Chapter 4

I am arranging the caryophylls, which I mass broadly into "Clarissa," the true jagged-leaved and clove-scented ones; "Lychnis," those whose leaves are essentially in two lobes; "Arenaria," which I leave untouched; and "Mica," a new name of my own for the pearlworts of which the French name is to be Miette, and the representative type (now Sagina procumbens) is to be in--

_Latin_--Mica amica. _French_--Miette l'amie. _English_--Pet pearlwort.

Then the next to this is to be--

_Latin_--Mica millegrana. _French_--Miette aux mille perles. _English_--Thousand pearls.

Now this on the whole I consider the prettiest of the group, and so look for a plate of it which I can copy. Hunting all through my botanical books, I find the best of all is Baxter's Oxford one, and determine at once to engrave that. When turning the page of his text I find: "The specimen of this curious and interesting little plant from which the accompanying drawing was made was communicated to me by Miss Susan Beever. To the kindness of this young lady, and that of her sister, Miss Mary Beever, I am indebted for the four plants figured in this number."

I have copied lest you should have trouble in looking for the book, but now, you darling Susie, please tell me whether I may not separate these lovely pearlworts wholly from the spergulas,--by the pearlworts having only two leaves like real pinks at the joints, and the spergulas, a _cluster_; and tell me how the spergulas scatter their seeds, I can't find any account of it.

* * * * *

I would fain have come to see that St. Bruno lily; but if I don't come to see Susie and you, be sure I am able to come to see nothing. At present I am very deeply involved in the classification of the minerals in the Sheffield Museum, important as the first practical arrangement ever yet attempted for popular teaching, and this with my other work makes me fit for nothing in the afternoon but wood-chopping. But I will call to-day on Dr. Brown's friends.

I hope you will not be too much shocked with the audacities of the new number[26] of "Proserpina," or with its ignorances. I am going during my wood-chopping really to ascertain in my own way what simple persons ought to know about tree growth, and give it clearly in the next number. I meant to do the whole book very differently, but can only now give the fragmentary pieces as they chance to come, or it would never be done at all.

You must know before anybody else how the exogens are to be completely divided. I keep the four great useful groups, mallow, geranium, mint, and wallflower, under the head of domestic orders, that their sweet service and companionship with us may be understood; then the water-lily and the heath, both four foils, are to be studied in their solitudes (I shall throw all that are not four foils out of the Ericaceae); then finally there are to be seven orders of the dark proserpine, headed by the draconids (snapdragons), and including the anemones, hellebores, ivies, and forget-me-nots.

What plants I cannot get ranged under these 12+4+2+7==25 in all, orders, I shall give broken notices of, as I have time, leaving my pupils to arrange them as they like. I can't do it all.

The whole household was out after breakfast to-day to the top of the moor to plant cranberries; and we squeezed and splashed and spluttered in the boggiest places the lovely sunshine had left, till we found places squashy and squeezy enough to please the most particular and coolest of cranberry minds; and then each of us choosing a little special bed of bog, the tufts were deeply put in with every manner of tacit benediction, such as might befit a bog and a berry, and many an expressed thanksgiving to Susie and to the kind sender of the luxuriant plants. I have never had gift from you, dear Susie, more truly interesting and gladdening to me, and many a day I shall climb the moor to see the fate of the plants and look across to the Thwaite. I've been out most of the forenoon and am too sleepy to shape letters, but will try and get a word of thanks to the far finder of the dainty things to-morrow.

What loveliness everywhere in a duckling sort of state just now.

[Footnote 26: Part 5.]

* * * * *

BRANTWOOD.

I hope you did not get a chill in the garden. The weather is a little wrong again, but I am thankful for last night's sunset.

You know our English Bible is only of James 1st time--Stalk is a Saxon word, and gets into English I fancy as early as the Plantagenets--but I have not hunted it down.--I'm just in the same mess with "pith," but I'm finding out a great deal about the thing though not the word, for next "Deucalion," in chopping my wood.

You know, "Funckia" won't last long. I am certain I shall have strength enough to carry my system of nomenclature at least as far, as to exclude people's individual names.

I won't even have a "Susia"--stay--that's Christian--yes, I will have a Susia. But not a "Beeveria," though----

* * * * *

TO MISS BEEVER.

_20th January, 1879._

You will not doubt the extreme sorrow with which I have heard of all that was ordered to be, of terrible, in your peaceful and happy household. Without for an instant supposing, but, on the contrary, utterly refusing to admit, that such calamities[27] may be used to point a moral (all useful morality having every point that God meant it to have, perfectly sharp and bright without any burnishing of _ours_), still less to adorn a tale (the tales of modern days depending far too much upon Scythian decoration with Death's heads), I, yet, if I had been Mr. Chapman, would have pointed out that all concealments, even of trivial matters, on the part of young servants from kind mistresses, are dangerous no less than unkind and ungenerous, and that a great deal of preaching respecting the evil nature of man and the anger of God might be spared, if children and servants were only taught, as a religious principle, to tell their mothers and mistresses, when they go out, exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. I think both you and Miss Susan ought to use every possible means of changing, or at least checking, the current of such thoughts in your minds; and I am in hopes that you may have a little pleasure in examining the plates in the volume of Sibthorpe's "F. Graeca" which I send to-day, in comparison with those of "F. Danica." The vulgarity and lifelessness of Sibthorpe's plates are the more striking because in mere execution they are the more elaborate of the two; the chief point in the "F. Danica" being the lovely artistic skill. The drawings for Sibthorpe, by a young German, were as exquisite as the Dane's, but the English engraver and colorist spoiled all.

I will send you, if you like them, the other volumes in succession. I find immense interest in comparing the Greek and Danish forms or conditions of the same English flower.

I send the second volume, in which the Rufias are lovely, and scarcely come under my above condemnation. The _first_ is nearly all of grass.

[Footnote 27: One of our younger servants had gone on to the frozen lake; the ice gave way, and she was drowned.--S. B.]

* * * * *

BRANTWOOD, _4th February_ (1879).

You know I'm getting my Oxford minerals gradually to Brantwood, and whenever a box comes, I think whether there are any that I don't want myself, which might yet have leave to live on Susie's table. And to-day I've found a very soft purple agate, that looks as if it were nearly melted away with pity for birds and flies, which is like Susie; and another piece of hard wooden agate with only a little ragged sky of blue here and there, which is like me; and a group of crystals with grass of Epidote inside, which is like what my own little cascade has been all the winter by the garden side; and so I've had them all packed up, and I hope you will let them live at the Thwaite.

Then here are some more bits, if you will be a child. Here's a green piece, long, of the stone they cut those green weedy brooches out of, and a nice mouse-colored natural agate, and a great black and white one, stained with sulphuric acid, black but very fine always, and interesting in its lines.

Oh dear, the cold; but it's worth _any_ cold to have that delicious Robin dialogue. Please write some more of it; you hear all they say, I'm sure.

I cannot tell you how delighted I am with your lovely gift to Joanie. The perfection of the stone, its exquisite color, and superb weight, and flawless clearness, and the delicate cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of the Lake, make it altogether the most perfect mineralogical and heraldic jewel that Joanie could be bedecked with, and it is as if Susie had given her a piece of Coniston Water itself.

And the setting is delicious, and positively must not be altered. I shall come on Sunday to thank you myself for it. Meantime I'm working hard at the Psalter, which I am almost sure Susie will like.

* * * * *

BRANTWOOD.

I am so very glad you like Sir Philip so much.

I've sent for, and hope to get him for you. He was shot before he had done half his Psalter--His sister finished it, but very meanly in comparison, you can tell the two hands on the harp at a mile off.

The photograph--please say--like all photos whatsoever, is only nature dirtied and undistanced.--If that is all one wants in trees,--they might be dead all the year round.

* * * * *

_25th May_ (1879).

This is a most wonderful stone that Dr. Kendall has found--at least to _me_. I have never seen anything quite like it, the arborescent forms of the central thread of iron being hardly ever assumed by an ore of so much metallic luster. I think it would be very desirable to cut it, so as to get a perfectly smooth surface to show the arborescent forms; if Dr. Kendall would like to have it done, I can easily send it up to London with my own next parcel.

I want very much to know exactly where it was found; might I come and ask about it on Dr. Kendall's next visit to you? I could be there waiting for him any day.

What lovely pictures you would have made in the old butterfly times, of opal and felspar! What lost creatures we all are, we nice ones! The Alps and clouds that _I_ could have done, if I had been shown how.

* * * * *

_27th June_ (1879).

Everybody's gone! and I have all the new potatoes, and all the asparagus, and all the oranges and everything, and my Susie too, all to myself.

I wrote in my diary this morning that really on the whole I never felt better in my life. Mouth, eyes, head, feet, and fingers all fairly in trim; older than they were, yes, but if the head and heart grow wiser, they won't want feet or fingers some day.

And I'll come to be cheered and scolded myself the moment I've got things a little to rights here. I think imps get into the shelves and drawers, if they're kept long locked, and must be caught like mice. The boys have been very good, and left everything untouched; but the imps; and to hear people say there aren't any! How happy you and I should always be if it weren't for them!

How gay you were and how you cheered me up after the dark lake.

Please say "John Inglesant" is harder than real history and of no mortal use. I couldn't read four pages of it. Clever, of course.

* * * * *

HERNE HILL, _14th August, 1880_.

I've _just_ finished my Scott paper:[28] but it has retouchings and notings yet to do. I couldn't write a word before; haven't so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at chess to Macdonald, for, you know, to keep a chess player waiting for a move is like keeping St. Lawrence unturned.

[Footnote 28: "Fiction Fair and Foul", No. 3.]

* * * * *

_21st August, 1880._

I'm leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Restante, Abbeville.

I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn't much time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all the time. And I gave the hippopotamus _whole_ buns, and he was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to him six yards off; never missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop up again.

And I lunched with Cardinal Manning, and he gave me _such_ a plum pie. I never tasted a Protestant pie to touch it.

* * * * *

Now you're just wrong about my darling Cardinal. See what it is to be jealous! He gave me lovely soup, roast beef, hare and currant jelly, puff pastry like Papal pretensions--you had but to breathe on it and it was nowhere--raisins and almonds, and those lovely preserved cherries like kisses kept in amber. And told me delicious stories all through lunch. _There_!

And we really do see the sun here! And last night the sky was all a spangle and delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them and spikiness softened off by a young darling of a moon.

* * * * *

AMIENS, _29th August, 1880_.

You have been made happy doubtless with us by the news from Herne Hill. I've only a telegram yet though, but write at once to congratulate you on your little goddaughter.

Also to say that I am very well, and sadly longing for Brantwood; but that I am glad to see some vestige of beloved things here, once more.

We have glorious weather, and I am getting perfect rest most of the day--mere saunter in the sunny air, taking all the good I can of it. To-morrow we get (D.V.) to Beauvais, where perhaps I may find a letter from Susie; in any case you may write to Hotel Meurice, Paris.

The oleanders are coming out and geraniums in all cottage windows, and golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all the fields.

* * * * *

BEAUVAIS, _3d September, 1880_.

We are having the most perfect weather I ever saw in France, much less anywhere else, and I'm taking a thorough rest, writing scarcely anything and sauntering about old town streets all day.

I made a little sketch of the lake from above the Waterhead which goes everywhere with me, and it is so curious when the wind blows the leaf open when I am sketching here at Beauvais, where all is so differently delightful, as if we were on the other side of the world.

I think I shall be able to write some passages about architecture yet, which Susie will like. I hear of countless qualities being discovered in the new little Susie! And all things will be happy for me if you send me a line to Hotel Meurice saying _you_ are happy too.

* * * * *

PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).

I have all your letters, and rejoice in them; though it is a little sadder for you looking at empty Brantwood, than for me to fancy the bright full Thwaite, and then it's a great shame that I've everything to amuse me, and lovely Louvres and shops and cathedrals and coquettes and pictures and plays and prettinesses of every color and quality, and you've only your old, old hills and quiet lake. Very thankful I shall be to get back to them, though.

We have finished our Paris this afternoon, and hope to leave for Chartres on Monday.

* * * * *

HOTEL DE MEURICE, PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).

Is it such pain to you when people say what they ought not to say about _me_? But when do they say what they ought to say about anything? Nearly everything I have ever done or said is as much above the present level of public understanding as the Old Man is above the Waterhead.

We have had the most marvelous weather thus far, and have seen Paris better than ever I've seen it yet,--and to-day at the Louvre we saw the Casette of St. Louis, the Coffre of Anne of Austria, the porphyry vase, made into an eagle, of an old Abbe Segur, or some such name. All these you can see also, you know, in those lovely photographs of Miss Rigbye's, if you can only make out in this vile writing of mine what I mean.

But it is so hot. I can scarcely sit up or hold the pen, but tumble back into the chair every half minute and unbutton another button of waistcoat, and gasp a little, and nod a little, and wink a little, and sprinkle some eau de Cologne a little, and try a little to write a little, and forget what I had to say, and where I was, and whether it's Susie or Joan I'm writing to; and then I see some letters I've never opened that came by this morning's post, and think I'd better open them perhaps; and here I find in one of them a delightful account of the quarrel that goes on in this weather between the nicest elephant in the Zoo' and his keeper, because he won't come out of his bath. I saw them at it myself, when I was in London, and saw the elephant take up a stone and throw it hard against a door which the keeper was behind,--but my friend writes, "I _must_ believe from what I saw that the elephant knew he would injure the man with the stones, for he threw them hard to the _side_ of him, and then stood his ground; when, however, he threw water and wetted the man, he plunged into the bath to avoid the whip; not fearing punishment when he merely showed what he could do and did not."

The throwing the stone hard at the door when the keeper was on the other side of it, must have been great fun for him!

I am so sorry to have crushed this inclosed scrawl. It has been carried about in my pocket to be finished, and I see there's no room for the least bit of love at the bottom. So here's a leaf full from the Bois de Boulogne, which is very lovely; and we drive about by night or day, as if all the sky were only the roof of a sapphire palace set with warm stars.

* * * * *

CHARTRES, _8th September_ (1880). (_Hotel du Grande Monarque._)

I suppose _I'm_ the grand Monarque! I don't know of any other going just now, but I don't feel quite the right thing without a wig. Anyhow, I'm having everything my own way just now,--weather, dinner, news from Joanie and news from Susie, only I don't like her to be so very, very sad, though it _is_ nice to be missed so tenderly. But I do hope you will like to think of my getting some joy in old ways again, and once more exploring old streets and finding forgotten churches.

The sunshine is life and health to me, and I am gaining knowledge faster than ever I could when I was young.

This is just to say where I am, and that you might know where to write.

The cathedral here is the grandest in France, and I stay a week at least.

* * * * *

CHARTRES, _13th September_ (1880)

I must be back in England by the 1st October, and by the 10th shall be myself ready to start for Brantwood, but may perhaps stay, if Joanie is not ready, till she can come too. Anyway, I trust very earnestly to be safe in the shelter of my own woodside by the end of October. I wonder what you will say of my account of the Five Lovers of Nature[29] and seclusion in the last _Nineteenth Century_?

I am a little ashamed to find that in spite of my sublimely savage temperament, I take a good deal more pleasure in Paris than of old, and am even going back there on Friday for three more days.

We find the people here very amiable, and the French old character unchanged. The perfect cleanliness and unruffledness of white cap, is always a marvel, and the market groups exquisite, but our enjoyment of the fair is subdued by pity for a dutiful dog, who turns a large wheel (by walking up it inside) the whole afternoon, producing awful sounds out of a huge grinding organ, of which his wheel and he are the unfortunate instruments. Him we love, his wheel we hate! and in general all French musical instruments. I have become quite sure of one thing on this journey, that the French of to-day have no sense of harmony, but only of more or less lively tune, and even, for a time, will be content with any kind of clash or din produced in time.

The Cathedral service is, however, still impressive.

[Footnote 29: Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and John Ruskin.]

* * * * *

PARIS, _18th September_, 1880.

What a _very_ sad little letter, and how very naughty of my little Susie to be sad because there are still six weeks to the end of October! How thankful should we both be to have six weeks still before us of the blessed bright autumn days, with their quiet mildnesses in the midst of northern winds; and that these six weeks are of the year 1880--instead of '81 or '82--and that we both can read, and think, and see flowers and skies, and be happy in making each other happy. _What_ a naughty little Susie, to want to throw any of her six weeks away!

I've just sealed in its envelope for post the most important Fors I have yet written, addressed to the Trades Unions,[30] and their committees are to have as many copies as they like free, for distribution, free (dainty packets of Dynamite). I suspect I shall get into hot water with _some_ people for it. Also I've been afraid myself, to set it all down, for once! But down it is, and out it shall come! and there's a nice new bit of article for the _Nineteenth Century_, besides anyhow I keep you in reading, Susie--do you know it's a very bad compliment to me that you find time pass so slowly!

I wonder why you gave me that little lecture about being "a city on a hill." I don't want to be anything of the sort, and I'm going to-night to see the Fille du Tambour-Major at the Folies Dramatiques.

[Footnote 30: "Fors," vol. viii., Letter 5.]

* * * * *

BRANTWOOD, _16th February, 1881_.

I've much to tell you "to-day"[31] of answer to those prayers you prayed for me. But you must be told it by our good angels, for your eyes must not be worn. God willing, you shall see men as trees walking in the garden of God, on this pretty Coniston earth of ours. Don't be afraid, and please be happy, for I can't be, if you are not. Love to Mary, to Miss Rigbye, and my own St. Ursula,[32] and mind you give the messages _to all three, heartily_.

[Footnote 31: The motto on Mr. Ruskin's seal. See "Praeterita", vol. ii.,]

[Footnote 32: Photograph of Carpaccio's.]

* * * * *

BRANTWOOD, _22d April, 1881_.

I'm not able to scratch or fight to-day, or I wouldn't let you cover me up with this heap of gold; but I've got a rheumatic creak in my neck, which makes me physically stiff and morally supple and unprincipled, so I've put two pounds sixteen in my own "till," where it just fills up some lowering of the tide lately by German bands and the like, and I've put ten pounds aside for Sheffield Museum, now in instant mendicity, and I've put ten pounds aside till you and I can have a talk and you be made reasonable, after being scolded and scratched, after which, on your promise to keep to our old bargain and enjoy spending your little "Frondes" income, I'll be your lovingest again. And for the two pounds ten, and the ten, I am really most heartily grateful, meaning as they do so much that is delightful for both of us in the good done by this work of yours.

I send you Spenser; perhaps you had better begin with the Hymn to Beauty, page 39, and then go on to the Tears; but you'll see how you like it. It's better than Longfellow; see line 52--

"The house of blessed gods which men call skye."

Now I'm going to look out Dr. Kendall's crystal. It _must_ be crystal,[33] for having brought back the light to your eyes.