Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/111

 the Herveys, as I told you before, were a third part of the creation.

"Oh, Lord! when I think of some people, who fancy that abruptness is the best way of approaching you—how horrid it is! I recollect one man, a sensible man too, who came into the room with—'Lady Hester, I understand you are a very good judge of a leg; you shall look at mine: see, there are muscles! they say it is an Irish chairman’s; but isn’t it the true antique?' Another would enter, and begin—'What a horrid bonnet Lady So-and-so wears; I have just seen her, and I never shall get over it.’ A third would cry, on seeing you—' Do you know Lord Such-a-one is given over? He has tumbled down from a terrible height, and is so hurt!'—'Good God! what’s the matter?'—'Why, don’t you know? He has tumbled from his government:' and then they fancy that wit.

"Such conversations as we hear in people’s houses are, in my mind, no conversations at all. A man who says, 'Oh! it’s Sunday; you have been to church, I suppose?'—or, 'You have not been to church, I see;' or another, who says, 'You are in mourning, are you not? what, is the poor Lord So-and-so dead at last?'—and is replied to by, 'No, I am not in mourning; what makes you think so? is it that you don’t like black?'—all this is perfect non-