It is very unlucky that we never can have what we want all at once. If corn is plentiful, there is not a morsel of loyalty to be had for love or money, and when the market for wool is good, morals are at their lowest pitch.
I was rather sorry to come home again, for when I am out of town I forget all my party feelings; but I was obliged to come back as soon as I was strong enough, for George has not a chance of getting out of town even for a day.
Have you seen the 2nd Volume of Lord Byron? It is a wicked book, and having made that avowal it is unlucky that I feel myself obliged to own that it is much the most interesting book I ever read in my life—much. I never was so amused, and the more wickeder he is in his actions, the more cleverer he is in his writings. I am afraid I like him very much—that is I cannot bear him really, only I am glad he lived, else we should not have had his Life to read, to say nothing of his poetry. He had some good points; such extreme gratitude to anybody who ever showed him kindness; and if he had lived I still think that he would have been converted, and that once a Christian, there is nothing great or good he would not have been equal to. He had such magnificent talents—an archangel ruined—and I think he regretted the height from which he had fallen. Still the book is a bad book. I was obliged to stop yesterday and recall mes grands principes before I could remember that it was not wrong or ill-natured of Guiccioli to insist on his wife’s[366] separation from Lord Byron. Moore talks about it as an unprincipled disturbance of Lord Byron’s domestic felicity, and with such earnestness, that he very nearly took me in.
I wish I had seen you act. Lord Castlereagh’s epilogue was in the papers, with a few lines added, not with a view of pleasing him. Your affectionate
E. E.
CHAPTER IX
1831-1835
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister.
GREENWICH PARK,
[October or November] 1831.
MY DEAREST THERESA, I would take a larger sheet of paper, but it does so happen that ever since we have nominally had stationery for nothing, I have never been able to find anything in the nature of paper, pen, or sealing-wax; indeed, for some time one pen served the whole house. It never came to my turn to have it, as you perceived, and I scorned to buy one. The country may yet afford a quarter of a hundred of pens, at least I suppose so.