My trip to Fonthill[172] was an amusing way of passing a spare day, and has left a strong impression of the immeasurable folly with which money may be spent. The house is too absurd, but the grounds are beautiful. Lansdowne has bought some pictures there which he was anxious for, as they belonged to his father. I have just heard from him. He is going for a few weeks to Paris, and like everybody else, is expecting you and me to pay him a good long visit at the end of the year. In his mild rational way he exceedingly regrets that the Cortes have not cut off the head of Ferdinand.[173] _Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._ [1822.] MY DARLING EM, Your letter has revived me, for I was smothered with Fog and so obfuscated I found myself growing callous of the density of the gloom, and my perception of my own dirt and my neighbour’s grimness was diminishing. I was getting hardened, when your letter and a gleam of dingy yellow sun showed me the state of myself and the children, and I went up and washed myself and repented of my filth. The fog prevented Mrs. Colvile coming, which is provoking. I wanted to show her my boy; she has put so many of them together, she has an experienced eye on the subject[174].... The Ladies Fitz-Patrick, old Mrs. Smith, etc., are cooking up a match between Vernon Smith and Mary Wilson, old Lord Ossory’s natural daughter with much money. Emily does it strike you that vices are wonderfully prolific among the Whigs? There are such countless illegitimates among them, such a tribe of Children of the Mist.... Your own PAM. _Lady Campbell to Miss Eden._ _January 6, 1823._ _Twelfth Night or what you will._ MY DARLING EMMY, Thank God you have written at last, I have worked myself into a fright this day or two that you were very ill. I have been very poorly, but am better. You are mistaken about that sucking lump being a favourite. I esteem him; he is a man of strict probity and integrity with steady principles, and he is a man would make any reasonable woman very happy in domestic life; but there is a refinement and charm in that Cain that makes a fool of me,--a great fool, for she[175] don’t much care for me, and is radically vicious. We have got a house between Reading and Basingstoke, a mile from Strathfieldsaye, at a village called Strathfield Turgess:--delightful prospect, well furnished, roomy, with Cow and poultry included, garden meadow, for £84 per annum. Lady Louisa Lennox had rather taken my fancy, and that negative mind of being Anti-Bathurst is a jewel in their favour. Emily, to have it gravely told me Lady Georgina Bathurst[176] is a strong-headed woman, superior, with wonderful abilities, etc. _Cela m’irrite la bile_, when I know her to be prejudiced, worldly, entrenched by prejudices upon prejudice, till her very soul is straightened within the narrow limit of the Ministers, their wives, and her own family....