Their enemies, it seems, carried off their arms; perhaps, in the true spirit of French chivalry, with a view to lay them, as so many trophies, at the feet of the insulted lady.

Mr. Lowther writes, that my brother and he are lodged in the hotel of a man of quality, a dear friend of the late Mr. Danby, and one of the three whom he has remembered in his will; and that Sir Charles is extremely busy in relation to the executorship; and, having not a moment to spare, desired Mr. Lowther to engage his friend, to whom he wrote, to let us know as much; and that he was hastening every thing for his journey onwards.

Mr. Beauchamp’s narrative of this affair is, as I told you, very circumstantial.  I thought to have shortened it more than I have done.  I wish I have not made my abstract confused, in several material places:  but I have not time to clear it up.  Adieu, my dear.

Charlotte G——.

LETTER XLI

Lady G——­, to miss Byron
Sunday, may 7.

I believe I shall become as arrant a scribbler as somebody else.  I begin to like writing.  A great compliment to you, I assure you.  I see one may bring one’s mind to any thing.—­I thought I must have had recourse, when you and my brother left us, and when I was married, to the public amusements, to fill up my leisure:  and as I have seen every thing worth seeing of those, many times over; (masquerades excepted, and them I despise;) time, you know, in that case, would have passed a little heavily, after having shewn myself, and, by seeing who and who were together, laid in a little store of the right sort of conversation for the tea-table.  For you know, Harriet, that among us modern fine people, the company, and not the entertainment, is the principal part of the raree-show.  Pretty enough! to make the entertainment, and pay for it too, to the honest fellows, who have nothing to do, but to project schemes to get us together.

I don’t know what to do with this man.  I little thought that I was to be considered as such a doll, such a toy, as he would make me.  I want to drive him out of the house without me, were it but to purvey for me news and scandal.  What are your fine gentlemen fit for else?  You know, that, with all my faults, I have a domestic and managing turn.  A man should encourage that in a wife, and not be perpetually teasing her for her company abroad, unless he did it with a view to keep her at home.  Our sex don’t love to be prescribed to, even in the things from which they are not naturally averse:  and for this very reason, perhaps, because it becomes us to submit to prescription.  Human nature, Harriet, is a perverse thing.  I believe, if my good man wished me to stay at home, I should torture my brain, as other good wives do, for inventions to go abroad.