Chapter XIII: A Visit to Leicester Fields

Captain Fane, of his own free will, would not have paid another visit to Cleveland Court, before he returned to his ship. So far as it rested with him, he had made up his mind—a great deal too tartly for perfect indifference—to have nothing more to do with fine ladies, and to turn his back on fine ladies’ entertainers, so long as they were cumbered with such troublesome guests.

But Captain Fane had business with Sir Peter, who was, indeed, about to appoint Harry Fane one of the guardians to his young son, and so punctilious and conscientious a young man as Harry Fane could not see it his duty to renounce this trust because circumstances had rendered it distasteful to him.

Thus it happened, that while Captain Fane felt scandalised by the manner in which Lady Bell Trevor had suffered herself to float doubly with the tide, in the water-party, while he kept telling himself caustically that he need not have expected anything else, and continued setting his face, more like a flint than ever, against fashionable frivolity and levity—he yet found himself on the steps of Sir Peter Sundon’s house.

And at that moment Lady Bell, attended by her maid, tripped out in her calèche and with her hands clasped in her muff, clearly starting on an expedition.

Lady Bell distanced and dumbfounded Captain Fane, who was unfamiliar with the changes of mind and revolutions in tactics of even the staidest and most demure of womankind.

She stopped him as he was about to pass her with a formally low bow, by holding out a friendly little hand, and bestowing on him the unsolicited information, that she was bound for the great painter in Leicester Fields, who had made so fine a picture of Commodore Keppel.

She was not a sitter herself, but she had made interest to see the paintings which Sir Joshua Reynolds had on hand.

She knew that she should never be able to look upon her daubs after this morning, but, woman-like, she must go and meet her fate, though it were her demolition.

Sir Joshua’s pictures were works of genius in his line, equal to Mr. Boulton’s and Mr. Wedgwood’s exhibitions; therefore, she ventured to offer Captain Fane the benefit of her ticket, as a poor return for his former kindness.

She was all alone, save her maid, Rogers, because Lady Sundon was engaged with Sir Peter, and the Misses Sundon could not stand the smell of paint without the risk of incurring megrim or vertigo. She was more fortunate—but then she had always dabbled in paints, and so was used to the odour.

Before Captain Fane knew what he was about, he had turned, and was walking away by her side in acceptance of her invitation. Neither did he detest or despise himself for his weakness, as might have been expected.

Lady Bell had succeeded, without a word of confession or acknowledgment, by the shy, wistful appeal of her eyes as she prattled to him, in making him comprehend that she had seen that he was right and she was wrong in their respective opinions of much that had happened at the water-party. She implied that she was sorry for having offended and alienated him; that she had resolved on following, in future, rational pursuits, instead of mere idle pleasure-hunting,—witness her early homage to art this morning.

Captain Fane could not even accuse himself of meddling in a matter which was none of his, far less could he accuse himself of madly foolish motives.

Was it not in some measure the business of every honourable, kindly man to encourage a girl like Lady Bell, in any intelligent interest that might help to educate her, and raise her above the giddy vacant crowd of fashionables, with whom idleness was the fruitful parent of mischief?

Ought he not to alter his arrangements, and put himself a little out of his way for one morning, to see that she did not fall into company like that of the hateful Sir George Waring, when she was walking abroad with no better protection than her maid’s?

True, it was broad day, and with that it was also betimes in the forenoon, doubtless an age before Sir George was up holding his levee, in his brocade nightgown, as he sipped his chocolate, and pencilled his daily note to Mrs. Lascelles.

But people could not be too careful, under some conditions. Lady Sundon was certainly as fearless and heedless, as Lady Bell was guileless and thoughtless. It became Captain Fane’s part to supplement the absence of some of the proper qualities of a guardian in his cousin.

If Lady Sundon was lax, the strictness and zeal of Captain Fane on Lady Bell’s behalf might, if the persons principally concerned had given themselves time to think about it, have astonished even them. But this young couple, after the questionable fashion of young couples, did not pause to weigh their relations—they took them for granted.

Lady Bell had even so pleasing a trust in the sedately fault-finding young sea-captain, that she had not the slightest qualm when he at once did her bidding and consented to be elected her escort, such as she would have had with almost any other of the gay danglers about her, and notably with the agreeable Sir George. “Captain Fane is such a manly, true young spark,” she took it upon her to decide, for her private satisfaction, though how she had arrived at the strong conclusion after one or two bantering, bickering interviews, unless from information derived from Lady Sundon, to whose judgment Lady Bell was not wont to pin her faith, it puzzles one to guess. “He is a little prejudiced and hard,” continued Lady Bell, mentally taking stock of her companion, “but I can melt him” (there was the triumph!). “I think I know how he would look boarding a ship, and how I could make him drop his sword,” which was a purely imaginative vision.

As Lady Bell and Captain Fane passed along the streets, they became eye-witnesses to a curious political contradiction. At one thoroughfare, men were stationed with handbills, to be distributed to respectable and influential persons, especially to members of parliament, praying them to stop the shedding of their American brethren’s blood. At another thoroughfare, the pedestrians had to thread their way through a crowd—the centre of which was the common hangman in the act of burning, to the accompaniment of tumultuous applause, copies of a pamphlet entitled “The Present Crisis with respect to America,” which had been condemned by both Houses, as a flagrant insult to the King.

Captain Fane informed Lady Bell that this difference of opinion had even penetrated to the services. He brought forward the instance of Lord Viscount Pitt, son to my Lord Chatham, having asked leave to resign his commission, since he was determined not to serve in a war between the mother country and her colony.

“And what do you say, sir?” inquired Lady Bell.

“I say that it is too late to stop a fratricidal war, save by fighting it out as quickly as may be, and that even if it were not so, it is for me to obey, not to issue, orders,” he replied with decision.

At Leicester Fields Lady Bell’s ticket procured the admission of the lady and her friend, first into the parlour, where an untidy, abrupt, cordial elderly woman, was herself painting a miniature and hurriedly sopping up her spilt paint, when she heard the steps of visitors.

This was Mrs. Frances Reynolds, who painted “The grimly ghost of Johnson,” and wrote the “Essay on Taste”—printed but never published. She was soon on familiar terms with the intruders.

“My brother will be certain to spare time for you,” Miss Reynolds assured Lady Bell, “he is like the rest of the geniuses, not above the flattery of such a visit. Bah! haven’t I known them all, Burke, Goldy, Dr. Johnson, who has wished my tea-pot might never run dry, and yet hurried off to help himself with his own spoon out of a Countess’s sugar-bason, and been put down—to put her down in turn in the presence of her grand company? Ah! well, I have never wished the great Doctor would stay by his own fire-side, though he has forced Joshua to rise and take his hat, if he would not sit on into the small hours, and have us all winking with sleep as the only hint to our visitor to be gone. I don’t know that we think ourselves so enviable. You’ll be sent for to the painting-room presently, Lady Bell—no, you need not look at my baby faces—child’s play to the doings of my brother,—the man in Cavendish Square can never come near them, though I should not say it. But first you must let me have a look at you, for even we poor artists hear of the belles of the season, with other public matters, in the conversation of sitters, and when we are bidden to look in at a conversazione, or a rout, now and then.”

“Oh, pray, Miss Reynolds, don’t make me public property,” cried Lady Bell, in laughing objection.

“If my brother seek to paint you, as he has painted so many of your sisterhood, you will become public property, whether you like it or no,” boasted the sister, “you cannot help it, madam, it is a tax you owe to the country, like the tax on powder or armorial bearings. But who is this gentleman? I did not catch his name. Oh! my brother has done many naval men, and for my part, I like his Lord Mount Edgcumbe and Commodore Keppel, as well as any face which he has put through his hands. My Lord Mount Edgcumbe is a Devonshire man, and for Commodore Keppel he gave Joshua his first lift, and we may well love a dog with the name of ‘Keppel,’ as Dr. Johnson could love a dog if it were called ‘Hervey.’”

The garrulous inquisitive lady was interrupted by her little niece, as quiet as the aunt was a rattle, and as shy and attentive to the proprieties as Miss Reynolds was impetuous and eccentric. This young girl was Sir Joshua’s Offy Palmer, whom he was to immortalise, reading “Clarissa,” and who was to be Mrs. Gwatkin, while her sister was to be the heiress of the largest fortune acquired by the prosecution of art in this inartistic England, and to marry the Marquis of Thomond. She brought a message that her uncle was free from a sitter then, and for the next half hour, and that he was coming himself to take Lady Bell Trevor and Captain Fane to his painting-room, where he would shew them the pictures in his possession.