After Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private and select
parties, the claims of that estimable woman as regards fashion were
settled, and some of the very greatest and tallest doors in the
metropolis were speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall that
the beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to enter at them.
Dear brethren, let us tremble before those august portals. I fancy
them guarded by grooms of the chamber with flaming silver forks with
which they prong all those who have not the right of the entree. They
say the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall and takes down the
names of the great ones who are admitted to the feasts dies after a
little time.
He can't survive the glare of fashion long. It scorches
him up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that poor
imprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a creature who ruined herself by
venturing out of her natural atmosphere. Her myth ought to be taken to
heart amongst the Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhaps
Becky's too. Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia is
not a sounding brass and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal. These are
vanities. Even these will pass away. And some day or other (but it
will be after our time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be no
better known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts of Babylon,
and Belgrave Square will be as desolate as Baker Street, or Tadmor in
the wilderness.
Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What
would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester's
parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous
parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat
soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the
departed came in and took their places round the darksome board. The
pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual
port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap.
Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be
behindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under
bushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's
eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how his
glass went up full to his mouth and came down empty; up to the ceiling
which was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the past days
have all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now.
Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the
wilderness. Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the other
solitude.