After my marriage, though Mr. Faringfield's handsome settlement would
have enabled Fanny and me to live far more pretentiously, we were
content to remain in the Hampstead cottage. Fanny would not hear to
our living under a separate roof from that of my mother, whose
constant society she had come to regard as necessary to her happiness.
Philip now arranged to pursue the study of architecture in the office
of a practitioner of that art; and he gave his leisure hours to the
improving of his knowledge of London. He made acquaintances; passed
much time in the Pall Mall taverns; and was able to pilot me about the
town, and introduce me to many agreeable habitues of the
coffee-houses, as if he were the elder resident of London, and I were
the newcomer. And so we arrived at the Spring of 1786, and a momentous
event.
CHAPTER XIX.
_We Meet a Play-actress There._
It was Philip's custom, at this time, to attend first nights at the
playhouses, as well from a love of the theatre as from the possibility
that he might thus come upon Captain Falconer. He always desired my
company, which I was the readier to grant for that I should recognise
the captain in any assemblage, and could point him out to Phil, who
had never seen him. We took my mother and Fanny excepting when they
preferred to stay at home, which was the case on a certain evening in
this Spring of 1786, when we went to Drury Lane to witness the
reappearance of a Miss Warren who had been practising her art the
previous three years in the provinces.
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