There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk hat trimmed with pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest brim ever seen, and she simply sits on a chair; and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been extinguished under that hat, I am sure; and only to look at Countess Fanny’s eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so slightly in her artfulness makes the absurd thing graceful and suitable.  Oh! she was a cunning one.  But you must be on your guard against the scandalmongers and collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic, of our Galleries of Art; for she being in almost all of them (the principal painters of the day were on their knees for the favour of a sitting), they have to speak of her pretty frequently, and they season their dish, the coxcombs do, by hinting a knowledge of her history.

’Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful but, we fear, naughty Countess of Cressett.’

You are to imagine that they know everything, and they are so indulgent when they drop their blot on a lady’s character.

They can boast of nothing more than having read Nymriey’s Letters and Correspondence, published, fortunately for him, when he was no longer to be called to account below for his malicious insinuations, pretending to decency in initials and dashes:  That man was a hater of women and the clergy.  He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire:  I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness.  He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop.  Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar’s breech for decency, I say:  I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to retire on tiptoe.  You cannot help being angry with the man for both reasons.  But he is the writer society delights in, to show what it is composed of.  A man brazen enough to declare that he could hold us in suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak and an ankle, may know the world; you had better not know him—­that is my remark; and do not trust him.

He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of the public, for it was general property, but of course he finishes with a Nymney touch:  ’So the Old Buccaneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a handful of silver pieces.’  There is no such handful to exchange—­not of the kind he sickeningly nudges at you.  I will prove to you it was not Countess Fanny’s naughtiness, though she was indeed very blamable.  Women should walk in armour as if they were born to it; for these cold sneerers will never waste their darts on cuirasses.  An independent brave young creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her reckless innocence, is the victim for them.  They will bring all society down on her with one of their explosive sly words appearing so careless, the cowards.  I say without hesitation, her conduct with regard to Kirby, the Old Buccaneer, as he was called, however indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart an innocent young woman, much to be pitied.  Only to think of her, I could sometimes drop into a chair for a good cry.  And of him too! and their daughter Carinthia Jane was the pair of them, as to that, and so was Chillon John, the son.