I fear there is no good sketcher in Dublin, but there is a man who does paint something like a miniature, and does catch a likeness, and it shall be done for you next week, my darling. I never have you out of my mind a minute, and I always thought I should not be sorry if a change sent a Tory out instead of you.... I feel cheerful about you because you are doing what is right, and only think what you would have been suffering now if you were seeing him prepared to go without you.... Shall we take good in this world and not take the evil, our old compensations? You might have lived years without either you or George knowing how much you loved each other, and is there not an utter delight in this feeling of devotion twice blessed?
Let me know how I am to write to you, and how to send my letters. How little did I imagine when I read of India, and looked on those hot, misty, gorgeous Indian views, that I should ever garner up part of my heart there. I am staying here.[429] I always like them, but there is a want of colour and life and impulse. There are many positive virtues present, and an absence of all vice and evil, but yet something is wanted. There is the dreaminess of Sleepy Hollow upon them.
Send me a bit of your hair, my darling, and always bear me in your “heart of hearts, as I do thee, Horatio.” I cannot believe it yet, nor do you, dearest, in spite of the preparations, and it is best you should not believe it till it is over....
It must be done, and so it had best be well done! and I will not hang to your skirts and make it harder for you to go forward and do right, only I felt all the love I have borne you for all these years choking me till I sobbed it well out, you whom I loved as my own sister.... I was not surprised at it; I felt it would be, it was so like life—such a horrid piece of good fortune, such a painful bit of right to be done.
How right the Wise Men were to come from the East! Only, I should not have been particular about going back again; I had rather have stayed and sat in Herod’s back-parlour for the rest of my life.
When once it is over you will be very busy and very amused. Emmy, I mean to open an account with you. I mean to keep a letter always going to you, and so tell you every week what I am thinking about, because, you know, in India, without any vanity, I may be very sure my letters will be valuable. It will cool you to read anything coming from the damp West.... I have been so eager about the Corporations, for Corporation in this Country means abomination! And when I heard them all spitting and scratching about the Tithe Bill, I thought what will they say to the Corporation Bill that sweeps so much farther.
There is a great deal of rage and fury fermenting here, but I think there will be no explosion. I own I am sorry to see that the fury of the Orangemen, tho’ it may not drive the lower orders of Protestants to fight, will, by making him fancy himself ill-used, persuade him to emigrate. Thousands are preparing to emigrate.
I do not hope to see Ireland better in my time, and it often makes me so sad, for I do love it with the love one feels towards the child that is most weak, most sick.
Miss Eden to Mrs. Lister.
ADMIRALTY,
Thursday, September 1835.