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Hortus Inclusus, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
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_ BRANTWOOD, _16th March, 1874_. MY DEAREST SUSIE,-- In a state of great defeat and torment, this morning--having much to do with the weather and--not living on milk, I have been greatly helped by--one of my own books![1] It is the best I ever wrote--the last which I took thorough loving pains with--and the first which I did with full knowledge of sorrow. Will you please read in it--first--from 65 at the bottom of page 79[2] as far as and not farther than, 67 in page 81. That is what helped me this morning. Then, if you want to know precisely the state I am in, read the account of the Myth of Tantalus, beginning at 20--p. 24 and going on to 25--page 31. It is a hard task to set you, my dear little Susie; but when you get old, you will be glad to have done it, and another day, you must look at page 94, and then you must return me my book, for it's my noted copy and I'm using it. The life of Tantalus doesn't often admit of crying: but I had a real cry--with quite wet tears yesterday morning, over what--to me is the prettiest bit in all Shakespeare
[Footnote 1: "The Queen of the Air." See page 70.] [Footnote 2: Cf. contemporary edition.] [Footnote 3: "Coriolanus", Act iii. scene 2.] [Footnote 4: "Coriolanus", Act ii. scene 1.]
THE SACRISTAN'S CELL.
I got to-day your lovely letter of the 6th, but I never knew my Susie _could_ be such a naughty little girl before; to burn her pretty story[5] instead of sending it to me. It would have come to me so exactly in the right place here, where St. Francis made the grasshopper (cicada, at least) sing to him upon his hand, and preached to the birds, and made the wolf go its rounds every day as regularly as any Franciscan friar, to ask for a little contribution to its modest dinner. The Bee and Narcissus would have delighted to talk in this enchanted air. Yes, that _is_ really very pretty of Dr. John Brown to inscribe your books so, and it's so like him. How these kind people understand things! And that bit of his about the child is wholly lovely; I am so glad you copied it. I often think of you, and of Coniston and Brantwood. You will see, in the May Fors, reflections upon the temptations to the life of a Franciscan. There are two monks here, one the sacristan who has charge of the entire church, and is responsible for its treasures; the other exercising what authority is left to the convent among the people of the town. They are both so good and innocent and sweet, one can't pity them enough. For this time in Italy is just like the Reformation in Scotland, with only the difference that the Reform movement is carried on here simply for the sake of what money can be got by Church confiscation. And these two brothers are living by indulgence, as the Abbot in the Monastery of St. Mary's in the Regent Moray's time. The people of the village, however, are all true to their faith; it is only the governing body which is modern-infidel and radical. The population is quite charming,--a word of kindness makes them as bright as if you brought them news of a friend. All the same, it does not do to offend them; Monsieur Cavalcasella, who is expecting the Government order to take the Tabernacle from the Sanctuary of St. Francis, cannot, it is said, go out at night with safety. He decamped the day before I came, having some notion, I fancy, that I would make his life a burden to him, if he didn't, by day, as much as it was in peril by night. I promise myself a month of very happy time here (happy for _me_, I mean) when I return in May. The sacristan gives me my coffee for lunch, in his own little cell, looking out on the olive woods; then he tells me stories of conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the Sacristy and have a reverent little poke out of relics. Fancy a great carved cupboard in a vaulted chamber full of most precious things (the box which the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things that are only shown twice in the year or so, with fumigation! all the congregation on their knees; and the sacristan and I having a great heap of them on the table at once, like a dinner service! I really looked with great respect at St. Francis's old camel-hair dress. I am obliged to go to Rome to-morrow, however, and to Naples on Saturday. My witch of Sicily[6] expects me this day week, and she's going to take me such lovely drives, and talks of "excursions" which I see by the map are thirty miles away. I wonder if she thinks me so horribly old that it's quite proper. It will be very nice if she does, but not flattering. I know her mother can't go with her, I suppose her maid will. If she wants any other chaperon I won't go. She's really very beautiful, I believe, to some people's tastes, (I shall be horribly disappointed if she isn't, in her own dark style,) and she writes, next to Susie, the loveliest letters I ever get. Now, Susie, mind, you're to be a very good child while I'm away, and never to burn any more stories; and above all, you're to write me just what comes into your head, and ever to believe me your loving J. R. [Footnote 5: "The Bee and Narcissus."] [Footnote 6: Miss Amy Yule. See "Praeterita", Vol. III., Chap. vii.] * * * * *
I heard of your great sorrow[7] from Joan six days ago, and have not been able to write since. Nothing silences me so much as sorrow, and for this of yours I have no comfort. I write only that you may know that I am thinking of you, and would help you if I could. And I write to-day because your lovely letters and your lovely old age have been forced into my thoughts often by dreadful contrast during these days in Italy. You who are so purely and brightly happy in all natural and simple things, seem now to belong to another and a younger world. And your letters have been to me like the pure air of Yewdale Crags breathed among the Pontine Marshes; but you must not think I am ungrateful for them when I can't answer. You can have no idea how impossible it is for me to do all the work necessary even for memory of the things I came here to see; how much escapes me, how much is done in a broken and weary way. I am the only author on art who does the work of illustration with his own hand; the only one therefore--and I am not insolent in saying this--who has learned his business thoroughly; but after a day's drawing I assure you one cannot sit down to write unless it be the merest nonsense to please Joanie. Believe it or not, there is no one of my friends whom I write so scrupulously to as to you. You may be vexed at this, but indeed I can't but try to write carefully in answer to all your kind words, and so sometimes I can't at all. I _must_ tell you, however, to-day, what I saw in the Pompeian frescoes--the great characteristic of falling Rome, in her furious desire of pleasure, and brutal incapability of it. The walls of Pompeii are covered with paintings meant only to give pleasure, but nothing they represent is beautiful or delightful, and yesterday, among other calumniated and caricatured birds, I saw one of my Susie's pets, a peacock; and he had only eleven eyes in his tail. Fancy the feverish wretchedness of the humanity which in mere pursuit of pleasure or power had reduced itself to see no more than eleven eyes in a peacock's tail! What were the Cyclops to this? I hope to get to Rome this evening, and to be there settled for some time, and to have quieter hours for my letters. [Footnote 7: The death of Miss Margaret Beever.] * * * * *
I have your sweet letter about Ulysses, the leaves, and the Robins. I have been feeling so wearily on this journey, the want of what--when I had it, I used--how often! to feel a burden--the claim of my mother for at least a _word_, every day. Happy, poor mother, with two lines--and I--sometimes--nay--often--thinking it hard to have to stay five minutes from what I wanted to do--to write them. I am despising, now, in like senseless way, the privilege of being able to write to you and of knowing that it will please you to hear--even that I can't tell you anything! which I cannot, this morning--but only, it is a little peace and rest to me to write to my Susie. * * * * *
A number of business letters and the increasing instinct for work here as time shortens, have kept me too long from even writing a mere mamma-note to you; though not without thought of you daily. I have your last most lovely line about your sister--and giving me that most touching fact about poor Dr. John Brown, which I am grieved and yet thankful to know, that I may better still reverence his unfailing kindness and quick sympathy. I have a quite wonderful letter from him about you; but I will not tell you what he says, only it is so _very_, very true, and so very, very pretty, you can't think. I have written to my bookseller to find for you, and send a complete edition of "Modern Painters," if findable. If not, I will make my assistant send you down my own fourth and fifth volumes, which you can keep till I come for them in the autumn. There is nothing now in the year but autumn and winter. I really begin to think there is some terrible change of climate coming upon the world for its sin, like another deluge. It will have its rainbow, I suppose, after its manner--promising not to darken the world again, and then not to drown. * * * * *
I have to-day, to make the day whiter for me, your lovely letter of the 15th,[8] telling me your age. I am so glad it is no more; you are only thirteen years older than I, and much more able to be my sister than mamma, and I hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think I _must_ tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said, or part of it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb without its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. Of course my Susie's wise and grave gifts must be told of afterwards. There is no one I know, or have known, so well able as you are to be in a degree what my mother was to me. In this chief way (as well as many other ways) (the puzzlement I have had to force that sentence into grammar!), that I have had the same certainty of giving you pleasure by a few words and by any little account of what I am doing. But then you know I have just got out of the way of doing as I am bid, and unless you can scold me back into that, you can't give me the sense of support. Tell me more about yourself first, and how those years came to be "lost." I am not sure that they were; though I am very far from holding the empty theory of compensation; but much of the slighter pleasure you lost then is evidently still open to you, fresh all the more from having been for a time withdrawn. The Roman peasants are very gay to-day, with roses in their hair; legitimately and honorably decorated, and looking lovely. Oh me, if they had a few Susies to take human care of them what a glorious people they would be! [Footnote 8: _See_ page 99.] * * * * *
Ah if you were but among the marbles here, though there are none finer than that you so strangely discerned in my study; but they are as a white company innumerable, ghost after ghost. And how you would rejoice in them and in a thousand things besides, to which I am dead, from having seen too much or worked too painfully--or, worst of all, lost the hope which gives all life. Last Sunday I was in a lost church found again,--a church of the second or third century, dug in a green hill of the Campagna, built underground;--its secret entrance like a sand-martin's nest. Such the temple of the Lord, as the King Solomon of that time had to build it; not "the mountains of the Lord's house shall be established above the hills," but the cave of the Lord's house as the fox's hole, beneath them. And here, now lighted by the sun for the first time (for they are still digging the earth from the steps), are the marbles of those early Christian days; the first efforts of their new hope to show itself in enduring record, the new hope of a Good Shepherd:--there they carved Him, with a spring flowing at His feet, and round Him the cattle of the Campagna in which they had dug their church, the very self-same goats which this morning have been trotting past my window through the most populous streets of Rome, innocently following their shepherd, tinkling their bells, and shaking their long spiral horns and white beards; the very same dew-lapped cattle which were that Sunday morning feeding on the hillside above, carved on the tomb-marbles sixteen hundred years ago. How you would have liked to see it, Susie! And now to-day I am going to work in an eleventh century church of quite proud and victorious Christianity, with its grand bishops and saints lording it over Italy. The bishop's throne all marble and mosaic of precious colors and of gold, high under the vaulted roof at the end behind the altar; and line upon line of pillars of massive porphyry and marble, gathered out of the ruins of the temples of the great race who had persecuted them, till they had said to the hills, Cover us, like the wicked. And then _their_ proud time came, and their enthronement on the seven hills; and now, what is to be their fate once more?--of pope and cardinal and dome, Peter's or Paul's by name only,--"My house, no more a house of prayer, but a den of thieves." I can't write any more this morning. Oh me, if one could only write and draw all one wanted, and have our Susies and be young again, oneself and they! (As if there were two Susies, or _could_ be!)
Yes, I am a little oppressed just now with overwork, nor is this avoidable. I am obliged to leave all my drawings unfinished as the last days come, and the point possible of approximate completion fatally contracts, every hour to a more ludicrous and warped mockery of the hope in which one began. It is impossible not to work against time, and _that_ is killing. It is not labor itself, but competitive, anxious, disappointed labor that dries one's soul out. But don't be frightened about me, you sweet Susie. I know when I _must_ stop; forgive and pity me only, because sometimes, nay often my letter (or word) to Susie must be sacrificed to the last effort on one's drawing. The letter to one's Susie should be a rest, do you think? It is always more or less comforting, but not rest; it means further employment of the already extremely strained sensational power. What one really wants! I believe the only true restorative is the natural one, the actual presence of one's "helpmeet." The far worse than absence of mine _reverses_ rest, and what is more, destroys one's power of receiving from others or giving. How much love of mine have _others_ lost, because that poor sick child would not have the part of love that belonged to her! I am very anxious about your eyes too. For any favor don't write more extracts just now. The books are yours forever and a day--no loan; enjoy any bits that you find enjoyable, but don't copy just now. I left Rome yesterday, and am on my way home; but, alas! might as well be on my way home from Cochin China, for any chance I have of speedily arriving. Meantime your letters will reach me here with speed, and will be a great comfort to me, if they don't fatigue _you_. * * * * *
I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering of yours, and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says. Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection should take with reference to my proposed re-publication. I mean to take the botany, the geology, the Turner defense, and the general art criticism of "Modern Painters," as four separate books, cutting out nearly all the preaching, and a good deal of the sentiment. Now what you find pleasant and helpful to you of general maxim or reflection, _must_ be of some value; and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me what no other reader could have done, least of all I myself; keep together, that is to say, what may be right and true of those youthful thoughts. I should like you to add anything that specially pleases you, of whatever kind; but to keep the notion of your book being the didactic one as opposed to the other picturesque and scientific volumes, will I think help you in choosing between passages when one or other is to be rejected. * * * * *
I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to write to you. Very difficult and melancholy work, deciphering what remains of a great painter[9] among stains of ruin and blotches of repair, of five hundred years' gathering. It makes me sadder than idleness, which is saying much. I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of your last letters, about the difficulty I had in unpacking my mind. That is true; one of my chief troubles at present is with the quantity of things I want to say at once. But you don't know how I find things I laid by carefully in it, all moldy and moth-eaten when I take them out; and what a lot of mending and airing they need, and what a wearisome and bothering business it is compared to the early packing,--one used to be so proud to get things into the corners neatly! I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I'm in a horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit; and the various sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and to be charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amazement to me. They succeed in getting _everything_ bad; no exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive trees, and the oil's bad; there are no such lovely cattle elsewhere in the world, and the butter's bad; half the country people are shepherds, but there's no mutton; half the old women walk about with a pig tied to their waists, but there's no pork; the vine grows wild anywhere, and the wine would make my teeth drop out of my head if I took a glass of it; there are no strawberries, no oranges, no melons, the cherries are as hard as their stones, the beans only good for horses, or Jack and the beanstalk, and this is the size of the biggest asparagus-- [Illustration: hand-drawn sketch of asparagus stalk] I live here in a narrow street ten feet wide only, winding up a hill, and it was full this morning of sheep as close as they could pack, at least a thousand, as far as the eye could reach,--tinkle tinkle, bleat bleat, for a quarter of an hour. [Footnote 9: Cimabue.] _ |
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