You, who have followed me through the four acts of my comedy, seem to cut me dead at the fifth, and leave me to the enjoyment of my own catastrophe without sympathy or participation; not a single couplet to celebrate the grand event, not even one line of prose to say “I wish you joy.” It is quite clear, that like all heroines, I no longer interest when I gain a husband.
Since you will not even ask me how I am, I will volunteer
the information of my being as happy as being “loved up to my
bent” (aye, and almost beyond
| FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | 5 |
Though living in a palace, we have all the comfort and independence of home; besides bed-rooms and dressing-rooms, Morgan’s study has been fitted up with all the luxury of a joli boudoir by Lady Abercorn (who neither spared her taste nor purse on the occasion). It is stored with books, music, and everything that can contribute to our use and amusement. Here “the world forgotten, and by the world forgot,” we live all day, and do not join the family till dinner time, and as chacun a son goût is the order here, when we are weary of argand lamps and a gallery a hundred feet long in the evening—we retire to our own snuggery, where, very often, some of the others come to drink coffee with us. As to me, I am every inch a wife, and so ends that brilliant thing that was Glorvina.
N.B.—I intend to write a book to explode the vulgar idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the real thing and all before but “leather and prunella.”
This chapter I dedicate to Bess. Sir Charles desires me to assure you of his highest consideration: an enthusiast in everything, he is a zealot as to talent, and one of your old letters has roused all his fanaticism in your favour; he longs as much to know you as I do to see you, et c’est beaucoup dire! for that, I fear, for a long time there is no chance.
