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 Ist. ‘‘ 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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