I am spending a few days here at Mount Stuart,[144] and you may see that I am writing with strange paper and ink, and have but a distant bowing acquaintance with this fine clarified pen.
You are quite right, one is a better human creature, when one has seen a mountain and it does one good. I only wish I could see a mountain with you.
Your Feilding fuss is so described, that I laughed over it for an hour; my Dear, I see it, and enter into your quiescent feelings on the occasion; things settle themselves so well I wonder other people always, and we sometimes, give ourselves any trouble about anything.
This is a good enough house, but somehow they go out of the room and leave one, and yet one has not the comfort of feeling alone and easy, and I caught myself whispering and Lucy too; I can’t account for it, except by the great family pictures, that are listening all round in scarlet cloaks, and white shoes, and red heels and coronets. Kitty[145] is to be married to-day—plenty of love but little prospect of anything else. Her future income is rather in the line of a midshipman’s allowance, Nothing a day and find yourself.
I hope you will taste this saying, for I am partial to it, it gives one a comfortable idea, that in these days, when the Whigs complain of Ministerial extravagance, the Navy establishment will escape censure.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
March 3, 1821.
Much to say I can’t pretend, but something to say I can always find when I write to you. We left Mount Stuart to-day. Sir Guy, Lucy and I delighted to be at home. Aunt rather missing the cookery dishes, claret, champagne, and a sound house.
My mind is grown much more easy since I have clearly ascertained, weighed, and measured that I don’t like Lord Bute, and of course I have a whole apparatus of reasonable reasons, to support my dislike envers et contre tout. He is proud not in that complimentary sense. Some people use the word implying a dislike of dirty deeds and a love of noble doings. He is not purse-proud nor personally proud of his looks; but the sheer genuine article pride which now-a-days one seldom meets with barefaced. He is proud of his ancestors, proud of the red puddle that runs in his veins, proud of being a Stuart, a Bute, and a Dumfries. He apes humility, and talks of the honour people do him in a way that sounds like “down on your knees.” Talks of his loyalty as if Kings should kiss his hand for it. However though this is tiresome and contemptible, he has some of the merits that mitigate pride. He seems high principled and honourable, with sense enough for his own steerage, and I make allowances for his blindness which must make him center in self a good deal.
She is pleasant enough in a middling way, no particular colour in her ideas. She never moots or shocks, or pushes one back, but she don’t go any further, content to dwell in decencies for ever. She likes a joke when it is published and printed for her, but I suppose a manuscript joke never occurred to her.