I cannot say how grieved I was for that. Such a happy young life, and one that was of importance to so many others! I hope Lord John will be allowed to keep those children,[466] and I suppose she will have left them under his guardianship. I suppose he would hardly object to all the children being together. I see by the papers that you have been at Cassiobury with poor Lord John.
Everybody writes what you say of Sir G. Villiers[467]—that he is not the least altered, which I own surprises me, because as far as I am concerned he has been decidedly “changed at nurse,” and just simply because he would not answer the two long letters I wrote him, I settled that he was not the original G. Villiers, with whom one could talk and laugh any number of hours, and whose visits were a bright spot in the day, but that he was a mixture of a Spanish Grandee in a reserved black cloak, with a mysterious hat and plume, etc., or a Diplomat in a French comedy who speaks blank verse. But “it is the greatest of comforts,” as Mrs. Bennett said about long sleeves, to know that he is unaltered. I should be sorry if those horrid Spaniards had gone and spoilt one of our pleasantest men, and I still think that a system of sending out bores to foreign courts would be an improvement.
Foreigners would never know how it was. A bore would be softened by being translated into another language, or he might simply pass as an original—un Anglais enfin; and then we might keep all the amusing people to ourselves. I should like to have seen your brother; and how I should like to see your children! I have no doubt they are as pretty as you say; the little boy[468] always had a turn that way. I cannot make out whether there are any more coming, but I suppose you would have mentioned it if there were, and I think you are apt to increase your family in a dawdling way, not in that rapid manner with which my sister used to produce ten or twelve children all of a sudden, and before one was prepared for the shock.
We came back to these dear good hills about a fortnight ago, and I love them more dearly than ever. The thermometer was at 91 in our tents, and after two days’ toiling up the hills, we found snow in our garden here. That is all gone, and the flowers are beginning to spring up. The snowy range is so clean and bright, it looks as if one might walk to it, and the red rhododendrons are looking like gigantic scarlet geraniums in the foreground. I cannot sketch hills at all: they are too large here, and there is no beginning nor end to them—no waterfalls, or convents, or old buildings to finish them off.
We were about four months and a half in camp this year, so the blessing of being in a house again is not to be described. I never am well in the plains, and this year it would have been perverse not to have had constant fever. We had rain every week, which kept the tents constantly dripping, and we were very often apparently pitched in a lake, and had to be carried through the water to dress. I was hardly a month the whole time free from ague, and how George and Fanny are so constantly well is a matter of astonishment to our doctor and every one else.
The Punjab was an interesting bit of our tour, and I am very glad we have seen Runjeet Singh[469] and all his Indians in their savage grandeur. He very nearly died just before we came away, which would have been a dreadful blow in the political way, but he has happily rallied again.
I should like to show you some of my Sikh sketches, though I have horrible misgivings that, except to those who have run up Sikh intimacies, and who prefer Shere Singh[470] to Kurruck Singh, or vice versa, they may be tiresome performances. I have, in the meanwhile, had several of my sketches copied by the miniature painters at Delhi, and they have made some very soft likenesses from them. Do you ever draw now? Or have you no time?
There are 96 ladies here whose husbands are gone to the wars, and about 26 gentlemen—at least there will, with good luck, be about that number. We have a very dancing set of Aides-de-Camp just now, and they are utterly desperate at the notion of our having no balls. I suppose we must begin on one in a fortnight, but it will be difficult, and there are several young ladies here with whom some of our gentlemen are much smitten. As they will have no rivals here, I am horribly afraid the flirtations may become serious, and then we shall lose some active Aides-de-Camp, and they will find themselves on Ensign’s pay with a wife to keep. However, they will have these balls, so it is not my fault. Your ever affectionate
E. EDEN.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lister.