Miss Eden's Letters Part 15

I doubt if the Chancellor[222] is safely out yet. He writes such characteristic letters to an old sister-in-law of his who lives in this village, talking of his release from fatigues that were too much for him, and rest for his few remaining days, etc.

We dined at Panshanger yesterday. Lady Cowper[223] is miserable at being out of all the ferment of London. She is a Whig only by marriage, I suspect, and a regular courtier at heart, but talks bravely just now, with only occasional regrets that the Duke of Wellington should have been so _ill-advised_....

I saw Lady Ouseley yesterday and she is quite aware how ill you have been, and that you could not write to her. I never can give my mind to her conversation, but she looked very melancholy, and yet I cannot recollect that she mentioned any misfortune except that Sir Gore[224]

had the rheumatism. Janie looked to me like a standing misfortune. She is so very plain, and she does not pay the slightest attention to her poor melancholy mother.

I am glad you are reading those books. To be sure, you are reading Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ only now. I knew that, the _Memoires de Retz_, Shakespeare, and a great part of the Bible, almost by heart before I was eleven years old; so then there was not a thought left for me to think upon manners, men, imagination, or morals. Everything is in those books. On scientific subjects I never could understand other people's thoughts, and am guiltless of having had one of my own even on the simplest question. My sentiment, later in life, I took by the lump, in absolute cwts. out of _Corinne_[225] and Lord Byron's Poems, and so, as I said before, I have never had a thought of my own and I do not believe any of us can, in the way we are all educated; and I suppose it is lucky, as they would be foolish thoughts probably if they came.

G.o.d bless you, dear, and go on getting better. Your ever affectionate

E. E.

_Miss Eden to Miss Villiers._

BOWOOD, _September_ 24, 1826.

MY DEAR THERESA, I am in such a bad mood for writing, that I could not set about it with a worse grace, only you will not write to me if I do not write to you.

I am devoted to the arts just now, and to the improvement of my small mind, which I have brought to a high state of cultivation by studying fifteen books at a time, some of them amazingly abstruse, such as the _Life of James Mackoul the Housebreaker_--very improving. Also I have finished my Denham's _Travels_, and the _Life of Professor Clarke_ and _Les Barricades_,[226] a diluted sort of history, partly history and partly dialogue, which Lord Lansdowne likes because it is the fas.h.i.+on at Paris, but it is uncommonly stupid. And I have been dipping into Pothier's _Histoire de l'Eglise_,--and in short, if we stay here a week there is no saying how much I shall read, or how little I shall remember.

Think of the agonies of coming here last Monday doubtful if we were expected or not! _Il Fanatico per la Musica_ (by which form of words I opine that the Italians translate: Lord Lansdowne) pa.s.sed last week at the Gloucester music meeting, so he did not receive George's letter in proper time, and of course there was some mistake about his answer, as there always is about any letter that signifies, and so we did not know if this week suited them. A warm reception from her is in the best of times doubtful, and arriving against her wish would have been horribly degrading. George never will enter into those sort of feelings, but that only makes them worse. However, he promised, if he found we had not been expected, to go on to Bath, and then we had a beautiful wild scheme, if I could have made my mind up to twelve hours' steam-boat, of going from Bristol to see Elizabeth Cawdor.[227] But unfortunately we found our rooms here all ready, so we shall not see Wales this year. The Lansdownes were quite alone, expecting us, and she in the most cordial affectionate state; the place, which I have never seen but at Christmas, quite beautiful, and in short, I never liked Bowood half so much before.

That was sure to be the consequence of expecting to dislike it.

Our Newton we have overtaken here again. He left the Grange rather in a huff some days ago, affronted somehow about his singing (at least so I heard, for I was not in the room to hear it); but he went away suddenly and ungraciously. I certainly don't like him, he is so argumentative, and talks so much of himself. His opinion of your brother George amused me particularly. He raves about you, but sensibly and properly, and calls you Miss Villiers. I have not a notion what line you take when you praise me, but he will distrust your judgment in future whatever you said, for he is one of the people to whom I must be odious. I go and look at his picture of "Macheath," which is in the drawing-room here, and which I think one of the best modern pictures I know, and collect a large ma.s.s of esteem and admiration for the painter, and rush into the library and address myself to him while it is all smoking hot; and before I have been five minutes there, all my good opinion turns sour and bitter and tough and cold, and he might just as well never have painted the picture at all.

Moore[228] has been here the last three days, singing like a little angel. He has some new songs that make one perfectly and comfortably miserable, particularly one, set to a very very simple air, and with a constant return of the words, "They are gone," etc. He was singing it here on Friday, and there was a huge party of neighbours, amongst others a very vulgar bride who is partly a Portuguese, but chiefly a thorough vulgar Englishwoman, calls Lord Lansdowne "Marquis" when she speaks to him, and turns to Lady Lansdowne all of a sudden with "Law, how 'andsome you look." Just as Moore had finished this, and we were most of us in tears, she put her great fat hand on his arm and said, "And pray, Mr.

Moore, can you sing Cherry Ripe?" George and I, who were sitting the other side of him, burst out laughing, and so Moore was obliged to make a good story out of it afterwards; else he owns he was so angry he meant to have sunk it altogether. Your ever affectionate

E. EDEN.

_Miss Eden to Miss Villiers._

EASTCOMBE, _October_ 1826.

MY DEAR THERESA, I must be come to my second childishness and mere oblivion, for I cannot recollect whether I have answered the letter you wrote to me at Shottesbrook, and which followed me here, or not. If I have written, you had better put this in the fire, because it must be the same thing over again. One thing I know: That I have written above _twenty_ letters since I came here. My family are all dispersed, and I have unwisely enlarged my list of friends, and my acquaintances have been uncommonly troublesome; and in short, I have been ill-used in the article of letter writing.

I have such miserable letters from my poor dear Pamela. It breaks one's heart to read them, and yet she is very good. She wrote to tell me of Lucy's death _immediately_ after it occurred, and wrote in the greatest agony, but even then resigned, at least trying to be so, and thinking much of the life of trouble which poor Lucy would have had before her.

Pamela said, "Think of her Aunt, think of her poor husband, think of all but _her_, for she was miserable and it was in mercy that G.o.d took her."

And I believe her death to have been in fact occasioned by the state of excitement and anxiety in which she had lived since her marriage; and she had little chance, with her strong feelings and the peculiar circ.u.mstances of her situation, of anything but an increase of anxiety.

Pamela writes me word to-day that her four servants--all she keeps--are in the scarlet fever, and her eldest little girl had just begun with it, and she has had, ever since Lucy's death, a sort of nervous pain in her throat that prevents her swallowing anything but liquids, and is grown very weak. I am telling you a long story, but I think you are interested about her, and it is such a melancholy situation that I can think of nothing else. To be sure, I have, as it is, a great many more blessings than I deserve; but it is hard that the want of a little foolish money should keep me from the best friend I have in the world at the only time in which I could be of use to her. However, if it had been possible, George would have taken me to her, and there is no use in murmuring at impossibilities. G.o.d knows I can enter into her feelings as a sister; and now that she has so much sickness in her home, it is cruel to leave her with a half-broken heart to struggle through it by herself.

And yet I do not see how it is to be managed. Pamela writes but little of the scenes she has been through. She says she cannot endure to express her feelings in writing, though she thinks she would be better if she could talk it over.

Captain Lyon was coming home in January, but perhaps this will prevent him. Poor creature! What an arrival it will be if he has set off before this news reaches him.

You are quite right. I followed you in Berks.h.i.+re, and next week I am going to Robert. It is doubtful whether his child[229] will live, and Mrs. Eden has hardly been allowed to see it; but she wrote yesterday in the greatest spirits saying there had been a great change for the better, and the baby was then in her room; so I trust now it must be thought out of danger. What a horrid piece of work a lying-in is! I am more and more confirmed in the idea that a life of single blessedness is the wisest, even accompanied, as Shakespeare mentions, by the necessity of chanting faint hymns to the cold lifeless moon, which, as I have no voice, rather discomposes me. I shall astonish the moon, poor fellow, when I set off, but as for going through all my sister-in-law has done this fortnight, I could not, and would not, for all the Roberts in creation.

I cannot come to Knightsbridge just now, I am sorry to say. It is highly flattering, my sisters are all fighting for me, and with a very superior cool air I allow them to divide me.

I will not say anything about Sarah; she is too bad, if she knows what she is about. Poor Mr. Robinson was summoned back from Wrest[230]

yesterday, where he had been amusing himself three days. She sent him word she was dying, and when he arrived in the greatest haste yesterday, she was gone out airing. He was very cross, but too late. It relieves Sister from a very fatiguing attendance, and that is all the good I know.

I shall probably have to unsay all I have said of Newton, for George has discovered he thinks him pleasant, which is an unexpected blow. Do not twit me with inconstancy if I say so too. Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.

[Lady Sarah Robinson was the daughter of Robert, 4th Earl of Buckinghams.h.i.+re. Her mother died in 1796. Three years later her father married Eleanor Eden, who proved to be a good, hard-working stepmother; Lady Sarah gave her constant employment in that capacity even after her marriage to Mr. Robinson in 1814.

Lady Bucks saw that her stepdaughter was comfortably provided with clothes. Amongst other items in her trousseau, were "five beautiful sattin gowns all covered with lace, and twelve high gowns all covered with lace, and nineteen more low gowns all covered with lace--thirty-six in all."

Lady Sarah had one daughter Elinor, who, seeing the discomfort her mother underwent before the birth of one of her children, said she was "determined to have all her children before she married, and enjoy herself afterwards." Elinor died, aged eleven, in 1826. A year later her only son was born, George Frederick Samuel, who succeeded his father as Earl of Ripon in 1859, and was created Marquess of Ripon in 1871.

Lady Sarah was highly nervous and hysterical, and a constant source of amus.e.m.e.nt and irritation to her relations and friends. Her husband resigned after he had been Premier for five months, stating that his wife's health would no longer allow him to remain in office.]

_Miss Eden to Miss Villiers._

EASTCOMBE, _Sunday, 1 o'clock, October 30, 1826._

DEAR THERESA, I am sorry you had the trouble of sending for me yesterday, for Mary Drummond settled when I arrived that my remaining here would allow her to go home to her children, so she went home after dinner last night and I sent up to London for my things and all here was in such confusion, and there was so much to write that I could not write to you. The poor child[231] is still alive, and yesterday afternoon we had all talked ourselves into spirits about her, though Warren and West[232] continue to repeat that they cannot allow the slightest _expectation_ of her recovery to be entertained. Since that, my sister's maid writes me word this morning that she has had a most wretched night, constantly screaming and groaning without one moment's quiet, and that the attendants all thought her very much worse, but that Warren did not think her materially so, as they did.

Think what it must be to witness. Sister has not been out of the room since seven yesterday morning, and with the exception of Tuesday night has sat up seven nights. She sees no one, but I had a composed letter from her last night. Sarah sat up on Friday, and from fatigue and anxiety gave way yesterday morning entirely, and had several fainting fits. n.o.body can tell what he goes through, and he is, I think, as nearly angelic in his feelings and conduct as it is possible for man to be. The doctors speak of him with tears in their eyes. f.a.n.n.y and I are going to walk there now and may perhaps see him, but at all events some of the doctors. You have no idea what it is the waiting here, expecting every hour to have directions to have this house prepared to receive them. They will all come here as soon as it is over. Yours affectionately

E. E.

_Lord Auckland to Miss Eden._

LONDON, _October 30, 1826_.

I have not been able to hear anything about you to-day, and am almost fearful I shall go out of town without doing so. At all events direct to me at Pixton, Dulverton. Your last note was far more cheerful, but yet it is a frightful and wretched state of things.[233] I saw Mrs. Villiers yesterday, and Newton to-day; he is putting Theresa's monkey into one of his pictures, and goes to Knightsbridge to draw him. She seems to be ill.

_November 21, 1826._

I saw your de Roos yesterday, and he begged me to tell you that Sir Guy Campbell has an appointment in Ireland which will put him and Pam more at their ease--600 a year. It is very satisfactory.

Little Macdonald is going to be married to an Irish widow, an old acquaintance and attachment with a very small jointure. He is going over to be married, and returns to attend the January Sessions. John Murray, too (you may remember him at Edinbro'), is going to be married. He was on his way to Bowood, and pa.s.sed a week at Sydney Smith's on his road, who had to meet him a fat Yorks.h.i.+re lady of forty, with 60,000, and rather blue. Just the thing for him, and it was all arranged, and Sydney Smith is delighted, and expects visits from Scotchmen without end.

Lansdowne is in town, but she is not, and the Lambs are here, and the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re,[234] who says he is too poor after Russia to go to Chatsworth. But he has a cloak of black Fox worth 500 and is happy.

_Miss Eden to Miss Villiers._

EASTCOMBE, _Tuesday night, November 1826._

DEAREST THERESA, You will have heard before this that all is over. I could not write sooner, and I knew you would hear. To the last the poor dear child's sufferings were dreadful, and she never had one moment's consciousness....