Letters from Bath; Or, A Friend in Exile Read online

  Chapter Three

  Letter No. 4

  [Editor’s note: Those letters which contained mostly irrelevant material, such as comments on Julia’s own letters, descriptions of balls and concerts, and criticisms of various books, are not included in this collection.]

  Tuesday, 15th May

  My Dear Julia,

  In my last letter you may have discerned a certain contentment seeping into my prose, brought on by several days of being left to do as I pleased, while my mother busied herself with morning calls and visiting the assembly rooms. Unfortunately, one of the ball-dresses my mother had commissioned was indeed completed in time, and so she carried out her threat, and curled and pinned and laced and gloved, out we sallied last evening.

  Julia, I have not the proper words to describe the impression it made upon me, when first we entered. If this is how it looks now, while Members of Parliament are still vigorously arguing with one another, I cannot conceive of how anyone is able to move more than an inch or two in any direction, once London has shaken itself free of hundreds of hot and disgruntled aristocrats, many of whom reportedly have nothing better to do than rush here to divert themselves with Bath’s well-regulated amusements. In the ordinary way, as you know, my mother would have no thought of lingering here for the summer months, risking the dilution of her own consequence by the influx of so many persons of importance; but I very much fear, that for the joy of seeing me ‘credibly established’, she means to endure even this humiliation.

  But this is only a dread specter of the future. Presently, her amour propre is perfectly secure within her own circle of admirers, which is wide enough, that she need never enter a room, without having someone ready to receive her stately nod of acknowledgement with every symptom of gratification. There are, in particular, four or five ladies of mature if not excessive years, who seem to form what I cannot help but think of as her Court: a Mrs. Warren, Mrs. Belmar, Mrs. Farris, Mrs. Joles, and a Mrs. Ash-something-or-other. The first two are widows, and though the last three admit to husbands, I can only suppose that they are molded from the same obliging material as my father, and give little trouble to their wives, who return the favor by seldom referring to them even in conversation.

  As for these court ladies, I have, as yet, been unable to determine the precise origin of their attachment to my mother’s interests, since it may have been inspired by her husband’s illustrious (if lamentably long-lived) relatives, her own highly-respectable forbears, or even the elegance of her hands and the practiced haughtiness of her demeanor. One thing is certain, and that is, that she failed to warn them of my Fatal Flaw: their first expressions of delight at being introduced to the Princess Royal of the House of Northcott faltered and fell away with almost audible thumps, as they perceived the sad truth of my affliction. My mother gracefully sought to ease their consternation, by dismissing my infirmity as the residue of a trifling fall suffered at some unspecified, but fairly recent, date; but she was shortly afterward summoned away by the siren call of the card-room, and left to the kindly words and sympathetic glances of her ladies-in-waiting, I was soon confiding in them, as my mother’s most trusted friends, a more complete account of my frailty and decrepitude. The confession that I could no longer dance, appeared to strike them all with something akin to horror, and even brought tears to the eyes of Mrs. Warren; my brave protestations that I had never any great enjoyment in the pastime even before, was received with sighs, and mournful head-shakings, and, as far as I could tell, comprehensive disbelief.

  Mrs. Warren was the first to pull herself from the slough of despond into which a contemplation of a danceless Miss Northcott had cast her, and, clutching onto the hope of a cure, she began to urge upon me the virtues of the baths. This was a discussion into which the other ladies eagerly joined, and in very short order they had convinced themselves that a course of Medicinal Bathing could not help but prove beneficial to my general health and well-being, even if there had never before been a recorded instance of the waters miraculously restoring anyone’s ability to perform a cotillion—and they did not seem to rule even this out entirely. I listened patiently to their descriptions of the transports of those who rose from the waters, wonderfully invigorated, their pains eased, their indigestion cured, their fingertips wrinkled—all, in short, infused with a new zest for life, a renewed ardor for playing cards and drinking tea and flirting and reading novels and gazing at the portraits of the All-Glorious Nash (these, I collect, being almost inescapable), and whatever other worthy activities may form the framework of Bath lives. I promised to try the baths at the first opportunity, and was eventually able to turn the conversation to other matters, of more interest to myself.

  I passed the whole of the evening in their company—not all together, of course, but they never left me alone without at least two of them in attendance—and I cannot say too much in praise of their thoughtfulness, and the assiduity with which they remembered and respected my tragic weaknesses on all occasions.

  In the ordinary way of things, as you know, such solicitude would not suit me at all; would, in fact, soon provoke me to conceal myself behind pillars and small decorative trees and ponderous strangers with wide silhouettes, whenever I saw one of them approaching. However, finding myself exiled to Bath is not an ordinary circumstance: it is almost a declaration of war; and one thing I learned from De Retz, is that there is a distinct art, to transforming adverse circumstances into one’s good fortune. These relentlessly sympathetic ladies might have sworn allegiance to my mother, but I mean to turn them into my own staunchest allies. I can only pray that they will prove themselves to be more steadfast than Russians, and more effectual than Austrians.

  Yours, as full of intrigue as any French ecclesiastic,

  Ann Northcott

  PS. In considering the care with which my mother chooses her companions, I am reminded of the deer in your grandfather’s park. They, too, have sense enough to know that they are better protected if they stay within certain boundaries, and so make no attempt to jump over ha-has and walls, and experience the true freedom of roaming wherever they will, and perhaps being summarily shot in mid-frolic by some rude gypsy thinking only of his dinner.