Miss Eden's Letters

Whenever I am too much beat by the weather even to take a book, I find I am always thinking of packing and tin cases, and whether the railroad from Portsmouth is not a horrid conveyance; and I never dream of anything that is not purely English.

Law! Sister, there is such a gale of wind it has actually blown open a window by breaking an iron bar, and the rain is coming down like smoke, and I rather think, but cannot be sure, that I am coming to life. Of course it is not the actual rains, but they must come in a fortnight, and this is a blessing for an hour.

My new dog is a total failure. I still call him mine, but Captain Macintosh takes care of him. I have been offered another, but I know nothing will do after Chance.

Take care of Dandy and yourself. Ever your most affectionate

E. E.Miss Eden to the Countess of BuckinghamshireCALCUTTA,July 18, 1841.

MY DEAREST SISTER, At first I scorned your spiteful imputation that I had not written to you by the April mail, but upon looking back into my littel boke of dates, I found it was true, and now I only wonder how you found it out. I see that it is for some years the first month I have missed writing, and for fear the case should occur again, I strongly advise that you should seal up two or three of my old Indian letters, if you can find them; and desire Streeton to bring one in on a silver waiter at the proper time. You will be quite taken in, for I have a deep conviction that my letters have all been copies one of the other, so one on the old pattern will seem quite natural to you.

Those horrid English letters of June 4 came in yesterday. They always give me a low day, but this was worse than ever. I had made up my mind that the Whigs were to be out and the Tories naming another Governor-General. I do not now think the dissolution will help them much, but others say it may, and now they have sent out full powers to George to try and mend up that Chinese mess, and he thinks that if the Whigs stay in, that he will be obliged to stay on. However, I did nothing but cry about it yesterday, and now to-day I see it all quite differently. I don’t think they will stay, nor he, nor we, and so I won’t bother you about it till I see things more dispassionately. We are to have another post in before ours goes, and that will show the turn the elections are going to take, and I think – I am not sure – but I think I can live on in the hope of that post settling our return. I always believe for the best, and this would be such a disappointment that I have a sort of faith it cannot happen, and so let us talk of something else.

I am glad Hazlewood’s visit was not very fatiguing. He is a good-hearted creature, and a shocking martyr to his wounds, but he has not half an idea in his head, and I rather thought it a bold thing to introduce him. But I daresay the pleasure to him was greater than the bore to you, and that is the way to balance those things. And then, all Indians dote on a live Countess. A stuffed one they would look up to, but a live one is really a treat.

How is Dandy? Zoe, my new dog, is decidedly a treasure, marked just like the lamented Chance, but smaller, and she does not interfere with my respect to his memory, as she has no talents and no temper, but is creepmousey, and cares for nothing and nobody but me, and requires constant petting – a familiarity Chance did not admit of. She is unluckily not used to the climate, and Brown, our coachman, who is probably disgusted at having to doctor her so often, said to me yesterday, “She is a nice little pet, ma’am, but I think the delicacy of her health will give you a great deal of trouble.” Just as if it were a delicate baby.

We had a sad incident amongst the pets yesterday. Captain Thurlow was in William’s room, and was looking at some of his daggers and playing with William’s great bloodhound. William was called out of the room, upon which Nero laid hold of poor Captain Thurlow’s nose and bit it quite through. They say he would have bit it off, if he had not been in play. But in the meanwhile Thurlow is bit and Nero sent away, an event that delights George, who always thought him an unsafe pet.

August 11, 1841.

Think of that being written three weeks ago, and Thurlow was at Barrackpore three weeks ago in attendance on his General, and his nose so dreadful that, though he only appeared by candle-light, and that for the first time since his accident, his poor dear nose made me so squeamish I could not touch a morsel of dinner. However, they say it will come right in time, but if it had been Thurlow’s dog and William’s nose, George was wondering when he should have heard the last of it.

You will see our China news, which George thinks very good as far as it goes. Charles Elliot is supposed again to have interfered too much against fighting, and to favour the Chinese pride as much as ever, and the Army and Navy are both as bitter against him as the merchants; but George is so thankful that our 2,000 men should have got out of the scrape of attacking 47,000 without utter destruction, that he is rather pleased. And then the million and a half of our money is a great point, the more so that he has just heard that four million and a half of dollars will be here in a week, just when money was most wanted.

I have had a long letter from Mrs. Elliot who had been at Canton before this attack, and out shopping where no English lady ever shopped before. She has picked up some curiosities of an expensive kind for George, and some smaller ones for me, and Fanny has got a boxful from an American to whom she gave a commission, and just because we want to unpack our little goods, it is a Hindu holiday and the Custom House is shut. Do the Hindu holidays annoy you much? But of course they do; we always felt alike.

Poor Mrs. Elliot has had a trying life of it lately. She seems pleased with this Canton business, and it is the best point at which Charles could meet his recall. I imagine from some letters of his which George showed me that it will not be a surprise to him, and he means to show the world, etc., how right he has been. I foresee a long life of pamphlets, don’t you?

No other English post come in, but I think we have quite satisfied ourselves that the Whigs cannot stay and we shall go in February at latest. I have heard from Captain Grey, to whom I wrote to ask what accommodation he could give us in the Endymion. He says, smaller than the Jupiter, but he thinks he can take us all. We shall be fewer by Mars507 married; Chance, dead; and Fop, William’s greyhound, also dying of old age. I wonder whether we have only been here six years. I imagine we are all dying of old age sometimes, and that we have been here the usual Indian terms of twenty-one years.

August 16, 1841.

The July post come in – the Elections all wrong, and so our going home is certain. George sends his resignation by this post, and in February we sail. God bless that dear post for bringing us such good news and so quickly. I am still an excellent Whig, but there is much pleasure in Opposition. And then the delight of going home! Good-bye, Sister; I’m coming directly. Just stop one minute while I draw my ship up your river. I really believe George is rather sorry, but he says not, and he is an honourable man. Your affectionate

E. E.

[Captain Elliot had been unjustly blamed for the management of the expedition to China. He was recalled by Lord Palmerston for disobedience to his instructions, and on his return to England he found Lord Aberdeen had become Foreign Secretary. Elliot’s explanation of his conduct was satisfactory, and he completely cleared his character.]

Miss Eden to the Countess of BuckinghamshireCALCUTTA,September 10, 1841.

MY DEAREST SISTER, I have never felt such unwillingness to set off letter writing as this month, and it will be worse and worse and worsted for the next three, and then I shall be ready to write a line to say we are going on board, and after that I never mean to write to you again – never. I am tired of it, and besides, mean to pass the rest of my life with you. What a horrid prospect for you to find me always tugging after you with a long languid Indian story, only diversified by requests for a large fire and shut windows. I would not be you on any account. Besides, think of the obtuseness with which we shall meet each other’s topics. I beg to apprise you at once that I do not remember the botanical name of any one single flower; so don’t expect it. I have gone back to the old childishness of roses, wallflowers, and carnations, and beyond that I cannot charge my memory.

I have been ornamenting the garden with some stone vases that the natives make very prettily, and just at the proper moment, Fop, William’s old greyhound, died, so I buried him symmetrically opposite to Chance, and Captain FitzGerald has put two ornamental vases over the two dogs, with a slight tendency to the funereal urn about their design for the consolation of my hurt feelings, and yet sufficiently like flower vases to deceive the Tory Governor-General, so that he cannot be spitefully tempted to pull them down again. Zoe, my new dog, is very pretty and very small, but certainly with none of the genius of her predecessor. In fact, between friends, she is rather dull, but she is such a little helpless thing that nobody can help coaxing her, and I could not expect two Chances in one life. George rather affections her, though he says he thinks a black bottle full of hot water would be quite as good as Zoe sitting on his lap, and full as lovely. Every morning in the auction papers there is a list of “Europe toys” for children, and I found one called a black cloth dog, defective, which is clearly another Zoe for sale. However, all this is only a hypocritical jest. I am very fond of her; and I assume you think that if anything happened to Dandy, you would be obliged to try a successor. One wants something of the sort.

Sir Jasper508 and all the Nicolls family are on the point of setting off for their march through India. Lady Nicolls has done it once before and is fully awake to its horrors, and the young ladies do not like leaving Calcutta, but Lady Nicolls looks so ill that it is lucky she is going. They are a nice English family, and will be a loss here. The married daughter from Madras arrived last week with the first grandchild. Such a hideous little baby – but they are all in such ecstasies with it. I went there this morning and found our Miss Nicolls with the thermometer at 1000, I believe, walking up and down the room with the baby, away from the punkah because they thought it made the child sneeze. The perspiration was streaming down her face, and there was old Sir Jasper in a white jacket snapping his fingers and saying, Bow, wow, wow, and then rushing back to the punkah and saying he really could not stand the heat, but perhaps the baby with her cold had better not venture near the punkah. I believe the child was boiled; it looked like it. I think I ought to be excused a few small sins for the merit of going to the Nicolls this hot day.

There is an old blind General of 98 at Barrackpore, and his wife (who is 84) has just been couched, and sees with one eye, which is the only eye they have between them, and now the old man is going to be couched, and their pet doctor is ordered off with one of the marching regiments. They applied for an exchange for the doctor, which Sir Jasper refused, and the old lady came crying about it to Barrackpore last week; but I did not think I could well ask for it. However, she wrote a moving letter yesterday, and it is so hard at 90 and 80 to be thwarted in one of the very few wishes one can form, that I took courage, and set off this morning and expounded the case to Sir Jasper, who is very good-natured, and I rather think will do what they want. Sir Henry Fane would have snapped anybody’s nose right off who had asked him for any favour of the sort. It will make the old Morleys very happy. The glare was so great that I think I shall have to be couched too; but that, of course, the doctor will do gratis. My eyesight is shockingly bad – I mean even for my age – and I have a strong and decided preference for large print.

I quite forget what one does of an evening in England. Here we dine at eight and go to bed at ten, so a short game at cards after coffee fills up the time, and nobody can read by the flickering lights here. Perhaps you will play at Beg-of-my-Neighbour with me; and then we shall step out, and smell the night-blooming stock in that little round border by the breakfast-room, and listen to the nightingales, and then go to bed, and I hope you will tell the bearers not to go to sleep when they are pulling the punkah in the company-room, because that wakes me.

Dear me! I sometimes feel very English just now, but ungainly, and with an idea that you will all laugh at us. I remember so well seeing all the Lowry Coles509 debark at Lord de Grey’s from the Cape, and they were very unlike other people, and had very odd bonnets on.

September 15.

This must go. We have had a hard-working week, – a great farewell dinner to the Nicolls, and then to attend a play which Sir Jasper bespoke, and which lasted till near one. We luckily did not go till ten, but the audience who had sat there since eight were nearly dead, and we were all horribly hard-worked. Then I have been making a sketch of Dost Mahomed and his family, and he set off this morning for the Upper Provinces, leaving me with one of his nephews unsketched. So this morning, with immense activity I got up early, and Colvin abstracted the nephew from the steamer and brought him to sit for his picture before breakfast. The nephew is very like the picture of Judas Iscariot. They are all very Jewish, but he is a fine subject, and considering Colvin had had no breakfast, he seemed to talk Persian with wonderful animation. Ever, dearest Sister, yours most affectionately,

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to the Countess of BuckinghamshireBARRACKPORE,October 8, 1841.

MY DEAREST SISTER, It is time to be writing again. Only three, or, at most four times more. It makes me yawn and stretch, with a sort of nervous shivering – just as one used to feel as a child the morning before going to the play with the idea that by some particular mischance that day never would come to an end, or that the theatre would tumble down, or somebody take our box. I have those theatrical misgivings and yearnings about the next three or four months, and I wish the September post would come, just to make sure that the new Governor-General510 is a man of active packing habits. I want to go in February. They say now that going in March makes such a long voyage. I think it is rather lucky that this month’s news did not go home by last month’s mail. That sounds Irish, because, as you justly observe, it is not so easy to advance a month’s news as it might be a month’s allowance; but there is George with his predatory habits up to the ears in preparation for a Burmese war, and if that news had got home in time, the Court of Directors would probably have made a strong objection to a change of rulers at the beginning of a war.

It may still go off, but the villain [illegible] who is almost a savage, has suddenly moved down to within 24 hours’ distance of our territories with a horde of fifty thousand men, plenty of guns, boats, etc., and in short, he looks full of mischief, all the more that he is egged on by the Chinese. He may change his mind and take fright at the last minute, but in the meanwhile he gives just as much trouble as if he had declared war, and George has had a very busy week, ordering off regiments, taking up transports, buying stores, etc., and as usual, if a thing has to be done in a hurry, he has to see to it all himself. He lives in a rage with the slowness of the people whose real work it is, but by dint of aggravating them, he gets them through their work. I see the necessity of sending out a fresh English head of affairs, with the English constitution and habits of business, every five or six years. He keeps all the poor languid Indians moving.

George was to have come up here yesterday, but he found the Captain of the man-of-war and the Colonel of the regiment that are to start first were making out that they could not possibly sail on Monday; so he sent for them in the morning and made a row, and then asked them to dinner in the evening to keep up the impression, and got some knowledgeable people to meet them, and I suppose he will get them off in time. The Chinese news is already better since Charles and Sir Gordon came away. Sir H. Pottinger511 began in the right way. The Chinese Commissioner wanted to see him at Canton; he said it was the Commissioner’s place to come to him at Macao. Now there is an expedition gone to Amoy. The Chinese by their proclamations seem thoroughly frightened. The General and all the Navy people seem to be in ecstasies at having somebody who will not stop all their fighting, and I should not be the least surprised if Sir H. Pottinger finished it all in six months, by merely making war in a common straightforward manner.

I suppose Fanny has told you of all Mrs. Elliot’s anger, and her expectations that Charles is to have titles and governments, etc., the instant he lands in England. She is quite right, poor thing! to take his part, though foolish to announce such expectations. But the change of Ministry may be of use to him. Otherwise, there never was a man, meaning well – which I really suppose he did – who has left such a fearful character behind him with everybody but the Chinese, who profess the greatest gratitude to him, as well they may. Your most affectionate

E. E.

[In March 1842, Lord Auckland and his sisters left India. After their four months’ voyage they settled down in a little whitewashed villa, Eden Lodge, Kensington Gore.

Lowther Lodge was built subsequently on this site, now occupied by the Geographical Society.]

CHAPTER XIII

1842-1849

Miss Eden to Lady Theresa ListerKNIGHTSBRIDGE,Tuesday[1845].

MY DEAREST THERESA, I can write to no one in all the nervous flurry of these first meetings but yourself, my poor afflicted friend. Amongst all the happiness of others your hard trial512 haunts me, and shocked me more, much more than I can say, when I heard it at Southampton.

I had dwelt so much on seeing you, as I was told you were unaltered, and then to hear of this! I will not write more now, but even the first moments of arrival cannot pass away without my telling you how heartily I feel for you and love you.

We are all well. Your most affectionate

E. EDEN.Miss Eden to Lady Francis EgertonMONTAGU HALL,Tuesday [1846].

MY DEAREST LADY F., I have been meaning to write to you constantly, but once caught again in the trammels of civilised life the thing was impossible.

We spent a great deal of time (very pleasantly, so there is nothing to repent of) at Penrhyn Castle. We went there for two days last Thursday week, and somehow stayed on till yesterday. Every time we talked of pursuing our Welsh researches, Colonel Pennant513 declared that that particular sight was one of the drives from the Castle, and there came round a jaunting-car with four great black horses, and we went off to Conway.

There was no end to the sights, besides the Castle itself, which I think one of the finest things I ever saw. The arches over the staircase looked just like so much guipure lace carved in stone. Every table and cabinet is carved either in slate, marble, or oak, till it is a curiosity of itself. I slept in the State room, an enclosed field of blue damask and carved oak. The bed, which I should imagine did not cover more than an acre and a half, is said to have cost £1500. I never had an opportunity of judging whether there was work enough for the money, having slept generally near the edge.

Old Mr. Pennant spent £28,000 a year for twelve years in building this Castle, and died just as it was finished. Everything from the Keep to the inkstand on the table was made by his own Welsh people; and I never saw a more wealthy-looking peasantry, and I suppose he spent his money well according to Miss Martineau’s principles of doing good; that of getting as much work done for one’s self as one’s money will pay for. I daresay that is all right, but it always sounds like a suspicious system, and against all the early ideas of self-denial and alms-giving that were so carefully dinned into one; but the result in the instance of Penrhyn Castle has been highly satisfactory, and I do not really mean that he did not do a great deal of good besides. There never was a more charitable man.

The present Col. Pennant, too, seems very anxious to do all that is right, but he is oppressed, I think, by his immense wealth, and is not quite used to it yet. He seems quite wretched still for the loss of his poor little heiress of a wife. I like him for that, and also for that, having like Malvolio had greatness thrust upon him, he has not set up any of the yellow-stocking men or cross-garters Malvolio thought necessary, but is just as simple and unpretending as he was in his poor days.

We had a very large party and a pleasant one, Edwin Lascelles amongst others. What a man! If there happens to be any one day in which he does not say or do anything absolutely rude, everybody takes a fit of candour, and says: “After all, I like Edwin Lascelles. I think we are all wrong about him; he did not shut the drawing-room door in my face when I was coming across the hall, and if you observed, he said before he shut all the windows that he hoped nobody minded a hot room. I do not think him selfish.”

We came here yesterday; rather a change from Penrhyn Castle. The house was built in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and furnished, I should suppose, by his own upholsterer, and has not been touched up since apparently. And there is a window from which Henry the Seventh escaped, and another at which Oliver Cromwell looked out, and in short, every window has its legend, but none of them have any shutters or curtains, and the doors are all on the latch and never shut, and the weather has turned cold, and in short, it is a relief to my feelings to say that I am bored to death and wretchedly uncomfortable, and think seriously of following Henry the Seventh’s example, and of escaping out of one of the windows, to which my interesting legend will henceforth be attached.

It is very wrong, I know, to say I am so bored, but it is only to you – and I might have an illness if I did not mention it – and though it is extremely kind of them to have us here, I wish they wouldn’t, and we had never meant to come. But when we were on our way yesterday to Pengwern (Lord Mostyn’s) this Mr. and Lady H. Mostyn514 brought him over here, and then sent out letters and ordered post-horses to bring us too, and I always knew how it would be. However, it is so very dull it is almost amusing, particularly when I look at Lord Auckland, who has always declared he should like the Mostyns. Indeed, he was the only one of us who knew them, and I am happy to say that he sank into a sweet slumber after coffee, from which he was roused with difficulty at bed-time. One good of age and of hard practice in India is that one does not mind being bored so much as one did in youth, though then, to be sure, it hardly ever happened. The sediment at the bottom of the cup is decidedly thicker whenever I am reduced to swallow a spoonful; but still, I am more used to the taste of it, and as Dickens says of orange peel and water, if you make believe very much, it is not so very nasty. I am in a strong course of mutiny between them. But there is the luncheon bell happily; that is always a cheerful incident. Ever your affectionate

E. E. Miss Eden to Lady Theresa Lewis. 515 BONCHURCH, 1845.

Our post goes out now about half-past one, and we have had an immensely long sermon against the poor Babylonians, who have all been dead and gone so long that I for one have quite forgiven them their little errors; but the preacher here is always having a poke at the poor sinners in the Old Testament. It can do them no good, and it does none to us, and he preaches an hour extempore, and altogether I think he had better not be so spiteful.

Our Bonchurch has been a most successful experiment, and I have not enjoyed a summer so much for the last ten years. We have a beautiful little cottage in pretty grounds of its own. The country about you know well, and I must say it is a very kind dispensation that as the wear of life takes away or deadens the interests that seem so exciting in youth, and many of which are artificial, the love of nature becomes more intense. I am quite happy with shadows and clouds passing over beautiful hills. I wish I could read Wordsworth, but the actual food itself I cannot swallow.