DEAREST EMMY, I daresay the very sight of a letter from me frights you. I was very sorry after I had written the nasty bitter letter. When I wrote that, I was ill-tempered too! and one always writes harder than one feels. However, my own Emmy, I had rather have written it to you than to any other, tho’ you may not thank me for la préférence, if any one can bear with me it is you, however. You mistook me if you thought that I thought that either dear Lord Auckland or the Lansdownes had not done their utmost for us! God knows I feel far more sure of Lord Auckland’s kindness to me than of my own Brother’s. But there is much danger in our sort of distress of getting embittered, my Darling. I pray against this temptation, and strive against this most fervently, and I do trust my cheerfulness has never flagged, and that I blame no one. We have done all we can, and I will not fret....
Your little Godchild is a dear child, with immense eyes and four teeth. She is wise, clever and quiet, and all your Godchild ought to be, but not so pretty as some of her sisters. As they say the commodities are always in proportion to the demand for them, I expect a great cry for girls in a few years.
I have been to our Court but twice. I was told it was imposing, and I did think there was a good deal of imposition. He[398] is sharp and clever and does work like a horse, but I do think one man about him very dangerous, and that is Blake the Remembrancer. I cannot help thinking that man very double, nay, triple. There are no bounds to the gossip of our little Court; the master likes it and is fed with it. I do not think he is very popular, but that does not signify; here, the way of flesh and all parties seems to be discontent, and murmur and grumble. Think of the Wilt[399] being married,—Ciel!... Your own
PAMMY.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
1834.
I am over head and ears in your affairs. I have so much the bump of speculation and lottery in my soul that I am decidedly of your opinion, and would at once keep Greenwich and the Thames, than put my head under that very excellent and comfortable extinguisher of the Exchequer, particularly if my head were as bien meublée and well arranged as your George’s small crop-eared shaven little crown. We always dressed our heads alike outside, no curls. I would most certainly take my chance and not dowager myself into the Exchequer....
I suppose Government, to hold together, must go upon the principle of each Minister bringing a certain quantity of sense and an alloy of folly. Now, surely, some of your colleagues bring a peck of dirt and very few grains of reason. Are you obliged to eat it all?... My dearest, tempt me not with the sound of pleasant books, I am all day at Latin and Greek with the boys, I very nearly wrote your name in Greek letters.
Write to me; it cheers me, and I want cheering often, dear Emmy. I grieve at your account of Lady Lansdowne.[400] She has not the constitution for the illness of being cured by the London physicians, I am very sure. Solomon, after he had taken all the physic in the world, exclaimed: “Vanity of vanities.”
Your Godchild has a mouthful of teeth. Tell me something of your Sisters, of William Osborne, of that marriage of your niece, and particularly of the fate of those orchises we took down that day we ran to Greenwich, did they ever come up?