The principal topic of conversation at present is about the queen. The
Argents, who are our main instructors in the proprieties of London life,
say that it would be very vulgar in me to go to look at her, which I am
sorry for, as I wish above all things to see a personage so illustrious
by birth, and renowned by misfortune. The Doctor and my mother, who are
less scrupulous, and who, in consequence, somehow, by themselves,
contrive to see, and get into places that are inaccessible to all
gentility, have had a full view of her majesty. My father has since
become her declared partisan, and my mother too has acquired a leaning
likewise towards her side of the question; but neither of them will
permit the subject to be spoken of before me, as they consider it
detrimental to good morals. I, however, read the newspapers.
What my brother thinks of her majesty's case is not easy to divine; but
Sabre is convinced of the queen's guilt, upon some private and authentic
information which a friend of his, who has returned from Italy, heard
when travelling in that country. This information he has not, however,
repeated to me, so that it must be very bad. We shall know all when the
trial comes on. In the meantime, his majesty, who has lived in dignified
retirement since he came to the throne, has taken up his abode, with
rural felicity, in a cottage in Windsor Forest; where he now, contemning
all the pomp and follies of his youth, and this metropolis, passes his
days amidst his cabbages, like Dioclesian, with innocence and
tranquillity, far from the intrigues of courtiers, and insensible to the
murmuring waves of the fluctuating populace, that set in with so strong a
current towards "the mob-led queen," as the divine Shakespeare has so
beautifully expressed it.
You ask me about Vauxhall Gardens;--I have not seen them--they are no
longer in fashion--the theatres are quite vulgar--even the opera-house
has sunk into a second-rate place of resort. Almack's balls, the
Argyle-rooms, and the Philharmonic concerts, are the only public
entertainments frequented by people of fashion; and this high superiority
they owe entirely to the difficulty of gaining admission. London, as my
brother says, is too rich, and grown too luxurious, to have any exclusive
place of fashionable resort, where price alone is the obstacle. Hence,
the institution of these select aristocratic assemblies. The
Philharmonic concerts, however, are rather professional than fashionable
entertainments; but everybody is fond of music, and, therefore,
everybody, that can be called anybody, is anxious to get tickets to them;
and this anxiety has given them a degree of eclat, which I am persuaded
the performance would never have excited had the tickets been purchasable
at any price. The great thing here is, either to be somebody, or to be
patronised by a person that is a somebody; without this, though you were
as rich as Croesus, your golden chariots, like the comets of a season,
blazing and amazing, would speedily roll away into the obscurity from
which they came, and be remembered no more.