Читать книгу Miss Eden's Letters - Eden Emily - Страница 10
ОглавлениеGeorge liked Middleton very much. Lady Jersey[137] was going, as soon as the present party was all gone, to turn unhappy for the poor Duke of York,[138] and as far as I can make out, she was going to show it by putting off all the ladies of the party she was to have had this week, and to keep up just enough to receive all the gentlemen. She and Lady Granville[139] seem to have had a fine tracasserie at Paris. George is so charmed with Lady Jersey’s children. He says he never saw such a fine pleasant set of boys, and the girls are very pretty.
I have not been out of the house, except once, to see Elizabeth Cawdor,[140] and with that wonderful quickness of observation that I possess I discovered that she will probably soon add to her family, and that the addition will be very considerable—three or four at least.
Lady Bath is at Rome again and not the least anxious to come home, which is odd. One of Elizabeth’s children is so pretty. I have no news to tell you, as it does not come of itself. One must go to look for it.
[In October 1820 Emily Eden suddenly received from her friend Pamela in Scotland the news of her engagement to a widower with one child—Sir Guy Campbell, and a month later the wedding had taken place. Pamela, in her characteristic way, wrote and announced the event.]
Before you read thro’ this letter call your maid, and get the smelling bottle, for you will certainly faint away with surprise and wonder. Who would have thought it! I don’t believe it myself so I cannot expect you to believe it, but I am going to be married perfectly true in about a month or six weeks.
I am going to be married to Sir Guy Campbell[141].... What I would have given to have had you with me all this time, and at this moment, I miss you beyond expression. He is uncommonly right-headed, of course it follows he is liberal, wide-minded and indulgent, at the same time I see he can take violent dislikes, as you do at times, my best one. He is very tact to a degree, and that you know, Dearest, is a corner-stone in happiness, for there is no fitting two minds without it.
[On her wedding-day, November 20, Pamela wrote to say the Catholic priest had married them at half-past twelve, and that she was to be married again by the Presbyterian minister, and a long dinner was to be given for them in the evening for all the Family to contemplate her. A week later she wrote again to Miss Eden.]
Just like you, and quite tactful not to cool our affection for each other by sending me a wet blanket in the shape of a congratulation. I like Sir Guy more and more, he understands me so well, he knows my faults, which is a great relief, for I have no silent obliquity to smother, or no good behaviour to act up to more than is comfortable. He is doing a set of sketches of the Highlands for you, which I am sure you will like. However, tho’ he is of a Highland family, let me take from your mind any impression that he is at all Scotch in obstinacy, cunning cheek-bones, or twang. He has not been in Scotland for the last six and twenty years. You need not tell dear Mrs. Colvile this, who has built all my hopes of future happiness on his being Scotch to the bone. Hers was the first letter I received with Lady Campbell on it....
I cannot say how pretty it was of you to send that pretty cap, which I think the prettiest cap that ever was prettied. Pat your Grantham for she did that commission well. So she was very brimful of London and the ways and means of the place? You wonder at her liking it so much after having had so much of it; but it grows upon them like a description I read somewhere of some part of the Infernal Regions, where the damned were condemned to misery and dirt, wallowing in mire and sand, but they were so degraded they had lost the sense of misery, and had no wish to leave the darkness for light.
I wear your dear cap often and often, and occasionally Sir Guy wears it when he is not very well. He says he is sure you will be gratified by the attention.
I have had a very neat silk pelisse trimmed with fur, sent without the donor’s name, and as the poor thing is a very pretty pelisse, but can’t tell me its business or where it comes from, I have a silent great-coat here, and thanks I can’t impart. I believe it comes from those Lady Hills, those bosom friends I never could bear, and if I have thanked the Gods amiss, I can’t help it.
Have you seen your Elliots?[142] for I am anxious to know what India has done for them. It is a dangerous experiment, they get so stuffed with otto of roses, sandal-wood and sentiment, they never come quite right....
Aunty is in the grumps with the rheumatism, and the winds and draughts. You know the sort of silent-victim appearance of suffering innocence some people take and wear, which increases when the meat is tough, and the pudding burnt, and which is all more or less aimed at me, till I feel so culprit, as if I blew the winds, and made the cold, and toughed the meat, and burnt the dish. However, I don’t mind it now and go on doing my best for all of them, particularly as she desired not to be troubled with housekeeping, and as I recollect she always keeps a growl at the cold at home. Sir Guy behaves like an angel to her....
I hear they have a large party at Bowood, I suppose the usual routine. I heard of Truval at Longleat, not doing anything particular. That small Ealing address with all the little Truvals of the grove, babes and sucklings, amused me. He was bored at Longleat and deserves to be bored thro’ life. I can only wish him a continuance of H. Montagu’s friendship.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
BUTE,
January 7, 1821.
Many thanks, my darling Emmy, for your delightful letter. Till you are shut up for six months in an old rambling house on the coast of the Isle of Bute in January, you cannot know the value, the intrinsic sterling, of such a letter as yours.... I am sorry poor Mary’s Charing-Cross purgatory has begun again.
I think, if God grants us life, we are very likely to settle, when we do settle, somewhere near London. It is bad for the mind to live without society, and worse to live with mediocrity; therefore the environs of London will obviate these two evils. But I like the idea. I cannot bear Scotland in spite of every natural beauty, the people are so odious (don’t tell Mrs. Colvile). Their hospitality takes one in, but that is kept up because it is their pride. Their piety seems to me mere love of argument and prejudice; it is the custom to make a saturnalia of New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day they drown themselves in whisky. Last New Year’s Eve being Sunday, they would not break the Sabbath, but sat down after the preaching till 12 o’clock; the moment that witching hour arrived, they thought their duty fulfilled, seized the whisky, and burst out of their houses, and ran about drinking the entire night, and the whole of Monday and Monday night too. This is no exaggeration, you have no idea the state they are in—men lying about the streets, women as drunk as they,—in short, I never was more disgusted....
Lady Lansdowne did not send the Pelisse. She sent me ribbons, an Indian muslin gown, quantities of French-work to trim it, four yards of lace, a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs; and that touching Lord Lansdowne sent me a beautiful set of coral. She also sent me a white gros de Naples gown. In short, she has done it uncommon well, and I love her as much as I can, and who can do more?
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
January 21, 1821.
Many many thanks, my Dearest, for your kind letter. We certainly do understand one another extraordinair well, as they say in Scotland. Your writing in London too is quite “from the depths I cried out.” Emily, there is a sympathy of bores between us. Sir Guy and I have regularly been put out of humour every morning by the new Times, and it will come all the way to Bute, though he has written to agents and bankers and offices to stop it. Like old Time and pleasant Time and Time-serving, there is no arresting it, and its disgusting pages meet my eye and try my temper without cessation. Send me down a little genuine essence of Whig when you have time occasionally. Sir Guy is no politician at all, only I in a quiet way insinuate sound principles into his mind. Not but what I think a military man should be without party, so that the doses I give are very mild. I go no further than just liberality, and now and then drawing him into some remarks on the malversations of ministers.
I enter into your dinner and house bothers.
I don’t find that variety in the beef of to-morrow and the mutton of to-day, which the Anti-Jacobin expatiates upon with such delight, and the joints diminish in sheep when we eat mutton. As for puddings, they are one and the same, and only one, and then when one has tortured one’s brain and produced a dinner, and that it is eaten, my heart sinks at the prospect that to-morrow will again require its meal, et les bras me tombent ....
Lord[143] and Lady Bute are coming here. We don’t know them at all, but I suppose we shall see them, which is bore, for nothing is so tiresome as to be near neighbours with people one scarce knows. One has one foot in intimacy, and the other in formality, and it makes but a limping acquaintance. I don’t think Lady Lansdowne has quite got over my not marrying her way; she covers it up very well, but you know how soon you and I can see through all that, and I know also that Sir Guy is not likely to overcome that feeling in her. He is not a party man, he is not scientific, and unless he likes people he is very shy, and I see they will never make it up. But I always thought marriage must disarrange many acquaintances. I don’t regret acquaintances; even to have had variety of acquaintances is an advantage, for the reason which makes a public school an advantage to a boy; it widens the mind. But to go on through life with them is heartless and thankless too. I mean to save my time, and keep it all for those I like and love.... We have lovely warm spring weather here, always breakfast with the window open and getting away from the fires. I must say the climate far exceeded my expectations. The garden is covered with thick white patches of snow-drops in full bloom. Don’t this make your mouth water, and your eyes too, you poor misery in your cold smoke?
Good-bye, Dearest, have you been drawing and what? I don’t mean just now in London, but in your lucid intervals, and are you well?
So far London is a place that cures or kills. Your own
PAMELA.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[MOUNT STUART,]
February 28, 1821.
Don’t go out during this pestilential month of March, people may call it east wind and sharp, but it is neither more or less than a plague, that regularly blows thro’ the Islands, and it is nonsense to brave it, just because it is not called pest, or yellow or scarlet, or pink fever, so don’t go out.
I am spending a few days here at Mount Stuart,[144] and you may see that I am writing with strange paper and ink, and have but a distant bowing acquaintance with this fine clarified pen.
You are quite right, one is a better human creature, when one has seen a mountain and it does one good. I only wish I could see a mountain with you.
Your Feilding fuss is so described, that I laughed over it for an hour; my Dear, I see it, and enter into your quiescent feelings on the occasion; things settle themselves so well I wonder other people always, and we sometimes, give ourselves any trouble about anything.
This is a good enough house, but somehow they go out of the room and leave one, and yet one has not the comfort of feeling alone and easy, and I caught myself whispering and Lucy too; I can’t account for it, except by the great family pictures, that are listening all round in scarlet cloaks, and white shoes, and red heels and coronets. Kitty[145] is to be married to-day—plenty of love but little prospect of anything else. Her future income is rather in the line of a midshipman’s allowance, Nothing a day and find yourself.
I hope you will taste this saying, for I am partial to it, it gives one a comfortable idea, that in these days, when the Whigs complain of Ministerial extravagance, the Navy establishment will escape censure.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
March 3, 1821.
Much to say I can’t pretend, but something to say I can always find when I write to you. We left Mount Stuart to-day. Sir Guy, Lucy and I delighted to be at home. Aunt rather missing the cookery dishes, claret, champagne, and a sound house.
My mind is grown much more easy since I have clearly ascertained, weighed, and measured that I don’t like Lord Bute, and of course I have a whole apparatus of reasonable reasons, to support my dislike envers et contre tout. He is proud not in that complimentary sense. Some people use the word implying a dislike of dirty deeds and a love of noble doings. He is not purse-proud nor personally proud of his looks; but the sheer genuine article pride which now-a-days one seldom meets with barefaced. He is proud of his ancestors, proud of the red puddle that runs in his veins, proud of being a Stuart, a Bute, and a Dumfries. He apes humility, and talks of the honour people do him in a way that sounds like “down on your knees.” Talks of his loyalty as if Kings should kiss his hand for it. However though this is tiresome and contemptible, he has some of the merits that mitigate pride. He seems high principled and honourable, with sense enough for his own steerage, and I make allowances for his blindness which must make him center in self a good deal.
She is pleasant enough in a middling way, no particular colour in her ideas. She never moots or shocks, or pushes one back, but she don’t go any further, content to dwell in decencies for ever. She likes a joke when it is published and printed for her, but I suppose a manuscript joke never occurred to her.
They never have anybody there, except now and then Mr. Moore, his man of business, who is in the full sense of the word corpulent, red-faced, with a short leg with a steel yard to it, and a false tuft; and he is Colonel of the Yeomanry. But I like him for a wonderful rare quality in any Baillie, but above all in a Scotch Baillie; he is independent and no toad-eater. He found fault with his patron’s potatoes at the grand table, with a whole row of silver plates dazing his eyne; and he as often as occasion occurs quietly contradicts him....
General Way[146] and his wife are to be at Mount Stuart next week. Sir Guy described General Way as an Adjutant-General, and a Methodist, which sounds such an odd mixture,—true Church Militant. They are great Jew converters. I have been reading a luminous treatise on Witchcraft, seriously refuting such belief. One rather odd circumstance is, that three-and-twenty books and tracts have been written since Charles II.’s reign in earnest support of the doctrine of Sorcery and Witchcraft....
I go on writing in case you are still shut up, it may amuse you tho’ I have no event. An occasional mad dog spreads horror thro’ the district; no wonder I enter into the poor dog’s feelings, he belonged to the steam boat, and that was enough to send any Christian out of their senses, let alone a dog.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
March 10 [1821].
What a delightful letter, and I feel perfectly agonised, not an idea, not a topic, not a word to send you in return. Sir Guy says I may do as I please, so I shall send the Highlands to the right about, and go south to you as soon as the weather is travellable, and that we have seen Sir Guy’s old Scotch aunt[147] at Edinburgh. I must see her because she is called “Aunt Christy.” That name, you must acknowledge, is worth a visit.
I send you, my Darling, a small Heart with my hair in it. Put it on directly and wear it. I know it is a comfort to have a little something new when one is ill, as I learnt when I had the chicken-pox, and found great benefit in some gilt gingerbread Kings and Queens. Lucy used to bring me them twelve years ago; they were hideous, useless, and not eatable, but still they made a break in the day....
I wish I could instil in you a little of that respect and mystic reverence which I never could feel myself for Doctors, and Pestles and Mortars—that blind devotion which is so necessary to make the stuff efficacious, for by faith we are saved in these cases, as in cases of conscience.
I am sorry they have made you have hysterics, and won’t let you have the Elliots, and conversation. That bluff Chilvers,[148] with his Burgomaster appearance, as if he was magistrate of our vitals and poor bowels! I hate him ever since he offered me the insult of a blister, that first blister of hateful memory.
Write, or don’t write, as it suits you. Lucy and Sir Guy are such friends, they quite doat on one another, and understand each other. Therefore wipe away all I said for nothing. That is my comfort with you, I can tell you and then scratch it out again as I please, and that is the only way to be constant in this changeable world, to be able to follow the changes of those we love, so as to be always the same with them.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[BUTE,]
March 15, 1821.
...We have been a day at Mount Stuart since I wrote, to meet a Sir Gregory and Lady Way—such bores! Oh! no, never. His brother is the great Jew-converter, and has now left his wife and house and estate and is gone a converting-tour into Poland. Some Israelites played him an ungrateful trick. He invited them to his house in Buckinghamshire to render thanks in his private Chapel for their redemption, but alas! they had not cast off their old man, for they stole all Mr. Way’s plate, which he has found it impossible to redeem, they having most probably converted it into money and made off. These people are strictly pious characters, and on Lucy saying she had heard of Mr. Way, Sir Gregory replied: “An instrument, Madam, merely an instrument!”
Lady Way is too heavy, and so dressed out—all in a sort of supprimé way, and wears a necklace like a puppy’s collar....
Did you see those pretty nice Feilding children[149] when the Feildings were in London? I hope that nasty woman[150] will not spoil them.
Have you had Mary Drummond in comfort since you have been shut up and ill?—like the indulgence of barley sugar with a cough; no remedy, but yet it is pleasant. Does Fanny still keep up “brother and sister” with Edward Drummond?[151] I don’t think even Fanny could do it. Sir Guy knows the one in the Guards (Arthur is not his name), and liked him better than Drummonds in general, for there is no denying that Drummonds are Drummonds to the greatest degree.... Send me your low letters, and your gay letters, and all you write, for I love it all.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
March 22, 1821.
...Jane Paget’s[152] business shocked, but did not surprise me. I never saw any poor girl so devoured by Ennui, and I have so long found Bore account for all the unaccountable things that occur, that it solved Jane’s marriage to me. She cannot exist without excitement, for she is completely blasée upon everything. Blasée is the genteel word; you would call it besotted or stupefied, if she had accomplished this vitiated destruction by dram-drinking or opium; but the effect, call it what you please, is exactly the same. I pity that poor Mr. Ball truly, for I don’t suspect him of being equal to rule a wife and have a wife....
I forget to tell you a good idea of Lucy’s, about Jane Paget’s marriage. She said it was such a pity to see good articles selling off at half-price like ribbon in Oxford Street, to make room for a new spring assortment.
We are doing our Mount Stuart again. We have a Mr. and Mrs. Veetchie (a Commissioner of the Customs and has been in the army) and Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Hope. Mr. Hope can be pleasant now and then, but as dulness was paramount during our intercourse, I suspect the agreeableness to be a little gilding he has got from living with the wits of Edinburgh. There seems no source—mere cistern work. Your old Burgomaster Chilvers is clever, and I think as much of him as of any of them. But go on mentioning all he does, whether you are drenched in drugs.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
April 1, 1821.
...Tho’ I know they are all taking care of you with all their might, I feel I should do it better, because I want to be with you so very too much, that I feel cross with those who can be about you. Sir Guy thinks you are a lucky woman in being allowed only ten minutes of everybody’s company; at least the chances are in your favour for escaping bores.
I hear of nothing but crash upon crash in London. Leinster[153] and Mary Ross[154] are obliged to join to help Lady Foley.[155] Lord Foley is so completely ruined, it is supposed it will be impossible to save anything for his six unfortunate children, and Lord and Lady Foley cannot have the satisfaction of throwing the blame on one another. He has gambled, and she has had six guineas-apiece handkerchiefs. She has enjoyed the bliss of boasting she never tied a ribbon twice, or wore her sattin three times. I thought I had made a poor marriage, and was content, but I begin to believe that I am a rich individual.
I think you are right about William,[156] I am sure he has taken a quirk about my marriage, because you see, my dear Emmy, it splits upon one of the very rocks of prejudice he has in his character. I would almost say the only one, but then it is a considerable stone, his worldliness. He would not have had me marry a regular established fool even he was rich, because again, the world might think the worse of me; but if I could, have met a rich quiet man without bells to his cap, made a good figure in London, and of whom some people might indulgently say—in consideration of his fortune, “Such a one I promise you has more sense than one would think, he is not such a fool as people give him credit for.” If I had run the usual race of London misery with such a man, William would not have objected.
It is a crooked corner in him, I have often observed he has a childish respect to the opinion of London; and Paris has done him no good in giving him a notion that it don’t signify what people do, so they keep it quiet, and make no open scandale. I have often wondered at this, because we mortals always try and trace a consistency in character, which is an ingredient never to be found in any composition, foreign to human nature altogether, which we still hunt after, and refer to and talk of, as if it was not as ideal as the philosopher’s stone, a tortoise-shell Tom cat, or any other impossibility you like to think of.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
April 10, 1821.
I have been again at Mount Stuart. Saw a civil Mr. Campbell of Stonefield, whom of course I ought to have called Stonefield tout court, but this seemed to me so improper and affectionate. I would not expose my conjugal felicity to such a slur, and I believe I affronted the Laird. He is a great man, having been at Oxford, of course the refined thing in education in Scotland; just as Lansdowne was sent to Scotland to give him a better coating of education. I suppose on the principle that the longest way about is the shortest road home. I see all those who are taken most pains with make the plainest figure. This man seems, however, to have preserved his whole row of Scotch prejudices unshaken, proud, and touchy.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
THAMES DITTON,
July 16, 1821.
DEAREST EMMY, I have been so pestered and worried. I should only have worried you if I had written to you in the midst of my various bothers. I find I have about one half of my baby linen to get made, Aunt Charlotte[157] having handsomely provided the caps and frocks and fineries, but turned me off with only half-a-dozen of everything needful, and not an inch of flannel. You are enough of a mother to enter into my feelings on the occasion.
I have had scene after scene to undergo with Aunt [Lady Sophia FitzGerald] upon the unkindness of my not remaining to be confined here within the compass of a sixpence, and taking everybody’s advice, sooner than hers, and, in short, not having her in the room with me. As I should have died of that, self-preservation gave me firmness to resist, and I declared I could not. All this was to be kept smooth to Sir Guy, for Aunt chose to be sulky with him. In short I have found the kindness of the house the cruellest thing on earth. I have not had a quiet moment, the neighbourhood have poured upon me.... Lucy is gone mad, for she is preparing to go to the Coronation.[158] Your affectionate and own
PAM.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
Tuesday, August 14, 1821.
...I am settled in Town since Saturday evening, and if Eastcombe has had reminiscences of me for you, Grosvenor Square has reminisced you to me, our evening walks, and Lady Petre, and Penniwinkle. Every valuable Bore I possess has by instinct discovered me in Town, and I have been surrounded with Clements,[159] Cootes, and Strutts.[160] However I had a visit from Bob[161] as a palliative which supported me under the rest.
It is quite impossible to give an idea of the hurry and scurry of the people in every direction, and as if the rain only increased their ardour. Women with drooping black bonnets and draggled thin cotton gowns, and the men looking wet and radical to the skin. I catch myself twaddling and moralising to myself just as I went on about poor Buonaparte. They say fools are the only people who wonder, and I believe there is something in it, for I go on wondering till I feel quite imbecile.
However I own I am shocked (not surprised in this instance) that not a single public office or government concern should be shut. No churches at this end of the town either open, and no bells tolling.[162]
Your small parcel delighted me and is the smartest I had. I have given every direction as to that being the first article worn, for I should not love my child unless it had your things on.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers.
WOBURN, 1821.
MY DEAR THERESA, There never was a house in which writing flourished so little as it does here, partly that I have been drawing a great deal, and also because they dine at half-past six instead of the rational hour of seven, and in that lost half-hour I know I could do more than in the other twenty-three and a half. After all, I like this visit. It was clever of me to expect the Duchess[163] would be cross, because of course, that insures her being more good-natured than anybody ever was. I am only oppressed at being made so much of. Such a magnificent room, because she was determined I should have the first of the new furniture and the advantage of her society in the mornings, though in general she makes it a rule to stay in her own room. In short, you may all be very, very good friends, but the only person who really values my merits is—the Duchess of Bedford, and once safe with her the house is pleasant enough.
We have had the Duncannons.[164] I like her; she is so unlike Lady Jersey. Miss P. is something of a failure in every way, except in intrinsic goodness; but she was terrified here, and at all times dull, and as nearly ugly as is lawful. They have been the only ladies. Then, there are dear little Landseer, Mr. Shelley, so like his mama in look, and a great rattle; Lord Chichester, Lord Charles Russell, etc.; and a tribe of names unknown to fame, headed by a Mr. Garrett, who is a rich shooting clergyman with the most suave complacent manners!—one of those appurtenances to a great house I cannot abide.
Eliza[165] is in the greatest beauty, and is a very nice person altogether. I think Lord Chichester succeeds here, and there is no denying that he is a creditable specimen of a young gentleman of the reign of George IV.[166] We have been on the point of acting, but the Providence that guards les fous et les ivrognes evidently keeps an eye on Amateur actors and preserves them from actually treading the boards. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
D’ARQUES, PRÈS DIEPPE,
Le 16 Juillet, 1822.
MY DEAREST EMILY, I have been robbed and pillaged and bored and worried, and hate France as much as ever I did, and so does Guy. Mama[167] has made us a comfortable visit, but alas I cannot stay any longer, and conceive my joy! we let our house here, and return to England for my Couche. It almost makes up to me for the business. I shall be in London in August, there to remain six months. To show you how entirely and utterly false it is that you have not always and always had that very large den in my heart, let me beg and entreat that, if you can, you will be in or near Town, if you can manage it, during my confinement.
It would be existence to me. Oh Emmy, I have so much to unburthen and talk over with you—and you only. I am much pleased with what I have seen of Mama, and Guy likes her....
Conceive the fuss we have had! My Lansdowne recommended Bridget as my maid; Bridget turned out a thief and has robbed me to the amount of 70 Pounds, and acknowledged the fact before the Police, which is no consolation, her candour not replacing the articles. We declined the other consolation of pursuing her, whipping and branding, and five years detention; but only—mind you!—never trust Jane Kingston, Lady Bath’s laundress, for Bridget declares upon oath having sent the things to her—my best lace among the rest.
On searching her things, a fine brodée handkerchief appeared, with Harriet embroidered in the corner, and as she lived with Lady H. Drummond[168] perhaps the House of Drummond might wish to make reclamation.... Your own
PAMELA.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[17 CADOGAN TERRACE,]
September 16, 1822.
MY OWN EMILY, Here have I been settling myself to my infinite satisfaction, after having endured the ordeal of France which I went through. Where are you? What are you doing? Remember I have bespoke you, October I expect to lay my egg.[169] If you are within reach—oh, it will be such a comfort to me, I positively thirst to have a talk with you. I am so happy to be in England. Better to live on a crust or a crumb, which is not half so good in England, than upon penny rolls in France.
I understand Lord Worcester[170] is already so bored with his bargain that he is to be pitied according to the good-nature of the world for anything that is passing wrong. It is sad that for the morality of the world, people will not be convinced that illegality and sin are not free from bore and ennui....
Tell me you are at hand or coming, for I downright long to see you, and in my position you should not let me long, though it would be no great punishment to have a child like you. Sir Guy sends his particular love to you. Your own affectionate
OLD PAM.
November 22, 1822.
Emily, these trembling lines, guided by a hand weakened by confinement, must speak daggers and penknives to you, for never having taken any written notice of me since you chucked me my child in at the window and went your way. As you come on Monday, I refer all to our meeting.
I want you shockingly.... Come to me soon, dear. Your affectionate
PAMELA.
Lord Auckland to his sister, Miss Eden.
NORMAN COURT,
October 29 [1822].
Thank you for your two letters which I would have answered sooner, but we shoot all day and are lazy all the evening.
I am not sure that you knew that Wall[171] had been ill and near losing the sight from one of his eyes. He is considerably better, and shoots as usual, and has no doubt of perfectly recovering.
My trip to Fonthill[172] was an amusing way of passing a spare day, and has left a strong impression of the immeasurable folly with which money may be spent. The house is too absurd, but the grounds are beautiful. Lansdowne has bought some pictures there which he was anxious for, as they belonged to his father. I have just heard from him. He is going for a few weeks to Paris, and like everybody else, is expecting you and me to pay him a good long visit at the end of the year. In his mild rational way he exceedingly regrets that the Cortes have not cut off the head of Ferdinand.[173]
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[1822.]
MY DARLING EM, Your letter has revived me, for I was smothered with Fog and so obfuscated I found myself growing callous of the density of the gloom, and my perception of my own dirt and my neighbour’s grimness was diminishing. I was getting hardened, when your letter and a gleam of dingy yellow sun showed me the state of myself and the children, and I went up and washed myself and repented of my filth. The fog prevented Mrs. Colvile coming, which is provoking. I wanted to show her my boy; she has put so many of them together, she has an experienced eye on the subject[174]....
The Ladies Fitz-Patrick, old Mrs. Smith, etc., are cooking up a match between Vernon Smith and Mary Wilson, old Lord Ossory’s natural daughter with much money.
Emily does it strike you that vices are wonderfully prolific among the Whigs? There are such countless illegitimates among them, such a tribe of Children of the Mist.... Your own
PAM.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
January 6, 1823. Twelfth Night or what you will.
MY DARLING EMMY, Thank God you have written at last, I have worked myself into a fright this day or two that you were very ill. I have been very poorly, but am better. You are mistaken about that sucking lump being a favourite. I esteem him; he is a man of strict probity and integrity with steady principles, and he is a man would make any reasonable woman very happy in domestic life; but there is a refinement and charm in that Cain that makes a fool of me,—a great fool, for she[175] don’t much care for me, and is radically vicious.
We have got a house between Reading and Basingstoke, a mile from Strathfieldsaye, at a village called Strathfield Turgess:—delightful prospect, well furnished, roomy, with Cow and poultry included, garden meadow, for £84 per annum.
Lady Louisa Lennox had rather taken my fancy, and that negative mind of being Anti-Bathurst is a jewel in their favour. Emily, to have it gravely told me Lady Georgina Bathurst[176] is a strong-headed woman, superior, with wonderful abilities, etc. Cela m’irrite la bile, when I know her to be prejudiced, worldly, entrenched by prejudices upon prejudice, till her very soul is straightened within the narrow limit of the Ministers, their wives, and her own family....
How is your Grantham? My Lansdowne is playing at de petits jeux innocents. I am of a guilty inclination and cannot taste those social innocences, besides, Emmy, we don’t do such things well in England, it don’t suit well, and to fail in a triviality is failure indeed, but the Wilt loves a caper. All this is very well, but I want to talk to you, Emmy. I have such quantities I cannot even tap in a letter, that I could talk out just in one ½ hour.
Louisa Napier[177] is with Lady Londonderry,[178] and the account I think very horrid. Every thing at Cray goes on the same, conversation, laughing, novels, light books, the attaches and habitués coming in, the very red boxes of office left in their places, not a shade of difference in her occupations, amusements or mode of life.
She seems as if determined there shall be no change. This may be fortitude, to me it is frightful. That habits should be so cherished and so rooted as to withstand such a shock as the disappearance of the only object she is ever supposed to have loved by Death, and such a death, is wonderful, and not to be understood if it is upon principles so erroneous....
I dined with the Wellesleys yesterday. Mr. Wellesley[179] acknowledges having been distractedly in love with Sister, and was so pleased to see her at Hastings. He hopes you like the place. His son Arthur is such a cub, and thinks himself so very every thing, it made me quite low. Of the Wellesley girls, the top and bottom dish, or eldest and youngest, are of the specie Geese—the middle ones, Georgina[180] and Mary,[181] are quite delightful, and very uncommon in their way.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[STRATHFIELD TURGESS,]
April 11, 1824.
Thank you for your last letter, thank you for Lord Lansdowne’s after laugh, but thank you above all, for being still my own Emmy just the same as ever. I suppose you are going to Captain Parry’s[182] fête on board the Hecla, announced in the newspaper. I think he might have asked me, and then I could have got over his ordering all this snow from Gunter’s. However I think he has rather overdone it. I understand there is to be a whole course of Walrus.
I had a letter from Sister, written at Lady Sarah’s[183] the day she left Strathfieldsaye. She is full of good, and agreeable; but yet, I never should be able to be quite friends with her. There is some gall about her which would always give me an afterthought, and keep me perhaps more on my guard with her than with many others who might betray me faster.
I wish you could have seen us all, we were so ill-sorted. As for poor Sister, among three Eton boys, one Oxford merveilleux, 2 silent girls, 1 military clergyman, 2 Colonels, some dancing country neighbours all wound up and going, I don’t know how she survives. By the bye tell me what are a Mr. Adderley and a Miss Adderley[184] to her? Something? Lord Buckinghamshire’s legitimates by a former marriage, or Sister’s illegitimates, or both their children, or no children at all? I was asked and could not tell. Don’t racket yourself to death. I, who no longer sit at good men’s feasts, certainly may magnify the fatigue, but I am sure you do too much.
May, 1824.—There is some saying, Chinese I believe, about not letting grass grow between friends, or words to that effect. Now, you must allow I have mowed it twice, but you will not keep it down, and if you will not, what’s to be done?
Lucy is coming to me to-morrow in spite of her resolutions never to be with me during a groaning. Mrs. Napier, too, who is staying at Farm House with her husband and a few children, wishes much to be with me, and it will, I know, end in my running away into some Barn, like a Cat, to kitten in peace. No, my dear Emmy, you are the only person that can be agreeable to me even in a lying-in—c’est tout dire.
Lucy tells me she saw dear Robert,[185] greatly to her satisfaction, one stray day she spent in London. So odd! for in general those are the particular days one can look out no face one ever saw before, unless one happens to be ill-dressed or in any disgraceful predicament of Hackney coach or bad company.... But strange to say, Lucy met Robert with decency and without distress. She says he is just the same, only sunburnt. How I wish I could see him, if he has any houses of low price and good dimensions, and furnished suited to a genteel but indigent or indignant Family? There is a talk of our leaving this, as the Landlord wishes to live here himself, and I should like to belong to Robert’s flock, of being one of his Ouailles.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
TURGESS,
May 14, 1824.
DEAREST EMMY, I was quite sorry I had sent my letter when the day after I found I was at liberty to talk about William de Roos’s marriage.[186] I am all delighted, and all that, and all I should be when I see him so happy. But tho’ I have been going thro’ all the palliating influence of confidant and in his secret, and within the mark of all hopes, and fears, and difficulties, yet I cannot shake off the idea that she is not good enough, he is selon moi such a dear creature, so much beyond the common run of man, of young men. Of course I rely on your keeping this alongside with your own ideas on the subject.
I believe she is improved, and I liked her once, when first she came out, and you know we certainly sober in this world unless we go mad; perhaps she may have taken that turn. In short there is much in her favour, but while he was marrying a beggar he might have had a pleasanter, but opportunity does all those things, there is no choice in the case. One negative advantage I have never lost sight of, she is not a Bathurst.
I do regret bitterly not seeing Robert. If I was not childing, I could have had a room for him, but somehow I shall be lying-in in every room and all over the place. Give my love to him and ask him seriously, if he knows of a family house that could suit us, as Sir Guy and I are very likely to find all the world before us next February, like Adam and Eve, only with better clothes and more children.
Is not it so like William de Roos to go to Ireland to avoid the wishing joy? He had business certainly, but still nobody but him could do such a thing. Many thanks for solving Sister’s acidities for me. Your own
PAMELA.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
[STRATHFIELD TURGESS,]
Sunday, June 20, 1824.
DEAR EMMY, Yes, yes, you may still show pleasure, surprise, emotion, on seeing my handwriting again. Here, alas, my reign is over, my rôle of lying-in.... One month, one little month, was scarce allowed me; and I was again dragged into the vulgar tumult of common barren life. Provoking and vexatious events are no longer kept from my knowledge, the hush and tiptoe are forgotten, the terror of my agitation has ceased, the glory of Israel is departed! The truth is I am too well; there is no pathos, no dignity, no interest, in rude health, and consequently I meet with no respect. I have not even been allowed to read Redgauntlet in seclusion, and chickens and tit-bits have given way to mutton chops and the coarse nutrition adapted to an unimpaired constitution.
Emily! let me be a warning if you wish to preserve the regard of your friends, the respect of your acquaintance, consideration, attention, in short, all social benefits, don’t get well—never know an hour’s health.
I have got into a fit of nonsense, as you will perceive, a sort of letter-giggle; seriously now I want to hear from you, to know how you are.... Sir Guy is gone to Town to see his sister off to France. He is to sleep to-night in Water Lane, which sounds damp, but is convenient to the Steamboat by which Fanny Campbell sails or boils to Calais.... Your own
PAMELA.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
STRATHFIELD TURGESS,
June 1824.
I wish I knew how you are, and where you are. William de Roos is the happiest of men, and Lady G. has won Uncle Henry’s[187] heart at Strangford by taking to gardening; I do hope it may turn out well and shame the Devil....
As I stood looking over a heap of weeds that were burning, they struck my own mind, as being somewhat like itself, you could see no flame, you could see no fire, and yet it was surely tho’ slowly consuming to ashes. Now you see my indolence does just the same to my better qualities. There is no outraged sin, no crying vice, and yet this indolence eats into my life.
If you will but keep me in order, and pity my infirmities, when can you come to me?...
The great House is a bore, selon moi, but I will tell you all about it when you come. I have just read Hayley;[188] considering I don’t think him a Poet, nor his life eventful, I wonder why one reads it? The truth is, we are all, I believe, so fond of knowing other people’s business, we would read anybody’s life.
July 9, 1824.
Many thanks for your letter. It did indeed make my country eyes stare, and put me in such a bustle as if I had all you did—to do. I have had a great combat, but pride shall give way, and candour shall cement our friendship. The paragraph in your letter about Lord E. threw me into consternation, as well as those who might have known better, for, Emily, he has not written me a word about it, and would you believe it? I don’t know who he is going to marry.... You rolled your pen in such a fine frenzy that I cannot read your version of his name no more than if it had been written with one of the lost legs of the spider tribe. I see it begins with a B., but the rest dissolves like the bad half of those prayers to Jupiter in Air.
I believe I should make your city hair friz again, if I were to detail my country week’s work. However, I will be cautious. I won’t speak too much of myself, which for want of extraneous matters, I might be led to do.... You keep very bad company with them Player-men, those Horticultural Cultivators of the Devil’s hot-bed.
I suppose I shall hear you talk of the Sock and Buskin; it is all that Cassiobury connexion that makes you so lax.
Miss Eden to her Niece, Eleanor Colvile.
SPROTBOROUGH [DONCASTER],
Sunday [1824].
MY DEAR ELEANOR, Your Mamma seems to think you may like to have a letter, and I am vainly trying to persuade myself I like to write one.
The Miss Copleys have their Sunday School just the same as ours, with the Butcher’s daughter and the Shop-woman for teachers; not quite so many children as we have; but in all other respects the two schools are as like as may be, and they are there all Sunday, which gives me time for writing.
Maria [Copley][189] has just been telling a story of a Christening that makes me laugh. She and her sister stood Godmothers to two little twins in the village, and carried them to church. The children were only a fortnight old, and therefore were much wrapped up, and Miss Copley, who is not used to handling children, carried hers with the feet considerably higher than the head. She gave it carefully to the clergyman when he was to christen it, and together they undid its cloak in search of its face, and found two little red feet. They were so surprised at this that the clergyman looked up in her face and said: “Why, then, where is its head?” And she, being just as much frightened, answered: “I really cannot think.” Maria at last suggested that in all probability the head would be at the opposite end of the bundle from the feet, and so it proved.
Good-bye, dear Eleanor,[190] mind you get better. It is foolish to be ill; I found it so myself. Love to all. Your affectionate Aunt,
E. E.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers.
[EYAM RECTORY], STONEY MIDDLETON,
August 1824.
MY DEAR MISS VILLIERS, George has gone to Scotland to kill the poor dumb grouse (or grice), as they ought to be in the plural, but I will transmit your direction to him, and if he can do what you wish I daresay he will, though I have an idea it is the sort of thing about which people chuse to look really important, and say they cannot interfere.
...Dear Lady Chichester![191] How lucky it is that people’s letters are so like themselves. It is perhaps not unnatural but amusing too, I did not know till Lady Buckinghamshire mentioned it the other day when she was talking of this marriage that the Chichesters have the strongest possible feeling on the subject of connexion, and she said they would look on this marriage as a positive calamity. How very absurd it is, and it is a shame of Lady Chichester to exaggerate George Osborne’s[192] faults so much. He was not in fact very much to blame, in his disagreement with Lord Francis, and if it were not the way of the Osborne family to make their family politics the subject of their jokes to all the world, George would have been reckoned just as good as any boy of his age. I imagine that even Lord Chichester has found his son liked his own way as well as the rest of the world, but perhaps Lady Chichester and he do not impart to each other the little difficulties they find with those separate little families you mention....
We are so settled here that it seems as if we had never gone away, I believe one changes one’s self as well as Horses at Barnet, I lose all my recollections of London, “that great city where the geese are all swans and the fools are all witty” and take up the character of the Minister’s sister, as I hear myself called in the village. Robert’s house is very comfortable, and I think this much the most beautiful country I have seen since I saw the Pyrenees. Some people might think it verging on the extreme of picturesque and call it wild, but I love a mountainous country. I go sketching about with the slightest success, the rocks are too large and obstinate and won’t be drawn.
Mrs. Lamb[193] came here Sunday, and we must return the visit some day, but by a great mercy I broke the spring of the pony carriage the other day. Your ever affectionate
E. E.
