We have been living here rather quietly, not very though, – at least I dined in town at several great dinners, at the Lievens, etc., that fortnight the Ministers were all in London, and we went up several times to the play with the Stanleys, and several of them came and dined here, and so on during November. Then, George has been frisking about the country at Woburn, Brocket, etc., shooting; and on Saturday he and I are going to run down to Bowood for a week. It is an expensive amusement and not worth the trouble, barring that it is worth while acknowledging the kindness of the Lansdownes. He rode down here from London to ask us, but I never go on his invitations. But, however, he wrote again as soon as he got back, and then Lady Lansdowne wrote to insist on our fixing a day. So, though I know she never wishes her invitations to be accepted, yet if she will write, she must take the consequences, and so we are going. I hear the Nortons396 are to be there, which will be funny. I do not fancy her, but still she will be amusing to meet for once.
We settle in town after that, at least Fanny and I do. George is going to a great meeting of Ministers at Goodwood. I think it such a good thing, the Ministers have all taken to go shooting about in a body. It prevents their doing any other mischief. That is the way an enemy might state it. I, who am a friend, merely presume they must have brought the country to a flourishing state, since they seem to have so much leisure for amusing themselves.
We have two of Robert’s boys staying with us while Mrs. Eden is recovering from her sixth lying-in. The eldest of the five younger children is just five years old. Pleasant!
I send this to the Council Office as you desire, and have a vague idea that C. Greville will read it, and throw it into the fire – officially of course, I mean. Ever, dearest Theresa, your affect.
E. E.
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell
GROSVENOR STREET,Tuesday, [1837].
DEAREST PAM, Thank you just for giving me a push off – not that of all the days in the year I could have chosen this for answering you. I am in long correspondence with Louisa (Mrs. Colvile) about that flirtation,397 that little interesting love story I imparted to you, and, as usual, the young people are to be very miserable, because that £100 a year which has been left out of everybody’s income, when incomes were created, is not forthcoming; and as usual again, I take the grand line of “all for love and my niece well lost.” Moreover, I think a small income in these days is as good as a large one twenty years ago; and that anything is to be preferred to a disappointment. But all this – together with due attention to dignity one side and love the other, and no two people ever understanding each other – keeps me writing at the rate of twelve pages a day. I am quite tired of the manual labour, and as I feel convinced that three months hence they will be married, I grudge these protocols.
What fun your visit was to me, and I shall always think that last sin of your drive to Greenwich and back was the best spent wickedest two hours we ever passed. I have been twice for a few days to Eastcombe. Saturday and Sunday we pass at Greenwich. George gardens for about fourteen hours on Sunday, which I suppose is wrong, only that is his way of resting himself. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden
March 26, 1834.
DEAREST EMMY, I daresay the very sight of a letter from me frights you. I was very sorry after I had written the nasty bitter letter. When I wrote that, I was ill-tempered too! and one always writes harder than one feels. However, my own Emmy, I had rather have written it to you than to any other, tho’ you may not thank me for la préférence, if any one can bear with me it is you, however. You mistook me if you thought that I thought that either dear Lord Auckland or the Lansdownes had not done their utmost for us! God knows I feel far more sure of Lord Auckland’s kindness to me than of my own Brother’s. But there is much danger in our sort of distress of getting embittered, my Darling. I pray against this temptation, and strive against this most fervently, and I do trust my cheerfulness has never flagged, and that I blame no one. We have done all we can, and I will not fret…
Your little Godchild is a dear child, with immense eyes and four teeth. She is wise, clever and quiet, and all your Godchild ought to be, but not so pretty as some of her sisters. As they say the commodities are always in proportion to the demand for them, I expect a great cry for girls in a few years.
I have been to our Court but twice. I was told it was imposing, and I did think there was a good deal of imposition. He398 is sharp and clever and does work like a horse, but I do think one man about him very dangerous, and that is Blake the Remembrancer. I cannot help thinking that man very double, nay, triple. There are no bounds to the gossip of our little Court; the master likes it and is fed with it. I do not think he is very popular, but that does not signify; here, the way of flesh and all parties seems to be discontent, and murmur and grumble. Think of the Wilt399 being married, —Ciel!.. Your own
PAMMY.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden
1834.
I am over head and ears in your affairs. I have so much the bump of speculation and lottery in my soul that I am decidedly of your opinion, and would at once keep Greenwich and the Thames, than put my head under that very excellent and comfortable extinguisher of the Exchequer, particularly if my head were as bien meublée and well arranged as your George’s small crop-eared shaven little crown. We always dressed our heads alike outside, no curls. I would most certainly take my chance and not dowager myself into the Exchequer…
I suppose Government, to hold together, must go upon the principle of each Minister bringing a certain quantity of sense and an alloy of folly. Now, surely, some of your colleagues bring a peck of dirt and very few grains of reason. Are you obliged to eat it all?.. My dearest, tempt me not with the sound of pleasant books, I am all day at Latin and Greek with the boys, I very nearly wrote your name in Greek letters.
Write to me; it cheers me, and I want cheering often, dear Emmy. I grieve at your account of Lady Lansdowne.400 She has not the constitution for the illness of being cured by the London physicians, I am very sure. Solomon, after he had taken all the physic in the world, exclaimed: “Vanity of vanities.”
Your Godchild has a mouthful of teeth. Tell me something of your Sisters, of William Osborne, of that marriage of your niece, and particularly of the fate of those orchises we took down that day we ran to Greenwich, did they ever come up?
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell
GROSVENOR STREET.[1837.]
…I do not really care about my position in this short life, but I like to be actually posished, don’t you? I believe we shall end by remaining at Greenwich, influenced chiefly by the enormous price of villas.
I am sorry Lady Lansdowne writes in bad spirits, for barring the melancholy circumstances attending Kerry’s marriage, I should not have thought this a troublesome year to her. The Wilt himself seems full of attention to her, and if she hates London society, this is a charming year, as such an article does not exist. You have no idea how odd it is. Except herself, no person ever thinks of giving either ball or party. I own I think it quite delightful; no hot rooms, no trouble of any sort, and a great economy of gowns and bores.
We thought much of the Unions401 for ten days, but they are going by. There never was such luck as the Tailors starting by such ridiculous demands. The middle classes, even down to servants, took against them, and there seems to be very little doubt that, in a very few weeks, they will be totally beat and the whole Union fund exhausted.
It is rather amusing to see them wandering about the Parks, quite astonished at the green leaves and blackbirds. There were about fifty of them playing at leap-frog the other morning. Only conceive the luxury of going home after that unusual exercise, and after beating their wives for making such good waistcoats, sitting down cross-legged to rest themselves. They cost the Union £10,000 the first week, and £8,000 the second, and as the whole amount of the Union fund is £60,000, it is easy to guess how long it may last. It will end in frightful distress. The great tailors are getting foreigners over, and employing women with great success.
I have been in a state of agitation with a touch of bother added to it, which would have made my letters very hummocky. That giving up Greenwich was nearly the death of me, and our glorious promotion402 was inflicted on us on a particular Thursday, Epsom race day, which George and I had set apart for a holiday, and a tête-à-tête dinner, and a whole afternoon in that good little garden. We went all the same; but, as for gardening, what was the good of cultivating flowers for other people’s nosegays! So there I sat under the verandah crying. What else could be done, with the roses all out, and the sweetpeas, and our orange-trees, and the whole garden looking perfectly lovely; and George was nearly as low as I was.
And then we had two or three days of bother for our future lives, because, though I now never mean to talk politics, and to hear as little of them as may be, yet I suppose there is no harm in imagining just the bare possibility that the Government may not last for ever.403 However, he is assured now of a retiring pension. If he chooses to play at the game of politics, he must take his chance of winning or losing; and moreover, this would not have been a time for separating from poor Lansdowne, who has behaved beautifully all through these troubles. So now we are fairly in for it, and after the first troubles are over, I daresay it will do very well. It is the kind of office he likes, and he is, of course, flattered with the offer of it, and Lord Grey has been uncommonly kind to him.
We went on Tuesday to see the Admiralty, and I believe we shall be moving into it the end of next week. It is a vast undertaking. The kitchen is about the size of Grosvenor Square, and takes a cook and three kitchen-maids to keep it going, but the rest of the establishment is in proportion, which is distressing, as I look on every additional servant as an added calamity. I will trouble you with the idea of this house – your old acquaintance – with a bill stuck in its window, “To be sold,” – rather shocking! Looks ungrateful after we have passed our best days in it; but still I cannot fancy being much attached to any London house, so I do not mind about this. Our idea is to get a villa sufficiently small to be adapted to our income, whenever the day of dignified retirement comes; to move our plants and books to it, and gradually to furnish it, and then to make it our only home for the rest of our lives. I should like that better than any other life. Ever your affectionate
E. E.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden
Tuesday, June 10, 1834.
How do you do, and how do you feel? How does one feel when one becomes sister to the Admiralty?.. Stanley404 seems a terrible loss, but at this distance I cannot judge, of course. You will think me, of course, a Radical, but I think he is wrong, for the Irish Church always did strike me like a Hot-bed for raising Horse-Beans, – some would tell you for raising thistles, but I don’t go quite so far. I saw Mrs. Ellice, she is in such a Grey fermentation, it might be dangerous, but she foams it away in such long talk that it is very safe.
I saw Mrs. Foggy405 as she is called; pleasant, merry, and going on very well; people begin to get accustomed to her ways, and, I think, like her on the whole! Darling dear Foggy is in good humour, and all seems right. She is amusing, certainly, but certainly elle parle gras, as the French say, when people speak improprieties. I always think part of her education must have been carried on in the Canal boat, like Vert Vert, when he got away from the nuns.
The Protestants are bristling all over this unfortunate country since the Reform. I have seen nothing like the excitement among them. The Catholics do not appear so excited. This is plain enough. The loss to 200,000 is immense, whereas the gain to 8,000,000 is comparatively small.
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell.HAM COMMON,Tuesday, July 23, 1834.
Yes, it is very odd – absolutely curious. But tho’ you and I live in two different islands – two different worlds – yet your letters always are just what I think, and know, and say, and they fit into my mood of mind, and you carry on the story I am telling – and you know all I did not tell you, and say all I did not know – and the whole thing amalgamates. That Littleton creature!406 Is not there an unity in that story of him with all I know? Let’s write his life. Did not I meet him at dinner the very week after the stramash, when everybody crossed the street if they saw him coming, they were so ashamed for him? It was at a dinner at the Chancellor’s, the first given after Lord Melbourne’s appointment,407 and he was there, and Lord Lansdowne, and several others, and Charles Grey408 as sulky as possible. And next to him sat Mr. Littleton – and the first thing he chose to begin talking about across the table was something about “one of the tustles that O’Connell and I have had.” It set all our teeth on edge, everybody being naturally with a predisposition to edge-ism, and none of the ferment of the change having had time to subside – and he the guilty author of it all! I really would not have alluded for his sake to the letter O. I said to Lord Lansdowne: “Well, I am surprised at him, for I have refrained from talking about him, from really expecting his mind must give way, and that there will be some horrid tragedy to make us all repent having abused him.” And he said, “That is exactly my feeling. I look at him with astonishment; I can hardly believe he is what he seems to be.” I suppose it really was true, and that he did not mind. We tried, for two or three days, I remember, to declare he looked very ill, but now you say he had not lost a night’s rest, I give up that point. It never was very tenable.
The young Greys have all been pre-eminently absurd, Lord Howick more than all the rest. He told me he had been to all the clubs, and calling at all the houses he knew, to spread every report against the Chancellor he could think of, and coming from him, of course, it was set down as coming from his father, who is as unlike his sons as he well can be. I do not wish to entrench on Mrs. E.’s409 province – how tiresome she must be! – but she can say nothing of Lord Grey I don’t think. He is the only great man I ever had the good luck to see – consistent and magnanimous – two qualities that I never met with in any other politician. I have closed my political accounts with him… I am sure I cannot tell you generally anything about the Government. Politics have answered so ill to me in my private capacity that I gave them quite up, and can only tell you these private gossipries of the time. I have not read a debate since last Easter, and can only wonder how I could be so foolish three years ago as to think politics and office the least amusing. I suppose to the end of our days we shall all wonder at ourselves three years ago. But I have had such a horrid uncomfortable year this year; I never was so tired, so out of breath, so bored. You may well ask where we lodge. At a little cottage on Ham Common, hired by the week, without a scrap of garden, but where by dint of hard labour, a doctor, and quantities of steel draughts, I have recovered a little of the health I lost entirely by being kept eight months in London, frying over the coals.
I declare I believe I have lived ten whole lives in the last ten months; we have been so unsettled, which is the only state I cannot abide. First George was to have that Exchequer place with Greenwich, and we made up our plans for that, and were to part with Grosvenor Street; then Greenwich was cut off from the Exchequer, and we prepared to give that up; then the Government found it convenient to make him keep the Board of Trade, and we went back to be as we were.
Then came the Stanley secession and we thought we were all to be out, and reverted to the Exchequer, and looked at every villa round London. Then came the Admiralty, and George sent me to Greenwich to pack up and sell and give up everything, (the only spot of ground I care about in the world).
Well! That was done, and as the goods were on their road, just turning into the Admiralty gate, and just after we had paid Sir James Graham for his goods, and stuck up a bill in Grosvenor St. “To Be Sold” – out went dear Grey.
Then for two or three weeks we did not know what to do. And then in all that hot weather, at last we settled to move, and the arrangement of that great Admiralty was enough to murder an elephant. Then, when George set off on his Tour of the Ports, we came here, and just as we got settled, a Mr. Brogden bought Grosvenor Street, so that I had to go up and pack that up, and rout out the accumulated rubbish of sixteen years, and move all the books, etc.
However they have done their worst now, we have parted with both our houses, and all our goods, and when we are turned out, must live in a tent under a hedge.
I have got a little black King Charles’s spaniel of my own, that I mean to boil down, and make into a comfortable “sup of broth” when we come to that particular hedge “where my tired mind may rest and call it home.”
I somehow feel as if I were sitting by watching George’s mad career, and wondering where it will end.
I never set eyes on him – you have no idea what the labour of the Admiralty is – he never writes less than 35 letters every day in his own hand, besides what the Secretary and all the others do.
Every Levée is a crowd of discontented men who would make an excellent crew for one ship, he says, but as they each want one, he is obliged to refuse 99 out of every 100. However he is as happy as a king, I believe, only he has not had time to mention it. He likes his office of all things.
The Admiralty is a splendid home to live in, but requires quantities of servants, and the more there are the more discontented they are. Everybody says what fortunate people we are, and I daresay George is, but my personal luck consists in having entirely lost his society and Greenwich, the two charms of my life; in being kept ten months of every year in London, which I loathe; and in being told to have people to dinner – without the means of dressing myself so as to be always in society. I wish Government would consider that, tho’ a man be raised high in office, yet that the unfortunate women remain just as poor as ever.
Louisa (Mrs. Colvile) has just had her seventeenth child; Mary (Mrs. Drummond) her ninth; and Mrs. Eden is going to have her seventh.
Lord Melbourne410 made a good start in the House of Lords as far as speaking went. I do not know what ladies have hopes of him, but the “Fornarina,”411 as he calls her himself, has him in greater thraldom than ever. I see him very often and confidentially, but both of us without any sinister designs.
Miss Eden to Lady Charlotte Greville
HAM COMMON,Friday [October 1834].
MY DEAR LADY CHARLOTTE, I sent a note to thank you for my beautiful purse down to Mr. Spring-Rice to frank, not knowing he was away from home, and now that is come back to me I may thank you also for your account of Lady F.412 I am so glad the business is over at last; it was very hard upon her to have it hanging over her so long, and I congratulate you on being at ease about her. As for another grandchild – your grand quiver is so full of them already, that I suppose you hardly have room for any more. I think it would be such a good plan, if after people have as many children as they like, they were allowed to lie-in of any other article they fancied better; with the same pain and trouble, of course (if that is necessary), but the result to be more agreeable. A set of Walter Scott’s novels, or some fine china, or in the case of poor people, fire-irons and a coal skuttle, or two pieces of Irish linen. It would certainly be more amusing and more profitable, and then there would be such anxiety to know what was born. Now it can be only a boy or a girl.
I expect and hope that Lady F. in about ten days will be walking about looking younger and stronger than ever.
My purse is quite perfection, and I cannot thank you enough for it. I am only afraid it is still more attractive than the last you gave me, which so took the fancy of one of those men who sell oranges in the street, that he snatched it off the seat of the carriage in which I was sitting and ran away with it. Your ever affectionate
E. EDEN.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden
[1837.]
Tell me any old news you have by you, for I never see a newspaper by any chance, and live in the wilds, – woods I would have said, only we are scarce of trees. I hear news once a month from Mrs. Ellice. I think she seems Lord Wellesley’s Madame de Pompadour, and so happy! She is quick and lively, but furieusement intrigante I should imagine, from what I hear of her; and her vanity has such a maw that she swallows the rawest compliments. She was recommended to me by Mrs. Sullivan, – not merely introduced to my acquaintance, but fairly confided to my heart. Well, my dearest, I went with my friendship in my hand, ready to swear it before the first magistrate, expecting to find a warm-hearted étourdie full of talent and genius. Well, we met, and I knocked my head against the hardest bit of worldly Board you ever met with. Full of business, with a great deal of the grey claw and accaparage. So I buttoned up my heart to my chin, and we talked good harsh worldly gab, and we are charming persons together.
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister
HAM COMMON,Monday evening, October 28, 1834.
DEAREST THERESA, I am kind to write to-night, for Fanny and I poked out an old backgammon board of the General’s413 and began to play, and I beat her two single games and a gammon, so that in coming to my letter I am probably leaving “fortune at the flood, and all my after life will be bound in flats and shallows.” All your fault.
Our cottage is a real little cottage, belonging to an old General Eden who, on the score of relationship, let us have it for almost nothing. It is very clean and old bachelorish, and he lets with it an old housemaid who scolds for half-an-hour if a grain of seed drops from the bird’s cage, or if Chance414 whisks a hair out of his tail; we are grown so tidy and as she is otherwise an obliging old body, she has been an advantage to us. We took the house only by the week, and as my health has entirely recovered the complete break-up it came to, from our long detention in London, and as his Lordship is living alone at that Admiralty, we depart on Wednesday to settle ourselves there till the Government changes, or I am ill again. However, I do not mind London so much in cold weather. I have been very busy this last week setting up house, as the Ministers will be most of them in town next month without their families, and George has announced an intention to make the Admiralty pleasant to his colleagues. I have but one idea of the manner in which that is to be achieved, and hope the cook may turn out as well as Mr. Orby Hunter’s recommendation promises. Oh dear! I dread the sight of their dear old faces again, and of that “full of business” manner which they get into when they meet in any number.
I wish I could write like Mrs. Hannah More, and have money enough to build myself a Barley Wood,415 and resolution to go and live there. I am so taken by that book and amazingly encouraged by it, for she was as dissipated and as wicked as any of us for the first half of our life, so there is no saying whether we may not turn out good for something at last.
We have been here eleven weeks, quite alone, but walking and driving eternally, and very few interruptions except an occasional visit from, or to, the F. Egertons and W. de Roos’s, and a royal dinner, luncheon, and party at the Studhouse, which always turns out amusing. The King is so good-natured that it does not signify his being a little ridiculous or so; it is impossible not to love him. The Albemarles416 do the thing in the handsomest manner as far as the dinner, establishment, etc., goes, and I think the Studhouse a charming possession. She always gets all the King’s Ministers that she can find to meet him, and it charms me to hear her judgments of people: – How unlucky that the Spring-Rices should look less well at a dinner than the Stanleys; and what luck she was in in having such a showy person as Lady Bingham last year in the neighbourhood; not adverting to the possibility that one person may be pleasanter than the others, and admitting that, their position being changed, they do not amount to being persons at all.
I suppose that things are going on well, for I never saw people in greater glee than the Ministers are. Lord Melbourne is in the highest state of spirits, which seems to me odd for the Prime Minister of the country. They all went off from the last luncheon at the Studhouse early, leaving only the W. de Roos’s, Fanny and me and Lord Hill417 to go round Hampton Court Palace with the King, – a long and curious process, as he shows it just like a housekeeper with a story for each picture. It was pitch dark, so it does not much matter if the pictures were as improper as the stories, for I saw none of them, but it lasted two hours, and in the meantime the Ministers, having had their dinner so early, had set fire to the two Houses of Parliament just for a ploy for the evening.418 That is the sort of view the Tories take of it, and it sounds plausible, you see; and from Lord Hill’s staying to see the Palace it is clear he had not been let into that plot.
No, I did not see the fire, – wish I had – will trouble them to do it all over again when there are more people in town. Is Lord Fordwich the new Under Secretary? I asked George and he said he did not know, and I asked Lord Melbourne and he said he could not tell me – both very good answers in their way and such as I am used to, but it leaves the fact of Fordwich’s appointment doubtful, and I heard from Lady Cowper three days ago and she said nothing about it.
There was a great sough of India for about a fortnight, but I always said it was too bad to be true, which is a dangerous assertion to make in most cases, it only hastens the catastrophe. But this was such an extreme case, such a horrible supposition, that there was nothing for it but to bully it; and the danger is over now. Botany Bay would be a joke to it. There is a decent climate to begin with, and the fun of a little felony first. But to be sent to Calcutta for no cause at all!! At all events, I should hardly have got there before George got home again, for I should have walked across the country to join him, if I had gone at all. I think I see myself going into a ship for five months! I would not do it for £1000 per day.
Good-night, dearest Theresa. I see Ann Grey is out, and rather expect that will turn out to be yours too. Is it?419 Your ever affectionat
E. E.
[In November 1834 the King dismissed Lord Melbourne, and sent for the Duke of Wellington, who advised that Sir Robert Peel should form a Government. Peel’s return from Italy did not take place till December 9, and the Duke in the meantime assumed control of various offices, thereby giving offence to the Whigs. He became Foreign Secretary under Peel.]
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister
ADMIRALTY,Monday, November 23, 1834.
MY DEAREST THERESA, Yes, – you see it all just in the right light; but what will come of it nobody can say… The truth is, till Sir Robert or his answer comes, they have not the least idea themselves what they are to do, or to say, or to think, and I should not be the least surprised if he were to refuse to come, and many people think that from the ridicule of the Duke’s position and conduct now, the whole thing may crumble away before Sir Robert can arrive.
The King is said to be very cross about it, and at the unconstitutional state of affairs. It has been the oddest want of courtesy on the Duke’s part insulting the Ministers for his own inconvenience. Mr. Spring-Rice’s420 keys, besides his seals, were sent for two hours after the Duke kissed hands on Monday, so that he could not remove his private letters even, and has never been able to get them since. He is naturally the gentlest man I ever saw, but is in that state of exasperation that he would do anything to show his resentment.
On Friday the Duke sent to Lord Conyngham to say he begged he would dispose of no more patronage, to which Lord Conyngham answered very properly that he had resigned, and was keeping the office solely for the Duke’s convenience (it is a patent office), and that he would leave it with pleasure the next minute, but as long as he remained there he should certainly do what he thought best with his patronage. The Chancellor421 was to have given up the seals on Saturday, when he would have cleared off all arrears and closed the courts, etc., and this was understood at the beginning of the week; but on Thursday the Duke wrote to him that he must give up the Great Seal on Friday morning. It appears that nobody but the King has a right to ask for the Great Seal, so the Chancellor wrote to tell the Duke what was the proper étiquette, and at the same time wrote to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom he is on the most amicable terms, saying that the Duke, besides being three Secretaries of State, President of the Council, etc., was now going to be Lord Chancellor, so he should give notice to the Bar that the Duke would give judgment on Friday afternoon, and sit to hear Motions on Saturday morning. He came here quite enchanted with the serious answer from Lord Lyndhurst, saying the Duke had no such notion, etc.