The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 184: what you’re looking at

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171 Crimp, in as meek and humble a tone as he coald possibly bring himself to adopt—although he had @ presentiment that his visit to the Marchioness would prove at last as abortive as his appeal to Lady Singleton. “Friendship!” ejaculated the Dowager, her face becoming purple with anger. “How dared the upstart Mrs. Fitzherbert to represent herself as the friend of the Marchioness of Banbury? No—thank God! there was never any friendship between us. I tolerated the woman—and that was all. But I always despised her vanity and foresaw that her pride would have a fall; and am glad that the catastrophe has ocourred. It will be a lesson to such women in future. In- deed I am very much to Meme that I ever per- mitted a person of such a loose character and such disreputable morals to cross my threshold. Good morning to you!” And the Marchioness stalked away, with the majestic bearing of an empress, to the farther end of the room, while Mr. Crimp sneaked off as dis- comfited and crest-fallen as he well could be. On regaining tbe hackney-coach, he was on the point of desiring the driver to return to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s house—for be had uo cdurage to apply in any other quarter on her behalf: but a second thought prompting him to give the expe- rimental affair one more trial, he hastily examined the addresses of the four remaining letters, and selected the Dowager-Countess of Montgomery as the next personage to be applied to. Mr. Natban Crimp accordingly drove to Grafton Street; and on alighting at the splendid mansion to which the reader has been already introduced on a former occasion, he rang the bell—delivered the letter—and quietly seated himself in the hall to await the result. A quarter of an hour elapsed—and at the ex- piration of this interval the footman who had taken charge of the note, reappeared with a request that Mrs. Fitzherbert’s messenger would step up-stairs. This invitation struck Mr. Crimp as a favourable augury: and it was with consi- derable alacrity that he followed the gorgeously- clad domestic to an apartment where the Dow- ager-Countess of Montgomery was seated in com- pany with half-a-dozen ladies of rank and fashion. The Dowager-Countess herself was a very fine woman, considering her age, which was as- suredly verging towards cixty, despite of the ex- quisite skill wherewith the appliances of art were used to conceal the ravages of time. In her earlier years she must have been as eminently handsome as the Marchioness of Banbury ; in- deed every feature of her countenance and every contour of her person retained the traces of former beauty. Her large dark eyes were pierc- ing as arrows and still full of fire; and in ber face was reflected the indomitable decision of her character. Haughty, proud, selfish, and unprin- cipled, she was one of those heartless women who care not, so long as they can achieve the aggrandizement of their families, if millions of bard-working Englishmen should perish of star- vation. She waa, indeed, a veritable type of the British peeress—narrow-minded, prejudiced, in- toleravt, Ruxurions, avaricious, extravagant, and cold-blooded to a degree. In her younger days she had bé@en an intriguant in love: now she meddled in politics. She hated “the people” as cordially as she could : she firmly believed in the divine right of Kings; she Jooked upon Charles I asa martyr—and she thought that the “lower orders” were only fitted to reniain the sorfs and slaves of the “ upper classes.” And these are the sentiments of ninety-nine out of every hundred ladies in the higher grades of English society. On the present occasion, the Dowager-Countess had several titled visitresses staying with her in Grafton Street. They were all of high rank and great wealth ; and they therefore despised every one who had not the same claims to considera- tion. The pride of each was sufficient to fill in- finite space; the virtue of each might be com- pressed without much diffloulty into the smallest pill-box. For be it well understood—and we m this as our honest, sincere, and delibe- rate conviction—that, with a few honourable ex- ceptions—the titled ladies of this land are the most lascivious demireps in morals, the vilest hypocrites in religion, the most ostentatious coun- terfeits in their so-called benevolence, the most heartless tyrants to their inferiors, and the most cordial haters of the working-classes that can pos- sibly exist. Prudes in seeming, they are generally prostitutes fn sooth; and the scandalous laxity of their morals is displayed by the fact that num- bers of the proudest families in the aristocratic sphere make a glory and a boast of being de- scended from the shameless and sting harlots who flourished as the mistresses of Charles II. Bat to continue. It was in the splendid apart- ment where the Dowager-Countess of Montgomery was seated with her guests, that Mr. Nathan Orimp was shown. He was taken considerably aback on finding bimself thus suddenly ushered into the presence of four or five elderly ladies all wearing huge turbans, and seatedin a kind of awful grandeur upon the crimson velvet sofas— while three or four younger ladies were grouped in the bay-window and reading Mrs. Fitzher- bert’s letter with very great attention. But Mr. Crimp made his politest bow—ran his fingers through his greasy hair—orushed his hat under his arm—end endeavoured to look at his ease, though in reality he felt as uncomfortable as if he were going forth on a public scaffold to be hanged. “Pray what is your name, my man?” asked the most majestic-looking lady of the whole as- semblage, and whom the bailiff therefore instan- taneously set down in his own mind as the Dowager-Countess of Montgomery. “My name’s Crimp—Nathan Orimp, at your ladyship’s service,” was the prompt reply. “And pray what has happened to our dear friend Mrs. Fitzherbert?” inquired the Dowager- Countess. “She alludes to some difficulty of a painful nature; and we are all dying with sus- pense to learn the sad truth.” “Well, it is sad enow, heaven knows,” ex- claimed Mr. Crimp, flattering himself that he had at last fallen in with sympathetic souls and that the advance of pecuniary supplies would neces- sarily follow. “T suppose, then, that the dear creature—I mean, our excellent friend, Mrs. Fitzherbert—has altogethor broken off with a certain illustrious personage?” remarked one of the ladies, appa- rently addressing herself to the Dowager- Countess, but in reality levelling her observation jn an interrogatory sense at Mr. Nathan Crimp. 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