Emily Eden (1797–1869)
Author of The Semi-Attached Couple, and The Semi-Detached House
About the Author
Works by Emily Eden
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Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Eden, Emily
- Birthdate
- 1797-03-03
- Date of death
- 1869-08-05
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- poet
novelist
Diarist
travel writer - Relationships
- Eden, Anthony (great-great-grandnephew)
Eden, William (father)
Eden, Fanny (sister) - Short biography
- Emily Eden was born in London, England, a daughter of Eleanor Elliot and William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland. She was one of 14 siblings, including Frances "Fanny" Eden and George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland. She never married, and along with her sister accompanied their brother to India during his term as Governor-General in 1835–1842. She wrote popular works about India, and her celebrated travel accounts, diary, and published letters give colorful insights into the daily life of the British Raj in India prior to the Mutiny of 1857. She was also a successful novelist as the author of two witty and satirical works, The Semi-Attached House (1859) and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). She moved in the highest circles of British society and entertained the celebrities of the day, including her close friend Lord Melbourne. The 2003 novel One Last Look by Susanna Moore was inspired in part by the journals and private papers of Emily Eden and Fanny Eden.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Westminster, London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- India (1836-1869)
England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
Group read: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden in Virago Modern Classics (February 2018)
Group read: The Semi-Attached Couple in Virago Modern Classics (January 2018)
Reviews
George Eden, Lord Auckland, was appointed as British Governor-General of India in 1836. Being unmarried, he took his younger sister Emily with him to run his household, act as hostess for official functions, and generally fill the place of "first lady". She also happened to be a very competent writer, who later published a couple of moderately successful novels, and her letters and journals describing her time in India have become one of the classic first-hand sources on colonial India in show more the early Victorian period.
Up the country is a selection of letters (most of it a journal written as a serial letter to one of her sisters) dealing with a series of journeys around northern India she made with her brother between October 1837 and March 1840. Her voyage to India and the rest of her stay there between 1836 and 1842 (mostly in Calcutta) is described in another book, Miss Eden's Letters (1872).
Going camping with Miss Eden is a bit different from any other travel book you've ever read. The first time she mentioned that they were a party of 12,000, I assumed that the printer had stuck in a couple of zeroes too many. But they really were that many: The Governor-General went on tour not so much to see the country as to be seen: he had to "show the flag" and exchange courtesies with local rulers, and that meant travelling with a sizeable military escort (two infantry regiments plus cavalry and artillery). Communications were slow, railways and telegraphs had yet to be brought to India and even the famous Grand Trunk Road seems to have been in such poor condition that Miss Eden didn't even notice she was travelling along it. Auckland couldn't rely on sending instructions back to Calcutta, he had to take his complete administration with him. By the time you bring in all the family members of the staff, the domestic servants (one European in the party complained at being forced to limit himself to the 150 most essential servants; Miss Eden employed at least three people just to look after her pet dog), and all the pack animals and porters needed to transport the luggage and provisions, you do indeed end up with a group the size of a small town. And it's not altogether surprising that it takes them all five months to get from Calcutta to Simla. A far cry from Lady Betjeman with her two mules and one muleteer!
It's a dreadful cliché to compare every woman writer from the Georgian or early Victorian period with Jane Austen, but in Miss Eden's case it does have some justification. At least seen from this distance, there is quite some similarity in their styles (informality, intelligence, barbed wit, ...)and their range of subject-matter. Obviously, there are rather more elephants here than in Emma, and we are two or three notches further up the social hierarchy, but what Miss E seems determined to do is show us the domestic side of living in India as a privileged European woman. There is a lot about balls and charity events (fancy fairs, amateur dramatics); about formal visits and sketching excursions; about lovelorn aides-de-camp and daughters who can't marry before their elder sisters. There is also a lot about sickness, bad weather, the discomforts of travel. Her letters to her sister seem to have given her a place where she didn't need to set a good example to her underlings and could have the occasional good solid moan about how awful it all was and how she missed home.
There's a lot of politics going on in the background, but Miss E is too discrete to say much about it. We meet Ranjit Singh and his family in the Punjab, the name Dost Mohammed is dropped from time-to-time, and there are passing mentions of Kabul and Kandahar, but no-one who didn't know would realise that brother George has started what would turn out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful war in Afghanistan. Perhaps this reflects security concerns at the time: it might have been ill-advised to discuss politics in personal letters that had to travel across India carried by relays of runners. Or perhaps it is later editing to avoid people associating her brother's name with the loss of the British army in Kabul. We get quite detailed and very entertaining descriptions of the many durbars and formal meetings with rajahs and ranees, but there is never anything substantive about the nature of the discussions. What seems to occupy her a lot more is the business of formal exchange of gifts that goes with these state visits. She and George receive piles of jewellery and shawls, but they all become the property of the East India Company and are whisked away by clerks before she gets a proper look at them.
(Incidentally, fans of the Flashman stories will recall that GMF has Flashman meet Miss Eden in Calcutta in 1841. She is largely responsible for getting him posted to Kabul. He calls her an "old trout" — she must have been in her early forties at the time. But probably not as good-looking after five years in India as in the portrait from 1835. Another important Flashman character, Mrs Eliza James, later to be famous as "Lola Montez", also makes a cameo appearance in Up the country — Miss E's comment that she is likely to come to a bad end looks suspiciously like an afterthought, though.)
An irritating feature of Miss Eden's style is her habit of referring to Europeans only by initials. At first I thought this was more discretion, but it seems to be simply shorthand. The text would hardly make sense if we didn't know that G was her brother George and F and W the other Eden siblings in the party, for instance. The others are also easy to spot when you happen to know them. Where she says something really offensive about someone (which she does quite often, mostly about women), she doesn't use initials, but replaces the name by a dash. If you want to read these journals as more than a matter of passing interest, you probably need to get a decent modern edition with footnotes. (I read a facsimile of the 1867 edition from archive.org)
Miss Eden's sketches, many of which were later worked up into lithographs and published, are also very charming and attractive. There weren't any in the edition I read, but it's easy to find them on the internet. show less
Up the country is a selection of letters (most of it a journal written as a serial letter to one of her sisters) dealing with a series of journeys around northern India she made with her brother between October 1837 and March 1840. Her voyage to India and the rest of her stay there between 1836 and 1842 (mostly in Calcutta) is described in another book, Miss Eden's Letters (1872).
Going camping with Miss Eden is a bit different from any other travel book you've ever read. The first time she mentioned that they were a party of 12,000, I assumed that the printer had stuck in a couple of zeroes too many. But they really were that many: The Governor-General went on tour not so much to see the country as to be seen: he had to "show the flag" and exchange courtesies with local rulers, and that meant travelling with a sizeable military escort (two infantry regiments plus cavalry and artillery). Communications were slow, railways and telegraphs had yet to be brought to India and even the famous Grand Trunk Road seems to have been in such poor condition that Miss Eden didn't even notice she was travelling along it. Auckland couldn't rely on sending instructions back to Calcutta, he had to take his complete administration with him. By the time you bring in all the family members of the staff, the domestic servants (one European in the party complained at being forced to limit himself to the 150 most essential servants; Miss Eden employed at least three people just to look after her pet dog), and all the pack animals and porters needed to transport the luggage and provisions, you do indeed end up with a group the size of a small town. And it's not altogether surprising that it takes them all five months to get from Calcutta to Simla. A far cry from Lady Betjeman with her two mules and one muleteer!
It's a dreadful cliché to compare every woman writer from the Georgian or early Victorian period with Jane Austen, but in Miss Eden's case it does have some justification. At least seen from this distance, there is quite some similarity in their styles (informality, intelligence, barbed wit, ...)and their range of subject-matter. Obviously, there are rather more elephants here than in Emma, and we are two or three notches further up the social hierarchy, but what Miss E seems determined to do is show us the domestic side of living in India as a privileged European woman. There is a lot about balls and charity events (fancy fairs, amateur dramatics); about formal visits and sketching excursions; about lovelorn aides-de-camp and daughters who can't marry before their elder sisters. There is also a lot about sickness, bad weather, the discomforts of travel. Her letters to her sister seem to have given her a place where she didn't need to set a good example to her underlings and could have the occasional good solid moan about how awful it all was and how she missed home.
There's a lot of politics going on in the background, but Miss E is too discrete to say much about it. We meet Ranjit Singh and his family in the Punjab, the name Dost Mohammed is dropped from time-to-time, and there are passing mentions of Kabul and Kandahar, but no-one who didn't know would realise that brother George has started what would turn out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful war in Afghanistan. Perhaps this reflects security concerns at the time: it might have been ill-advised to discuss politics in personal letters that had to travel across India carried by relays of runners. Or perhaps it is later editing to avoid people associating her brother's name with the loss of the British army in Kabul. We get quite detailed and very entertaining descriptions of the many durbars and formal meetings with rajahs and ranees, but there is never anything substantive about the nature of the discussions. What seems to occupy her a lot more is the business of formal exchange of gifts that goes with these state visits. She and George receive piles of jewellery and shawls, but they all become the property of the East India Company and are whisked away by clerks before she gets a proper look at them.
(Incidentally, fans of the Flashman stories will recall that GMF has Flashman meet Miss Eden in Calcutta in 1841. She is largely responsible for getting him posted to Kabul. He calls her an "old trout" — she must have been in her early forties at the time. But probably not as good-looking after five years in India as in the portrait from 1835. Another important Flashman character, Mrs Eliza James, later to be famous as "Lola Montez", also makes a cameo appearance in Up the country — Miss E's comment that she is likely to come to a bad end looks suspiciously like an afterthought, though.)
An irritating feature of Miss Eden's style is her habit of referring to Europeans only by initials. At first I thought this was more discretion, but it seems to be simply shorthand. The text would hardly make sense if we didn't know that G was her brother George and F and W the other Eden siblings in the party, for instance. The others are also easy to spot when you happen to know them. Where she says something really offensive about someone (which she does quite often, mostly about women), she doesn't use initials, but replaces the name by a dash. If you want to read these journals as more than a matter of passing interest, you probably need to get a decent modern edition with footnotes. (I read a facsimile of the 1867 edition from archive.org)
Miss Eden's sketches, many of which were later worked up into lithographs and published, are also very charming and attractive. There weren't any in the edition I read, but it's easy to find them on the internet. show less
Though not quite to the standard of Austen, Emily Eden, writing thirty years later, captures that same wry humour and scathing social eye in her two novels. I enjoyed The Semi-Attached Couple far more, but both stories are filled with familiar characters and romantic devices.
The honest portrayal of marriage between the Teviots in the first half book descends into a Victorian melodrama, putting me in mind of Baroness Orczy, but the bluff Mrs Douglas and Eltonesque Lady Portmore livened up show more the scenes of domestic misery. (I love Mrs Douglas' honest appraisal of one woman's 'mistaken bonnet' and her droll comment that 'the Beauforts all laugh as if they thought they had good teeth'!)
The slightly patronising air of the characters in The Semi-Detached House, particularly the 'angelic' Blanche, and the farcical plot that reads like a Trollope novel written by Wodehouse, didn't hold my attention or amuse me at all, unfortunately. I actually struggled to finish, but I have yet to tackle Persuasion by the incomparable Austen, too! show less
The honest portrayal of marriage between the Teviots in the first half book descends into a Victorian melodrama, putting me in mind of Baroness Orczy, but the bluff Mrs Douglas and Eltonesque Lady Portmore livened up show more the scenes of domestic misery. (I love Mrs Douglas' honest appraisal of one woman's 'mistaken bonnet' and her droll comment that 'the Beauforts all laugh as if they thought they had good teeth'!)
The slightly patronising air of the characters in The Semi-Detached House, particularly the 'angelic' Blanche, and the farcical plot that reads like a Trollope novel written by Wodehouse, didn't hold my attention or amuse me at all, unfortunately. I actually struggled to finish, but I have yet to tackle Persuasion by the incomparable Austen, too! show less
Emily Eden's second attempt at a novel was made almost thirty years after her first---and this time she published her work. The success, in 1859, of The Semi-Detached House prompted her to revive her long-neglected manuscript of The Semi-Attached Couple, which finally appeared in 1860. Despite their "paired" titles, the two novels have no direct connection, and in fact make for an interesting contrast---not least in that they depict, effectively, the same society more than a generation show more apart, offering an intriguing, unintentional sketch of the changes that occurred in between. In particular, while The Semi-Attached Couple restricts itself to the higher levels of society, The Semi-Detached House is about the beginning of the breakdown of social barriers and friendship across the classes. With her husband away on a diplomatic mission, the young Blanche, Lady Chester, who is expecting a baby, is ordered by her doctor to remove from the bustle and pollution of London. When her relatives hire for her a semi-detached house outside of the city, by the river, Blanche is at first dismayed at the thought of having "common people" for close neighbours. She does not realise that, thanks to a misinterpreted piece of gossip in a newspaper, the "common people" in question believe her to be either an adulterous wife separated from her husband, or a kept mistress, and are even more dismayed by the prospect of a "fallen woman" next door... While it is a less serious work than The Semi-Attached Couple, The Semi-Detached House is a better-written novel: Emily Eden sustains her comedy much more successfully, and though her themes are mostly light, they are consistent. The result is a minor but charming work, depicting the new friendships available in an evolving society, and offering the encouraging thought that nice people will always find each other. As it turns out, the people next door, the Hopkinsons, are almost exactly as the over-imaginative Blanche pictured them---except that they are also kind, generous, and entirely likeable. Her own qualms set at rest, Mrs Hopkinson takes Blanche to her heart, mothering her when she needs it most. Around this warmly-drawn central friendship, several romantic relationships are lightly sketched; while when Lord Chester returns, we are offered a welcome portrait of a young married couple very much in love. There is far more comedy than romance in this novel, however, with Eden again showing her skill at depicting amusingly horrid people: this time, the Baroness Sampson, a determined social-climber who disrupts the narrative's central idyll. (The subplot featuring the Baroness's unhappy niece, Rachel, is one of the novel's serious touches.) The Semi-Detached House also offers one of the era's most unusual characters in Charles Willis, Mrs Hopkinson's son-in-law, who is at once psychologically complex and perversely funny. Not, in fact, having cared much for his late wife, Willis had nevertheless turned himself into a monument of grief, crushing everyone else's spirits at every possible opportunity and deriving enormous gratification from his own mental image of himself as inconsolable---so much so, that when he finally falls genuinely in love, he hardly knows how to let himself be happy...
Then Arthur's fond letter came, and after that matters mended considerably. There was the house to show to Aileen, and the garden to investigate, and all sorts of red and gold barges came careering up the river, with well-dressed people, looking slightly idiotical as they danced furiously in the hot sun... Blanche had several visitors the first week, and Dulham Lane was, as Janet and Rose had hoped, much enlivened thereby.
But Mrs Hopkinson sat with her broad back to the window, pertinaciously declining to look at all the wickedness on wheels that was rolling by her door. She had found that the plan of shutting her shutters would probably end in a fall down her narrow staircase, so she had told her girls not to look out of the window, that poor Willis had reason to believe that the people next door were not at all creditable; and as Janet and Rose were singularly innocent in the ways of the world, and were always desirous to thwart Willis, and as they were particularly anxious to know whether flounces or double skirts were the prevailing fashion, they resented this exclusion from their only point of observation. Charlie missed his airings in the garden, and altogether the advent of Lady Chester had thrown a gloom over the Hopkinson circle.
When Sunday arrived, a fresh grievance occurred. The Hopkinsons had been allowed to make use of the pew belonging to Pleasance, and that was now occupied by Lady Chester and her sister. The slight bustle occasioned by the attempt to find a seat for Mrs Hopkinson, who was of large dimensions, caused Blanche to look up, and with natural good breeding she opened her pew door, and beckoned to that lady to come in. She did so, and what with the heat of the day, and the thought of what Willis would say when he saw her sitting next to a lady of doubtful character, who had made a "fracaw in high life," she could hardly breathe... show less
Then Arthur's fond letter came, and after that matters mended considerably. There was the house to show to Aileen, and the garden to investigate, and all sorts of red and gold barges came careering up the river, with well-dressed people, looking slightly idiotical as they danced furiously in the hot sun... Blanche had several visitors the first week, and Dulham Lane was, as Janet and Rose had hoped, much enlivened thereby.
But Mrs Hopkinson sat with her broad back to the window, pertinaciously declining to look at all the wickedness on wheels that was rolling by her door. She had found that the plan of shutting her shutters would probably end in a fall down her narrow staircase, so she had told her girls not to look out of the window, that poor Willis had reason to believe that the people next door were not at all creditable; and as Janet and Rose were singularly innocent in the ways of the world, and were always desirous to thwart Willis, and as they were particularly anxious to know whether flounces or double skirts were the prevailing fashion, they resented this exclusion from their only point of observation. Charlie missed his airings in the garden, and altogether the advent of Lady Chester had thrown a gloom over the Hopkinson circle.
When Sunday arrived, a fresh grievance occurred. The Hopkinsons had been allowed to make use of the pew belonging to Pleasance, and that was now occupied by Lady Chester and her sister. The slight bustle occasioned by the attempt to find a seat for Mrs Hopkinson, who was of large dimensions, caused Blanche to look up, and with natural good breeding she opened her pew door, and beckoned to that lady to come in. She did so, and what with the heat of the day, and the thought of what Willis would say when he saw her sitting next to a lady of doubtful character, who had made a "fracaw in high life," she could hardly breathe... show less
After a brief, ballroom-acquaintance courtship, the beautiful young Lady Helen Eskdale becomes engaged to marital prize, Lord Teviot. Almost immediately, Helen begins to have doubts; but with two older sisters happily married on equally brief acquaintance and a mother serenely making wedding-plans, she struggles to articulate them, and the marriage goes ahead. Passionately in love with Helen, Teviot is hurt by her emotional reticence, and increasingly jealous of what seems to him a show more preference for her family's company over her husband's; and it is not long before an estrangement develops... Written in 1830, but not published for another thirty years, Emily Eden's The Semi-Attached Couple is a social comedy with a serious point. Not surprisingly for a first attempt at a novel (moreover, it seems that Eden did not revise her manuscript before eventually publishing it), this is an uneven work, whose shifts in tone do not always meld well. There is much overt comedy, most of it involving two awful supporting characters: Mrs Douglas, whose greatest pleasure in life is being miserable; and Lady Portmore, a social manoeuvrer suffering delusions of self-importance; the clashes between the two comprise some of the novel's funniest scenes. Emily Eden was a great admirer of Jane Austen, and it shows in a series of tart conversation set-pieces, between the mutually antagonistic ladies, and between Mrs Douglas and her long-suffering husband. But at the same time, Eden takes Helen, and her situation, perfectly seriously; and while she does poke some fun at Teviot's "superior male" attitudes and self-defeating jealousy (showing that he is, in his own way, almost as naive as Helen, and much more foolish), in the end she can only resolve her central dilemma by twisting her comedy into a near-tragedy, and tacking a conventional conclusion onto what is, in many ways, an unconventional novel. Despite these flaws, The Semi-Attached Couple is an unusual and entertaining work, offering an engaging picture of society between the Regency period and the Victorian era. It is also quite psychologically acute, particularly in its depiction of the way that Teviot's jealousy creates a self-fulfilling tragedy, by driving Helen away and therefore "proving" his worst fears. Moreover, Eden shows, as plainly as was permissible at the time, that to a girl of Helen's age and innocence, Teviot's very passion for her is more frightening than gratifying. Interestingly, Eden places great weight upon the disparate family situations of her central couple: Teviot is an only child, with a poor relationship with his father, and consequently has no experience and little understanding of Helen's deep attachment to her large, happy family; while Helen, conversely, has no experience of the world beyond family life, and cannot easily give it up. By dissecting the increasing estrangement between the two, and by placing around them several contrasting relationships, Eden offers valid criticism of the way marriages were made at the time, and the unrealistic expectations placed upon young and inexperienced women.
Helen found every day some fresh cause to doubt whether she were as happy, engaged to Lord Teviot, as she was before she had ever seen him. He was always quarrelling with her---at least, so she thought; but the real truth was, that he was desperately in love, and she was not; that he was a man of strong feelings and exacting habits, and with considerable knowledge of the world; and that she was timid and gentle, unused to any violence of manner or language, and unequal to cope with it. He alarmed her, first by the eagerness with which he poured out his affection, and then by the bitterness of his reproaches because, as he averred, it was not returned.
She tried to satisfy him; but when he had frightened away her playfulness, he had deprived her of her greatest charm, and she herself felt that her manner became daily colder and more repulsive. His prediction that she would be happier anywhere than with him seemed likely, by repetition, to insure its own fulfillment. Even their reconciliations---for what is the use of a quarrel but to bring on a reconciliation?---were unsatisfactory. She wished that he loved her less, or would say less about it; and he thought that the gentle willingness with which she met his excuses was only a fresh proof that his love or his anger were equally matters of indifference to her. No French actor with a broken voice, quivering hands, a stride, and a shrug, could have given half the emphasis to the sentiment, J'aimerais mieux être haï qu' aimé faiblement, than Lord Teviot did to the upbraidings with which he diversified the monotony of love-making... show less
Helen found every day some fresh cause to doubt whether she were as happy, engaged to Lord Teviot, as she was before she had ever seen him. He was always quarrelling with her---at least, so she thought; but the real truth was, that he was desperately in love, and she was not; that he was a man of strong feelings and exacting habits, and with considerable knowledge of the world; and that she was timid and gentle, unused to any violence of manner or language, and unequal to cope with it. He alarmed her, first by the eagerness with which he poured out his affection, and then by the bitterness of his reproaches because, as he averred, it was not returned.
She tried to satisfy him; but when he had frightened away her playfulness, he had deprived her of her greatest charm, and she herself felt that her manner became daily colder and more repulsive. His prediction that she would be happier anywhere than with him seemed likely, by repetition, to insure its own fulfillment. Even their reconciliations---for what is the use of a quarrel but to bring on a reconciliation?---were unsatisfactory. She wished that he loved her less, or would say less about it; and he thought that the gentle willingness with which she met his excuses was only a fresh proof that his love or his anger were equally matters of indifference to her. No French actor with a broken voice, quivering hands, a stride, and a shrug, could have given half the emphasis to the sentiment, J'aimerais mieux être haï qu' aimé faiblement, than Lord Teviot did to the upbraidings with which he diversified the monotony of love-making... show less
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