. . . Yesterday we dined at Lady
Charleville's, the old lady of eighty-four, at whose house I
mentioned an evening visit in my last, and I must tell you all about
it to entertain dear Grandma. I will be minute for once, and give
you the LITTLE details of a London dinner, and they are all
precisely alike. We arrived at Cavendish Square a quarter before
seven (very early) and were shown into a semi-library on the same
floor with the dining-room. The servants take your cloak, etc., in
the passage, and I am never shown into a room with a mirror as with
us, and never into a chamber or bedroom.
We found Lady Charleville and her daughter with one young gentleman
with whom I chatted till dinner, and who, I found, was Sir William
Burdette, son of Sir Francis and brother of Miss Angelina Coutts. I
happened to have on the corsage of my black velvet a white moss rose
and buds, which I thought rather youthful for ME, but the old lady
had [them] on her cap. She is full of intelligence, and has always
been in the habit of drawing a great deal. . . . Very soon came in
Lord Aylmer, [who] was formerly Governor of Canada, and Lady
Colchester, daughter of Lord Ellenborough, a very pretty woman of
thirty-five, I should think; Sir William and Lady Chatterton and Mr.
Algernon Greville, whose grandmother wrote the beautiful "Prayer for
Indifference," an old favorite of mine, and Mr. MacGregor, the
political economist.
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