I have just been interrupted by the arrival of the Lansdowne children, who are come here for the afternoon to make Lady Lansdowne’s excuse for not coming to take leave before she goes out of town. The little girl[52] is the prettiest little thing I ever saw—the smallest child—looking like a fairy for all the world.
July 6, 1815.
We were all very sorry to hear of poor Comte Meerveldt’s[53] death, for her distress must be very great. Little Rodolphe will now be a great consolation to her. Lady Selkirk has had one very short note from poor Lady Delancey.[54] It was almost too composed to be comfortable to her friends. She said her husband had died at Waterloo, and was buried the morning she wrote, at Brussels, and she wished Lady Selkirk would have his picture done immediately by Heaphy,[55] as that was the only thing she could now live for. She made no complaint, except saying that she had had but one very happy week at Brussels, which was over, and that she was sure Lady Selkirk, at least, would feel for such a very wretched creature. She is expected at Penge to-morrow. There is an odd mixture of joy and sorrow in that house, as Lady K. Douglas[56] is married there to-day, which is rather astonishing, considering the state her family is in....
Miss Eden to Lord Auckland.
EDEN FARM,
August 11 [1815].
MY DEAREST GEORGE, I put a most excellent joke in these two first lines, but was obliged to efface them from my fear of the police, but it is inserted in sympathetic Ink, and if you will hold it for ¾ of an hour by a very hot fire, rubbing it violently the whole time without intermission, with the back of your hat and one hand, I daresay you will find it.
We are much as you left us. I cannot buy any sheep yet, for the price has risen in the market prodigiously, and we must wait a little, but Walsh is to go to Smithfield this week to see how things are. In your directions you left out a very important word, whether the ferrule should be fixed in the bottom, or the seat of the Tilbury. I say the former, and Mama the latter. One makes the umbrella too low, the other too high, but by a little arrangement of mine, too long to explain, I have made it the right height for myself, bonnet, feathers, and all, and it will altogether be very comfortable.
There is to be a meeting of all the Sunday Schools in the district next week at Bromley, and a collection, and a collation. We mean to eat up the collation, and give all our old clipped sixpences to the collection, which we think is a plan you would approve if you were here.
Madden[57] has given us so much to do, we have not a minute’s spare time. We are duller than a hundred posts about Astronomy, and if you can find any planets for us in Paris, we shall be obliged to you, as we cannot find one on the globe, and Madden only laughs at us. There! Good-bye, my dearest George. Take care of your little self. Your affectionate
EMILY EDEN.