Chapter VIII: Part IV (4)

At Dawlish, Torquay, etc. the jutting rocks of worn-away sandstone mark the points of the little bays with fantastic looking shapes, like petrified giants. [_Sketch._]

Looking back from Teignmouth is a very curious one on which the sea-birds sit. Bless their noses! and their legs! How they do enjoy the waves! [_Sketch._]

Those lazy ripples damp their boots so nicely!

In the Exeter Station sat a ---- [_Sketch_] Bull Dogue. O dear! He looked so "savidge," and was so nervous; every train made him tremble in every limb! I bought him a penny bun, but he was too nervous to eat, though he looked very grateful. The porter promised me to give him plenty of water, and as I gave the porter plenty of coppers I hope he did!

Tell Stephen the flowers on the railway banks give you quite a turn! Crimson, pale pink, and dead-white Valerian against a deep blue sky in hot sunshine make one not know whether to PAINT or press!

As to Dartmouth itself it is a mixture of Matlock, Whitby and Antwerp!!! The defect is it is really oil the river, not on the sea, but the neighbouring bays are so get-at-able we have settled here. The town is very old. Some of the streets, or rather terraces--if a perfectly irregular perching and jumbling of houses up and down a steep lull can be called a terrace--are very curious. [_Sketch._]

Flowers everywhere....

TO H.K.F.G.

July 12, 1874.

Dr. Edghill preached a fine sermon this morning on "Friend! wherefore art thou come?" Terribly didactic on the fate of Judas, but the practical application was wonderful and _so_ like him! It being chiefly on the "patient love of Christ." Quite merciless on Judas, and on the coarseness, coldness and brutalness of betrayal by the tenderest sign of human love. "But" (plunging head-first among the Engineers!) "if there's any man sitting here with a heart and conscience every bit as black as Judas's _in that hour_: to thee, Brother, in this hour--in thy worst and vilest hour--Jesus speaks--'_Friend!_--You may have worn out human love, you may try your hardest to wear out Mine'"--(parenthesis to the A.S.C. and a nautical _hitch_ of half his surplice)--("and we all try hard enough, _that's_ certain!)--'but _you never can_--Friend, still My Friend!'" (Pull up, and obvious need of bronchial troches. Tonsure mopped and a re-commencement.) "Then there's the appeal to the _conscience_ as well as to the _heart_. _Wherefore art thou come?_ what art thou about--what is thy object? I tell you what, I believe if Judas had answered this in plain language to himself he would have stopped short even then. And we should stop short of many a sin if we'd _face_ what we're going to do" (Dangerous precipitation of the whole Chaplain at the heads of the privates below.) "Some of you ask yourselves that question to-day--this evening _as you're walking to Aldershot_, 'Wherefore am I come?' And don't let the Devil put something else into your head, but just _answer it_," etc. etc.

He's not exactly an _equal_ or a _finished_ preacher for highly educated ears, but that sort of transparent candour which he has makes him _very_ affecting when on his favourite topic, the inexhaustible love of God. His face when he quotes--"The Son of God Who loved _Me_ and gave Himself for _Me_," is like a man showing the Rock he has clung to himself in shipwreck.

TO C.T.G.

_X Lines._ July 22, 1874.

DEAREST CHARLIE,

It was a _great_ disappointment not to see you! Now don't fail me next week--you scoundrel! I want you _most_ particularly for most selfish reasons. I am just taking my hero[38] into Victoria Docks, and want to dip my brush in _Couleur locale_ with your help. Do come, and we'll go up to London by _barge_ and sketch all the way!!! I know an A1 Bargemaster, and we can get beds at the inns _en route_. A two days' voyage! Or we can go for a shorter period and come home by rail. It won't cost us much.

[Footnote 38: "A Great Emergency," vol. xi.]

I am so glad to think of you in the dear _Old_--_New_ Forest.

* * * * *

Now mind you come--if only to see my Nelson (bureau) Relic!! It is such a comfort to me and _my papers_!

Ever your most loving sister, J.H.E.

TO MRS. ELDER.

_X Lines, South Camp._ August 7, 1874.

MY DEAR AUNT HORATIA,

I have begged the Tiger Tom for you!

He is the handsomest I ever saw, with such a head! His name is _Peter_. [_Sketch._]

Nothing--I assure you, can exceed his beauty--or the depth of his stripes....

If I had not too many cats already I should have adopted Peter long ago. We always quote William Blake's poem to him when we see him prowling about our garden.

"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright,
In the forest of the night,
What immortal Hand and Eye
Framed thy fearful symmetry?"

Do you remember it?

I feel _quite a wretch_ not to like your "Ploughman"[39] as well as usual. There is always poetry in your things, but TO ME the _spirit_ of this one has not quite that reality which is the highest virtue of "a sentiment"--or at least its greatest strength. But I may be wrong. Only that kind of constant lifting of the soul from the labour of daily drudgery to the Father of our spirits seems to me one of the highest, latest, and most refined Christian Graces in natures farthest removed from "the ape and tiger," and most at leisure for contemplative worship. I know there are exceptions. Rural contemplative saints among shepherds and ploughmen. But that the agricultural labourer as a type seeks "Nature's God" at the plough-tail and in the bosom of his family I fear is _not_ the case--and it would be very odd if poverty and ignorance did lead to such results, even in the advantages of an "open-air" life. Perhaps Burns knew such a Cottar on Saturday Nights as he painted--he wasn't _sick_ himself! unless you interpret _a neet wi' Burns_ by that poem!--and there has been one contemplative Shepherd on Salisbury Plain--though the proverb says--

"Salisbury Plain
Is seldom without a thief or twain."

--_not_ I believe supposed to refer to highwaymen!! and agricultural labourers stand (among trades) statistically high (or low!) for the crime of murder.

[Footnote 39: Sonnet by H.S. Elder, _Aunt Judy's Magazine_.]

But I won't inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction _in my inside_ that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned--not the ignorant--who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising sun--though YOUR mind might overflow with awe and admiration. As to the last verse--that a "cot" should ever be "cheerful" which "serves him for" washhouse, kitchen, nursery and all--is a triumph of the "softening influence of use"--and I concede it to you! But where "he reigns as a king his toils forgot" is, I am convinced, at the Black Bull with highly-drugged beer!!!!!!

Now am I _not_ a Brute?

And yet it is _very_ pretty, and--strange to say--the class to whom I believe it would be acceptable, is the class of whom I believe it is not (typically) true, and PERHAPS it is good for every class to have an _ideal_ of its own circumstances before its eyes. But I don't think it is good for rich people's children to grow up with the belief that twelve shillings a week, and cider and a pig, are the wisest and happiest earthly circumstances in which humanity with large families can be placed for their temporal and spiritual progress. I don't think it ever leads to a wish in the young Squire to exchange with Hodge for the good of his own soul, but I think it fosters a fixed conviction that Hodge has nothing to complain of, _plus_ being placed at a particular advantage as to his eternal concerns.

Will you ever forgive me? I like the descriptive parts so much, the "rival cocks at dawn"--the "autumn's mist and spring's soft rain," the team that "turn in their trace in the furrow's face," and the life-like descriptions in verse 4. It is as true to one's observation as it is graceful....

Your loving niece, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

_Ecclesfield._ May 14, 1876.

[_Sketch._] Do you remember Whitley Hall? I used to be so fond of the place when I was a child, and no one lived there but an old woman--old Esther Woodhouse--with a face like an ideal witch--at the lodge. As you know I always hated _writing down_--but long before I accomplished a tale on paper I wrote a novel _in my head_ to Whitley Hall, and used to walk about in the wood there, by the pond--_to think it_!

_York._ February 23, 1879.

... Yesterday was sunny though cold, and I had a delicious drive to Escrick and Naburn. Oh, it _does_ send thrills of delight through me, when the hay-coloured hedge-grass begins to mix itself with green, and the hedges have a very brown-madderish tint in the sun, and all the trunks of all the old trees are far greener than the fields, and the earth is turned over, and the rooks hold Parliaments.

* * * * *

[_York._] Easter Day, 1879.

... I went to Church at S. John's, Mr. Wilberforce's Church; I had never been in it. That window with S. Christopher, and those strange representations of the Trinity, and the five Master Yorkes kneeling all in blue on one side, and their four sisters on the other, is very wonderful. One of the most wonderful. How fascinating these dear old churches are! Mr. Wilberforce has a fine voice, a most rich and flexible baritone, and sings ballads with a great deal of taste and expression. I shall for ever love York and its marble-white walls and dear old churches, but "Benedetta sia 'l giorno e 'l mese e 'l anno," when you set your face with your black poodle towards the island called Melita! This north-east wind which still blows _cruelly_ would have made you very ill, I think....

I must tell you of another thing. On Thursday I went to the Blind School to a concert. I went rather against my will, for you know I was sadly impressed before by their _very_ unhealthy and miserable look, but oh, dear, they do sing well! and it was very affecting. One of the Barnbys teaches them. They have a good organ, and one of the blind men played very well. They sang very refinedly. No doubt they are well taught, but no doubt also the sense of hearing is delicate with them....

_Frimhurst._ April 18, 1879.

I got here safely yesterday, though I had a horrid headache on Wednesday, and expected to arrive here in very bad condition. I felt rather bad yesterday morning, but as I drew near, marvellous to relate, my headache went away! Oh! I thought so much of you, as the misty network of pines against the sky--the stretches of moor--the flashes of the canal--and all the dear familiar Heimath Land came nearer and nearer....

It is still "chill April" even here, but wonderfully different from Yorkshire. Sunshine--and green things so much more forward--and birds singing their very throats out.

"Lion," the mastiff, I am rather frightened of, but he loves me and gives me paws over and over again. He is pawing me now and will interrupt.

April 22.

The weather is intensely cold again, though nothing can make this country quite dreary--but cold it is! Still there are all the dear old features, I did not know the Mitchett side (of the Frimhurst bridge) of the canal; but I have been a good way down getting water-weeds--but of course you know it well. It is curiously like bits of the S. John [New Brunswick] River. One could almost see birch-bark canoes at points.

To-day the Jelfs came. It was an affecting meeting, our first since he was so ill in Cyprus, and he said, "It used to seem so little likely one would ever again see the old faces."... He spoke at once about your calling this country Heimath Land, saying it seemed the very word.

I am going on Thursday to stay with the Jelfs till Monday; I shall be so thankful to get a Sunday in the old Tin Tabernacle.

_K Lines, South Camp, Heimath Land._ April 25.

It is a sunny sweet day, so that I have been strolling about in the garden without a jacket. It is strangely pleasant being here, the old scenes without, and all Sir Howard Elphinstone's pretty things within. The Jelfs are staying in the Elphinstones' hut. In the matter of pictures I do not always agree with Sir Howard, but his decorative taste is very good, and the things he has picked up in all parts of the world are delightful. "Et ego, etc." We have things and things as it is, and shall pick up more! He is so very ingenious, and has made a dado over the mantelpiece, with a white or coloured border on which he puts pictures and photographs; in the centre is a square of coloured material with other things mounted on it. I foresee making a similar design for our Malta mantelpiece, with a gold Maltese cross in the centre and tiles round illustrating the eight Beatitudes....

I am intensely enjoying this bit here. Yesterday the Jelfs and the boys and I had a long wander by the canal where the larches and the birches are getting their tenderest tints on.... On Thursday evening I went to the Tin Church, with the old bell _tankling_ as I went in, and the mess bugles tootling afar as I came out. Bell the schoolmaster and baritone started as if I were a ghost, and sent me a book for the special hymn. Not a soul in the officers' seats--but a good choir and a very fair congregation of men and barrack families. Said I to myself, "I've been living in wealthy Bowdon and in ecclesiastical York, and not had this. Well done--the Tug of War and the Tin Tabernacle and the Camp! and unpaid soldiers and their sons to sing the Lord's Song in the land of their pilgrimage!"

To-day I went with Mrs. Jelf to a meeting at the Club House about "Coffee Houses." When we got in a "rehearsal" (dramatic) was going on, and the chaff was "Have you come for the rehearsal or the coffee-house?" We "Coffee-housers" adjourned to the Whist Room. Sir Thos. Steele in the chair. I had a long chat with him. He says Music and the Drama have declined dreadfully. The meeting was full of friends. "Mat Irvine" nearly wrung my hand off, and I sat by poor Knollys, who is heart-broken at the death of that dear little soul, Captain Barton. It was a first-rate meeting, mixed military and Aldershot tradesmen--a very "nice feeling" displayed--altogether it was wonderfully pleasant.

_Exeter._ May 16, 1879.

... The weather alternates here between North-Easters and mugginess, and I have never slept without fires yet. All the same I have had some lovely _drives_, which you know are so good for me. When Mrs. Fox Strangways couldn't go the Colonel has taken me alone 12 or 14 miles in the dog-cart with a very "free-going" but otherwise prettily-behaved little mare named Daphne. The tumbledown of hills and dales is very pretty here, and the deep red of the earth, and the whitewashed and thatched cottages. Very pretty bits for sketching if it had been sketching-weather....

I hope to get several things done in London. Jean Ingelow has burst out rather about my writings, and wants me to do something "in the style of Madam Liberality," and let her try to get it into _Good Words_, as she thinks I ought to try for a wider audience. I shall certainly go and see her, and talk over matters.... I was _very_ much pleased Sir Anthony Home had been so much pleased with "Jan." To draw tears from a V.C. and a fine old Scotch medico is very gratifying! Capt. Patten said their own Dr. Craig had also been delighted with it. When "We and the World" is done I mean to rest well on my oars, and then try and aim at something to give me a better footing if I can....

June 14, 1879.

... I am getting as devoted to Browning as you. It is very funny--this sudden and simultaneous light on him!

May 23, 1879.

[_Sketch._]

Forty-four of these aquatic plant tubs stand in one part of the back premises of Clyst S. George Rectory, full of truly wondrous varieties. The above is a thing like white tassels and purple-pink buds. Fancy how I revel in them, and in the garden, which holds 1640 species of herbaceous perennials all labelled and indexed!! The old Rector (he is 89) is as hard at it as ever. He is so pleased to be listened to, and it is enormously interesting though somewhat fatiguing, and leaves me no time whatever for anything else! My brain whirls with tiles, mosaics, tesseræ, bell-castings, bell-marks, and mottos, electros, squeezes, rubbings, etc., etc. His latest plant fad is Willows and Bamboos, of which he has countless kinds growing and flourishing!!! He is infirm, but it is very grand to see life rich with interests, and with work that will benefit others--so near the grave!

We'd a funny scene this morning when I went over the church with him, and had to write my name in the book.

Very testily--"The _date_, my dear, put the date!"

"I have put it."

More testily at being in the wrong--"Then put your address, put your address."

I hesitated, and he threw up his hands: "Bless me! you've not got one. It has always puzzled me so what made _you_ take a fancy to a soldier."

He had been very full of all kinds of ancient Church matters--a wonderful bell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in a very remarkable inscription, etc.,--so I seized the pen and wrote--_Strada Maria Stella, Malta_--and "I du thenk" (as they say here) it will considerably puzzle the old sexton!!!!!

Soon after sunrise on Ascension Day I was woke clear and clean by the bells _breaking into song_. You know campanology is his great hobby. They rang changes, with long pauses between. Bells often try me very much, at Ecclesfield _par exemple_, but I really enjoyed these....

May 24, 1879.

... A very pathetic bit of private news of poor little MacDowell. He was sent by the General to tell them to strike the tents, and was urging on the ammunition to the front, and encouraging the bandsmen to carry it, when a Zulu shot him. A good and not painful end--God bless him! The Capt. Jones who told this, said also that one little bugler killed three big Zulus with his side-arms before he fell! Also that a private of the 24th saved Chard's life at Rorke's Drift by pushing his head down, so that a bullet went over it!

_Woolwich._ Whit Monday, 1879.

* * * * *

Don't think you have all the picturesque beggars to yourself! Out in a street of Woolwich with Mrs. O'Malley the other day I saw this--[_Sketch._] The eyes though very clear and intense-looking decided me at once the man was blind, though he had no dog, and was only walking solemnly on, with a _carved fiddle_ of white wood under his arm! I ran back after him, and went close in front of him. He gazed and saw nothing. Then I touched him and said, "Are you blind?" He started and said, "Very nearly." I gave him a penny, for which he thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The _handle part_ (forgive my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North American Indian _art_, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. This has been a lucky day for me." He was a shipwright--can play the piano, he says--lives in the workhouse in winter and comes out in summer--with the flowers--and his fiddle! I knew you would like me to give something to that _povero fratello_.

_Woolwich._ June 6, 1879.

... _The_ painter of the Academy this year is Mrs. Butler!! I do hope some day somewhere you may see _The Remnants of an Army_ and _Recruits for the Connaught Rangers_. The first is in the _Academy Notes_, which I send you. The second is at least as fine. [_Sketch._] The landscape effect is the opal-like sky and bright light full of moisture after rain--heavy clouds hang above--the mountains are a leaden blue--and the sky of all exquisite pale shades of bright colour. Down the wet moor road comes the group. Two very tall, dark-eyed Connaught "boys"--one with a set face and his hands in his pockets looking straight out of the picture--the other with a yearning of Keltic emotion looking back at the hills as if his heart was breaking. The strapping young sergeant looks very grave; but an "old soldier" behind is lighting his pipe, and a bugler is holding back a dog. One of the best faces is that of the drummer who walks first, and whose 13-year-old face is so furrowed about the brow with oppressive anxiety--very truthful!

_The Remnants of an Army_ is of course overpowering by the mere subject, and it is nobly painted. The man and his horse are wonderful alike. There is nothing to touch these two. But I _would_ like to steal Peter Graham's _The Seabirds' Resting-Place_. Such penguins sitting on wet rocks with wet Fucus _growing on_ them! Such myriads more in the _sea-mist_ that hides the horizon-line--sitting on distant rocks!--and _such_ green waves--by the light of a sunbeam into one of which you see Laminaria fronds and lumps of Fucus tossing up and down. You feel wet and ozoney to come near it! There are some very fine men's portraits, and Orchardson's _Gamblers Hard Hit_ is the best thing of his, I think, that I know....

... There is a very beautiful old gun in the Arsenal upon a gun-carriage with wheels thus [_Sketch_], and with bas-reliefs of St. Paul and the Viper. It is needless to say the gun came from the island called Melita! But for cunning workmanship and fine bold designs and delicate execution the Chinese guns are the ones! I am taking rubbings of the patterns for decorative purposes! They were taken in the war.

There is yet one picture I must tell you of--"_A Musical Story by Chopin_"--the boy playing to a group of lads and a tutor. His utterly absorbed face is _admirable_. It is a very pretty thing. Not marvellous, but very good.

August 5, 1879.

* * * * *

I must tell you that it is _on the cards_ that Caldecott is going to do a coloured picture for me _to write to_, for the October No. of _A.J.M._ (so that it will bind up with the 1879 volume and be the Frontispiece). He is so fragile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do it. D---- and he became great friends in London, and I think now he would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over second-rate "society" work for _Graphic_, etc., etc., when he has such a genius to interpret humour and pathos for good writers, and no real writing gifts himself. (He has done some things called _Flirtation in France_, supplying both letter-press and sketches!--that are terrible to any one who has gone heart and soul into his House that Jack built!!!) I've told him frankly if he "_draws down to me_" in the hopes of making _my_ share easy by making his commonplace, and gives me a "rising young family in sand-boots and frilled trousers with an over-fed mercantile mamma," my "few brains will utterly congeal," but I have made two suggestions to _him_, so closely on his own lines that if hints help him I think he would find it easy. You know _horses_ are really his spécialité. I have asked him to give me a coloured thing and one or two rough sketches, Either

An Old Coaching Day's Idyll
or--A Trooper's Tragedy.

The same beginning for either:

Child learning to ride on
hobby-horse
rocking-horse
donkey
pony
etc. etc.

Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching road (Hog's Back!)--a highwayman--a broken-down postilion--a girl on a pillion, etc., etc.

Or, if military:

A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a bridge.

A Horse and Trooper--Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another man across his saddle.

Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet), but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.

* * * * *

August 9, 1879.

* * * * *

I was reading again at _Robert Falconer_ the other day. What _grand_ bits there are in it? With such _bosh_ close by. So like Ruskin in that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers, false swearers, whoremongers, and "all liars"--I wonder whether these trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!

But oh, that description to the _son_ of what it sounded like when _his father_ played the _Flowers of the Forest_ on his fiddle, isn't to be beaten in any language I believe! All the Scotch lasses after Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the men who lay on Flodden Field!--"Lasses to reap and lasses to bind--Lasses to stook." etc., etc., and "no a word I'll warrant ye, to the orra lad that didna gang wi' the lave"!!!![40] and the lad's outburst in reply, "I'd raither be gratten for nor kissed!"

[Footnote 40: _Robert Falconer_, chap. xix.]

Poor Z----! They don't teach that at Academies and Staff Colleges, nor in the Penny-a-line of newspaper correspondents and the like--but he should get some woman to soak it into his brains that the men women will love are men who would rather be "gratten for" in honour than be kissed in shame.

* * * * *

_Ecclesfield._ August 23, 1879.

* * * * *

Talking of drawings, what do you think? Caldecott has done me the most _lovely_ coloured thing to write a short tale to for October _A.J.M._ It is very good of him. He has simply drawn what I asked, but it is quite lovely!

A village Green, sweet little old Church, and house and oak tree, etc., etc. in distance, a small boy with aureole of fair hair on a red-haired pony, coming full tilt across it blowing a penny trumpet and scattering pretty ladies, geese, cocks and hens from his path. His dog running beside him! You will be delighted!

* * * * *

September 1, 1879.

I have done my little story to Caldecott's picture, and I have a strong notion that it will please you. It is called "Jackanapes."... I shall be so _disappointed_ if you don't like "Jackanapes." But I think it is just what you will like!! I think you will cry over him!

September 19, 1879.

Isn't it a great comfort that I have finished the serial story, and "Jackanapes"?--so that I am now quite free, and never mean to write against time again. I know you never cared for the serial; however, it is done, and tolerably satisfactory I think. "Jackanapes" I do hope you will like, picture and all. C---- sent Mr. Ruskin "Our Field," and I am proud to hear he says it is not a mere story--it's a poem! Great praise from a great man!

October 11, 1879.

* * * * *

I was knocked up yesterday in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin at Herne Hill. I find him _far_ more _personally_ lovable than I had expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm. So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such clear Scotch turquoise eyes.

He had been out to buy buns and grapes for _me_ (!), carrying the buns home himself very carefully that they might not be crushed!! We are so utterly at one on some points: it is very delightful to hear him talk. I mean it is uncommonly pleasant to hear things one has long thought very vehemently, put to one by a Master!! _Par exemple._ You know my mania about the indecent-cruel element in French art, and how the Frenchiness of Victor Hugo chokes me from appreciating him: just as we were going away yesterday Mr. Ruskin called out, "There is something I MUST show Aunt Judy," and fetched two photos. One, an old court with bits of old gothic tracery mixed in with a modern tumbledown building--peaceful old doorway, wild vine twisting up the lintel, modern shrine, dilapidated waterbutt, sunshine straggling in--as far as the beauty of contrast and suggestiveness and form and (one could fancy) colour could go, perfect as a picture. (R---- didn't say all this, but we agreed as to the obvious beauty, etc.) Then he brought out the other photo, and said, "but the French artist cannot rest with that, it must be heightened and stained with blood," and there was the court (photo from a French picture), with two children lying murdered in the sunshine.

Another point we met on was my desire to write a tale on Commercial Honour. He was delighted, and will I think furnish me with "tips." His father was a merchant of the old school. And then to my delight I found him soldier-mad!! So we got on very affably, and I hope to go and stay there when I go home next summer.

* * * * *

November 7, 1879.

Friends are truly kind. Miss Mundella sent two season tickets for the Monday "Pop." to D---- and me. I managed to go and stay for most of it. Norman Neruda, Piatti, and _Janotha_--have you heard Janotha play the piano? I think she is _very_ wonderful. It is so absolutely without affectation, and so _selfless_, and yet such a mastery of the instrument. Her _rippling_ passages are like music writ in water, and she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, and quite young. We sat quite near to Browning, who is a nice-looking old man, delightfully _clean_. He seemed to delight in Neruda and Piatti, and followed the music with a score of his own.

_Ecclesfield._ Saturday, January 31, 1880.

How beautiful a day is to-day I cannot tell you! It does refresh me!... Head and spine very shaky this morning so that I could not get warm; but I wrapped in my fur cloak, and went out into the sunshine, up and down, up and down the churchyard flags. A sunny old kirkyard is a nice place, I always think, for aged folk and invalids to creep up and down in, and "Tombstone Morality" isn't half as wearing to the nerves as the problems of _life_!...

* * * * *

_Greno House_, Tuesday.

Harry Howard drove me up yesterday. It was _just_ as much as I could bear; but I lay on the sofa till dinner, and went to bed at eight, and though my head kept me awake at first, I did well on the whole. Breakfast in bed, a bigger one than I have eaten for three weeks, and since then I have had an hour's drive. The roughness of the roads is unlucky, but the air _divine_! Such sweet sunshine, and Greno Wood, with yellow remains of bush and bracken, and heavy mosses on the sandstone walls, and tiny streams trickling through boggy bits of the wood, and coming out over the wall to overflow those picturesque stone troughs which are so oddly numerous, and which I had in my head when I wrote the first part of "Mrs. Overtheway."

* * * * *

January 11, 1880.

* * * * *

Very dear to me are all your "tender and true" regards for the old home--the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted--which is bound up with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!! Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever met has, I think, _quite_ your sympathy with exactly what the external world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind--to now when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable--and other people being destitute of the sixth sense to comprehend it--so that one feels a fool either way)--one rarely finds any one to whom one can comfortably speak of it, and be _understanded_ of them. It is the one of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) _see_ those things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me _content_ in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small sunny nook where we may end our days--so long as there is a bit of yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...

[_Grenoside._] February 21, 1880.

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I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. There are lovely bits in it.

Reading away at Mrs. Browning lately has very much confirmed my notion that the fault of her things is lack of condensation. They are almost without exception too long. I doubt if one should ever leave less than fifty per cent. of a situation to one's readers' own imagination, if one aims at the highest class of readers. That swan song to Camöens from his dying lady would have been very perfect in FIVE verses. As it is, one gets tired even of the exquisite refrain "Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" (an expression he had used about her eyes in a song, and which haunts her).

The other night we had Sergeant Dickinson up. He has lately settled in the village. He was in the Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava (17th Lancers), and also at Alma, Inkerman, and Sebastopol. He has also the Mutiny Medal and Good Conduct and Service one, so he is a good specimen. Curious luck, he never had a _scratch_ (!). Says he has had far "worse wounds" performing in Gyms., as he was a good swordsman, etc. He told us some _dear_ tales of old Sir Colin Campbell. He said his men idolized him, but their wives rather more so, and if any of them failed to send home remittances, the spouses wrote straight off to Sir Colin, who had up "Sandy or Wully" for remonstrance, and stopped his grog "till I hear again from your wife, man."

On one occasion he saw a drummer-boy drunk, and a sergeant near. Sir Colin: "Sergeant, does yon boy belong to your company?"

Sergeant: "He does not, sir."

"Does he draw a rum allowance?"

"He does, sir."

"Well, away to the Captain of his company, and say it's my orders that the oldest soldier in this bairn's company is to draw his rum, till he feels convinced it's for the lad's benefit that he should tak it himsel'--and that'll not be just yet awhile I'm thinking."

Some brilliant tales too of the wit and gallantry of Irish comrades, several of whom wore the kilt. And almost neatest of all, a story of coming across a fellow-villager among the Highlanders:

"But I were fair poozled He came from t' same place as me, and a clever Yorkshireman too, and he were talking as Scotch as any of 'em. So I says, 'Why I'm beat! what are YOU talking Scotch for, and you a Knaresborough man?' 'Whisht! whisht! Dickinson,' he says, 'we mun A' be Scotch in a Scotch regiment--or there's no living.'"...

February 19, 1880.

I have been re-reading the _Legend of Montrose_ and the _Heart of Midlothian_ with _such_ delight, and poems of both the Brownings, and Ruskin, and _The Woman in White_, and _Tom Brown's Schooldays_, etc., etc.!!! I have got two volumes of _The Modern Painters_ back with me to go at.

What a treat your letters are! Bits are _nearly_ as good as being there. The sunset you saw with Miss C----, and the shadowy groups of the masquers below in the increasing mists of evening, painted itself as a whole on to my brain--in the way _scenes_ of Walter Scott always did. Like the farewell to the Pretender in _Red Gauntlet_, and the black feather on the quicksand in _The Bride of Lammermuir_.

March 1, 1880.

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The ball must have been a grand sight, but I think, judging from the list, that your dress as Thomas the Rhymer stands out in marked _individuality_. Nothing shows more how few people are at all _original_ than the absence of any thing striking or quaint in most of the characters assumed at a Fancy Ball. This, however, is Pampering the Pride of you members of the Mutual Admiration Society. You must not become cliquish--no not Ye Yourselves!!!!

Above all _you_ must never lose that gracious quality (for which I have so often given you a prize) of patience and sympathy with small musicians and jangling pianos in the houses of kind and hospitable Philistines. Besides, I like you to be largely gracious and popular. All the same I confess that it is a grievance that music (and sherry!) are jointly regarded as necessary to be supplied by all hosts and hostesses--whether they can give you them good or not! People do not cram their bad drawings down your throats in similar fashion, Still what is, is--and Man is more than Music--and I have never felt the real mastership you hold in music more than when you have beaten a march out of some old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R---- petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!! I have heard enough good playing to be able to gauge him!...

Incapacity for every other kind of effort is giving me leisure for a feast of reading and _re-reading_ such as I have not indulged for years. Amongst other things I have read for the first time Black's _Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_--it is _very_ charming indeed, and if you haven't read it, some time you should. As a rule I detest German heroes _to English books_, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and the refrain outbreaks of his jealousy are really high art, when he unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif--"but that young man of Twickenham--he is a most pitiful fellow--" you feel Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. But Black has very artistically managed his hero's idioms so as to give great effect. And as we have a brain wave on about Womanhood you may like, as much as I have, V. Rosen's sketch of English women (to whom he gives the palm over those of other nations). Speaking of some others--"very nice to look at perhaps, and very charming in their ways perhaps, but not sensible, honest, frank like the English woman, _and not familiar with the seriousness of the world, and not ready to see the troubles of other people_. But your English-woman _who is very frank to be amused_, and can enjoy herself when there is a time for that, who is _generous in time of trouble and is not afraid_, and can be firm and active and yet very gentle, and who does not think always of herself, but is ready to help other people, and can look after a house and manage affairs--that is a better kind of woman I think--more to be trusted--more of a companion--oh, there is no comparison!"

It is very good, isn't it?--and he is mending the fire during this outburst, and keeps piling coal on coal as he warms with his subject.

I must also just throw you two quotations from Macaulay's most interesting _Life and Letters_. Quotations within quotations, for they are extracts.

"Antoni Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true."

(BROWNING.)

"There is na workeman
That can both worken wel and hastilie
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie."

(CHAUCER.)

By the bye, the italics in Black's quotations are _mine_. Good wording I think.

But how one does go back with delight to Scott! I confess I think to have written the _Heart of Midlothian_ is to have put on record the existence of a moral atmosphere in one's own nation as grand as the ozone of mountains. WHAT a contrast to that of French novels (with no disrespect to the brilliant art and refreshing brain quickness of the latter); but Ruskin's appeal to the responsibility of those who wield Arts instead of Trades recurs to one as one under which Scott might have laid his hand upon his breast, and looked upwards with a clear conscience....

March 16, 1880.

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I quite agree with you about an artlessness and roughness in Scott's work. I thought what I had dwelt on was the magnificent _tone_ of the _H. of Midlothian_. Also he has two of the first (first in rank and order if not first in degree) qualifications for a writer of fiction--Dramatism and individuality amongst his characters. He had (rather perhaps one should say), the quality which is _nascitur non fit_--Imagination. It is the great defect, _I think_, of some of our best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious--Imagination limited--Dramatism--nil!

She draws people she has seen (Mrs. Poyser) like a photograph--she imagines a Daniel Deronda, and he is about "as natural as waxworks."

"I've been reading Jean Ingelow's _Fated to be Free_ lately, and it is a marvellous mixture of beauty and failure. But _lovely_ passages. Incisive as G. Eliot, and from the point of view of a tenderer mind and experience. This is beautiful, isn't it?

"Nature before it has been touched by man is almost always beautiful, strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity, and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as well as it did before."

The double edge of the sentiment is very exquisite, and the truth of the natural fact very perfect as observation, and the book is full of such writing. But oh, dear! the confusion of plot is so maddening you have a delirious feeling that everybody is getting engaged to his half-sister or widowed stepmother, and keep turning back to make sure! But the dramatism is very good and leads you on....

March 22, 1880.

... I am getting you a curious little present. It is Thos. À Kempis's _De Imitatione Christi_ in Latin _and Arabic_. A scarce edition printed in Rome. I think you will like to have it. That old Thomas was much more than a mere monk. A man for all time, his monasticism being but a fringe upon the robe of his wisdom and _honest_ Love of God. It will be curious to see how it lends itself to Arabic. Well, I fancy. Being in very proverbial mould. Such verses as this (I quote roughly from memory):

"That which thou dost not understand when thou readest thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation: for there be secrets of religion which are not known till they be felt and are not felt but in the Day of a great calamity!" (a piece of wisdom with application to other experiences besides religious ones). I think this will read well in the language of the East. As also "In omnibus rebus Respice Finem," etc.....

* * * * *

Tuesday.

I am quite foolishly disappointed. The À Kempis is gone already! It is a new Catalogue, and I fancied it was an out-o'-way chance. It seems Ridler has no other Arabic books whatever. He may not have known its value. It "went" for six shillings!!!

* * * * *

TO THE BISHOP OF FREDERICTON.

_131, Finborough Road, South Kensington._ March 23, 1880.

MY DEAR LORD,

I thank you with all my heart for the gift of your book,[41] and yet more for the kindly inscription, which affected me much.

[Footnote 41: _The Book of Job_, translated from the Hebrew Text by John, Bishop of Fredericton.]

As one gets older one feels distance--or whatever parts one from people one cares for--worse and worse, I think!--However, whatever helps to remedy the separation is all the dearer!

I had devoured enough of your notes, to have laughed more than once and almost to have heard you speak, before I moved from the chair in which the book found me, and had read all the Introduction. I could HEAR you say that "Bildad uttered a few trusims in a pompous tone"!

What I have read of your version seems to me grand, bits here and there I certainly had never felt the poetical power of before. Rex will be delighted with it!

I fully receive all you say about Satan and the Sons of God. But I think a certain painfulness about such portions of Holy Writ--does not come from (1) Unwillingness to lay one's hand upon one's mouth and be silent before God. (2) Or difficulty about the Personality of Satan. I fancy it is because in spite of oneself it is painful that one of the rare liftings of the Great Veil between us and the "ways" of the Majesty of God should disclose a scene of such petty features--a sort of wrangling and experimentalizing, that it would be _pleasanter_ to be able to believe was a parable brought home to our vulgar understandings rather than a real vision of the Lord our Strength.

I am, my dear Lord, Your grateful and ever affectionate old friend, J.H.E.

TO J.H.E.

_Fredericton._ April 8, 1880.

MY DEAR MRS. EWING,

I will not let the mail go out without proving that I am not a bad correspondent, and without thanking you for your delightful letter. Oh! why don't you squeeze yourself sometimes into that funny little house opposite Miss Bailey's, and let me take a cup of tea off the cushions, or some other place where the books would allow it to be put? And why don't you allow me to stumble over my German? And why doesn't Rex, Esq. (for Rex is too familiar even for a Bishop) correct my musical efforts? How terrible this word _past_ is! The past is at all events _real_, but the future is so shadowy, and like the ghosts of Ulysses it entirely eludes one's grasp. I speak of course of things that belong to this life. It was (I assure you) a treat to lay hold of you and your letters, and (a minor consideration) to find that even your handwriting had not degenerated, and had not become like spiders' legs dipped in ink and crawling on the paper, as is the case of some nameless correspondents. There was only one word I could not make out. In personal appearance the letters stood thus, _[Greek: us]_. It looks like "us," or like the Greek _[Greek: un]_, which being interpreted is "pig." But M----, who is far cleverer than I am, at once oracularly pronounced it "very," and I believe her and you too....

I was greatly tickled in your getting _amusement_ out of "Job," the last book where one would have expected to find it; but stop--I recollect it is out of _me_, not the patriarch, that you find something to smile at, and no doubt you are right, for no doubt I say ridiculous things sometimes. _Au sérieux_, it pleases me much that you enter into my little book, and evidently have _read_ it, for I have had complimentary letters from people who plainly had not read a word, and to the best of my belief never will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet one admires his word-painting while one longs to kick him! I am glad to see the _Church Times_ agrees with me in the early character of the book. There is not a trace in it of later Jewish history or feeling. The argument on the other side is derived from Aramaic words only, which words are not unsuitable to a writer who either lived, _or had lived_ out of Palestine, and scholars agree now that they may belong either to a very late or a very early time, and are used by people familiar with the cognate languages of the East.

A word about your very natural feeling on the subject of Satan. I suppose that Inspiration does not interfere with the character of mind belonging to the inspired person. The writer thinks Orientally, within the range of thought common to the age, and patriarchal knowledge, so that he could neither think nor write as S. Paul or S. John, even though inspired. We criticize his writing (when we do criticize it) from the standpoint of the nineteenth century, _i.e._ from the accumulated knowledge, successive revelations, and refined civilization of several thousand years.