[Footnote 5: "The Bee and Narcissus."]
[Footnote 6: Miss Amy Yule. See "Praeterita", Vol. III., Chap. vii.]
* * * * *
NAPLES, _2d May, 1874_.
I heard of your great sorrow[7] from Joan six days ago, and have not
been able to write since. Nothing silences me so much as sorrow, and
for this of yours I have no comfort. I write only that you may know
that I am thinking of you, and would help you if I could. And I write
to-day because your lovely letters and your lovely old age have been
forced into my thoughts often by dreadful contrast during these days
in Italy. You who are so purely and brightly happy in all natural and
simple things, seem now to belong to another and a younger world. And
your letters have been to me like the pure air of Yewdale Crags
breathed among the Pontine Marshes; but you must not think I am
ungrateful for them when I can't answer. You can have no idea how
impossible it is for me to do all the work necessary even for memory
of the things I came here to see; how much escapes me, how much is
done in a broken and weary way. I am the only author on art who does
the work of illustration with his own hand; the only one
therefore--and I am not insolent in saying this--who has learned his
business thoroughly; but after a day's drawing I assure you one cannot
sit down to write unless it be the merest nonsense to please Joanie.
Believe it or not, there is no one of my friends whom I write so
scrupulously to as to you. You may be vexed at this, but indeed I
can't but try to write carefully in answer to all your kind words,
and so sometimes I can't at all. I _must_ tell you, however, to-day,
what I saw in the Pompeian frescoes--the great characteristic of
falling Rome, in her furious desire of pleasure, and brutal
incapability of it. The walls of Pompeii are covered with paintings
meant only to give pleasure, but nothing they represent is beautiful
or delightful, and yesterday, among other calumniated and caricatured
birds, I saw one of my Susie's pets, a peacock; and he had only eleven
eyes in his tail. Fancy the feverish wretchedness of the humanity
which in mere pursuit of pleasure or power had reduced itself to see
no more than eleven eyes in a peacock's tail! What were the Cyclops to
this?
I hope to get to Rome this evening, and to be there settled for some
time, and to have quieter hours for my letters.
[Footnote 7: The death of Miss Margaret Beever.]
* * * * *
ROME, HOTEL DE RUSSIE, _8th May, '74_.
I have your sweet letter about Ulysses, the leaves, and the Robins. I
have been feeling so wearily on this journey, the want of what--when I
had it, I used--how often! to feel a burden--the claim of my mother
for at least a _word_, every day. Happy, poor mother, with two
lines--and I--sometimes--nay--often--thinking it hard to have to stay
five minutes from what I wanted to do--to write them.
I am despising, now, in like senseless way, the privilege of being
able to write to you and of knowing that it will please you to
hear--even that I can't tell you anything! which I cannot, this
morning--but only, it is a little peace and rest to me to write to my
Susie.
* * * * *
ROME, _23d May, 1874_.
A number of business letters and the increasing instinct for work here
as time shortens, have kept me too long from even writing a mere
mamma-note to you; though not without thought of you daily.
I have your last most lovely line about your sister--and giving me
that most touching fact about poor Dr. John Brown, which I am grieved
and yet thankful to know, that I may better still reverence his
unfailing kindness and quick sympathy. I have a quite wonderful letter
from him about you; but I will not tell you what he says, only it is
so _very_, very true, and so very, very pretty, you can't think.
I have written to my bookseller to find for you, and send a complete
edition of "Modern Painters," if findable. If not, I will make my
assistant send you down my own fourth and fifth volumes, which you can
keep till I come for them in the autumn.
There is nothing now in the year but autumn and winter. I really begin
to think there is some terrible change of climate coming upon the
world for its sin, like another deluge. It will have its rainbow, I
suppose, after its manner--promising not to darken the world again,
and then not to drown.
* * * * *
ROME, _24th May, 1874_ (_Whit-Sunday_).
I have to-day, to make the day whiter for me, your lovely letter of
the 15th,[8] telling me your age. I am so glad it is no more; you are
only thirteen years older than I, and much more able to be my sister
than mamma, and I hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think
I _must_ tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said,
or part of it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb
without its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. Of
course my Susie's wise and grave gifts must be told of afterwards.
There is no one I know, or have known, so well able as you are to be
in a degree what my mother was to me. In this chief way (as well as
many other ways) (the puzzlement I have had to force that sentence
into grammar!), that I have had the same certainty of giving you
pleasure by a few words and by any little account of what I am doing.
But then you know I have just got out of the way of doing as I am bid,
and unless you can scold me back into that, you can't give me the
sense of support.
Tell me more about yourself first, and how those years came to be
"lost." I am not sure that they were; though I am very far from
holding the empty theory of compensation; but much of the slighter
pleasure you lost then is evidently still open to you, fresh all the
more from having been for a time withdrawn.
The Roman peasants are very gay to-day, with roses in their hair;
legitimately and honorably decorated, and looking lovely. Oh me, if
they had a few Susies to take human care of them what a glorious
people they would be!
[Footnote 8: _See_ page 99.]
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