Part 5
[Footnote 33: For a present to Dr. Kendall.]
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD, _12th July, 1881_.
How delightful that you have that nice Mrs. Howard to hear you say "The Ode to Beauty," and how nice that you can learn it and enjoy saying it![34] I do not know it myself. I only know that it should be known and said and heard and loved.
I _am_ often near you in thought, but can't get over the lake somehow. There's always somebody to be looked after here, now. I've to rout the gardeners out of the greenhouse, or I should never have a strawberry or a pink, but only nasty gloxinias and glaring fuchsias, and I've been giving lessons to dozens of people and writing charming sermons in the "Bible of Amiens"; but I get so sleepy in the afternoon I can't pull myself over it.
I was looking at your notes on birds yesterday. How sweet they are! But I can't forgive that young blackbird for getting wild again.[35]
[Footnote 34: I learnt the whole of it by heart, and could then say it without a break. I have always loved it, and in return it has helped me through many a long and sleepless night.--S. B.]
[Footnote 35: Pages 101 _et seqq._]
* * * * *
_Last Day of 1881. And the last letter I write on it, with new pen._
I've lunched on _your_ oysters, and am feasting eyes and mind on _your_ birds.
What birds?
Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never before noticed the _sheath_ of his bill going over the front of the lower mandible that he may dig comfortably! But the others! the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and light, and black and tan and gold, and golden sand, and dark tresses, and purple shadows and moors and mists and night and starlight, and woods and wilds and dells and deeps, and every mystery of heaven and its finger work, is in those little birds' backs and wings. I am so grateful. All love and joy to you, and wings to fly with and birds' hearts to comfort, and mine, be to you in the coming year.
* * * * *
_Easter Day_, 1882.
I have had a happy Easter morning, entirely bright in its sun and clear in sky; and with renewed strength enough to begin again the piece of St. Benedict's life where I broke off, to lose these four weeks in London,--weeks not wholly lost neither, for I have learned more and more of what I should have known without lessoning; but I _have_ learnt it, from these repeated dreams and fantasies, that we walk in a vain shadow and disquiet ourselves in vain. So I am for the present, everybody says, quite good, and give as little trouble as possible; but people _will_ take it, you know, sometimes, even when I don't give it, and there's a great fuss about me yet. But _you_ must not be anxious any more, Susie, for really there is no more occasion at one time than another. All the doctors say I needn't be ill unless I like, and I don't mean to like any more; and as far as chances of ordinary danger, I think one runs more risks in a single railway journey, than in the sicknesses of a whole year.
* * * * *
HERNE HILL, _8th June_ (1882).
You write as well as ever, and the eyes must surely be better, and it was a joyful amazement to me to hear that Mary was able to read and could enjoy my child's botany. You always have things before other people; will you please send me some rosemary and lavender as soon as any are out? I am busy on the Labiatae, and a good deal bothered. Also St. Benedict, whom I shall get done with long before I've made out the nettles he rolled in.
I'm sure I ought to roll myself in nettles, burdocks, and blackthorn, for here in London I can't really think now of anything but flirting, and I'm only much the worse for it afterwards.
And I'm generally wicked and weary, like the people who ought to be put to rest. But you'd miss me, and so would Joanie; so I suppose I shall be let stay a little while longer.
* * * * *
SALLANCHES, SAVOY, _13th September_ (1882).
I saw Mont Blanc again to-day, unseen since 1877; and was very thankful. It is a sight that always redeems me to what I am capable of at my poor little best, and to what loves and memories are most precious to me. So I write to _you_, one of the few true loves left. The snow has fallen fresh on the hills, and it makes me feel that I must soon be seeking shelter at Brantwood and the Thwaite.
* * * * *
GENOA, _Sunday, 24th September_ (1882).
I got your delightful note yesterday at Turin, and it made me wish to run back through the tunnel directly instead of coming on here. But I had a wonderful day, the Alps clear all the morning all round Italy--two hundred miles of them; and then in the afternoon blue waves of the Gulf of Genoa breaking like blue clouds, thunderclouds, under groves of olive and palm. But I wished they were my sparkling waves of Coniston instead, when I read your letter again.
What a gay Susie, receiving all the world, like a Queen Susan (how odd one has never heard of a Queen Susan!), only you _are_ so naughty, and you never do tell me of any of those nice girls when they're _coming_, but only when they're gone, and I never shall get glimpse of them as long as I live.
But you know you really represent the entire Ruskin school of the Lake Country, and I think these _levees_ of yours must be very amusing and enchanting; but it's very dear and good of you to let the people come and enjoy themselves, and how really well and strong you must be to be able for it.
I am very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things.[36] I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study Emerson and aspire to Buddhism.
I'm trying to put my own poor little fragmentary Ism into a rather more connected form of imagery. I've never quite set myself up enough to impress _some_ people; and I've written so much that I can't quite make out what I am myself, nor what it all comes to.
[Footnote 36: Florence, Alice, and May Bennett. Florence is gone. Alice and May still sometimes at Coniston, D.G. (March 1887).--J. R.
"One Companion, ours no more, sends you I doubt not Christmas greeting from her Home,--Florence Bennett. Of her help to us during her pure brief life, and afterwards, by her father's fulfillment of her last wishes, you shall hear at another time."--_Fors Clavigera_, vol. viii.]
* * * * *
TO MISS BEEVER.
_10th January, 1883._
I cannot tell you how grateful and glad I am, to have your lovely note and to know that the Bewick gave you pleasure, and that you are so entirely well now, as to enjoy anything requiring so much energy and attention to this degree. For indeed I can scarcely now take pleasure myself in things that give me the least trouble to look at, but I know that the pretty book and its chosen wood-cuts ought to be sent to you, first of all my friends (I have not yet thought of sending it to any one else), and I am quite put in heart after a very despondent yesterday, passed inanely, in thinking of what I _couldn't_ do, by feeling what you _can_, and hoping to share the happy Christmas time with you and Susie in future years. Will you please tell my dear Susie I'm going to bring over a drawing to show! (so thankful that I am still able to draw after these strange and terrible illnesses) this afternoon. I am in hopes it may clear, but dark or bright I'm coming, about half past three, and am ever your and her most affectionate and faithful servant.
* * * * *
_24th September, 1884._
I wandered literally "up and down" your mountain garden--(how beautifully the native rocks slope to its paths in the sweet evening light, Susiesque light!)--with great happiness and admiration, as I went home, and I came indeed upon what I conceived to be--discovered in the course of recent excavations--two deeply interesting thrones of the ancient Abbots of Furness, typifying their humility in that the seats thereof were only level with the ground between two clusters of the earth; contemplating cyclamen, and their severity of penance, in the points of stone prepared for the mortification of their backs; but truly, Susie's seat of repose and meditation I was unable as yet to discern, but propose to myself further investigation of that apple-perfumed paradise, and am ever your devoted and enchanted
[Transcriber's Note: no ending to the sentence here.]
* * * * *
OXFORD, _1st December_ (1884).
I gave my fourteenth, and last for this year, lecture this afternoon with vigor and effect, and am safe and well (D.G.), after such a spell of work as I never did before. I have been thrown a week out in all my plans, by having to write two new Lectures, instead of those the University was frightened at. The scientists slink out of my way now, as if I was a mad dog, for I let them have it hot and heavy whenever I've a chance at them.
But as I said, I'm a week late, and though I start for the North this day week, I can't get home till this day fortnight at soonest, but I hope not later than to-morrow fortnight. Very thankful I shall be to find myself again at the little room door.
Fancy Mary Gladstone forgiving me even that second _naughtiness_![37] She's going to let me come to see her this week, and to play to me, which is a great comfort.
[Footnote 37: The first attack on Mr. Gladstone is in "Fors", September, 1875, the apology and withdrawal in "Fors", February, 1878. The second "naughtiness" will be found in "Arrows of the Chace", Vol. II., and a final attack is made in an interview in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, 21st April, 1884. The subject is summarized in an article in the _Daily News_ of 4th July, 1898.]
* * * * *
ST. SUSIE, _27th November, 1885_.
Behold Athena and Apollo both come to bless you on your birthday, and all the buds of the year to come, rejoice with you, and your poor cat[38] is able to purr again, and is extremely comfortable and even cheerful "to-day." And we will make more and more of all the days, won't we, and we will burn our candle at both beginnings instead of both ends, every day beginning two worlds--the old one to be lived over again, the new to learn our golden letters in. Not that I mean to write books in that world. I hope to be set to do something, there; and what lovely "receptions" you will have in your little heavenly Thwaite, and celestial teas! And you won't spoil the cream with hot water, will you, any more?
The whole village is enjoying itself, I hear, and the widows and orphans to be much the better for it, and altogether, you and I have a jolly time of it, haven't we?
[Footnote 38: J. R.]
* * * * *
_20th February, 1886._
I haven't had anything nice to send you this ever so long, but here's a little bird's nest of native silver which you could almost live in as comfortably as a tit. It will stand nicely on your table without upsetting, and is so comfortable to hold, and altogether I'm pleased to have got it for you.
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD, _1st March, 1886_.
Yes, I knew you would like that silver shrine! and it _is_ an extremely rare and perfect specimen. But you need not be afraid in handling it; if the little bit of spar does come off it, or out of it, no matter.
But of course nobody else should touch it, till you give them leave, and show them how.
I am sorry for poor Miss Brown, and for your not having known the Doctor. He should have come here when I told him. I believe he would have been alive yet, and I never should have been ill.
* * * * *
I believe you know more Latin than I do, and can certainly make more delightful use of it.
Your mornings' ministry to the birds must be remembered for you by the angels who paint their feathers. They will all, one day, be birds of Paradise, and say, when the adverse angel accuses you of being naughty to _some_ people, "But we were hungry and she gave us corn, and took care that nobody else ate it."
I am indeed thankful you are better. But you must please tell me what the thing was I said which gave you so much pain. Do you recollect also what the little bit in "Proserpina" was that said so much to you? Were you not thinking of "Fors"?
* * * * *
I am very thankful for all your dear letters always--greatly delighted above all with the squirrel one, and Chaucer. Didn't he love squirrels![39] and don't I wish I was a squirrel in Susie's pear trees, instead of a hobbling disconsolate old man, with no teeth to bite, much less crack, anything, and particularly forbidden to eat nuts!
[Footnote 39:
"And many squireles, that sett Ful high upon the trees and ete And in his maner made festys." "The Dethe of Blaunche," 430.]
* * * * *
Your precious letter, showing me you are a little better, came this morning, with the exquisite feathers, one, darker and lovelier than any I have seen, but please, I still want one not in the least flattened; all these have lost just the least bit of their shell-like bending. You can so easily devise a little padding to keep two strong cards or bits of wood separate for one or two to lie happily in. I don't mind giving you this tease, for the throat will be better the less you remember it. But for all of us, a dark sky is assuredly a poisonous and depressing power, which neither surgery nor medicine can resist. The difference to me between nature as she is now, and as she was ten years ago, is as great as between Lapland and Italy, and the total loss of comfort in morning and evening sky, the most difficult to resist of all spiritual hostility.
* * * * *
_22d May, 1886._
Of course the little pyramid in crystal is a present. With that enjoyment of Pinkerton,[40] you will have quite a new indoors interest, whatever the rain may say.
How very lucky you asked me what basalt was! How much has come out of it (written in falling asleep)! I've been out all the morning and am _so_ sleepy.
But I've written a nice little bit of "Praeterita" before I went out, trying to describe the Rhone at Geneva. I think Susie will like it, if nobody else.
That "not enjoying the beauty of things" goes ever so much deeper than mere blindness. It is a form of antagonism, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of demonology in otherwise good people, or shall we say in "good people"? You know _we_ are not good at all, are we now?
I don't think you've got any green in your mica. I've sent you a bit inclosed with some jealous spots in.
[Footnote 40: Pinkerton on "Petralogy."]
* * * * *
_26th November, 1886._
_Do_ you know how to make sugar candy? In my present abject state the only way of amusing myself I can hit on is setting the girls of the school to garden and cook! By way of beginning in cooking I offered to pay for any quantity of wasted sugar if they could produce me a crystal or two of sugar candy. (On the way to Twelfth cakes, you know, and sugar animals. One of Francesca's friends made her a life-size Easter lamb in sugar.) The first try this morning was brought me in a state of sticky jelly.
And after sending me a recipe for candy, would you please ask Harry to look at the school garden? I'm going to get the _boys_ to keep that in order; but if Harry would look at it and order some mine gravel down for the walks, and, with Mr. Brocklebank's authority (to whom I have spoken already), direct any of the boys who are willing to form a corps of little gardeners, and under Harry's orders make the best that can be made of that neglected bit of earth, I think you and I should enjoy hearing of it.
I told a Cambridge man yesterday that he had been clever enough to put into a shilling pamphlet all the mistakes of his generation.
* * * * *
_27th November, 1886._
For once, I have a birthday stone for you, a little worth your having, and a little gladsome to me in the giving. It is blue like the air that you were born into, and always live in. It is as deep as gentians, and has their gleams of green in it, and it is precious all through within and without, as Susie herself is. Many and many returns of all the birthdays that have gone away, and crowds yet of those that never were here before.
* * * * *
MISCELLANEOUS.
* * * * *
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD, _24th December, 1877_.
This is just for Christmas love, and I'm quite well and up to work this morning, and the first thing I opened here was St. Ursula from Mr. Gould--and I hope the darling will be with me and you and him, and all good lovers and laborers everywhere. Love to Mary. Also to the servants. Also to the birds. If any mice are about--also to them,--and in a hush-a-bye to the Squirrels--wherever they are.
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
This reminiscence of birds--entirely delightful--puts me on a thought of better work that you can do for me than even the Shakespeare notes. Each day, when you are in spirits,--never as an effort, sit down and tell me--as in this morning's note--whatever you remember about birds--going back to very childhood--and just chatting on, about all you have seen of them and done for them.
You will make a little book as delightful--nay, much more delightful than White of Selborne--and you will feel a satisfaction in the experience of your real knowledge--power of observation--and loving sentiment, in a way to make them even more exemplary and helpful.
Now don't say you can't--but begin directly to-morrow morning.
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD, 1880.
What am I about all this while?
Well--I wake every morning at four--can't help it--to see the morning light--Perhaps I go to sleep again--but never for long--then I do really very good work in the mornings--but by the afternoon I'm quite beaten and can do nothing but lie about in the wood.
However--the Prosody and Serpent lectures are just finishing off and then I shall come to see you in the morning! while I am awake.
I went out before breakfast this morning, half asleep--and saw what I thought was a red breasted woodpecker as big as a pigeon! Presently it came down on the lawn and I made up my mind it was only a robin about the size of a small partridge!
Can it have been a cross-bill?
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
I've had this cold five days now and it's worse than ever, and yet I feel quite well in other respects, and the glorious sunshine is a great joy to me. Also Prince Leopold's words,[41] seen to-day. Very beautiful in themselves--and--I say it solemnly--just, more than ever I read before of friend's sayings. It is strange--I had no conception he saw so far into things or into _me_.
It is the greatest help that has ever been given me (in the view the public will take of it).
[Footnote 41: In a speech delivered at the Mansion House, February 19, 1870, in support of the extension of university teaching. See Cook's "Studies in Ruskin," p. 45.]
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
A heap half a foot high of unanswered letters pouring and tottering across the table must pour and fall as they will, while I just say how thankful I am for yours always, and how, to-day, I must leave letters, books and all to work on that lovely Trientalis which Mary sent me. It has a peculiar set of trine leaves which Linnaeus noticed and named it for--modern botanists have no notion of it.
I think both Mary and you will be deeply interested in seeing it worked out. I've been at it since seven o'clock.
Yes, if I had known you were in the garden! Alas--one never can know what one wants to--I was all that afternoon seeing the blacksmith make a chopper!
* * * * *
BROADLANDS, ROMSEY, _15th October_ (1875).
I was very thankful for your letter this morning--having heard you were unwell and being a little despondent myself--more than of late--an Italian nobleman is here who cares for nothing but shooting, and everybody thinks it perfectly right!
It is a great joy to me that you find so much in the "Stones of Venice"--I hope that book is worth the time it took me to write it, every year of youth seems to me in looking back, now so precious.
How very strange I should give you _quietness_, myself being always disquieted in heart--a Ghost of poor Samuel--helpless--in sight of ruining Israel.
To think of the difference between these two scenes,--Samuel at his feast sending the prepared portion to the expected Saul.
And Samuel the Ghost--with his message.
Well--this is a cheering letter to send my poor Susie. It's all that Italian Duke.
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
If ever a Gentiana Verna demeans itself to you at Brantwood--I'll disown it and be dreadfully ashamed for it! The other little things if they'll condescend to come shall be thanked and honored with my best. Only please now _don't_ send me more asparagus!
I feel so piggish and rabbitish in eating you out of all your vegetables, that I'm afraid to speak lest it should turn out grunting, and to shake my head for fear of feeling flappy at the ears.
But--please--Is the bread as brown as it used to be? I think you're cosseting me up altogether and I don't like the white bread so well!
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
What _can_ you mean about your ignorance--or my astonishment at it? Indeed you are a naughty little Susie to think such things. I never come to the Thwaite but you and your sister tell me all kinds of things I didn't know, and am so glad to know.
I send a book of architect's drawings of Pisa, which I think will interest you--only you must understand that the miserable Frenchman who did it, could not see the expression of face in any of the old sculptures, nor draw anything but hard mechanical outlines--and the charm of all these buildings is this almost _natural_ grace of free line and color.
The little tiny sketch of mine, smallest in the sheet of 4 (the other sheet only sent to keep its face from rubbing) will show you what the things really are like--the whole front of the dome, plate XI. (the wretch can't even have his numbers made legibly) is of arches of this sweet variable color.
Please can your sister or you plant a grain or grains of corn for me, and watch them into various stages of germination.[42] I want to study the mode of root and blade development. And I am sure you two will know best how to show it me.
[Footnote 42: "Proserpina,"]
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD, _30th December, 1883_.
I heard with extreme sorrow yesterday of your mischance, and with the greater, that I felt the discomfort and alarm of it would be increased to you--in their depressing power by a sense of unkindness to you on my part in not having been to see you--nor even read the letter which would have warned me of your accident. But you must remember that Christmas is to me a most oppressive and harmful time--the friends of the last thirty years of life all trying to give what they cannot give--of pleasure, or receive what--from me, they can no more receive--the younger ones especially thinking they can amuse me by telling me of their happy times--which I am so mean as to envy and am doubly distressed by the sense of my meanness in doing so.