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_ VENICE, _17th February_ (1877). It is very grievous to me to hear of your being in that woeful weather while I have two days' sunshine out of three, and starlight or moonlight always; to-day the whole chain of the Alps from Vicenza to Trieste shining cloudless all day long, and the sea-gulls floating high in the blue, like little dazzling boys' kites. Yes, St. Francis would have been greatly pleased with you watching pussy drink your milk; so would St. Theodore, as you will see by next Fors, which I have ordered to be sent you in first proof, for I am eager that you should have it. What wonderful flowers these pinks of St. Ursula's are, for life! They seem to bloom like everlastings. I get my first rosebud and violets of this year from St. Helena's Island to-day. How I begin to pity people who have no saints to be good to them! Who is yours at Coniston? There must have been some in the country once upon a time. With their help I am really getting well on with my history and drawing, and hope for a sweet time at home in the heathery days, and many a nice afternoon tea at the Thwaite. * * * * *
That is entirely new and wonderful to me about the singing mouse.[21] Douglas (was it the Douglas?) saying "he had rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak" needs revision. It is a marvelous fact in natural history. The wind is singing a wild tune to-night--cannot be colder on our own heaths--and the waves dash like our Waterhead. Oh me, when I'm walking round it again how like a sad dream all this Venice will be! [Footnote 21: A pleasant story that a friend sent me from France. The mouse often came into their sitting-room and actually sang to them, the notes being a little like a canary's.--S. B.] * * * * *
I've not tumbled into the lagoons, nor choked myself in a passion, nor gone and made a monk of myself--nor got poisoned by the Italian cooks. I'm packing up, and coming to the Thwaite as soon as ever I can--after a little Alpine breathing of high air. I'm pretty well--if you'll forgive me for being so naughty--else I can't be even plain well--but I'm always your loving---- [Transcriber's Note: no ending to the sentence here.] * * * * *
I write first to you this morning to tell you that I gave yesterday the twelfth and last[22] of my course of lectures this term, to a room crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members of the University, and with its door wedged open by those who could not get in; this interest of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the first time in Oxford, I have been able to speak to them boldly of immortal life. I intended when I began the course only to have read "Modern Painters" to them; but when I began, some of your favorite bits interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a proportion of undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to reinforce and press them home; and people say I have never given so useful a course yet. But it has taken all my time and strength, and I have not been able even to tell Susie a word about it until now. In one of my lectures I made my text your pretty peacock and the design[23] of him. But did not venture to say what really must be true, that his voice is an example of "the Devil sowed tares," and of the angels letting both grow together. My grateful compliments to the peacock. And little (but warm) loves to all your little birds. And best of little loves to the squirrels, only you must send _them_ in dream-words, I suppose, up to their nests. [Footnote 22: An Oxford Lecture. _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1878.] [Footnote 23: Decorative art of his plumage.--J. R.] * * * * *
It is a long while since I've felt so good for nothing as I do this morning. My very wristbands curl up in a dog's-eared and disconsolate manner; my little room is all a heap of disorder. I've got a hoarseness and wheezing and sneezing and coughing and choking. I can't speak and I can't think, I'm miserable in bed and useless out of it; and it seems to me as if I could never venture to open a window or go out of a door any more. I have the dimmest sort of diabolical pleasure in thinking how miserable I shall make Susie by telling her all this; but in other respects I seem entirely devoid of all moral sentiments. I have arrived at this state of things, first by catching cold, and since by trying to "amuse myself" for three days. I tried to read "Pickwick," but found that vulgar,[24] and, besides, I know it all by heart. I sent from town for some chivalric romances, but found them immeasurably stupid. I made Baxter read me the _Daily Telegraph_, and found that the Home Secretary had been making an absurd speech about art, without any consciousness that such a person as I had ever existed. I read a lot of games of chess out of Mr. Staunton's handbook, and couldn't understand any of them. I analyzed the Dock Company's bill of charges on a box from Venice, and sent them an examination paper on it. I think _that_ did amuse me a little, but the account doesn't. _L1 8s. 6d._ for bringing a box two feet square from the Tower Wharf to here! But the worst of all is, that the doctor keeps me shut up here, and I can't get my business done; and now there isn't the least chance of my getting down to Brantwood for Christmas, nor, as far as I can see, for a fortnight after it. There's perhaps a little of the diabolical enjoyment again in that estimate; but really the days _do_ go, more like dew shaken off branches than real sunrisings and settings. But I'll send you word every day now for a little while how things are going on. [Footnote 24: "May I ask you to correct a false impression which any of your readers who still care to know my opinions would receive from the reference to Dickens in your kind notice of my letters to Miss Beever....I have not the letters here, and forget what I said about my Pickwick's not amusing me when I was ill, but it always does, to this hour, when I am well; though I have known it by heart, pretty nearly all, since it came out; and I love Dickens with every bit of my heart, and sympathize in everything he thought or tried to do, except in his effort to make more money by readings which killed him." _Letter to "Daily Telegraph", Sandgate, January 4, 1888._] * * * * *
Oh dear, I've scribbled this dreadfully. Can you really read my scribble, Susie? Love, you may always read, however scribbled. * * * * *
By the way, what a shame it is that we keep that word "jealous" in the second commandment, as if it meant that God was jealous of images. It means burning, zealous or full of life, visiting, etc., _i.e._, necessarily when leaving the father leaving the child; necessarily, when giving the father life, giving life to the child, and to thousands of the race of them that love me. It is very comic the way people have of being so particular about the second and fourth commandments, and breaking all the rest with the greatest comfort. For me, I try to keep all the rest rather carefully, and let the second and fourth take care of themselves. Cold quite gone; now it's your turn, Susie. I've got a love letter in Chinese, and can't read it! * * * * *
I came to see Prince Leopold, who has been a prisoner to his sofa lately, but I trust he is better; he is very bright and gentle, under severe and almost continual pain. My dear little Susie, about that rheumatism of yours? If it wasn't for that, how happy we both ought to be, living in Thwaites and woods, instead of nasty castles! Well, about that Shakespeare guide? I cannot, cannot, at all fancy what it is. In and out among the stars; it sounds like a plan for stringing the stars. I am so very glad you told me of it. "Unwritten books in my brain?" Yes, but also in how many other brains of quiet people, books unthought of, "In the Book and Volume" which will be read some day in Heaven, aloud, "When saw we thee?" Yes, and "When _read_ we ourselves?" My dear Susie, if I were to think really _lost_, what you for instance have new found in your own powers of receiving and giving pleasure, the beautiful faculties you have, scarcely venturing even to show the consciousness of them, when it awakes in you, what a woeful conception I should have of God's not caring for us. He will gather all the wheat into His garner. * * * * *
It's a charming post here, and brings me my letters the first thing in the morning; and I took care to tell nobody where I was going, except people I wanted to hear from. What a little busy bee of a Susie you've been to get all those extracts ready by this time. I've got nothing done all the while I've been away, but a few mathematical figures, and the less I do the less I find I can do it; and yesterday, for the first time these twenty years at least, I hadn't so much as a "plan" in my head all day. But I had a lot to look at in the moorland flowers and quiet little ancient Yorkshire farmhouses, not to speak of Ingleborough, who was, I think, a little depressed because he knew you were only going to send your remembrances and not your love to him. The clouds gathered on his brow occasionally in a fretful manner, but towards evening he resumed his peace of mind and sends you his "remembrances" and his "blessing." I believe he saves both you and me from a great deal of east wind. Well, I've got a plan in my head _this_ morning for the new extracts. Shall we call them "Lapides (or "Marmora") Portici"; and put a little preface to them about the pavement of St. Mark's porch and its symbolism of what the education of a good man's early days must be to him? I think I can write something a little true and trustworthy about it. * * * * *
I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you rightly for bread, sweet odors, roses and pearls, and must just allow myself to be fed, scented, rose-garlanded and bepearled as if I were a poor little pet dog or pet pig. But my cold is better, and I _am_ getting on with this botany; but it is really too important a work to be pushed for a week or a fortnight. And Mary and you will be pleased at last, I am sure. I have only to-day got my four families, Clarissa, Lychnis, Scintilla, and Mica, perfectly and simply defined.[25] See how nicely they come. A. Clarissa changed from Dianthus, which is bad Greek (and all my pretty flowers have names of girls). Petal _jagged_ at the outside. B. Lychnis. Petal _divided in two_ at the outside, and the fringe retired to the top of the limb. C. Scintilla. (Changed from Stellaria, because I want Stella for the house leeks.) Petal formed by the _two_ lobes of lychnis without the retired fringe. D. Mica. _Single_ lobed petal. When once these four families are well understood in typical examples, how easy it will be to attach either subordinate groups or specialities of habitat, as in America, to some kinds of them! The entire order, for their purity and wildness, are to be named, from Artemis, "Artemides", instead of Caryophyllaceae; and next them come the Vestals (mints, lavenders, etc.); and then the Cytheride Viola, Veronica, Giulietta, the last changed from Polygala. That third Herb Robert one is just the drawing that nobody but me (never mind grammar) could have made. Nobody! because it means ever so much careful watching of the ways of the leaf, and a lot of work in cramp perspective besides. It is not quite right yet, but it _is_ nice. [Footnote 25: "Proserpina,"] * * * * * It is so nice to be able to find anything that is in the least new to _you_, and interesting; my rocks are quite proud of rooting that little saxifrage. I'm scarcely able to look at one flower because of the two on each side, in my garden just now. I want to have bees' eyes, there are so many lovely things. I must tell you, interrupting my botanical work this morning, something that has just chanced to me. I am arranging the caryophylls, which I mass broadly into "Clarissa," the true jagged-leaved and clove-scented ones; "Lychnis," those whose leaves are essentially in two lobes; "Arenaria," which I leave untouched; and "Mica," a new name of my own for the pearlworts of which the French name is to be Miette, and the representative type (now Sagina procumbens) is to be in-- Then the next to this is to be-- _Latin_--Mica millegrana.
I have copied lest you should have trouble in looking for the book, but now, you darling Susie, please tell me whether I may not separate these lovely pearlworts wholly from the spergulas,--by the pearlworts having only two leaves like real pinks at the joints, and the spergulas, a _cluster_; and tell me how the spergulas scatter their seeds, I can't find any account of it. * * * * * I would fain have come to see that St. Bruno lily; but if I don't come to see Susie and you, be sure I am able to come to see nothing. At present I am very deeply involved in the classification of the minerals in the Sheffield Museum, important as the first practical arrangement ever yet attempted for popular teaching, and this with my other work makes me fit for nothing in the afternoon but wood-chopping. But I will call to-day on Dr. Brown's friends. I hope you will not be too much shocked with the audacities of the new number[26] of "Proserpina," or with its ignorances. I am going during my wood-chopping really to ascertain in my own way what simple persons ought to know about tree growth, and give it clearly in the next number. I meant to do the whole book very differently, but can only now give the fragmentary pieces as they chance to come, or it would never be done at all. You must know before anybody else how the exogens are to be completely divided. I keep the four great useful groups, mallow, geranium, mint, and wallflower, under the head of domestic orders, that their sweet service and companionship with us may be understood; then the water-lily and the heath, both four foils, are to be studied in their solitudes (I shall throw all that are not four foils out of the Ericaceae); then finally there are to be seven orders of the dark proserpine, headed by the draconids (snapdragons), and including the anemones, hellebores, ivies, and forget-me-nots. What plants I cannot get ranged under these 12+4+2+7==25 in all, orders, I shall give broken notices of, as I have time, leaving my pupils to arrange them as they like. I can't do it all. The whole household was out after breakfast to-day to the top of the moor to plant cranberries; and we squeezed and splashed and spluttered in the boggiest places the lovely sunshine had left, till we found places squashy and squeezy enough to please the most particular and coolest of cranberry minds; and then each of us choosing a little special bed of bog, the tufts were deeply put in with every manner of tacit benediction, such as might befit a bog and a berry, and many an expressed thanksgiving to Susie and to the kind sender of the luxuriant plants. I have never had gift from you, dear Susie, more truly interesting and gladdening to me, and many a day I shall climb the moor to see the fate of the plants and look across to the Thwaite. I've been out most of the forenoon and am too sleepy to shape letters, but will try and get a word of thanks to the far finder of the dainty things to-morrow. What loveliness everywhere in a duckling sort of state just now. [Footnote 26: Part 5.] * * * * *
I hope you did not get a chill in the garden. The weather is a little wrong again, but I am thankful for last night's sunset. You know our English Bible is only of James 1st time--Stalk is a Saxon word, and gets into English I fancy as early as the Plantagenets--but I have not hunted it down.--I'm just in the same mess with "pith," but I'm finding out a great deal about the thing though not the word, for next "Deucalion," in chopping my wood. You know, "Funckia" won't last long. I am certain I shall have strength enough to carry my system of nomenclature at least as far, as to exclude people's individual names. I won't even have a "Susia"--stay--that's Christian--yes, I will have a Susia. But not a "Beeveria," though---- * * * * *
You will not doubt the extreme sorrow with which I have heard of all that was ordered to be, of terrible, in your peaceful and happy household. Without for an instant supposing, but, on the contrary, utterly refusing to admit, that such calamities[27] may be used to point a moral (all useful morality having every point that God meant it to have, perfectly sharp and bright without any burnishing of _ours_), still less to adorn a tale (the tales of modern days depending far too much upon Scythian decoration with Death's heads), I, yet, if I had been Mr. Chapman, would have pointed out that all concealments, even of trivial matters, on the part of young servants from kind mistresses, are dangerous no less than unkind and ungenerous, and that a great deal of preaching respecting the evil nature of man and the anger of God might be spared, if children and servants were only taught, as a religious principle, to tell their mothers and mistresses, when they go out, exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. I think both you and Miss Susan ought to use every possible means of changing, or at least checking, the current of such thoughts in your minds; and I am in hopes that you may have a little pleasure in examining the plates in the volume of Sibthorpe's "F. Graeca" which I send to-day, in comparison with those of "F. Danica." The vulgarity and lifelessness of Sibthorpe's plates are the more striking because in mere execution they are the more elaborate of the two; the chief point in the "F. Danica" being the lovely artistic skill. The drawings for Sibthorpe, by a young German, were as exquisite as the Dane's, but the English engraver and colorist spoiled all. I will send you, if you like them, the other volumes in succession. I find immense interest in comparing the Greek and Danish forms or conditions of the same English flower. I send the second volume, in which the Rufias are lovely, and scarcely come under my above condemnation. The _first_ is nearly all of grass. [Footnote 27: One of our younger servants had gone on to the frozen lake; the ice gave way, and she was drowned.--S. B.] * * * * *
You know I'm getting my Oxford minerals gradually to Brantwood, and whenever a box comes, I think whether there are any that I don't want myself, which might yet have leave to live on Susie's table. And to-day I've found a very soft purple agate, that looks as if it were nearly melted away with pity for birds and flies, which is like Susie; and another piece of hard wooden agate with only a little ragged sky of blue here and there, which is like me; and a group of crystals with grass of Epidote inside, which is like what my own little cascade has been all the winter by the garden side; and so I've had them all packed up, and I hope you will let them live at the Thwaite. Then here are some more bits, if you will be a child. Here's a green piece, long, of the stone they cut those green weedy brooches out of, and a nice mouse-colored natural agate, and a great black and white one, stained with sulphuric acid, black but very fine always, and interesting in its lines. Oh dear, the cold; but it's worth _any_ cold to have that delicious Robin dialogue. Please write some more of it; you hear all they say, I'm sure. I cannot tell you how delighted I am with your lovely gift to Joanie. The perfection of the stone, its exquisite color, and superb weight, and flawless clearness, and the delicate cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of the Lake, make it altogether the most perfect mineralogical and heraldic jewel that Joanie could be bedecked with, and it is as if Susie had given her a piece of Coniston Water itself. And the setting is delicious, and positively must not be altered. I shall come on Sunday to thank you myself for it. Meantime I'm working hard at the Psalter, which I am almost sure Susie will like. * * * * *
I am so very glad you like Sir Philip so much. I've sent for, and hope to get him for you. He was shot before he had done half his Psalter--His sister finished it, but very meanly in comparison, you can tell the two hands on the harp at a mile off. The photograph--please say--like all photos whatsoever, is only nature dirtied and undistanced.--If that is all one wants in trees,--they might be dead all the year round. * * * * *
This is a most wonderful stone that Dr. Kendall has found--at least to _me_. I have never seen anything quite like it, the arborescent forms of the central thread of iron being hardly ever assumed by an ore of so much metallic luster. I think it would be very desirable to cut it, so as to get a perfectly smooth surface to show the arborescent forms; if Dr. Kendall would like to have it done, I can easily send it up to London with my own next parcel. I want very much to know exactly where it was found; might I come and ask about it on Dr. Kendall's next visit to you? I could be there waiting for him any day. What lovely pictures you would have made in the old butterfly times, of opal and felspar! What lost creatures we all are, we nice ones! The Alps and clouds that _I_ could have done, if I had been shown how. * * * * *
Everybody's gone! and I have all the new potatoes, and all the asparagus, and all the oranges and everything, and my Susie too, all to myself. I wrote in my diary this morning that really on the whole I never felt better in my life. Mouth, eyes, head, feet, and fingers all fairly in trim; older than they were, yes, but if the head and heart grow wiser, they won't want feet or fingers some day. And I'll come to be cheered and scolded myself the moment I've got things a little to rights here. I think imps get into the shelves and drawers, if they're kept long locked, and must be caught like mice. The boys have been very good, and left everything untouched; but the imps; and to hear people say there aren't any! How happy you and I should always be if it weren't for them! How gay you were and how you cheered me up after the dark lake. Please say "John Inglesant" is harder than real history and of no mortal use. I couldn't read four pages of it. Clever, of course. * * * * *
I've _just_ finished my Scott paper:[28] but it has retouchings and notings yet to do. I couldn't write a word before; haven't so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at chess to Macdonald, for, you know, to keep a chess player waiting for a move is like keeping St. Lawrence unturned. [Footnote 28: "Fiction Fair and Foul", No. 3.] * * * * *
I'm leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Restante, Abbeville. I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn't much time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all the time. And I gave the hippopotamus _whole_ buns, and he was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to him six yards off; never missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop up again. And I lunched with Cardinal Manning, and he gave me _such_ a plum pie. I never tasted a Protestant pie to touch it. * * * * * Now you're just wrong about my darling Cardinal. See what it is to be jealous! He gave me lovely soup, roast beef, hare and currant jelly, puff pastry like Papal pretensions--you had but to breathe on it and it was nowhere--raisins and almonds, and those lovely preserved cherries like kisses kept in amber. And told me delicious stories all through lunch. _There_! And we really do see the sun here! And last night the sky was all a spangle and delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them and spikiness softened off by a young darling of a moon. * * * * *
You have been made happy doubtless with us by the news from Herne Hill. I've only a telegram yet though, but write at once to congratulate you on your little goddaughter. Also to say that I am very well, and sadly longing for Brantwood; but that I am glad to see some vestige of beloved things here, once more. We have glorious weather, and I am getting perfect rest most of the day--mere saunter in the sunny air, taking all the good I can of it. To-morrow we get (D.V.) to Beauvais, where perhaps I may find a letter from Susie; in any case you may write to Hotel Meurice, Paris. The oleanders are coming out and geraniums in all cottage windows, and golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all the fields. * * * * *
We are having the most perfect weather I ever saw in France, much less anywhere else, and I'm taking a thorough rest, writing scarcely anything and sauntering about old town streets all day. I made a little sketch of the lake from above the Waterhead which goes everywhere with me, and it is so curious when the wind blows the leaf open when I am sketching here at Beauvais, where all is so differently delightful, as if we were on the other side of the world. I think I shall be able to write some passages about architecture yet, which Susie will like. I hear of countless qualities being discovered in the new little Susie! And all things will be happy for me if you send me a line to Hotel Meurice saying _you_ are happy too. * * * * *
I have all your letters, and rejoice in them; though it is a little sadder for you looking at empty Brantwood, than for me to fancy the bright full Thwaite, and then it's a great shame that I've everything to amuse me, and lovely Louvres and shops and cathedrals and coquettes and pictures and plays and prettinesses of every color and quality, and you've only your old, old hills and quiet lake. Very thankful I shall be to get back to them, though. We have finished our Paris this afternoon, and hope to leave for Chartres on Monday. * * * * *
We have had the most marvelous weather thus far, and have seen Paris better than ever I've seen it yet,--and to-day at the Louvre we saw the Casette of St. Louis, the Coffre of Anne of Austria, the porphyry vase, made into an eagle, of an old Abbe Segur, or some such name. All these you can see also, you know, in those lovely photographs of Miss Rigbye's, if you can only make out in this vile writing of mine what I mean. But it is so hot. I can scarcely sit up or hold the pen, but tumble back into the chair every half minute and unbutton another button of waistcoat, and gasp a little, and nod a little, and wink a little, and sprinkle some eau de Cologne a little, and try a little to write a little, and forget what I had to say, and where I was, and whether it's Susie or Joan I'm writing to; and then I see some letters I've never opened that came by this morning's post, and think I'd better open them perhaps; and here I find in one of them a delightful account of the quarrel that goes on in this weather between the nicest elephant in the Zoo' and his keeper, because he won't come out of his bath. I saw them at it myself, when I was in London, and saw the elephant take up a stone and throw it hard against a door which the keeper was behind,--but my friend writes, "I _must_ believe from what I saw that the elephant knew he would injure the man with the stones, for he threw them hard to the _side_ of him, and then stood his ground; when, however, he threw water and wetted the man, he plunged into the bath to avoid the whip; not fearing punishment when he merely showed what he could do and did not." The throwing the stone hard at the door when the keeper was on the other side of it, must have been great fun for him! I am so sorry to have crushed this inclosed scrawl. It has been carried about in my pocket to be finished, and I see there's no room for the least bit of love at the bottom. So here's a leaf full from the Bois de Boulogne, which is very lovely; and we drive about by night or day, as if all the sky were only the roof of a sapphire palace set with warm stars. * * * * *
The sunshine is life and health to me, and I am gaining knowledge faster than ever I could when I was young. This is just to say where I am, and that you might know where to write. The cathedral here is the grandest in France, and I stay a week at least. * * * * *
I must be back in England by the 1st October, and by the 10th shall be myself ready to start for Brantwood, but may perhaps stay, if Joanie is not ready, till she can come too. Anyway, I trust very earnestly to be safe in the shelter of my own woodside by the end of October. I wonder what you will say of my account of the Five Lovers of Nature[29] and seclusion in the last _Nineteenth Century_? I am a little ashamed to find that in spite of my sublimely savage temperament, I take a good deal more pleasure in Paris than of old, and am even going back there on Friday for three more days. We find the people here very amiable, and the French old character unchanged. The perfect cleanliness and unruffledness of white cap, is always a marvel, and the market groups exquisite, but our enjoyment of the fair is subdued by pity for a dutiful dog, who turns a large wheel (by walking up it inside) the whole afternoon, producing awful sounds out of a huge grinding organ, of which his wheel and he are the unfortunate instruments. Him we love, his wheel we hate! and in general all French musical instruments. I have become quite sure of one thing on this journey, that the French of to-day have no sense of harmony, but only of more or less lively tune, and even, for a time, will be content with any kind of clash or din produced in time. The Cathedral service is, however, still impressive. [Footnote 29: Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and John Ruskin.] * * * * *
What a _very_ sad little letter, and how very naughty of my little Susie to be sad because there are still six weeks to the end of October! How thankful should we both be to have six weeks still before us of the blessed bright autumn days, with their quiet mildnesses in the midst of northern winds; and that these six weeks are of the year 1880--instead of '81 or '82--and that we both can read, and think, and see flowers and skies, and be happy in making each other happy. _What_ a naughty little Susie, to want to throw any of her six weeks away! I've just sealed in its envelope for post the most important Fors I have yet written, addressed to the Trades Unions,[30] and their committees are to have as many copies as they like free, for distribution, free (dainty packets of Dynamite). I suspect I shall get into hot water with _some_ people for it. Also I've been afraid myself, to set it all down, for once! But down it is, and out it shall come! and there's a nice new bit of article for the _Nineteenth Century_, besides anyhow I keep you in reading, Susie--do you know it's a very bad compliment to me that you find time pass so slowly! I wonder why you gave me that little lecture about being "a city on a hill." I don't want to be anything of the sort, and I'm going to-night to see the Fille du Tambour-Major at the Folies Dramatiques. [Footnote 30: "Fors," vol. viii., Letter 5.] * * * * *
I've much to tell you "to-day"[31] of answer to those prayers you prayed for me. But you must be told it by our good angels, for your eyes must not be worn. God willing, you shall see men as trees walking in the garden of God, on this pretty Coniston earth of ours. Don't be afraid, and please be happy, for I can't be, if you are not. Love to Mary, to Miss Rigbye, and my own St. Ursula,[32] and mind you give the messages _to all three, heartily_. [Footnote 31: The motto on Mr. Ruskin's seal. See "Praeterita", vol. ii.,] [Footnote 32: Photograph of Carpaccio's.] * * * * *
I'm not able to scratch or fight to-day, or I wouldn't let you cover me up with this heap of gold; but I've got a rheumatic creak in my neck, which makes me physically stiff and morally supple and unprincipled, so I've put two pounds sixteen in my own "till," where it just fills up some lowering of the tide lately by German bands and the like, and I've put ten pounds aside for Sheffield Museum, now in instant mendicity, and I've put ten pounds aside till you and I can have a talk and you be made reasonable, after being scolded and scratched, after which, on your promise to keep to our old bargain and enjoy spending your little "Frondes" income, I'll be your lovingest again. And for the two pounds ten, and the ten, I am really most heartily grateful, meaning as they do so much that is delightful for both of us in the good done by this work of yours. I send you Spenser; perhaps you had better begin with the Hymn to Beauty, page 39, and then go on to the Tears; but you'll see how you like it. It's better than Longfellow; see line 52-- "The house of blessed gods which men call skye." Now I'm going to look out Dr. Kendall's crystal. It _must_ be crystal,[33] for having brought back the light to your eyes. [Footnote 33: For a present to Dr. Kendall.] * * * * *
How delightful that you have that nice Mrs. Howard to hear you say "The Ode to Beauty," and how nice that you can learn it and enjoy saying it![34] I do not know it myself. I only know that it should be known and said and heard and loved. I _am_ often near you in thought, but can't get over the lake somehow. There's always somebody to be looked after here, now. I've to rout the gardeners out of the greenhouse, or I should never have a strawberry or a pink, but only nasty gloxinias and glaring fuchsias, and I've been giving lessons to dozens of people and writing charming sermons in the "Bible of Amiens"; but I get so sleepy in the afternoon I can't pull myself over it. I was looking at your notes on birds yesterday. How sweet they are! But I can't forgive that young blackbird for getting wild again.[35] [Footnote 34: I learnt the whole of it by heart, and could then say it without a break. I have always loved it, and in return it has helped me through many a long and sleepless night.--S. B.] [Footnote 35: Pages 101 _et seqq._] * * * * *
What birds? Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never before noticed the _sheath_ of his bill going over the front of the lower mandible that he may dig comfortably! But the others! the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and light, and black and tan and gold, and golden sand, and dark tresses, and purple shadows and moors and mists and night and starlight, and woods and wilds and dells and deeps, and every mystery of heaven and its finger work, is in those little birds' backs and wings. I am so grateful. All love and joy to you, and wings to fly with and birds' hearts to comfort, and mine, be to you in the coming year. * * * * *
I have had a happy Easter morning, entirely bright in its sun and clear in sky; and with renewed strength enough to begin again the piece of St. Benedict's life where I broke off, to lose these four weeks in London,--weeks not wholly lost neither, for I have learned more and more of what I should have known without lessoning; but I _have_ learnt it, from these repeated dreams and fantasies, that we walk in a vain shadow and disquiet ourselves in vain. So I am for the present, everybody says, quite good, and give as little trouble as possible; but people _will_ take it, you know, sometimes, even when I don't give it, and there's a great fuss about me yet. But _you_ must not be anxious any more, Susie, for really there is no more occasion at one time than another. All the doctors say I needn't be ill unless I like, and I don't mean to like any more; and as far as chances of ordinary danger, I think one runs more risks in a single railway journey, than in the sicknesses of a whole year. * * * * *
You write as well as ever, and the eyes must surely be better, and it was a joyful amazement to me to hear that Mary was able to read and could enjoy my child's botany. You always have things before other people; will you please send me some rosemary and lavender as soon as any are out? I am busy on the Labiatae, and a good deal bothered. Also St. Benedict, whom I shall get done with long before I've made out the nettles he rolled in. I'm sure I ought to roll myself in nettles, burdocks, and blackthorn, for here in London I can't really think now of anything but flirting, and I'm only much the worse for it afterwards. And I'm generally wicked and weary, like the people who ought to be put to rest. But you'd miss me, and so would Joanie; so I suppose I shall be let stay a little while longer. * * * * *
I saw Mont Blanc again to-day, unseen since 1877; and was very thankful. It is a sight that always redeems me to what I am capable of at my poor little best, and to what loves and memories are most precious to me. So I write to _you_, one of the few true loves left. The snow has fallen fresh on the hills, and it makes me feel that I must soon be seeking shelter at Brantwood and the Thwaite. * * * * *
I got your delightful note yesterday at Turin, and it made me wish to run back through the tunnel directly instead of coming on here. But I had a wonderful day, the Alps clear all the morning all round Italy--two hundred miles of them; and then in the afternoon blue waves of the Gulf of Genoa breaking like blue clouds, thunderclouds, under groves of olive and palm. But I wished they were my sparkling waves of Coniston instead, when I read your letter again. What a gay Susie, receiving all the world, like a Queen Susan (how odd one has never heard of a Queen Susan!), only you _are_ so naughty, and you never do tell me of any of those nice girls when they're _coming_, but only when they're gone, and I never shall get glimpse of them as long as I live. But you know you really represent the entire Ruskin school of the Lake Country, and I think these _levees_ of yours must be very amusing and enchanting; but it's very dear and good of you to let the people come and enjoy themselves, and how really well and strong you must be to be able for it. I am very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things.[36] I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study Emerson and aspire to Buddhism. I'm trying to put my own poor little fragmentary Ism into a rather more connected form of imagery. I've never quite set myself up enough to impress _some_ people; and I've written so much that I can't quite make out what I am myself, nor what it all comes to. [Footnote 36: Florence, Alice, and May Bennett. Florence is gone. Alice and May still sometimes at Coniston, D.G. (March 1887).--J. R. "One Companion, ours no more, sends you I doubt not Christmas greeting from her Home,--Florence Bennett. Of her help to us during her pure brief life, and afterwards, by her father's fulfillment of her last wishes, you shall hear at another time."--_Fors Clavigera_, vol. viii.] * * * * *
I cannot tell you how grateful and glad I am, to have your lovely note and to know that the Bewick gave you pleasure, and that you are so entirely well now, as to enjoy anything requiring so much energy and attention to this degree. For indeed I can scarcely now take pleasure myself in things that give me the least trouble to look at, but I know that the pretty book and its chosen wood-cuts ought to be sent to you, first of all my friends (I have not yet thought of sending it to any one else), and I am quite put in heart after a very despondent yesterday, passed inanely, in thinking of what I _couldn't_ do, by feeling what you _can_, and hoping to share the happy Christmas time with you and Susie in future years. Will you please tell my dear Susie I'm going to bring over a drawing to show! (so thankful that I am still able to draw after these strange and terrible illnesses) this afternoon. I am in hopes it may clear, but dark or bright I'm coming, about half past three, and am ever your and her most affectionate and faithful servant. * * * * *
I wandered literally "up and down" your mountain garden--(how beautifully the native rocks slope to its paths in the sweet evening light, Susiesque light!)--with great happiness and admiration, as I went home, and I came indeed upon what I conceived to be--discovered in the course of recent excavations--two deeply interesting thrones of the ancient Abbots of Furness, typifying their humility in that the seats thereof were only level with the ground between two clusters of the earth; contemplating cyclamen, and their severity of penance, in the points of stone prepared for the mortification of their backs; but truly, Susie's seat of repose and meditation I was unable as yet to discern, but propose to myself further investigation of that apple-perfumed paradise, and am ever your devoted and enchanted [Transcriber's Note: no ending to the sentence here.] * * * * *
I gave my fourteenth, and last for this year, lecture this afternoon with vigor and effect, and am safe and well (D.G.), after such a spell of work as I never did before. I have been thrown a week out in all my plans, by having to write two new Lectures, instead of those the University was frightened at. The scientists slink out of my way now, as if I was a mad dog, for I let them have it hot and heavy whenever I've a chance at them. But as I said, I'm a week late, and though I start for the North this day week, I can't get home till this day fortnight at soonest, but I hope not later than to-morrow fortnight. Very thankful I shall be to find myself again at the little room door. Fancy Mary Gladstone forgiving me even that second _naughtiness_![37] She's going to let me come to see her this week, and to play to me, which is a great comfort. [Footnote 37: The first attack on Mr. Gladstone is in "Fors", September, 1875, the apology and withdrawal in "Fors", February, 1878. The second "naughtiness" will be found in "Arrows of the Chace", Vol. II., and a final attack is made in an interview in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, 21st April, 1884. The subject is summarized in an article in the _Daily News_ of 4th July, 1898.] * * * * *
Behold Athena and Apollo both come to bless you on your birthday, and all the buds of the year to come, rejoice with you, and your poor cat[38] is able to purr again, and is extremely comfortable and even cheerful "to-day." And we will make more and more of all the days, won't we, and we will burn our candle at both beginnings instead of both ends, every day beginning two worlds--the old one to be lived over again, the new to learn our golden letters in. Not that I mean to write books in that world. I hope to be set to do something, there; and what lovely "receptions" you will have in your little heavenly Thwaite, and celestial teas! And you won't spoil the cream with hot water, will you, any more? The whole village is enjoying itself, I hear, and the widows and orphans to be much the better for it, and altogether, you and I have a jolly time of it, haven't we? [Footnote 38: J. R.] * * * * *
I haven't had anything nice to send you this ever so long, but here's a little bird's nest of native silver which you could almost live in as comfortably as a tit. It will stand nicely on your table without upsetting, and is so comfortable to hold, and altogether I'm pleased to have got it for you. * * * * *
Yes, I knew you would like that silver shrine! and it _is_ an extremely rare and perfect specimen. But you need not be afraid in handling it; if the little bit of spar does come off it, or out of it, no matter. But of course nobody else should touch it, till you give them leave, and show them how. I am sorry for poor Miss Brown, and for your not having known the Doctor. He should have come here when I told him. I believe he would have been alive yet, and I never should have been ill. * * * * *
Your mornings' ministry to the birds must be remembered for you by the angels who paint their feathers. They will all, one day, be birds of Paradise, and say, when the adverse angel accuses you of being naughty to _some_ people, "But we were hungry and she gave us corn, and took care that nobody else ate it." I am indeed thankful you are better. But you must please tell me what the thing was I said which gave you so much pain. Do you recollect also what the little bit in "Proserpina" was that said so much to you? Were you not thinking of "Fors"? * * * * *
"And many squireles, that sett Your precious letter, showing me you are a little better, came this morning, with the exquisite feathers, one, darker and lovelier than any I have seen, but please, I still want one not in the least flattened; all these have lost just the least bit of their shell-like bending. You can so easily devise a little padding to keep two strong cards or bits of wood separate for one or two to lie happily in. I don't mind giving you this tease, for the throat will be better the less you remember it. But for all of us, a dark sky is assuredly a poisonous and depressing power, which neither surgery nor medicine can resist. The difference to me between nature as she is now, and as she was ten years ago, is as great as between Lapland and Italy, and the total loss of comfort in morning and evening sky, the most difficult to resist of all spiritual hostility. * * * * *
Of course the little pyramid in crystal is a present. With that enjoyment of Pinkerton,[40] you will have quite a new indoors interest, whatever the rain may say. How very lucky you asked me what basalt was! How much has come out of it (written in falling asleep)! I've been out all the morning and am _so_ sleepy. But I've written a nice little bit of "Praeterita" before I went out, trying to describe the Rhone at Geneva. I think Susie will like it, if nobody else. That "not enjoying the beauty of things" goes ever so much deeper than mere blindness. It is a form of antagonism, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of demonology in otherwise good people, or shall we say in "good people"? You know _we_ are not good at all, are we now? I don't think you've got any green in your mica. I've sent you a bit inclosed with some jealous spots in. [Footnote 40: Pinkerton on "Petralogy."] * * * * *
_Do_ you know how to make sugar candy? In my present abject state the only way of amusing myself I can hit on is setting the girls of the school to garden and cook! By way of beginning in cooking I offered to pay for any quantity of wasted sugar if they could produce me a crystal or two of sugar candy. (On the way to Twelfth cakes, you know, and sugar animals. One of Francesca's friends made her a life-size Easter lamb in sugar.) The first try this morning was brought me in a state of sticky jelly. And after sending me a recipe for candy, would you please ask Harry to look at the school garden? I'm going to get the _boys_ to keep that in order; but if Harry would look at it and order some mine gravel down for the walks, and, with Mr. Brocklebank's authority (to whom I have spoken already), direct any of the boys who are willing to form a corps of little gardeners, and under Harry's orders make the best that can be made of that neglected bit of earth, I think you and I should enjoy hearing of it. I told a Cambridge man yesterday that he had been clever enough to put into a shilling pamphlet all the mistakes of his generation. * * * * *
For once, I have a birthday stone for you, a little worth your having, and a little gladsome to me in the giving. It is blue like the air that you were born into, and always live in. It is as deep as gentians, and has their gleams of green in it, and it is precious all through within and without, as Susie herself is. Many and many returns of all the birthdays that have gone away, and crowds yet of those that never were here before. * * * * * _ |
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