Chapter IX: Part IV (5)

Its extreme simplicity of description may appear to us trivial. But is not the fact indubitable that God tries us as He did Job, though by different methods? And is not our Lord's expression, "whom Satan hath bound, lo! these eighteen years," and S. Paul's, "to deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," analogous to the account in Job? One has only to try to transfer oneself to the patriarchal age, when there was no Bible, no Lord Jesus come in the flesh, but when at intervals divine revelations were given by personal manifestations and then withdrawn, and to take out of oneself all one has known about God from a child, to view the account as an Oriental would look at it, not as a Western Christian. The "experiment" (so to speak) involves one of the grandest questions in the world--Is religion only a refined selfishness, or is there such a thing as real faith and love of God, apart from any temporal reward? The devil asserts the negative and so (observe) do Job's so-called friends; but Job proves the affirmative, and hence amidst certain unadvised expressions he (in the main) speaks of God the thing that is right.

I do not know that there is in the early chapters anything that can be called "petty," more than in the speech of the devils to our Lord, and His suffering them to go into the swine.

We must, however, beware that we do not, when we say "petty," merely mean at bottom what is altogether different from our ordinary notions, formed by daily and general experience of life, as we ourselves find it.

All this long yarn, and not a word about your health, which is shameful. We both do heartily rejoice that you are better, and only hope for everybody's sake and your own, you will nurse and husband your strength....

Your affectionate old friend, JOHN FREDERICTON.

TO A.E.

April 10, 1880.

* * * * *

The night before last I dined with Jean Ingelow. I went in to dinner with Alfred Hunt (a water-colour painter to whose work Ruskin is devoted). A _very_ unaffected, intelligent, agreeable man; we had a very pleasant chat. On my other side sat a dear old Arctic Explorer, old _Ray_. I fell quite in love with him, and with the nice Scotch accent that overtook him when he got excited. Born and bred in the Orkneys, almost, as he said, _in the sea_; this wild boyhood of familiarity with winds and waves, and storms and sports, was the beginning of the life of adventure and exploration he has led. He told me some very interesting things about Sir John Franklin. He said that great and good as he was there were qualities which he had not, the lack of which he believed cost him his life. He said Sir John went well and gallantly at his end, if he could keep to the lines he had laid down; but he had not "fertility of resource for the unforeseen," and didn't _adapt_ himself. As an instance, he said, he always made his carriers _march_ along a given line. If stores were at A, and the point to be reached B, by the straight line from A to B he would send the local men he had _hired_ through bog and over boulder, whereas if he said to any of them, "B is the place you must meet me at," with the knowledge of natives and the instinct of savages they would have gone with half the labour and twice the speed. He said too that Franklin's party suffered terribly because none of his officers were _sportsmen_, which, he said, simply means starvation if your stores fail you. We had a long talk about scientific men and their _deductions_, and he said quaintly, "Ye see, I've just had a lot of rough expeerience from me childhood; and things have happened now and again that make me not just put implicit faith in all scientific dicta. I must tell you, Mrs. Ewing, that when I was a young man, and just back from America and the Arctic Regions, where I'd lived and hunted from a mere laddie, I went to a lecture delivered by one of the verra _first_ men of the day (whose name for that reason I won't give to ye) before some three thousand listeners and the late Prince Consort; and there on the table was the head and antlers of a male reindeer--beasts that, as I'm telling ye, I knew _sentimately_, and had killed at all seasons. And this man, who, as I'm telling ye, was one of the verra furrrst men of the day (which is the reason why I'm not giving ye his name) spoke on, good and bad, and then he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, and your Royal Highness, be good enough to look at the head of this Reindeer. Here ye see the antlers,' and so forth, 'and ye'll obsairve that there's a horn that has the shape of a shovel and protrudes over the beast's eyes in a way that must be horribly inconvenient. But when ye see its shape, ye'll perceive one of the most beautiful designs of Providence, a _proveesion_ as we may say; for this inconvenient horn is so shaped that with it the beast can shovel away the deep winter snow and find its accustomed food.'

"And when I heard this I just shook with laughing till a man I knew saw me, and asked what I was laughing at, and I said, 'Because I happen to know that the male reindeer _sheds its antlers_ every year in the beginning of November, _snow shovel_ and all, and does not resume them till spring.'"!!!!!!

* * * * *

April 26, 1880.

* * * * *

Curious your writing to me about Dante's Hell--and Lethe. Two books in my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE as strongly in those who have been carefully brought up apart from "religious convictions" as in those whose minds have been soaked in them). One was Flaxman's _Dante_, the other Selous's illustrations in the same style to the _Pilgrim's Progress_. I do not know whether I suffered more in my childhood than other children. Possibly, as my head was a good deal too big for my body! But I remember two troubles that haunted me. One that I should get tired of Eternity. Another that I couldn't be happy in Heaven unless I could _forget_. And in this latter connection I loved indescribably one of Flaxman's best designs. [_Sketch._] I can't remember it well enough to draw decently, but this was the attitude of Dante whom Beatrice was just laving in the Waters of Forgetfulness before they entered Paradise.

And even more fond was I of the passing of the great river by Christiana and her children, and by that mixed company of the brave and the weak, the young and the old, the gentle and the impatient,--and that grand touch by which the "Mr. Ready-to-Halt" of the long Pilgrimage crossed the waters of Death without fear or fainting.

* * * * *

Why should you think I should differ with Dante in his estimate of sin? I doubt if I could rearrange his Circles, except that "Lust" is a wide word, as = Passion I should probably leave it where it is; but there are hideous forms of it which are inextricably mingled, if not identical with Cruelty,--and Cruelty I should put at the lowest round of all.

_Clyst S. George._ April 30, 1880.

* * * * *

We have had rather a chaff with Mr. Ellacombe (who in his ninety-first year is as keen a gardener as ever!) because he has many strange sorts of _Fritillary_, and when I told him I had seen and gone wild over a sole-coloured pale yellow one which I saw exhibited in the Horticultural Gardens, he simply put me down--"No, my dear, there's no such thing; there's a white Fritillary I can show you outside, and there's _Fritillaria Lutea_ which is yellow and spotted, but there's no such plant as you describe." Still it evidently made him restless, and he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him _shaves_ about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to describe a white Crown Imperial--a thing that has _never been_!" Later he announced--"I have written to Barr and Sugden--'Gentlemen! Here's another White Elephant. A lady has seen a sole-coloured Yellow Fritillary!'"

This morning B. and S. wrote back, and are obliged to confess that "a yellow Fritillary has been produced," but (not being the producers) they add, "It is not a good yellow." _Pour moi_, I take leave to judge of colours as well as Barr and Sugden, and can assure you it is a very lovely yellow, pale and chrome-y. It has been like a chapter out of Alphonse Karr!

One of the horticultural papers is just about to publish Mr. Ellacombe's old list of the things he has grown in his own garden. Three thousand species!

* * * * *

I hope you liked that _Daily Telegraph_ article on the Back Gardener I sent you? It is really fine workmanship in the writing line as well as being amusing. I abuse the Press often enough, but I will say such Essays (for they well deserve the name) are a great credit to the age--in Penny Dailies!!!

"The Nursery Nonsense of the Birds," "A Stratified Chronology of Occupancies," "Waves of Whims," etc., etc., are the work of a man who can use his tools with a master's hand, or at least a _skilled_ worker's!

I am reading another French novel, by Daudet, _Jack_. So far (as I have got) it is marvellous _writing_. "Le petit Roi--Dahomey" in the school "des pays chauds" is a Dickenesque character, but quite marvellous--his fate--his "gri-gri"--his final Departure to the land where all things are so "made new" that "the former" do not "come into mind"--having in that supreme hour _forgotten_ alike his sufferings, his tormentors, and his friends--and only babbling in Dahomeian in that last dream in which his spirit returned to its first earthly home before "going home" for Good!--is superb!!! The possible meanness and brutality of civilized man in Paris--the possible grandeur and obvious immortality of the smallest, youngest, "gri-gri" worshipping nigger of Dahomey oh it is wonderful altogether, and I should fancy SUCH a sketch of the _incompris_ poet and the rest of the clique!! "_C'est_ LUI."

* * * * *

_Ecclesfield, Sheffield._ July 23, 1880.

MY DEAR MR. CALDECOTT,

I am sending you a number of "Jackanapes" in case you have lost your other.

I have made marks against places from some of which I think you could select easy scenes; I mean easy in the sense of being on the lines where your genius has so often worked.

I will put some notes about each at the end of my letter. What I now want to ask you is whether you _could_ do me a few illustrations of the vignette kind for "Jackanapes," so that it might come out at Christmas. Christmas _ought_ to mean October! so it would of course be very delightful if you could have completed them in September--and as soon as might be. But do not WORRY your brain about dates. I would rather give it up than let you feel the fetters of Time, which, when they drag one at one's work, makes the labour double. But if you will begin them, and _see_ if they come pretty readily to your fingers, I shall only too well understand it if after all you can't finish in time for this season!

In short I won't press _you_ for all my wishes!--but I do feel rather disposed to struggle for a good place amongst the hosts of authors who are besetting you; and as I am not physically or mentally well constituted for surviving amongst the fittest, if there is _much shoving_ (!) I want to place my plea on record.

So will you try?--

* * * * *

It was very kind of you and your wife to have us to see your sketches. I hope you are taking in ozone in the country.

Yours ever, J.H.E.

[NOTES.]

Respectfully suggested scenes to choose from.

Initial T out of the old tree on the green, with perhaps _to secure portrait_ the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag _à la_ an old Chelsea Pensioner.

1. A lad carrying his own long-bow (by regulation his own height) and trudging by his pack-horse's side, the horse laden with arrows for Flodden Field (September 9, 1513). Small figures back view (!) going westwards--poetic bit of moorland and sky.

2. If you _like_--a portrait of the little Miss Jessamine in Church.

3 to 5. You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type). Old inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ones) scattered in the fray.

The Black Captain, with his hand on his horse's mane, bigger--(so as to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or _small_ on his horse stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused behind Master Johnson (page 707).

6. Pretty vignetted portrait of the little Miss J., three-quarter length, about size of page 29 of _Old Christmas_. Scene, girl's bedroom--she with her back to mirror, face buried in her hands, "crying for the Black Captain"; her hair down to just short of her knees, the back of her hair catching light from window and reflected in the glass. Old Miss Jessamine (portrait) talking to her "like a Dutch uncle" about the letter on the dressing-table; aristocratic outline against window, and (as Queen Anne died) "with one finger up"!!!!! (These portraits would make No. 2 needless probably.)

7. Not worth while. I had thought of a very small quay scene with slaves, a "black ivory"--and a Quaker's back! (Did you ever read the correspondence between Charles Napier and Mr. Gurney on Trade and War?)

8. A very pretty elopement please! Finger-post pointing to Scotland--Captain _not_ in uniform of course.

9 or 10--hardly; too close to the elopement which we _must_ have!

11. You are sure to make that pretty.

12. Might be a very small shallow vignette of the field of Waterloo. I will look up the hours, etc., and send you word.

13. As you please--or any part of this chapter.

16. I mean a tombstone like this [_Sketch of flat-topped tombstone_], very common with us.

17, 18. I leave to you.

19 or 20, might suit you.

21. Please let me try and get you a photo of a handsome old general!! I think I will try for General MacMurdo, an old Indian hero of the most slashing description and great good looks.

22. I thought some comic scene of a gentleman in feather-bed and nightcap with a paper--"Rumours of Invasion" conspicuous--might be vignetted into a corner.

23 might be fine, and go down side of page; quite alone as vignette, or distant indication of Jackanapes looking after or up at him.

24. Should you require military information for any scene here?

25-26. I hope you could see your way to 26. Back view of horses--"Lollo the 2nd" and a screw, Tony lying over his holding on by the neck and trying to get at his own reins from Jackanapes' hand. J.'s head turned to him in full glow of the sunset against which they ride; distant line of dust and "retreat" and curls of smoke.

The next chapter requires perhaps a good deal of "war material" to paint with, and strictly soldier-type faces.

27. The cobbler giving his views might be a good study with an advertisement somewhere of the old "souled and healed cheap."

28. This scene I think you might like, and please on the wall have a hatchment with "Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori" (excuse my bad Latinity if I have misquoted).

29 would make a pretty scene, I think, and

30 would make me too happy if you scattered pretty groups and back views of the young people, "the Major" and one together, in one of your perfect bits of rural English summer-time.

If there _were_ to be a small vignette at the end, I should like a wayside Calvary with a shadowy Knight in armour, lance in rest, approaching it from along a long flat road.

Now please (it is nearly post time!) forgive how very badly I have written these probably confusing suggestions. I am not very well, and my head and _thumb_ both fail me.

If you can do it, do it as you like. I will send you a photo of an officer who will do for the Black Captain, and will try and secure a General also. If you could lay your hands on the Illustrated Number that was "extra" for the death of the Prince Imperial--a R.A. officer close by the church door, helping in one end of the coffin, is a very typical military face.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

July 30, 1880.

* * * * *

Oh, with what sympathy I hear you talk of Shakespeare. Nay! not Dante and not Homer--not Chaucer--and not Goethe--"not Lancelot nor another" are really his peers.

Here blossom sonnets that one puts on a par with his--there, _in another man's_ work the illimitable panorama of varied and life-like men and women "merely players," may draw laughter and tears (Crabbe, and much of Dickens and other men, and Don Quixote). His coarse wit and satire and shrewdness, when he is least pure, may I suppose find rivals in some of the eighteenth or seventeenth century English writers, and in the marvellous brilliancy of French ones. When he is purest and highest I cannot think of a Love Poet to touch him. Tennyson perhaps nearest. But _he_ seems quite unable to fathom the heart of a noble woman with any _strength_ of her own, or any knowledge of the world. "Enid" is to me intolerable as well as the degraded legend it was founded on. Perhaps the brief thing of Lady Godiva is the nearest approach, and Elaine faultless as the picture of a maiden-heart brought up in "the innocence of ignorance." But he can write fairly of "fair women." Scott runs closer, but his are paintings from without. "Jeanie Deans" is bad to beat!!

Shelley comes to his side when _weirdness_ is concerned.

"Five fathom deep thy father lies," etc.,

is run hard by--

"Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
_Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come._"

But I will not bore you with comparisons. My upshot is that no one of the many who may rival him in SOME of his perfections, COMBINE them all in ONE genius. In all these philosophizing days--who touches him in philosophy? From the simplest griefs and pleasures and humanity at its simplest--Macduff over the massacre of his wife and children--to all that the most delicate brain may search into and suffer, as Hamlet--or the ten thousand exquisite womanish thoughts of Portia, a creature of brain power and feminine fragility--

"By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great world."

* * * * *

TO C.T.G.

_Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield._ Aug. 3, 1880.

* * * * *

_À propos_ of my affairs ... next year we might do something with some of my "small gems." Don't _you_ like "Aldegunda" (Blind Man and Talking Dog)? D. does so much. Do you like the "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher," "Ladders to Heaven," and "Dandelion Clocks"?...

... As you know, these _little_ things are the chief favourites with my more educated friends, whose kindness consoles me for the much labour I spend on so few words (The "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher" was "in hand" two years!!!), and I think their only chance would be to be so dressed and presented as to specially and downrightly appeal to those who would value the Art of the Illustrator, and perhaps recognize the refinement of labour with which the letter-press has been ground down, and clipped, and condensed, and selected--till, as it would appear to the larger buying-public, there is _wonderfully little left you for your money_!!...

Poor old Cruikshank! How well--and willingly--he would have done "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher." He said, when he read my things, "the Fairies came and danced to him"--which pleased me much.

* * * * *

Yesterday I pulled myself together and wrote straight to the printers, to the effect that the suffering the erratic and careless printing of "We and the World" cost me was such that I was obliged to protest against X. and Sons economizing by using boys and untrained incapables to print (printing from print being easier, and therefore adapted for teaching the young P.D. how to set up type), pointing out one sentence in which (clear type in _A.J.M._) the words "insist on guiding my fate by lines of their own ruling" was printed to the effect that they wouldn't insist on _gilding_ my _faith_, etc., _their_ being changed to _there_. All of which the _reader_ had overlooked--to concern himself with my Irish brogue--and certain _reiterations of words_ which he mortally hates, and which I regard the chastened use of, as like that of the _plural of excellence_ in Hebrew!

(He would have put that demoniacal mark [symbol: checkmark] against one of the summers in "All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone"!!!)

I sent SUCH a polite message PER X. to his reader, thanking him much for trying to mend my brogue (which had already passed through the hands of three or four Irishmen, including Dr. Todhunter and Dr. Littledale), but proposing that for the future we should confine ourselves to our respective trades,--That the printer should print from copy, and not out of his own head--that the reader should read for clerical errors and bad printing, which would leave me some remnant of time and strength to attend to the language and sentiments for which I alone was responsible. My dear love, I must stop.

Ever your devoted, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

_Farnham Castle, Surrey._ Oct. 10, 1880.

DIARY OF MRS. PEPYS.

"_Oct. 9._--Passed an ill night, and did early resolve to send a carrier pigeon unto the Castle to notify that I must lie where I was, being unable to set forward. But on rising I found myself not so ill that I need put others to inconvenience; so I did but order a cab and set forth at three in the afternoon, in pouring rain. My hostess sent with me David her footman, who saved me all trouble with my luggage, and so forth from Frimley to Farnham. A pause at the South Camp Station, dear familiar spot, a little before which the hut where my good lord lay before we were married loomed somewhat drearily through the mist and rain. At Farnham the Lord Bishop's servitor was waiting for me, and took all my things, leading me to a comfortable carriage and so forth to the Castle.

Somewhat affrighted at the hill, which is steep, and turns suddenly; but recovered my steadfastness in thinking that no horses could know the way so well as these.

The Bishopess and her daughter received me on the stair-case, and we had tea in the book-gallery, a most pleasing apartment.

Thence to my room to rest till dinner. It is a mighty fine apartment, vast and high, with long windows having deep embrasures, and looking down upon the cedars and away over the whole town, which is a pretty one.

Methinks if I were a state prisoner, I would fain be imprisoned in an upper chamber, looking level with these same cedar-branches, whereon, mayhap, some bird might build its nest for mine entertainment.

Dinner at 8.15. Wore my ancient brocade newly furbished with olive-green satin, and tinted lace about my neck, fastened with a brooch made like to a Maltese Cross, green stockings and shoes embroidered with flowers.

Was taken down to dinner by Sir Thos. Gore Browne, an exceeding pleasant old soldier, elder brother to the Bishop,--having before dinner had much talk with his Lordship, whom I had not remembered to have been the dear friend of our dear friend the Lord Bishop of Fredericton, when both prelates were curates in Exeter."

* * * * *

I am very much enjoying my visit to this dear old Castle. They are superabundantly kind! After the evening yesterday everybody, visitors and family, all trooped into the dimly-lighted chapel for Evening Prayer. They sang "Jerusalem the Golden," and Gen. Lysons sang away through his glass, in his K.C.B. star, and came up to compliment me about it afterwards....

October 22, 1880.

Yesterday was Trafalgar Day. About half-a-dozen old Admirals of ninety and upwards met and dined together! I don't know what I would not have given to have been present at that most ghostly banquet! How like a dream, a shadow, a bubble, a passing vapour, and all the rest of it, must life not have seemed to these ex-midshipmen of the _Victory_ and the _Téméraire_! muffling their poor old throats against this sudden frost, and toddling to table, and hobnobbing their glass in old-fashioned ways to immortal memories,

"here in London's central roar,
Where the sound of those, he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for Evermore!"

The cold is sudden and most severe. I fear it will hustle some of those dear old Admirals to rejoin their ancient comrade--the "Saviour of the silver-coasted isle."

* * * * *

May 1881.

"The Harbour Bay was clear as glass--
So smooth--ly was it strewn!
And on--the Bây--the moonlight lay
And--the--Shad--ow of--the Moon!"

--thus was it at 11 p.m. on the night of the 4th of May, when I looked out of my bedroom window at Plâce Castle, Fowey, on the coast of Cornwall!!!!--(and we must also remember that Isolde was married to the King of Cornwall, and lived probably in much such a place as Plâce!)

* * * * *

I caught a train on to Fowey, which I reached about 5. There I found a brougham and two fiery chestnuts waiting for me, and after some plunging at the train away went my steeds, and we turned almost at once into the drive. There is no park to Plâce that I could see, but the drive is _sui generis_! You keep going through _cuttings_ in the rock, so that it has an odd feeling of a drive _on the stage_ in a Fairy Pantomime. On your right hand the cliff is _tapestried_, almost hidden, by wild-flowers and ferns in the wealthiest profusion! Unluckily the wild garlic smells dreadfully, but its exquisite white blossoms have a most aërial effect, with pink campion, Herb Robert, etc., etc. On the left hand you have perpetual glimpses of the harbour as it lies below--oh, _such_ a green! I never saw such before--"as green as em-er-âld!"--and the roofs of the ancient borough of Fowey!--I hope by next mail to have photographs to send you of the place. It perpetually reminded me of the Ancient Mariner. As to Plâce (P. Castle they call it now), the photographs will really give you a better idea of it than I can. You must bear in mind that the harbour of Fowey and a castle, carrying artillery, have been in the hands of the Treffrys from time immemorial.... We went over the Church, a fine old Church with a grand tower, standing just below the Castle. The Castle itself is chiefly Henry VI, and Henry VII. I never saw such elaborate stone carving as decorates the outside. There are beautiful "Rose" windows close to the ground, and the Lilies of France, of course, are everywhere. The chief drawing-room is a charming room, hung with pale yellow satin damask, and with beautiful Louis Quinze furniture. The porphyry hall is considered one of _the_ sights, the roof, walls, and floor are all of red Cornish porphyry....

_Frimhurst_, May 10, 1881.

I have been into the poor old Camp. I will tell thee. Did you ever meet Mr. F., R.E.? a young engineer of H.'s standing, and his chief friend. A Lav-engro (Russian is his present study) with a nice taste in old brass pots and Eastern rugs, and a choice little book-case, and a terrier named "Jem "--the exact image of dear old "Rough." He asked us to go to tea to see the pictures you and I gave to the Mess and so forth. So the General let us have the carriage and pair and away we went. It _is_ the divinest air! It was like passing quickly through BALM of body and mind. And you know how the birds sing, and how the young trees look among the pines, and the milkmaids in the meadows, and the kingcups in the ditches, and then the North Camp and the dust, and Sir Evelyn Wood's old quarters with a new gate, and then the racecourse with polo going on and more dust!--and then the R.E. theatre (where nobody has now the spirit to get up any theatricals!), and the "Kennêl" (as Jane Turton called it) where I used to get flags and rushes, and where Trouvé, dear Trouvé! will never swim again! And then the Iron Church from which I used to _run_ backwards and forwards not to be late for dinner every evening, with the "tin" roof that used to shake to the "Tug of War Hymn,"--and then more dust, and (it must be confessed) dirt and squalor, and _back views_ of ashpit and mess-kitchens and wash-houses, and turf wall the grass won't grow on, and rustic work always breaking up! and so on into the R.E. Lines! Mr. F. was not quite ready for us, so we drove on a little and looked at No. 3. N. Lines. T.'s hut is nearly buried in creepers now. An _Isle of Man_(do you remember?) official lives there, they say; but it looked as if only the Sleeping Beauty could. Our hut looks just the same. Cole's greenhouse in good repair. But through all the glamour of love one could see that there _is_ a good deal of dirt and dust, and refuse and coal-boxes!!!

Then a bugle played!--

"The trumpet blew!"

I _think_ it was "Oh come to the Orderly Room!" _We_ went to the Mess. The Dining-Room is much improved by a big window, high pitched, opposite the conservatory. It is new papered, prettily, and our pictures hang on each side of the fireplace. Mr. G. joined us and we went into the Ante-Room. Then to the inevitable photo books, in the window where poor old Y. used to sit in his spotless mufti. When G. (who is not _spirituel_) said, turning over leaves for the young ladies, "that and that are killed" I turned so sick! Mac G. and Mac D.! Oh dear! There be many ghosts in "old familiar places." But I have no devouter superstition than that the souls of women who die in childbed and men who fall in battle go straight to Paradise!!! Requiescant in Pace.

Then to tea in Mr. F.'s quarters next to the men. Then--now mark you, how the fates managed so happy a coincidence--G. said casually, "I saw Mrs. Jelf in the Lines just now!" I nearly jumped out of my boots, for I did not know she had got to England. Then F. had helped to nurse Jelf in Cyprus and was of course interested to see her, so out went G. for Mrs. J., and anon, through the hut porch in she came--Tableau--!

Then I sent the girls with Messrs F. and G. to "go round the stables," and M. and _Jem_ and I remained together. Jem went to sleep (with one eye open) under the table, and the sun shone and made the roof very hot, and outside--"The trumpets blew!"

It was an afternoon wonderfully like a Wagner opera, thickset with recurring _motifs_....

_Frimhurst._ June 15, 1891.

* * * * *

The old editions of Dickens are here, and I have been re-reading _Little Dorrit_ with keen enjoyment. There is a great deal of poor stuff in it, but there is more that is first-rate than I thought. I had quite forgotten Flora's enumeration of the number of times Mr. F. proposed to her--"seven times, once in a hackney coach, once in a boat, once in a pew, once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells, and the rest on his knees." But she is very admirable throughout.

I've also been reading some more of that American novelist's work, Henry James, junior,--_The Madonna of the Future_, etc. He is not _great_, but very clever.

Used you not to like the first-class Americans you met in China very much? It is with great reluctance--believing Great Britons to be the salt of the earth!!--but a lot of evidence of sorts is gradually drawing me towards a notion that the best type of American Gentleman is something like a generation ahead of our gentlemen in his attitude towards women and all that concerns them. There are certain points of view commonly taken up by Englishmen, even superior ones, which always exasperate women, and which seem equally incomprehensible by American men. You will guess the sort of things I mean. I do not know whether it is more really than the _élite_ of Yankees (in which case we also have our _ámes d'élite_ in chivalry)--but I fancy as a race they seem to be shaking off the ground-work idea of woman as the lawful PREY of man, who must keep Mrs. Grundy at her elbow, and _show cause why she shouldn't be insulted_. (An almost exclusively _English_ feeling even in Great Britain, I fancy. By the bye, what odd flash of self-knowledge of John Bull made Byron say in his will that his daughter was not to marry an Englishman, as either Scotch or Irishmen made better husbands?)...

July 6, 1881.

* * * * *

The Academy this year is very fine. Some truly beautiful things. But before one picture I stood and simply laughed and shook with laughing aloud. It is by an Italian, and called "A frightful state of things." It is a baby left in a high chair in a sort of Highland cottage, with his plate of "parritch" on his lap--and every beastie about the place, geese, cocks, hens, chicks, dogs, cats, etc., etc., have invaded him, and are trying to get some of his food. The painting is exquisite, and it is the most indescribably funny thing you can picture: and so like dear Hector, with one paw on little Mistress's eye eating her breakfast!!!...

* * * * *

_Ecclesfield._ August 24, 1881.

... André has made the "rough-book" (water colours) of "A week spent in a Glass Pond, By the Great Water Beetle." I only had it a few hours, but I scrambled a bit of the title-page on to the enclosed sheet of green paper for you to see. It is entirely in colours. The name of the tale is beautifully done in letters, the initials of which _bud and blossom_ into the Frogbit (which shines in white masses on the Aldershot Canal!) [_Sketch._] To the left the "Water Soldier" (_Stratiotes Aloides_) with its white blossoms. At the foot of the page "the Great Water Beetle" himself, writing his name in the book--_Dyticus Marginalis_. There is another blank page at the beginning of the book, where the beetle is standing blacking himself in a penny ink-pot!!!! and another where he is just turning the leaves of a book with his antennæ--the book containing the name of the chromolithographers. He has adopted almost all my ideas, and I told him (though it is not in the tale) "I should like a _dog_ to be with the children in all the pictures, and a cat to be with the old naturalist,"--and he has such a dog (a white bull terrier) [_sketch_], who waits on the woodland path for them in one picture, _noofles_ in the colander at the water-beasts in another, examines the beetle in a third, stands on his hind legs to peep into the aquarium in a fourth, etc. But I cannot describe it all to you. I have asked to have it again by and by, and will send you a coloured sketch or two from it. I am so much pleased!... Perhaps the best part of the book is _the cover_. It is very beautiful. The Bell Glass Aquarium (lights in the water beautifully done) carries the title, and reeds, flowers, newts, beetles, dragon-flies, etc., etc., are grouped with wondrous fancy! This entirely his own design....

_Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne._ August 30, 1881.

* * * * *

The four Jones children and their nurse are in lodgings at a place called Whitley on the coast, not far from here. Somebody from here goes to see them most days. To-day Mrs. J. and I went. As we were starting dear "Bob" (the collie who used to belong to the Younghusbands) was determined to go. Mrs. Jones said No. He bolted into the cab and crouched among my petticoats; I begged for him, and he was allowed. At the station he was in such haste he _would_ jump into a 2nd class carriage, and we had hard work to get him out. (This _is_ rather funny, because she usually goes there 2nd class with the children: and he looked at the 1st and would hardly be persuaded to get in.) Well, the coast is rather like Filey, and such a wind was blowing, and _such_ white horses foamed and fretted, and sent up wildly tossed fountains of foam against the rocks, and such grey and white waves swallowed up the sands! I ran and played with the children and the dog--and built a big sand castle ("Early English if not Delia Cruscan"!!), and by good-luck and much sharp hunting among the storm-wrack flung ashore among the foam, found four cork floats, and made the children four ships with paper sails, and had a glorious dose of oxygen and iodine. How strange are the properties of the invisible air! The air from an open window at Ecclesfield gives me neuralgia, and doubly so at Exeter. To-day the wild wind was driving huge tracts of foam across the sands in masses that broke up as they flew, and driving the sand itself after them like a dust-storm. I could barely stand on the slippery rocks, and yet my teeth seemed to _settle in my jaws_ and my face to get PICKLED (!) and comforted by the wild (and very cold) blast.... Now to sweet repose, but I was obliged to tell you I had been within sound of the sea, aye! and run into and away from the waves, with children and a dog. This is better than a Bath Chair in Brompton Cemetery!...

_Thornliebank, Glasgow._ September 8, 1881.

... "It is good to be sib to" kindly Scots! and I am having a very pleasant visit. You know the place and its luxuries and hospitalities well.

I came from Newcastle last Friday, and (in a good hour, etc.) bore more in the travelling way than I have managed with impunity since I broke down. I came by the late express, got to Glasgow between 8 and 9 p.m., and had rather a hustle to to get a cab, etc. A nice old porter (as dirty and hairy as a Simian!) secured one at last with a cabby who jabbered in a tongue that at last I utterly lost the running of, and when he suddenly (and as it appeared indignantly!) remounted his box, whipped up, and drove off, leaving me and my boxes, I felt inclined to cry(!), and said piteously to the porter, "What _does_ he say? I _cannot_ understand him!" On which the old Ourang-Outang began to pat me on the shoulder with his paw, and explain loudly and slowly to my Sassenach ears, "He's jest telling ye--that 't'll be the better forrr ye--y'unnerstan'--to hev a caaaab that's got an i(ro)n railing on the tôp of it--for the sake of yourrr boxes." And in due time I was handed over to a cab with an iron railing, the Simian left me, and so friendly a young cabby (also dirty) took me in hand that I began to think he was drunk, but soon found that he was only exceedingly kind and lengthily conversational! When he had settled the boxes, put on his coat, argued out the Crums' family and their residences, first with me and then with his friends on the platform, we were just off when a thought seemed to strike him, and back he came to the open window, and saying "Ye'll be the better of havin' this ap"--scratched it up from the outside with nails like Nebuchadnezzar's. Whether my face looked as if I did not like it or what, I don't know, but down came the window again with a rattle, and he wagged the leather strap almost in my face and said, "there's _hôals_ in't, an' ye can jest let it down to yer own satisfaction if ye fin' it gets clos." Then he rattled it up again, mounted the box, and off we went. Oh, _such_ a jolting drive of six miles! Such wrenching over tramway lines! But I had my fine air-cushions, and my spine must simply be another thing to what it was six months back. Oh, he was funny! I found that he did NOT know the way to Thornliebank, but having a general idea, and a (no doubt just) faith in his own powers, he swore he did know, and utterly resented asking bystanders. After we got far away from houses, on the bleak roads in the dark night, I merely felt one must take what came. By and by he turned round and began to retrace his steps. I put out my head (as I did at intervals to his great disgust; he always pitched well into me--"We're aal right--just com--pôse yeself," etc.), but he assured me he'd only just gone by the gate. So by and by we drew up, no lights in the lodge, no answer to shouts--then he got down, and in the darkness I heard the gates grating as if they had not been opened for a century. Then under overhanging trees, and at last in the dim light I saw that the walls were broken down and weeds were thick round our wheels. I could bear it no longer, and put out my head again, and I shall never forget the sight. The moon was coming a little bit from behind the clouds, and showed a court-yard in which we had pulled up, surrounded with buildings in ruins, and overgrown with nettles and rank grass. We had not seen a human being since we left Glasgow, at least an hour before,--and of all the places to have one's throat cut in!! The situation was so tight a place, it really gave one the courage of desperation, and I ordered him to drive away at once. I believe he was half frightened himself, and the horse ditto, and never, never was I in anything so nearly turned over as that cab! for the horse got it up a bank. At last it was righted, but not an inch would my Scotchman budge till he'd put himself through the window and confounded himself in apologies, and in explanations calculated to convince me that, in spite of appearances, he knew the way to Thornliebank "pairfeckly well." "Noo, I do beg of ye not to be narrrr-vous. Do NOT give way to't. Ye may trust me entirely. Don't be discommodded in the least. I'm just pairfectly acquainted with the road. But it'll be havin' been there in the winter that's just misled me. But we're aal right." And all right he did eventually land me here! so late J. had nearly given me up.

* * * * *

TO MRS. ELDER.

_Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield._ October 26, 1881.

DEAREST AUNT HORATIA,

* * * * *

D. says you would like some of the excellent Scotch stories I heard from Mr. Donald Campbell. I wish I could take the wings of a swallow and tell you them. You must supply gaps from your imagination.

They were as odd a lot of tales as I ever heard--_drawled_ (oh so admirably drawled, without the flutter of an eyelid, or the quiver of a muscle) by a Lowland Scotchman, and queerly characteristic of the Lowland Scotch race!!!! Picture this slow phlegmatic rendering to your "mind's eye, Horatia!"

A certain excellent woman after a long illness--departed this life, and the Minister went to condole with the Widower. "The Hand of affliction has been heavy on yu, Donald. Ye've had a sair loss in your Jessie."

"Aye--aye--I've had a sair loss in my Jessie--an' a heavy ex-pense."

* * * * *

A good woman lost her husband, and the Minister made his way to the court where she lived. He found her playing cards with a friend. But she was _æquus ad occasionem_--as Charlie says!--

"Come awa', Minister! Come awa' in wi' ye. Ye'll see _I'm just hae-ing a trick with the cairds to ding puir Davie oot o' my heid_."

* * * * *

I don't know if the following will _read_ comprehensibly. _Told_ it was overwhelming, and was a prime favourite with the Scotch audience.

Hoo oor Baby was _burrrned_. (How our Baby was burnt.)

(You must realize a kind of amiable bland _whine_ in the way of telling this. A caressing tone in the Scotch drawl, as the good lady speaks of _oor wee Wullie_, etc. Also a roll of the r's on the word burned.)

"Did ye never hear hoo oor wee Baby was burrrned? Well ye see--it was _this_ way. The Minister and me had been to _Peebles_--and we were awfu' tired, and we were just haeing oor bit suppers--when oor wêê Wullie cam doon-stairs and he says--'Mither, Baby's _burrrning_.'

"--Y'unerstan it was the day that the Minister and me were at Peebles. We were _awful_ tired, and we were just at oor suppers, and the Minister says (very loud and nasal), '_Ca'll Nurrse_!'--but as it rarely and unfortunitly happened--Nurrse was washing and she couldna be fashed.

"And in a while our WEE Wullie cam down the stairs again, and he says--'Mither! Baby's burning.'

"--as I was saying the Minister and me had been away over at Peebles, and we were in the verra midst of oor suppers, and I said to him--'Why didna ye call Nurse?'--and off he ran.

"--and there was the misfirtune of it--Nurrse was washing, and she wouldn't be fashed.

"And--in--a while--oor weee Wullie--came doon the stairs again--and he says 'Mither! Baby's burrrned.' And that was the way oor poor woe baby was burnt!"

* * * * *

Now for one English one and then I must stop to-day. I flatter myself I can tell this with a nice mincing and yet vinegar-ish voice.

"When I married my 'Usbin I had no expectation that he would live three week.

"But Providence--for wise purposes no doubt!--has seen fit to spare him three years.

"And there he sits, all day long, a-reading the _Illustrious News_."

Now I must stop....

Your loving niece, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO A.E.

_Grenoside._ Advent Sunday, 1881.

* * * * *

On one point I think I have improved in my sketching. I have been long wanting to get a _quick style_ sketching not painting. Because I shall never have the time, or the time and strength to pursue a more finished style with success. Now I have got paper on which I can make no corrections (so it forces me to be "to the point"), and which takes colour softly and nicely. I have to aim at very correct drawing _at once_, and I lay in a good deal both of form and shade with a very soft pencil and then wash colour over; and with the colour I aim at blending tints as I go on, putting one into the other whilst it is wet, instead of washing off, and laying tint over tint, which the paper won't bear. I am doing both figures and landscape, and in the same style. I think the nerve-vigour I get from the fresh air helps me to decision and choice of colours. But I shall bore you with this gallop on my little hobby horse!...

November 30.

... I have sketched up to to-day, but it was cold and sunless, so I did some village visiting. I am known here, by the bye, as "_Miss Gatty as was_"! I generally go about with a tribe of children after me, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin! They are now fairly trained to keeping behind me, and are curiously civil in taking care of my traps, pouring out water for me, and keeping each other in a kind of rough order by rougher adjurations!

"Keep out o' t' _leet_ can't ye?"

"Na then! How's shoo to see through thee?"

"Shoo's gotten t' Dovecot in yon book, and shoo's got little Liddy Kirk--and thy moother wi' her apron over her heead, and Eliza Flowers sitting upo' t' doorstep wi' her sewing--and shoo's got t' woodyard--and Maester D. smooking his pipe--and shoo's gotten _Jack_."

"Nây! Has shoo gotten Jack?"

"Shoo _'as_. And shoo's gotten ould K. sitting up i' t' shed corner chopping wood, and shoo's bound to draw him and Dronfield's lad criss-cross sawing."

"Aye. Shoo did all Greno Wood last week, they tell me."

"Aye. And shoo's done most o' t' village this week. What's shoo bound to do wi' 'em all?"

"_Shoo'll piece 'em all together and mak a big picter of t' whole place._" (These are true bills!)

Mr. S---- brings in some amusing _ana_ of the village on this subject.

A.W., a nice lad training for schoolmaster, was walking to Chapeltown with several _rolls of wall paper_ and a big wall paste-brush, when he was met by "Ould K." (a cynical old beggar, and vainer than any girl, who has been affronted because I put Master D. into my foreground, and not him), who said to him--"Well, lad! I see thou's _going out mapping_, like t' rest on 'em." This evening Mr. S---- tells me his landlord told him that some men who work for a very clever file-cutter here, who is _facile princeps_ at his trade, but _mean_, and keeps "the shop" cold and uncomfortable for his workmen--devised yesterday the happy thought of going to their Gaffer and telling him that I had been sketching down below (true) and was coming up their way, and that I was sure to expect a glint of fire in the shop, which ought to look its best. According to N. he took the bait completely, piled a roaring fire, and as the day wore on kept wandering restlessly out and peering about for me! When they closed for the night he said it was strange I hadn't been, but he reckoned I was sure to be there next day, and he could wish I would "tak him wi' his arm uplifted to strike." (He is a very powerful smith.) I think I _must_ go if the shop is at all picturesque....

Nov. 25, 1881.

* * * * *

Be happy in a small round. But, none the less, all the more does it refresh me to get the wave of all your wider experience to flood my narrow ones--and to enjoy all the _calm_ bits of your language study and the like. And oh, I am _very_ glad about the Musical Society! Though I dare say you'll have some _mauvais quarts d'heure_ with the strings in damp weather!...