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Updated: June 8, 2025
Dissipation, women, wine, Tarleton for a friend, Lady Hasselton for a mistress. Let me now throw aside the mask. To people who have naturally very intense and very acute feelings, nothing is so fretting, so wearing to the heart, as the commonplace affections, which are the properties and offspring of the world. We have seen the birds which, with wings unclipt, children fasten to a stake.
"Oh, the report is universal!" and the Lady Hasselton flirted her fan with the most flattering violence. But who is the bride?" "The Duke of Newcastle's rich daughter, Lady Henrietta Pelham." "What, Harley's object of ambition!* Faith, Madam, the report is not so cruel as I thought for!" * Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley's administration to marry his son to this lady.
The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me single, would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, directly they heard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, and assert, with a wise look, that my uncle knew well what he was about. Then the joy of the Lady Hasselton, and the curled lip of the haughty Tarleton!
I hurried into the great drawing-room, found Lady Needleham alone, rushed out in despair, encountered the Lady Hasselton, and coquetted with her the rest of the evening. Vain hope! to forget one's real feelings by pretending those one never felt!
Time, however, cures what it does not kill; and both bird and beast, if they pine not to the death at first, grow tame and acquiescent at last. What to me was the companionship of Tarleton, or the attachment of Lady Hasselton? I had yielded to the one, and I had half eagerly, half scornfully, sought the other.
This emboldened that bashful personage to press in earnest for the fourth seat in the beauty's carriage, which we have seen in the conversation before mentioned had been previously offered to him in jest. After a great affectation of horror at the proposal, the Lady Hasselton yielded.
"I have sworn," said I, fixing my eyes upon the lady, "I have sworn never to be kissed, even by women. You must pardon me, Uncle." "I declare," cried the Lady Hasselton, flirting her fan, which was somewhat smaller than the screen that one puts into a great hall, in order to take off the discomfort of too large a room, "I declare, Count, there is a vast deal of originality about you.
Ever since that conversation with Lady Hasselton which has been set before the reader, that lady had lingered and lingered though the house was growing empty, and London, in all seasons, was, according to her, better than the country in any until the Count Devereux, with that amiable modesty which so especially characterized him, began to suspect that the Lady Hasselton lingered on his account.
But what matters it? you have conquered your love now." "Ay," I said, with a laugh, "I have conquered it, and I am now about to find some other empress of the heart. What think you of the Lady Hasselton? a fair dame and a sprightly. I want nothing but her love to be the most enviable of men, and a French valet-de-chambre to be the most irresistible."
The story was now left for me to tell, not for the Lady Hasselton; and that makes all the difference in the manner a story is told, me narrante, it is de te fabula narratur; te narrante, and it is de me fabula, etc. Poor Lady Hasselton! to be laughed at, and have Tarleton for a lover!
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