Emily Eden

“ It had been her intention to settle herself at the sea-side after a fortnight's stay at Pleasance; but Janet and Rose dwelt with such melancholy energy on the loneliness of their parents, and the comfort that she would be to their mother after they were gone, that she consented to stay till the return of the Harcourts from their wedding tour. Janet would not be able to leave Chesford, but Rose would then be within reach of Dulham; perhaps in her heart, Rachel dreaded to begin her lonely life, and clung to the kindness she met with at Pleasance. ”

“ Lord Beaufort waited some time in his sister's room before she came to him. She had been with Mary, and had heard the history of the contretemps of the morning, and was prepared to pacify, and explain, and smooth, and conciliate, till all should be peace again. Such is the daily toil of the mistress of a large country-house. No laundress, ironing away at an obstinate row of plaits; no carpenter planing the roughest plank of wood; no gardener raking the stoniest soil, has half the trouble she has, to maintain a smooth surface in the aspect of her mixed society. Nothing more is asked. ”

“ I wish to snatch one day from the general wreck, and to observe that yesterday was very pleasant indeed—one of those days that go far to make up for the faults of a voyage. We avoided all the authorities, and landed at a little quiet bay, where George had ordered five horses to meet us; and Captain Grey took us a ride that he had known in former times, up one of the high mountains, and back by the aqueduct; and we were all satisfied that Nature can do no more in the way of beauty—clouds, mountains, trees, butterflies, atmosphere, water—such a combination! ”

“ I get such horrible fits at times (particularly when I am driving out) of thinking that we are gone back to an entirely savage state, and are at least 3000 years behind the rest of the world. I take all the naked black creatures squatting at the doors of their huts in such aversion, and what with the paroquets, and the jackals, and the vultures, which settle in crowds on the dead bodies that are thrown on the banks of the river, and what with the climate and the strange trees and shrubs, I feel all Robinson Crusoe-ish. ”

“ But if in the whole course of woman's sensitive life there is one moment of happiness more keen, blissful, bright, than another, it is that in which the husband of her choice thanks her for his first born child. It was with heartfelt gratitude that Blanche whispered "I thank God, love, that he has not taken me from you," for she felt, as Arthur pressed her to his heart, as with tears he thanked her for being so patient, so good—as he blessed her, not so much that she was the mother of his child, as that she was still his own, his wife, his Blanche ”

“ I am more reconciled to India than I was, inasmuch as it is no use kicking against the pricks; and then the days are so monotonous that they go by quicker than they did when everything was new; and then, though the heat is in fact greater this year, we all submit to it better; and the pain of being indolent is no longer very irksome, I am ashamed to say. And, last of all, I really feel every day that I would not be away from George—and think of him alone in this country—for any earthly consideration. ”

“ Helen went down to dinner irresolute. Nothing in Lord Teviot's manner tended to reconcile her to him; and She thought that in the course of the evening she would bravely seek him to dissolve their engagement. But perhaps he saw something in her ease of manner that alarmed him: dinner, that useful counsellor, had smoothed his ruffled temper; perhaps the instinct that always leads a man to foresee when an impending explanation is not likely to end in his favour prompted him to divine that he should have the worse of this. ”

“ I assure you, Emmy, I take great care of myself; we only sit up every other night, and my spirits are quite good. I am screwed up like a machine, and get through day and night very quickly indeed. I eat and drink and laugh and don’t let myself think.
You must come again, when you can, to see me, Emmy. I have no scruple in asking you to come and see me in the fullness of my dullness, out of the fullness of your gaiety, because when we get together, we get into our element, my darling. ”

“ Rachel, my dear," said the weeping mother, "you are almost another daughter to me. I wish you could make up your mind to marry Willis, and take my Mary's place, and then you would belong to us, and we should all be settled like the people at the end of a play. Could you not just fall in love with him?"
"Quite impossible, my dear Mrs. Hopkinson, and no blame to Mr. Willis; I do not believe it is in my power to fall in love with anybody." ”

“ It certainly was a shame to stop Lord Wellesley when he was running up another good Government House at Barrackpore and to stop the finish of this provisional house. As it is, there are no glass windows in the lower storey, and I only wonder the servants can bear the heat so well as they do; and then, as there are no doors whatever to the interior of our part of the house—nothing but open jalousies—the hot wind comes bustling upstairs and through all the jalousies and spoils our comfort. ”

“ I cannot abide India, and that is the truth, and it is almost come to not abiding in India. When I think, what I thought of a long sea-voyage, and yet look back upon it as pleasant compared to this life, and when I long to go in every little brig that goes down the river homeward-bound, I can only calculate how strong my aversion must be to ‘the land we live in.’ I suppose it is partly not feeling well, and partly the fidget for letters; but nobody can be happy in such a climate. Everybody says it is one of the hottest hot seasons they have ever known ”

“ MY DEAR EMILY, Here we are once more within 30 miles of home, came here late yesterday, everybody at dinner—Mary in such a fright you never saw—such a silence you never heard—room so hot you never felt—dinner so cold you never tasted—dogs so tiresome you never smelt. So we must go to Shottesbrook bon gré, mal gré. Hang labels round your necks when we arrive on Wednesday or Thursday with your names on them (like the decanters) for do what we will, Mary and I cannot recollect your faces. Are you the one with the long nose? ”

“ We went on the elephants through the great gateway, in a Timour the Tartar fashion, into the court. Such torches and spearmen and drums and crowds, like a melodrama magnified by a solar microscope; it was the sort of scene where Ellen Tree would have snatched up a doll from under Farley’s sword, and said, ‘My boy, my boy, my rescued Agib!’ or words to that effect, while the curtain fell slowly. We got off at the door of an immense hall, a sort of court, and the rajah’s servants spread a path of scarlet and gold kincob from the door to the seat at the farthest end, for us to walk on. ”

“ I am fonder of Chance in my own little way than of all the rest of India, with Ceylon and the Straits thrown into the bargain. He has got such a sweet coat too, which he wears morning and evening, after the fashion of dogs in India. He had a common red one, very well for a common black dog, but not quite the thing for the Prince Royal. There is a native who sells us Chinese silks, and I suppose has made a good thing of us, for he made up as a surprise to me a coat for Chance, of a broché gold-coloured satin bound with silver, with a sort of breast-plate of mock stones set in gold. ”

“ The world, created and peopled by Jane Austen, is imperfect only in being too small. We pass through the magic door into fairyland, and hardly have we shed the muddy vesture of our vulgar, strident conflict beyond, than we find ourselves once more faced with the necessity of resuming it. What would not those of us who love Pride and Prejudice give for the discovery of another half-dozen novels by the same hand, comparable with it? ”

“ London has been an ugly-looking sight. We drove up to it most days to see George, and to take him down to the House, because I like to see him safe thro’ the crowd.
Women in London have made themselves so extremely ridiculous and conspicuous, by their party violence, and I have no reason for thinking I should have been wiser than others, if I had been in the same state of excitement. Besides, it is such a bore to be very eager, it tires me to death, and yet one catches it, if other people have the same complaint. ”

“ There is nothing so attractive to a child, particularly to a sick child, as being treated like a very old man, Charlie would sit on Rachel's knee, his eyes fixed admiringly on her, while she "fabled of green fields," or turned the white feathery clouds on the bright blue canopy above, into troops of angels, to whose swift flight she gave fanciful destinations; and Charlie would gravely say, "Yes, veddy true, pooty Rachel," and shake his head with an air of precocious wisdom that delighted her. ”

“ Pray sit down with Mary and me. Mary is one of my dearest friends; and you must not be afraid of her, though she is the cleverest creature in the world."
"There is one of the prettiest creatures in the world," said Mary, waving away the compliment to herself, and pointing to Lady Teviot's receding figure; "and there Miss Douglas will agree with me, I see."
"And I, I am sure," said Lady Portmore; "in fact, you could not speak to anyone who is such an authority on the subject of Helen's beauty as I am, for I was the very first person who discovered it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Have you no nearer relations than an uncle and aunt?"
"I have no other relations whatever, my father and mother died before I was two years old, and I never had either brother or sister."
"That is sad," said the sisters, looking at each other, 'but still you have a home, and since you have no one else to look to, I suppose your uncle and aunt stand in the place of parents to you; could you not—" Janet stopped, she looked at the Baron and Baroness. It seemed really a waste of words to ask if anybody could love them. ”

“ And Helen, my darling Helen! it kills me to look at that angel; she will wear herself out, and she looks so miserable, and yet is so calm and self-possessed. She soothes him when no one else can. Sometimes I fancy he knows her, and yet he talks of her always as absent. Miss Forrester, it is hard upon you to be brought into all our distress."
"It would be far harder if I were kept away from it," she said; and she, too, had tears in her eyes; "but I am more sanguine than you. The doctor seemed more hopeful yesterday evening, and they told us we might expect a return of fever. ”

“ Everybody had been, or would be disappointed in love, hardly anybody but himself aspired to being hopelessly miserable, and invariably unlucky. So any little vague tenderness for Rachel was quelled, his coat was once more buttoned up to the chin, a fresh crape put to his hat, his grey gloves thrown into the fire, and, leaning, with his arms folded, under a cypress tree on the lawn of Marble Hall, Willis was himself again.
"You wicked man!" said the Baroness, approaching him, "where have you been all day? there is breakfast over without you. ”

“ I fainted away, and was driven off by Mary, and Mama and Louisa went on in hysterics to London. I really am quite in a fright about it, and cannot think what beauties I ever saw in it. The house is nothing but a pile of old bricks, the rooms cold, damp, dirty, inconvenient cells, the view cheerless and bleak, the offices large and decaying, the garden unproductive and expensive, the neighbours impertinent and intrusive, the gardener impudent, the housemaids idle, the landlord exacting, and the tenant in a terrible scrape indeed—and so is the tenant’s sister too, as far as I can make out.... ”

“ I have not seen Helen for ages; and we have so much to hear and to say."
"And are you. Lady Portmore," he said, giving the cushion that supported his back a languid push, "are you still going on with all that old humbug of being glad to see people, and of having something to say to them? Has not everything been said forty times over? and is not any one individual quite as good as another?" ”

“ As for ever caring for a dog as I did for poor dear Chance, the thing is impossible. I do not believe there ever was so clever a dog, and very few equally clever men; and then, after eight years of such a rambling life, we have had so many recollections in common, and he was such a well-known character in India. I had no great fancy to have another; but we are alone so many hours of the day that a pet is almost a necessity, and a Doctor Young, who is just come from England, hearing I had lost Chance, very politely sent me a little English spaniel he had brought with him. ”

“ Willis and Mrs. Hopkinson walked for some time in silence, and then she suddenly said,
"I don't like those people, Charles; I do not mind their rudeness to me. I suppose I look like a respectable housekeeper, and she thinks I am one, that does not matter; but I do not quite make out what they are. What do you know of them, my dear?"
"He is one of the wealthiest men in the city," said Willis apologetically, for he was rather nettled that his mother-in-law should have been treated cavalierly, "and she is a very fine lady." ”

“ You will soon see how naturally one acquires a distaste for any ill-judging individual who presumes not to like one's husband. You would give us all up in a moment for Lord Teviot's sake, if we——"
"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Helen, clasping her hands; "I shall cling to you all more than ever, and none of you must give me up. Amelia, promise to be kind to me, to love me more than ever when I am married; indeed, indeed, I shall want your love"; and she threw her arms round Amelia's neck, and sobbed violently. ”

“ Then, after passing a house that is much more like a palace than anything we see in England, we come to a row of mud-thatched huts with wild, black-looking savages squatting in front of them, little black native children running up and down the cocoa-trees above the huts, and no one appearance of civilization that would lead one to guess any European had ever set foot on the land before. ”

“ The girls looked at her with astonishment, and Janet, laying hold of her hand, said, "Do not talk so, it is not right, I beg your pardon, perhaps you are not speaking seriously. Nobody can exist unless they have somebody to love, and who loves them in return."
"True," said Rachel, "it is not existence, it is a myth.
"'A dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed.'"
"But why not employ them?" said Rose, who was not learned in Byron, "you have a home." ”

“ I believe you are ashamed of showing your scarecrow of a husband; but I want to go while I am still looking interesting. I am sure your mother will enjoy petting me and making much of me."
"Who would not, you darling?" said Helen, in a transport of delight. "Oh dear, what a happy invention life is, particularly when it has been a little chequered! just think what a happy Christmas it will be; and how little we could's have expected it six weeks ago! Teviot, I sometimes think I am not half grateful enough for all the blessings I have." ”

“ I cannot think how any clever man who has not estate enough to find his property an occupation, can consent to be thrown by his own choice out of all professions. I should be a lawyer to-morrow if I were Lawrence Peel, or a lawyer’s wife if I were Lady Jane. She might persuade him into it I am sure, if she would try, and it would be so much better economy than consulting Doctor Mayo three times a day, which he does sometimes.
There is nobody here but Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, and Mr. Newton the painter, and one of the sons of the house. ”

“ She told me the other day, with tears in her eyes, that she never knew what goodness was till she married Mr. Armistead. You know what her own home was. And so as I was saying," pursued the old lady without raising her eyes from her netting, "I expect that in a very short time we shall have Arthur here—perhaps to-morrow."
"Oh, Aunt Sarah!" said Blanche, throwing her arms round her Aunt's neck, "you know more than you tell me; you have heard from Arthur, you are sure he is coming; perhaps he is here," and she started up as if to go and meet him. ”