The great event took place three weeks ago and I am just allowed to
leave my bed and lie on a couch for a few hours every day--in my
boudoir. Here I can wile away the time by writing letters.
It is a boy, so Francis ought to be in the seventh heaven of happiness
as he now has a direct heir for the succession. Ought to be, but
somehow isn't. Since I began to get better and take notice he does not
seem as exuberant as I expected. He isn't _well_. I have a sort of
idea he had a fainting fit in the House of Lords just when my crisis was
coming on and that they kept it back from me. But I saw an allusion to
it in an old _Times_ which had somehow found its way into my
sitting-room.
The infant is to be named James Francis Addington for ancestral reasons.
I do not feel energetic enough to contest. I should have preferred
_one_ Christian name _only_--a multitude of names is so demode and must
be so confusing to the recording angels who don't recognize surnames. I
wanted something a little baffling and out of the common such as
Clitheroe or Passavant. Clitheroe is not the name of any relation, but
I liked its sound--like the wind in the reeds, don't you think?--and it
would have been a new departure.
Little Clithy looks rather wizen as he lies asleep in his bassinette,
but at his age most infants seem incredibly old and cynical, as though
they were just finishing some life cycle and were peevish at beginning
another.
Of course, Clitheroe's coming has _quite_ ruled me out of the Jubilee
festivities. Suzanne Feenix has been doing all the running, and quietly
pushing her husband whilst I have been unable to secure any advancement
for mine, who now seems quite lacking in ambition. Suzanne, by the bye,
_l'on dit tres toquee_ of another good-looking African explorer, a rival
of yours from West Africa. A pity you did not make her acquaintance--as
I advised you to do--before you left. She has any amount of influence
with Lord W.
How is the missionaryess? I am glad she was safely married to her
missionary and withdrew herself into the interior. I feared otherwise
there was going to be _another_ entanglement: for I don't believe _in
the least_ you were a Galahad and faithful only to my memory in the days
when we played at being engaged. I don't see why I should be specially
interested in this young woman because she came from Aldermaston and her
father is one of our tenants.... However, when I can once more ride I'll
go over and look her people up and report on them. But I only hope you
won't turn her head by taking all this interest in her affairs. So like
you! And to think you once reproached me for inconstancy!
All the same, dear Roger, I do miss you--_dreadfully_. Francis _will_
keep up the grand manner and won't tell me any cabinet secrets. My
brothers and sisters don't interest me, mother is too anxious about
father's affairs to leave him for long, and when she is here I am
nervous about discussing them for fear they may want to borrow money
from Francis.