GENERAL SIR EDWARD FULFORD, K.G.C., to his sister MISS FULFORD
UNITED SERVICE CLUB, 29th June.
My Dear Charlotte,—I find I shall need at least a month to get through the necessary business; so that I shall only have a week at last for my dear mother and the party collected at New Cove. You will have ample time to decide which of the nieces shall be asked to accompany us, but you had better give no hint of the plan till you have studied them thoroughly. After all the years that you have accompanied me on all my stations, you know how much depends on the young lady of our house being one able to make things pleasant to the strange varieties who will claim our hospitality in a place like Malta, yet not likely to flag if left in solitude with you. She must be used enough to society to do the honours genially and gracefully, and not have her head turned by being the chief young lady in the place. She ought to be well bred, if not high bred, enough to give a tone to the society of her contemporaries, and above all she must not flirt. If I found flirtation going on with the officers, I should send her home on the spot. Of course, all this means that she must have the only real spring of good breeding, and be a thoroughly good, religious, unselfish, right-minded girl; otherwise we should have to rue our scheme. In spite of all you would do towards moulding and training a young maiden, there will be so many distractions and unavoidable counter-influences that the experiment would be too hazardous, unless there were a character and manners ready formed. There ought likewise to be cultivation and intelligence to profit by the opportunities she will have. I should not like Greece and Italy, to say nothing of Egypt and Palestine, to be only so much gape seed. You must have an eye likewise to good temper, equal to cope with the various emergencies of travelling. N.B. You should have more than one in your eye, for probably the first choice will be of some one too precious to be attainable.—Your affectionate brother,
EDWARD FULFORD.
MISS FULFORD to SIR EDWARD FULFORD
1 SHINGLE COTTAGES, NEW COVE, S. CLEMENTS, 30th June.
My Dear Edward,—When Sydney Smith led Perfection to the Pea because the Pea would not come to Perfection, he could hardly have had such an ideal as yours. Your intended niece is much like the ‘not impossible she’ of a youth under twenty. One comfort is that such is the blindness of your kind that you will imagine all these charms in whatever good, ladylike, simple-hearted girl I pitch upon, and such I am sure I shall find all my nieces. The only difficulty will be in deciding, and that will be fixed by details of style, and the parents’ willingness to spare their child.
This is an excellent plan of yours for bringing the whole family together round our dear old mother and her home daughter. This is the end house of three on a little promontory, and has a charming view—of the sea in the first place, and then on the one side of what is called by courtesy the parade, on the top of the sea wall where there is a broad walk leading to S. Clements, nearly two miles off. There are not above a dozen houses altogether, and the hotel is taken for the two families from London and Oxford, while the Druces are to be in the house but one next to us, the middle one being unluckily let off to various inhabitants. We have one bedroom free where we may lodge some of the overflowings, and I believe the whole party are to take their chief meals together in the large room at the hotel. The houses are mostly scattered, being such as fortunate skippers build as an investment, and that their wives may amuse themselves with lodgers in their absence. The church is the weakest point in this otherwise charming place. The nearest, and actually the parish church, is a hideous compo structure, built in the worst of times as a chapel of ease to S. Clements. I am afraid my mother’s loyalty to the parochial system will make her secure a pew there, though at the farther end of the town there is a new church which is all that can be wished, and about a mile and a half inland there is a village church called Hollyford, held, I believe, by a former fellow-curate of Horace Druce. Perhaps they will exchange duties, if Horace can be persuaded to take a longer holiday than merely for the three weeks he has provided for at Bourne Parva. They cannot come till Monday week, but our Oxford professor and his party come on Thursday, and Edith will bring her girls the next day. Her husband, our Q.C., cannot come till his circuit is over, but of course you know more about his movements than I do. I wonder you have never said anything about those girls of his, but I suppose you class them as unattainable. I have said nothing to my mother or Emily of our plans, as I wish to be perfectly unbiased, and as I have seen none of the nieces for five years, and am prepared to delight in them all, I may be reckoned as a blank sheet as to their merits.—Your affectionate sister,
CHARLOTTE FULFORD.
July 4.—By noon to-day arrived Martyn, [{127}] with Mary his wife, Margaret and Avice their daughters, Uchtred their second son, and poor Harry Fulford’s orphan, Isabel, who has had a home with them ever since she left school. Though she is only a cousin once removed, she seems to fall into the category of eligible nieces, and indeed she seems the obvious companion for us, as she has no home, and seems to me rather set aside among the others. I hope there is no jealousy, for she is much better looking than her cousins, with gentle, liquid eyes, a pretty complexion, and a wistful expression. Moreover, she is dressed in a quiet ladylike way, whereas grandmamma looked out just now in the twilight and said, “My dear Martyn, have you brought three boys down?” It was a showery, chilly evening, and they were all out admiring the waves. Ulsters and sailor hats were appropriate enough then, but the genders were not easy to distinguish, especially as the elder girl wears her hair short—no improvement to a keen face which needs softening. She is much too like a callow undergraduate altogether, and her sister follows suit, though perhaps with more refinement of feature—indeed she looks delicate, and was soon called in. They are in slight mourning, and appear in gray serges. They left a strap of books on the sofa, of somewhat alarming light literature for the seaside. Bacon’s Essays and Elements of Logic were the first Emily beheld, and while she stood regarding them with mingled horror and respect, in ran Avice to fetch them, as the two sisters are reading up for the Oxford exam—‘ination’ she added when she saw her two feeble-minded aunts looking for the rest of the word. However, she says it is only Pica who is going up for it this time. She herself was not considered strong enough. Yet there have those two set themselves down with their books under the rocks, blind to all the glory of sea and shore, deaf to the dash and ripple of the waves! I long to go and shout Wordsworth’s warning about ‘growing double’ to them. I am glad to say that Uchtred has come and fetched Avice away. I can hardly believe Martyn and Mary parents to this grown-up family. They look as youthful as ever, and are as active and vigorous, and full of their jokes with one another and their children. They are now gone out to the point of the rocks at the end of our promontory, fishing for microscopical monsters, and comporting themselves boy and girl fashion.
Isabel has meantime been chatting very pleasantly with grandmamma, and trying to extricate us from our bewilderment as to names and nicknames. My poor mother, after strenuously preventing abbreviations in her own family, has to endure them in her descendants, and as every one names a daughter after her, there is some excuse! This Oxford Margaret goes by the name of Pie or Pica, apparently because it is the remotest portion of Magpie, and her London cousin is universally known as Metelill—the Danish form, I believe; but in the Bourne Parva family the young Margaret Druce is nothing worse than Meg, and her elder sister remains Jane. “Nobody would dare to call her anything else,” says Isa. Avice cannot but be sometimes translated into the Bird; while my poor name, in my second London niece, has become the masculine Charley. “I shall know why when I see her,” says Isa laughing. This good-natured damsel is coming out walking with us old folks, and will walk on with me, when grandmamma turns back with Emily. Her great desire is to find the whereabouts of a convalescent home in which she and her cousins have subscribed to place a poor young dressmaker for a six weeks’ rest; but I am afraid it is on the opposite side of S. Clements, too far for a walk.
July 5.—Why did you never tell me how charming Metelill is? I never supposed the Fulford features capable of so much beauty, and the whole manner and address are so delightful that I do not wonder that all her cousins are devoted to her; Uchtred, or Butts, as they are pleased to name him, has brightened into another creature since she came, and she seems like sunshine to us all. As to my namesake, I am sorry to say that I perceive the appropriateness of Charley; but I suppose it is style, for the masculine dress which in Pica and Avice has an air of being worn for mere convenience’ sake, and is quite ladylike, especially on Avice, has in her an appearance of defiance and coquetry. Her fox-terrier always shares her room, which therefore is eschewed by her sister, and this has made a change in our arrangements. We had thought the room in our house, which it seems is an object of competition, would suit best for Jane Druce and one of her little sisters; but a hint was given by either Pica or her mother that it would be a great boon to let Jane and Avice share it, as they are very great friends, and we had the latter there installed. However, this fox-terrier made Metelill protest against sleeping at the hotel with her sister, and her mother begged us to take her in. Thereupon, Emily saw Isa looking annoyed, and on inquiry she replied sweetly, “Oh, never mind, aunty dear; I daresay Wasp won’t be so bad as he looks; and I’ll try not to be silly, and then I daresay Charley will not tease me! Only I had hoped to be with dear Metelill; but no doubt she will prefer her Bird—people always do.” So they were going to make that poor child the victim! For it seems Pica has a room to herself, and will not give it up or take in any one. Emily went at once to Avice and asked whether she would mind going to the hotel, and letting Isa be with Metelill, and this she agreed to at once. I don’t know why I tell you all these details, except that they are straws to show the way of the wind, and you will see how Isabel is always the sacrifice, unless some one stands up for her. Here comes Martyn to beguile me out to the beach.