English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
“What a pretty snuff-box!” he remarked, as I handed him mine, which I am
still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold box enough,
but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom
I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me. “Yes;
a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies--most ladies, carried
a box--nay, two boxes--tabatiere, and bonbonniere. What lady carries
snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly
were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as
this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a
tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes
in the world!--ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I
have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk
with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee
then? Do I not see thee still?”
This was passing strange. My ancestress--but there is no need to publish
her revered name--did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's, where she lies
buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear
little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world.
“Did you--did you--know, then, my great gr-ndm-ther?” I said.
He pulled up his coat-sleeve--“Is that her name?” he said.
“Eliza ----”
There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in
red on his arm.
“YOU knew her old,” he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange
knack); “I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury
ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ----?”
As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's MAIDEN name. Her maiden name
was ----. Her honored married name was ----.
“She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket
Plate,” Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.
Merciful powers! I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case
on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very
horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his
shoulders, was over the mantel-piece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup
in the year 1783!
“Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night,
before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your grandf----, ha!”
As he said “Ha!” there came three quiet little taps on the table--it is
the middle table in the “Gray's-inn Coffee-house,” under the bust of the
late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.
“I fired in the air,” he continued “did I not?” (Tap, tap, tap.) “Your
grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards.
'Captain Brown,' I said, 'who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?'
She is there! She is there!” (Tap, tap, tap.) “Yes, my first love--”
But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means “No.”
“I forgot,” he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan features,
“she was not my first love. In Germ--- in my own country--there WAS a
young woman--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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