My lord returned. He called upon us next forenoon, and informed us, looking grave and downcast, that he proposed to hold his garden-party in Durdans Park on the next day. People had come from Vauxhall to decorate the trees, and there would be fireworks, with supper, and concert of horns.
I asked him, deceitfully, if his business in London had prospered. He replied that it had not turned out so favourably as he hoped: and then he checked himself and added that, to be sure, his affairs were of no interest to us.
"Your lordship will not, I hope, believe that anything which contributes to your happiness is so indifferent to us."
He bowed, and we began to talk again about his _fête_.
His invitations included all the visitors of respectability at Epsom. Nancy, out of pure kindness, had gone about inquiring of every one if he was invited; and, if not, she got him an invitation at once. We did not, indeed, include the tallow-chandlers and hosiers of London, who frequented Epsom that year in great numbers, but took up their own end of the Assembly Rooms, and mostly walked on the New Parade. But we included all who could claim to belong to the polite world, because nothing is more humiliating than to be omitted from such a festivity at a watering-place. I have known a lady of fashion retire from Bath in mortification, being forgotten at a public tea, and never again show her face at that modish but giddy town.
The company were to assemble at five o'clock, the place of meeting being fixed in that part of Durdans Park most remote from the mansion, where the great trees of birch and elm make such an agreeable wilderness that one might fancy one's self in some vast forest. We were escorted by Sir Miles Lackington, who came because all his brother gamblers had deserted the card-room for the day; and Mr. Stallabras--Solomon--was dressed in another new coat (of purple), and wore a sword with a surprisingly fine hilt. He also had a pair of shoe-buckles in gold, given him by his female Mæcenas, the widow of the brewer, in return for a copy of verses. He was greatly elated, never before having received an invitation from a person of such exalted rank.
"Now, indeed," he said, "I feel the full sweetness of fame. This it is, Miss Kitty, to be a poet. His society is eagerly sought by the Great: he stands serene upon the giddy height of fashion, ennobled by the Muses (who possess, like our own august sovereign, the right of conferring rank): he takes his place as an equal among those who are ennobled by birth. No longer do I deplore that obscurity of origin which once seemed to shut me out of the circles of the polite. Fetter Lane may not be concealed in my biography: it should rather be held up to fame as the place in which the sunshine of Apollo's favour (Apollo, Miss Kitty, was the sun-god as well as the god of poets, which makes the image appropriate)--the sunshine of Apollo has once rested during the birth of an humble child. It was at number forty-one in the second pair back, a commodious garret, that the child destined to immortality first saw the light. No bees (so far as I can learn) played about his cradle, nor did any miracles of precocious genius foreshadow his future greatness. But, with maternal prescience, his mother named him Solomon."