Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/66

54 "What do you think Polycarp or Ignatius would say to this?" she observes. "A visitor is just gone, quite chagrined that I am such a rigid Methodist that I cannot come to her assembly on Sunday, though she protests, with great piety, that she never has cards, and that it is quite savage in me to think there can be any harm in a little agreeable music."

Whether from religious scruples, or from her sentiment for Garrick's memory, Hannah would not go to the theatre to see Mrs. Siddons, or other contemporary celebrities. The future Egalité was cherishing his Anglo-mania. "But," she writes, "as I do not go to Ranelagh, nor the opera, nor sup at Charles Fox's, nor play at Brookes', nor bet at Newmarket, I have not seen that worthy branch of the House of Bourbon, the Duke de Chartres. I never heard of such a low, vulgar, vicious fellow. His character is Poltron sur mer, Escroc sur terre, Et vaurien partout!"

Nothing shows more what Hannah, in spite of her lively playfulness, must have been than the fact that she was indispensable to her friends in time of sorrow. She had not long returned to Bristol before she was summoned to Oxford to aid Mrs. Kennicott in attending on her husband in a fatal illness at Christchurch. Indeed, Hannah was actually present during the last moments, having forced the wife from the room. Very