Dear Cecy,
May this letter find you and James safely at the King’s Head in Leeds. Thomas returned with your children a few hours ago. Everyone seems much as usual. No, let me amend that. Upon reflection, I believe that Georgy has been smiling ever since the children came. Distracting they may be, but it is the very best sort of distraction.
I am sure your Nurse Langley will write to you of Thomas’s methods where Diana and her carriage sickness are concerned. She objects to them.
Let me put your mind at rest. Diana has suffered no ill effects, and indeed asks at regular intervals when she might go driving with Thomas again. Driving is putting it a bit high, I think. Thomas told me that Diana, wedged securely on the seat between him and Ripley, fell asleep in her cocoon of blankets after the first ten miles. No further need for a basin, I am happy to report.
I am just as sure that when they write to you, Arthur and Eleanor will protest their treatment on the journey. Eleanor blames Thomas’s refusal to spring the horses entirely on Diana. “My sister is a very poor traveler,” she told me, with such an air of utter world-weariness that anyone would think they had just arrived here from Samarkand.
Arthur pronounced the whole journey sadly flat. “Nothing to what Papa would have done.” They are united in allotting Thomas the blame for the brutal way he condemned them to sit inside with Nurse Langley, when either of them would have been much better help driving than Diana was.
As far as your journey to Leeds is concerned, I hope that you and James made swift work of it indeed. That was why Thomas chose the Bull and Mouth, of course, to permit you to arrange with Mr. Sherman’s firm to use his post-horses for the changes on the road north, and to put you on that road in the shortest possible time. If comfort were of the essence, rather than time, naturally he would have stayed at the house in Mayfair instead.
This reminds me of another of Thomas’s crimes. He has refused Arthur his steam-works. You will hear about this at length, I am sure. Heartless as ever, dear Thomas is. In his defense, Thomas says, given Arthur’s burglar, he could not in good conscience risk the safety of the children in London a moment longer than necessary.
I thought that might make you smile. As if Thomas has ever possessed anything remotely resembling a conscience, good, bad, or indifferent. You and I know the sorry truth of it, of course. Thomas does not wish to play bear leader to Arthur unless it is for something Thomas himself has a keen interest in. If Arthur had conceived a passion for magnetism, Thomas would have taken him straight to Mr. Faraday’s laboratory and let any question of conscience go hang.
Upon reflection, I must admit things could be worse. Thomas and Arthur could share a keen interest in pugilism.
Come to think of it, I will refrain from jests on the topic, for Arthur has not yet forgotten the rash promise Thomas made to teach him how to box. I can only imagine Edward’s wrath if he is left out of the proceedings. A keen interest in pugilism is all too likely to sweep the nursery. I will keep silent, lest I provoke it.
You may wonder about the keen interest in the study of magic Thomas shares with Arthur and Eleanor. That would be the reason Thomas kept the twins amused at the inn by teaching them to scry in a dish of India ink. The nurse may well include the resulting stains in her list of objections against Thomas. I am very sorry for any inconvenience the ink may have caused, but I feel I must take at least part of the blame. His time with me has given Thomas a fine indifference to stains of all kinds. It is not a disregard shared by Nurse Langley.
I think the day and a half it took you to make the short journey to London put the fear of the Lord into Thomas. That’s why he was so brutal with the children.
Why he was brutal with the nurse as well is quite beyond me. Anyone would think he was a perfect Turk from the way Nurse Langley carries on. Happily, she has formed a pact of mutual support with Nurse Carstairs, who has the highest opinion of Thomas, so I hope she will be won over eventually.
Meanwhile it is quite diverting to watch the two women vie to show the babies to best advantage. It is clear that each privately feels her own charge to be the most beautiful and gifted. The older children are slightly less enchanting to them and thus are sometimes privileged to go for hours at a time without comparative assessment.
Still, it is fortunate that both Alexander and Laurence are too young to understand the boasts put forth on their behalf, or they would be insufferably pleased with themselves. (As it is, Laurence stands to inherit that quality from his father. Certainly Edward has done so. No matter what, Edward’s good opinion of himself is quite invincible.)
I am quite sure everyone will be in much better spirits in the morning. The rigors of travel take a toll on the sturdiest of us. I suspect Thomas is dealing with his fatigue most efficiently. He has locked himself in his study. Now that relative peace has descended, the children having ascended to the nursery at last, I will go and seek him in his lair. I look forward to the full version of his side of the story. She who laughs last may not invariably laugh best, but she does laugh. The nice thing about Thomas is that he will probably laugh quite a lot, too.
Good night and best wishes to you and James on your enterprise.
Love,
Kate