We are doing our Mount Stuart again. We have a Mr. and Mrs. Veetchie (a Commissioner of the Customs and has been in the army) and Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Hope. Mr. Hope can be pleasant now and then, but as dulness was paramount during our intercourse, I suspect the agreeableness to be a little gilding he has got from living with the wits of Edinburgh. There seems no source—mere cistern work. Your old Burgomaster Chilvers is clever, and I think as much of him as of any of them. But go on mentioning all he does, whether you are drenched in drugs.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
April 1, 1821.
...Tho’ I know they are all taking care of you with all their might, I feel I should do it better, because I want to be with you so very too much, that I feel cross with those who can be about you. Sir Guy thinks you are a lucky woman in being allowed only ten minutes of everybody’s company; at least the chances are in your favour for escaping bores.
I hear of nothing but crash upon crash in London. Leinster[153] and Mary Ross[154] are obliged to join to help Lady Foley.[155] Lord Foley is so completely ruined, it is supposed it will be impossible to save anything for his six unfortunate children, and Lord and Lady Foley cannot have the satisfaction of throwing the blame on one another. He has gambled, and she has had six guineas-apiece handkerchiefs. She has enjoyed the bliss of boasting she never tied a ribbon twice, or wore her sattin three times. I thought I had made a poor marriage, and was content, but I begin to believe that I am a rich individual.
I think you are right about William,[156] I am sure he has taken a quirk about my marriage, because you see, my dear Emmy, it splits upon one of the very rocks of prejudice he has in his character. I would almost say the only one, but then it is a considerable stone, his worldliness. He would not have had me marry a regular established fool even he was rich, because again, the world might think the worse of me; but if I could, have met a rich quiet man without bells to his cap, made a good figure in London, and of whom some people might indulgently say—in consideration of his fortune, “Such a one I promise you has more sense than one would think, he is not such a fool as people give him credit for.” If I had run the usual race of London misery with such a man, William would not have objected.
It is a crooked corner in him, I have often observed he has a childish respect to the opinion of London; and Paris has done him no good in giving him a notion that it don’t signify what people do, so they keep it quiet, and make no open scandale. I have often wondered at this, because we mortals always try and trace a consistency in character, which is an ingredient never to be found in any composition, foreign to human nature altogether, which we still hunt after, and refer to and talk of, as if it was not as ideal as the philosopher’s stone, a tortoise-shell Tom cat, or any other impossibility you like to think of.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
April 10, 1821.
I have been again at Mount Stuart. Saw a civil Mr. Campbell of Stonefield, whom of course I ought to have called Stonefield tout court, but this seemed to me so improper and affectionate. I would not expose my conjugal felicity to such a slur, and I believe I affronted the Laird. He is a great man, having been at Oxford, of course the refined thing in education in Scotland; just as Lansdowne was sent to Scotland to give him a better coating of education. I suppose on the principle that the longest way about is the shortest road home. I see all those who are taken most pains with make the plainest figure. This man seems, however, to have preserved his whole row of Scotch prejudices unshaken, proud, and touchy.