DEAREST THERESA, I found your note when we came home late last night from Richmond, where we had been to pass the day and dine with the G. Lamb’s; consequently your party was dispersed and you were in a sweet sleep before I knew you had been “at home,” and I was in a sweet sleep too, five minutes after I got home, and shall be so again, I hope, as soon as I have sealed this note. These days in the country are wholesome in that respect. We came here very early this morning, did our Churches like good Christians, and have given a dinner like Ditto, for we have a highly conservative party down here, at least what would have been conservative if, as my housekeeper justly observed about the gooseberries, the season for conserving was not gone by.
We have had the Jerseys, Lord Villiers, Lord Carnarvon, and dear C. Baring-Wall, besides the smart tassel of young Jersey children. George was as happy as a King with all his old friends, so I am delighted they came, and after all Lady Jersey is very good-humoured.
Lord Carnarvon[383] has a pouting-pigeon way of talking, which is rather amusing, but upon the whole I find Tories rather less lively, or perhaps a shade more dull, than Whigs. They growl more, and do not snap in that lively way I should have expected. However, I am no judge: “man delights not me nor woman either,” as dear Hamlet had the candour to observe. He had seen something of society. I daresay he longed to be left to his flowers and his Chiswick, and a comfortable chair under the portico. To be sure his father made a bad business of sleeping in the garden, but then it could not have been so sweet or so full of flowers as ours.
We go back to town to-morrow afternoon, but I begin to see the time coming when we shall settle here. I wish you would take to treat yourself entirely as a sick person for a fortnight. But you won’t, so there is no use saying anything about it. Your ever affectionate
E. E.
Viscount Melbourne[384] to Miss Eden.
WHITEHALL,
August 13, 1832.
MY DEAR MISS EDEN, Many thanks for your kind enquiries. I have been laid up for a day or two, but am much better, and in tearing spirits, which is always the consequence of being laid up. Abstinence from wine and regularity of diet does me much more good than the malady does me harm.
I hope I shall get into the country soon, for I quite pine for it. Robert, I am told, is the only man in Hertingfordbury who has registered. Has Lady Francis written to him for theological arguments? I understand that she has been simply defeated in religious dispute by an Atheist of the neighbourhood—a shoemaker, or something of that sort—and has been seeking everywhere for assistance. The man argued for Natural Philosophy for so long, that she was not prepared to controvert.
Do not the Malignants pour somewhat less malignance, or are they more irritated than ever? Adieu. Yours faithfully,