her brother’s absence obliged her to stay at Rowling till he should return to escort her home) will be understood by those who have perused Miss Burney’s novel of that name, and to those who have not will, I hope, be an inducement to do so, as it will certainly repay the perusal. Lady Waltham was the wife of Lord Waltham, and a great friend of Lady Bridges.
There are other allusions to things and people scattered throughout these letters, to understand which it is necessary to bear in mind that they are often made in the purest spirit of playful nonsense, and are by no means to be taken as grave and serious expressions of opinion or statement of facts. When, for instance, speaking of Mrs. Knight, the widow of Godmersham, she says “it is imagined that she will shortly be married again,” and in the next letter speaks of her brother Edward as intending to get some of a vacant farm into his occupation, “if he can cheat Sir Brook enough in the agreement,” she is writing in the same spirit of fun as when she presently tells us that her brother had thoughts of “taking the name of Claringbould,” that “Mr. Richard Harvey’s match is put off till he has got a better Christian name,” and that two gentlemen about to marry “are to have one wife between them.” Mrs. Knight was advanced in years at the time, and her marrying a second
