Within a few days of our arrival in London we were placed for education
in a school at Chelsea. The mistress of this seminary was perhaps one of
the most extraordinary women that ever graced, or disgraced, society;
her name was Meribah Lorrington. She was the most extensively
accomplished female that I ever remember to have met with; her mental
powers were no less capable of cultivation than superiorly cultivated.
Her father, whose name was Hull, had from her infancy been the master of
an academy at Earl's Court, near Fulham; and early after his marriage
losing his wife, he resolved on giving his daughter a masculine
education. Meribah was early instructed in all the modern
accomplishments, as well as in classical knowledge. She was mistress of
the Latin, French, and Italian languages; she was said to be a perfect
arithmetician and astronomer, and possessed the art of painting on silk
to a degree of exquisite perfection. But, alas! with all these
advantages, she was addicted to one vice, which at times so completely
absorbed her faculties as to deprive her of every power, either mental
or corporeal. Thus, daily and hourly, her superior acquirements, her
enlightened understanding, yielded to the intemperance of her ruling
infatuation, and every power of reflection seemed lost in the unfeminine
propensity.

All that I ever learned I acquired from this extraordinary woman. In
those hours when her senses were not intoxicated, she would delight in
the task of instructing me. She had only five or six pupils, and it was
my lot to be her particular favourite. She always, out of school, called
me her little friend, and made no scruple of conversing with me
(sometimes half the night, for I slept in her chamber), on domestic and
confidential affairs. I felt for her a very sincere affection, and I
listened with peculiar attention to all the lessons she inculcated. Once