Miss Eden's Letters

Miss Eden to Miss Villiers[PARK LODGE, GREENWICH,]October 19, 1829.

MY DEAREST THERESA, Lady Harriet [Baring] says she wrote to you yesterday to announce that we were going to talk you over. I think it my duty to write to-day to announce that we have talked you over, – done our devoirs bravely. The substance of our comments you would not of course be curious to hear. Having thus obviously made you thoroughly uncomfortable, and this being Sunday evening and consequently to be devoted to works of charity, I add from pure benevolence that Lady Harriet has said nothing that is not in your praise, confirms the remarkable fact that the heads of the Baring Clan are all turned by you, and if it were not for that circumstance, which, as she says, must be provoking to her, it appears to me she is as fond of you and Mrs. Villiers as it is possible to be. She is very charitable and very pleasant to-day.

I was not the least taken in by all your paltry evasions about not writing to me. You never care a straw for me when you can have Louisa Baring.325 I am constrained to avow that Harriet Baring and the Red Rover have always been my successful rivals with you and everybody else. Please the Fates, I will set up some new friends for myself, and occupy myself so exclusively with them that you shall not be able to get a word from me for a month.

Well, I have no doubt Harriet Baring has every merit under the sun, only you never will persuade me she is amusing. There is no merit in being amusing, so that is not against her. I am glad she is in good spirits; and it seems that neither she, nor her family, nor Lord Henry Thynne, nor his family, wished for the marriage. It is rather lucky than otherwise that they did not marry, though as the Barings want connection, and he wants money, it was a natural marriage for all the world to insist upon, – a clever idea, though it did not work well.

I passed such a nice morning yesterday, though my ulterior object was to go to town to try on some gowns. But George and I began the day early, and went to visit Chantrey,326 who showed us quantities of beautiful things, amongst others a monument to Bishop Heber327 that is quite beautiful, is not it? I tried to sketch it for you and failed, but he is blessing two kneeling Hindus who, to the best of my recollections, have not a stitch of clothes on (the climate is warm, you know), but the dearest bald head you ever saw, with one long lock from the top. They are so graceful – I mean seriously. Then we saw the Colossal statue of Mr. Pitt, he has just cast in Bronze, and he gave up a whole hour, in which he could have chipped a bit of covering to those poor Hindus, to explaining to me, who am fussy and dull if anybody begins an entirely new subject, how a bronze statue is cast, and how the weight of the least moisture in the cast is ascertained even to the 1000th part of a grain, and how the original cast is made. In short, I was quite learned about it yesterday, and as his clay models disgusted me with mine, I had some thoughts of turning the library into a foundery, and of melting down all the saucepans, and casting a statue of George in his shooting jacket, 14 feet high; but I have forgotten to-day how to do it. Chantrey was so good-natured, and gave me excellent advice about modelling, and is having some tools made for me, and I am always to have as much clay from him as I like, which will be a vast advantage, for his clay must have a habit of twisting itself into good shapes, and probably the raw material I obtain from him will be more like a human figure than anything I shall ever build myself.

I had some luncheon with Lady Harriet, met a considerable quantity of acquaintances all prowling about the quiet streets, finished up my wardrobe, bought some company work, paid a few bills, – in short, bored myself as much as was good for me. Miss Kemble’s328 reputation goes on increasing, which delights me. I have not seen anybody that does not think her very superior to anything we have had for years, and if they will leave her alone, and all the Magnates of the land will not insist upon marrying her instantly, she will be a great treasure. C. Kemble was giving a very touching account of her the other day to some cousins of mine. Her resolution to go on the stage was taken only a month before, at the time of his great difficulties, and he had never seen her rehearse but twice. He says there never was such a daughter, and he thinks her very clever.

I wish you had not done your Longleat. I had always meant you to be there with us – quite reckoned on it. Can you insinuate to Lady Bath that it is possible we may come two or three days sooner than I said at first, if she lets us. The Lansdownes are going to Brighton for a month, and want us to make Bowood on our return, instead of the time we mentioned. I shall be very glad to see Lady Bath, but if I might be excused the trouble of moving from home, I should not fret much. I gave Mr. Hibbert329 Lady Bath’s invitation, but he fears he must now stick to his business, though as it cost him ten shillings a day in hackney-coaches to transport his lame self to the city, I have proved to him that it would be an economy to the firm of Hibbert, if he went by the stage to Longleat. I always wonder what those West Indians do up in Leadenhall street. What is the use of their going from the west to the east of London to write about a plantation in Jamaica. If you were to go from Longleat to Newcastle to write directions about your garden at Knightsbridge it would be as sensible. I have often tried to make Mr. Colvile tell me what he does in Leadenhall Street. I believe they eat tamarinds and cashew nuts (I do not know how they are spelt) and ginger all day there. Good-bye. Your ever affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Miss Villiers[GREENWICH.]

(Friday). I began this two days ago, and you see how far I went. I have a passion at the moment for modelling in clay, an accomplishment I am trying to acquire from an old German who lives on Blackheath. The interest of the pursuit it is impossible to describe. I cannot imagine why I ever did anything else; it is the worst engouement I ever had, and so entirely past all regulating, that I think the best way now is to tire it out, so I model from morning to night. I wish I were not obliged to write to you, you uninteresting, unfinished lump of clay. George interests himself in the art, and with his usual amiability stepped up to town and brought me some tools. Think of our going to sit down to dinner the other day, in our accustomed domestic manner, soup and a mutton-pie; and Lord and Lady Jersey, F. Villiers, and Lord Castlereagh arrived at seven for dinner. No entrées, no fish, no nothing, and the cook ill. However, it turned out very pleasant.

I believe Lady E. Cowper will end by marrying Lord Ashley. She says she never has felt a preference for anybody, and will do just what her mother wishes. Lady Cowper is sorely puzzled, and he is in a regular high-flown Ashley state, wishing he had never proposed, that he might have watched over and adored her in silence.

Miss Eden to Miss VilliersNORMAN COURT,Monday [October 1829].

MY DEAREST THERESA, I do not find this visiting system good for the growth of letters. I have less to say when I see fresh people and fresh houses constantly, than at home, where I see the same every day. Your last letter, too, gave me an inspiration to answer it on the spot, but I had not time then, and so it subsided. You poor dear! Are you still liable to be haunted by recollections and tormented by the ghosts of past pleasures – youthful but weak? I have had so many feelings of the sort you mean, that your letter interested me particularly; but then it must be at least five years since the last ghost of the last pleasure visited me, so imagine the date of the pleasure by the date of the ghost – and the remains of youthful interests do not disturb me any longer. It is always childhood I return to, and exclusively the sight of Eden Farm330 and aught connected therewith that swells my heart to bursting, and that I never see now. Everything else is mended up again, and for the life of me I cannot understand how I ever could have been so sentimental and foolish as it appears I must have been.331 I say no more; but my old extract book has thrown me into fits of laughter. Calculate from that fact the horrid and complete extinction of sentiment that has taken place. You will come to it, and be surprised to see what a happy invention life is. I am afraid I like it too much. We have been at Shottesbrook. Caroline Vansittart is so uncommonly well; there are hardly any traces of her illness. The dear children will be children till they die of old age.

Then we went to Ewehurst which the Drummonds have rented from the Duke of Wellington. It is a very fine place, but an old house, and so cold. All the children had colds, and all the Aunts caught them, of course; only, instead of catching one cold I caught six, and have done nothing but sneeze ever since.

We stayed there a week and came here this day sen’night, found the house more luxurious and comfortable than ever after the cold of Ewehurst, and Mr. Wall in great felicity. Old Mrs. Wall I think much the most delightful old lady I ever knew. Lady Harriet we found here, and the Sturts, and the Poodles,332 and Mr. Pierpont, and latterly we have had a Doctor Daltrey, a very clever man who has thrown a pinch of sense into the very frivolous giggling conversation we have sunk into.

It has been rather amusing. Lady C. Sturt333 and Lady Harriet are rather in the same style of repartee. We all meant to dislike the former, but found her, on the contrary, very pleasant. She amused George very much, and Mr. Sturt was an old friend of ours. We should have gone on to Crichel,334 but our time and theirs could not be brought together. Lady Harriet is in her very best mood, and I always think it is a very pleasant incident, such excessive buoyancy of spirits. She is full as fidgety about Bingham as any wife would be, even any of my own sisters, who have a system of fidgeting about their husbands. I think he will arrive to-day. In fact he could hardly have come sooner if he set off even the very day he meant to. She insists upon it he is naturalized in Russia and has taken the name of Potemkin, and she is teaching the child335 to call him so: – “Come, dear; say Potemkin. Come, out with it like a man! Potty, Potty, Potty – come Baby!”

To-day we are to have a dinner of neighbours, chiefly clergy; two Chancellors of different dioceses and various attendant clergy, besides dear little Arundell who dines here every day. We flatter ourselves there will be great difficulties of precedence when we go into dinner, and have at last settled that the two Chancellors go in hand in hand like the Kings of Brentford, and that we must divide the inferior clergy amongst us – take two apiece.

Mr. Wall sometimes gets frightened at our levities and fancies we shall really say to his guests all that we propose for them.

George still gets into hysterical fits of laughter when I mention your idea of his being in love with Lady Harriet, which was unlucky at that time, for it did so happen that he could not endure her then, and he went up to town the day she came to stay at Greenwich, because he thought her so ill-natured. She happened to abuse, in her ignorance, the lady of the hour. But even he likes her here, thinks her very amusing, and much better-hearted than he expected, and he, like you, no longer wonders why I like her. Altogether this visit has answered.

Sister has been to Wrest, where the old stories are going on: – doctors sent for the middle of the night. In her last letter she said she believed that the Goderichs were going off at an hour’s notice, and that she should be left alone at Wrest, till she could alter all her plans. In the meantime there is nothing really the matter with the child.

You never tell me where to direct. I shall try Saltram.336 Love to Mrs. Villiers. Ever your most affectionate

E. E. Miss Eden to Lady Charlotte Greville. 337 Melbury, 1829.

I am sorry to write to you on paper that has evidently been in bad health for some time, but I cannot find any without this bilious tinge. Lady Bath told me that you were the giver of that pretty lamp in the drawing-room at Greenwich Park. I am so glad to know who it is I am to thank, and very glad that “who” is “you.” I tried a little of gratitude on two other friends who seemed obtuse about it. The pride of my life is the quantity of pretty things that my friends gave me when we settled. I like your name to be found in the list.

I suppose you are still in Ireland, and I direct my letter on that supposition. I have not written to any of your family for a long time. I cannot write while I am travelling about, as I hold it “stuff of the conscience” to comment on the owners of the houses I am in, and it would not be the least amusing to hear they were all charming people.

However, I must say that about Lord Ilchester, as I believe you do not know him, so it is news to you; and he certainly is the most amiable being I ever beheld. He has given up his own happiness as a lost case since the death of his wife,338 and his whole life is spent in trying to make other people happy. I never saw so gentle a character, and am no longer surprised at George’s attachment to him. It has lasted ever since they were at school together; and as I had never seen much of Lord Ilchester at home, and he was nothing shining in society, I used to wonder why George was so very fond of him. But I see how it is now.

To be sure, an inch of amiability is worth yards of cleverness for the real wear and tear of life. Lord Ilchester’s spirits have been thoroughly bent down once by the loss of his wife, and though he has mended himself up again to a certain degree, yet he is all over chinks and cracks, that shake on the slightest touch. I could not bear to allude before him to the possibility of any husband liking his wife, or any mother educating her children. The quantity of célibataires that I bring forward in conversation is incredible. I hope he is quite convinced that there is not such a thing as a married man left in creation.

Mr. Corry, who is here, does not intend that the race shall be extinct. He is desperately in love with Lady H. Ashley,339 so desperately that he can think of nothing else, and I believe talks of little else; but between his brogue and the confusion of his ideas I am not always sure what he is talking about. He never sleeps, but writes half the night – whether sonnets to her, or pamphlets on the state of Ireland, he will not tell me. But he is in a constant state of composition, writing notes all the evening to be arranged into sense at night. From the dark romantic hints he throws out for our information, I imagine he has hopes of marrying her in the course of next year. I hope he will not be disappointed. I like anybody who is so really in earnest as he is.

We paid a long visit at Longleat – very successful, inasmuch as Lady Bath was in the highest of good humour, and Tom Bath is dearer to my heart than ever. Lord Edward was at Longleat the latter part of our visit, and a great addition. He is totally unlike all the Thynnes I ever saw – full of fun and dashes out everything that comes into his head, astonishes them all, but governs the whole house. They all laugh the instant he opens his lips.

CHAPTER VIII

1830-1831

Miss Eden to Miss VilliersSaturday, January 1830.

MY DEAREST THERESA, I did write the day I had your first letter. To be sure you were not bound to know it, for I put my letter by so carefully, that at post time it was entirely missing. Then I was took with a cold, and took to my bed, and by the time I was well enough to institute a successful search for my lost letter, it had grown so dull and dry by keeping that it was not worth sending.

So you are snowed up at an inn. Odd! Your weather must be worse than ours, though that has been bad enough, but no great depths of snow. I think you sound comfortable. I have the oddest love of an Inn; I can’t tell why, except that I love all that belongs to travelling; and then one is so well treated. I have nothing to tell you, as I wrote a very disgustingly gossipy letter to Lady Harriet [Baring] which was to serve you too, and I have seen nobody since, except the Granthams. I suppose there are live people in the provinces; there are none in town – no carriages – no watchmen – no noise at all.

We had four London University professors to dinner on Thursday (and Mr. Brougham was to have come, but was, of course, detained), proving that madmen were sane or some clever men mad – I forget which. However, our Professors were very pretty company. I did not understand a word they said, but thought them very pleasant.

Have you read Moore?340 So beyond measure amusing! It is abused and praised with a violence that shows how much party feeling there is about it. The vanity both of the writer and the writee is very remarkable, but it does not prevent the book from being very amusing, and I think it altogether a very fair piece of biography. Moore was not bound to make Lord Byron’s faults stand out; there are plenty of them and striking enough without amplification, and he mentions them with such excuses as he can find.

George goes to Woburn to-morrow for the last week of shooting. Lord Edward Thynne’s marriage went off – because the butcher would not be conformable about settlements.341 I am sorry, for I liked Edward very much when we were at Longleat. He is quite unlike the others, so lively and easy. I wish he had not equally bad luck in the line of fortune-hunting. Dublin must be going into deep black for your brother, to judge by the papers.342 I wonder whether Popular mourning is like Court mourning – the gentlemen to wear black swords and fringe, and the ladies chamois shoes – two great mysteries to me. I am so glad he has been so liked. Your most affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Miss VilliersGROSVENOR STREET,Thursday, April 1830.

MY DEAREST THERESA, Observe how we write! Not a moment lost, and I shall have the last word, but I meant to write to you yesterday, because the very morning after my last letter, I found by a confidential advice from Longleat that I had forwarded to you a regular London lie about Edward Thynne, and that his marriage, so far from being off, was negotiating with great success. However, it was a secret then; but Lord Henry came yesterday to tell me it was declared, and to-day I have a letter from Lady Bath, apparently in ecstacies: “Write and wish me great joy. You are the first, the very first, to whom I have written my dear Edward’s marriage, and I know you will be pleased. Write to me directly.”

I am not at all pleased, and have not an idea what to write. I think if Edward had been thirty-three instead of twenty-three, had wearied of the world, as the Scotch say, and been disappointed in love several times, as all people are by that time, it would not have been unnatural that he should have married for an establishment; but a boy of that age has no right to be so calculating. I cannot quite make out the story. I heard from a great friend of the family who had been employed in the negotiation that it is the sick plain sister343 Lord E. marries; that he did not pretend to care about her; supposed if he saw her once before their marriage it would be enough – and so on, which was disgusting.

Lord Henry yesterday carried it off better – said she was rather pretty, well educated, well mannered, and that Edward was in love, and all the right things. Perhaps he is right. I did not know what to tell you about Longleat, it was so long ago. I do not think your Barings344 will like Lord Henry’s present pursuit. The same name and the other family; but do not for your life say a word of it to them, as I vowed the deepest vows to him yesterday that I would not do him any mischief. Not that I know how I could, and I would not if I could, but I presume he dreads family communications which, as the A. Barings and H. Barings do not speak, I laboured to convince him yesterday were not to be dreaded.

I am quite alone here, George went to Woburn Monday, and Fanny to Eastcombe. I have just cold enough left to excuse myself from dining out with my attached friends and family, so that I see a few morning visitors and have the evenings all to myself. The pleasure of it no words can express. I never can explain what is the fun of being alone in the room with the certainty of not being disturbed; but that there is something very attractive and pleasing in the situation it is impossible to deny. I feel so happy, and sit up so late, and am so busy about nothing.

I had a remarkably pleasant set of visitors yesterday. Your brother George, amongst others, followed Lord Henry, and as usual I was enchanted to see him.

Good-bye dearest. I wish you were come. Your most affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Miss VilliersThursday evening, May 1830.

DEAREST THERESA, Thank you for writing to me. Your letter told me many particulars I had wanted to know, though the one melancholy fact of her deplorable condition345 Lady F. Leveson wrote to me yesterday. I never was more shocked or grieved. I wrote to Lady Cawdor last night, but begged her not to write, as nothing is so trying as writing in real anxiety. Poor Lady Bath! It is melancholy to think we are not to see her again. After all, we all thought about her and cared about her opinion more than for most people’s; and she was more of an object to us than anybody out of our own families. She was a very kind friend to me when first I came out and when I knew nobody and nobody cared about me, and I cannot name anybody from whom I have received so much gratuitous kindness, particularly at times of trial, and we all of us, you as well as I, never could bear being in a scrape with her. We fretted and were affronted and so on, but there was no bassesse I did not condescend to, to make it up again. I liked her society, and altogether loved her very dearly, and the idea of her present situation poor thing, is very, very painful. I hardly wish her recovery, because it seems doubtful if it would be complete, and the recovery of bodily health alone is not to be wished.

Poor Lord Bath; it will be a dreadful loss to him. I shall really be very glad if you will write again, whatever happens. Once more thank you. Ever your affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady CampbellGREENWICH PARK,Wednesday, August 1830.

I know I did not answer your last letter. I wrung it from you, and it enchanted me, and at first I would not answer it for fear of plaguing you, and after a time I would not answer it for fear of plaguing me – and so on – and latterly I have done nothing but work in the garden – and how can you expect a day labourer, a plodding operative, to write? Shaky hands, aching back, etc.; but on the other side, hedges of sweet peas, lovely yellow carnations, brilliant potentillas, to balance the fatigue. George and I have quarrelled so about the watering-pot, which is mine by rights, that for fear of an entire quarrel he has been obliged to buy. I wish you could see our house and garden, “a poor thing, but mine own.” I am so fond of it, and we are so comfortable.

I wonder whether you really will go to the Ionian Isles. I have just as good a chance of seeing you there as in Ireland, so if you need it I should. We shall never move again, or if we ever did, I should have a better claim to go after you to the Ionian Isles, where we have never been, than again to Ireland.

Mrs. Heber,346 the Bishop’s widow, has just published two more Vols. of her first husband’s life, and finding it lucrative, has taken a second husband, a Greek, who calls himself Sir Demetrie Valsomachi, and he has carried her off to the Ionian Islands, where you will find her collecting materials for the biography of Sir Demetrie.

We think and talk of nothing but Kings and Queens. It adds to the oppression of the oppressive weather even to think of all the King does. I wish he would take a chair and sit down. We have only been up once to see him, at that full-dress ball at Apsley House, where he brought brother Würtemburg,347 and the whole thing struck me as so tiresome. I could not treat it as a pageant – only as a joke.

However, tho’ our adored Sovereign is either rather mad or very foolish, he is an immense improvement on the last unforgiving animal, who died growling sulkily in his den at Windsor.348 This man at least wishes to make everybody happy, and everything he has done has been benevolent; but the Court is going to swallow up all other society. It is rather funny to see all the great people who intrigued for court places, meaning to enjoy their pensions and do no work, kept hard at it from nine in the morning till two the following morning – reviews, breakfasts, great dinners, and parties all following each other, and the whole suite kept in requisition.