We dined at Panshanger yesterday. Lady Cowper223 is miserable at being out of all the ferment of London. She is a Whig only by marriage, I suspect, and a regular courtier at heart, but talks bravely just now, with only occasional regrets that the Duke of Wellington should have been so ill-advised…
I saw Lady Ouseley yesterday and she is quite aware how ill you have been, and that you could not write to her. I never can give my mind to her conversation, but she looked very melancholy, and yet I cannot recollect that she mentioned any misfortune except that Sir Gore224 had the rheumatism. Janie looked to me like a standing misfortune. She is so very plain, and she does not pay the slightest attention to her poor melancholy mother.
I am glad you are reading those books. To be sure, you are reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson only now. I knew that, the Memoires de Retz, Shakespeare, and a great part of the Bible, almost by heart before I was eleven years old; so then there was not a thought left for me to think upon manners, men, imagination, or morals. Everything is in those books. On scientific subjects I never could understand other people’s thoughts, and am guiltless of having had one of my own even on the simplest question. My sentiment, later in life, I took by the lump, in absolute cwts. out of Corinne225 and Lord Byron’s Poems, and so, as I said before, I have never had a thought of my own and I do not believe any of us can, in the way we are all educated; and I suppose it is lucky, as they would be foolish thoughts probably if they came.
God bless you, dear, and go on getting better. Your ever affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
BOWOOD,September 24, 1826.
MY DEAR THERESA, I am in such a bad mood for writing, that I could not set about it with a worse grace, only you will not write to me if I do not write to you.
I am devoted to the arts just now, and to the improvement of my small mind, which I have brought to a high state of cultivation by studying fifteen books at a time, some of them amazingly abstruse, such as the Life of James Mackoul the Housebreaker– very improving. Also I have finished my Denham’s Travels, and the Life of Professor Clarke and Les Barricades,226 a diluted sort of history, partly history and partly dialogue, which Lord Lansdowne likes because it is the fashion at Paris, but it is uncommonly stupid. And I have been dipping into Pothier’s Histoire de l’Eglise, – and in short, if we stay here a week there is no saying how much I shall read, or how little I shall remember.
Think of the agonies of coming here last Monday doubtful if we were expected or not! Il Fanatico per la Musica (by which form of words I opine that the Italians translate: Lord Lansdowne) passed last week at the Gloucester music meeting, so he did not receive George’s letter in proper time, and of course there was some mistake about his answer, as there always is about any letter that signifies, and so we did not know if this week suited them. A warm reception from her is in the best of times doubtful, and arriving against her wish would have been horribly degrading. George never will enter into those sort of feelings, but that only makes them worse. However, he promised, if he found we had not been expected, to go on to Bath, and then we had a beautiful wild scheme, if I could have made my mind up to twelve hours’ steam-boat, of going from Bristol to see Elizabeth Cawdor.227 But unfortunately we found our rooms here all ready, so we shall not see Wales this year. The Lansdownes were quite alone, expecting us, and she in the most cordial affectionate state; the place, which I have never seen but at Christmas, quite beautiful, and in short, I never liked Bowood half so much before. That was sure to be the consequence of expecting to dislike it.
Our Newton we have overtaken here again. He left the Grange rather in a huff some days ago, affronted somehow about his singing (at least so I heard, for I was not in the room to hear it); but he went away suddenly and ungraciously. I certainly don’t like him, he is so argumentative, and talks so much of himself. His opinion of your brother George amused me particularly. He raves about you, but sensibly and properly, and calls you Miss Villiers. I have not a notion what line you take when you praise me, but he will distrust your judgment in future whatever you said, for he is one of the people to whom I must be odious. I go and look at his picture of “Macheath,” which is in the drawing-room here, and which I think one of the best modern pictures I know, and collect a large mass of esteem and admiration for the painter, and rush into the library and address myself to him while it is all smoking hot; and before I have been five minutes there, all my good opinion turns sour and bitter and tough and cold, and he might just as well never have painted the picture at all.
Moore228 has been here the last three days, singing like a little angel. He has some new songs that make one perfectly and comfortably miserable, particularly one, set to a very very simple air, and with a constant return of the words, “They are gone,” etc. He was singing it here on Friday, and there was a huge party of neighbours, amongst others a very vulgar bride who is partly a Portuguese, but chiefly a thorough vulgar Englishwoman, calls Lord Lansdowne “Marquis” when she speaks to him, and turns to Lady Lansdowne all of a sudden with “Law, how ‘andsome you look.” Just as Moore had finished this, and we were most of us in tears, she put her great fat hand on his arm and said, “And pray, Mr. Moore, can you sing Cherry Ripe?” George and I, who were sitting the other side of him, burst out laughing, and so Moore was obliged to make a good story out of it afterwards; else he owns he was so angry he meant to have sunk it altogether. Your ever affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
EASTCOMBE,October 1826.
MY DEAR THERESA, I must be come to my second childishness and mere oblivion, for I cannot recollect whether I have answered the letter you wrote to me at Shottesbrook, and which followed me here, or not. If I have written, you had better put this in the fire, because it must be the same thing over again. One thing I know: That I have written above twenty letters since I came here. My family are all dispersed, and I have unwisely enlarged my list of friends, and my acquaintances have been uncommonly troublesome; and in short, I have been ill-used in the article of letter writing.
I have such miserable letters from my poor dear Pamela. It breaks one’s heart to read them, and yet she is very good. She wrote to tell me of Lucy’s death immediately after it occurred, and wrote in the greatest agony, but even then resigned, at least trying to be so, and thinking much of the life of trouble which poor Lucy would have had before her. Pamela said, “Think of her Aunt, think of her poor husband, think of all but her, for she was miserable and it was in mercy that God took her.” And I believe her death to have been in fact occasioned by the state of excitement and anxiety in which she had lived since her marriage; and she had little chance, with her strong feelings and the peculiar circumstances of her situation, of anything but an increase of anxiety. Pamela writes me word to-day that her four servants – all she keeps – are in the scarlet fever, and her eldest little girl had just begun with it, and she has had, ever since Lucy’s death, a sort of nervous pain in her throat that prevents her swallowing anything but liquids, and is grown very weak. I am telling you a long story, but I think you are interested about her, and it is such a melancholy situation that I can think of nothing else. To be sure, I have, as it is, a great many more blessings than I deserve; but it is hard that the want of a little foolish money should keep me from the best friend I have in the world at the only time in which I could be of use to her. However, if it had been possible, George would have taken me to her, and there is no use in murmuring at impossibilities. God knows I can enter into her feelings as a sister; and now that she has so much sickness in her home, it is cruel to leave her with a half-broken heart to struggle through it by herself. And yet I do not see how it is to be managed. Pamela writes but little of the scenes she has been through. She says she cannot endure to express her feelings in writing, though she thinks she would be better if she could talk it over.
Captain Lyon was coming home in January, but perhaps this will prevent him. Poor creature! What an arrival it will be if he has set off before this news reaches him.
You are quite right. I followed you in Berkshire, and next week I am going to Robert. It is doubtful whether his child229 will live, and Mrs. Eden has hardly been allowed to see it; but she wrote yesterday in the greatest spirits saying there had been a great change for the better, and the baby was then in her room; so I trust now it must be thought out of danger. What a horrid piece of work a lying-in is! I am more and more confirmed in the idea that a life of single blessedness is the wisest, even accompanied, as Shakespeare mentions, by the necessity of chanting faint hymns to the cold lifeless moon, which, as I have no voice, rather discomposes me. I shall astonish the moon, poor fellow, when I set off, but as for going through all my sister-in-law has done this fortnight, I could not, and would not, for all the Roberts in creation.
I cannot come to Knightsbridge just now, I am sorry to say. It is highly flattering, my sisters are all fighting for me, and with a very superior cool air I allow them to divide me.
I will not say anything about Sarah; she is too bad, if she knows what she is about. Poor Mr. Robinson was summoned back from Wrest230 yesterday, where he had been amusing himself three days. She sent him word she was dying, and when he arrived in the greatest haste yesterday, she was gone out airing. He was very cross, but too late. It relieves Sister from a very fatiguing attendance, and that is all the good I know.
I shall probably have to unsay all I have said of Newton, for George has discovered he thinks him pleasant, which is an unexpected blow. Do not twit me with inconstancy if I say so too. Your most affectionate
E. EDEN.
[Lady Sarah Robinson was the daughter of Robert, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire. Her mother died in 1796. Three years later her father married Eleanor Eden, who proved to be a good, hard-working stepmother; Lady Sarah gave her constant employment in that capacity even after her marriage to Mr. Robinson in 1814.
Lady Bucks saw that her stepdaughter was comfortably provided with clothes. Amongst other items in her trousseau, were “five beautiful sattin gowns all covered with lace, and twelve high gowns all covered with lace, and nineteen more low gowns all covered with lace – thirty-six in all.”
Lady Sarah had one daughter Elinor, who, seeing the discomfort her mother underwent before the birth of one of her children, said she was “determined to have all her children before she married, and enjoy herself afterwards.” Elinor died, aged eleven, in 1826. A year later her only son was born, George Frederick Samuel, who succeeded his father as Earl of Ripon in 1859, and was created Marquess of Ripon in 1871.
Lady Sarah was highly nervous and hysterical, and a constant source of amusement and irritation to her relations and friends. Her husband resigned after he had been Premier for five months, stating that his wife’s health would no longer allow him to remain in office.]
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
EASTCOMBE,Sunday, 1 o’clock, October 30, 1826.
DEAR THERESA, I am sorry you had the trouble of sending for me yesterday, for Mary Drummond settled when I arrived that my remaining here would allow her to go home to her children, so she went home after dinner last night and I sent up to London for my things and all here was in such confusion, and there was so much to write that I could not write to you. The poor child231 is still alive, and yesterday afternoon we had all talked ourselves into spirits about her, though Warren and West232 continue to repeat that they cannot allow the slightest expectation of her recovery to be entertained. Since that, my sister’s maid writes me word this morning that she has had a most wretched night, constantly screaming and groaning without one moment’s quiet, and that the attendants all thought her very much worse, but that Warren did not think her materially so, as they did.
Think what it must be to witness. Sister has not been out of the room since seven yesterday morning, and with the exception of Tuesday night has sat up seven nights. She sees no one, but I had a composed letter from her last night. Sarah sat up on Friday, and from fatigue and anxiety gave way yesterday morning entirely, and had several fainting fits. Nobody can tell what he goes through, and he is, I think, as nearly angelic in his feelings and conduct as it is possible for man to be. The doctors speak of him with tears in their eyes. Fanny and I are going to walk there now and may perhaps see him, but at all events some of the doctors. You have no idea what it is the waiting here, expecting every hour to have directions to have this house prepared to receive them. They will all come here as soon as it is over. Yours affectionately
E. E.
Lord Auckland to Miss Eden
LONDON,October 30, 1826.
I have not been able to hear anything about you to-day, and am almost fearful I shall go out of town without doing so. At all events direct to me at Pixton, Dulverton. Your last note was far more cheerful, but yet it is a frightful and wretched state of things.233 I saw Mrs. Villiers yesterday, and Newton to-day; he is putting Theresa’s monkey into one of his pictures, and goes to Knightsbridge to draw him. She seems to be ill.
November 21, 1826.
I saw your de Roos yesterday, and he begged me to tell you that Sir Guy Campbell has an appointment in Ireland which will put him and Pam more at their ease – £600 a year. It is very satisfactory.
Little Macdonald is going to be married to an Irish widow, an old acquaintance and attachment with a very small jointure. He is going over to be married, and returns to attend the January Sessions. John Murray, too (you may remember him at Edinbro’), is going to be married. He was on his way to Bowood, and passed a week at Sydney Smith’s on his road, who had to meet him a fat Yorkshire lady of forty, with £60,000, and rather blue. Just the thing for him, and it was all arranged, and Sydney Smith is delighted, and expects visits from Scotchmen without end.
Lansdowne is in town, but she is not, and the Lambs are here, and the Duke of Devonshire,234 who says he is too poor after Russia to go to Chatsworth. But he has a cloak of black Fox worth £500 and is happy.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
EASTCOMBE,Tuesday night, November 1826.
DEAREST THERESA, You will have heard before this that all is over. I could not write sooner, and I knew you would hear. To the last the poor dear child’s sufferings were dreadful, and she never had one moment’s consciousness…
Lord Grantham235 arrived at the moment she expired. I wrote to him on Saturday to say he had better come, or rather to ask him if he did not think so, and he came off instantly, and I am so glad now, for you have no idea of the good effect it had on Mr. R.
Poor Sarah surprised me more than anybody. She cried a great deal, but was perfectly reasonable in her grief, and has fortunately taken the turn of feeling that it is only by her exertions her poor husband can be supported at all, and she kept repeating all the morning how much worse her calamity might have been, that at all events she had him left and ought not to repine. She thanked Sister, and, in short, nothing could be better than her conduct.
All hours come to an end at last; all griefs find, or make, a place for themselves. Don’t you know what I mean, – how they work themselves into the mind, and so, by degrees, the surface of life closes over and looks smooth again, and I always think what a blessing it is in these cases there are so many little things that must necessarily be talked over and done. It fills up the time.
Sarah and Mr. R. come here to-morrow, and then go to Nocton236 for the funeral.
I think this day has lasted a year, and I cannot see to read, and my eyes are sore, and Sister cannot bear the light. In short, you must bear with me to-night. I am tired to death in my mind, and it rests me writing to somebody.
It was such a house of misery – the poor little French girl and the governess crying in one room; Warren237 with his cold sarcastic manner talking to West, who was crying like a child. And yet he need not. He was right from the first, and perhaps that is a painful feeling, to think that all the misery he saw, might have been spared if he had not been thwarted…
There is nothing I would not have given to escape the journey to Nocton. I had a sort of cowardly wish that George would not let me go (though I would have gone too, at all events), and I was almost sorry when his letter began, “You are quite right, and so go.” And yet I have been often pretending to wish that I had more positive duties to do. We are such horrid hypocrites to ourselves. I am going to Nocton, I suppose, from the same feelings that lead Catholics to go up the Scala Sancta on their knees – a sort of superstition. It must be right, it is so unnatural and disagreeable; and yet I am very fond of Sister, and Sarah was once very kind to me, and is now again. It is very wrong; when you praised me in your letter it smote my conscience. Almost everybody but me has a pleasure in doing right. I have often thought how much you must have to learn on the subject of calamity for the loss of friends, but do not learn it before you must.
Lord Grantham has been such a comfort to them all. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
Nocton, Lincolnshire,Monday evening, December 13, 1826.
Bless your foolish heart! No, child, there is nothing the matter – never was anything worth mentioning. We have ruralized some time in this rustic Bedlam, and some of us got loose on Wednesday; but we are all caught and shut up again, and there is no harm done except 250 guineas gone and spent in post-horses, and we are all thin and exhausted with anxiety and shame, some for themselves, and some for others. I believe I sent you, at the time of Clarke’s238 last visit, my farce of the new “Mayor of Garratt,” with the plot made out into scenes, and specimens of the dialogue; but a good five-act comedy has written itself since Wednesday. Sarah is willing to laugh at it all herself now, and does so, I hear; – and after all, poor thing, it is no wonder she is nervous about health just now. All her fears I can excuse, with the death of her child from mismanagement constantly weighing on her mind; and the folly she is betrayed into, her fear is responsible for; but as she knows that her mind is beyond her own control, the provoking thing is that from the moment she begins to be ungovernable, she refuses to see anybody except servants who cannot contradict her.
As long as Mr. Robinson is forthcoming that does not signify, as to a certain degree he prevents her doing anything outrageously foolish; but he was took with a bad headache on Wednesday, such as he often has, a regular case of Calomel and black dose which the Lincoln doctors prescribed, and said he would be better the next day. But in the meanwhile Sarah worked herself into such a state that she sent off at eight in the morning two expresses, one for Clarke who lives in Norfolk, and another for Henry Ellis, Doctor Warren, West, and I fancy any others of the profession who chose to come. She would not see Sister, or rather speak to her; for Sister once went into her room and found her (who has not had her feet to the ground since I was here) walking about like anybody else, and actually running into the library to write her letters.
Poor dear Mr. Robinson got quite well as the day went on and the dose went off, and then Sarah began to be frightened at what she had done; and then she saw Sister and was content to be advised, and a third messenger was sent off to stop all the doctors he could find on the road. He turned back Warren in his chaise and four at Biggleswade; and West in his chaise and four, a few miles beyond. Before the express came back, we were living in the pleasing expectation of going in to dinner, – Sister, Anne,239 Mary, and I – each arm in arm with a doctor – Clarke, Warren, West, and Swan – the Lincoln man. I wanted to make a pleasant evening of it, as there was not much sickness about, and after dancing a quadrille with them that we should take a little senna tea, and then have a good jolly game at Snap-dragon with some real Epsom Salts.
I forgot to mention that Sarah, with fatigue and worry, had made herself so ill that a fourth express went on Thursday to fetch Clarke again. She makes all these people travel in chaises and four par parenthèse; Clarke came on Saturday night, and then it was to be broke to that dear good gull Mr. Robinson that any doctor whatever had been sent for. I had no idea before that she could have been enough afraid of him to have kept anything from him; but he even read that paragraph in the paper about himself and wondered what the mistake could be.
However, Sister, as usual, was persuaded to take a great deal of the scrape on her shoulders, and Clarke, who seems clever enough, undertook to announce and explain the rest. Mr. R. was, I heard, horribly annoyed at first, but is resigned now, and it is all smothered up in her dressing-room where she has shut him up, and I do not know when he will be allowed to call himself well again.
I hear she is very low now the excitement is over, but wisely declares she shall do just the same next time, and he begs he may go as his own express. Poor man! he has a bad prospect before him, but I do not think that he minds it.
She professes the degree of religious feeling that is seldom met with, and which appears to me inconsistent with any worldly feelings whatever, above all with her feelings for self. The quantity of her religion it is impossible to deny, but I doubt its quality being right; and when I see that her high-flown mystical ideas end in making everybody round her perfectly miserable, I go back to the suspicions I have entertained for some time that the old simple religion we were taught at four years old out of Watt’s catechism is the real right thing after all. “If you are good, you will go to Heaven, and if you are naughty, etc., etc.” You ought to know your Watt’s catechism. I shall learn mine over again, and begin quite fresh in the most practical manner.
Oh, by the bye, and another thing I have found out and meant to tell you is, that Virtue is not its own reward. It may be anybody’s else, but it is not its own. I take the liberty of asserting that my conduct here has been perfectly exemplary. I never behaved well before in my life, and I can safely add I never passed so unpleasant a month.
Well, my dear, good old George arrived to-night, which is payment for everything, and he has not blown his head off to signify.240 There are no marks visible by candle-light, though he looks ill from starving. I have been very poorly myself with a cold caught by the open windows, and what it appears is called swelled glands. I never knew anything but a horse had that complaint or something like it, and that then they were shot; and as far as humanity goes that is a good cure. I went stamping and screeching about one day like an owl with the pain. If I get better we are going to Woburn, George says; but if I continue poorly I shall leave him there, and go home on Saturday. It is astonishing how kindly I feel towards Grosvenor Street. I am almost wishing to be settled there, for the first time in my life.
I am sorry to give up Sprotbro’, but if we had gone there, we must have done Erswick first where the Copleys will be, and where there is a great charity bazaar meeting and a ball, and all sorts of County troubles, and George prefers Woburn.
I am sorry not to see Maria Copley; Anne and Mary are still here, and I quite agree to all you say of Anne. I am so fond of her, and so is Sister. Mary is very dull, but seems amiable. I cannot tell you whether Sarah is kind to them. You must see her to understand the state she is in; but she is not unkind to anybody, and never now finds fault with anybody she speaks of. She very seldom speaks at all, unless she is excited to defend some religious point.
She sometimes smiles when Mr. Robinson and I have been talking nonsense, but does not say anything. Your most affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
NOCTON,December 15, 1826.
MY DEAR THERESA, I wish to apprise you not to go in search of me in Grosvenor Street, because I am not there. “I am very bad with the ague,” as people must be in the habit of saying in these fenny districts. I ’ticed my poor dear George out of town into this horrid place, and here he is with nobody to play with and nothing to do, and missing his Woburn shooting… Still the idea of another’s bore is a heavy weight on my mind.
You will be happy to hear that Mr. Robinson is very well. George says he never saw him better, and he makes a point of telling him so three times a day at least. The poor man is starving, as Sarah will not allow him to dine except in her dressing-room at two o’clock, because, as she does not dine down with the family, she says she cannot trust to his promises not to eat more than is right, as she is not there. He happens to have an immensely good appetite since his headache, and frets like a child about this; but has not courage to dine like a man on the most unwholesome things he can find. I would live on mushrooms and walnuts and fried plum-pudding if I were him.
This conversation passed verbatim yesterday, but do not for your life mention it again. He wanted to go to the stables when he was out walking, but said Sarah had told him not. However, he went boldly to her window and knocked at it. “Sarah, I wish I might go to the stables?” – “No, dearest, I told you before not to go.” – “Yes; but I want to see my horses. Mayn’t I go?” – “No, darling, you said you would not ask it if I let you go out.” – “Yes; but one of my horses is sick, and I want to see it.” – “Well, then, if Mama will go with you, you may.” So Sister actually had to go with him to take care of him. She told me this, and did not know whether he was ashamed of it; but I saw him in the evening and he repeated it, evidently rather pleased that he was made so much of. He is a poor creature after all, Theresa, though you are so fond of him. Your most affectionate
E.E.
Anne and Mary went on Wednesday. I did not see them the last two days, but Mr. Auckland still does not admire them. I wish Anne would be as pleasant in society as she is alone with one. I think she is nervous.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers
NOCTON,December 1826.
DEAREST THERESA, There is a shameful substitution of the donkey for the poney who ought to take these letters to post, so allowing for the difference of speed, the letters go an hour and a half sooner than usual! and Mr. Robinson has just sent up the frank for you, he says the letter must go in ten minutes, so it is no use my trying to make a letter. I have mentioned your and Mrs. Villiers’s enquiries constantly to Sarah, and read her aloud bits of your letter yesterday. I think she likes enquiries.
It is more than I do; I pass my life answering them still, because people whom I never saw or wish to see, know dear Miss Eden will excuse them if they trouble her again, etc. I don’t excuse them at all, but I am obliged to answer their letters just as if I did.
It is difficult to know what to say… When first we came down I thought her really low for two days, though it struck me as odd that she was so little attentive to him. However, I believe she thought him too cheerful, though God knows it was the falsest cheerfulness ever was acted.
Since Saturday she has been exactly in the state in which she was before poor Elinor’s death. She talks and thinks of nothing but her health, and I really believe (and I do not think it is want of charity that makes me so, for I pity her still) that a thought of her child does not cross her mind twice in the day.
She is absorbed in herself, and has been more animated since she has been – or called herself – ill, for she talks of her complaint without ceasing and without reserve. It will be said more than ever she is in the family way, for they have sent an express for Clarke, and we are expecting him to-night, and nobody knows what to say to him when he comes.
I think she is a little ashamed about Clarke, and I grudge the hundred guineas, which would be better bestowed on weavers, or the people in the village here.
Sister tried to be candid about it last night, and said that Clarke would probably stay a day or two when he came, and he would amuse Sarah; I suggested that for half the money I could have persuaded several pleasant men to come from London to stay double the time, so it must not be defended on the plea of economy.. She could not help laughing, because in fact she is less taken in than anybody. The cold of this place surpasses anything I have ever felt. Yours
E.E.