What nice weather you have for your Gravesend expedition. Is the great review of Tide-waiters[218] taking place to-day? I have not the least idea what they are, what are the origin, manners, and customs of the nation of Tide-waiters? If they are people who wait till the tide serves they will flourish for ever. The poor dear tide never serves anybody, and if they gain their bread by tide-waiting, what floods of tears they must shed at Othello’s description of the Pontic Sea, which knows no retiring ebb....
I am decidedly in what Swift calls “a high vein of silliness” this afternoon; but it is the fault of the weather and of being in the country, which, after all, is the only thing that makes actual happiness. Your affectionate
E. E.
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers.
THE GRANGE,[219]
Sunday, 1826.
MY DEAREST THERESA, I should have written sooner to tell you where to write to me, but I was rather in hopes George would let me stay another month at Tunbridge. Everybody was going away, so we might have had a very small house for half the price we gave for ours, and as the servants will eat whether they are there or in Grosvenor Street, I thought we might have lived more economically than in posting all over England. However, after much correspondence, George, who terrifies me by the way in which he spends his own money, settled that the expenses were nearly equal, and that being the case that he would rather have us with him. “I never met with such an instance of politeness all my life,” as the immortal Collins observes,—not the Professor Collins, but the far greater “Pride and Prejudice” Collins. And so we packed up and came here, and I expect George and Mr. Wall to arrive every minute.
In shooting season they only travel on Sundays, I observe. We lived at Tunbridge almost entirely with the F. Levesons. I had a great idea that I should dislike her, which was a mistake, and if I were given to engouements, I should suppose I were suffering under one now for her, only it came very gradually, which is not the case with that complaint, I believe. First a decrease of dislike, and then not caring whether she were in the room or not, and then a willingness to walk towards her house, and then an impossibility to walk in any other direction.
The last fortnight we had the de Roos’s, who dined with the F. Levesons’s as often as we did, or else we all dined with the Peels;[220] and if we dined early, we rode after dinner and met again for tea. I can ride four hours at a time now without the least fatigue and walk in proportion. I like the Peels too, only I wish Lady Jane would bind him apprentice to a tinker, or a shoemaker, or to anybody who would make him work, as he seems to have an objection to the liberal professions. From mere want of employment, he has fancied himself into bad health, and does nothing but hold a smelling-bottle to his nose all day, even at dinner. How it would annoy me if I were his wife!—because he has talents enough, and can be pleasant when he is roused. I cannot think how any clever man who has not estate enough to find his property an occupation, can consent to be thrown by his own choice out of all professions. I should be a lawyer to-morrow if I were Lawrence Peel, or a lawyer’s wife if I were Lady Jane. She might persuade him into it I am sure, if she would try, and it would be so much better economy than consulting Doctor Mayo three times a day, which he does sometimes.
There is nobody here but Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, and Mr. Newton the painter, and one of the sons of the house. This is such a delicious house now it is finished, and heaps of new books and good pictures.
I intend to make much of a friendship with Newton. Mr. Baring tells me he has seen a great deal of you, which is an additional reason why I should make his acquaintance. He seems to me clever and paradoxical and a little Yankeeish and perhaps conceited, but that picture of Macheath[221] is a great set off against any faults he may have. It is impossible, too, that I can know anything about him, as I only saw him for five minutes at the other end of the breakfast-table; but I like to state my first impressions. They are invariably wrong, and now I know that, they are just as good as if they were right, I may believe with much assurance the contrary of what I think.