Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph: Extracted from her own Journal, and now first publishedSheridan, Frances Chamberlaine
General
Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph: Extracted from her own Journal, and now first published
Sheridan, Frances Chamberlaine
English fiction -- 18th century
All our motions here are as regular as the clock. The family rise at
six; we are summoned to breakfast at eight; at ten a venerable
congregation are assembled to prayers, which an ancient clergyman, who
is curate of the parish, and her ladyship's chaplain, gives us daily.
Then the old horses are put to the old coach; and my lady, with her
guests, if they chuse it, take an airing; always going and returning by
the same road, and driving precisely to the same land-mark, and no
farther. At half an hour after twelve, in a hall large enough to
entertain a corporation, we sit down to dinner; my lady has a grace of a
quarter of an hour long, and we are waited on by four truly venerable
footmen, for she likes state. The afternoon we may dispose of as we
please; at least it is a liberty I am indulged in, and I generally spend
my time in the garden, or my own chamber, till I have notice given me of
supper's being on the table, where we are treated with the same
ceremonials as at dinner. At ten exactly, the instant the clock strikes
the first stroke, my lady rises with great solemnity, and wishes us a
good night.
_August 14_
You cannot expect, in such a house as this is, my dear, that I can be
furnished with materials to give you much variety. Indeed these four
last days have been so exactly the same in every particular, excepting
that the dishes at dinner and supper were changed, that I had resolved
to hang up my pen till I quitted Grimston-hall, or at least resign it to
Patty, and let her plod on and tell you how the wind blew such a day;
what sort of a mantua lady Grimston had on such a day (though by the way
it is always the same, always ash-coloured tissue); what the great dog
barked at, at such an hour, and what the old parrot said at such a time;
the house and the garden I have exhausted my descriptive faculties on
already, though, they are neither of them worth describing; and I was
beginning to despair of matter to furnish out a quarter of an hour's
entertainment, when the scene began to brighten a little this auspicious
day, by the arrival of a coach full of visitors. These were no other
than a venerable dean, who is the minister of our parish, his lady and
daughter, and a Mr Arnold, a gentleman who is a distant relation of lady
Grimston's. He has a house in this neighbourhood, and is just come to
an estate by the death of his elder brother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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