Miss Eden's Letters Part 11

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 brodee handkerchief appeared, with Harriet embroidered in the corner, and as she lived with Lady H.

Drummond[168] perhaps the House of Drummond might wish to make reclamation.... Your own

PAMELA.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

[17 CADOGAN TERRACE,]

_September 16, 1822_.

MY OWN EMILY, Here have I been settling myself to my infinite satisfaction, after having endured the ordeal of France which I went through. Where are you? What are you doing? Remember I have bespoke you, October I expect to lay my egg.[169] If you are within reach--oh, it will be such a comfort to me, I positively thirst to have a talk with you. I am so happy to be in England. Better to live on a crust or a crumb, which is not half so good in England, than upon penny rolls in France.

I understand Lord Worcester[170] is already so bored with his bargain that he is to be pitied according to the good-nature of the world for anything that is pa.s.sing wrong. It is sad that for the morality of the world, people will not be convinced that illegality and sin are not free from bore and ennui....

Tell me you are at hand or coming, for I downright long to see you, and in my _position_ you should not let me long, though it would be no great punishment to have a child like you. Sir Guy sends his particular love to you. Your own affectionate

OLD PAM.

_November 22, 1822._

Emily, these trembling lines, guided by a hand weakened by confinement, must speak daggers and penknives to you, for never having taken any written notice of me since you chucked me my child in at the window and went your way. As you come on Monday, I refer all to our meeting.

I want you shockingly.... Come to me soon, dear. Your affectionate

PAMELA.

_Lord Auckland to his sister, Miss Eden._

NORMAN COURT, _October 29_ [1822].

Thank you for your two letters which I would have answered sooner, but we shoot all day and are lazy all the evening.

I am not sure that you knew that Wall[171] had been ill and near losing the sight from one of his eyes. He is considerably better, and shoots as usual, and has no doubt of perfectly recovering.

My trip to Fonthill[172] was an amusing way of pa.s.sing a spare day, and has left a strong impression of the immeasurable folly with which money may be spent. The house is too absurd, but the grounds are beautiful.

Lansdowne has bought some pictures there which he was anxious for, as they belonged to his father. I have just heard from him. He is going for a few weeks to Paris, and like everybody else, is expecting you and me to pay him a good long visit at the end of the year. In his mild rational way he exceedingly regrets that the Cortes have not cut off the head of Ferdinand.[173]

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

[1822.]

MY DARLING EM, Your letter has revived me, for I was smothered with Fog and so obfuscated I found myself growing callous of the density of the gloom, and my perception of my own dirt and my neighbour's grimness was diminishing. I was getting hardened, when your letter and a gleam of dingy yellow sun showed me the state of myself and the children, and I went up and washed myself and repented of my filth. The fog prevented Mrs. Colvile coming, which is provoking. I wanted to show her my boy; she has put so many of them together, she has an experienced eye on the subject[174]....

The Ladies Fitz-Patrick, old Mrs. Smith, etc., are cooking up a match between Vernon Smith and Mary Wilson, old Lord Ossory's natural daughter with much money.

Emily does it strike you that vices are wonderfully prolific among the Whigs? There are such countless illegitimates among them, such a tribe of Children of the Mist.... Your own

PAM.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

_January 6, 1823._ _Twelfth Night or what you will._

MY DARLING EMMY, Thank G.o.d you have written at last, I have worked myself into a fright this day or two that you were very ill. I have been very poorly, but am better. You are mistaken about that sucking lump being a favourite. I esteem him; he is a man of strict probity and integrity with steady principles, and he is a man would make any reasonable woman very happy in domestic life; but there is a refinement and charm in that Cain that makes a fool of me,--a great fool, for she[175] don't much care for me, and is radically vicious.

We have got a house between Reading and Basingstoke, a mile from Strathfieldsaye, at a village called Strathfield Turgess:--delightful prospect, well furnished, roomy, with Cow and poultry included, garden meadow, for 84 per annum.

Lady Louisa Lennox had rather taken my fancy, and that negative mind of being Anti-Bathurst is a jewel in their favour. Emily, to have it gravely told me Lady Georgina Bathurst[176] is a strong-headed woman, superior, with wonderful abilities, etc. _Cela m'irrite la bile_, when I know her to be prejudiced, worldly, entrenched by prejudices upon prejudice, till her very soul is straightened within the narrow limit of the Ministers, their wives, and her own family....

How is your Grantham? My Lansdowne is playing at _de pet.i.ts 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 quant.i.ties I cannot even tap in a letter, that I could talk out just in one 1/2 hour.

Louisa Napier[177] is with Lady Londonderry,[178] and the account I think very horrid. Every thing at Cray goes on the same, conversation, laughing, novels, light books, the attaches and habitues coming in, the very red boxes of office left in their places, not a shade of difference in her occupations, amus.e.m.e.nts or mode of life.

She seems as if determined there shall be no change. This may be fort.i.tude, to me it is frightful. That habits should be so cherished and so rooted as to withstand such a shock as the disappearance of the only object she is ever supposed to have loved by Death, and such a death, is wonderful, and not to be understood if it is upon principles so erroneous....

I dined with the Wellesleys yesterday. Mr. Wellesley[179] acknowledges having been distractedly in love with Sister, and was so pleased to see her at Hastings. He hopes you like the place. His son Arthur is such a cub, and thinks himself so very _every thing_, it made me quite low. Of the Wellesley girls, the top and bottom dish, or eldest and youngest, are of the specie Geese--the middle ones, Georgina[180] and Mary,[181]

are quite delightful, and very uncommon in their way.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

[STRATHFIELD TURGESS,]

_April 11, 1824_.

Thank you for your last letter, thank you for Lord Lansdowne's after laugh, but thank you above all, for being still my own Emmy just the same as ever. I suppose you are going to Captain Parry's[182] _fete_ on board the _Hecla_, announced in the newspaper. I think he might have asked me, and then I could have got over his ordering all this snow from Gunter's. However I think he has rather overdone it. I understand there is to be a whole course of Walrus.

I had a letter from Sister, written at Lady Sarah's[183] the day she left Strathfieldsaye. She is full of good, and agreeable; but yet, I never should be able to be quite friends with her. There is some gall about her which would always give me an afterthought, and keep me perhaps more on my guard with her than with many others who might betray me faster.

I wish you could have seen us all, we were so ill-sorted. As for poor Sister, among three Eton boys, one Oxford _merveilleux_, 2 silent girls, 1 military clergyman, 2 Colonels, some dancing country neighbours all wound up and going, I don't know how she survives. By the bye tell me what are a Mr. Adderley and a Miss Adderley[184] to her? Something? Lord Buckinghamshire's legitimates by a former marriage, or Sister's illegitimates, or both their children, or no children at all? I was asked and could not tell. Don't racket yourself to death. I, who no longer sit at good men's feasts, certainly may magnify the fatigue, but I am sure you do too much.

_May_, 1824.--There is some saying, Chinese I believe, about not letting gra.s.s 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_.