Dear Lady Augusta--I am afraid I shall not be able to come to you on
January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I am so very, very
sorry; it is a great disappointment to me. But I have just heard that it
has been settled that mamma and the children are coming abroad for a part
of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyeres, where
Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well
these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she is very
poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and
he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors.
They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn't agree about
the place; so that mamma herself decided for Hyeres, because it is the
most economical. I believe it is very dull, but I hope it will do
Georgina good. I am afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until
she consents to take more care of herself; I am afraid she is very wild
and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa's
positive orders to make her stop in-doors. She is very cross (mamma
writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn't seem at all to mind the
expense that papa has been put to--talks very ill-naturedly about losing
the hunting, etc. She expected to begin to hunt in December, and wants
to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyeres. Fancy a girl wanting to
follow the hounds when her lungs are so bad! But I daresay that when she
gets there she will he glad enough to keep quiet, as they say that the
heat is intense. It may cure Georgina, but I am sure it will make the
rest of us very ill.
Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide
abroad with her; the others will remain at Kingscote until February
(about the 3d), when they will go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss
Turnover, the new governess, who has turned out such a very nice person.
She is going to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but who
is only qualified for the younger children, to Hyeres, and I believe some
of the Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; it is
only a pity she has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she
would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might
object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name;
she gives 5 pounds more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she
calls them; I think it's Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady's
maid). Governesses shouldn't have too pretty a name; they shouldn't have
a nicer name than the family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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