Emily Eden
Miss Eden's Letters

PREFACE

IT is difficult to express one’s gratitude. Mine I owe to my brother, R. E. Dickinson, to Mrs. Ernest Farquhar (granddaughter of Lady Theresa Lewis), to Sir Guy Campbell, Mrs. W. Rendel, and Sir Arthur Stanley, for the loan of letters in this book. I also thank Mr. Claud Paget and Mr. W. Barclay Squire for the help they have given me.

Doubtless, through want of experience, I have been guilty of leaving out much that might have been left in, and leaving in much that might not be of interest.

The pleasure of knowing Lady Campbell through her letters has been doubled by the kindness I have met with from her daughters, Mrs. Ellis and Mrs. Percy Wyndham.

Lord Cromer before his death in 1917 had been interested in reading these letters. It is due solely to his encouragement that they are now published, though lacking the Introduction he was good enough to offer to write.

A friend of mine read some of the proofs. I found on three occasions they induced sound sleep within a few minutes, which leads me to hope perhaps other readers may find them equally soothing.

V. D.

July 1919.

INTRODUCTION

IN the autumn of 1913 a Life of Lord Clarendon¹ was published, and among many of his letters were a few written to him by an old friend, Miss Eden. It was thought that a further selection of Emily Eden’s letters might be of interest.

She was a keen politician of the Whig order, clever, amusing, critical, an excellent friend and a devoted sister. Her father, William Eden,² was the third son of Sir Robert Eden, Bart., of West Auckland, Durham, and he married in 1776 Eleanor Elliot, a sister of the 1st Earl of Minto.³ Two years later, Eden went as a Commissioner to America. He was Chief Secretary in Ireland under Lord Carlisle; Minister-Plenipotentiary in 1785 to the Court of Versailles; in 1788 Ambassador to Spain, and in the following year Ambassador to Holland; he was given a peerage in 1789 (Baron Auckland). Mrs. Eden, from her own account, was evidently a first-rate traveller; she took great interest in her husband’s work, and she had a child, often amidst much discomfort, in every country to which they were sent.

Emily was born in 1797. Her parents were settled at Eden Farm, Beckenham, Kent, and her father now devoted his time to politics. Her mother took great trouble to rear and educate her family of fourteen, leaving a detailed account in her Diary of their upbringing, diseases and marriages. Evidently her sense of humour and cheerfulness helped her through much misery.

“Out of fourteen I suckled thirteen. Eleven of the children had smallpox during their wanderings, also cow-pox, whooping-cough, measles and scarlet fever.”

In 1786, Eden, who was then in Paris, wrote to his friend Lord Sheffield: “Mrs. Eden is just returned from passing nearly a week in the Circle and Society of the whole Court of Versailles without feeling a moment’s discomposure. It is impossible to describe to you all the glorious attentions with which she is honoured by the Queen of France, not only in presents, but in what she values more, in admiration of her children. She and the little Frenchman are both well, and we have now as many nations in our Nursery as were assembled at the Tower of Babel.” Another friend also wrote:

“Every report says Mrs. Eden’s Nursery is the admiration of the Court and the Town, that they make parties to see it, that she had made domestic life quite fashionable”; and there are constant allusions to the Brattery, the Light Infantry, and the little Parisians.

By her contemporaries Lady Auckland was known later in life as Haughty Nell, and the Judicious Hooker. Her eldest girl, Eleanor, was Pitt’s only love, but for various reasons, after a long correspondence between Pitt and Lord Auckland, the affair came to an end, and Eleanor in 1799 married Lord Hobart, who became Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in 1801, and succeeded his father as Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1804.

Lord Auckland died suddenly at Eden Farm in 1814. Lady Auckland only survived him four years. Six of their daughters had married, and the remaining two, Emily and Fanny, lived with their elder brother George, and went with him to India when he became Governor-General in 1835.

From an account given of herself in a letter to one of her friends, Emily had profited by the education she received from her mother. She had read Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the Memoires du Cardinal de Retz, Shakespeare, and knew a great part of the Bible almost by heart before she was eleven.

She took a strong interest in politics, but she was never happier than when living quietly at Greenwich with her brother, sketching, reading and gardening, and in 1835 the prospect of a five months’ sea journey to India, and being obliged to leave her sisters, friends, and interests, depressed and worried her.

On her return to England in 1842 she published her Portraits of the People and Princes of India. She also wrote Up the Country; Letters from India, edited by her niece; and two novels, The Semi-Detached House and The Semi-Attached Couple.

Three large volumes of her Water-colour Sketches were sold at Christie’s in 1907 and are now in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta.

The year 1849 proved to be one of the greatest sorrow to Miss Eden. Her brother, Lord Auckland, died quite suddenly in January, and three months later she lost her sister Fanny. For the next twenty years she divided her time between Eden Lodge, Kensington Gore, and a little cottage at Broadstairs, writing her books, and seeing many of her friends. Though she had become quite an invalid, her house still remained a centre of political interest. One of her nieces, Lena Eden, lived with her.

Among her most intimate friends were Mr. George Villiers (Lord Clarendon) and his sister Theresa, who married Mr. Lister of Armitage Park in 1830. He died twelve years later, and in 1844 she married George Cornewall Lewis, M.P.⁴

Unfortunately, none of Lady Theresa’s letters to Miss Eden can be found. She had a most attractive and gifted nature; her family and friends were devoted to her. Kent House, Knightsbridge, in which she lived nearly all her life, was within a short walk of Eden Lodge.

Another great friend was Pamela, daughter of Lord and Lady Edward FitzGerald. Her father, the chief figure in the Irish Rebellion of ‘98,⁵ had married her mother, the beautiful and fascinating Pamela, six years previously. He died in Newgate Prison, Dublin, leaving three children, Edward, Pamela, and Lucy.

After his death a bill of attainder was passed against his estate, and his wife had to leave Ireland. Edward was left to the care of his grandmother the Duchess of Leinster; Lucy went to Lady Sophia FitzGerald (Aunt Soph), at Thames Ditton. Pamela lived abroad with Lady Edward till 1811, when she returned to her grandmother; three years later the Duchess died; Pamela was then sent to Thames Ditton to be brought up with her sister; she married Sir Guy Campbell in 1820. Her correspondence with Emily Eden covered a period of thirty years. Her letters describe her life with all its Irish and English fun and misery, her adventures and difficulties, the bringing into the world her eleven children, and her efforts to educate them on a dwindling income.

Sir Guy Campbell and Lord Auckland both died in 1849. Pamela lived to be seventy-three, and Emily to be seventy-two; they died in 1869. Emily’s letters began in 1814, and were written to her elder sister, Eleanor Lady Buckinghamshire, who lived at Eastcombe, near Greenwich, within driving distance of Eden Farm, the Edens’ home till their mother’s death in 1818.

CHAPTER I
1814-1819

Hon. Emily Eden (aged 17) to her Sister the Countess of Buckinghamshire (aged 37). ⁶

EDEN FARM, BECKENHAM, KENT,

Monday, September 26, 1814.

WE have been very much surprised by a letter from Miss Milbanke⁷ to Mary⁸ informing her she was engaged to marry Lord Byron, a “person of whose character she has had the best opportunity of judging, and who, as he merits her greatest esteem, possesses her strongest attachment.” That last sentence certainly sounds very well, but, that she does not seem to be acting with her usual good sense is Mama’s opinion, as by all accounts Lord Byron is not likely to make any woman very happy. It is particularly unlucky, at present, as Mary’s letters to her about “Lara,” the “Corsair,” etc., have not expressed much admiration for their author…

September 30.

Mr. Van.⁹ came here to dinner to-day and goes away to-morrow. I wish you would tell me what to say to him just now, for he looks as if he wanted some one to talk to him. Mary and George¹⁰ are so busy at chess, and Mama is so interested in the Anarchie de Pologne,¹¹ and I am so tormented by a real, large, green, crawling caterpillar which has found its way to the table and keeps hunting me round it, I have not presence of mind enough left to make out one topic.

Mary has just received Sarah’s¹² letter. You perhaps may not know that she [Sarah] is going to change her character to that of a good-natured shilly-shally fellow. She is also thoroughly to understand politics, and is studying Junius, and for want of better society is to get into great habits of intimacy with me. If we were not to change our characters sometimes, there would be rather a sameness in our lives.

George is going to Dropmore and Shottesbrook, but will return home to receive the Colviles, stay here a week longer, and then go for six weeks to Melbury.

He will be a great loss to us, and I cannot but look forward with dread to the long evenings, which used to be so happy, and which will seem so lonely without Him,¹³ who enlivened them so much.

Good-bye, my dearest Sister. Do not trouble yourself to answer my letters, as a letter to any part of this family does as well for the rest.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

October 25 [1814].

MY DEAR SISTER, Charlotte¹⁴ has had a good night by the account we received this morning. The baby is wonderfully well.

Lord Francis goes to Newmarket on Sunday, and I am to go to Earl’s Court for a week, and George¹⁵ and Willy Osborne come here. It sounds as if we were going to play Puss in the Corner on a grand scale, but I shall be glad to get back to my corner again…

George writes me word that one story about Lady Caroline Lamb¹⁶ is, that the separation had been agreed upon, and the articles ready; that Lady Melbourne set out one morning from London to try and arrange matters, and on her arrival she found the happy couple at breakfast, and Lady Caroline drawling out – “William, some more muffin?” – and everything made up.

Mary has grown so fat she can scarcely waddle about, and flatters herself she is looking very well. I remain ever your aff. sister,

EMILY EDEN.

(Quite private)

I must just mention that the tucker Ingram made is considered as the most beautiful, elegant, decent, well-behaved, unassuming good sort of tucker in His Majesty’s dominion, and is quite the rage. I am in a fever, which should be called the decent fever, till I can get four dozen made just exactly like it.

Mary has been very busy preparing for her journey, and desires her love to you, and is very much obliged to you for the use of your necklace, bracelet, etc., which she will take great care of.

She has not heard from Miss Milbanke lately, but we hear that Lord Byron is going to be a good boy, and will never be naughty no more, and he is really and truly writing a new version of the Psalms!

Lord Auckland to Miss Eden

MELBURY,¹⁷

November 12 [1814].

MY DEAR EMILY, I must write one line though it is past midnight, and that because nobody writes to poor Emily. Well, I am glad you have got a little gaiety at last.

As for us here, we are as merry as grigs, and as active as flies, and as chatty as the maids. We eat and drink, and work and walk, and shoot and hunt, and talk and laugh, all day long – and I expect my pretty master, you would like the eating and drinking the best of all. Such luncheons! a roast turkey, and hash and potatoes, and apple pudding, and what not, and I stand by and abuse them all for eating, and eat with the best of them.

We have been trying the new experiment of burning clay for manure, and have not above half succeeded – and we have just found an old book, 80 years old, which gives a full and detailed account of what all the wiseacres are all making an outcry about as a new discovery, and as the practice has not been adopted, we are beginning to suspect that its merits are a little exaggerated.

We have a house brimful.

Give my love to all, Vansittart and all, and so good-night, my old boy, for I must go to bed. Your affec. brother,

AD.

Miss Eden to her Sister, Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

December 1814.

MY DEAREST SISTER, Mary’s first letter is arrived, so I must begin copying and extracting, and abridging, as if I had never done anything else all my life.

But I must begin by observing that we all parted most heroically on Wednesday morning, not the least in the O’Neil style, but we were all as cool as cucumbers, and as hard-hearted as rocks. (What beautiful similes!) Mary looked very smart, her coat was covered with grey vandykes, which does not sound pretty, but looked very well, and her hat of course matched it exactly. She says they did not arrive at Shottesbrook¹⁸ till late, as they went round and round the place several times before the postboy could find the entrance…

We heard from Morton¹⁹ the other day, a long account of his gaieties. He has been showing Oxford to the Feildings, and the Meerveldts²⁰ (what a difficult word to spell), and then was invited to go to Middleton with them, where he met the Worcesters, Cowpers, Eustons, and the Duke of Devonshire. We are rather in dread of his return, and to find him grown very fine, which will be an unlucky turn to take…

Mrs. Percival’s²¹ marriage shocked us all, as we had not heard of it before, but Mrs. Moore sent in word of it, and of the gentleman’s name afterwards. Ever your affec. sister,

EMILY EDEN.

Miss Eden to her Sister, Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

December 23, 1814.

MY DEAREST SISTER, We have had two such long letters from Mary (at Bowood). You must be contented with some extracts. She says: “We have almost as few events here as at Eden Farm; in the morning we walk four or five miles, and in the evening everybody reads a little except Lady E. Feilding,²² who walks about disturbing us all. She brought down a great book full of verses and epigrams, that she is collecting all over the world and gathered chiefly at Middleton; she let few of them be read, and screamed and pulled away the book every three minutes in case we should see more than we ought.

There were some pretty things of Lady Cowper’s²³ composing, one addressed to her sleeping baby, and another on an Infant that is one of the most beautiful things possible. It seems to be the fashion collecting these things, for Captain Feilding says it was quite ridiculous to see Lady Jersey²⁴ and Lady Cowper, and Lady E. Feilding and two or three others coming down of an evening at Middleton with their great books in satchells like so many schoolboys, and showing each other their ‘little treasures,’ and one saying, ‘May I copy this?’ – ‘No; not unless you will let me copy that.’ – ‘Very well, but you won’t turn over the page?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Then you must not go further than that line.’ And then the books are all locked up again, for they each have keys, and Lady Elizabeth says everybody wore the key of her manuscript book at her side, in case the others should get it by fair means or foul.

Lady Elizabeth’s maid is also making a collection. Lady Lansdowne²⁵ looked prettier than ever last night, and is the kindest, most pleasing-mannered person I ever saw. She has got some receipts for dyeing muslins, sattins and silks any colours, and has been all this morning up to the elbows in soap-suds, starch and blue, and then on her knees for an hour ironing on the floor, – the work of the morning. I saw her little girl²⁶ for a moment, and it seems to be a pretty little thing; the boy²⁷ is exactly like Lord Lansdowne, but is never to be seen, and I only met the little Feildings²⁸ once on the stairs since I came here. We are much too learned to think of children.”

So much for Mary’s first letter. George says, “Mary behaves like an angel. She walks with Lansdowne and talks learnedly – I do not know what about. The only words I could hear were, And be hanged to you, and Slip-gibbit, and Betty Martin.”

Mary says in her second letter: “We had a tremendous fit of Crambo again last night from eight to eleven without stopping. Lord Lansdowne gives his whole heart and mind to any little game, or whatever he is about, and it is really quite amusing to see him fretting and arguing, and reasoning and labouring, at this Crambo, as if it was a matter of the greatest importance. It is certainly rather fretting, but it is as good a way of passing a long evening as another. Lady Lansdowne takes a great deal of charge of me, and is a person I really cannot find one fault in…”

I had advanced so far in copying, and was just thinking how nicely and quickly I had done it, when the post arrived, and brought a letter from Mary of nine quarto pages thickly written, and so amusing. But you must not see it to-day – you little thing – this is quite enough for once. Your affectionate sister,

EMILY EDEN.

Lord Auckland to his Sister, Miss Eden

MELBURY,

December 31, 1814.

MY DEAR EMILY, I am living in a state of great fright about the event of my message by the last post, and if the key is not found, you must not be much astonished at seeing me arrive either with or without Mary on Tuesday; but I do not like to settle anything about this fussy, provoking scrapey piece of business till I hear from you and from Dyer to-morrow.

We have been doing nothing particular to-day except going in a large party after some woodcocks.

I am as pleased as Punch with the American peace.²⁹ We shall get rid of the property tax, and the 3 per cents will be up in the skies. We have nothing yet to succeed Whishaw.³⁰ Sir George Paul³¹ is near seventy, but he is a fine old beau, and has one of the prettiest places in England, so that if the Dowager Lady Ilchester³² does not snap him up, something may yet be done.

To console us for not having you, we have an Emily here who has something of the fooley in her, but she unluckily is a dullfooley.

I have in leisure hours been looking over a good many old letters which are here, written by the Fox’s and Pelhams and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams,³³ etc., etc., in the reign of George II., some of which are very entertaining. I send you a copy of verses written by Sir C. H. Williams to one of Ilchester’s aunts, Lady Susan O’Brien.³⁴

Sweeter than the sweetest Manna,
Lovely, lively, dear Susannah,
You’re the girl that I must muse on,
Pretty little smiling Susan.
Oh! if verses could amuse ye,
Fairest, gentlest, laughing Susey,
I’ll write to you, but ne’er rebuke ye,
Handsome and good-natured Sukey.
Every rhyme should flatter you
Trifling, dimpling, tender Sue.
I’ve sung my song and so adieu! adieu!
Susannah, Susan, Susey, Sukey, Sue!

Mary is quite reviving to-night, and is making a deuce of a noise, and be hanged to her. My love to my Mother and all. Yours very affectionately,

AUCKLAND.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

Monday, January 1815.

MY DEAR SISTER, I have not a guess how far Mary’s journal³⁵ has been continued to you. She says, “The great amusement here seems to be eating, which goes on from morning till night. There is an immense breakfast for people to go in and out to, a large luncheon which stands two hours on the table, a very long dinner, and a regular supper, which altogether takes up half the day. To-day, by way of amusement, and keeping up an old custom, we have all been baking, that is, spoiling an enormous quantity of good things in the housekeeper’s room, making some uneatable gingerbread and cakes, and ourselves very dirty. There are a quantity of children here, and all very nice ones seemingly. Lady Theresa Strangways³⁶ would be really a dear little thing, if Lady G. Murray³⁷ would not talk and teaze one so about her stomach and teeth.

…Lady G. Murray is in greater beauty than ever, and happier than anybody I ever saw. She has two sons here.”

Tuesday.

…I was so cross and stupid with a pain in my ear which I have had this week, and in such a fury with Willy Osborne³⁸ who made a point of dropping his shuttlecock on my paper every minute, that I was obliged to leave off writing in order to fight with him, and when that battle was ended, he insisted on playing at Blind Man’s Buff…

Mary seems quite delighted with her visit to Melbury, and even nearly reconciled to quitting Bowood, which she was very sorry to do. Sir George Paul,³⁹ nearly eighty years old, is very much struck with her, she says, and when she goes to the pianoforte puts on his spectacles, and sits opposite her, gazing on her beautiful countenance with great satisfaction.

He drank two glasses of wine with her at dinner, and all the other ladies insisted on his drinking one with them, that they might at least have half as much done for them as was done for Mary.

We are all in doubt whether to like Sir G. Paul best or Mr. Whishaw, a lawyer, about ten years younger, but with only one leg. But the poor man, George says, was terribly smitten, and if they had staid but two days longer at Bowood, it would have come to a happy conclusion.

I myself should prefer somebody rather older and steadier.

Lady Ilchester wrote to Mamma, to know whether she was to let this flirtation go on, as it does at present…

George writes in good spirits, and seems delighted with his tour and with Melbury, which is the pleasantest place he knows. He says Mary is in very good spirits and makes a deuce of a noise and that she is a great favourite wherever she goes, and he believes deservedly so.

They neither of them seem to have any idea that they must ever come home again; but if ever they do I will let you know. Yours affectionately,

EMILY EDEN.

Miss Eden to her Brother, Lord Auckland

EDEN FARM,

Monday, January 1815.

POOR DEAR LITTLE GEORGY, I am quite sorry it has been in such a fuss about the key, and I am afraid my last letter will not have set it’s little heart at ease, but on Sunday morning Morton⁴⁰ and I hunted for an hour, and at last found the key tied with a yellow ribbon, and not a blue one, and when we had found it and made Bob ride to Greenwich⁴¹ as fast as he could, he found Mr. Dyer laughing by himself at the fuss you and Morton were in. He said the chest was broken open at a quarter past twelve and is now broken up for life. Which of your brothers-in-law do you like best? because I cannot make up my mind quite to either, though I believe I like lame Whishaw better than the venerable Paul. Mama is really fidgetty about them; and if you write again, will you let us know whether Mary is really as pleasant as she pretends to be and whether she did not make you underline the words “deservedly liked” in your last letter? Because it looked very suspicious… Talking of Fooleys, by the bye, Mr. and Miss Vansittart come here this afternoon, and I am grown duller than ever. Thank you for your verses, which we liked very much. Ever your affectionate sister,

EMILY EDEN.

Lord Auckland to Miss Eden

DROPMORE,⁴²

January 13, 1815.

MY DEAR EMILY, Here we are once more within 30 miles of home, came here late yesterday, everybody at dinner – Mary in such a fright you never saw – such a silence you never heard – room so hot you never felt – dinner so cold you never tasted – dogs so tiresome you never smelt. So we must go to Shottesbrook bon gré, mal gré. Hang labels round your necks when we arrive on Wednesday or Thursday with your names on them (like the decanters) for do what we will, Mary and I cannot recollect your faces. Are you the one with the long nose?

Lady Riversdale’s maid has had an offer of marriage, and she has refused it, because she “had not that attachment that ought to subside between man and wife.”

Mind that, girls, and don’t marry rashly. Yours, and a day no more foolish than yourself,

AUCKLAND.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

March 9 [1815].

MY DEAREST SISTER, As the Queen has been so uncivil and even spiteful to me and my sattin gown, as to put off the drawing-room, our three letters per day upon dress may now cease, and this is merely a letter of thanks for all the trouble you have taken with Wynne, Pontet, lace, notes, hoops, drapery, sattin, carriers, feathers, jewels, etc., and which have unluckily, by this strange and unaccountable spitefulness of H.M., all proved useless.

Poor Beckenham is gone mad about the corn laws,⁴³ and have revenged themselves on poor innocent harmless out-of-the-way George, by drawing him on the walls hanging as comfortably as possible, and Mr. Cator on another gibbet opposite to him. Mr. Colvile⁴⁴ is also hanging somewhere else… Every house and wall is covered with mottoes, and “No corn laws” in every direction. Ever your affectionate,

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

June 24 [1815].

MY DEAREST SISTER, We had not expected the satisfaction of two letters from you to-day… A letter that condescends to speak of two housemaids, without talking of battles and Bonaparte, is a very delightful novelty, as I am quite tired of rejoicing and lamenting over this news⁴⁵ which, upon the whole, strikes me as very melancholy, though I know that is a very wrong feeling.

There have yet been no accounts of poor Lady Delancey!⁴⁶ She must have had a horrible shock at first, as Sir William, believing himself to be dying, refused at first to be removed from the field of battle, which gave rise to the report of his death. Poor Lady I. Hay quitted London at six yesterday morning to inform her father,⁴⁷ who was in the country, of Lord Hay’s death. He was not more than nineteen, and was a friend of Bob’s at Eton.

The George Elliots⁴⁸ came here to dinner yesterday, with their youngest child, who is a very fine child, and as a baby, I thought its name might be interesting to you, though it was not very different from other children, except that it had, on its cap a lilac satin cockade,⁴⁹ which is naturally a very pretty thing, though a baby sewed to it does not add to its beauty.

That is, however, a mere matter of taste.

Mrs. G. Elliot we all like, and she has full as much sense as the rest of the world, and would be as pleasant, if her manner was not rather hurried and rough, evidently from shyness and a fear of being thought dull.

Except these, we have not seen anybody, not even a neighbour, nor do I believe there are such things as neighbours left in the world, and it is much too hot to go and look for them if they are yet alive.

Mrs. Green, poor woman, seems to think you a little dull, but I always told you how it would be when you lost me, and I am glad to see Mrs. Green has so much penetration. Ever your affectionate sister,

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

July 3, 1815.

We heard yesterday from the Selkirks⁵⁰ a certain account of poor Sir W. Delancey’s death,⁵¹ and we heard it also from several other good authorities. The Selkirks have been in town every day in hopes of hearing either of or from Lady Delancey, but without success. Her situation is most dreadful, as he died at Waterloo, so she is not near any acquaintance she might have made at Brussels. She is but eighteen, and literally just out of the nursery. She has with her only a new maid, whom Lady Selkirk procured for her but three weeks ago. It appears very shocking that none of her relations should have gone to her on hearing of his wound, as she will now have every detail to manage for herself, and her return to Penge, which she quitted in such violent spirits not a month ago, will be dreadful. The Selkirks expect her every hour.

I have just been interrupted by the arrival of the Lansdowne children, who are come here for the afternoon to make Lady Lansdowne’s excuse for not coming to take leave before she goes out of town. The little girl⁵² is the prettiest little thing I ever saw – the smallest child – looking like a fairy for all the world.

July 6, 1815.

We were all very sorry to hear of poor Comte Meerveldt’s⁵³ death, for her distress must be very great. Little Rodolphe will now be a great consolation to her. Lady Selkirk has had one very short note from poor Lady Delancey.⁵⁴ It was almost too composed to be comfortable to her friends. She said her husband had died at Waterloo, and was buried the morning she wrote, at Brussels, and she wished Lady Selkirk would have his picture done immediately by Heaphy,⁵⁵ as that was the only thing she could now live for. She made no complaint, except saying that she had had but one very happy week at Brussels, which was over, and that she was sure Lady Selkirk, at least, would feel for such a very wretched creature. She is expected at Penge to-morrow. There is an odd mixture of joy and sorrow in that house, as Lady K. Douglas⁵⁶ is married there to-day, which is rather astonishing, considering the state her family is in…

Miss Eden to Lord Auckland

EDEN FARM,

August 11 [1815].

MY DEAREST GEORGE, I put a most excellent joke in these two first lines, but was obliged to efface them from my fear of the police, but it is inserted in sympathetic Ink, and if you will hold it for ¾ of an hour by a very hot fire, rubbing it violently the whole time without intermission, with the back of your hat and one hand, I daresay you will find it.

We are much as you left us. I cannot buy any sheep yet, for the price has risen in the market prodigiously, and we must wait a little, but Walsh is to go to Smithfield this week to see how things are. In your directions you left out a very important word, whether the ferrule should be fixed in the bottom, or the seat of the Tilbury. I say the former, and Mama the latter. One makes the umbrella too low, the other too high, but by a little arrangement of mine, too long to explain, I have made it the right height for myself, bonnet, feathers, and all, and it will altogether be very comfortable.

There is to be a meeting of all the Sunday Schools in the district next week at Bromley, and a collection, and a collation. We mean to eat up the collation, and give all our old clipped sixpences to the collection, which we think is a plan you would approve if you were here.

Madden⁵⁷ has given us so much to do, we have not a minute’s spare time. We are duller than a hundred posts about Astronomy, and if you can find any planets for us in Paris, we shall be obliged to you, as we cannot find one on the globe, and Madden only laughs at us. There! Good-bye, my dearest George. Take care of your little self. Your affectionate

EMILY EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

EDEN FARM,

Thursday, August 31, 1815.

MY DEAREST SISTER, Did Mama write to you yesterday? I wish I knew, but she is unluckily upstairs, and indeed I must say is hardly ever in the way when I want her.

I had meant to have answered your letter yesterday, but Mary, Miss Vansittart, and I went a-pleasuring, so that I had not time.

We went in the morning to Greenwich, where Mr. Van.⁵⁸ met us in the Admiralty barge, and took us to the steamboat.

We found there Lord and Lady Liverpool,⁵⁹ my dear Letitia Taylor, Lady Georgina, and Lady Emily Bathurst, Lord Bathurst, Lord Harrowby, Sir G. Hope, Sir George Warrender, Mr. Lushington, etc. Lady Liverpool still retains the notion that I am Miss Eden in the country, as well as in town, and introduced Mary as Miss E. Eden, and me as Miss Eden to all the company, and Mr. Van. insisted on calling Miss Taylor – Miss Rickets, so that the most curious effect steam has had yet was making a large company answer to wrong names.

The Invention itself, I believe, was supposed to succeed perfectly. We had a very pleasant row, or steaming, or whatever else it may be called, beyond Woolwich, and back to Greenwich again in three hours, during which time we also contrived to eat a large breakfast, and a larger dinner and dessert.

Lord Liverpool had some very improper purring scenes, and Lady Liverpool was very good-natured…

It must be an amusing sight to see Sarah⁶⁰ scolding the post-boy for not driving fast enough, or calling to the hostler for “a pair of horses to St. Albans immediately,” or adding up the innkeeper’s account, and giving him something over for the scoundrel that drove.

That is the style she must now adopt. Ever your affect. sister,

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

August 19 [1817].

MY DEAREST SISTER, The reason I am in such a state of ignorance about the letter is, that Mama and Louisa⁶¹ went to meet them in their way to London; that we were behind them in the poney-cart; and George behind us in the gig. We all fell in with each other and the letters in the middle of Penge Common, where we each took what belonged to us. I met immediately with the dreadful intelligence that you were going actually to take May Place, and on our recommendation, which dreadful intelligence I communicated to George, who immediately fainted away, and was driven off by his servant. I fainted away, and was driven off by Mary, and Mama and Louisa went on in hysterics to London. I really am quite in a fright about it, and cannot think what beauties I ever saw in it. The house is nothing but a pile of old bricks, the rooms cold, damp, dirty, inconvenient cells, the view cheerless and bleak, the offices large and decaying, the garden unproductive and expensive, the neighbours impertinent and intrusive, the gardener impudent, the housemaids idle, the landlord exacting, and the tenant in a terrible scrape indeed – and so is the tenant’s sister too, as far as I can make out… The only thing I know for certain is that I am to send our bricklayer there early to-morrow to look at the house, and to meet George, who goes there at break of day; and if I can bribe him, as he is a very clever person, to pull the whole thing down, I will. It is past letter-time, and I have not time to read over what nonsense I have written. Lady Byron⁶² and her child come here the 27th. Most affectionately yours,

E. E.

There is a rheumatic headache attached to the place, and let with it.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

TONBRIDGE,

October 10 [1817].

MY DEAREST SISTER, The “Eden Farmots” have kept me in such profound ignorance with respect to you that I had some doubts whether you were not settled at Charlton,⁶³ or whether you were not tired of the name of house, and had fitted up a nice hollow tree for yourself with some little hollow trees round it for your sisters and friends. It looks rather pretty and attentive though, in me, that I should answer your questions two days before you ask them.

This weather is particularly provoking in a house where there are but few books, but the last week we have contrived to be out nearly ten hours every day, beginning at seven in the morning. Getting up at that time and swimming through the fog to drink the coldest of all cold water is the least pleasant part of the day, but otherwise I have lost all hatred to exercise, from the circumstance of never being fatigued with any quantity of it.

The Vyners are so close to us that we are always together… I wish somebody would just have the kindness to marry Miss Vyner. She would be such an excellent chaperon-general to all young ladies.

We had on Sunday morning the finest sermon I ever heard from Mr. Benson – so fine that we went in the dark and in the rain to hear another. He began by preaching at the Opposition, which gave me a fit of the sullens; then he went on to smugglers, then to brandy merchants; and, lastly, laid the sins of the whole set and all the other misfortunes of the country upon “ladies who wore fancy dresses” and encouraged smuggling by example and money.

It is a very odd fashion now, I think, to abuse women for everything, but, however, there were so few gentlemen at Church that we all bore it tolerably well. People’s French bonnets sat tottering on their heads, and if it had not been for some sense of decency and a want of pockets, many a French shawl was preparing to step itself quietly out of the way. Your most affect. sister,

E. E.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

November 16 [1817].

MY DEAREST SISTER, You seemed by your last letter to be so overcome by the communications of your friends, that I burnt a long composition of mine. Indeed, nobody but an excellent sister could be induced to write on such a gloomy, dispiriting afternoon, but I have put the table close by the fire, with one leg (belonging to the table, not to me) in the fender, to prevent it from slipping away, the arm-chair close behind the table, and me supported by them both, holding a pen in one hand and the poker in the other, and now, have at you.

Yesterday was not a flourishing day by any means, but this is to be different, as the Osbornes⁶⁴ and their five noisy, unmanageable, provoking, tiresome and dear children are coming, so we have all collected whatever health and strength we possess to answer the demands of the day.

I called on Lady Grantham⁶⁵ last week. The Baby is a remarkably pretty child, immensely fat and very nice-looking for its age, but still I could not come up quite to her raptures on the subject, and I thought it still looked red like other babies, and I never should of my own accord have thought of coaxing it so much as she expected. Ever, my dearest Sister, most affect. yours,

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

NEWBY HALL,⁶⁶

Sunday Ev. September 13, 1818.

MY DEAREST SISTER, Your account of Mary agrees very much with her own. I do not know if you have heard from her since she has settled to pay a little visit at Frognal, but, if so, you must have thought with me that Lord Sydney⁶⁷ will be a very pleasant brother-in-law for us. Such a great addition, in every sense of the word, to our society, and when the Miss Townshends have been turned out of doors, upon any slight pretence, it will really be a very nice establishment.

I am going on here just as was expected, very unhappy at first for about three days, without any particular place in the room, or any particular rule about being in the library, or my own room, or Lady Grantham’s, and then, you know, my trunk and all my worldly possessions were missing and lost, which was a cruel blow, at my first setting out, but at last my dear trunk reappeared unexpectedly, and from that time I got comfortabler and comfortabler, till I could get no further.

Miss Wynn⁶⁸ I like very much, probably because I expected to dislike her. The rest of the family are perfectly inoffensive, with nothing particularly agreeable or disagreeable in them, except indeed I have the pleasure of beating Mr. Wynn at chess every evening, till the tears almost course one another down his innocent cheeks, but I go on beating him for all that.

Lady Grantham is much better than she was during the journey; we go out every day in the pony-cart together, and call on the farmers and cottagers. I do not understand one word in ten the people say, and should be glad to take a Yorkshire master if I could find one. I hope, for your sake, Gog Magog⁶⁹ is not as green as this place is, else you will be more angry than ever with the dusty trees and brown grass of Eastcombe. The grass was quite dazzling when I first came here, and the green is a bad colour for the eyes, after the nice quiet brown we have been accustomed to, but green peas agree remarkably well with me, and sometimes I give a little passing thought to you, when I am packing up a great forkfull of them, and again when the children bring me in immense nosegays of mignonette, sweet peas, jessamine, which are to be put out at night because they smell so very sweet.

Lady Grantham’s garden is beautiful, and full of every sort of flower, but then it is generally locked. The house is excessively comfortable, with a stove in every passage, and a fire in every room, servants’ and all, an excellent library, and a very pretty statue gallery, heaps of amusing books, and an arm-chair for every limb. I foresee a great probability of my being very happy here, as my love of Lady Grantham does not diminish by any means, and he and I are great friends, and he likes to be played to for hours together. Your most affec.

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to her Brother, Lord Auckland

NEWBY,

Monday [1818].

MY DEAREST GEORGE, Having in our former letters nearly settled all our business matters, I may venture this time to indulge you with a few lighter topics… This house is what Bob would call chuck full, but I do not think you know any of the company except the Markhams⁷⁰ and Mrs. Graham. I think all the Markhams pleasant in their way. Anne is rather an odd fellow, but very amusing, and Frederica is very pleasant. Cecilia desires me to give you her kind remembrance. As for your friend Mr. Graham,⁷¹ though I would not wish to be severe, yet I cannot think a man who wears a light sort of mulberry-coloured “don’t mentions,” from a wish to look waspish, can be any great shakes. The rest of his character may be very good perhaps, but I can hardly think so under these circumstances.

Your Bess has been making sad work of it indeed, and I wish she had not been promised to Sister, for the Granthams are enquiring everywhere for a dog of that description, and I think Bess would find this place pleasanter than Eastcombe. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

NEWBY HALL [1818].

MY DEAREST SISTER, Your pride must be getting up again, I should imagine, and I must give it a little epistolary pat on the back (what a remarkably odd clever expression) to keep it all smooth.

My illness was remarkably opportune, inasmuch as it began at Studley,⁷² and which was so uncommonly dull, that the impossibility of dining down was an immense advantage that I had over the rest of society. We were nineteen at dinner every day. We were all immensely formal in the evening.

The house is but a bad one in the old-fashioned way, and my room was peculiarly liable to murder and that sort of accident, a large dark green bed with black feathers on the top, stuck in a deep alcove, and on one side of it an enormous dark closet, quite full of banditti I fancy, and all the rest of the room actually swarming with ghosts I know, only I was much too sleepy to lay awake and look at them.

Mrs. Lawrence has an unhappy turn for music without any very remarkable genius, and we played 150 pages of the dryest Duetts in the Dussek and Pleyel style without even changing our time, or rising into a forte, or sinking into a piano, and minding every Repeat and Da Capo in the book.

On Wednesday Lord Grantham and Mr. Graham went on some Yeomanry business to Leeds, on Thursday we came home to my great joy. Adieu, my dearest sister; this has been written in a confusion of tongues, and I cannot make it any longer by any means. Ever your most affec.

E. EDEN.

P.S.– I have got a beautiful black cloth gown for two guineas, so fine you never saw the like

Emily Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

NEWBY HALL,

November [1818].

MY DEAREST SISTER, We are now quite alone for the first time since I came – that is, the Wynns are here still, but they are part of being alone, and we have never before been so few, and I must say that it is uncommonly pleasant after so much company. The mere comfort of being able to go about the house with rough hair, or a tumbled frill, and in an old black gown, is not to be despised, and there is some pleasure in taking up a book in the evening and yawning over it, and then saying anything that comes uppermost, without thinking. We are very busy, dressing little dolls for Lord Grantham’s Theatre, which is one of the most ingenious pieces of mechanism I ever saw, and one of the prettiest things altogether. There is to be a grand representation to-night, and we have been rehearsing all the last week. It takes nine people to manage the scenery, figures, and music, and we all of us lose our tempers at it regularly every morning. I act the orchestra, and whilst I am playing away to the best of my power the music belonging to any particular scene, Anne⁷³ and Lady Grantham, who manage the figures, get into some hobble, and the music is finished before the action to which it belongs is begun, so that Harlequin and Columbine have to dance out without any time to assist them. I believe nothing in the world could ruffle Lord Grantham’s temper; but these theatrical difficulties go nearer to it than anything else, and while he is explaining to Lady Grantham that the figures will move if she takes pains, and to me that the music is quite long enough if I will but play slower, it may be rather provoking that Freddy⁷⁴ should let down the wrong trap-door, Anne set her sleeves on fire in one of the lamps, Mary⁷⁵ turn the cascade the wrong way, so that the water runs up instead of down; Thomas the footman should let down a light blue sky to a dark moonlight scene, and Shaw should forget the back scene altogether, so that his coat and buttons and white waistcoat are figuring away in the distance of the Fire King’s Palace. However, patience and scolding have overcome these little difficulties, and our last rehearsal was perfect.

Lady Melville⁷⁶ and her children were here for five days last week. I do not know exactly what I thought of her. She is too clever not to be rather pleasant, and too argumentative not to be very tiresome, and altogether I do not think I liked her. But her visit took place very soon after I had heard of poor Sir S. Romilly,⁷⁷ and I was too much shocked and too unhappy really to like anybody, particularly a person who insisted upon discussing the whole thing constantly, and in a political way. I think I have never been more shocked by anything that was not a private calamity – I mean, that did not concern one’s family or one’s self – than I was by this, and poor Captain Feilding⁷⁸ who was here, and who was a private friend of his, was so completely overcome that I was very sorry for him too. Altogether it is a horrible history, and only shows how very little we can know what is good for man in this life, when we were all saying some months ago that this would be the proudest year of Sir S. Romilly’s life. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Lord Auckland to Miss Eden

BRUTON STREET,

Monday, November 1818.

MY DEAR EMILY, I have this moment seen an agent of Mrs. Wildman, a rich Kentish widow, and she has agreed to take Eden Farm on my own terms, which gives us a prospect of being a little more settled and comfortable.

She is to have it for seven years and pay £600 a year. And now I must look out for a house in town, which you will find pretty near ready for you when you arrive. I am in a great bustle and hurry, for we are all alive with this election, though with the melancholy impression of poor Romilly’s death it is difficult to rouse people. Hobhouse⁷⁹ has behaved so ill that it is right to try to beat him, but I fear that Lamb⁸⁰ is too late. He will certainly be low on the poll for the first week, but it is possible that afterwards he may recover. In the meantime, people are very busy, and none of our friends are sanguine. Your affectionate brother,

AD.

Lord Auckland to Miss Eden

[November] 1818.

MY DEAR EMILY, Lamb carried his election to-day by 604, and made a sort of a speech saying that now he was their member, and they were his constituents, and that they would soon learn to be friends. He was a little hooted, but not much more than usual; but all our foolish friends appeared to cheer him with cockades in their hats, and all was uproar and riot and confusion and pelting and brickbats and mud, and it is lucky none of them were very seriously hurt. They all arrived covered with dirt to the west end of the town, and the mob at their heels, for they were too gallant not to stop to be occasionally pelted.

I never saw such a scene. Your friend Graham⁸¹ looked as if he had just come out from the pillory; Sefton, Morton, and twenty others in the same plight.

Report says that one servant is nearly killed; I hope it is not true. Ferguson had a blow on his head, and Mr. Charlton another more serious one; but I hear of nothing worse. It makes but an ugly triumph for our great victory. What a glorious debate was yesterday’s!

You will live at No. 30 Lower Grosvenor Street, the only house I can get, small but convenient, and I think we shall make it do well enough. Ever affectionately yours,

AD.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

NEWBY HALL [1818].

MY DEAREST SISTER, …Mr. Ellis left this place yesterday, so I could not give him your message. I think he enjoyed the latter part of his visit here very much, as there was a very pleasant set of gentlemen, and Mr. Douglas, who is more amusing than ever. We had besides them, two Mr. Lascelles’s,⁸² one “a cunning hunter” and the other very gentlemanlike and pleasant; Mr. Duncombe, a pretty little London Dandy, rather clever in his way; Captain Cust,⁸³ a soldierly sort of person, and a kind of Lusus Naturae (is that sense do you think?), because he is pleasant and well-looking though he is a Cust, and Mr. Petre, very rich and very stupid, so that we had a very proper mixture of character…

We are all hunting mad in these parts, and I am afraid that when I come to Eastcombe I shall be a great expense to you with my hunters and grooms. I have already made great progress in the language of the art.

I have heard a new name for the Miss Custs, in case you are tired of the Dusty Camels; by uniting their names of Brownlow and Cust, they become Brown Locusts, which is a very expressive title I think. I remain, ever yr. very affec. sister,

E. EDEN.

CHAPTER II
1819-1820

Miss Eden to the Dowager Lady Buckinghamshire

NEWBY HALL,

Sunday, February 14 [1819].

MY DEAREST SISTER, I was very sorry to hear of the unfortunate state in which you have been, and in which Sarah [Lady Sarah Robinson] is, as I have a sufficient recollection of the Mumps to know what a very disagreeable disorder they are, or they is.

We have had a spirt of company for the last three days, but they all very kindly walked off yesterday, and as it is wrong to dwell upon past evils, I spare you an account of most of them.

There were a Mr. and Mrs. Winyard amongst them, who were very pleasant. He was in the army, and is now in the Church, and though they are the sort of people who have a child every year, and talk about their governess, and though she very naturally imagined, that because she was absent, the high wind would blow away the little tittupy parsonage, and the ten precious children, yet they really were very agreeable.

He sang so very beautifully though, that it made all his other good qualities quite superfluous, and I am convinced it would have touched your unmusical heart to hear him sing some of the Irish Melodies.

I have some thoughts of writing an Essay on Education for the good of my country, and I think the little Robinsons⁸⁴ will in most cases serve for example, and I must say that, tho’ children, they are very nice things, and uncommonly well managed.

If at any time you will let me know how you are going on, the smallest intelligence will be thankfully received. Ever, my dear Sister, your very affect.

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

LONGLEAT [WARMINSTER, WILTS],

Monday, March 15, 1819.

MY DEAREST SISTER, This place affords so very little to say, that if this prove to be a long letter, of which at present I do not see much chance, I pity from my heart your feelings of weariness at the end of it. There is nobody here but the Campbells, but I imagine that the family of Thynne are much pleasanter out of a crowd. At least, we are not the least formal or dull, which from the account Mary and Fanny used to give I thought would have been the case.

The magnificence of the house far surpasses anything I have ever seen, and with all that, it is one of the most comfortable abodes possible. It is inconvenient too in some respects, at least to me, who have an unfortunate knack of losing my way even in a house that may consist of only ten rooms, so that I cannot stir without Fanny or some other guide.

There are several roads to our rooms. The servants make it, I think, about five and twenty minutes’ walk, a little more than a mile and a quarter; but then that is a very intricate way.

Lady Bath⁸⁵ is very much out of spirits at times about Lord Weymouth,⁸⁶ who is going on very ill; but she is always very pleasant and very good-humoured…

Lady Elizabeth⁸⁷ and Lady Louisa⁸⁸ both make themselves very pleasant.

We leave this place Saturday night, probably, which I am very sorry for, but George must be in town Monday, and therefore it is necessary to be there Saturday. However, he is first going to see poor Lord Ilchester at Weymouth,⁸⁹ and is to rejoin me on the road, so our plans depend a little on Lord Ilchester’s. London will be a little dark and dismal-looking this weather, but the FitzGeralds are coming up to be at the Meeting of Parliament, and I shall be rather glad to meet Pam.⁹⁰ Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.

Miss Pamela FitzGerald to Miss Eden

[1819.]

So you are not dead at all, Emmy! I am very glad, for I can’t spare you. I have been what the people call in a great deal of trouble. Aunt⁹¹ frightened me, she chose to neglect her cough so long, that when at last on her complaining of pain in her side I bullied her, and sent for Dundas, he found she has a considerable degree of inflammation on her chest, and she was to be bled directly; the Apothecary out of the way, never came home till night. Aunt made a monstrous piece of work between fright and fever, and cried out, and the candles flared, and Baker stamped, and I who thought myself so courageous, I was turned upside down with the whole business.

Lucy⁹² is staying at Mrs. Seymour’s, luckily out of the mess; she went over for a ball Monday, and Mrs. Seymour has kept her on there.

I had a letter from Edward⁹³ a few days ago, written from the Slough of Despond; he has joined his regiment at Lichfield, and you may imagine the transition from Paris, poor darling. I would give the whole world to go and comfort him.

Emmy, don’t you know what I mean? But when anything one loves is unhappy, it seems more particularly to belong to one.

He comes to us the 11th, for a few days, which I look to with some anxiety, after that taste, or rather distaste, we had of each other in London.

I am looking about for a conveyance to Town, because I want to buy a hat; at present I am all shaven and shorn, and shall be reduced to wear a paper cap, if I don’t take care.

I am obliged to write with this pen, which is like a Chinese chop stick, because I am in Aunt’s room, and she is asleep, and I dare not begin that quick rustle, which disturbs and wakes a Patient as much as the roar of a cannon, and which would be unavoidable in a hunt for quill or knife; as it is I have some trouble to keep the paper from crackling, and the few books d’alentour from throwing themselves head-long off the table, which is the way of all books the moment one drops asleep.

I have had sad fits of low spirits. Spring makes one languid to a degree, that the air is a weight upon one.

The Assizes were delightful. I don’t think it right to carve out futurity for oneself, or else I really think I should like never to marry anybody who does not wear a Lawyer’s Wig. It is proper, it adorneth the outward and visible man; those thin terrier faces, those hollow cheeks and deep eyes, are precious and lovely.

I was amused at the younglings, whose callow smooth faces look all the younger for the wig. Seriously, the interest of the most important cases to me was inexpressible. It is the reality which presses on one’s heart, and makes an impression far deeper than the utmost stretch of imaginary sorrow can ever produce.

I have seen no creature, and have established my character Bearish in the neighbourhood, so they are content to let me alone…

Mr. Peel⁹⁴ could not help marrying that girl who is silly; those things fit, and are so far satisfactory they establish some sort of system in the goings on of the world, and give body to speculation. Wise men love fools.

I had done writing, and then as usual a whole heap of things came lumbering about my head. I had a high letter from poor Eliza Fitz.⁹⁵ She has given up her dearest hopes on earth, and if she should be obliged to marry any one else, miserable, wretched, homeless, she trusts she will do her duty and be a good wife; that’s the résumé of four criss-cross sheets of paper. I wrote her a very reasonable letter to comfort her, for she is painfully ashamed of herself, poor girl, and there is no use in that, so I turned her over to the bright side. She has only fallen in that common error of whipping up her feelings with words, and they never can keep pace even, one will always be before the other.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

June 4 [1819].

MY DEAREST SISTER, Mary went out last night to Mrs. Baring’s⁹⁶ ball, which was not likely to do her much good, and is completely “frappée en haut” (Sir W. Wynn’s translation of “knocked up”) with headache and fatigue this morning. Dissipation is not likely to agree with her, certainly, but then, Sister, think of the pineapples and strawberries and ices and temporary rooms and magnificent hangings and beautiful flowers at Mrs. Baring’s.

I wish I was a rich old banker; but then I would not have, or own, so many fellow-creatures as the Barings do. I keep my comforts a little more to myself… We have had a most alarming visit from Rogers the Poet this morning, the very recollection of which would make my hair, black pins, combs and all, stand on end, if they had ever subsided since his first appearance. I never saw such a satirical, odious wretch, and I was calculating the whole time, from what he was saying of other people, what he could find ill-natured enough to say of us. I had never seen him before, and trust I never shall again. Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

June 10, 1819.

MY DEAREST SISTER, You will, I hope, have more pleasure or rather happiness than I can yet teach myself to feel, in hearing that our dearest Mary is going to be married to Charles Drummond. It cannot be a surprise, of course, to any one, as he has certainly taken no pains to conceal his attachment; but the objections arising from want of fortune, we had not hoped could have been so well overcome as they are, quite to the satisfaction of his friends and hers also. It was almost settled at Lady Darnley’s fancy ball on Monday, and concluded by letter (such a very pretty letter!) on Tuesday morning. Mary and I went down to Langley⁹⁷ for an hour for a little advice, as George was gone to his Committee; then we saw George; then Mr. D.; and, in short, everything went on smoothly, and as such things usually do go on. George has seen the old Drummonds, who were very good-humoured and quite agreeable. In short, I should believe we were all amazingly happy, only I know I have seldom felt so wretched. She will be such a dreadful loss to me! But I will only think of the advantages of the case; and George is so pleased, and it is altogether a very desirable thing for all of us, besides the real chief point of her happiness, which she ought to find, and of which she has so reasonable a prospect. The Post Bell is ringing. Mary would have written herself, but he is here, and this is their first real conversation. Sarah will excuse my not writing to her to-day, I hope, and I really have had great difficulty in making out this one letter, and we have told nobody else yet. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

THAMES DITTON,

Friday, August 13, 1819.

MY DEAREST EMILY, I was really sorry not to be able to accept Lady Buckinghamshire’s invitation, but you see it could not be, for Lucy sets off Tuesday morning, and as Aunt Soph⁹⁸ never parted with her before in her life, I must stay and comfort her…

Think of Sister liking me! I know of few phenomena that ever more surprised me, for I concluded she had set me down as wild and scapegracish. However, it was certainly reciprocal, for she certainly took my fancy very much.

Mary is very much changed since she has gone to live with that Drummond; however, you must get the better of that awkwardness, my poor dear Emmy, which for some time will hang over you. Besides, when Mary’s mind settles again, you will get on better, and no longer miss her. In short, make haste and come, for I cannot write, but I want to talk to you.

Mary gave a sad account of that comical Dog,⁹⁹ I trust he is better…

It was a very foolish thing of Mary marrying, but let us hope that, as a cook once said to me when I represented that she had not married prudently, “It was very foolish. The only thing is never to do so again, Ma’am, let us hope.” I say she will look upon it as warning…

I have bought me some ducks, Emily, which I have to dill-dill myself. As yet I hold out, but as I may think dill a bore, I must hope Providence or instinct, that instinct, Emily, which does “Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze,” that wonderful instinct I do hope will teach them their solitary way to the back yard.

I am going to get me a Pig too, which I mean to farm upon speculation and make monies.

Have you heard from that comical Dogge? By the bye, I hear that a man was bit by a comical dog at Kingston, and is very bad. Sad times, bread is dear, reformers meeting, dogs mad, and such a harvest the farmers must be ruined… Ever your affect.

PAM.

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

BURGH,

Friday, September 10, 1819.

MY DEAREST SISTER, My visit to Thames Ditton I liked of all things. Poor Aunty was confined to her room with a bad sore throat till the last two days of my stay, so that Pam and I had it all to ourselves. We lived from breakfast time till seven at Boyle Farm, a beautiful place of Lord H. FitzGerald’s by the river. I drew a great deal (what an odd word drew is! I mean, I drawed a great deal) and Pam read loud a very little, and I played and she sang, and the talking and laughing we divided in two equal large shares. I was very sorry to leave her, but I should have missed Mary altogether if I had not come here this week. There is an immense party in the house, but as everybody does what they like that is rather an advantage than otherwise. We set off after breakfast yesterday in seven pairs to take a walk, Mr. D. and Mary leading the way like Noah and his wife. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Shem, Ham and Japhet, and two or three odd pairs of beasts, the remainder here I suppose. I was set upon a horse, too, after luncheon, which was a Mazeppa-ish sensation – but there are beautiful rides about here, and if I was not as stiff as a poker to-day, I should have enjoyed that ride yesterday particularly.

Any little shyness that change of circumstance may have made, and indeed must have made at first, is quite over, and we are as comfortable as ever, which is satisfactory, considering that I love nothing in the world so well as her – tho’ I should be sorry that she should say the same of me now. I am quite contented to be second. Her happiness is not the least surprising, as it must be pleasant in the first place, to be considered as she is by all the Drummonds, and Mr. Drummond’s merits open upon me every day. He is much superior to all his family, I think, and as Mary thinks him superior to everything else, it all is as it should be. Adieu, dearest Sister. Your ever affectionate

E. E.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

THAMES DITTON,

September 23, 1819.

…You must tell Mr. Drummond I never thank him enough for having blessed me with Bess, for some days she pondered on the vicissitudes of sties, but she has recovered herself, and enjoys existence with all the buoyancy and exuberance of youthful spirits. Her beauty is remarkable, and she possesses much of that piquant and espièglerie, which so seldom is allied to regularity of feature. Her disposition is very engaging, her heart mild and tender, and so affectionate she will eat out of my hand. In short, her perfections are such, I defy the bosom of a Jew to resist the fascination of them.

Your Uncle Henry¹⁰⁰ went away last Thursday; he went without bidding us good-bye, but wrote a very quiet touching note, saying parting gave him such a squeeze about the heart, he could not bear the idea of taking leave. Poor Aunt did not like it at all – by the bye, that’s one of the topics that are spoiling in my mind, for want of you to discuss them. I think one don’t escape the squeeze at the heart by avoiding a parting, and that one has in addition a very unpleasant jar, besides having one’s mind all over in a litter of things one still had to say, and odd ends of topics (the pig just stepped into the room to see what I was about; it must have some Irish blood in it, for it seems quite at home in the house).

Lucy comes back next Saturday. She met, she tells me in her last letter, Lady Harrowby,¹⁰¹ and Newman the Russian, and Pahlen the Prussian, and Lady Ebrington¹⁰² behind her parasol and Lord Ebrington, and Lady Mary Ryder, and Ed. Montagu; in short, as she says, the whole cavalcade of Click.

We have just now my cousins Cootes¹⁰³ staying with us, I have always a sort of nervous fear of seeing them vanish, they seem so like bad visions.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

October 3, 1819.

I cannot say how much your long satisfactory letter delighted me, that’s something like a letter. I ought not to have been surprised at the tidings you give of dearest Mary, for when people marry there is nothing we may not expect them to do, and it is our own fault if we allow ourselves to be astonished at anything.

Lucy came back yesterday week, fat, well, in high force, delighted with all she has seen and done; in short, for you can bear with my obliquities, her spirits were a peg or two higher than my own, which trod me down very much at first…

I have been spending a day at Bushy with the Mansfields.¹⁰⁴ I like her infinitely the best of the two, she really is sensible, amiable, and as clever as need be. He seems to have a cloudy unhappy temper, and some pretensions which he has not ability enough to either disguise or excuse.

Mr. Rose¹⁰⁵ was there (the Court of Beasts Rose), and I like him much better on acquaintance. With wretched health he manages to keep up an even flow of spirits. He appears to indulge himself in his whims and oddities for his own amusement, and to divert his mind from dwelling upon the sufferings of his body, which makes one very lenient towards his jokes, poor man! even when they are not good. He seems amiable, and when one can get him to speak seriously his conversation is very charming, for with great information he is perfectly natural and easy; it is very odd he should like dirty jokes. I wonder whether it is inherent, or merely the consequence of bad health which catches at anything for relief and distraction.

What are your plans? When do you go your travels, or has not the Comical Dog told you anything about it, but means to have you off at a moment’s warning, bundled into the carriage, with one arm in your sleeve, and only one shoe on?

What do you think? Is there any hope of your going to Bowood? Are you to live all October in the papered up rooms in Grosvenor St. with brown paper draperies?

Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire

GROSVENOR STREET,

October 7 [1819].

MY DEAREST SISTER, I am going to write you a long letter, and I shall be like a ginger-beer bottle now, if once the cork is drawn. I shall spirtle you all over – not that I have anything to say, but just a few remarks to make.

In the first place, I am eternally obliged to you for your just and proper appreciation of Autumn; nobody cares about it enough but you and me, and it is so pretty and so good, and gives itself such nice airs, and has such a touching way of its own, that it is impossible to pet it enough.

I tried some cool admiration of it upon Louisa,¹⁰⁶ but she said she did not like it, as it led to Winter, and the children wanted new coats, and she must write to Grimes of Ludgate Hill for patterns of cloth, etc.

However, London is a very pretty check to enthusiasm; there are no trees to look brown and yellow, and the autumn air only blows against poor Lord Glengall’s¹⁰⁷ hatchment, and the few people that wander about the streets seem to think it cold and uncomfortable. Except the Drummonds and ourselves, I believe there is nobody here but the actors who act to us, and the bricklayers who are mending the homes of all the rest of the world. I have seen when I go sneaking down to Charing-Cross two or three official people, who think I suppose, that they govern us and the bricklayers.

Fanny and I shall end by being very accomplished, if we lead this life long. We breakfast at a little before ten, and from that time till a little after three are very busy at our lessons.

We have just finished Mrs. H. More,¹⁰⁸ which I like very much, particularly the latter part.

We have foolishly begun Modern Europe for our history book, which I think much too tiresome to be endured, and then we take a peep at what the Huns and Vandals are about. My only hope is that fifteen hundred years hence we shall be boring some young lady in the back Settlement of Canada with our Manchester Riots.¹⁰⁹ That is the only thought which supports me under the present dulness of the newspaper.

George brought us such a quantity of Confitures from Paris, that it is a mercy we are not in bilious fevers before this. I enclose you some Fleur d’Orange because it is so genteel. Pray remark when it is going down, whether your sensations are not remarkably lady-like? Your most affect.

E. EDEN.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

THAMES DITTON,

Tuesday, October 1819.

Very pleasant, but not correct, as our immortal Monkey said when he kissed the Cat, my going to see you in town! It would indeed be a case for Hannah More, as that very comical Dog said; why it would make the few pious hairs she still preserves rear up, like quills upon the fretful Porcupine; to say I should like it is saying very little indeed.

Next to Hannah More, that Chancellor¹¹⁰ is the greatest Beast and Bore to prevent our going up; I won’t have my oath¹¹¹ trifled with no more than my affections, and since he coquets with my conscience, I have a great mind not to swear at all, and keep myself disengaged for some little Lèse-Majesté. This letter seems copied out of Buffon or “The Book of Beasts,” for I find honourable mention made of cat, dog, monkey, beast, bore, porcupine.

I will try and let you know what day I come, if I can get it out of old Sullivan, and if it is soon I will take the duck to you. I suppose Hannah More will not be shocked at the dead duck spending the night under the roof with you; the duck being dead must remove all impropriety attendant on such a step.

Your account of your bonnet diverted me highly; it certainly is much more difficult to find a congenial bonnet than a congenial soul, and after all they don’t last one so long. Sullivan talks of Thursday as the most likely day I shall land at your house, and I may from there branch out into all other ramifications of business. I send you some three or four violets to sweeten you in London.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

November 7, 1819.

DEAREST EMMY, I meant every day to have written to you whilst you were at Shottesbrook,¹¹² but I never could hit the right temperature; when I felt dull, I thought it was not fair writing to you, making “confusion worse confounded,” and when I was merry, I imagined the shock might be too much for you, and only serve to make your “darkness visible.” This is a very deeply Miltonic apology, the truth I daresay may turn out to be a severe fit of laziness, which has incapacitated me from doing anything beyond reading, which delights me, and swallows up all my duties.

Your sister Caroline seems an admirable Brood Mare. I admire her exertions, but, Emmy, it is lucky we are not put to the test, we never could imitate them. However brilliant and liberal our views, we should fail in the plodding perseverance, which is the necessary ingredient to fill up the gaps and make it all solid.

I have of late been driven by Aunt in the Chaise, to try a Mule, which a man wants us to buy. In my life I never was on service of such danger. She holds her reins so very loose, that she puts me in mind of the picture of Phaeton when he is in the act of culbute from Heaven, and I find myself humming a Te Deum for my safety as I get out, for she has no manner of power over the beast, and throws herself upon its generosity with wonderful philosophy. I, who have not this reliance upon its honour, really suffer greatly from terror… My dear Emmy, the Ogress’s¹¹³ dereliction from the sober paths of temperance was a shock I have not yet recovered from. Our cook has taken to drinking too, but she certainly boasts some originality in her tastes; she ruins herself in Antimonial Wine and emetics of the strongest nature; no remonstrance can deter her from pouring every species of quackery down her unhappy throat. It is very remarkable how the lower classes love physic.

Your anticipated fondness for your powder’d Friend quite enchanted us. I have an extinguisher on my mind to-day, so good-bye. I write just to show you I can make an effort for you. Good-bye. I am your own

PAM.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

Sunday, November 14, 1819.

What are you about? Write to me directly. Yesterday I was stirred up by one of those hubbubs that vanish into smoke. Mr. Ogilvie¹¹⁴ wrote to say he was coming to us for a few hours previous to his going to Paris for a fortnight on business, upon which Lucy went mad; she would and should go with him, raved and tore about, wrung from the hard hands of Aunt her vile consent, and so far infected me with her fuss that I was all of a twitter.

Her cloaths were preparing, in short, she was far on the road to France. Ogilvie arrives, Lucy downs upon her knees, to beg he will take her to Paris, and lo! he would have been delighted to take her, but he had given up the journey!

We all dropt in spirit like so many sacks, after the excitation of the morning.

We go to Town positively on the 27th of this month, God willing. Let me know whether the master of your destiny, your fate, George, brings you to Town. We shall be in Stratford Place, and about the beginning of next month I suppose the Chancellor will have us up. Pray how do you think we ought to dress the character, something of the sackcloth and ash nature?..

How do Fanny and Edward Drummond¹¹⁵ go on? I hope she still thinks him pleasant. Don’t rob her of those comfortable illusions, any bulwark against bore is a blessing.

Aunt has had the white Cock, the pride of the Dunghill killed, and Lucy has replaced him by a pair of stinking red-eyed rabbits. We have robberies going on on all sides. The thieving establishment is put upon the most liberal footing; they drive their cart, and keep their saddle-horses, and nobody seems inclined to disturb them.

I understand Stocks? Emmy, I have been making Mr. Ogilvie give me a lecture on Finance, but to-morrow I shall relapse into darkness. Nature has done much for you and me, but we are not organised for Stocks.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

November 26, 1819.

We go to Town to-morrow, but too late to see you. I am so unhappy, my snug own home so clean, so warm, my life so humdrum, to-day walking in the footsteps of yesterday, all thrown over by going to that Babylon. If it was not for you, I should hang myself previous to my departure. Conceive my situation on finding myself to-morrow night, amidst the smoke and stir of that dim spot which men call Stratford Place, Nr. 2…

I had a kind note from Lady Lansdowne,¹¹⁶ I love her. Emmy, if you desire to keep a Grantham and four horses, I surely may have my Lansdowne and two!

I feel walking against the wind, which is the only way I can express the feeling one has in parts of one’s life when matters go contrary. We are coming up in truly Scriptural style, for we know not where we shall eat, and where we shall drink, nor wherewithal we shall be clothed.

December 17, 1819.– Emmy, the moon whistles, but why don’t you write? My trunk is gone forth and is now on its remote, unfriended, melancholy, and slow journey to Bowood, and drags at each remove a lengthening chain, and the weather is so bad, and so we are all very unhappy. Isn’t (I never know how to tittle that abbreviation, but to you my meaning is palpable) well to go on. Isn’t this a day for Crack-skull Common?

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

BOWOOD,

Thursday, a great deal p.m., December 23, 1819.

MY DEAREST EMMY, I am safely arrived into this country, and as you have never peregrined into these parts, a few remarks, peradventure, a few remarks upon the nation Wiltshire may give you satisfaction. The Wilt¹¹⁷ is generally of noble disposition, kind of heart and of sound understanding. In person short of stature, thick set, square built, hath straight hair, and a pleasing aspect. In civility most laborious, insomuch there seems a wall of politeness which keepeth off better acquaintance in this tribe. The Wilt woman¹¹⁸ liveth bounden in subjection and loving obedience unto the husband, and filleth her time duly in catering and ordering for her household. The Wilt¹¹⁹ when young is ill-favoured, given unto the asking of questions, eager for food, and hath a harsh and unmusical voice. It is the custom to déjeune at the hour Ten. The Wilt doth eat, and read the signs of a large leaf showing the contests of the Two Tribes – the one having power that doth act foolishness, and the other which hath no power – speaking wisdom; and after breathing a word or two at intervals when the meal is ended, the Wilt will go unto his avocations and work with his brains, and then at about the hour Two, he eateth of a mixture of flour and water like unto cakes, and then doth go forth unto the exercising of his body in the way of quick walking, or managing of a small horse. At dinner the Wilt ordereth himself seemly, eateth of all things freely and slow, drinking moderately. He then adjourneth unto another part of the Habitation and doth talk of divers matters good and well spoken, rubbing his hands withal exceedingly; and after he hath drunk of a hot brown liquor, the women take their tools and do sew wearing apparel and are still, and the Wilt taketh a volume and doth lift up his voice and read. I do mention this because the custom is after the manner of this tribe peculiarly, and is regarded upon by other tribes as an abomination, inasmuch that one of the tribe of Dumont¹²⁰ has been known to cover his countenance with a cloth when the same has been practical. I have been at some pains to get particulars of this form of idolatry to the god Bore, and have collected thus much: Bore is an evil spirit that, they reckon, commonly doth haunt empty places, but is more terrible when he doth infest crowded places. He doth possess people after the fashion of the Devils in Judaea, and hath, besides, a contagious property, it having been noted that one possessed will generally infect others. What a fool I am, Emmy dear! but I was so full of nonsense I was obliged to come and write to you, and such an ill-tempered pen too, that would go no way, not even its own. I am sure it came out of Lady Holland¹²¹ or the Dss of Bedford’s¹²² Wing!

I am very snug here as to my body, but I do want you to talk to beyond expression, and I cannot bear to think Lucy is missing me all this while. I have been over all my old walks here, and remembering all the corners and rooms and chairs and tables, so that I feel two years the younger. But I wonder how I got on at all without knowing you. Lady Lansdowne is in high favour with me. There is so much to like in her. Him of old I have always doated on, but I have sat with my extinguisher upon my head ever since I arrived, so that I fear, pleased as I am with them, the feeling is not reciprocal. I always shall love this place for having brought me acquainted with old Mary, for my liking to her was a sort of halfway-house to my affection for you.

I have not an idea who or when anybody is to come. I don’t care. You have lost the art of writing me good long letters. I desire you will mend. Goodbye, Dearie, God bless you. Tell me more. And believe me ever your own

PAM.

Emmy now, don’t let all my stupid jokes lay about, and don’t because you have nothing ready to say to Mary and Mr. Drummond, in an evil hour go and shew my letter. You know you have done such things, you animal. Remember, I will never write again if you play me this trick. I pour my nonsense into your trusty bosom only in confidence. If I must restrain my nonsense, what a bond of Friendship will be broken!

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

BOWOOD [1819].

That One Pound Bill is for the liquidation of the debt I contracted that morning in Town with you at a shop in Regent Street for value received of silk handkerchiefs, ribbons, etc… I am fallen in love with Mr. Abercromby.¹²³ He is quite a darling, mouth and all. The first day I saw him I thought of your face and laughed; but we are now inseparable. He is so natural, so good-natured, and does love nonsense. You would delight in him. The Macdonalds have been here, and they are no loss. She is so very dull, oh dear! – and they are much too newly married to be fit for society… I take long walks with my dear Lord Lansdowne. Emmy, he is so good, and so knowledgeful, and so liberal, I think he is the most liberal man I ever met with at all, in taste as well as principle. And that is a great merit, for one knows where to have him. Emmy, don’t New Year’s days and all those milestones in one’s life make you very melancholy? They do me to a degree. I take some time shaking off the weight. Of course I won’t say a word of the Dromedaries [Drummonds] to any one, but I don’t see that you have any duty laying in that quarter, particularly as the more you see of them and go to Charing Cross, the more obligations they will imagine themselves bestowing on you.

CHAPTER III
1820-1825

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

BOWOOD,

February, 1820.

HUSH, hush, Emmy, the King is dead,¹²⁴ and we have entered a new reign, yes, yes, and George IV. has been proclaimed, and I have wondered what he’ll do with his wife, and Henry VII. would not let his Queen be crowned for two years, and Hume says so, and all the newspapers are very black, and the Times blacker than any, and there is an end of the topics and we know it all. Now to our old channel.

My hair is on tip-toe. I have heard with my outward ears to-day, that there hangs a possibility in Fate of my not getting home for a month. Not that I am uncomfortable here, but only I do so wish to see you again, my dearie, and poor dear Lu!¹²⁵ It quite amounts to longing, or craving, or hunger, or thirst. It is so long since I have done out my heart and mind, it is all in a litter.

I enjoyed myself so very much indeed while your brother and Mr. Fazakerly were here. As for the others, I wished them hanged, for I had to make company to them, and they did not make amusement for me.

We are quite alone, and have been ever since Wednesday. After I have made breakfast, and Lord Lansdowne has engulphed as much Tea as he can carry, I take my mornings to myself and bask in the Library. I do not mean this as a figurative allusion to the sunshine of the mind, but that the room stands South, as all rooms should stand, or walk off. I then at about two, lunch, and see Lady Lansdowne for half-an-hour, take my walk till five, come in, and write an empty line to Lucy to while away her time.

Lady Lansdowne dines with us, goes to bed before eleven, and I stay on talking till near one with the Wilt. I do, I will like him, tho’ I have run very near hating him, that Wilt wise man! He goes next Monday to Woburn¹²⁶ and Middleton¹²⁷ on his way to Town, and Lord knows when it will please Providence we should follow.

Tell me something of Mary, and above all, tell me about yourself. Your last letter made me laugh so much! Do it again. I ever remain, your affectionate old

PAM.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

BOWOOD,

February 10, 1820.

It is now settled we are to be in Town the 20th… We do not mean to be in London this year at all to remain, Emmy; it is not worth while. I need not say it to you, for we compared notes last year upon the emptiness of existence in that Town – gaiety as it is called. You will come to Thames Ditton, where we have the certainty of being comfortable together.

Lord Lansdowne set off to-day for Middleton. I miss him shockingly. He has crept into my affections in a wonderful degree these last ten days; I have pounded a little nonsense into him. Twice I made him laugh at jokes not worth repeating, and once at his own matter-of-fact method of understanding Fun: in short, our intimacy grew so thick he committed himself far enough to say that he was quite in a childish fidget to see his new Gallery and ceiling – much more anxious about that than about the Meeting of Parliament. And last night the agony he got into fancying he should want all the identical books in this library in Town, and which to take, and the sort of goodbye he bid the volumes, gave me hopes of him.

Emmy, you know the brother, William Strangways?¹²⁸ He is a curious specimen. He certainly will pack himself up by mistake and send himself as a Fossil to the Geological Society some fine day. I rather like him, he is so good-natured, and so cram full of out of the way information. Another Brother arrived to-day, y-clept Giles.¹²⁹ I know nothing of him, and am likely to remain in ignorance, as they go away to-morrow.

She and I get on charmingly. I like her more than I ever did, more than I ever thought I could love anybody who has the misfortune of not being one of us.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

March, 1820.

Your letter gave me such delight, the laugh of other days came o’er my soul.

My dear, rums is ris, and sugars is fell. My cold is gone, but Aunt is sick, in short, barring myself who am very well thank you, the house is an Hospital.

Aunt has been quite ill, shut up, and the Apothecary busy, all over pocket handkerchiefs and Ipecacuanha.

All my neighbours far gone in liver complaints and buried in bile, so that I have kept aloof from all, when they did not want me, and we are so very, very quiet here, I almost fancy I must be grown deaf, for I suppose the world is still in a bustle, and going on. No letters, no murder, no crimes.

What a retention of correspondence this cessation of franks seems to have caused: when shall we see our wholesome days again?

Emkins, Holland will never do. Why? When, shall I see you? Why can’t you stay where you are? Your brother George is like an âme en peine; he can’t abide nowhere. I suppose you will like the junket, you Beast… So you have your Grantham.¹³⁰ It is all very well we should allow those sort of people to love us, etc. but they must be kept in their place. How little I saw you in Town, and then you think it my fault and that I won’t dine with you. You don’t know, you cannot know, how I have been bothered about it, not by Aunt alone. In short, there is a bother in our celibacy, that as there is no one to speak as one having authority, the whole herd think they have a right to have a pull at one’s tether, and pin one down to their own fancies…

Emmy, only think Danford is going to-day! A woeful day that such a Dan should go.

There’s been a grand inventory to do, and glass and china, etc. Aunt was aghast at the mortalities among the rummer glasses. He denied having crackt their noble hearts, when, oh Providence! oh, juste ciel! their glassy relics rose in judgment, and from the cupboard called for vengeance. There lay their bottoms, which, like the scalps of his enemies, had accumulated in evidence of his deeds. His wen grew pale when he thought of his wages. “Conceive his situation!” What a climacteric! Good-bye, write to me much and often, but if you don’t, never mind, for I know what London is.

I do long to see Matthews,¹³¹ so provoking the animal won’t begin his pranks before we leave London.

April, 1820.

…Poor Aunt gets no worse, but I see no great amendment… I assure you, Emmy, I take great care of myself; we only sit up every other night, and my spirits are quite good. I am screwed up like a machine, and get through day and night very quickly indeed. I eat and drink and laugh and don’t let myself think.

You must come again, when you can, to see me, Emmy. I have no scruple in asking you to come and see me in the fullness of my dullness, out of the fullness of your gaiety, because when we get together, we get into our element, my darling. Your visit quite refreshed me the other day. I send you some flowers to brighten up your room, and you will put them into the Christening bowls, which lie about your tables.

April 30, 1820.

I have given up the hopes of seeing you, nobody is going to Town, unless I take a cling to some carriage footboard as the beggar boys do. I have given up all prospects of bonnets for the future, and so have ordered one at Kingston.

I had an obliquity the other day, and awful longing to be in London for a leetle, a very leetle while. I tried and tried what you call to reason myself out of it, and I partly succeeded, but the getting out of that folly cost me a great deal, and made me rather rough and uncomfortable. Brushing up one’s reason is just as disagreeable as having one’s teeth cleaned, it sets one on edge for the while…

I am sure you will be obliged to me for telling you, that in a shower in London, a man was running along with an umbrella, and ran against another man, this latter offended man snatched the offending umbrella, out of the umbrellee’s hands, and throwing it away said, “Where are you running to like a mad mushroom?”

If Aunt gets better soon, I will go up in a week or two, and have a look at you, and get a hat. Your Leghorn sounds well, but I never yet found home brewed bonnets answer, they are always ill-disposed, full of bad habits, and get awkward crics about them. Good-bye.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

May, 1820.

I should have written directly to wish you joy of Mary’s job being so prosperously accomplished,¹³² but I have been keeping my bed. My cough has got such a grip of me, nothing does me good… What a fuss you must have been in I can but think. Was Mr. Drummond in a fuss? Well, it must be a great relief off your mind, and off hers too, poor dear. I suppose she is already doatingly fond of the little brute as if she had known it all her life… I have got a horrid cold and cough, and I look a beast of the first water, and of course, Edward [FitzGerald] has fixed this moment to come and see us. I expect him in two days, and he expects me in my present haggard, worn, water-gruel state of mind to amuse him and be sémillante. I, who am so low in words, I have not one to throw at a small dog.

Miss FitzGerald to Miss Eden

June, 1820.

I am quite so much better to-day, I entertain some hopes of prolonging my precarious existence a little longer. Company to dinner yesterday. Humbug and Bore kissed each other without truth or mercy. Why didn’t you come to me to-day? Come to-morrow for I have such a piece of nonsense for you.

EDINBURGH,

August 12, 1820.

We sailed Tuesday and arrived this morning by 5 o’clock at Leith. Our journey was most prosperous and very amusing. Our Society of Passengers also kept me in great amusement. I must just mention that their meals amused me as much as any part of their proceedings. One poured whisky over cold pie for sauce, and one ate raspberry jam with bread and butter, all ate peas with their knives. We shall see the sights between this and Tuesday, when we go to Bonnington. Write to me my own Emmy, and direct at Lady Mary Ross,¹³³ Bonnington, Lanark.

BONNINGTON,

October 9, 1820.

…Your letter amused me. The geographical happiness which has befallen us in being born near one another is indeed inestimable. That horrible supposition of my being the amiable Laplander made me shudder. You always do hit the funniest ideas in the world. You darling, I require something to keep up my spirits, for if I don’t laugh I shall cry when I tell you it is more than probable I shall not see you till next May.

Mary Ross has put it into Aunt’s head that it would be the best plan in the world for us to pass the winter in the Isle of Bute. Living is for nothing. As this is a plan of economy I dare say nothing, but I am very unhappy, I am very unhappy indeed, for I feel my heart sink into my shoes when I think how long it may be before I again see you or any of you… We shall stay here till November, when we shall go to our little Bute. Our society there is likely to be confined to Mrs. Muir, the factor’s wife, a quick, lively, little body, I am told, which sounds awfully bustling and pert, an occasional King’s officer in search of smugglers, and the master of the steam-boat. I have liked Scotland upon the whole, in short I had determined to make the best of it, and one always partly succeeds in those cases, yet I don’t like the people; they are very hospitable, but du reste, they appear to me stubborn, opinionated, cold, and prejudiced. The women are either see-saw and dismal, or bustling and pert, and appear to me to be generally ignorant, which I did not expect, and the minute gossip they keep us is something I cannot describe.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers. ¹³⁴

GROSVENOR STREET,

Monday [1820].

DEAREST THERESA, Please to write again directly to say how you are going on. I take your Grove¹³⁵ to be equal to my Nocton¹³⁶ in matter of bore, and that being the case, if one is to have an illness, one may as well have it at those houses. It fills up the time. My ague is subsiding, but I have fits of it occasionally and hate it very much. I had one yesterday, which even moved George’s strong heart to pity, though he has such a contempt for illness that I keep it all very snug. I am going to Langley to-day, and that is another thing which makes him so scrapey that I am writing in his room in order to talk him over in my most insinuating and winning manner between the sentences of my letter.

He and I go on such different tacks about town and country, that we make our plans, and talk them over for half-an-hour before I recollect that we are working for different aims. He thinks every day spent in the country by anybody who does not shoot is so much time wasted, and I happen to think every day spent in London is a mistake, and I was roused to the sense of our different views by his saying, “Well, but I want you to gain another day in London, and you can write to Louisa that you were not well yesterday, and then stay here, and I will go to the play with you to-night.” Such an iniquitous plot! And I am about as fit to go to the play as to go in a balloon.

George liked Middleton very much. Lady Jersey¹³⁷ 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 Granville¹³⁹ 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 Campbell¹⁴¹… 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 ….

Lord¹⁴³ 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. Kitty¹⁴⁵ 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 Way¹⁴⁶ 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 aunt¹⁴⁷ 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 children¹⁴⁹ when the Feildings were in London? I hope that nasty woman¹⁵⁰ 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’s¹⁵² 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. Leinster¹⁵³ and Mary Ross¹⁵⁴ 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 Charlotte¹⁵⁷ 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 Bob¹⁶¹ 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 Duchess¹⁶³ 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.

Eliza¹⁶⁵ 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. Mama¹⁶⁷ 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. Drummond¹⁶⁸ 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 Worcester¹⁷⁰ 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 Wall¹⁷¹ 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 Fonthill¹⁷² 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 subject¹⁷⁴…

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 she¹⁷⁵ 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 Bathurst¹⁷⁶ 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 Napier¹⁷⁷ 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. Wellesley¹⁷⁹ 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, Georgina¹⁸⁰ 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’s¹⁸² 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’s¹⁸³ 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 Adderley¹⁸⁴ 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’s¹⁸⁷ 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’s¹⁹² 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. Lamb¹⁹³ 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.

CHAPTER IV
1825-1827

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

Eyam,

Saturday [1825].

MY DEAR MISS VILLIERS, What a shame it is that I should have been so long writing to you, particularly after Mrs. Villiers had made the discovery that my letters amused her. My sister Louisa [Colvile] and four of her children passed a fortnight here at the end of last month, and our whole time was spent in “exploring in the barouche landau,” as Mrs. Elton observes.

By the time I have had nine or ten more of my sisters here, and thirty or forty of their children, I shall be tired of my own enthusiasm in the great picturesque cause; but at present all other employments are sacrificed to it. However, it may amuse you.

I shall continue to think a visit to Chatsworth a very great trouble. You are probably right in thinking the Duke¹⁹⁴ takes pleasure in making people do what they don’t like, and that accounts for his asking me so often. We have now made a rule to accept one invitation out of two. We go there with the best dispositions, wishing to be amused, liking the people we meet there, loyal and well affected to the King of the Peak himself, supported by the knowledge that in the eyes of the neighbourhood we are covering ourselves with glory by frequenting the great house; but with all these helps we have never been able to stay above two days there without finding change of air absolutely necessary, – never could turn the corner of the third day, – at the end of the second the great depths of bore were broken up and carried all before them: we were obliged to pretend that some christening, or a grand funeral, or some pressing case of wedding (in this country it is sometimes expedient to hurry the performance of the marriage ceremony) required Robert’s immediate return home, and so we departed yawning. It is odd it should be so dull. The G. Lambs are both pleasant, and so is Mr. Foster and Mrs. Cavendish and a great many of the habitués of Chatsworth; and though I have not yet attained the real Derbyshire feeling which would bring tears of admiration into my eyes whenever the Duke observed that it was a fine day, yet I think him pleasant, and like him very much, and can make him hear without any difficulty, and he is very hospitable and wishes us to bring all our friends and relations there, if that would do us any good. But we happen to be pleasanter at home. However private vices may contribute to public benefit, I do not see how private bore can contribute to public happiness, do you?

Pray give my love to your mother, and believe me, your affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to her Sister, Lady Buckinghamshire

LANGLEY,

July 15, 1825.

MY DEAREST SISTER, Do you recollect my asking you whether you would give us a dinner in the course of the year? Well, at one of our pleasant dinners the other day we were all so mortal agreeable that we settled we should go to Astley’s on the 18th. The party consisted of Maria Copley, Lord Henry Thynne,¹⁹⁵ Colonel Arden,¹⁹⁶ Mr. Wall,¹⁹⁷ Henry Eden,¹⁹⁸ and our three selves. To that it was necessary to add for decency’s sake Sir Joseph and Coppy.¹⁹⁹ It occurred to me this afternoon whilst murmuring over the heat, which is extremely unpleasant, that Astley’s would be the death of us all, and that if the weather continued in its present state, it would be better to change it for a water party.

It would be very pleasant if your carriage and two or three of those nice little poney-carriages you keep on the heather were to meet us at the water-side to bring us to your nice little place, and you receive us in your nice little way, and give us a nice little collation at about 6 o’clock, and let us walk about the place and then leave you, and talk you well over in the boat, as we go back again.

In the first place, these are all the people whom you have read about over and over again, and whom you are dying to see. Then, though they are ten now, yet by the end of the week they will not be above seven or eight.

Sir Joseph hates the water, so as I mean to make a vacancy for the present list I will ask your own Mr. G. Villiers to come with us, and he will be such a support to you. Well, what do you think?

My own interest in the question is this: that I am going to establish a coolness between myself and Lord Henry, who is exposing me to the remarks of the invidious public without any earthly purpose; and I had all the advantage at Burlington House on Thursday of being supposed to be honoured by a proposal from him in the face of many curious spectators, when he was imparting to me his intentions of admiring another person more than me. I do not know whether it was fun or spite, or a tryal of my feelings, or whether he is serious; but as I found that I did not care which it was, I do not mean to favour the world with the sight of any more such long conversations. It amuses them more than it does me, and henceforth I mean not to let him go tagging after me as he has done lately. The Astley party was made before this wise resolution, and I want to change it to a water-party, which will cut him out without offending him, as he never goes on fresh water, and we will ask Mr. Villiers in his place.

Don’t let yourself be frightened, you will find us so pleasant.

Good-night. I can’t help laughing when I see myself introducing the Colonel to you. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

SPROTBRO’,

Sunday, 1825.

You must have got hold of some other family in the same street. It is not my story you are telling me. I am Emily Eden, of No. 30 [Grosvenor Street], who has been marrying a brother²⁰⁰ in Derbyshire; then has been to Kent to visit a married sister; then found another sister setting off into Yorkshire, and took advantage of an offered place in her carriage and was deposited yesterday at Sprotbro’. I am really delighted that Mrs. Villiers is getting better. Is not Doctor Pidcock the man who cured Mr. H. Greville and whom Mrs. Villiers abused with unusual injustice, first because he was a doctor and no doctor could be of any use to anybody, and next because he was a quack and therefore no doctor. He is taking such a generous revenge! heaping such large coals of fire on her head! I hope he will go on, dear man! – skuttle-full after skuttle-full of fiery coals till she is quite well.

I saw your brother riding up the deep solitudes of Parliament Street the day I drove through London. It was an awful sight. The street so quiet you might have heard a pin drop.

Sister and I left Eastcombe last Monday and went to Gog Magog. I invited myself of course, but Charlotte²⁰¹ bore it very well. I was there fifteen years ago in the capacity of a child: I therefore did not see much of her, or know anything of her, and except that, have not seen her but for two or three morning visits per annum; so it was a voyage of discovery, in the style of a North Pole expedition. The Frost intense – and a good deal of hummocky ice to sail through. However, I really liked it much better than I expected. Lord Francis is particularly pleasant in his own house, and young Charlotte²⁰² very civil and good-natured. I found nine letters yesterday here and have had two more to-day, all requiring answers. I mean to put my death in the papers. It would be cheaper than if I really were to die from the over-exertion of writing eleven letters.

Robert’s new relations write to me, which is kind, but hard, as I must answer them. Lord Bexley²⁰³ has given Robert the living of Hertingfordbury.²⁰⁴ I have written so much about it lately, that I have at last forgotten how to spell it, and I am, beside, related to it, and am in the habit of familiarly terming it Hert.

Robert leaves this place next week. At first we thought he was going to be immensely rich, but dear Lord Bexley in a fit of conscientiousness divided from Hertingfordbury the living of St. Andrews, which has been given with it for the last 150 years. He thinks it will be a good example to his successors if he divides them in a case where he has a nearer interest, as in a brother-in-law. I can’t guess what his successor may think, and never shall know probably, as I never look to be Chancellor of the Duchy; but I can tell him that I think his relations think it extremely unpleasant, and it makes the benefit rather a doubtful one.

However, it is very good of him, only it is a pity where the principle is so good the result is not more agreeable. And he is so complacent and pleased with his decision! I have found out he is just what a sea-Captain said of one of Wesley’s preachers: “a heavenly-minded little Devil.” Your ever affectionate

E. E.

Monday.– I was prevented by a very long ride on Saturday from sending this. I am so grieved to see poor Captain Russell’s²⁰⁵ death in the paper. It is not formally announced, but I see it in the Ship news mentioned by the captain of some other ship. Perhaps it may not be true, but yet I fear it is. I saw Eliza²⁰⁶ the other day in her way from Scotland, as I believe I told you, and she talked with such pleasure of her brother George’s promotion. I had a letter from her a fortnight ago delighted that he had escaped the fever which his ship’s company had all had. Poor thing! I am so sorry for her. She was so fond of him, and the unexpected loss of a dearly loved brother is a grief that must, like all others, be endured, but one that, God knows, time itself cannot heal, and hardly mitigate. I wonder where Eliza is now – whether they are gone to Paris. If you hear anything of her or of Captain Russell’s death will you let me know? I suppose everybody feels most for the calamity under which they themselves have suffered, and from my very heart I pity Eliza, and it was impossible not to like Captain Russell for his own sake.

Good-bye, dear Theresa. Your ever affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

HERTINGFORDBURY,

[December] 1825.

I say Theresa, I shall be in Grosvenor Street on Tuesday from twelve to four. Please, if you are in the land of the living, commonly called Knightsbridge, to come and see me and we will talk a few.

We (thereby meaning Robert, his wife, and me) arrived here from Derbyshire last night, and are quite delighted with this place. It is a real country place, not like a parsonage, with a little park something in the Irish class of parks, but with fine trees in it and a pretty garden, and everything very nice.

We are just come back from our first church here. There are a great many nervous points in a clergyman’s life, and I think the first interview with his parishioners rather awful. I remember the time when I used to think a clergyman’s life the most pitiable thing in the world. I am wiser now, and can see the numerous advantages a man has whose duties and pleasures must necessarily be one and the same thing.

Robert preached to-day a sermon I wrote, and to my horror I detected a disguised quotation from Shakespeare in an imposing part of it, which was not obvious till it was read aloud. However, it was probably not very apparent to anybody but myself. I was rather in hopes of seeing you in a corner of the Cowper pew, but it was quite empty. Well, I can’t stay chattering here all day. Your ever affectionate

E. EDEN.

Miss Eden to her Sister, Fanny Eden

LANGLEY FARM, BECKENHAM, KENT,

November 11, 1825.

MY DEAREST FANNY, Begin writing to me again forthwith. I have heard from the Copleys with fresh plans for my going there, so that I should not have been in want of a house.

Mary says Mr. H. Greville²⁰⁷ is so cross she does not know what to do with him. What if it is love for Isabella Forester.²⁰⁸ She is sorry he is so foolish, and if it is bile – she is sorry he does not take more pills.

Why, Foolish the 5th, don’t you remember my white muslin gown with tucks and blue stars between them, and the body done with blue braiding, and I wore it the Chatham day, and it smelt of the tobacco old gentlemen were pleased to smoke in our faces, so I would not let it be washed for their dirty sakes till Wright showed it me by daylight and told me I was probably not aware I had worn it 30 times. And to be sure it was not the cleaner for it. Still, it grieved me to have it washed. I shall go and see our Caroline [Vansittart] in town and shall come down with all my hair stroked up the wrong way by her remarks. Your most affectionate

E. E.

[The year 1826 brought many troubles and great unhappiness to Lady Campbell. Her sister Lucy, who had always been an anxiety to her, had married Captain George Lyon, R.N., in 1825. Lucy evidently had her full share of FitzGerald beauty and charm, large dark eyes and beautiful chestnut auburn hair.

In January she arrived at Calne, where the Campbells were now living, in a great state of misery, having just parted with her husband, who had gone to take up an appointment in Mexico. The couple had sailed together, but for eleven days the ship tossed about in a storm and finally was obliged to put back. Mrs. Lyon was ill, and she decided to remain in England; her husband left her at home, hoping to rejoin her in a year and a half.

In February Lady Campbell’s cousin, Arthur de Roos, died at Boyle Farm, and in the following autumn her two elder children were dangerously ill with scarlet fever. Her friend, Miss Wellesley, and four of the servants also caught this illness, and her sister Lucy died of it at Thames Ditton when her child was born.

“I have had eight persons ill of the fever. As soon as they come into the house to help do for us, – they fall sick.”]

Lady Campbell to Miss Eden

[CALNE,]

January 13, 1826.

MY DEAREST EMILY, I never was so provoked in my life at anything, and I cursed the aristocracy of the country, and I was told of it²⁰⁹ as coolly as if it was a distress in Ireland. Seriously, what provoked me was her never telling me till after it was all given up, and put an end to, for thank Heaven I have a small house, and therefore can always make room, and I could perfectly have put up Fanny, and you, and your maid.

I had the gratification of seeing the whole party swamped in Crambo, and water-logged in Charades, and a large party writhing in the agonies of English Xmas conviviality, without any young ladies, without any music to break the awful solemnity of the evening, and no Lord Auckland to make them gamesome.

Lord Dudley was their wit, and as there was nobody to play with him, I saw he tried to domesticate himself, as he could make nothing of his jokes, or, what was worse, saw them torn to pieces before his eyes by the avidity with which the hungry society seized on them, to support themselves thro’ the day. But who could even domesticate in that drawing-room?

Sir Guy nearly died of Crambo, and was very near taking a Dictionary with him the next time. But as he is not at all of the go-along tribe he kicked, and would not cramb.

The event of the next time was Charades, and our enthusiasm knew no bounds when Lord Dudley joined the crew, and appeared with his coat turned inside out, and enacted a chimney-sweeper, and rattled a stick upon a bit of wood. Our rapture was indescribable, and it reminded me of the feelings of those who in ancient times beheld great men doing little things! Anecdotes which Historians always dwell on with that delight which human beings naturally feel on seeing a dry patch in a bog, or a green patch in a waste – the man who ploughed in Rome after heading the Yeomanry or Militia of the Republic; the man who picked up shells near the same place; that other who had the horticultural turn for sowing Lettuces – all these men were nothing in effect to Lord Dudley playing at sweep. I felt it deeply.

It was that day too he said when they offered him toasted cheese, “Ah! yes; to-day is Toasted-cheese day, and yesterday was Herring day!!”

How we all laughed!!!

How goodly is it to earn fair Fame! Once get your charter for a Wit, and you may sit down with all the comfort of being a fool for the rest of your life. One joke a year – not so much – even one bad joke now and then, is a better tenure than all those forms of carrying a Hawk, or the King’s Pepper-box, at the Coronation, for an estate.

We had a ball at Bowood the night before Twelfth Night. It went off very well indeed. I had the pleasure of cramming my small Pam²¹⁰ into a pink body and seeing it dance, and seeing everybody make a fuss with it because it was by many degrees the smallest thing in the room…

No; there never, never, never, was anything so cross as your not coming to Bowood this year, because I had looked to it just as you did, and had even distressed myself about how I should manage to see enough of you, and whether Lady Lansdowne would facilitate our intercourse, and I meant to show you all my new editions of children, and even make you superintend the new one, for certainly the one you picked up in Cadogan Place is the prettiest of the whole set. I cannot tell you how kind Lady Lansdowne is to me, and she need be so after putting you off; but she does really load me with kindnesses. However, we are not to stay in this house. It smokes and is too dear for us, so alas! I am again hunting a domicile. We get poorer and poorer, but as Guy bears it better and better, I don’t mind.

I am glad you see William.²¹¹ He is so dear a creature! His Family cannot forgive him for having picked out a little happiness for himself his own way… Your affectionate

Pamela C.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

March 30 [1826].

MY DEAR THERESA, Robert and his wife are coming for a week to Grosvenor Street, and I must be there to order their dinner and sweep their room, so I shall go there on Saturday and stay in town ten days. I shall be very glad to see you again. Pray come as soon as you can – Saturday afternoon if possible. I want you to come in the light of something good, to take the taste of going back to London out of my mouth. It is an ugly place, is it not? Probably I shall forget my troubles to-morrow if I do not fix them by mentioning them to you to-day. I always find that when I have withstood a strong temptation to mention to my friend the worry of the moment, it ceases to be a worry much sooner than the grief which has gone through the process of discussion. But the struggle is unpleasant.

I liked Malachi particularly.²¹² I have not seen the answers, but hear they are very amusing, which is a pity. I have long vowed never to be amused by anything Mr. Croker should say or do, be it ever so entertaining, and “shall I lay perjury on my precious soul?” as Shylock says, for a mere pamphlet?

I have been trying to read The Last of the Mohicans and have come to a full stop at the end of the first volume. I am sure you will not like it. Those vulgar Mohicans only wear one long scalp-lock of hair – they don’t crêper! Nasty savages! And so far from wearing full sleeves, it is painfully obvious that they wear no sleeves at all, and not much else in matter of cloathes.

Have you been uneasy about Sarah? Sister would have been if she could, but it came out unfortunately by the admission of those who saw her, that she had not been quite so ill as angry, and Sister weakly goes backwards and forwards to London on the chance of being admitted, and then hears Sarah is gone out airing. They say it is a fine sight to see the preparations for her airing. She “plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven” and the clerks of the Treasury; but whether she has succeeded in making any “angel weep” but dear Robin,²¹³ I do not know. However, it is wrong to laugh, because I believe nervous complaints are great suffering, and at all events poor Mr. R. was frightened.

Good-bye, my love to your mother. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

TUNBRIDGE WELLS, Sunday, August 6 [1826].

DEAREST THERESA, I had such a desire to write to you yesterday because it was not post day and I had no frank, and to-day it goes all against the grain, because I have plenty of time and George is come back to give me a frank and my letter can go. But you always make me write first; why, I never make out. Have you any good reason for it?

Our Tunbridge speculation is answering so well to us. I always knew I should like it, but George’s content, indeed actual enjoyment of the place and way of life, surprises me. We have such a clean house, just finished, and we are its first inhabitants, so we run no hazard of being devoured by a flea hacknied in the arts of devouring and tormenting. I was just going to bother myself by inventing a description of our way of life, when George showed me his answer to a vain-glorious description of the joys of Worthing, which Mr. Wall, who is living there, has just sent, meaning to put us out of conceit with Tunbridge by the vulgar notion of the Agar-Ellis’²¹⁴ man-cook and carriage and four, and so I shall copy part of George’s answer.

It opens with a moral: “We are better off and happier than is properly compatible with a life of innocence and vegetation. Our house is delightfully clean and comfortable. The living very good. Fish caught at eight in the morning at Hastings is devoured here at three. The eggs, cream, and butter, are brought to us in an hourly succession of freshness. All the material of the kitchen excellent, and the appetite too pure to think that it is a female that cooks it. Then a few glasses of hock and some coffee, and an hour’s repose, and we meet at Lady C. Greville’s,²¹⁵ Alvanley²¹⁶ and his sisters, and the F. Levesons.²¹⁷ We assort ourselves upon horses, into barouches, etc., and start for some of our inexhaustible lions; and we end our evening together with the feast of nonsense and the flow of tea.” He ends his letter with a promise to be at Norman Court the 1st of September, and adds, “My guns are at home and the locks click sweetly. Water the turnips when it does not rain.”

How much more foolish men are than women, particularly about their amusements. We none of us write to each other about our white sattin gowns that are hanging sweetly up at home.

George does not mention what is I think the most curious part of our life – that I am actually dressed and down at the Wells every morning before half-past eight, and he generally arrives only five minutes later. We dine at three and go to bed at eleven, and are in a ravenous state of hunger at all hours; and the consequence is that I can already walk three or four miles without being tired.

The Duchess of Kent arrived two days ago, and we live in a transport of loyalty. We insisted on illuminating for her and dragging her into the town, which naturally alarmed her, so she put off coming, meaning to step in unobserved. But that our loyalty could not suffer; and I never stepped out without 50 yards of rope in one pocket, and a Roman candle in the other, for fear of accidents. However, I believe she was allowed to drive up to her own door, but there were some fine illuminations afterwards.

Lord Alvanley is an amusing incident at this sort of place, and it is a pity he is not more likeable, because there is certainly nobody more amusing. He goes away Tuesday, but he liked it so much he means to come back again. We all parted yesterday evening, quite worn out with laughing, and yet I cannot recollect what he said. But it was very delightful. Except these tea-drinkings we could not be quieter or more independent in a country home of our own. Nobody visits of a morning, and in the evenings they are all in their coloured morning dresses.

You will be happy to hear that our three-shilling coarse straw bonnets are only a shade too good for the style of dress here.

I wish you were here. The man who built this house might have guessed we should like to have you. The upholsterer knew it, for there are more beds than enough, two in each room, but there are only three good bedrooms, and neither Fanny nor I could sleep except in a room by ourselves. But you must let me know your plans, because George will be obliged to go away in a fortnight more, and unless any of my sisters mean to take his place, which I do not suppose they will do, I think you might give us a visit. It is the sort of life you would like. I have not done so much drawing for years as during the last week. I have copied those six Prints on six cards for that tiresome Hertford fair, and they looked so pretty in that small shape I was quite sorry to send them to Robert.

What nice weather you have for your Gravesend expedition. Is the great review of Tide-waiters²¹⁸ taking place to-day? I have not the least idea what they are, what are the origin, manners, and customs of the nation of Tide-waiters? If they are people who wait till the tide serves they will flourish for ever. The poor dear tide never serves anybody, and if they gain their bread by tide-waiting, what floods of tears they must shed at Othello’s description of the Pontic Sea, which knows no retiring ebb…

I am decidedly in what Swift calls “a high vein of silliness” this afternoon; but it is the fault of the weather and of being in the country, which, after all, is the only thing that makes actual happiness. Your affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

THE GRANGE,²¹⁹

Sunday, 1826.

MY DEAREST THERESA, I should have written sooner to tell you where to write to me, but I was rather in hopes George would let me stay another month at Tunbridge. Everybody was going away, so we might have had a very small house for half the price we gave for ours, and as the servants will eat whether they are there or in Grosvenor Street, I thought we might have lived more economically than in posting all over England. However, after much correspondence, George, who terrifies me by the way in which he spends his own money, settled that the expenses were nearly equal, and that being the case that he would rather have us with him. “I never met with such an instance of politeness all my life,” as the immortal Collins observes, – not the Professor Collins, but the far greater “Pride and Prejudice” Collins. And so we packed up and came here, and I expect George and Mr. Wall to arrive every minute.

In shooting season they only travel on Sundays, I observe. We lived at Tunbridge almost entirely with the F. Levesons. I had a great idea that I should dislike her, which was a mistake, and if I were given to engouements, I should suppose I were suffering under one now for her, only it came very gradually, which is not the case with that complaint, I believe. First a decrease of dislike, and then not caring whether she were in the room or not, and then a willingness to walk towards her house, and then an impossibility to walk in any other direction.

The last fortnight we had the de Roos’s, who dined with the F. Levesons’s as often as we did, or else we all dined with the Peels;²²⁰ and if we dined early, we rode after dinner and met again for tea. I can ride four hours at a time now without the least fatigue and walk in proportion. I like the Peels too, only I wish Lady Jane would bind him apprentice to a tinker, or a shoemaker, or to anybody who would make him work, as he seems to have an objection to the liberal professions. From mere want of employment, he has fancied himself into bad health, and does nothing but hold a smelling-bottle to his nose all day, even at dinner. How it would annoy me if I were his wife! – because he has talents enough, and can be pleasant when he is roused. I cannot think how any clever man who has not estate enough to find his property an occupation, can consent to be thrown by his own choice out of all professions. I should be a lawyer to-morrow if I were Lawrence Peel, or a lawyer’s wife if I were Lady Jane. She might persuade him into it I am sure, if she would try, and it would be so much better economy than consulting Doctor Mayo three times a day, which he does sometimes.

There is nobody here but Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, and Mr. Newton the painter, and one of the sons of the house. This is such a delicious house now it is finished, and heaps of new books and good pictures.

I intend to make much of a friendship with Newton. Mr. Baring tells me he has seen a great deal of you, which is an additional reason why I should make his acquaintance. He seems to me clever and paradoxical and a little Yankeeish and perhaps conceited, but that picture of Macheath²²¹ is a great set off against any faults he may have. It is impossible, too, that I can know anything about him, as I only saw him for five minutes at the other end of the breakfast-table; but I like to state my first impressions. They are invariably wrong, and now I know that, they are just as good as if they were right, I may believe with much assurance the contrary of what I think.

Is your brother George in town? And did I fancy, or could he have told me that I might enclose to him at the Custom House a parcel above the usual weight. I want to send to my sister-in-law some interesting little caps I have been making which will not be much above weight. Your most affectionate

E. E.

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers

HERTINGFORDBURY,

Monday, September, 1826.

MY DEAREST THERESA, Your account of yourself pleases me, partly because it is evident the proper remedy for your illness has been found out, and also because you write so much more legibly, which is a good sign…

I do not know what state of appetite you are in or how much you eat, but could not you live lower, and so require fewer leeches? Give up that egg you mix so neatly with your tea and put on the leeches less.

You ask if I care about the present state of politics? Why, dear child, I never cared for anything half so much in my life, – almost to the pass of being sorry I am out of town this week. I am trying to subside, simply because I do not think any of our people will get anything in the scramble; but still it is amusing to see such a mess as all the other side is in, and any change must be for the better, you know we think…

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1

Life and Letters of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon. by Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.

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2

William and his seven brothers and three sisters, were brought up by their mother, his father having died when he was only eleven years of age. (Lady Eden was the daughter of W. Davison of Beamish Park, Durham.)

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3

Sir Gilbert Elliot (1751-1814). In 1806 he was appointed Governor-General of India, and created Earl of Minto in 1813.

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4

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart. (1806-1863), of Harpton Court, Radnorshire. On his father’s death in 1855 he succeeded to the baronetcy; he became Chancellor of the Exchequer the same year, Home Secretary in 1859, and Secretary for War in 1861.

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5

A full account of this time is given in Life and Death of Lord Edward FitzGerald, by Thomas Moore, also in Edward and Pamela FitzGerald, by Gerald Campbell.

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6

Hon. Eleanor Eden, married in 1799 Lord Hobart (Earl of Buckinghamshire). He died in 1816; she was generally known as Lady Bucks.

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7

Anne Isabella, daughter of Sir R. Milbanke Noel, married Lord Byron, January 2, 1815. He had proposed to her and been refused in 1812.

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8

Miss Eden’s sister, who married Charles Drummond the banker in 1819.

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9

Nicholas Vansittart (1766-1851), Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1812; he was created Baron Bexley in 1823; he had married Miss Eden’s sister, who died in 1810.

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10

Miss Eden’s brother, Lord Auckland (the comical dog); he succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Auckland in 1814. He became President of the Board of Trade in 1830, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1834, Governor-General of India in 1835, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1840.

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11

By Claude de Ruthière.

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12

Daughter of Robert, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire; she married, Sept. 1, 1814, Frederick John Robinson, second son of Thomas, Lord Grantham. Created Viscount Goderich in 1827. He became Prime Minister after Canning’s death.

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13

Her father, who died May 28, 1814.

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14

Her sister, Charlotte Eden, married Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne in 1800.

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15

George, subsequently 8th Duke of Leeds.

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16

Daughter of 3rd Lord Bessborough, married W. Lamb (Viscount Melbourne) in 1805, and finally separated from him in 1825. She died in 1828.

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17

Near Dorchester, belonging to Lord Ilchester.

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18

In Berkshire, belonging to Colonel Arthur Vansittart, who married Caroline Eden.

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19

Miss Eden’s brother.

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20

Count Meerveldt was the Austrian Ambassador; he died the following year.

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21

Widow of Spencer Percival, who was assassinated in 1812; she married, secondly, Mr. Carr (Lieut. – Col. Sir H. Carr).

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22

Lady Elizabeth Fox-Strangways, widow of Mr. Talbot of Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire, married, secondly, in 1804, Captain Feilding, R.N., afterwards Rear-Admiral.

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23

Amelia, daughter of Viscount Melbourne, married in 1805 5th Earl of Cowper.

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24

Lady Sarah Fane, daughter of 10th Earl of Westmoreland, married in 1804 5th Earl of Jersey.

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25

Lady Louisa Fox-Strangways married in 1808 Henry, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne.

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26

Lady Louisa Fitzmaurice.

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27

Earl of Kerry, aged three.

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28

Caroline married in 1831 3rd Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe, and Horatia married in 1850 Mr. T. Gaisford.

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29

A Treaty of Peace was signed at Ghent between England and the United States on December 24, 1814.

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30

A great friend of Lord and Lady Holland, born in 1764.

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31

Sir George Onesiphorus Paul (1746-1820). “One of the prettiest places” was Hill House, Woodchester, Gloucestershire.

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32

Juliana, daughter of the Hon. and Rev. W. Digby, Dean of Durham.

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33

Charles Hanbury, a diplomatist and writer; he took the name of Williams in 1729. He was knighted in 1744.

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34

Lady Susan Fox-Strangways married Mr. O’Brien, a handsome young actor, in 1764.

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35

Miss Eden’s sister Mary, aged twenty-two, and her brother Lord Auckland, were staying at Melbury, Dorchester, with Lord Ilchester.

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36

Lady Theresa Strangways, married in 1837 9th Lord Digby.

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37

Miss Grant, Lady Ilchester’s mother.

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38

Miss Eden’s nephew, aged ten.

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39

Sir G. Paul was only sixty-eight years old.

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40

Morton and Bob, Miss Eden’s two brothers.

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41

Lord Auckland was auditor of Greenwich Hospital.

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42

Dropmore belonged to William Wyndham, Lord Grenville.

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43

The Corn Law of 1815 which closed the ports to the importation of foreign grain till the prices reached eighty shillings a quarter.

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44

Miss Eden’s brother-in-law.

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45

The battle of Waterloo had been fought on the 18th June.

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46

Magdalene, daughter of Sir J. Hall, Bart., married Sir William Howe Delancey, K.C.B., in March or April 1815. He was mortally wounded at Waterloo.

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47

William, 15th Earl of Erroll.

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48

George Elliot, son of the first Earl of Minto; married in 1810 Eliza Cecilia, daughter of James Ness of Osgodby, York. He commanded the Chinese Expedition in 1840.

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49

This was a party badge.

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50

Thomas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, married, 1807, Jean, daughter of James Wedderburn Colvile. He was Lady Delancey’s uncle.

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51

Sir William Delancey died in a cottage in the village of Mont St. Jean a week after he was wounded. His wife wrote a description of his death, which was published in 1906: A Week at Waterloo in 1815, edited by Major B. R. Ward.

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52

Lady Louisa Fitzmaurice, married in 1845 Hon. James Kenneth Howard.

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53

The Austrian Ambassador died on July 4.

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54

Lady Delancey married, secondly, in 1819, Captain H. Harvey.

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55

Thomas Heaphy, 1775-1835. He painted on the spot Wellington and his officers before an action in the Peninsular War.

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56

Lady Katherine Douglas, sister of Lord Selkirk, married in July 1815 John Halkett, Governor of the Bahamas.

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57

The tutor.

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58

Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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59

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister. He married Louisa Theodosia, daughter of the Bishop of Derry (Earl of Bristol).

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60

Lady Sarah Robinson, Lady Buckinghamshire’s step-daughter.

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61

Miss Eden’s sister, Mrs. Colvile.

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62

Anne Isabella, only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke Noel, Bart. Married, January 2, 1810, Lord Byron. They had one daughter, Ada Augusta, born December 10, 1815, married in 1835 to William, Earl of Lovelace.

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63

Eastcombe, Charlton, Kent (Lady Buckinghamshire’s house).

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64

Hon. Charlotte Eden, married in 1800 Lord Frances Godolphin Osborne; created Baron Godolphin in 1832.

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65

Lady Henrietta Cole, married in 1805 Thomas Philip, 3rd Lord Grantham; the Granthams had a house at Putney.

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66

Newby Hall, near Ripon, belonging to Lord Grantham.

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67

John, Viscount Sydney, married in 1832 Lady E. Paget.

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68

Lady Grantham’s niece.

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69

Lady Bucks was staying with her niece, Lady Francis Osborne.

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70

The daughters of George Markham, Dean of York.

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71

James Robert Graham, who became Sir J. Graham, Bart., of Netherby, in 1824.

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72

Studley Royal, Ripon.

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73

Lord Grantham’s elder daughter, married in 1833 Lord Fordwich (6th Earl Cowper).

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74

Frederick William Robinson, born 1810, and died aged twenty-one.

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75

Mary Robinson, married Henry Vyner in 1832.

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76

Anne, daughter of Richard Huck Saunders, wife of 2nd Viscount Melville.

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77

Sir Samuel Romilly, Solicitor-General, committed suicide on November 2, 1818, shortly after the death of his wife. According to Lord Lansdowne, “He was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself. When he lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up.”

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78

Charles Feilding, son of Commodore Charles Feilding, married in 1804 Elizabeth, daughter of 2nd Earl of Ilchester and widow of William Talbot of Lacock Abbey.

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79

John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton. He lost this election.

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80

Hon. George Lamb was standing for Westminster. He was a brother of Lord Melbourne.

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81

Mr. James Graham stood as a Whig for Hull and was successful at the General Election of 1818.

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82

Sons of Henry, 2nd Earl of Harewood.

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83

Brother of the 1st Earl Brownlow.

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84

Anne, Baroness Lucas (Lady Cowper). Mary, married in 1832 Henry Vyner. Frederick William Robinson, born 1810; died in 1831. Lady Grantham had a daughter in October 1816, probably Amabel, who died in 1827.

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85

Isabella, daughter of 4th Viscount Torrington, married, 1794, 2nd Marquess of Bath.

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86

Her eldest son. He married in 1820 Miss Harriet Robins.

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87

Lady Elizabeth Thynne, married in 1816 John Frederick Campbell (Earl Cawdor).

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88

Lady Louisa Thynne, married in 1823 Henry, 3rd Earl of Harewood.

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89

Third Earl of Ilchester, married in 1812 Caroline, daughter of Lord George Murray. She died January 8, 1819, leaving four children.

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90

Pamela FitzGerald, daughter of Lord and Lady Edward FitzGerald.

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91

Lady Sophia FitzGerald, born in 1762.

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92

Lucy FitzGerald, her sister.

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93

Edward FitzGerald, her brother. He married in 1827 Jane, daughter of Sir John Dean Paul, Bart.

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94

Right Hon. William Peel; married Jane, daughter of 2nd Earl Mountcashell, in 1819.

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95

Elizabeth FitzClarence, sister of 1st Earl of Munster. She married in 1820 the 16th Earl of Erroll.

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96

Daughter of William Bingham, Senator of the United States. She married Mr. Alexander Baring, who went to Paris in 1815, and there financed a loan with France, making his own fortune and also that of the Baring House.

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97

Mr. Colvile, Miss Eden’s brother-in-law, lived at Langley.

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98

Lady Sophia FitzGerald.

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99

Lord Auckland.

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100

Lord Henry FitzGerald married in 1791 Charlotte, Baroness de Roos.

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101

Susan, daughter of 1st Marquess of Stafford; married in 1795 1st Earl of Harrowby.

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102

Lady Harrowby’s daughter, who married Viscount Ebrington in 1817.

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103

Daughters of the last Earl of Bellamont.

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104

William, 3rd Earl of Mansfield, married in 1797 Frederica, daughter of Dr. Markham, Archbishop of York.

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105

William Stewart Rose, author of A History of the Late War.

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106

Her sister.

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107

Lord Cahir, created Earl of Glengall in 1816; he died in 1819.

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108

Hannah More (1745-1833), writer of many religious works.

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109

Peterloo; an open-air meeting held in St. Peter’s Fields at Manchester by Mr. Hunt.

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110

Lord Eldon.

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111

Required in the proceedings for the repeal in 1819 of the attainder of her father, Lord Edward FitzGerald.

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112

Belonging to Colonel Vansittart, who married Caroline Eden. They had thirteen children or more.

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113

Miss Eden’s cook.

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114

Second husband of the Duchess of Leinster.

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115

Colonel Edward Drummond.

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116

Lady Louisa Fox-Strangways, daughter of Lord Ilchester.

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117

Lord Lansdowne.

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118

Lady Lansdowne.

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119

Lord Kerry, aged eight.

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120

Pierre Louis Dumont began life as a Swiss clergyman. He was invited to England as tutor to the sons of Lord Shelburne, afterwards 1st Marquess of Lansdowne.

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121

Elizabeth Vassall, a Jamaica heiress, married first Sir Godfrey Webster, who divorced her, and, secondly, Henry, 3rd Baron Holland.

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122

Georgiana, daughter of the Duke of Gordon, married John, 6th Duke of Bedford.

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123

James Abercromby, M.P. for Calne; he was Speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839, when he was created Lord Dunfermline.

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124

George the Third died January 29, 1820.

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125

Lucy FitzGerald, her sister.

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126

Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire.

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127

Middleton Park, belonging to Lord Jersey.

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128

Lady Lansdowne’s half-brother (4th Earl of Ilchester).

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129

Giles Digby Robert Fox-Strangways, born in 1798.

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130

Lady Grantham.

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131

Thomas Matthews the actor.

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132

Mrs. Drummond’s daughter, Theresa, was born May 5, 1820.

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133

Lady Mary FitzGerald was Pamela’s first cousin; she married Sir Charles Ross in 1799.

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134

Only daughter of the Hon. George Villiers, son of the 1st Earl of Clarendon. Her mother was Maria Theresa Parker, daughter of the 1st Lord Boringdon. Miss Villiers was six years younger than Miss Eden.

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135

Near Watford, belonging to Lord Clarendon.

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136

Lord Grantham’s house in Lincolnshire.

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137

Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, daughter of Lord Westmoreland, married in 1804 5th Earl of Jersey.

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138

The Duchess of York died August 6, 1820.

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139

Lady Harriet Cavendish, married in 1809 Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville.

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140

Lady Elizabeth Thynne married in 1816 Lord Cawdor. They had seven children.

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141

Major-General Sir Guy Campbell, Bart. He married in 1817 Frances Burgoyne, who died the following year when her child Fanny was born.

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142

Right Hon. Hugh Elliot, Governor of Madras in 1814 to 1820, brother of the 1st Earl of Minto, Governor-General of India.

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143

Second Marquess of Bute, married, 1818, Maria, daughter of 3rd Earl of Guildford.

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144

Lord Bute’s home.

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145

Her maid.

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146

Sir Gregory Way, Deputy Adjutant-General in N.B.

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147

Miss Christina Campbell, aged seventy-five.

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148

Miss Eden’s doctor.

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149

Caroline, married, 1831, 3rd Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe. Horatia, married, 1850, T. Gaisford.

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150

Lady Elizabeth Feilding.

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151

Private Secretary to Sir Robert Peel.

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152

Lady Jane Paget’s engagement to Mr. Ball was broken off.

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153

The 3rd Duke of Leinster.

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154

Lady Mary FitzGerald, married in 1799 Sir Charles Ross.

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155

Cecilia, daughter of 2nd Duke of Leinster, married Thomas, 3rd Baron Foley.

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156

Hon. William de Roos.

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157

Lady Charlotte FitzGerald, married in 1789 Joseph Strutt, M.P.

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158

The Coronation of George IV., July 19, 1821.

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159

Lord Leitrim’s daughters.

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160

Daughters of Joseph Strutt of Terling.

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161

Robert Eden, Miss Eden’s brother.

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162

For the death of Queen Caroline on August 7, 1821.

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163

Georgiana, daughter of 4th Duke of Gordon, married in 1803 John, 6th Duke of Bedford.

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164

Lady Maria Fane married Lord Duncannon, 1805, sister to Lady Jersey.

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165

Daughter of Lord W. Russell.

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166

He was then sixty-five.

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167

Pamela, Lady Edward FitzGerald.

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168

Daughter of 9th Earl of Kinnoull, married Henry Drummond of Albury Park.

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169

Lady Campbell’s son Edward was born October 25, 1822.

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170

Lady Worcester died May 11, 1821. Lord Worcester married, secondly, June 29, 1822, Emily, daughter of Charles Culling Smith.

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171

He was the son of Charles Wall, who had married Miss Harriet Baring in 1790.

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172

Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, built by William Beckford.

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173

Ferdinand VII. of Spain.

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174

Mrs. Colvile had seventeen children.

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175

Her daughter Pamela.

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176

Daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl Bathurst.

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177

Daughter of the Hon. George Napier.

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178

Lady Emily Hobart, married in 1794 Viscount Castlereagh. He committed suicide, August 12, 1822, at his house, North Cray, in Kent.

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179

Hon. and Rev. Gerald Wellesley, Prebendary of Durham, brother of 1st Duke of Wellington.

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180

Georgina married in 1827 Rev. G. Darby St. Quintin.

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181

Mary married in 1836 Henry, 4th Earl Cadogan.

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182

Sir William Parry, the Arctic explorer.

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183

Lady Sarah Robinson (Lady Goderich).

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184

Children of Thomas Adderley; his widow married Lord Hobart in 1792. They had one daughter, Sarah, who married Mr. Robinson. Lady Hobart died in 1796. Lord Hobart married secondly Eleanor Eden, in 1799, and became Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1804.

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185

Miss Eden’s brother, Rector of Eyam in Derbyshire.

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186

Hon. William de Roos married, June 7, Lady Georgina Lennox.

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187

Lord Henry FitzGerald.

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188

William Hayley. His Memoirs were published in 1823.

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189

Married in 1832 Lord Howick.

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190

Eleanor died, aged sixteen, in November 1824.

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191

Lady Mary Osborne, daughter of 5th Duke of Leeds, married Thomas, 2nd Earl of Chichester, 1801.

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192

George Godolphin Osborne (8th Duke of Leeds), married, 1824, Harriet Stewart.

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193

Miss St. Jules, married, 1809, Hon. G. Lamb.

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194

William Spencer, 6th Duke of Devonshire.

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195

Lord Henry Frederick Thynne, afterwards 3rd Marquess of Bath, married, 1830, Harriet, daughter of 1st Lord Ashburton.

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196

Lieut. – Col. Richard Pepper Arden (Lord Alvanley).

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197

Mr. Baring Wall of Norman Court.

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198

Henry Eden (Admiral) married in 1849 Elizabeth, daughter of Hon. George Beresford.

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199

Sir J. Copley and Miss Copley.

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200

Rev. Robert Eden, married in September Mary Hurt of Alderwasley, Derbyshire.

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201

Lady Francis Osborne (Miss Eden’s sister).

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202

Charlotte Godolphin Osborne, married in 1829 Sir Theodore Brinkman.

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203

Miss Eden’s brother-in-law, Nicholas Vansittart. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1812-23, and was made Lord Bexley when he went out of office.

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204

Near Hertford.

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205

George Russell, son of Lord W. Russell, died September 15, 1825.

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206

Elizabeth, married, 1829, Lord Wriothesley Russell.

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207

Henry Greville, born 1801, son of Lady Charlotte and Charles Greville.

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208

Daughter of Lord Forester, married in 1830 General the Hon. George Anson.

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209

Miss Eden’s visit to Bowood.

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210

Pamela, aged five. She married Rev. Charles Stanford in 1841.

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211

The Hon. William FitzGerald de Roos.

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212

“Two letters on Scottish affairs from Edward Bradwardine Waverley, Esq., to Malachi Malagrowther, Esq.” They were written by Scott. John Wilson Croker’s reply appeared in the Courier newspaper.

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213

Right Hon. F. J. Robinson, Chancellor of the Exchequer from January 1823 to April 1827.

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214

George Welbore Agar-Ellis, created Baron Dover in 1831.

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215

Lady Charlotte Cavendish Bentinck married Charles Greville.

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216

William Arden, 2nd Baron Alvanley, born 1789, died unmarried in 1849.

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217

Francis Leveson-Gower, son of the 1st Duke of Sutherland. Later he inherited property from the last Duke of Bridgewater and became known as Francis Egerton. He married Harriet, daughter of Charles Greville in 1822. In 1846 he was created Earl of Ellesmere.

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218

The Tide-waiters waited for ships coming in on the flood-tides to collect duties.

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219

The Grange, Alresford, Hampshire, belonged to Mr. Alexander Baring.

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220

Lawrence Peel, married, 1822, Lady Jane Lennox, sister of Lady Georgina de Roos.

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221

“Captain Macheath” was bought by Lord Lansdowne for 500 guineas.

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