Miss Eden's Letters

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisADMIRALTY, Sunday [1851].

MY DEAREST THERESA, I may as well write a line while I can, just in the stages that intervene between the pains of my illness and the pains of my cure; the last being decidedly the worst and the most destructive; my courage has gone for pain.

How are you and yours, and what do you hear from Dublin? I have heard nothing about them since they went. London is this week entirely empty; otherwise there has always been an allowance of a visitor a day – Lord Grey, Lord Palmerston, Lord Cowper, passing through, and so on; and while Lord Auckland and Fanny were at Bowood, my sister, Mrs. Colvile, abandoned in the handsomest manner her husband and children in the wilds of Eaton Place, and came and lived here. I was very unwell at the time, and she is the quietest and best nurse in the world. Poor thing! she well may be.

The report of Lord Godolphin’s545 marriage to Lady Laura gains ground, and though I feel it is not true, it is too amusing to dispute. Ditto, C. Greville’s to Mrs. H. Baring.546 I see his stepchildren playfully jumping on his feet when gout is beginning. Henry Eden is so happy about his marriage, and so utterly oblivious of the fact that he is fifty, that I begin to think that is the best time for being in love. Miss Beresford has £20,000 down now, more hereafter; and as the attachment has lasted twelve years, only waiting for the cruel Uncle’s consent, which was wrung from him by Henry’s appointment to Woolwich, they ought to know what they are about, and luckily when they meet they seem to have liked each other better than ever. But twelve years is rather an awful gap…

Macaulay’s book has unbounded success.547 Not a copy to be had, and everybody satisfied that their copy is the cleverest book in the world. Don’t tell anybody, but I can’t read it – not the fault of the book, but I can’t take the trouble, and had rather leave it till I can enjoy it, if that time ever comes.

Good-bye, dearest Theresa. Love to Mrs. V. When do you come to town? How goes on your book?548 Yours affectionately,

E. E.

CHAPTER XIV

1849-1863

Miss Eden to Lady CampbellEDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,Tuesday evening, 1849.

MY OWN DEAREST PAM, I hear to-day that you too are bereaved of what was most dear to you;549 and it has roused me to write, for if any one has a right to feel for and with you, through my old, deep, unchanged affection, early ties, association in happy days, and now through calamity, – it is I. Dearest, how kindly you wrote to me in my first bitter hours,550 when I hardly understood what comfort could mean, and yet, your warm affection did seem to comfort me, and I wish I could now say to you anything that could help you.

You have children, to love and to tend, and yet again, they may be fresh sources of anxiety. I have heard nothing but that there was a long previous illness; and though you may have had the anxiety of much watching, still I think that it is better than a sudden rending of the ties of life… We came here Friday, but I have not been able to go out of my own room. This reminds me of you as well as of him. Your ever affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisEDEN LODGE,Saturday, December 1849.

Thank you very much, my dear old friend, for thinking of me and my sorrows in the midst of all your gladsome family, and your happy Christmas. I earnestly hope and trust you will have many as happy, and even more so as your children grow up around you, and become what you have tried to make them.

The paper-knife is beautiful, and if it were not so I should have been pleased at your thinking of me; and considering how long I have tried the patience of my friends, it is marvellous how little it has failed.

It was a twelvemonth yesterday since he left me to go to the Grange. I had got out of bed and was settled on the sofa, that he might go off with a cheerful impression of me, and we had our luncheon together; and he came in again in his fine cloak to say good-bye, and I thought how well he was looking. And that was the close of a long life of intense affection. I do not know why I should feel additionally sad as these anniversaries come round, for I never think less or more on the subject on any day. It is always there. But still this week is so burnt in on my mind that I seem to be living it all dreamily over again.

I wish at all events to be able to keep (however cold and crushed I feel myself) the power of entering into the happiness of others, and I like to think of you, dear Theresa… Your ever affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis[VILLETTE], BROADSTAIRS, Wednesday [1853].

MY DEAREST THERESA …I do not know whether you have heard of dear little Mary Drummond’s marriage to Mr. Wellesley.551 He is a really good, sensible young man, the greatest friend her brothers and sisters have, much looked up to in his office; and though he might have been a little richer, they will not be ill off, and there is a tangible sum to settle on her, and altogether I think it is a cheerful event. Their young happiness will do good to all our old unhappinesses, and I think Mrs. Drummond’s letters are already much more cheerful from her having all the love-making, trousseau, etc., to write about instead of her health. Little Mary is such a darling – so bright and useful and unselfish, and so buoyantly happy, that I do not see how they are to get on without her. Her letters make me feel almost youthful again. She is so thoroughly pleased with her lot in life.

Maurice552 and Addy are taking their holiday at Broadstairs. I had never seen them in this sort of intimate way, and I did not expect to be so pleased as I am with both of them. His manner to her is perfect – not only full of tenderness and attention, but he is very sensible in his precautions about her health, and takes great care of her in every way. She looks fearfully delicate. He is very attentive to me too, and as they came in this direction partly to see if they could be of use to me, I am glad it has all turned out so well. My health is in a very poor state, and I am obliged to give up going down to the Baths, but a cottage always has room for everything; and we are turning what is by courtesy called a Green-house, into a bath-room, opening out of my sitting-room. I like the place, and its quiet and bracing air and its busy sea. It is always covered with ships, and I do not regret the move. Your ever affectionate

E. E. Miss Eden to Lady Dover. 553 BROADSTAIRS, 1851.

Your letter, dearest, was by some accident delayed on the road, and when I received it the life you were all watching so anxiously was then only to be numbered by hours, and I did not like to break in on you. Your poor sister!554 From my heart I grieve for her, and from the very beginning of this severe trial I have had almost daily accounts of her.

I would have written to you sooner about your own child’s555 happiness, but I was very ill when I heard of it. It is one of the marriages that seems to please everybody, and as I do not think anybody would have been satisfied with a moderately good son-in-law for you, or a commonplace husband for Di, I am quite convinced that all that is said of Mr. Coke must be true.

I sometimes hope that when your child is married, and your poor sister can spare you, that you and Lucia556 might be tempted to come here for a few days. The journey is only three hours, and it is such a quiet little place to stay in. The hotel is only a little village inn. I do so long to see you.

Lord Carlisle talked of coming here for a day or two, but then I was not allowed to see anybody. I wish you would tell him with my love how much I should like to see him at any time, when he can leave his family and his public duties.

Lady Grey kindly came here on Saturday, and is gone back to-day, and I had a visit from the Ellesmeres last week, for which I had been anxiously looking, as I was obliged once to put them off, and I wanted much to see her. She is looking very thin, and is much depressed; but still it always does me good to be with her, and to see such a well-regulated Christian heart as hers. The second day she talked constantly of her boy,557 and as it was her own volunteering I hope the exertion may have done her good. Lord E. is particularly well. The suddenness of the poor boy’s death preys on her, and much as your sister has witnessed of pain and illness, I still think that it is the sudden grief which breaks the heart-strings. It is the difference between the avalanche which crushes and the stream which swells gradually and has time to find its level. But perhaps every one that is tried finds the readiest excuse for their own especial want of resignation.

My health does not improve. They say the last attack a fortnight ago was gout in the stomach. I trust God will spare me a recurrence of such suffering, for I am grown very cowardly; but, at all events, every medical precaution has now been taken, and I am not anxious as to the result, though shamefully afraid of pain.

God bless you. Yours affectionately,

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis[VILLETTE], BROADSTAIRS, 1851.

There is nothing I like so much as a letter, dearest Theresa, but I am so often unable to answer them that, of course, my correspondents are disheartened, and I cannot wonder at it. Just now a private letter is invaluable, for when I woke up after six days of agony, which cut me off even from a newspaper, I found that there had not only been various Ministries formed and destroyed, but that The Times had become perfectly drivelling. Its baseness and inconsistency did not shock me, and we have been brought up to that; but it writes the sort of trash that a very rheumatic old lady who had been left out of Lord John’s parties might indite. It really worries me, because I cannot make out who or what it is writing for or about, or what it wants. There is no use in commenting on your letters. I am very sorry for all that is past, because I like Lord John, and he seems to have played a poor part. This last abandonment of the Papal Bill558 is to my mind the falsest step of all, and I think the most ruinous to his character and the country, and totally unlike him. I always keep myself up by setting down everything wrong that is done to the Attorney-General,559 and everything foolish that is written, to C. Greville. Quite unjust; but I have never forgiven the Attorney-General that Park history, and C. G. tried to do as much mischief as he could in The Times last year about foreign politics, and this year about the Pope.

Anyhow, it is an ugly state of things, and cannot last long. I heard from a person to whom Sir James Graham said it, that he would not serve under Lord John, but that he would under Lord Clarendon; and I cannot imagine that Lord Clarendon will not be Prime Minister before three months are over.560 I am afraid he is papally wrong, but I give that point up now. The Pope has beat us and taken us; and when once a thing is done there is no use in grumbling. England will be a Roman Catholic country; and I shall try and escape into Ireland (which will, of course, become Protestant and comfortable eventually), unless I fall into the hands of Pugin,561 who has built a nice little church and convent, with an Inquisition home to match at Ramsgate. I suppose we shall be brought out to be burnt on the day of Sanctus Carolus,562 for the Pope cannot do less than canonise Charles Greville.

I did not admire Lord Stanley’s speech as many Whigs did; there was the old little-mindedness and grudging testimony to adversaries in it. I always think Lord Lansdowne comes out as a real, gentlemanlike, high-minded statesman on these occasions. However, I know nothing about it really, for I have not seen a human being this fortnight.

Eden Lodge had been let to what seemed an eligible tenant, a rich widow with one daughter, but three days before she was to have taken possession she said her friends had frightened her about the Exhibition. I do not suppose anybody will take it this year, which is inconvenient to me, in a pecuniary point of view; but it cannot be helped. You do not mention the children – is Villiers grown up? married? Prime Minister or what? Your book looks imposing in the advertisements.

Love to Mrs. Villiers and to Lord Clarendon when you write. Your affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisEDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,Saturday, March 1856.

MY DEAREST THERESA, Such a fascinating bullfinch! Mr. Whittaker’s assortment arrived two days ago, and he brought six here this morning in small wooden prisons; and the scene was most interesting. All of them clearing their throats and pretending that they had taken cold and did not know whether they could sing; and all swelling into black and red balls, and then all bursting at once into different little airs; and Whittaker, who partakes of the curious idiosyncrasy which I have traced in Von der Hutten and other bird dealers, that of looking like a bullfinch and acting as such, going bowing and nodding about to each cage, till I fancied that his coat and waistcoat were all purfled out like bird’s feathers; and I, lying on the sofa, insisting in a most stately manner that some of the birds did not bring the tune down to its proper keynote, though it was impossible I could tell, as they all sang at once. However, I chose one that sings to command (a great merit). “’Tis good to be merry and wise,” and now I have him alone, I am confident you will like him. If not, the man will change him. I shall be so pleased, dearest Theresa, if he gives you even a moment’s pleasure, and I am certain from sad experience that in a settled deep grief,563 it is wise to have these little adventitious cheerfulnesses put into the background. It is good for those who are with us, at all events. And there is something catching in the cheerfulness of animals, just as the sight of flowers is soothing.

You must find Harpton looking pretty for March, particularly if it is suffering under such a very favourable eruption of crocuses, etc., as my garden is. I never saw them in such clumps.

I have been fairly beat by Miss Yonge’s new book, The Daisy Chain, which distresses me, as I generally delight in her stories; but if she means this Daisy Chain to be amusing, it is, unhappily, intensely tedious, and if she means it to be good, it strikes me that one of Eugène Sue’s novels would do less harm to the cause of religion. The Colviles are very angry with me for not liking it; and, above all, for thinking Ethel, the heroine, the most disagreeable, stormy, conceited girl I ever met with. Starting with the intention of building a church out of her shilling a week – which is the great harrowing interest of all Puseyite novels; finding fault with all her neighbours; keeping a school in a stuffy room that turns everybody sick, because she cannot bear money that was raised by a bazaar by some ladies she disliked; and always saying the rudest thing she can think of because it is her way. I read on till I came to a point when she thought her father was going to shake her because she was ill-natured about her sister’s marriage; and finding that he did not perform that operation, which he ought to have done every day of her life, I gave it up. The High Church party are all going raving mad!

That pretty Mrs. Palmer564 has had herself taken to a hospital as a sort of penance in illness, and has left her most excellent husband and five little children to take care of themselves. She has, moreover, taken a vow of six hours’ silence every day during Lent, but will write an answer on a slate. If I were her husband I should take advantage of that vow and give her my mind for six hours at a time. She may not answer again. Ever your affectionate

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisEden Lodge, Kensington Gore [1861].

MY DEAREST THERESA, Will you tell me what I am to think about the India Bill?565 I believe I think with Roebuck, that it is claptrappy, and generally that it would make a mess of India, but I have not the least idea what it means, and will you tell me what effect it had?

I am still so much occupied in rearing up Sir George Lewis to be Leader of the House, that I have hardly time to write. May I ask you to make his holidays advantageous, by pointedly contradicting everything he says, or does not say, while you are at Harpton; allowing him to argue in defence of his opinions, but continue to contradict him in the pertest and most offensive manner. I am afraid, too, I must trouble you to allow him to find fault with everything you do – from ordering dinner, downwards; because, though I hope this India Bill will finish the Derbyites, still my Leader must be up to his Opposition duties. After the recess, the House will continue his education, and your domestic felicity will be more complete than ever for this little sacrifice to the public good. You are quite wrong, my dear, about Lord John. A charming individual in private life, but not fit to govern a country or lead a party. So please attend to the above directions. Your affect.

E. E.Miss Eden to her Niece, Lena EdenEDEN LODGE[October or November 1858].

MY DEAREST LENA, It is pitch dark to-day, so that I have not been able to attempt my newspaper. I am afraid you will have to go out as a daily governess when I die, for I am spending my whole fortune in coats. Lady Georgina Bathurst’s566 letter was very amusing, but it is clear that her friend Bennett567 makes himself generally odious, and that poor Mrs. Bennett suffers as much from it as she did formerly. I am sick of the High Church clergy’s cant about respect for their Diocesan, etc., when they always do everything they can that is rude and disrespectful to their Bishop; and it always surprises me that a sensible woman like Georgina can be taken in by them. But she always was in extremes. In her political days she did not think it possible that a Whig soul could be saved, and may think so still…

The seagull pigeon is sitting. I am so glad I am not married to a pigeon; they are such teasing, tyrannical husbands. Yours affectionately,

E. E.Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisRICHMOND, Tuesday evening [1862].

DEAREST THERESA, Sorry you did not come; hope for better luck Thursday. I have had a passage at arms with old Bentley, who has dawdled over the “Auckland Correspondence”568 till he says it is now too late for the publication this season, and it will not appear till October; but that this is the best time for a work of fiction, and he wanted mine instantly. I wrote him a coldly savage letter, conveying all sorts of reproaches in political terms, and saying that, as of course he could not undertake a second book till he had done with the first, and as I was in a hurry, I must accept the offer of some other publisher (I have had several offers). Whereupon he rushed down here early this morning and told Lena he was “a persecuted victim,” that he would bring out the Semi-Detached569 in a month, and that he must have it, etc. He offered only £250, and I really will not take less than £300. Lena told him so afterwards, and he said he dared to say that there would be no difficulty about terms if he could talk it over with you. So mind you stick to £300 and a very early publication. I really do want the money, for poor Richard Wellesley has been obliged to resign, and they are ordered to winter abroad for the winter and will have some difficulty in managing it, so I want to be able to help them.

Dear little Mary is a greater darling than ever. Ever your affectionate

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Lady Charlotte GrevilleCHILD’S HILL, HAMPSTEAD,[August] Saturday, 1859.

So like you, dearest, to think of sending that review, which I thought very flattering. Lena had already picked it up at a neighbour’s house, and I am told it is a great help to a book to be reviewed by the Globe. A review in The Times, even unfavourable, is supposed by publishers to ensure a second edition, but The Times does not stoop to single volume novels. “Semi” has had more success than I require, and considerably more than I expected.

It gave me real pleasure to think that I had amused you. That, and a kind note from Lord Lansdowne, who said that the book had been a great amusement to him in his convalescence, gave me intense gratification. Altogether, people have been marvellously good-natured about it, and if ever I write another story, which is not very likely, I shall call it “The Good-natured World.” I really do think that, though we all carp in a petty childish way at each other, that there is an immense amount of solid bienveillance in constant circulation; only we do not think about the kindness we meet with, till we actually want it, and then we see the amount and the value of it.

I wrote my congratulations with very great ease to the Buccleughs. That marriage seems to give universal satisfaction, and Char was in such a fidget to have her son570 married, that she would have put up with a very inferior article in the way of a daughter-in-law. I am more puzzled with my letters to Theresa Lewis. Lord Clarendon had cut him571 on account of his writings, and Theresa Lewis had never asked him to Kent House, so you see there is rather a mess to be cleared up before congratulations come out in a clear brilliant stream.

However, Lord Clarendon has been extremely amiable about it, which he was sure to be, and Thérèse was so regularly and thoroughly in love that I think T. Lewis was quite right to make no objections on the ground of poverty. After twenty-one, young people may surely choose for themselves, whether they will be rich or poor.

Do you want a perfection of a little dog to égayer you? Lady Ellesmere knows my little Manilla silk dog, a small bone run through a large skein of white floss silk, full of wit and affection. I feel certain it would be a happiness to you and no trouble, except that you would have to coax it fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, and then strike for thirteen hours.

Love to Lady E. Ever your affectionate

E. Eden.

The Duke of Bedford was here yesterday. He is looking very thin but in good spirits, and happily satisfied that Lord John is the best Foreign Secretary we have ever had, and a juste milieu between Lord Palmerston’s extreme French, and Lord C.’s extreme Austrian views.

Lord Lansdowne to Miss EdenRICHMOND, August 22 [1862].

MY DEAR MISS EDEN, Many thanks for your very kind letter. You will see from the date of this I have advanced a step, and tho’ not quite well yet, am at least convalescent, and just in a state fully to appreciate a pleasant letter or a pleasant book; the Semi-Detached, innocent as it is, did indeed amuse me greatly. I only wish all people could be made half as agreeable. You have been able to hurry on a catastrophe without the assistance of one villainous couple.

I am much disposed to be seduced by your view of Napoleon III.; no man ever committed such mistakes and knew so well how to get out of them. A friend of Mme. de Staël once said to me that she had an irresistible propensity to throw her friends into the river; but that it was relying upon her skill pour les repêcher, l’un après l’autre. This is somewhat the case with him. He would not run so voluntarily into blunders if he did not feel confident of extricating himself. Believe me, always, affectly yours,

LANSDOWNE.

Pray read B. Osborne’s speech at Liskeard. One can afford to forgive impudence when it is so amusing.

Miss Eden to Lady Theresa LewisCHILD’S HILL, HAMPSTEAD, Monday evening [1862].

MY DEAREST THERESA, This has been a great “Semi” day, concluding with your letter which is just come; and I began the morning with four closely-written pages from Locock, who generally throws very cold water on any of my little pursuits. But he says the grandest things of “Semi,” which he had read on Saturday evening, and says that a bystander would have thought him quite mad; he was screaming with laughter by himself, and that he is ashamed to add that in church next day it would come back to him. “It really haunts me.” He was longing for Monday to read it loud to Lady L., and he says that he must, at all events, be a good judge of a confinement. Blanche’s lying-in is so thoroughly true.

I enclose a bit of Mary Auckland’s572 letter, which also came to-day, and which is the third she has written about it. All the family from Wells have written in the same strain, and Robert, who is painfully punctual, was missing at breakfast the morning after “Semi” arrived; and was discovered in bed, peremptorily declining to get up till he had finished his book. We look upon this as a great compliment, as he never looks at a word. Anne Cowper is equally civil; but then these are all friends, and would say anything that would encourage me to fill up my sedentary sick life with any occupation; so any little word that you hear from strangers is more valuable as a genuine judgment.