Miss Eden's Letters

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 Gods 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 EdenBUTE,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 God 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, quantities 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 EdenJanuary 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 ….

Lord143 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. Kitty145 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 EdenMarch 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 noble 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 manuscript 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 Way146 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 circumstance 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 aunt147 at Edinburgh. I must see her because she is called “Aunt Christy.” That name, you must acknowledge, is worth a visit.

I send you, my Darling, a small Heart with my hair in it. Put it on directly and wear it. I know it is a comfort to have a little something new when one is ill, as I learnt when I had the chicken-pox, and found great benefit in some gilt gingerbread Kings and Queens. Lucy used to bring me them twelve years ago; they were hideous, useless, and not eatable, but still they made a break in the day…

I wish I could instil in you a little of that respect and mystic reverence which I never could feel myself for Doctors, and Pestles and Mortars – that blind devotion which is so necessary to make the stuff efficacious, for by faith we are saved in these cases, as in cases of conscience.

I am sorry they have made you have hysterics, and won’t let you have the Elliots, and conversation. That bluff Chilvers,148 with his Burgomaster appearance, as if he was magistrate of our vitals and poor bowels! I hate him ever since he offered me the insult of a blister, that first blister of hateful memory.

Write, or don’t write, as it suits you. Lucy and Sir Guy are such friends, they quite doat on one another, and understand each other. Therefore wipe away all I said for nothing. That is my comfort with you, I can tell you and then scratch it out again as I please, and that is the only way to be constant in this changeable world, to be able to follow the changes of those we love, so as to be always the same with them.

Lady Campbell to Miss Eden[BUTE,]March 15, 1821.

…We have been a day at Mount Stuart since I wrote, to meet a Sir Gregory and Lady Way – such bores! Oh! no, never. His brother is the great Jew-converter, and has now left his wife and house and estate and is gone a converting-tour into Poland. Some Israelites played him an ungrateful trick. He invited them to his house in Buckinghamshire to render thanks in his private Chapel for their redemption, but alas! they had not cast off their old man, for they stole all Mr. Way’s plate, which he has found it impossible to redeem, they having most probably converted it into money and made off. These people are strictly pious characters, and on Lucy saying she had heard of Mr. Way, Sir Gregory replied: “An instrument, Madam, merely an instrument!”

Lady Way is too heavy, and so dressed out – all in a sort of supprimé way, and wears a necklace like a puppy’s collar…

Did you see those pretty nice Feilding children149 when the Feildings were in London? I hope that nasty woman150 will not spoil them.

Have you had Mary Drummond in comfort since you have been shut up and ill? – like the indulgence of barley sugar with a cough; no remedy, but yet it is pleasant. Does Fanny still keep up “brother and sister” with Edward Drummond?151 I don’t think even Fanny could do it. Sir Guy knows the one in the Guards (Arthur is not his name), and liked him better than Drummonds in general, for there is no denying that Drummonds are Drummonds to the greatest degree… Send me your low letters, and your gay letters, and all you write, for I love it all.

Lady Campbell to Miss EdenMarch 22, 1821.

…Jane Paget’s152 business shocked, but did not surprise me. I never saw any poor girl so devoured by Ennui, and I have so long found Bore account for all the unaccountable things that occur, that it solved Jane’s marriage to me. She cannot exist without excitement, for she is completely blasée upon everything. Blasée is the genteel word; you would call it besotted or stupefied, if she had accomplished this vitiated destruction by dram-drinking or opium; but the effect, call it what you please, is exactly the same. I pity that poor Mr. Ball truly, for I don’t suspect him of being equal to rule a wife and have a wife…

I forget to tell you a good idea of Lucy’s, about Jane Paget’s marriage. She said it was such a pity to see good articles selling off at half-price like ribbon in Oxford Street, to make room for a new spring assortment.

We are doing our Mount Stuart again. We have a Mr. and Mrs. Veetchie (a Commissioner of the Customs and has been in the army) and Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Hope. Mr. Hope can be pleasant now and then, but as dulness was paramount during our intercourse, I suspect the agreeableness to be a little gilding he has got from living with the wits of Edinburgh. There seems no source – mere cistern work. Your old Burgomaster Chilvers is clever, and I think as much of him as of any of them. But go on mentioning all he does, whether you are drenched in drugs.

Lady Campbell to Miss EdenApril 1, 1821.

…Tho’ I know they are all taking care of you with all their might, I feel I should do it better, because I want to be with you so very too much, that I feel cross with those who can be about you. Sir Guy thinks you are a lucky woman in being allowed only ten minutes of everybody’s company; at least the chances are in your favour for escaping bores.

I hear of nothing but crash upon crash in London. Leinster153 and Mary Ross154 are obliged to join to help Lady Foley.155 Lord Foley is so completely ruined, it is supposed it will be impossible to save anything for his six unfortunate children, and Lord and Lady Foley cannot have the satisfaction of throwing the blame on one another. He has gambled, and she has had six guineas-apiece handkerchiefs. She has enjoyed the bliss of boasting she never tied a ribbon twice, or wore her sattin three times. I thought I had made a poor marriage, and was content, but I begin to believe that I am a rich individual.

I think you are right about William,156 I am sure he has taken a quirk about my marriage, because you see, my dear Emmy, it splits upon one of the very rocks of prejudice he has in his character. I would almost say the only one, but then it is a considerable stone, his worldliness. He would not have had me marry a regular established fool even he was rich, because again, the world might think the worse of me; but if I could, have met a rich quiet man without bells to his cap, made a good figure in London, and of whom some people might indulgently say – in consideration of his fortune, “Such a one I promise you has more sense than one would think, he is not such a fool as people give him credit for.” If I had run the usual race of London misery with such a man, William would not have objected.

It is a crooked corner in him, I have often observed he has a childish respect to the opinion of London; and Paris has done him no good in giving him a notion that it don’t signify what people do, so they keep it quiet, and make no open scandale. I have often wondered at this, because we mortals always try and trace a consistency in character, which is an ingredient never to be found in any composition, foreign to human nature altogether, which we still hunt after, and refer to and talk of, as if it was not as ideal as the philosopher’s stone, a tortoise-shell Tom cat, or any other impossibility you like to think of.

Lady Campbell to Miss EdenApril 10, 1821.

I have been again at Mount Stuart. Saw a civil Mr. Campbell of Stonefield, whom of course I ought to have called Stonefield tout court, but this seemed to me so improper and affectionate. I would not expose my conjugal felicity to such a slur, and I believe I affronted the Laird. He is a great man, having been at Oxford, of course the refined thing in education in Scotland; just as Lansdowne was sent to Scotland to give him a better coating of education. I suppose on the principle that the longest way about is the shortest road home. I see all those who are taken most pains with make the plainest figure. This man seems, however, to have preserved his whole row of Scotch prejudices unshaken, proud, and touchy.

Lady Campbell to Miss EdenTHAMES DITTON,July 16, 1821.

DEAREST EMMY, I have been so pestered and worried. I should only have worried you if I had written to you in the midst of my various bothers. I find I have about one half of my baby linen to get made, Aunt Charlotte157 having handsomely provided the caps and frocks and fineries, but turned me off with only half-a-dozen of everything needful, and not an inch of flannel. You are enough of a mother to enter into my feelings on the occasion.

I have had scene after scene to undergo with Aunt [Lady Sophia FitzGerald] upon the unkindness of my not remaining to be confined here within the compass of a sixpence, and taking everybody’s advice, sooner than hers, and, in short, not having her in the room with me. As I should have died of that, self-preservation gave me firmness to resist, and I declared I could not. All this was to be kept smooth to Sir Guy, for Aunt chose to be sulky with him. In short I have found the kindness of the house the cruellest thing on earth. I have not had a quiet moment, the neighbourhood have poured upon me… Lucy is gone mad, for she is preparing to go to the Coronation.158 Your affectionate and own

PAM.Lady Campbell to Miss EdenTuesday, August 14, 1821.

…I am settled in Town since Saturday evening, and if Eastcombe has had reminiscences of me for you, Grosvenor Square has reminisced you to me, our evening walks, and Lady Petre, and Penniwinkle. Every valuable Bore I possess has by instinct discovered me in Town, and I have been surrounded with Clements,159 Cootes, and Strutts.160 However I had a visit from Bob161 as a palliative which supported me under the rest.

It is quite impossible to give an idea of the hurry and scurry of the people in every direction, and as if the rain only increased their ardour. Women with drooping black bonnets and draggled thin cotton gowns, and the men looking wet and radical to the skin. I catch myself twaddling and moralising to myself just as I went on about poor Buonaparte. They say fools are the only people who wonder, and I believe there is something in it, for I go on wondering till I feel quite imbecile.

However I own I am shocked (not surprised in this instance) that not a single public office or government concern should be shut. No churches at this end of the town either open, and no bells tolling.162

Your small parcel delighted me and is the smartest I had. I have given every direction as to that being the first article worn, for I should not love my child unless it had your things on.

Miss Eden to Miss VilliersWOBURN, 1821.

MY DEAR THERESA, There never was a house in which writing flourished so little as it does here, partly that I have been drawing a great deal, and also because they dine at half-past six instead of the rational hour of seven, and in that lost half-hour I know I could do more than in the other twenty-three and a half. After all, I like this visit. It was clever of me to expect the Duchess163 would be cross, because of course, that insures her being more good-natured than anybody ever was. I am only oppressed at being made so much of. Such a magnificent room, because she was determined I should have the first of the new furniture and the advantage of her society in the mornings, though in general she makes it a rule to stay in her own room. In short, you may all be very, very good friends, but the only person who really values my merits is – the Duchess of Bedford, and once safe with her the house is pleasant enough.

We have had the Duncannons.164 I like her; she is so unlike Lady Jersey. Miss P. is something of a failure in every way, except in intrinsic goodness; but she was terrified here, and at all times dull, and as nearly ugly as is lawful. They have been the only ladies. Then, there are dear little Landseer, Mr. Shelley, so like his mama in look, and a great rattle; Lord Chichester, Lord Charles Russell, etc.; and a tribe of names unknown to fame, headed by a Mr. Garrett, who is a rich shooting clergyman with the most suave complacent manners! – one of those appurtenances to a great house I cannot abide.

Eliza165 is in the greatest beauty, and is a very nice person altogether. I think Lord Chichester succeeds here, and there is no denying that he is a creditable specimen of a young gentleman of the reign of George IV.166 We have been on the point of acting, but the Providence that guards les fous et les ivrognes evidently keeps an eye on Amateur actors and preserves them from actually treading the boards. Your most affectionate

E. E.Lady Campbell to Miss EdenD’ARQUES, PRÈS DIEPPE,Le 16 Juillet, 1822.

MY DEAREST EMILY, I have been robbed and pillaged and bored and worried, and hate France as much as ever I did, and so does Guy. Mama167 has made us a comfortable visit, but alas I cannot stay any longer, and conceive my joy! we let our house here, and return to England for my Couche. It almost makes up to me for the business. I shall be in London in August, there to remain six months. To show you how entirely and utterly false it is that you have not always and always had that very large den in my heart, let me beg and entreat that, if you can, you will be in or near Town, if you can manage it, during my confinement.