“Do not you mean to make a trial of the waters?” Eliza exclaimed.

“How can you think it possible, my dear?” I replied. “You forget the example of my Uncle Leigh-Perrot, and his two glasses per day these twenty-odd years. Never has water done so little to improve a faulty constitution, or to cure a persistent gout. I shall place my faith in a daily constitutional. It may claim a decided advantage in scenic enjoyment, and cannot hope to impair the bowels.”[20]

“Pshaw. Come and examine the book,” Eliza rejoined comfortably, as she turned back the pages of a calf-bound volume, in which the most recent visitors had inscribed their names and directions. “We must learn who is come to be gay in Bath. Mr. John Julius Angerstein and Mrs. Angerstein. Well. And so they have left their home in Blackheath, and abandoned the Princess of Wales to her scandalous beaux. The Honourable Matthew Small, Captain, Royal Navy. Well, we want none of him, do we? For a naval man torn from the sea cannot, I think, be very agreeable. Officers are always labouring under the influence of a wound, or a gouty manifestation. Mr. and Mrs. Jens Wolff. Capital! He is the Danish Consul, you know, and she is nothing short of a beauty. They lodge in Rivers Street. I have not seen Isabella Wolff this age!”

And so, as Eliza exclaimed and brooded, I allowed my mind once more to wander. My eyes I permitted to rove as well, in search of a nobleman of imposing aspect. I lacked Eliza’s knowledge of the Earl of Swithin’s past, but I had heard enough of that gentleman’s reputation to believe him stern and unyielding. His suit had driven Lady Desdemona Trowbridge from her home in London — had driven her, perhaps, into the arms of Mr. Richard Portal, who now lay dead. For what else but the theatre manager’s impropriety towards the lady could have so excited her brother’s contempt?

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but if I am not mistaken — are you not Mrs. Henry Austen?”

We turned — and observed a gentleman of some sixty years at least, and quite extraordinary in his aspect. He was short, and lithe, and fussily dressed, in a sky-blue jacket of sarcenet, a lavender silk waistcoat overlaid with bronze cherries, and light-coloured pantaloons well tucked into glowing Hessians. The stiff white points of his collar were so high as to disguise his ears, and render any effort at turning the head quite beyond his power; and the arrangement of his neckcloth must surely rival the Beau’s.[21] But all this would be as nothing — merely the trappings of a dandy more suited to a gentleman half his age — in comparison with the excessive ugliness of his features. The man resembled nothing so much as a baboon.

“Mr. Cosway, to be sure!” the little Comtesse cried, and extended her hand with every affectation of delight. “What felicity, in finding oneself not entirely without friends! How come you to leave St. James, my dear sir, in such a season?”

“A touch of the gout, Mrs. Austen, which I must for-fend — though I confess, with the end of the world so close upon us all, it hardly seems worth the trouble.”

“Indeed,” Eliza replied smoothly, with barely a flicker of an eyelid at the gentleman’s singularity of address. “One should meet any eventuality, extraordinary or commonplace, at the absolute pitch of health. But I must have the honour of acquainting you with my husband’s sister, Miss Austen. Jane — Mr. Richard Cosway, the principal painter to His Majesty the Prince of Wales.”

My senses were all alive; for though I may despise the Prince with every pore of my being, I am not so determined in dislike as to learn nothing of a gossip. In silence, I made Mr. Cosway a courtesy. The face, the figure, were comprehensible to me now, from several decades’ worth of caricatures in the papers. This was the extraordinary Cosway — whose cunning art at portraiture, particularly of a miniature kind, had swept the fashionable world; whose weekly salons in Pall Mall had been the sole entertainment worthy of fashionable attendance, throughout the past two decades; whose pretty little wife, full twenty years his junior, had so captivated the great with her accomplishments on the harp and at the easel. This was Richard Cosway, who followed Mesmer, and practised Animal Magnetism, and all manner of superstitious folly — now hard upon the brink of old age.[22] Trust my dear Eliza to claim acquaintance with every notable oddity in the kingdom!

“And have you any news of your delightful wife?” my sister was enquiring, with becoming solicitude. “Maria is quite a prisoner, I presume, in the Monster’s court?”

“Alas, I fear that she is — and it seems that any transport between England and the Continent is at a standstill. The outbreak of hostilities has overthrown my poor Maria’s labours entirely. She had embarked, as no doubt you know, upon a project of sketching the vast collection in Buonaparte’s Louvre, for the edification of mankind. And hers was so admirable a project — the Prince of Wales himself subscribed, my dear Mrs. Austen — but it has come to naught. And so Mrs. Cosway has entirely quitted Paris.”[23]

“But when is she likely to return? Can nothing be done for her present relief?”

Mr. Cosway hesitated. His eyes roved the room as if in search of acquaintance. “I may say that my wife is not without resources. She has made the best of her situation — and has gone to Lyons, for the purpose of founding a school for the education of young ladies in the Catholic faith. You know, of course, that she was born in Italy, and has always been a subject of Rome.”

“But of course,” Eliza replied dubiously. “And how long do you intend, sir, to dazzle Bath with your presence?”

“Not above three months, I assure you. I am bound for Brighton at Easter.”

“How delightful!” Eliza cried. “I long to visit Brighton! What schemes and dissipation — the chariot races on the shingle! The breakfasts out-of-doors! The fireworks and expeditions — the crush of the balls! How vast an acquaintance one must cultivate, too, in the Prince’s household train. The demands, I fear, are unending.”

“The amusements of Brighton are as nothing to me, who must suffer from the want of solitude that such a pleasure party demands; but I cannot help be a slave to the Prince,” Mr. Cosway observed, with a grotesque smile. “The decoration of the Pavilion, the maintenance of his collections — the imperative of Art! — are the foremost objects of my soul. My own poor daubs must be as nothing. I have not the nature for self-interest, I own — I am all devotion to the people I love.”

“I am sure it does you very great credit, Mr. Cosway,” the Comtesse replied, with what I thought to be admirable forbearance. “We must hope to solicit your society a little, perhaps, while yet you remain in Bath.”

And with a bow and a flourish of his handsome grey melton hat, Mr. Richard Cosway left us.

“What a ridiculous fellow, to be sure,” Eliza told me, “though quite accomplished in his line.”

“How come you to be acquainted with him, Eliza?”

“My godfather, Mr. Hastings, sat to Cosway for a miniature some years past,” she said carelessly, “but I formed a true attachment to the enchanting Mrs. Cos-way. Maria had all of London at her feet, you know, in the ‘eighties. We met in France, I recollect, in ‘91 or ‘92—just after the birth of her little girl, whom she abandoned to her husband’s rearing.”[24]

“How very singular!”

“It was. He suffered from the conviction of Maria’s infidelity, and thought the child to be anyone’s but his own — and so she left him, for nearly four years.”