° ° Journal of Emily Eden (1797-1869), novelist and travelle...

Hammer

£2,400

° ° Journal of Emily Eden (1797-1869), novelist and traveller; 1 January - 29 March 1828
Paper book with marbled edges in a parchment binding, 18 x 12 cm, with label of the supplier J Bowen, wholesale stationer, 315 Oxford Street. The journal opens with Emily’s departure from a long stay with her sister Mrs Colvile at Langley Farm at Beckenham in Kent.

The context for this brief period in her life was the fall of the government led for five months by Frederick John Robinson (1782-1859), first Viscount Goderich and first earl of Ripon, and the character of Goderich’s wife Sarah, often the butt of Emily’s acerbic comments.

Born into the Whig aristocracy and an acute political observer, Emily had the opportunity to follow the crisis at first hand. She had a low opinion of the premier – ‘Theresa Villiers … said that Lord Goderich had resigned the day before, and that the King had sent to the Duke of Wellington to desire him to make a new Government. It was hardly possible to regret the last, it was so weak, and Lord Goderich so inefficient and ridiculous, chiefly owing to Sarah, but the triumph of one’s enemies is always an ugly business.’ Emily’s position also provides a privileged view of machinations in the royal household: at dinner on 12 January Lord Lansdowne described ‘the whole thing as an intrigue between Mr [John Charles] Herries and Sir William Knighton [the king’s physician and private secretary] – the instances he gave of Sir William Knighton’s influence over the King are quite wonderful.’ On 22 January ‘Lawrence Peel told me that the K[ing] was at first cold to his brother [Robert Peel], but after a little while began mimicking Lord Anglesey and then all the late ministry.’

Her plan to resolve the crisis was radical, and somewhat redolent of proceedings in today’s parliament: ‘It would be a shorter plan to let Parliament meet and vote that last year has never existed – that this is 1827. We should all be a year younger to begin with; Lord Goderich would not have utterly lost his character – the Turks would be relieved from any unpleasant suspicion that they had lost their fleet; in short it would do better.’

Emily frequently obtained tickets to attend parliament; on 14 February she observed ‘Mr [John Cam] Hobhouse moved a vote of thanks to Sir E[dward] Codrington [for his victory over the Turkish fleet at the battle of Navarino], and made a good speech, Mr [Henry] B[ankes] a very tiresome one, Sir [James] Mackintosh rather a learned one; and Mr [Robert] Peel not a bad one, during which we came away, almost starved to death. Dined at 11.’ The next day ‘Mr [Henry] Goulburn moved an adjournment which was received with a shout of laughter, and they all rushed out. We were all horribly disappointed, nobody found their carriages ready. While we were waiting for the carriage Mr [William] H[uskisso]n came down and pretended to be very sorry he had not been called upon to explain.’ On 25 February ‘Lord Normanby and Mr [Henry] Brougham came – he was very amusing – kissed my hand at some foolish remark I made – because he said I was a clever creature, which I consider a certificate of cleverness – much to be prized.’

The journal contains a full record of Emily’s social engagements and cultural interests; on 18 January she visited the French theatre with Mrs Mildmay and Francis Baring: ‘The Lyceum is very prettily fitted up but except Perlet, the acting is very bad’; on the 28th ‘Lady Grantham lent me her box at C[ovent] Garden, Mary went with me – saw Henry 4th – C[harles] Kemble’s Falstaff is a wonderful piece of acting – but the whole play acts very heavily.’ On 16 February ‘we went in the evening to Mr Hay’s – saw some drawings of birds by a Mr Audebon’ [John James Audubon, 1785-1851, whose publication of Birds of America was largely financed by his visit to England between 1826 and 1829].

Emily greatly admired Jane Austen, whose writing influenced her own fiction. At a performance by the pupils of the Royal Academy of Music on 7 March, Emily overheard a couple ‘settling how to break to her father their intention of marrying – it would have been an excellent scene for Miss Austen’. On 17 March she accompanied her nephew Charley D[rummond] to the studio of Gilbert Stuart Newton, to sit for one of the children in The vicar of Wakefield reconciling his wife to Olivia; the picture, commissioned by Lord Lansdowne, was exhibited at the Royal Academy later that year.

At rear, in reverse: ‘List of books at Berkley, August 1879, E Dickinson’ (2 pages)
Loose within volume: ‘Directions for washing Piña Cloth’ (a luxury fabric made from the leaves of the pineapple plant, mostly in the Philippines); c1840

Very few of Emily Eden’s papers are in public collections: letters to two of her sisters are held at Durham University Library, letters to Lord Minto in the National Library of Scotland and to Lord Brougham at University College, London. In 1919 her great-niece Violet Dickinson published extracts from her papers, including brief excerpts this Journal: Violet Dickinson, Miss Eden’s letters (London: MacMillan), 1919. The papers of her brother George Eden, Earl of Auckland (1784-1849) are held by the British Library.

Emily Eden (1797–1869), writer, was born on 3 March 1797 at Old Palace Yard, Westminster, the twelfth of fourteen children of William Eden, first baron Auckland (1744-1818), diplomatist, and his wife, Eleanor Elliot (1758–1818). The Edens were influential and active members of the whig aristocracy, and Emily grew up in a household at the centre of early nineteenth-century political and cultural life. She was from her adolescence a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued observer of that world: in one of her earliest surviving letters, written when she was seventeen, she tells a sister of the betrothal of Annabella Milbanke, a family friend, adding drily that Miss Milbanke ‘does not seem to be acting with her usual good sense’ in looking for marital bliss with Lord Byron (Miss Eden's Letters, 7).

After her mother's death in 1818 Emily and her sister Frances established a household in London with their brother George Eden, and in 1827 at Ham House near Richmond, where Emily worked on a novel. Eden’s young womanhood, as described in her letters, seems to have involved a round of social gatherings and country house visits with the literary and political élite of the day. On a visit to Lord Lansdowne in 1826, for example, she was entertained by the poet Thomas Moore: ‘here the last three days, singing like a little angel’ (Miss Eden's Letters, 110). Several years later she was charmed by Talleyrand, whom she met in London. She also became a friend of Lord Melbourne, briefly prompting some gossipy speculation that they might marry.
She also immensely admired Jane Austen, whose writing influenced her own fiction. Both her novels share Austen’s focus on the domestic lives of young women, although Eden’s characters move in somewhat higher social circles than Austen’s, and Eden relies on melodrama (near-fatal fevers, financial skullduggery) to advance her plots in a way that Austen seldom did.
Politics entered Emily’s life most dramatically when her brother George was appointed governor-general of India in 1835. He was unmarried, and Emily and her sister Frances accompanied him to Calcutta, where they arrived in March 1836 and carried out the official duties of the governor’s lady, with Emily, the elder, assuming chief responsibility.

According to her great-niece Violet Dickinson, who edited another collection of Eden's letters published in 1919, her household had ‘remained a centre of political interest’ (Miss Eden's Letters, x) even through Emily’s final years as an invalid.

In 1863 Emily wrote to her niece Mrs Dickinson: ‘I do not exactly see unless I turn back, and grow young again, that I shall ever visit you at Berkley [near Frome in Somerset] – Richmond is looked upon by doctors as an immense journey for me. I am very much pleased my book altogether amused you. I have such quantities of old letters of thanks for it, from people I had forgotten. I had a grand letter from Lord Houghton in praise of my pure facile English, among other things Slang was not invented in my day.’ (Miss Eden’s letters).

ODNB; Dickinson, Miss Eden’s letters.