Chapter Fifteen
Letter No. 26
Thursday, 28th June
My Dear Julia,
Perhaps you will be gratified to know, that I have decided not to send for the French after all, as the reception of notes from both Mrs. Grayson and Miss Barr have persuaded me that, although Bath is still very tedious, there may be far stupider places in England, which I would like even less (and no doubt, if my mother’s hopes for Bath are not fulfilled, she will next find some way to make me visit one of them).
As for the notes—which came together, Miss Barr’s being sealed within the other—I would have had them yesterday, and saved myself many hours of ill-humor, if they had not been mistakenly placed in the collection of mail given to my mother, and she had not passed over them as being of no particular importance—the paper being of ordinary quality, and the seal uncrested—and only come to open the cover today, when she had no other correspondence to dispose of. She asserts that she never noticed that it was directed to me, and I suppose, since the only other letters I am accustomed to receive are your own, that this is not an unreasonable claim. In any event, she did not trouble to conceal the fact that she had continued to read Mrs. Grayson’s note, even after her eye fell on the salutation addressed to Miss Northcott, for she asked me who Mrs. Overton Grayson might be, and when I reminded her that she already knew of my acquaintance with Mr. Grayson, and explained their relationship, she looked faintly alarmed, and went away frowning. No doubt she is now suspecting me of having developed a stupid tendre for the gentleman, based upon this evidence that I have troubled to form an acquaintance with his aunt, and will occupy the rest of the day in attempting to discover if there is the slightest hope that he may have a set of strawberry leaves somewhere in his extended family. I am sure I wish her joy of a wasted afternoon. [Editor’s Note: Strawberry leaves were associated with ducal coronets.]
Mrs. Grayson’s note was a very simple one, her words filling less than one page, and yet when I laid it down I was smiling for what felt like the first time in days, and felt the faint stirrings of hope, that perhaps my exile here has served a greater purpose, than the one designed by my mother. She may have meant it for evil (or at least, to illustrate to me that there are unpleasant consequences to refusing to flirt with the heir to an earldom, when he fortuitously happens to be the good-natured cousin of one’s best friend), but perhaps, after all, God meant it for good, just as my dear Julia keeps insisting, with wasplike tenacity.
Mrs. Grayson began by expressing her confidence that I would forgive her ‘presumption’ in initiating a correspondence, and explaining that she would not have done so, except that events had unexpectedly fallen out, that led to their precipitate departure from Bath, and she thought I deserved to know the fate of Mrs. Barr and her daughter, having taken so great an interest in their welfare.
It seems that the Graysons’ offer to share their carriage with Mrs. Smithton and the Barrs, had the unintended effect of arousing in Mrs. Smithton’s breast the suspicion—as far as I know, unfounded—that her hapless relations were plotting ways to escape from the trap of her beneficence. That evening she had summoned Mrs. Barr to a private interview, and there proceeded to accuse her of every variation of ingratitude and folly, in such an unreasonable manner, that Mrs. Barr feared her relative had taken leave of her senses. Mrs. Smithton evidently ended by promising to lay a charge of theft against Mrs. Barr, should she attempt to leave the household and ‘disgrace the family name by throwing herself on the mercy of strangers.’
I could not help wondering how Mrs. Smithton’s vaunted care for the family name could ever hope to survive one of its members being arrested and perhaps hanged for a thief, but Mrs. Barr apparently saw no reason to doubt the sincerity of the threat. Terrified and desperate, she nevertheless bided her time, and the next morning at first light, took her daughter and as many of their possessions as could be stuffed into a pair of band-boxes, and left Mrs. Smithton’s, having no choice but to do exactly as she had forbidden, and trust to the mercy of strangers, since their own family members had proved to be singularly devoid of that quality.
Mrs. Grayson did not mention how she and her nephew may have responded to being rousted out at such an early hour in order to receive fugitives, but no one who has conversed with her for more than five minutes with an unprejudiced mind, can doubt that the Barrs were greeted with the utmost kindness. According to Mrs. Grayson, she was only too delighted to be able to welcome them into her household, having worried for days over the best way to approach the matter without giving offense. As for Mr. Grayson, his response to Mrs. Barr’s account was to arrange for breakfast, and afterward to call on Mrs. Smithton in company with a stout footman, his aunt’s maid, and a list of the Barrs’ belongings which they had been forced to leave behind. While in Charles Street, he had spoken to The Benefactress to such effect, that he was afterward able to persuade Mrs. Barr that she need have no further fear of the woman’s ire, or of her threats being carried out. Still, the Barrs’ dread of meeting her again was so acute, that the Grayson had agreed that, rather than leave Bath for Northumberland on Friday, as had been their intention, they would instead expedite the preparations and depart the next day.
This was the main substance of her letter, though there were a few more lines concerned with her (needless) gratitude to me for bringing the Barr ladies to her attention, thus allowing her to be ‘the Providential means by which they were liberated from a most dreadful situation.’
After this, you may suppose I opened Miss Barr’s note with great eagerness—the seal attesting that my mother had not been curious enough to do so—and for once my expectations did not meet with disappointment, for though she told much the same tale in two crossed sides, she was far less discreet, and did not hesitate to record many details, that Mrs. Grayson had elected to pass over; or perhaps she may not have known them: I can well imagine, that Mrs. Barr may have been reluctant to confess to either of the Graysons some of Mrs. Smithton’s wilder accusations, which she might have admitted to her daughter, in the first flurry of agitation.
Miss Barr was herself clearly still in an excited state when she penned her account to me, and both her legibility and her prose suffered, the latter from both repetition and exclamatory phrases. Shorn of these, however, the list of Mrs. Smithton’s accusations is remarkably entertaining, from being both contradictory and absurd—your father would doubtless be pained by the deficiency of her logic, but I feel some credit must be given for the ingenuity of a mind that can simultaneously censure a woman for venality, credulity and immorality. And one cannot help but feel a certain admiration for the decisive way in which she cast the Graysons’ reputations to the winds, in order to support her cause.
As far as I could establish them, Mrs. Smithton’s main points were as follows:
1. Mrs. Barr had been telling odious lies about her benefactress, and impugning Mrs. Smithton’s generosity to others;
2. Mrs. Barr had been shamelessly flirting with Mr. Grayson;
3. she had been encouraging her daughter to do the same;
4. she was attempting to deceive Mrs. Grayson into believing that she would be an excellent companion, soft-spoken and biddable, instead of a sly, ungrateful wretch who played cards with less skill than an Indian monkey;
5. Mrs. Grayson was attempting to lure her away, and if Mrs. Barr succumbed she would find herself and her daughter ensnared in a life of intolerable servitude;
6. Mr. Grayson was a wolf in sheep’s clothing who preyed upon foolish women who had no one to protect them, and if Mrs. Barr believed his protestations of regard and left the safety of her relative’s household, she would soon find herself destitute and despised etc, etc.
(I was amused to note, that Miss Barr’s greatest indignation and horror, seemed almost to be reserved for the thought that she would ever have attempted to attract the notice of a gentleman as advanced in years as Mr. Grayson, even if h
er mother had encouraged such a thing.)
Aside from the vituperation of Mrs. Smithton, Miss Barr’s letter contained about half a sheet extolling the kindness and generosity of the Graysons, and a few obligatory lines regretting the fact that, as they were shortly to leave for Northumberland, she was not likely ever to see her dear Miss Northcott again, though she would always remember me very gratefully, and treasure her Evenings at Home until the day she died; she would, as well, be certain to read every one of those books I had recommended, of which she had kept a very careful list. I admit, I was absurdly pleased by her confession that, when first they left Mrs. Smithton’s house, she had tried to persuade her mother to come to me for help, until Mrs. Barr had reminded her that I was ill. It is gratifying to know, that at least Miss Barr had faith in my goodwill, even if her mother (rightly) mistrusted my ability to act upon it. My illness made a convenient excuse, but I must suspect that my mother’s well-known intolerance for presumption was the chief reason why Mrs. Barr chose to look elsewhere for sanctuary.
And so, my dear Julia, there it is—my little Bath play has had the finis spoken over it, and all my characters are by now several counties away, and planning their lives without my assistance. The first swell of elation and relief has passed, and I now feel a gentle melancholy creeping over me at the realization that, while they may be gone, I am still held captive here by my mother’s decree. I do not mean to sink into a decline, however, but will gird myself and go out tomorrow to greet my allies, and hobble about as determinedly as ever. Perhaps I will tell Mrs. Warren a very little of what occurred, not enough that the least breath of scandal will attach to anyone concerned, but only sufficient that she may rejoice with me that the Barr ladies have at last found freedom from the tyranny of Mrs. Smithton’s card-table.
Yours, smiling a most immoderate and unChesterfieldian smile,
Ann Northcott
PS. I have just realized, Julia, that by my own persistence in the role of dea ex machina, I have succeeded in removing from Bath the two persons whom I found the most pleasure in observing. My Siddons and Kemble are gone, and I am now left with nothing but the inferior features of secondary players. How, how could I have been so lacking in foresight?
Letters from Bath; Or, A Friend in Exile Page 15