Miss Eden's Letters Part 9

[In October 1820 Emily Eden suddenly received from her friend Pamela in Scotland the news of her engagement to a widower with one child--Sir Guy Campbell, and a month later the wedding had taken place. Pamela, in her characteristic way, wrote and announced the event.]

Before you read thro' this letter call your maid, and get the smelling bottle, for you will certainly faint away with surprise and wonder. Who would have thought it! I don't believe it myself so I cannot expect you to believe it, but I am going to be married perfectly true in about a month or six weeks.

I am going to be married to Sir Guy Campbell[141].... What I would have given to have had you with me all this time, and at this moment, I miss you beyond expression. He is uncommonly right-headed, of course it follows he is liberal, _wide_-minded and indulgent, at the same time I see he can take violent dislikes, as you do at times, my best one. He is very tact to a degree, and that you know, Dearest, is a corner-stone in happiness, for there is no fitting two minds without it.

[On her wedding-day, November 20, Pamela wrote to say the Catholic priest had married them at half-past twelve, and that she was to be married again by the Presbyterian minister, and a long dinner was to be given for them in the evening for all the Family to contemplate her. A week later she wrote again to Miss Eden.]

Just like you, and quite tactful not to cool our affection for each other by sending me a wet blanket in the shape of a congratulation. I like Sir Guy more and more, he understands me so well, he knows my faults, which is a great relief, for I have no silent obliquity to smother, or no good behaviour to act up to more than is comfortable. He is doing a set of sketches of the Highlands for you, which I am sure you will like. However, tho' he is of a Highland family, let me take from your mind any impression that he is at all Scotch in obstinacy, cunning cheek-bones, or tw.a.n.g. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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, quant.i.ties of French-work to trim it, four yards of lace, a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs; and that touching Lord Lansdowne sent me a beautiful set of coral. She also sent me a white _gros de Naples_ gown.

In short, she has done it uncommon well, and I love her as much as I can, and who can do more?

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

_January 21, 1821._

Many many thanks, my Dearest, for your kind letter. We certainly do understand one another _extraordinair_ well, as they say in Scotland.

Your writing in London too is quite "from the depths I cried out."

Emily, there is a sympathy of bores between us. Sir Guy and I have regularly been put out of humour every morning by the new _Times_, and it will come all the way to Bute, though he has written to agents and bankers and offices to stop it. Like old Time and pleasant Time and Time-serving, there is no arresting it, and its disgusting pages meet my eye and try my temper without cessation. Send me down a little genuine essence of Whig when you have time occasionally. Sir Guy is no politician at all, only I in a quiet way insinuate sound principles into his mind. Not but what I think a military man should be without party, so that the doses I give are very mild. I go no further than just liberality, and now and then drawing him into some remarks on the malversations of ministers.

I enter into your dinner and house bothers.

I don't find that variety in the beef of to-morrow and the mutton of to-day, which the _Anti-Jacobin_ expatiates upon with such delight, and the joints diminish in sheep when we eat mutton. As for puddings, they are one and the same, and only one, and then when one has tortured one's brain and produced a dinner, and that it is eaten, my heart sinks at the prospect that to-morrow will again require its meal, _et les bras me tombent ..._.

Lord[143] and Lady Bute are coming here. We don't know them at all, but I suppose we shall see them, which is bore, for nothing is so tiresome as to be near neighbours with people one scarce knows. One has one foot in intimacy, and the other in formality, and it makes but a limping acquaintance. I don't think Lady Lansdowne has quite got over my not marrying her way; she covers it up very well, but you know how soon you and I can see through all that, and I know also that Sir Guy is not likely to overcome that feeling in her. He is not a party man, he is not scientific, and unless he likes people he is very shy, and I see they will never make it up. But I always thought marriage must disarrange many acquaintances. I don't regret acquaintances; even to have had variety of acquaintances is an advantage, for the reason which makes a public school an advantage to a boy; it widens the mind. But to go on through life with them is heartless and thankless too. I mean to save my time, and keep it all for those I like and love.... We have lovely warm spring weather here, always breakfast with the window open and getting away from the fires. I must say the climate far exceeded my expectations. The garden is covered with thick white patches of snow-drops in full bloom. Don't this make your mouth water, and your eyes too, you poor misery in your cold smoke?

Good-bye, Dearest, have you been drawing and what? I don't mean just now in London, but in your lucid intervals, and are you well?

So far London is a place that cures or kills. Your own

PAMELA.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

[MOUNT STUART,]

_February 28, 1821_.

Don't go out during this pestilential month of March, people may call it east wind and sharp, but it is neither more or less than a plague, that regularly blows thro' the Islands, and it is nonsense to brave it, just because it is not called pest, or yellow or scarlet, or pink fever, so don't go out.

I am spending a few days here at Mount Stuart,[144] and you may see that I am writing with strange paper and ink, and have but a distant bowing acquaintance with this fine clarified pen.

You are quite right, one is a better human creature, when one has seen a mountain and it does one good. I only wish I could see a mountain with you.

Your Feilding fuss is so described, that I laughed over it for an hour; my Dear, I see it, and enter into your quiescent feelings on the occasion; things settle themselves so well I wonder other people always, and we sometimes, give ourselves any trouble about anything.

This is a good enough house, but somehow they go out of the room and leave one, and yet one has not the comfort of feeling alone and easy, and I caught myself whispering and Lucy too; I can't account for it, except by the great family pictures, that are listening all round in scarlet cloaks, and white shoes, and red heels and coronets. Kitty[145]

is to be married to-day--plenty of love but little prospect of anything else. Her future income is rather in the line of a midshipman's allowance, _Nothing a day and find yourself_.

I hope you will taste this saying, for I am partial to it, it gives one a comfortable idea, that in these days, when the Whigs complain of Ministerial extravagance, the Navy establishment will escape censure.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

_March 3, 1821._

Much to say I can't pretend, but something to say I can always find when I write to you. We left Mount Stuart to-day. Sir Guy, Lucy and I delighted to be at home. Aunt rather missing the cookery dishes, claret, champagne, and a sound house.

My mind is grown much more easy since I have clearly ascertained, weighed, and measured that I don't like Lord Bute, and of course I have a whole apparatus of reasonable reasons, to support my dislike _envers et contre tout_. He is proud not in that complimentary sense. Some people use the word implying a dislike of dirty deeds and a love of n.o.ble 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 ma.n.u.script joke never occurred to her.

They never have anybody there, except now and then Mr. Moore, his man of business, who is in the _full_ sense of the word corpulent, red-faced, with a short leg with a steel yard to it, and a false tuft; and he is Colonel of the Yeomanry. But I like him for a wonderful rare quality in any Baillie, but above all in a Scotch Baillie; he is independent and no toad-eater. He found fault with his patron's potatoes at the grand table, with a whole row of silver plates dazing his eyne; and he as often as occasion occurs quietly contradicts him....

General Way[146] and his wife are to be at Mount Stuart next week. Sir Guy described General Way as an Adjutant-General, and a Methodist, which sounds such an odd mixture,--true Church Militant. They are great Jew converters. I have been reading a luminous treatise on Witchcraft, seriously refuting such belief. One rather odd circ.u.mstance is, that three-and-twenty books and tracts have been written since Charles II.'s reign in earnest support of the doctrine of Sorcery and Witchcraft....

I go on writing in case you are still shut up, it may amuse you tho' I have no event. An occasional mad dog spreads horror thro' the district; no wonder I enter into the poor dog's feelings, he belonged to the steam boat, and that was enough to send any Christian out of their senses, let alone a dog.

_Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._

_March 10_ [1821].

What a delightful letter, and I feel perfectly agonised, not an idea, not a topic, not a word to send you in return. Sir Guy says I may do as I please, so I shall send the Highlands to the right about, and go south to you as soon as the weather is _travellable_, and that we have seen Sir Guy's old Scotch aunt[147] at Edinburgh. I must see her because she is called "Aunt Christy." That name, you must acknowledge, is worth a visit.