenance. Lady Louisa was most charming in her attention to me, and she has a most sensible, deep-thinking face.

Feb. 2.

Snowing and fogging, as white and as dark and disagreeable as ever it can be. Thank heaven, to-day was not yesterday, which was dry, bright sunshine, on purpose to grace the Queen, and to pleasure us three in particular. Fanny ended yesterday by telling you how fortunate, or rather how kind, people had been in working out three tickets for me, at the last hour, at the last moment; for Lord Lovelace came himself between eleven and twelve at night with a ticket, which he gave me, at Lady Byron's request. You may guess how happy I was to have the third ticket for Honora, and we were all full dressed, punctual to the minute, in Fanny's carriage, and with my new-dressed opossum cloak covering our knees, as warm as young toasts.

I spare you all that you will see in the newspapers. The first view of the House did not strike me as so grand as the old House, but my mouth was stopped by "Pro tempore only, you know." We went up an ignominiously small staircase, and the man at the bottom, piteously perspiring, cried out, "On, on, ladies! don't stop the way! room enough above!" But there was one objection to going on, that there were no seats above: however, we made ourselves small&mdash;no great difficulty&mdash;and, taking to the wall, we left a scarcely practicable pass for those who, less wary and more obedient than ourselves, went up one by one to the highmost void. Fanny feared for me that I should never be able to stand it, when somehow or another my name was pronounced and heard by one of the Miss Southebys, who stretched her cordial hand. "Glad&mdash;proud&mdash;glad&mdash;we'll squeeze&mdash;we'll make room for you between me and my friend Miss Fitzhugh;" and so I was bodkin, but never touched the bench till long after. I cast a lingering look at my deserted sisters twain. "No, no, we can't do that!" so, that hope killed off, I took to make the best of my own selfish position, and surveyed all beneath me, from the black heads of the reporter gentlemen, with their pencils and papers before them in the form and desk immediately below me, to the depths of the hall, in all its long extent; and sprawling and stretching in the midst&mdash;with the feathered and lappeted and jewelled peeresses on their right, and their foreign excellencies on the left&mdash;were the long-robed, ermined judges, laying their wigs together and shaking hands, their wigs' many-curled tails shaking on their backs. And the wigs jointly and severally looked like so many vast white and gray birds'-nests from Brobdingnag, with a black hole at the top of each, for the birds to creep out or in. More and more scarlet-ermined dignitaries and nobles swarmed into the hall, and then, in at the scarlet door, came, with white ribbon shoulder-knots and streamers flying in all directions, a broad scarlet five-row-ermined figure, with high, bald forehead, facetious face, and jovial, hail-fellow-well-met countenance, princely withal, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and the sidelong peeress benches stretched their fair hands, and he his ungloved royal hand hastily here and there and everywhere, and chattering so loud and long, that even the remote gallery could hear the "Ha, ha, haw!" which followed ever and anon; and we blessed ourselves, and thought we should never hear the Queen; but I was told he would be silent when the Queen came, and so it proved.

The guns were heard: once, twice, and at the second all were silent: even His Royal Highness of Cambridge ceased to rustle and flutter, and stood nobly still.

Enter the crown and cushion and sword of state and mace&mdash;the Queen, leaning on Prince Albert's arm. She did not go up the steps to the throne well&mdash;caught her foot and stumbled against the edge of the footstool, which was too high. She did not seat herself in a decided, queenlike manner, and after sitting down pottered too much with her drapery, arranging her petticoats. That footstool was much too high! her knees were crumpled up, and her figure, short enough already, was foreshortened as she sat, and her drapery did not come to the edge of the stool: as my neighbour Miss Fitzhugh whispered, "Bad effect." However and nevertheless, the better half of her looked perfectly ladylike and queenlike; her head finely shaped, and well held on her shoulders with her likeness of a kingly crown, that diadem of diamonds. Beautifully fair the neck and arms; and the arms moved gracefully, and never too much. I could not at that distance judge of her countenance, but I heard people on the bench near me saying that she looked "divinely gracious."

Dead silence: more of majesty implied in that silence than in all the magnificence around. She spoke, low and well: "My lords and gentlemen, be seated." Then she received from the lord-in-waiting her speech, and read: her voice, perfectly distinct and clear, was heard by us ultimate auditors; it was not quite so fine a voice as I had been taught to expect; it had not the full rich tones nor the varied powers and inflections of a perfect voice. She read with good sense, as if she perfectly understood, but did not fully or warmly feel, what she was reading. It was more a girl's well-read lesson than a Queen pronouncing her speech. She did not lay emphasis sufficient to mark the gradations of importance in the subjects, and she did not make pauses enough. The best-pronounced paragraphs were those about France and Ireland, her firm determination to preserve inviolate the legislative union; and "I am resolved to act in strict conformity with this declaration" she pronounced strongly and well. She showed less confidence in reading about the suspension of the elective franchise, and in the conclusion, emphasis and soul were wanting, when they were called for, when she said, "In full confidence of your loyalty and wisdom, and with an earnest prayer to Almighty GOD," etc.

Her Majesty's exit I was much pleased to look at, it was so graceful and so gracious. She took time enough for all her motions, noticing all properly, from "my dear uncle"&mdash;words I distinctly heard as she passed the Duke of Cambridge&mdash;to the last expectant fair one at the doorway. The Queen vanished: buzz, noise, the clatter rose, and all were in commotion, and the tide of scarlet and ermine flowed and ebbed; and after an immense time the throngs of people bonneted and shawled, came forth from all the side niches and windows, and down from the upper galleries, and then places unknown gave up their occupants, and all the outward halls were filled with the living mass: as we looked down upon them from the back antechamber, one sea of heads. We sat down on a side seat with Mrs. Hamilton Grey and her sister, and we made ourselves happy criticising or eulogising all that passed down the centre aisle: not the least chance of getting to our carriage, for an hour to come. One of the blue and silver officials of the House, at a turn in one of the passages, had loudly pronounced, pointing, rod in hand, to an outer vestibule and steps, "All who are not waiting for carriages, this way, be pleased;" and vast numbers, ill pleased, were forced to make their exit. We went farther and fared worse. While we were waiting in purgatory, several angelic wigs passed that way who noticed me, most solemnly, albeit cordially: my Lord Chief Justice Tindal, Baron Alderson, Mr. Justice Erskine, the Bishop of London&mdash;very warm indeed; had never cooled since I had met him the night before at Sir Robert Inglis's.

Harriet de Salis, very well dressed and very unaffected and warm-hearted, actually left her chaperon, and sat down on the steps, and talked and laughed the heart's laugh. Honora and Fanny had gone on a voyage of discovery through the sea of heads, and had found that most excellent and sensible John stuck close to the door; but as to getting the carriage up, impracticable. We had only to wait and be ready instantly, as it would have to drive off as soon as called. Workmen, bawling to one another, were hauling and hoisting out all the peeresses' benches, stripped of their scarlet; and the short and the very long of it is that we did at last hear "Mrs. Wilson's carriage," and in we ran, and took Mrs. Hamilton Grey in too: Fanny sat on Honora's lap, and all was right and happy; and even little I not at all tired.

When I had got thus far, Sir Thomas Acland came in; I had met him at Sir Robert Inglis's. He was full of Edgeworthstown and your kindness to him, my dear mother. He repeated to me all the good advice he received from you forty years ago, and says that you made him see Ireland, and have common-sense. You put him in the way, and he has made his way. He is very good, very enthusiastic, and wonderfully fond of me and of Castle Rackrent.