MISS FULFORD TO SIR EDWARD FULFORD
1 SHINGLE COTTAGES, NEW COVE, S. CLEMENTS, 30TH JUNE.
My Dear Edward,--When Sydney Smith led Perfection to the Pea because
the Pea would not come to Perfection, he could hardly have had such
an ideal as yours. Your intended niece is much like the 'not
impossible she' of a youth under twenty. One comfort is that such
is the blindness of your kind that you will imagine all these charms
in whatever good, ladylike, simple-hearted girl I pitch upon, and
such I am sure I shall find all my nieces. The only difficulty will
be in deciding, and that will be fixed by details of style, and the
parents' willingness to spare their child.
This is an excellent plan of yours for bringing the whole family
together round our dear old mother and her home daughter. This is
the end house of three on a little promontory, and has a charming
view--of the sea in the first place, and then on the one side of
what is called by courtesy the parade, on the top of the sea wall
where there is a broad walk leading to S. Clements, nearly two miles
off. There are not above a dozen houses altogether, and the hotel
is taken for the two families from London and Oxford, while the
Druces are to be in the house but one next to us, the middle one
being unluckily let off to various inhabitants. We have one bedroom
free where we may lodge some of the overflowings, and I believe the
whole party are to take their chief meals together in the large room
at the hotel. The houses are mostly scattered, being such as
fortunate skippers build as an investment, and that their wives may
amuse themselves with lodgers in their absence. The church is the
weakest point in this otherwise charming place. The nearest, and
actually the parish church, is a hideous compo structure, built in
the worst of times as a chapel of ease to S. Clements. I am afraid
my mother's loyalty to the parochial system will make her secure a
pew there, though at the farther end of the town there is a new
church which is all that can be wished, and about a mile and a half
inland there is a village church called Hollyford, held, I believe,
by a former fellow-curate of Horace Druce. Perhaps they will
exchange duties, if Horace can be persuaded to take a longer holiday
than merely for the three weeks he has provided for at Bourne Parva.
They cannot come till Monday week, but our Oxford professor and his
party come on Thursday, and Edith will bring her girls the next day.
Her husband, our Q.C., cannot come till his circuit is over, but of
course you know more about his movements than I do. I wonder you
have never said anything about those girls of his, but I suppose you
class them as unattainable. I have said nothing to my mother or
Emily of our plans, as I wish to be perfectly unbiased, and as I
have seen none of the nieces for five years, and am prepared to
delight in them all, I may be reckoned as a blank sheet as to their
merits.--Your affectionate sister,