Thank God we have got back safe to London. My lady keeps up wonderfully, under the load of grief that she has at her heart. She does not complain nor lament herself, as I have seen some do, who have not been in half her trouble. She hardly spoke a word during her whole journey, and strove as much as possible not to cry; but I could observe that she never turned her eyes on the two little babes, one of whom sat on my lap, and the other beside me, but the tears ran down her cheeks.
It was a doleful sight, the meeting between her and my lady Bidulph. The poor old lady grieves sadly, and looks mighty ill: I am afraid she will not hold out long; she has had great trials, for a lady so far in years. Sir George came to see my lady; he looked troubled: I hope he will be good to her.
June 1
My lady asked me this morning if I had thought of keeping any journal for this fortnight past. I told her I had, and she desired to see it. She shed so many tears while she read it, that the paper was quite wet when she gave it to me again. She ordered me to make up the packet, and send it off, as she was not in a condition to add any thing to it herself. [Mrs Arnold in continuation].
June 20
Yes, my dear Cecilia, I have need of the tender condolements, with which your last packet was filled. Well may you call me a child of affliction; I am now so exercised in sorrows, that I look forward to nothing else.
Patty, I find, has been a faithful journalist; and has carried down her melancholy narrative to this day: this day, on which, for the first time, I have taken a pen in my hand for more than two months; but my eyes are much better, and I hope I shall not have occasion for the assistance of her pen, unless some new calamity should again disqualify me from using my own.
Yet in the midst of my griefs, ought I not to return thanks to heaven, that I have such an asylum to fly to, as the arms of one of the best of mothers? Oh! my dear, while I have her, I ought not to say, that I have lost every thing. Sir George has been more obliging since my fatal loss than he was before; but still there wants that cordial heart which he formerly had. As for his lady, I know very little of her. She came to see me twice since my arrival in town, in all the formal parade of a state visit. How ill does the vanity of pomp suit with a house of mourning! Her visits were short, formal, and cold. She seems to be intolerably proud, and I thought looked as if she was disgusted at visiting people in lodgings, who were so nearly related to her. My brother and she are to go down this summer into Scotland, to see a nobleman who is her uncle by her mother’s side. She is ridiculously vain of her family, and has taught Sir George to be so too; so that now he hardly vouchsafes to own a relation that is untitled.
June 21
Lady V——, whose friendship has been one of the chief resources of comfort to me, went out of town this morning. She is retired, for life I fear, to a distant part of Lancashire, in order to spend the rest of her days with her eldest sister, a widow lady, of whom she is very fond. Her son’s ill behaviour has disgusted her so, she has broke with him intirely. Her younger son is gone into the army, not, I find, with her approbation: and she told me, she has nothing now worth living for, at least nothing for which she should subject herself to the cares of life. She insisted on my corresponding with her; and renewed her assurances of that kind attachment, which I have already so strongly experienced.