Pray read B. Osborne’s speech at Liskeard. One can afford to forgive impudence when it is so amusing.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis.
CHILD’S HILL, HAMPSTEAD,
Monday evening [1862].
MY DEAREST THERESA, This has been a great “Semi” day, concluding with your letter which is just come; and I began the morning with four closely-written pages from Locock, who generally throws very cold water on any of my little pursuits. But he says the grandest things of “Semi,” which he had read on Saturday evening, and says that a bystander would have thought him quite mad; he was screaming with laughter by himself, and that he is ashamed to add that in church next day it would come back to him. “It really haunts me.” He was longing for Monday to read it loud to Lady L., and he says that he must, at all events, be a good judge of a confinement. Blanche’s lying-in is so thoroughly true.
I enclose a bit of Mary Auckland’s[572] letter, which also came to-day, and which is the third she has written about it. All the family from Wells have written in the same strain, and Robert, who is painfully punctual, was missing at breakfast the morning after “Semi” arrived; and was discovered in bed, peremptorily declining to get up till he had finished his book. We look upon this as a great compliment, as he never looks at a word. Anne Cowper is equally civil; but then these are all friends, and would say anything that would encourage me to fill up my sedentary sick life with any occupation; so any little word that you hear from strangers is more valuable as a genuine judgment.
To be sure—the luck of having you as my editress, my shield, my sword, my everything. You know everybody, and are good friends with them all.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis.
CHILD’S HILL, HAMPSTEAD,
Monday [August 1859].
MY DEAREST THERESA, The important enclosure arrived safely this morning, and I sent Ellis forthwith to get the money and pay it in at Drummond’s, for fear Bentley should fail to-day. But my belief is that he is a wealthy Bentley; and he has behaved like a gentleman, and evidently is not discontented with his bargain. And so, all’s well that ends well, even if it be only a Semi-Detached House.
Thank you again and again, dearest Theresa, for all the successful trouble you took. Nobody but you could have brought the affair to such a good end, and I now fondly think that between this and November you will work up the Harcourt income to £4000 a year! You made £100 out of the £25 I expected, therefore, etc., etc.