GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



weighed with her. But Lady Webster now took a step which 

 cannot be defended. " The certainty," she writes, " of losing all 

 my children was agony to me, and I resolved to keep one in my 

 possession, and I chose the one which from her tender age and sex, 

 required the tenderness of a mother." 



She gave out that the child was dead, and for three years she 

 kept the little girl concealed ; then, influenced chiefly by the 

 fear that her action might compromise Lord Holland, in the 

 spring of 1799, she slowly made up her mind to give her up. Not 

 till after the event do entries in the " Journal " betray how great 

 had been her mental suffering, for at first she will not put her 

 trouble into words, even in the pages of her locked diary. But 

 she is restless, seeks relief in society, and entertains a great deal ; 

 and her remarks remind us that in those days conversation was 

 almost a fine art, and that a bon mot or an epigram was a passport 

 to great houses. " The wits and humorists," she writes, " were in 

 high spirits ; nothing could be pleasanter." But few ladies attend 

 her parties, and the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster is received 

 as yet, only by the wives of her husband's political friends. But 

 she goes with her mother to the opera ; and to Lady Heathfield's 

 masquerade where, in spite of her disguise, the Prince of Wales 

 recognizes her and where (as she thinks it worth while to note 

 in her " Journal ") two great ladies are cordial. We find her 

 at the theatre with a gay party seeing Sheridan's play Pizarro. 

 Apparently it was the first night, for Sheridan comes into her 

 box and explains the cause whenever there is a hitch in the per- 

 formance. " I was surprised," she writes, " at his eagerness, 

 and was glad to find that drinking had not totally absorbed his 

 faculties." Canning dines at Holland House. " He is very enter- 

 taining, or can be," she remarks on June 1st. " I made him repeat 

 the parody on Lewis's ' Alonzo and Imogene.' It goes very well 

 to music a ' Parson so grave and a baron so bold.' : But her 

 moods are variable one day she praises a friend, the next she is 

 captious and sarcastic. She now finds that " Canning's jokes are 

 local, and that unless he gives laws to his little senate he is silent." 

 " The Prince has given up Lady Jersey and is now trying to make 

 up with Mrs. Fitzherbert. He ought to try and make his peace 

 with Heaven if he has any account to settle, as he does not look 

 long for this life." " Sheridan, since he gained such credit as a 



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