How are you and yours, and what do you hear from Dublin? I have heard nothing about them since they went. London is this week entirely empty; otherwise there has always been an allowance of a visitor a day—Lord Grey, Lord Palmerston, Lord Cowper, passing through, and so on; and while Lord Auckland and Fanny were at Bowood, my sister, Mrs. Colvile, abandoned in the handsomest manner her husband and children in the wilds of Eaton Place, and came and lived here. I was very unwell at the time, and she is the quietest and best nurse in the world. Poor thing! she well may be.
The report of Lord Godolphin’s[545] marriage to Lady Laura gains ground, and though I feel it is not true, it is too amusing to dispute. Ditto, C. Greville’s to Mrs. H. Baring.[546] I see his stepchildren playfully jumping on his feet when gout is beginning. Henry Eden is so happy about his marriage, and so utterly oblivious of the fact that he is fifty, that I begin to think that is the best time for being in love. Miss Beresford has £20,000 down now, more hereafter; and as the attachment has lasted twelve years, only waiting for the cruel Uncle’s consent, which was wrung from him by Henry’s appointment to Woolwich, they ought to know what they are about, and luckily when they meet they seem to have liked each other better than ever. But twelve years is rather an awful gap....
Macaulay’s book has unbounded success.[547] Not a copy to be had, and everybody satisfied that their copy is the cleverest book in the world. Don’t tell anybody, but I can’t read it—not the fault of the book, but I can’t take the trouble, and had rather leave it till I can enjoy it, if that time ever comes.
Good-bye, dearest Theresa. Love to Mrs. V. When do you come to town? How goes on your book?[548] Yours affectionately,
E. E.
CHAPTER XIV
1849-1863
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell.
EDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,
Tuesday evening, 1849.
MY OWN DEAREST PAM, I hear to-day that you too are bereaved of what was most dear to you;[549] and it has roused me to write, for if any one has a right to feel for and with you, through my old, deep, unchanged affection, early ties, association in happy days, and now through calamity,—it is I. Dearest, how kindly you wrote to me in my first bitter hours,[550] when I hardly understood what comfort could mean, and yet, your warm affection did seem to comfort me, and I wish I could now say to you anything that could help you.