Barring the loss of the view, and the drives in that beautiful park, I do not miss my Richmond so much as I expected.
There is always something intensely comfortable in home, and my own books and things, and I am very busy with a new sitting-room that I have made upstairs, by throwing two small bedrooms into one. It has made a very pretty warm room, looks clean and bright, and then there is the fun of furnishing it. It is painful to look out of the window. Those dreadful Royal Commissioners have cut down all the fine trees belonging to Gore House[581] and are running up a blank wall 20 feet high, for their new garden.
My own trees are the only ones left in this neighbourhood, and though the blank wall is better than another row of houses staring into my garden, the general effect is that of living just outside the King’s Bench Prison. I look upon a man who cuts down a large tree in London as capable of committing murder, or any other crime, and have a vague idea that the Road Murder[582] might be traced home to Prince Albert and Lord Granville, or one of these Commissioners.
It will interest Lady Ellesmere to know that Lena[583] has returned to her navvies, and has been greeted with the greatest warmth. Indeed, I should prefer a little more coolness in her place, as they all insist on shaking hands, and I imagine washing is a virtue they do not practise more than once a week. However, they are an interesting race, very grateful in their rough way; and the Controller and Clerk of the Works both say that there is a great improvement in their habits, and are very eager now to encourage the readings. A great deal of the work in these gardens has now passed into the hands of London bricklayers and carpenters. They steadily declined listening to Mr. Ward, the missionary, and were very rude to him.
He was very anxious Lena should try and tame them, so she began by collecting the débris of her navvies, and sitting down with them under the old tree (which they have killed of course), and some of the bricklayers gathered round and began to laugh, so she told them very quietly that they need not come out of their shed to listen to her if they did not like it, but that if they came out she could not allow any laughing at such a serious subject. And they took it very well and said they did not mean to jeer, and that if she would come to their shed, they would listen if they might smoke; and the navvies in their gentleman-like way advised her to go, and said they would go with her, and they made a path with planks and put up a sort of seat, and showed the bricklayers how the little lady, as they call her, was to be treated. And it all went well. She read them a tract called Slab Castle, which always touches them, and when she came to the chapter on the Bible, half of the bricklayers were in tears, particularly the ones who had laughed, and they conveyed her to the gate, begging she would come again, and clamorous for copies of Slab Castle—which I advise her to decline giving for the present. But they have been extremely civil and attentive since, and she has certainly heard such satisfactory accounts of her old congregation, that it is an encouragement to go on. My love to Lady or Lord E., and believe me ever, dearest, your affectionate
E. EDEN.
I hope Alice will not insist on my liking Miss Yonge’s new book.[584] It is more unintelligible than “The Daisy Chain,” though not quite so tiresome. But she brings in too many people. There are four generations of one family, and her moral is quite beyond me. Those that are well brought up turn out wicked, and the worldly family produce a crop of saints. I am proud to say I am quite incapable of construing the slang she makes her ladies talk.
Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis.
EDEN LODGE, KENSINGTON GORE,
Monday, December [1863].
MY DEAREST THERESA, It is obvious that I must write and wish you and yours a happy New Year, and a great many of them, and one happier than the other; but barring that I do not see that I have anything else to say. London is so utterly empty during Christmas week, everybody thinking it right to go to somebody else’s house, and it is always the most solitary week of the year to me. But I feel so comfortable in the thought that I am not passing it in bed as I have for the twelve preceding years, that it seems to me a singularly merry Christmas.