The sensation produced by the debut¹ of Amethyst² Pimlico at the court of the sovereign, and in the salons³ of the beau-monde, was such as has seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were raving⁴ with love, and the women with jealousy⁵. Her eyes, her beauty, her wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration⁶ or envy.

Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace’s daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress’s regal beauty quite flung her cousins’ simple charms into the shade, and blazed with a splendor⁷ which caused all “minor lights” to twinkle faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the “Hoperer” in a green turban and a crumpled⁸ yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.

Crowds went to Squab and Lynch’s, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously¹⁰ unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs’, Rumble¹¹ and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called “Heiress-killers, very

分享到：