Happy returns

Sydney Walk
March 30th 1853

My Dearest Boo

I do hope you are feeling better, my darling friend. When Mrs Doughty wrote to me in Blindingham with news of LB and Villiers I resolved to come back to London straight away. I could not bear to be apart from them - and by association yourself - a minute longer. I am blessed with a doting husband, as you know, and when he found me in fits of weeping at the thought of staying away another night he called a carriage for me immediately. He remains in Blindingham, staying with the Cornbenches (who are a drab pair with clingy, grey children but who are at the very least not from the village) He is overseeing the structural security of the Hall and planning to drain the lake.

But what of it, I am here! Back in Bayswater ready to welcome LB to his temporary but very loving home. I think Mrs Doughty was happy to help for a while but she is not accustomed to the sounds and smells of an occupied household - not as you and I are - and I will wager that Villiers and she did not see eye to eye. Her account of his nighttime habits have proved to me that she is not as tolerant a woman as she might appear in daylight.

But that is of no matter now. I pray for your speedy recovery, Boo! Not only so that you can have your boy back in your arms - I need your worldly advice in furnishings and fashionable decor. I have a project which I cannot wait to discuss with you.

I shall call as soon as you are well enough,

Yrs

Effie x

Neighbourly relations

Lydiatt House
March 22nd 1853

I have loved my home for so long that I have been quite blind to the parlous stupidity of its village folk. This waiting for news of Cook is so tiresome that I find I no longer care overmuch whether she is alive or dead - she is sure to be one or the other. I have spent more time than I care to contemplate wandering the village lanes in search of her. At the start I was alive with eager hope that she would come walking around the next corner, scolding me for wearing unsuitable boots as she used to do. I am only slightly sorry to confess that now I would be happy for a glimpse of her under a bush or floating in Bartle Pond - anything that would bring an end to this uncertainty.

I visit Mrs Everdown in the Forester's Arms every morning to see if she has had word, but she is becoming increasingly vague as her vigil there goes on. When all this is over I shall insist that Josiah does not employ her as housekeeper of the rebuilt Hall - she is unlikely to appreciate the sophisticated new surroundings I am planning. She is too much of a villager for us after all, and resembles her bovine daughter more closely than I had imagined.

The people in Blindingham are well meaning enough, I suppose but oh! they are so dense and harsh of feature. There is not one of them without a nose like a pineapple. Everywhere I go I see the same thick set brows and square jaws looking back at me - I feel as if I have stumbled univited upon a family gathering. I wonder I had not noticed before how dim and pockmarked they all are.

If cook does not appear soon - quick or dead - I shall return to civilisation and be thankful that I do not have to conduct my business in the sawdust and smoke of a village hostelry. The air in the streets of Bayswater is a good deal fresher, I will swear to it.