BOLTON ABBEY,
_24th January, 1875_.
The black rain, much as I growled at it, has let me see Wharfe in
flood; and I would have borne many days in prison to see that.
No one need go to the Alps to see wild water. Seldom unless in the
Rhine or Rhone themselves at their rapids, have I seen anything much
grander. An Alpine stream, besides, nearly always has its bed full of
loose stones, and becomes a series of humps and dumps of water
wherever it is shallow; while the Wharfe swept round its curves of
shore like a black Damascus saber, coiled into eddies of steel. At the
Strid, it had risen eight feet vertical since yesterday, sheeting the
flat rocks with foam from side to side, while the treacherous
mid-channel was filled with a succession of boiling domes of water,
charged through and through with churning white, and rolling out into
the broader stream, each like a vast sea wave bursting on a beach.
There is something in the soft and comparatively unbroken slopes of
these Yorkshire shales which must give the water a peculiar sweeping
power, for I have seen Tay and Tummel and Ness, and many a big stream
besides, savage enough, but I don't remember anything so grim as this.
I came home to quiet tea and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped
half my cream jugful (and yet I had plenty) sitting on my
shoulder,--and Life of Sir Walter Scott. I was reading his great
Scottish history tour, when he was twenty-three, and got his materials
for everything nearly, but especially for Waverley, though not used
till long afterwards.
Do you recollect Gibbie Gellatly? I was thinking over that question of
yours, "What did I think?"[13] But, my dear Susie, you might as well
ask Gibbie Gellatly what _he_ thought. What does it matter what any
of us think? We are but simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very
inconsistent and wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the
ashes, perhaps--but for the next world! Why don't you ask your
squirrel what _he_ thinks too? The great point--the one for all of
us--is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to crack our nuts
innocently through winter and rough weather.
I shall post this to-morrow as I pass through Skipton or any
post-worthy place on my way to Wakefield. Write to Warwick. Oh me,
what places England had, when she was herself! Now, rail stations
mostly. But I never can make out how Warwick Castle got built by that
dull bit of river.
[Footnote 13: Of the things that shall be, hereafter.--J. R.]
* * * * *
"FRONDES."
WAKEFIELD, _25th January, 1875_.
Here's our book in form at last, and it seems to me just a nice size,
and on the whole very taking. I've put a touch or two more to the
preface, and I'm sadly afraid there's a naughty note somewhere. I hope
you won't find it, and that you will like the order the things are put
in.
Such ill roads as we came over to-day, I never thought to see in
England.
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CASTLETON, _26th January, 1875_.
Here I have your long dear letter. I am very thankful I can be so much
to you. Of all the people I have yet known, you are the only one I can
find complete sympathy in; you are so nice and young without the
hardness of youth, and may be the best of sisters to me. I am not so
sure about letting you be an elder one; I am not going to be lectured
when I'm naughty.
I've been so busy at _wasps_ all day coming along, having got a nice
book about them. It tells me, too, of a delightful German doctor who
kept tame hornets,--a whole nest in his study! They knew him
perfectly, and would let him do anything with them, even pull bits off
their nest to look in at it.
Wasps, too, my author says, are really much more amiable than bees,
and never get angry without cause. All the same, they have a tiresome
way of inspecting one, too closely, sometimes, I think.
I'm immensely struck with the Peak Cavern, but it was in twilight.
I'm going to stay here all to-morrow, the place is so entirely
unspoiled. I've not seen such a primitive village, rock, or stream,
this twenty years; Langdale is as sophisticated as Pall Mall in
comparison.
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