solute Governesse" (as he
called her), to whom he had been married some eight months before. If
you ask at the British Museum for the Steele manuscripts (Add. MSS.
5,145, A, B, and C), the courteous attendant will bring you, with its
faded ink, dusky paper, and hasty scrawl, the very letter making
arrangements for this meeting ("best Periwigg" and "new Shoes"
included), at the end of which the writer assures his "dear Prue"
(another pet name) that she is "Vitall Life to Yr. Oblig'd
Affectionate Husband & Humble Sernt. Richd. Steele." There are many
such in the _quarto_ volume of which this forms part, written from all
places, at all times, in all kinds of hands. They take all tones; they
are passionate, tender, expostulatory, playful, dignified, lyric,
didactic. It must be confessed that from a perusal of them one's
feeling for the lady of the chariot is not entirely unsympathetic. It
can scarcely have been an ideal household, that "third door right hand
turning out of Jermyn Street," to which so many of them are addressed;
and Mrs. Steele must frequently have had to complain to her
_confidante_, Mrs. (or Miss) Binns (a lady whom Steele is obviously
anxious to propitiate), of the extraordinary irregularity of her
restless lord and master. Now a friend from Barbados has stopped him
on his way home, and he will come (he writes) "within a Pint of Wine";
now it is Lord Sunderland who is keeping him indefinitely at the
Council; now the siege of Lille and the proofs of the "Gazette" will
detain him until ten at night. Sometimes his vague "West Indian
business" (that is, his first wife's property) hurries him suddenly
into the City; sometimes he is borne off to the Gentleman Ushers'
table at St. James's. Sometimes, even, he stays out all night, as he
had done not many days before the date of the above meeting, when he
had written to beg that his dressing-gown, his slippers, and "clean
Linnen" might be sent to him at "one Legg's," a barber "over against
the Devill Tavern at Charing Cross," where he proposes to lie that
night, chiefly, it has been conjectured from the context, in order to
escape certain watchful "shoulder-dabbers" who were hanging
obstinately about his own mansion in St. James's. For--to tell the
truth--he was generally hopelessly embarrassed, and scarcely ever
without a lawsuit on his hands. He was not a bad man; he was not
necessarily vicious or dissolute. But his habits were incurably
generous, profuse, and i