My dear Molly,--I received your letter in due course, and if it was n't
for crying, I could have laughed heartily over it! I don't know, I'm
sure, where you got your elegant description of the Lake of Comus; but I
am obliged to tell you it's very unlike the real article; at all events,
there 's one thing I 'm sure of,--it's a very different matter living
here like Queen Caroline, and being shut up in the same house with K.
I.; and therefore no more balderdash about my "queenly existence," and
so on, that your last was full of.
Here we are, in what they call the Villa of the Fountains, as if there
was n't water enough before the door but they must have it spouting
up out of a creature's nose in one corner, another blowing it out of a
shell, and three naked figures--females, Molly--dancing in a pond of
it in the garden, that kept me out of the place till I had them covered
with an old mackintosh of K. I.'s. We have forty-seven rooms, and
there's barely furniture, if it was all put together, for four; and
there 's a theatre, and a billiard-room, and a chapel; but there 's
not a chair would n't give you the lumbago, and the stocks at Bruff is
pleasant compared to the grand sofa. The lake comes round three sides of
the house, and a mountain shuts in the other one, for there 's no road
whatever to it. You think I 'm not in earnest, but it's as true as I 'm
here; the only approach is by water, so that everything has to come in
boats. Of course, as long as the weather keeps fine, we 'll manage to
send into the town; but when there comes--what we 're sure to have in
this season--aquenoctial gales, I don't know what 's to become of us.
The natives of the place don't care, for they can live on figs and
olives, and those great big green pumpkins they call watermelons; but,
after K. I.'s experience, I don't think we'll try _them_. It was at a
little place on the way here, called Colico, that he insisted on having
a slice of one of these steeped in rum for his supper, because he saw
a creature eating it outside the door. Well, my dear, he relished it
so much that he ate two, and--you know the man--would n't stop till he
finished a whole melon as big as one of the big stones over the gate
piers at home.
"Jemi," says he, when he'd done, "is this the place the hand-book says
you should n't eat any fruit in, or taste the wines of the country?"
"I don't see that," said I; "but Murray says it's notorious for March
miasma, which is most fatal in the fall of the year."
"What's the name of it?" said he.
I could n't say the word before he gave a screech out of him that made
the house ring.
"I 'm a dead man," says he; "that's the very place I was warned about."
From that minute the pains begun, and he spent the whole night in
torture. Lord George, the kindest creature that ever breathed, got out
of his bed and set off to Milan for a doctor, but it was late in the
afternoon when he got back. Half an hour later, Molly, and it would
have been past saving him. As it was, he bled him as if he was veal: for
that's the new system, my dear, and it's the blood that does us all the
harm, and works all the wickedness we suffer from. If it's true, K. I.
will get up an altered man, for I don't think a horse could bear what he
's gone through. Even now he 's as gentle as an infant, Molly, and you
would n't know his voice if you heard it. We only go in one at a time to
him, except Cary, that never leaves him, and, indeed, he would n't
let her quit the room. Sometimes I fancy that he 'll never be the same
again, and from a remark or two of the doctor's, I suspect it's his
head they 're afraid of. If it was n't English he raved in, I 'd be
dreadfully ashamed of the things he says, and the way he talks of the
family.
As it is, he makes cruel mistakes; for he took Lord George the other
night for James, and began talking to him, and warning him against his
Lordship. "Don't trust him too far, Jemmy," said he. "If he was n't in
disgrace with his equals, he 'd never condescend to keep company with
us. Depend on 't, boy, he 's not 'all right,' and I wish we were well
rid of him."
Lord George tried to make him believe that he did n't understand him,
And said something about the Parliament being prorogued, but K. I. went
on: "I suppose, then, our noble friend did n't get his Bill through the
Lords?"
"His mind is quite astray to-night," said Lord George, in a whisper, and
made a sign for us to creep quietly away, and leave him to Caroline.
She understands him best of any of us; and, indeed, one sees her to more
advantage when there 's trouble and misery in the house than when we 're
all well and prosperous.
We came here for economy, because K. I. determined we should go
somewhere that money couldn't be spent in. Now, as there is no road, we
cannot have horses; and as there are no shops, we cannot make purchases;
but, except for the name of the thing, Molly, might n't we as well be
at Bruff? I would n't say so to one of the family, but to you, in
confidence between ourselves, I own freely I never spent a more dismal
three weeks at Dodsborough. Betty Cobb and myself spend our time crying
over it the livelong day. Poor creature, she has her own troubles too!
That dirty spalpeen she married ran away with all her earnings, and even
her clothes; and Mary Anne's maid says that he has two other wives in
his own country. She 's made a nice fool of herself, and she sees it
now.
How long we're to stay here in this misery, I can't guess, and K. I.'s
convalescence may be, the doctor thinks, a matter of months; and even
then, Molly, who knows in what state he 'll come out of it! Nobody
can tell if we won't be obliged to take what they call a Confession of
Lunacy against him, and make him allow that he's mad and unfit to manage
his affairs. If it was the will of Providence, I 'd just as soon be a
widow at once; for, after all, it's uncertainty that tries the spirits
and destroys the constitution worse than any other affliction.
Indeed, till yesterday afternoon, we all thought he was going off in
a placid sleep; but he opened one eye a little, and bade Cary draw the
window-curtain, that he might look out. He stared for a while at the
water coming up to the steps of the door, and almost entirely round the
house, and he gave a little smile. "What's he thinking of?" said I, in a
whisper; but he heard me at once, and said, "I 'll tell you, Jemi, what
it was. I was thinking this was an elegant place against the bailiffs."
From that moment I saw that the raving had left him, and he was quite
himself again.
Now, my dear Molly, you have a true account of the life we lead, and
don't you pity us? If your heart does not bleed for me this minute, I
don't know you. Write to me soon, and send me the Limerick papers, that
has all the news about the Exhibition in Dublin. By all accounts it's
doing wonderfully well, and I often wish I could see it. Cary has just
come down to take her half-hour's walk on the terrace,--for K. I. makes
her do that every evening, though he never thinks of any of the rest of
us,--and I must go and take her place; so I write myself
Yours in haste, but in sorrow,