Her music suffered by reason of a sudden ardour for illumination; or art
went to the wall because a London musical season and an enthusiastic
admiration of Halle had inspired her with a desire to cultivate a more
classic style of pianoforte-playing. So in her English reading, each new
book blotted out its predecessor. Travels, histories, essays, biographies,
flitted across the lady's brain like the coloured shadows of a
magic-lantern, leaving only a lingering patch of picture here and there.
To be versatile was Lady Laura's greatest pride, and courteous friends had
gratified her by treating her as an authority upon all possible subjects.
Nothing delighted her so much as to be appealed to with a preliminary,
"Now, you who read so much, Lady Laura, will understand this;" or, "Dear
Lady Laura, you who know everything, must tell me why," etc.; or to be told
by a painter, "You who are an artist yourself can of course see this, Lady
Laura;" or to be complimented by a musician as a soul above the dull mass
of mankind, a sympathetic spirit, to whom the mysteries of harmony are a
familiar language.
In that luxurious morning-room of Lady Laura's Clarissa generally spent the
first two hours after breakfast. Here the children used to come with French
and German governesses, in all the freshness of newly-starched cambric and
newly-crimped tresses, to report progress as to their studies and general
behaviour to their mother; who was apt to get tired of them in something
less than a quarter of an hour, and to dispatch them with kisses and
praises to the distant schoolrooms and nurseries where these young exotics
were enjoying the last improvements in the forcing system.
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