Love to Mrs. V. Ever your most affectionate
Emmy, are you with child? Or have you had a husband and four children in the hooping-cough? Or have you been driven mad by Orange factions? If none of these evils have befallen you, you might have written me a line more. I know yours was the last letter, but think of me and all my sufferings! And above all, the standing disappointment of not seeing you, when I was literally airing the sheets and killing the fowls for you. And there I was without encumbrance, a free woman, ready to go all over the Causeway--and as I fear I am now beginning a child, I do not know when I shall be my own woman again.
Sir Guy has literally had the whooping-cough and is not well yet, and you who know what Lord Auckland is with a swelled face, may imagine what Sir Guy is with a whoop rending his lungs. The children have all had it rather lightly, but are still rather disagreeable and like a rookery. My dear, I had a glimpse of Lady Wallscourt[310] at the Inn. I spent half an hour with her; she is afraid of the whooping-cough and would not come to me. I think I ought to _bénir la providence_ that bricks and mortar stood my friends, and that she could not find a house; for truly I think you anticipated justly that she would not exactly be the person I should wish to spin my days with. However, I will work up a little good feeling and liking towards her next Spring, when she may want it,--and, my dear, I must confess to you that the slang of good society, even, is now grown irksome to me, I suppose from want of habit, particularly when it is not supported by any ideas.
However, my Dearest, don't think I am bitter. Indeed I love to think of all the good there is in the world,--not for your sake, though you are my great link. But then I consider you as my world in itself.
I hope it will not be in the power of any swindler to keep you from me next year, for I really cannot do so long without a clearance of ideas. There will be such old stores to dispose of. Emily, I am ashamed to confess to you how I have suffered from the Orange spirit of this horrid black North. I am ashamed to tell you how wickedly irritated I was, I am getting better now. The fearful evil I feel of this party spirit is, it is so catching. It kindles all the combustibles of contradiction and retaliation within one, till, though it was _injustice_ that irritated me, yet I fear I should not have dealt justly towards them. I am not sanguine, I think nothing will be done; and I wish I thought better of the Association.[311] I am constantly told _indirectly_ that the friends of the Catholics should fear their ascendancy, for if they begin a _massacre_ they will cut down _friend_ and foe. Pleasant little images!... It is such a comfort to me that by leaving the world one can get rid of its taint to a certain degree; for I do not think I could bear to hear one half of the things I used to think nothing of at all some years ago.