NORMAN COURT,
Monday [October 1829].
MY DEAREST THERESA, I do not find this visiting system good for the growth of letters. I have less to say when I see fresh people and fresh houses constantly, than at home, where I see the same every day. Your last letter, too, gave me an inspiration to answer it on the spot, but I had not time then, and so it subsided. You poor dear! Are you still liable to be haunted by recollections and tormented by the ghosts of past pleasures—youthful but weak? I have had so many feelings of the sort you mean, that your letter interested me particularly; but then it must be at least five years since the last ghost of the last pleasure visited me, so imagine the date of the pleasure by the date of the ghost—and the remains of youthful interests do not disturb me any longer. It is always childhood I return to, and exclusively the sight of Eden Farm[330] and aught connected therewith that swells my heart to bursting, and that I never see now. Everything else is mended up again, and for the life of me I cannot understand how I ever could have been so sentimental and foolish as it appears I must have been.[331] I say no more; but my old extract book has thrown me into fits of laughter. Calculate from that fact the horrid and complete extinction of sentiment that has taken place. You will come to it, and be surprised to see what a happy invention life is. I am afraid I like it too much. We have been at Shottesbrook. Caroline Vansittart is so uncommonly well; there are hardly any traces of her illness. The dear children will be children till they die of old age.
Then we went to Ewehurst which the Drummonds have rented from the Duke of Wellington. It is a very fine place, but an old house, and so cold. All the children had colds, and all the Aunts caught them, of course; only, instead of catching one cold I caught six, and have done nothing but sneeze ever since.
We stayed there a week and came here this day sen’night, found the house more luxurious and comfortable than ever after the cold of Ewehurst, and Mr. Wall in great felicity. Old Mrs. Wall I think much the most delightful old lady I ever knew. Lady Harriet we found here, and the Sturts, and the Poodles,[332] and Mr. Pierpont, and latterly we have had a Doctor Daltrey, a very clever man who has thrown a pinch of sense into the very frivolous giggling conversation we have sunk into.
It has been rather amusing. Lady C. Sturt[333] and Lady Harriet are rather in the same style of repartee. We all meant to dislike the former, but found her, on the contrary, very pleasant. She amused George very much, and Mr. Sturt was an old friend of ours. We should have gone on to Crichel,[334] but our time and theirs could not be brought together. Lady Harriet is in her very best mood, and I always think it is a very pleasant incident, such excessive buoyancy of spirits. She is full as fidgety about Bingham as any wife would be, even any of my own sisters, who have a system of fidgeting about their husbands. I think he will arrive to-day. In fact he could hardly have come sooner if he set off even the very day he meant to. She insists upon it he is naturalized in Russia and has taken the name of Potemkin, and she is teaching the child[335] to call him so:—“Come, dear; say Potemkin. Come, out with it like a man! Potty, Potty, Potty—come Baby!”
To-day we are to have a dinner of neighbours, chiefly clergy; two Chancellors of different dioceses and various attendant clergy, besides dear little Arundell who dines here every day. We flatter ourselves there will be great difficulties of precedence when we go into dinner, and have at last settled that the two Chancellors go in hand in hand like the Kings of Brentford, and that we must divide the inferior clergy amongst us—take two apiece.
Mr. Wall sometimes gets frightened at our levities and fancies we shall really say to his guests all that we propose for them.
George still gets into hysterical fits of laughter when I mention your idea of his being in love with Lady Harriet, which was unlucky at that time, for it did so happen that he could not endure her then, and he went up to town the day she came to stay at Greenwich, because he thought her so ill-natured. She happened to abuse, in her ignorance, the lady of the hour. But even he likes her here, thinks her very amusing, and much better-hearted than he expected, and he, like you, no longer wonders why I like her. Altogether this visit has answered.
Sister has been to Wrest, where the old stories are going on:—doctors sent for the middle of the night. In her last letter she said she believed that the Goderichs were going off at an hour’s notice, and that she should be left alone at Wrest, till she could alter all her plans. In the meantime there is nothing really the matter with the child.
You never tell me where to direct. I shall try Saltram.[336] Love to Mrs. Villiers. Ever your most affectionate