Tales and Novels — Volume 05: Tales of a Fashionable LifeEdgeworth, Maria
General
Tales and Novels — Volume 05: Tales of a Fashionable Life
Edgeworth, Maria
Fiction
“The third bride on this auspicious day was Miss Walsingham, who, with
her father and bride’s-maids, followed in Mr. Walsingham’s carriage.
Miss Walsingham, we are informed, was dressed with simple elegance,
in the finest produce of the Indian loom; but, as she was in a covered
carriage, we could not obtain a full view of her attire. Next to the
brides’ equipages, followed the bridegrooms’. And chief of these Sir
John Hunter sported a splendid barouche. He was dressed in the height of
the ton, and his horses deserved particular admiration. After Sir John’s
barouche came the equipage belonging to Mr. Beaumont, highly finished
but plain: in this were the two bridegrooms, Mr. Beaumont and Captain
Walsingham, accompanied by Mr. Palmer (the great West-Indian Palmer),
who, we understand, is the intimate friend and relative of the Beaumont
family. Then followed, as our correspondent counted, above a hundred
carriages of distinction, with a prodigious cavalcade of gentry. The
whole was closed by a long line of attendants and domestics. The moment
the park gates were opened, groups of young girls of the Beaumont
tenantry, habited in white, with knots of ribands, and emblematical
devices suited to the occasion, and with baskets of flowers in their
hands, began to strew vegetable incense before the brides, especially
before Mrs. Beaumont’s landau.
‘And whilst the priests accuse the bride’s delay,
Roses and myrtles still obstruct her way.’
“The crowd, which assembled as they proceeded along the road to the
church, and in the churchyard, was such that, however gratefully
it evinced the popularity of the amiable parties, it became at last
evidently distressing to the principal object of their homage--Mrs.
Beaumont, who could not have stood the gaze of public admiration but
for the friendly and becoming, yet tantalizing refuge of her veil.
Constables were obliged to interfere to clear the path to the church
door, and the amiable almost fainting lady was from the arms of
her anxious and alarmed bride’s-maids lifted out of her landau, and
supported into the church and up the aisle with all the marked gallantry
of true tenderness, by her happy bridegroom, Sir John Hunter.
“After the ceremony was over, Sir John and Lady Hunter, and the two
other new-married couples, returned to Beaumont Park with the _cortège_
of their friends, where the company partook of an elegant collation. The
artless graces and fascinating affability of Lady Hunter won all hearts;
and the wit, festive spirits, and politeness of Sir John, attracted
universal admiration--not to say envy, of all present. Immediately after
the collation, the happy couple set off for their seat at Hunter Hall.
“Mr. Beaumont, and the new Mrs. Beaumont, remained at Beaumont Park.
Captain and Mrs. Walsingham repaired to Mr. Walsingham’s.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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