and before us our knights and squires held two enormous panniers full of
ribands and cockades, which we distributed with a grace that won all
hearts, if not all votes Mrs. Luttridge thought the panniers would carry
the election; and forthwith she sent off an express for a pair of panniers
twice as large as ours. I took out my pencil, and drew a caricature of
_the ass and her panniers_; wrote an epigram at the bottom of it; and the
epigram and the caricature were soon in the hands of half ----shire. The
verses were as bad as impromptus usually are, and the drawing was not much
better than the writing; but the _good-will_ of the critics supplied all
my deficiencies; and never was more praise bestowed upon the pen of Burke,
or the pencil of Reynolds, than was lavished upon me by my honest friends.
My dear Belinda, if you will not quarrel with the quality, you may have
what quantity of praise you please. Mrs. Luttridge, as I hoped and
expected, was beyond measure enraged at the sight of the caricature and
epigram. She was, besides being a gamester and a politician--what do you
think?--an excellent shot! She wished, she said, to be a man, that she
might be qualified to take proper notice of my conduct. The same kind
friends who showed her my epigram repeated to me her observation upon it.
Harriot Freke was at my elbow, and offered to take any _message_ I might
think proper to Mrs. Luttridge. I scarcely thought her in earnest till she
added, that the only way left now-a-days for a woman to distinguish
herself was by spirit; as every thing else was grown 'cheap and vulgar in
the eyes of men;' that she knew one of the cleverest young men in England,
and a man of fashion into the bargain, who was just going to publish a
treatise 'upon the Propriety and Necessity of Female Duelling;' and that
he had demonstrated, beyond a possibility of doubt, that civilized society
could not exist half a century longer without this necessary improvement.
I had prodigious deference for the masculine superiority, as I thought it,
of Harriot's understanding. She was a philosopher, and a fine lady--I was
only a fine lady; I had never fired a pistol in my life, and I was a