nevertheless, with the exception of Tom himself, who, of course, holds
the centre of the stage, she is more surely and sensibly there than
any of his thousand characters, from the Prince Regent to the poet
Bowles; more surely and fragrantly there. We are the better for her
presence; and so is her Tom's memory, infinitely the better.

It was a secret marriage and, except in the minds of a few good
judges, an improvident.

"I breakfast with Lady Donegal on Monday," he writes to his
mother in May, 1811, "and dine to meet her at Rogers' on
Tuesday; and there is to be a person at both parties whom you
little dream of."

This person was Bessy, to whom he had been married some two months
on the day of writing, and of whom, when his family was notified, he
found that it had nothing good to say. He complains of disappointment,
of a "degree of coldness" in his father's comments; and neither is
perhaps very wonderful. For Miss Bessy not only had nothing a year,
but in the reckoning of the day, and in comparison with the young
friend of Lord Moira and Lady Donegal, she herself was nothing.
She was indeed a professional actress--Miss E. Dyke in the
play-bills--whom Tom had first met in 1808 when the Kilkenny Theatre
began a meteor-course. He had lent himself as an amateur to the
enterprise, was David in _The Rivals_, Spado (with song) in _A Castle
of Andalusia_. In 1809, for three weeks on end, he had been Peeping
Tom of Coventry to the Lady Godiva of Miss E. Dyke. The rest is easy
guessing, and so it is that Tom's parents were dismayed, and that
there was a "degree of coldness." Lady Godiva, indeed!