Note 13 — Chapter IV

Lady Hester’s doctrines went farther than the shape of the foot; they went even to the tread. “Did I never tell you the story,” said she one day, “of Lord B.’s friend? He was sleeping at some inn, I don’t know where, when, in the morning, as he was lying thinking in bed, he heard a step over his head: he immediately rang the bell in a state of agitation, and begged to see the landlord directly. ‘Sir,’ cried he to him, ‘you must tell me who the person is that slept over my head. I know it is a woman, and the one too I have been looking for all my life; her footstep has that in it which will fulfil my warmest hope: if she is single, I must marry her, or else it will be the death of me.’ He did marry her, and they were the happiest couple imaginable: he found in her all that his most sanguine expectations had fancied, and she made him a most excellent wife.”

Lady Hester delighted in anecdotes that went to show how much and how justly we may be biassed in our opinions by the shape of any particular part of a person’s body, independent of the face. She used to tell a story of ——, who fell in love with a lady on a glimpse of those charms which gave such renown to the Cnidian Venus. This lady—luckily or unluckily—happened to tumble from her horse, and by that singular incident fixed the gazer’s affection irrevocably. Another gentleman, whom she knew, saw a lady at Rome get out of her carriage, her head being covered by an umbrella, which the servant held over her on account of the rain, and, seeing nothing but her foot and leg, swore he would marry her—which he did.