Miss Eden's Letters. Eden Emily
at Frognal, but, if so, you must have thought with me that Lord Sydney67 will be a very pleasant brother-in-law for us. Such a great addition, in every sense of the word, to our society, and when the Miss Townshends have been turned out of doors, upon any slight pretence, it will really be a very nice establishment.
I am going on here just as was expected, very unhappy at first for about three days, without any particular place in the room, or any particular rule about being in the library, or my own room, or Lady Grantham’s, and then, you know, my trunk and all my worldly possessions were missing and lost, which was a cruel blow, at my first setting out, but at last my dear trunk reappeared unexpectedly, and from that time I got comfortabler and comfortabler, till I could get no further.
Miss Wynn68 I like very much, probably because I expected to dislike her. The rest of the family are perfectly inoffensive, with nothing particularly agreeable or disagreeable in them, except indeed I have the pleasure of beating Mr. Wynn at chess every evening, till the tears almost course one another down his innocent cheeks, but I go on beating him for all that.
Lady Grantham is much better than she was during the journey; we go out every day in the pony-cart together, and call on the farmers and cottagers. I do not understand one word in ten the people say, and should be glad to take a Yorkshire master if I could find one. I hope, for your sake, Gog Magog69 is not as green as this place is, else you will be more angry than ever with the dusty trees and brown grass of Eastcombe. The grass was quite dazzling when I first came here, and the green is a bad colour for the eyes, after the nice quiet brown we have been accustomed to, but green peas agree remarkably well with me, and sometimes I give a little passing thought to you, when I am packing up a great forkfull of them, and again when the children bring me in immense nosegays of mignonette, sweet peas, jessamine, which are to be put out at night because they smell so very sweet.
Lady Grantham’s garden is beautiful, and full of every sort of flower, but then it is generally locked. The house is excessively comfortable, with a stove in every passage, and a fire in every room, servants’ and all, an excellent library, and a very pretty statue gallery, heaps of amusing books, and an arm-chair for every limb. I foresee a great probability of my being very happy here, as my love of Lady Grantham does not diminish by any means, and he and I are great friends, and he likes to be played to for hours together. Your most affec.
MY DEAREST GEORGE, Having in our former letters nearly settled all our business matters, I may venture this time to indulge you with a few lighter topics… This house is what Bob would call chuck full, but I do not think you know any of the company except the Markhams70 and Mrs. Graham. I think all the Markhams pleasant in their way. Anne is rather an odd fellow, but very amusing, and Frederica is very pleasant. Cecilia desires me to give you her kind remembrance. As for your friend Mr. Graham,71 though I would not wish to be severe, yet I cannot think a man who wears a light sort of mulberry-coloured “don’t mentions,” from a wish to look waspish, can be any great shakes. The rest of his character may be very good perhaps, but I can hardly think so under these circumstances.
Your Bess has been making sad work of it indeed, and I wish she had not been promised to Sister, for the Granthams are enquiring everywhere for a dog of that description, and I think Bess would find this place pleasanter than Eastcombe. Your most affectionate
MY DEAREST SISTER, Your pride must be getting up again, I should imagine, and I must give it a little epistolary pat on the back (what a remarkably odd clever expression) to keep it all smooth.
My illness was remarkably opportune, inasmuch as it began at Studley,72 and which was so uncommonly dull, that the impossibility of dining down was an immense advantage that I had over the rest of society. We were nineteen at dinner every day. We were all immensely formal in the evening.
The house is but a bad one in the old-fashioned way, and my room was peculiarly liable to murder and that sort of accident, a large dark green bed with black feathers on the top, stuck in a deep alcove, and on one side of it an enormous dark closet, quite full of banditti I fancy, and all the rest of the room actually swarming with ghosts I know, only I was much too sleepy to lay awake and look at them.
Mrs. Lawrence has an unhappy turn for music without any very remarkable genius, and we played 150 pages of the dryest Duetts in the Dussek and Pleyel style without even changing our time, or rising into a forte, or sinking into a piano, and minding every Repeat and Da Capo in the book.
On Wednesday Lord Grantham and Mr. Graham went on some Yeomanry business to Leeds, on Thursday we came home to my great joy. Adieu, my dearest sister; this has been written in a confusion of tongues, and I cannot make it any longer by any means. Ever your most affec.
MY DEAREST SISTER, We are now quite alone for the first time since I came – that is, the Wynns are here still, but they are part of being alone, and we have never before been so few, and I must say that it is uncommonly pleasant after so much company. The mere comfort of being able to go about the house with rough hair, or a tumbled frill, and in an old black gown, is not to be despised, and there is some pleasure in taking up a book in the evening and yawning over it, and then saying anything that comes uppermost, without thinking. We are very busy, dressing little dolls for Lord Grantham’s Theatre, which is one of the most ingenious pieces of mechanism I ever saw, and one of the prettiest things altogether. There is to be a grand representation to-night, and we have been rehearsing all the last week. It takes nine people to manage the scenery, figures, and music, and we all of us lose our tempers at it regularly every morning. I act the orchestra, and whilst I am playing away to the best of my power the music belonging to any particular scene, Anne73 and Lady Grantham, who manage the figures, get into some hobble, and the music is finished before the action to which it belongs is begun, so that Harlequin and Columbine have to dance out without any time to assist them. I believe nothing in the world could ruffle Lord Grantham’s temper; but these theatrical difficulties go nearer to it than anything else, and while he is explaining to Lady Grantham that the figures will move if she takes pains, and to me that the music is quite long enough if I will but play slower, it may be rather provoking that Freddy74 should let down the wrong trap-door, Anne set her sleeves on fire in one of the lamps, Mary75 turn the cascade the wrong way, so that the water runs up instead of down; Thomas the footman should let down a light blue sky to a dark moonlight scene, and Shaw should forget the back scene altogether, so that his coat and buttons and white waistcoat are figuring away in the distance of the Fire King’s Palace. However, patience and scolding have overcome these little difficulties, and our last rehearsal was perfect.
Lady Melville76 and her children were here for five days last week. I do not know exactly what I thought of her. She is too clever not to be rather pleasant, and too argumentative not to be very tiresome, and altogether I do not think I liked her. But her visit took place very soon after I had heard of poor Sir S. Romilly,77 and I was too much shocked and too unhappy really to like anybody, particularly a person who insisted upon discussing the whole thing constantly, and in a political way. I think I have never been more shocked by anything that was not a private calamity – I mean, that did not concern one’s family or one’s self – than I was by this, and poor Captain Feilding
John, Viscount Sydney, married in 1832 Lady E. Paget.
Lady Grantham’s niece.
Lady Bucks was staying with her niece, Lady Francis Osborne.
The daughters of George Markham, Dean of York.
James Robert Graham, who became Sir J. Graham, Bart., of Netherby, in 1824.
Studley Royal, Ripon.
Lord Grantham’s elder daughter, married in 1833 Lord Fordwich (6th Earl Cowper).
Frederick William Robinson, born 1810, and died aged twenty-one.
Mary Robinson, married Henry Vyner in 1832.
Anne, daughter of Richard Huck Saunders, wife of 2nd Viscount Melville.
Sir Samuel Romilly, Solicitor-General, committed suicide on November 2, 1818, shortly after the death of his wife. According to Lord Lansdowne, “He was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself. When he lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up.”