I wish I could instil in you a little of that respect and mystic reverence which I never could feel myself for Doctors, and Pestles and Mortars – that blind devotion which is so necessary to make the stuff efficacious, for by faith we are saved in these cases, as in cases of conscience.
I am sorry they have made you have hysterics, and won’t let you have the Elliots, and conversation. That bluff Chilvers,148 with his Burgomaster appearance, as if he was magistrate of our vitals and poor bowels! I hate him ever since he offered me the insult of a blister, that first blister of hateful memory.
Write, or don’t write, as it suits you. Lucy and Sir Guy are such friends, they quite doat on one another, and understand each other. Therefore wipe away all I said for nothing. That is my comfort with you, I can tell you and then scratch it out again as I please, and that is the only way to be constant in this changeable world, to be able to follow the changes of those we love, so as to be always the same with them.
…We have been a day at Mount Stuart since I wrote, to meet a Sir Gregory and Lady Way – such bores! Oh! no, never. His brother is the great Jew-converter, and has now left his wife and house and estate and is gone a converting-tour into Poland. Some Israelites played him an ungrateful trick. He invited them to his house in Buckinghamshire to render thanks in his private Chapel for their redemption, but alas! they had not cast off their old man, for they stole all Mr. Way’s plate, which he has found it impossible to redeem, they having most probably converted it into money and made off. These people are strictly pious characters, and on Lucy saying she had heard of Mr. Way, Sir Gregory replied: “An instrument, Madam, merely an instrument!”
Lady Way is too heavy, and so dressed out – all in a sort of supprimé way, and wears a necklace like a puppy’s collar…
Did you see those pretty nice Feilding children149 when the Feildings were in London? I hope that nasty woman150 will not spoil them.
Have you had Mary Drummond in comfort since you have been shut up and ill? – like the indulgence of barley sugar with a cough; no remedy, but yet it is pleasant. Does Fanny still keep up “brother and sister” with Edward Drummond?151 I don’t think even Fanny could do it. Sir Guy knows the one in the Guards (Arthur is not his name), and liked him better than Drummonds in general, for there is no denying that Drummonds are Drummonds to the greatest degree… Send me your low letters, and your gay letters, and all you write, for I love it all.
…Jane Paget’s152 business shocked, but did not surprise me. I never saw any poor girl so devoured by Ennui, and I have so long found Bore account for all the unaccountable things that occur, that it solved Jane’s marriage to me. She cannot exist without excitement, for she is completely blasée upon everything. Blasée is the genteel word; you would call it besotted or stupefied, if she had accomplished this vitiated destruction by dram-drinking or opium; but the effect, call it what you please, is exactly the same. I pity that poor Mr. Ball truly, for I don’t suspect him of being equal to rule a wife and have a wife…
I forget to tell you a good idea of Lucy’s, about Jane Paget’s marriage. She said it was such a pity to see good articles selling off at half-price like ribbon in Oxford Street, to make room for a new spring assortment.
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.
…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. Leinster153 and Mary Ross154 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.
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.
DEAREST EMMY, I have been so pestered and worried. I should only have worried you if I had written to you in the midst of my various bothers. I find I have about one half of my baby linen to get made, Aunt Charlotte157 having handsomely provided the caps and frocks and fineries, but turned me off with only half-a-dozen of everything needful, and not an inch of flannel. You are enough of a mother to enter into my feelings on the occasion.
I have had scene after scene to undergo with Aunt [Lady Sophia FitzGerald] upon the unkindness of my not remaining to be confined here within the compass of a sixpence, and taking everybody’s advice, sooner than hers, and, in short, not having her in the room with me. As I should