To read all the information about Prince Leopold’s career and his manifold perfections which was printed in the various newspapers and journals became one of each day’s first objects for Fanny. However little she might have to say on the subject of Brougham’s extraordinary attack on the Prince Regent, with its disastrous consequences to his Party, she had plenty to say on the shabby nature of the dukedom conferred on Prince Leopold, and perused with painstaking thoroughness all seven Articles of the proposed Marriage Settlement.
Bath was well provided with libraries, and these were considered to be among its most agreeable lounges. Most of them provided their subscribers with all the new English and French publications, monthly reviews, and other magazines, all the London papers, and some of the French ones. Fanny divided her patronage between Duffield’s, in Milsom Street, and Meyler & Sons, which conveniently adjoined the Great Pump Room. Here, every morning, she dutifully drank the waters, declaring that she derived immense benefit from them. Serena agreed to this, with suitable gravity, but thought privately that the orchestra, which discoursed music there, the shops in the more modish streets, and the constant procession of new faces, were of even greater benefit to her spirits.
Apart from one or two elderly persons, who had been acquainted either with the first Lady Spenborough, or with Lady Claypole, they had no acquaintance in the town. It was no longer a resort of high fashion, though still a very prosperous and genteel watering-place; and the most notable person to be encountered was Madame D’Arblay, who had been residing there all the winter. Fanny once found herself standing beside her at the ribbon counter in a shop on Gay Street, and was very much awed. The celebrated authoress had bought nothing more uncommon than an ell of black sarsenet ribbon; and nobody, Fanny assured Serena, could have supposed from her manners or her appearance that she had ever done anything out of the common way. Fanny had longed for the courage to introduce herself. “For Evelina, you know, was quite my favourite book, and I’m sure I was persuaded I could never love any gentleman one tenth as much as I loved Lord Orville!”
“What a pity you did not tell her so! I daresay she would have been very much pleased,” Serena said.
“Yes, but I thought she might have wished me rather to have spoken about her last book,” said Fanny naively. “Do you recall that author who dined with us once, and was affronted because your dear papa praised his first book, and never said a word about his others? And I couldn’t have talked to Miss Burney about The Wanderer, because it was so tedious I gave it up after the first volume!”
Upon their first coming to Bath, Serena had written both their names in the subscription books at the Lower and the New Assembly Rooms. Fanny was doubtful of the propriety of this, but the worldly-wise Serena said: “Depend upon it, my dear, it would be foolish to do otherwise! In such a place as this it never does to offend the susceptibilities of the Masters of Ceremonies. We shan’t, of course, go to the balls, or even to the Card Assemblies, but after we have been in mourning for six months we might, I think, go to the concerts, if we wished.”
Fanny submitted, and soon found that her comfort was increased by the goodwill of Mr Guynette of the Lower Rooms, and Mr King of the Upper. Neither of these gentlemen delayed to pay a call of ceremony upon the distinguished ladies in Laura Place, and each rivalled the other in civility. Had the Dowager Countess been as old as Mrs Piozzi, Bath’s latest resident, the visits would have been made; but the zealous gentlemen might not have felt it to be so incumbent upon them to render her so many little attentions, or to keep her so meticulously informed of any item of Bath news. Any Dowager Countess must command respect: one so touchingly youthful, so angelically fair, and with such gentle, unassuming manners might command devotion.
“Fanny!” said Serena, much amused by the frequent visits of the rival Masters, “if there should be a Mrs King or a Mrs Guynette, which I’m sure I hope there may not be, I shudder to think of the evil passions you must be arousing in their bosoms!”
“I?” exclaimed Fanny, startled. “Good God, what can you mean?”
Serena laughed at her. “Well, how many times have these assiduous gentlemen found it necessary to call in Laura Place? I swear I’ve lost count! There was Mr King, coming to promise you a secluded place if only you could be brought to attend some lecture or other at the Upper Rooms; there was Mr Guynette, bethinking himself that you might not know which are the best stables for your carriage-horses; there was the occasion when—”
“Serena! Oh, hush!” Fanny cried, blushing and aghast. “I’m sure they have both been very kind, but—”
“Excessively kind! And so attentive! When Mr Guynette ran out of the Pump Room to summon a chair for you on Tuesday, only because three drops of rain had fallen, I began to think that it is you who need a chaperon, not I!”
“Oh, I know you are funning, but indeed I wish you will not!” Fanny said, distressed. “It would be so very unbecoming in me, and in them, too! And it is all nonsense! They feel it to be their duty to do everything in their power to make any visitor’s stay in Bath agreeable!” A dreadful thought occurred to her; she fixed her innocent blue eyes on Serena’s face, and gasped: “Serena! I have not—I have not appeared fast??”
“No, no!” Serena said soothingly. “Just pathetic!” She perceived that Fanny was seriously discomposed, and added:
“Goose! I was only quizzing you!”
“If I thought that I had seemed to be encouraging any gentleman to pay me undue attentions, it would be the most shocking thing, and would destroy all my pleasure in being in Bath!”
Serena reassured her, reflecting, not for the first time, that it was seldom wise to employ a rallying tone with her. The tone of her mind was serious, and she was more prone to be shocked than amused by encounters with more lively spirits. There could be no doubt that her air of youthful helplessness, coupled, as it was, with an ethereal beauty, had awakened chivalry in two middle-aged gentlemen, but Serena refrained from telling her so. Not the most severe critic could suspect her of flirtatiousness; and not for worlds would Serena have destroyed her pleasure in being in Bath.
This was very real. Looking at the shop windows, listening to the orchestra in the Pump Room, walking, on fine days, in Sydney Gardens, noting each new face that appeared, speculating on the relationships and identities of the various habitués of the Pump Room, seemed to be just what she liked. She was sure the man who always wore a pink flower in his buttonhole must be the brother, and not the husband, of the fat woman with the yellow wig. There was a pronounced likeness: did not Serena agree? And had Serena noticed the bonnet with the green feathers which that odd-looking woman who dressed in such an antiquated style was wearing? She had seen it displayed in the window of that milliner’s in Milsom Street only last week, and with the most shocking price attached! Serena always returned satisfactory answers, but had she told the truth she would have said that she had never noticed the fat woman in the yellow wig, or the odd-looking woman either.
The fact was that the dawdling life in Bath suited Serena no better than life at the Dower House. Mingled with the ache in her heart for the loss of one who had been more a companion than a father, was a restlessness, a yearning for she scarcely knew what, which found its only relief in gallops over the surrounding countryside. Owing to the steepness of its streets, carriages were not much used in Bath, chairmen supplanting coachmen in the task of conveying ladies to balls and concerts. Fanny had entertained serious thoughts of sending home her barouche, and could not understand the impulse which prompted Serena, morning after morning, to escape from Bath, attended only by her devoted but critical groom, Fobbing, to the surrounding hills. She knew that Serena had a great deal of uncomfortable energy, but she never realized that her more protracted expeditions coincided with the arrival in Laura Place of one of Lady Theresa Eaglesham’s punctual letters; and certainly never suspected that these letters, which seemed to her to be tiresomely full of dull political news, made Serena feel that she had slipped out of the world. To Fanny, the loss of London dinner-parties where little was talked of but a Government crisis, or a victory over the Opposition, was a gain; and she could not conceive what there was to excite interest in the news that the Grenvilles and the Foxites were splitting, in consequence of Brougham’s speech. The fortunes of Whig and Tory were of far less moment to Fanny than the fear that her mama might send her sister Agnes to Bath, to bear her company.