This is to be a simple line, because I am in what Mary Palk[246] used to call a religious bustle, occasioned by the difficulty of being in time for church if I write my letters. And the post-time and church-time clash cruelly, and I have made this such a week of rest as to writing that I am horribly in debt. I cannot help thinking George’s cold contempt for anybody who leaves London at all, which broke out into words the day before I left town, relieved his indignant heart, and I think he will perhaps let me stay. I cannot understand your not liking the country; it is an inconsistency in your character, and if I did not spurn an argument, I might almost deign to point out to you unanswerable reasons for hating London—as a place I mean, not as a means of seeing one’s friends. Its effect on one’s liver you will not dispute.
We sit out of doors all day. I should not like to paint myself, but I have done some sketches of the children in that chalk style, that certainly betray unequivocal marks of genius; inasmuch as their nurse, who was mine in former days, declares she had no idea Miss Emily could take them off so well, and she would not mind having them pictures for herself—which is wonderful for her to own.
Mary [Drummond] is very well, all things considered. I wish you could hear her play; I always think it the prettiest music in the world. She plays a great deal now. I heard from Pam to-day; very well, and resigned to Limerick. I wish you could manage through your Mr. Jones, or any better way, that she might have her mother’s[247] letters from Paris without paying 2/10 for them, which she says is the whole of her income. Can you manage it?
Miss Eden to Miss Villiers.
BIGODS,
July 12, 1827.
Well, I had nearly seized my pen yesterday, and leaving all decorum and propriety, throwing aside all the prudent and guarded forms and usages of society, was on the point of writing to your brother, merely from complete distrust of his being up to the tricks of the Goderichs. I was going as his friend-in-law, the friend of his sister, to implore him for once not to be a simple gentleman-like fool, not an honourable-minded generous idiot—in short, to stand up for his rights, and not to take the offer of 7/6 or 7/4 which Lord Goderich would in all probability make to him for the use of the house for a week and a compensation of the loss of the rent for the ensuing three months. He might not have offered so much; but I merely state the case in the grand Liberal manner.
Some obscure passages in Sister’s letter yesterday, and a very accurate observation for many years of the manners and customs of the Goderich tribe, led me to imagine they were trying to throw the house back on your hands; and I wish to exhort you all not to catch it if they throw it at you ten times a day. Charles Drummond desired me to add that as far as £10 would go to assist in any prosecution against Sarah for breach of contract, he should be most happy to subscribe it. However, I waited for your letter, and am happy to see that for once I was mistaken about the Goderichs as you do not mention that any shabby offer was ever made. Accepted, of course, it could not be. You know the usual answer is, that everything is in the hands of the agent, and you have nothing to do with it, and that Mrs. Villiers would of course say. I still mistrust them, and cannot quite understand some of Sister’s expressions. Her story otherwise tallies wonderfully with yours, except, that though you were in the next house, you cannot know how very much Sarah contrived to outdo her usual self in this instance. Sister is fully aware how tiresome she herself was. I should like to send you her letter, only it is so long; for it is very amusing, though it is a shame to let anybody see the abject slavery in which she and Mr. Robinson live.
It is quite a Fowell Buxton[248] case. They are always so kind as to call Sarah’s horrid bad temper—excitement; and Sister says that none of them have ever seen Sarah in such a state of excitement (such an overwhelming rage, evidently) as she was in this time. She would not hear of the slightest contradiction, and Sister said she had been obliged to write every half-hour to poor Mrs. Villiers without being able to make Sarah even listen to her representations. She was quieted at last by a quantity of Laudanum, besides her own way to satisfy her. The last would be a pleasant sedative to most of us.
Miss Eden to Lady Campbell.
BIGODS, ESSEX,
July 1827.