The Project Gutenberg EBook of The London Visitor, by Mary Russell Mitford

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Title: The London Visitor

Author: Mary Russell Mitford

Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22835]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONDON VISITOR ***

Produced by David Widger

THE LONDON VISITOR

By Mary Russell Mitford

Being in a state of utter mystification, (a very disagreeable state,
by-the-bye,) I hold it advisable to lay my unhappy case, in strict
confidence, in the lowest possible whisper, and quite in a corner,
before my kind friend, patron, and protector, the public, through whose
means--for now-a-days every body knows everything, and there is no
riddle so dark but shall find an OEdipus to solve it--I may possibly
be able to discover whether the bewilderment under which I have been
labouring for the last three days be the result of natural causes, like
the delusions recorded in Dr. Brewster's book, or whether there be in
this little south of England county of ours, year 1836, a revival of
the old science of Gramarye, the glamour art, which, according to that
veracious minstrel, Sir Walter Scott, was exercised with such singular
success in the sixteenth century by the Ladye of Branksome upon the good
knight, William of Deloraine, and others his peers. In short, I want to
know---- But the best way to make my readers understand my story, will
be to begin at the beginning.

I am a wretched visitor. There is not a person in all Berkshire who has
so often occasion to appeal to the indulgence of her acquaintance
to pardon her sins of omission upon this score. I cannot tell how it
happens; nobody likes society better when in it, or is more delighted to
see her friends; but it is almost as easy to pull a tree of my age and
size up by the roots, as it is to dislodge me in summer from my flowery
garden, or in the winter from my sunny parlour, for the purpose of
accepting a dinner invitation, or making a morning call. Perhaps the
great accumulation of my debts in this way, the very despair of ever
paying them all, may be one reason (as is often the case, I believe, in
pecuniary obligations) why I so se