 Also that »men do not so
much fear to lose the hearts of thoughtful women as their strict attention to
their graces.« The present market is what men are for preserving: an observation
of still reverberating force. Generally in her character of the feminine
combatant there is a turn of phrase, like a dimple near the lips, showing her
knowledge that she was uttering but a tart measure of the truth. She had always
too much lambent humour to be the dupe of the passion wherewith, as she says,
»we lash ourselves into the persuasive speech distinguishing us from the
animals.«
    The instances of her drollery are rather hinted by the Diarists for the
benefit of those who had met her and could inhale the atmosphere at a word.
Drolleries, humours, reputed witticisms, are like odours of roast meats, past
with the picking of the joint. Idea is the only vital breath. They have it
rarely, or it eludes the chronicler. To say of the great erratic and forsaken
Lady A****, after she had accepted the consolations of Bacchus, that her name
was properly signified in asterisks; »as she was now nightly an Ariadne in
heaven through her God,« sounds to us a roundabout, with wit somewhere and fun
nowhere. Sitting at the roast we might have thought differently. Perry Wilkinson
is not happier in citing her reply to his compliment on the reviewers' unanimous
eulogy of her humour and pathos: - the »merry clown and poor pantaloon demanded
of us in every work of fiction,« she says, lamenting the writer's compulsion to
go on producing them for applause until it is extremest age that knocks their
knees. We are informed by Lady Pennon of »the most amusing description of the
first impressions of a pretty English simpleton in Paris«; and here is an
opportunity for ludicrous contrast of the French and English styles of pushing
flatteries - »piping to the charmed animal,« as Mrs. Warwick terms it in another
place: but Lady Pennon was acquainted with the silly woman of the piece, and
found her amusement in the wonderful truth of that representation.
    Diarists of amusing passages are under an obligation to paint us a realistic
revival of the time, or we miss the relish. The odour of the roast, and more, a
slice of it is required, unless the humorous thing be preternaturally spirited
to walk the earth as one immortal among a number less numerous than the mythic
Gods. »He gives good dinners,« a candid old critic said, when asked how it was
that he could praise a certain poet. In an island of chills and
