HAM COMMON,
Monday evening, October 28, 1834.
DEAREST THERESA, I am kind to write to-night, for Fanny and I poked out an old backgammon board of the General’s[413] and began to play, and I beat her two single games and a gammon, so that in coming to my letter I am probably leaving “fortune at the flood, and all my after life will be bound in flats and shallows.” All your fault.
Our cottage is a real little cottage, belonging to an old General Eden who, on the score of relationship, let us have it for almost nothing. It is very clean and old bachelorish, and he lets with it an old housemaid who scolds for half-an-hour if a grain of seed drops from the bird’s cage, or if Chance[414] whisks a hair out of his tail; we are grown so tidy and as she is otherwise an obliging old body, she has been an advantage to us. We took the house only by the week, and as my health has entirely recovered the complete break-up it came to, from our long detention in London, and as his Lordship is living alone at that Admiralty, we depart on Wednesday to settle ourselves there till the Government changes, or I am ill again. However, I do not mind London so much in cold weather. I have been very busy this last week setting up house, as the Ministers will be most of them in town next month without their families, and George has announced an intention to make the Admiralty pleasant to his colleagues. I have but one idea of the manner in which that is to be achieved, and hope the cook may turn out as well as Mr. Orby Hunter’s recommendation promises. Oh dear! I dread the sight of their dear old faces again, and of that “full of business” manner which they get into when they meet in any number.
I wish I could write like Mrs. Hannah More, and have money enough to build myself a Barley Wood,[415] and resolution to go and live there. I am so taken by that book and amazingly encouraged by it, for she was as dissipated and as wicked as any of us for the first half of our life, so there is no saying whether we may not turn out good for something at last.
We have been here eleven weeks, quite alone, but walking and driving eternally, and very few interruptions except an occasional visit from, or to, the F. Egertons and W. de Roos’s, and a royal dinner, luncheon, and party at the Studhouse, which always turns out amusing. The King is so good-natured that it does not signify his being a little ridiculous or so; it is impossible not to love him. The Albemarles[416] do the thing in the handsomest manner as far as the dinner, establishment, etc., goes, and I think the Studhouse a charming possession. She always gets all the King’s Ministers that she can find to meet him, and it charms me to hear her judgments of people:—How unlucky that the Spring-Rices should look less well at a dinner than the Stanleys; and what luck she was in in having such a showy person as Lady Bingham last year in the neighbourhood; not adverting to the possibility that one person may be pleasanter than the others, and admitting that, their position being changed, they do not amount to being persons at all.
I suppose that things are going on well, for I never saw people in greater glee than the Ministers are. Lord Melbourne is in the highest state of spirits, which seems to me odd for the Prime Minister of the country. They all went off from the last luncheon at the Studhouse early, leaving only the W. de Roos’s, Fanny and me and Lord Hill[417] to go round Hampton Court Palace with the King,—a long and curious process, as he shows it just like a housekeeper with a story for each picture. It was pitch dark, so it does not much matter if the pictures were as improper as the stories, for I saw none of them, but it lasted two hours, and in the meantime the Ministers, having had their dinner so early, had set fire to the two Houses of Parliament just for a ploy for the evening.[418] That is the sort of view the Tories take of it, and it sounds plausible, you see; and from Lord Hill’s staying to see the Palace it is clear he had not been let into that plot.
No, I did not see the fire,—wish I had—will trouble them to do it all over again when there are more people in town. Is Lord Fordwich the new Under Secretary? I asked George and he said he did not know, and I asked Lord Melbourne and he said he could not tell me—both very good answers in their way and such as I am used to, but it leaves the fact of Fordwich’s appointment doubtful, and I heard from Lady Cowper three days ago and she said nothing about it.
There was a great sough of India for about a fortnight, but I always said it was too bad to be true, which is a dangerous assertion to make in most cases, it only hastens the catastrophe. But this was such an extreme case, such a horrible supposition, that there was nothing for it but to bully it; and the danger is over now. Botany Bay would be a joke to it. There is a decent climate to begin with, and the fun of a little felony first. But to be sent to Calcutta for no cause at all!! At all events, I should hardly have got there before George got home again, for I should have walked across the country to join him, if I had gone at all. I think I see myself going into a ship for five months! I would not do it for £1000 per day.
Good-night, dearest Theresa. I see Ann Grey is out, and rather expect that will turn out to be yours too. Is it?[419] Your ever affectionat
E. E.