“Your recollection and invitation do me great honour; but I
am going to be ‘married, and can’t come.’ My intended is two
hundred miles off, and the moment my business here is arranged, I must set out in a
great hurry to be happy. Miss Milbanke is the
good-natured person who has undertaken me, and, of course, I am very much in love, and
as silly as all single gentlemen must be in that sentimental situation. I have been
accepted these three weeks; but when the event will take place, I don’t exactly
know. It depends partly upon lawyers, who are never in a hurry. One can be sure of
nothing; but, at present, there appears no other interruption to this intention, which
seems as
| 584 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1814. |
“You perhaps know the lady. She is niece to Lady Melbourne, and cousin to Lady Cowper and others of your acquaintance, and has no fault, except being a great deal too good for me, and that I must pardon, if nobody else should. It might have been two years ago, and, if it had, would have saved me a world of trouble. She has employed the interval in refusing about half a dozen of my particular friends (as she did me once, by the way), and has taken me at last, for which I am very much obliged to her. I wish it was well over, for I do hate bustle, and there is no marrying without some;—and then, I must not marry in a black coat, they tell me, and I can’t bear a blue one.
“Pray forgive me for scribbling all this nonsense. You know I must be serious all the rest of my life, and this is a parting piece of buffoonery, which I write with tears in my eyes, expecting to be agitated. Believe me most seriously and sincerely your obliged servant,
“P.S. My best rems. to Lord * * on his return.”
