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 Lewis
Eden 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 Eden
EDEN 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 Lewis
RICHMOND,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 Greville
CHILD’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 Eden
RICHMOND,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 Lewis
CHILD’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.
To be sure – the luck of having you as my editress, my shield, my sword, my everything. You know everybody, and are good friends with them all.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis
CHILD’S HILL, HAMPSTEAD,Monday [August 1859].
MY DEAREST THERESA, The important enclosure arrived safely this morning, and I sent Ellis forthwith to get the money and pay it in at Drummond’s, for fear Bentley should fail to-day. But my belief is that he is a wealthy Bentley; and he has behaved like a gentleman, and evidently is not discontented with his bargain. And so, all’s well that ends well, even if it be only a Semi-Detached House.
Thank you again and again, dearest Theresa, for all the successful trouble you took. Nobody but you could have brought the affair to such a good end, and I now fondly think that between this and November you will work up the Harcourt income to £4000 a year! You made £100 out of the £25 I expected, therefore, etc., etc.
You all sound very happy at Harpton, and Lord Clarendon had given me the same account, and said how much his girls573 were taking to their new cousin, and how pleased they were with Thérèse’s perfect happiness.
The house in Pont Street is a good idea. Thérèse will be so handy for you to fetch and carry, and it will be such a mere step for her to Kent House. I do not mean to settle yet what my little offering is to be. I want to choose it myself when I go back to town. And then I have rather set my heart on a china dessert service, but if anybody else steps in, I can easily set my heart on something else. There are so many duplicates in wedding presents; such unnecessary quantities of inkstands and cream jugs; that I think it better to wait a little and hit the spot at the end. I began life by giving my sister Mary a dessert service when she married on £900 a year, and settled in that little cottage at Neasdon; and in all their after wealth Mr. Drummond never would have any other, but went on filling up the breakages in the old pattern to the end. And so it has been my usual wedding cadeau since, and I gave one to J. Colvile574 when he went to India, and as I look on Thérèse as a niece, I should like to go jogging on in the old dessert fashion; so, if anybody consults you, say that is bespoke. So Mr. Harcourt may have one. But you will let me know in the course of time. The Sydney Herberts called here yesterday. They had slept at the Grenville farm and he came very good-naturedly to assure himself, he said, that I was aware of the complete success of “Semi,” which seems to have taken his fancy prodigiously. He said it had become a sort of byword in London, and that if anybody talked of taking a house, the answer was, Semi-detached, of course. I have not seen him for 12 years, and he is not the least altered in looks. They were going to dine with Florence Nightingale575 at Hampstead, or rather at her house, for she has come quite to the last days of her useful life and is dying of disease of the heart. Every breath she draws may be heard through her closed doors, but when she can speak she still likes to talk to Mr. Herbert of soldiers’ hospitals and barracks, and to suggest means of improving them. Ever your affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis
EDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,Saturday evening, November 1859.
MY DEAREST THERESA, Between Lena,576 and Lady Ribblesdale,577 and Eddy and Theresa, and all the maids in the house, I am mistress of every detail of the wedding, and I am so very glad that it all went off so beautifully. Lena says it is the most interesting wedding she has been at; there was so much feeling and family affection floating about; and I hear dear Thérèse looked very pretty and very pale. But it is you, my old dear, that I have been thinking of all day – thinking so much that I am obliged to write to get the subject off my mind. I am so sorry for you, but only just at this moment. And, after all, the wedding is not so bad as the day of proposal to the mother. Then you had nothing to look to but her going away; and now your next prospect is her coming back; and in the meanwhile you have done all in your power to secure her happiness.
God bless you, dear. This does not require an answer, but I could not resist writing, and I thought you would like to know that I was as well as could be expected; after the fatigue of being at Mrs. Harcourt’s wedding this morning. I really feel as if I had been there. Your affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis
RICHMOND,Monday evening [October 1860].
MY DEAREST THERESA, It is just bedtime, but I must write a line of warm congratulation on the advent of the grandchild and our dear Thérèse’s safety;578 I missed the announcement in The Times this morning, and it was not till the middle of the day that Lena, with a railroad sort of screech, made the discovery, and then with infinite presence of mind I said, “Then Theresa cannot be come to town and I shall hear from her this evening.” And so I did.
What a discovery chloroform is. By the time we are all dead and buried, I am convinced some further discovery will be made by which people will come into the world and live through it and go out of it without the slightest pain.
Don’t you think that if Thérèse continues to go on as well as she has begun you will be able to drive down here? Lady Clarendon sometime ago got an order for Lena to see Strawberry Hill, but as Lena only returned from Wells on Saturday I made no use of it till to-day, and then we found Lady Waldegrave was living there. However, an imposing groom of the chambers showed us the pictures, and Lena saw the rest of the home, while I was all the time longing to ask him if he knew anything about Thérèse, but felt too low in the scale of creation to propound such a question to him.
My best love to her. Do come here. Your affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Lady Charlotte Greville
EDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,October 24 [1863].
MY DEAREST LADY CHARLOTTE, A sudden wish has seized me to write to you – not that I have an atom of a thing to say except the old hacknied fact that I am very fond of you, and also that I heard constantly of you when I was at Richmond through your sons,579 and the Flahaults,580 and that now I do not see how I am to hear of you at all, except somebody at Hatchford (not you) will have the kindness to write to me.
Barring the loss of the view, and the drives in that beautiful park, I do not miss my Richmond so much as I expected.
There is always something intensely comfortable in home, and my own books and things, and I am very busy with a new sitting-room that I have made upstairs, by throwing two small bedrooms into one. It has made a very pretty warm room, looks clean and bright, and then there is the fun of furnishing it. It is painful to look out of the window. Those dreadful Royal Commissioners have cut down all the fine trees belonging to Gore House581 and are running up a blank wall 20 feet high, for their new garden.
My own trees are the only ones left in this neighbourhood, and though the blank wall is better than another row of houses staring into my garden, the general effect is that of living just outside the King’s Bench Prison. I look upon a man who cuts down a large tree in London as capable of committing murder, or any other crime, and have a vague idea that the Road Murder582 might be traced home to Prince Albert and Lord Granville, or one of these Commissioners.
It will interest Lady Ellesmere to know that Lena583 has returned to her navvies, and has been greeted with the greatest warmth. Indeed, I should prefer a little more coolness in her place, as they all insist on shaking hands, and I imagine washing is a virtue they do not practise more than once a week. However, they are an interesting race, very grateful in their rough way; and the Controller and Clerk of the Works both say that there is a great improvement in their habits, and are very eager now to encourage the readings. A great deal of the work in these gardens has now passed into the hands of London bricklayers and carpenters. They steadily declined listening to Mr. Ward, the missionary, and were very rude to him.
He was very anxious Lena should try and tame them, so she began by collecting the débris of her navvies, and sitting down with them under the old tree (which they have killed of course), and some of the bricklayers gathered round and began to laugh, so she told them very quietly that they need not come out of their shed to listen to her if they did not like it, but that if they came out she could not allow any laughing at such a serious subject. And they took it very well and said they did not mean to jeer, and that if she would come to their shed, they would listen if they might smoke; and the navvies in their gentleman-like way advised her to go, and said they would go with her, and they made a path with planks and put up a sort of seat, and showed the bricklayers how the little lady, as they call her, was to be treated. And it all went well. She read them a tract called Slab Castle, which always touches them, and when she came to the chapter on the Bible, half of the bricklayers were in tears, particularly the ones who had laughed, and they conveyed her to the gate, begging she would come again, and clamorous for copies of Slab Castle – which I advise her to decline giving for the present. But they have been extremely civil and attentive since, and she has certainly heard such satisfactory accounts of her old congregation, that it is an encouragement to go on. My love to Lady or Lord E., and believe me ever, dearest, your affectionate
E. EDEN.
I hope Alice will not insist on my liking Miss Yonge’s new book.584 It is more unintelligible than “The Daisy Chain,” though not quite so tiresome. But she brings in too many people. There are four generations of one family, and her moral is quite beyond me. Those that are well brought up turn out wicked, and the worldly family produce a crop of saints. I am proud to say I am quite incapable of construing the slang she makes her ladies talk.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis
EDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,Monday, December [1863].
MY DEAREST THERESA, It is obvious that I must write and wish you and yours a happy New Year, and a great many of them, and one happier than the other; but barring that I do not see that I have anything else to say. London is so utterly empty during Christmas week, everybody thinking it right to go to somebody else’s house, and it is always the most solitary week of the year to me. But I feel so comfortable in the thought that I am not passing it in bed as I have for the twelve preceding years, that it seems to me a singularly merry Christmas.
I suppose you are all rehearsing and acting. Lady Derby writes word that she hears Alice585 is well enough now to think of acting on the 11th, so I hope she has made great progress in health since she got home. Lady Derby gives rather a poor account of him; he gains strength so slowly, but she says that after being confined to his own room for three months, he was now able to get about the house at times…
The only two people I have seen this week have been Lord Brougham and Sir C. Wood.586 Lord Brougham was only in town for two nights on his way to Cannes. He is quite enthusiastic about my father’s papers, and has written something about them in the Law Review, and he was rather good-humoured and pleasant. But on going away he always cries so much at the prospect of our not meeting again, that he leaves me in a puzzled state of low spirits. All the more, that I have not the remotest idea whether it is his death or mine that he is crying over; but he looks so well, I think it must be mine.
By the bye, your old Dean Milman587 came hobbling into the room on Saturday, full of abject apologies to Lena, whom he chose to suppose he had affronted, and taking great care to ignore his real grand sin of abducting the papers without asking leave. However, he came to say that he was most agreeably surprised that Mr. Hogge has done his part well,588 and that he and Mrs. Milman had been greatly interested, etc., which she amply confirmed. I like her very much, and she is still so handsome… Good-bye, dearest. I did not write sooner, as I had just written to the Grove when your letter came, and as everything is public property there, this counts for a letter to Lord Clarendon as well as to you. Your affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to her Niece, Mrs. Dickinson. 589
Eden Lodge, Kensington Gore [1864].
MY DEAR MRS. DICKINSON, I am charmed with your letter, I wanted to have one from you. Dear old Longleat! I should so like to see it again. I passed so much of my youth so very happily there, and I do not think I ever attained loving anybody more than Lady Bath,590– not this one591– but her mother-in-law, and the daughters pay back to me the affection I had for their mother…
I suppose they told you about the Horticultural Fête? I saw and heard nothing but the crash of carriages, and linkmen went on screaming for them till nine at night. I have not heard linkmen screaming for the last thirteen years.
Yesterday Lena got leave from one of her friends working in the garden, to bring me in thro’ a little obscure door into the great conservatory, which we had to ourselves, and I really could hardly believe the flowers were real, they were so unearthly beautiful, particularly the geraniums and roses, great round stools of flowers of the brightest colours. Some day I have a fancy that I shall be well enough to go down and visit you, my old pet. What a bore for you! Your aff.
E. E.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis
March [1865].
MY DEAREST FRIEND, I would rather write to you myself. I am so thankful I saw and took leave of dear Mary. She wished it so much herself, and was as loving and as dear as ever. You know we had always been the greatest friends of the family, and till I went to India, we had never missed for a single day writing to each other. It was an intimacy that only two sisters nearly of an age can have, and she referred to it again on Tuesday, and told me still to be a mother to her children. They always have been like my own children. But I am most thankful I was able to witness such a really happy deathbed as hers, so calm, so peaceful, and her mind as entirely clear as it ever was in its best days. And to see those six tall sons, four daughters-in-law, and her three daughters all round her bed, the sons more overwhelmed even than the daughters, and she thanking them, and saying how happy they had made her, it was a scene that quite comforts me for her loss, and her poor daughters had quite the same feeling. I saw them yesterday after the case was hopeless and they were quite calm.
Dearest Theresa,592 I do not think it good for you just now to go through more melancholy scenes, otherwise you are one of the few I should like to see. I depend on you so much. Is it not strange that with my health I should have outlived my six sisters – all, except Lady Godolphin, in perfect health when I came from India? Ever, dearest, your affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Mrs. Dickinson
EDEN LODGE, 1863.
I have been out only four times since I came to London. The very ordinary looking women who inhabit London at this time of year, with last year’s dirty little bonnets put at the back of last year’s dirty little faces, and with dirty gowns to match spread over absurd hoops, make me quite uncomfortable.
The “Semi-Attached Couple” was written in that little cottage at Ham Common. I do not exactly know who Mrs. B. was at this moment, but all our Camp ladies were always lying-in, and it is a very easy business in India.
I do not exactly see unless I turn back, and grow young again, that I shall ever visit you at Berkley,593– Richmond is looked upon by doctors as an immense journey for me. I am very much pleased my book altogether amused you. I have such quantities of old letters of thanks for it, from people I had forgotten. I had a grand letter from Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) in praise of my pure facile English, among other things Slang was not invented in my day.
You are quite right to make your children’s childhood happy, and as merry as possible, but please do not spoil them. Life does not spoil anybody, and so teach them early to take it as it comes – cheerfully. Your aff.
E. E.
[Miss Eden died in August 1869: her friend Lady Campbell three months later.]