VENICE, _17th February_ (1877).
It is very grievous to me to hear of your being in that woeful weather
while I have two days' sunshine out of three, and starlight or
moonlight always; to-day the whole chain of the Alps from Vicenza to
Trieste shining cloudless all day long, and the sea-gulls floating
high in the blue, like little dazzling boys' kites.
Yes, St. Francis would have been greatly pleased with you watching
pussy drink your milk; so would St. Theodore, as you will see by next
Fors, which I have ordered to be sent you in first proof, for I am
eager that you should have it. What wonderful flowers these pinks of
St. Ursula's are, for life! They seem to bloom like everlastings.
I get my first rosebud and violets of this year from St. Helena's
Island to-day. How I begin to pity people who have no saints to be
good to them! Who is yours at Coniston? There must have been some in
the country once upon a time.
With their help I am really getting well on with my history and
drawing, and hope for a sweet time at home in the heathery days, and
many a nice afternoon tea at the Thwaite.
* * * * *
VENICE, _8th March, 1877_.
That is entirely new and wonderful to me about the singing mouse.[21]
Douglas (was it the Douglas?) saying "he had rather hear the lark sing
than the mouse squeak" needs revision. It is a marvelous fact in
natural history.
The wind is singing a wild tune to-night--cannot be colder on our own
heaths--and the waves dash like our Waterhead. Oh me, when I'm walking
round it again how like a sad dream all this Venice will be!
[Footnote 21: A pleasant story that a friend sent me from France. The
mouse often came into their sitting-room and actually sang to them,
the notes being a little like a canary's.--S. B.]
* * * * *
VENICE, _15th May, 1877_.
I've not tumbled into the lagoons, nor choked myself in a passion, nor
gone and made a monk of myself--nor got poisoned by the Italian cooks.
I'm packing up, and coming to the Thwaite as soon as ever I can--after
a little Alpine breathing of high air.
I'm pretty well--if you'll forgive me for being so naughty--else I
can't be even plain well--but I'm always your loving----
[Transcriber's Note: no ending to the sentence here.]
* * * * *
OXFORD, _2d December_ (1877).
I write first to you this morning to tell you that I gave yesterday
the twelfth and last[22] of my course of lectures this term, to a room
crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members of the University,
and with its door wedged open by those who could not get in; this
interest of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the
first time in Oxford, I have been able to speak to them boldly of
immortal life. I intended when I began the course only to have read
"Modern Painters" to them; but when I began, some of your favorite
bits interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a
proportion of undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to
reinforce and press them home; and people say I have never given so
useful a course yet. But it has taken all my time and strength, and I
have not been able even to tell Susie a word about it until now. In
one of my lectures I made my text your pretty peacock and the
design[23] of him. But did not venture to say what really must be true,
that his voice is an example of "the Devil sowed tares," and of the
angels letting both grow together. My grateful compliments to the
peacock. And little (but warm) loves to all your little birds. And
best of little loves to the squirrels, only you must send _them_ in
dream-words, I suppose, up to their nests.
[Footnote 22: An Oxford Lecture. _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1878.]
[Footnote 23: Decorative art of his plumage.--J. R.]
* * * * *
HERNE HILL,
_Sunday, 16th December_ (1877).
It is a long while since I've felt so good for nothing as I do this
morning. My very wristbands curl up in a dog's-eared and disconsolate
manner; my little room is all a heap of disorder. I've got a
hoarseness and wheezing and sneezing and coughing and choking. I can't
speak and I can't think, I'm miserable in bed and useless out of it;
and it seems to me as if I could never venture to open a window or go
out of a door any more. I have the dimmest sort of diabolical pleasure
in thinking how miserable I shall make Susie by telling her all this;
but in other respects I seem entirely devoid of all moral sentiments.
I have arrived at this state of things, first by catching cold, and
since by trying to "amuse myself" for three days. I tried to read
"Pickwick," but found that vulgar,[24] and, besides, I know it all by
heart. I sent from town for some chivalric romances, but found them
immeasurably stupid. I made Baxter read me the _Daily Telegraph_, and
found that the Home Secretary had been making an absurd speech about
art, without any consciousness that such a person as I had ever
existed. I read a lot of games of chess out of Mr. Staunton's
handbook, and couldn't understand any of them. I analyzed the Dock
Company's bill of charges on a box from Venice, and sent them an
examination paper on it. I think _that_ did amuse me a little, but the
account doesn't. _L1 8s. 6d._ for bringing a box two feet square from
the Tower Wharf to here! But the worst of all is, that the doctor
keeps me shut up here, and I can't get my business done; and now there
isn't the least chance of my getting down to Brantwood for Christmas,
nor, as far as I can see, for a fortnight after it. There's perhaps a
little of the diabolical enjoyment again in that estimate; but really
the days _do_ go, more like dew shaken off branches than real
sunrisings and settings. But I'll send you word every day now for a
little while how things are going on.
[Footnote 24: "May I ask you to correct a false impression which any of
your readers who still care to know my opinions would receive from the
reference to Dickens in your kind notice of my letters to Miss
Beever....I have not the letters here, and forget what I said about
my Pickwick's not amusing me when I was ill, but it always does, to
this hour, when I am well; though I have known it by heart, pretty
nearly all, since it came out; and I love Dickens with every bit of my
heart, and sympathize in everything he thought or tried to do, except
in his effort to make more money by readings which killed him."
_Letter to "Daily Telegraph", Sandgate, January 4, 1888._]
* * * * *
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_26th December, 1877_.
I don't know really whether I _ought_ to be at Brantwood or here on
Christmas. Yesterday I had two lovely services in my own cathedral.
You know the _cathedral_ of Oxford is the chapel of Christ Church
College, and I have my own high seat in the chancel, as an honorary
student, besides being bred there, and so one is ever so proud and
ever so pious all at once, which is ever so nice, you know; and my own
dean, that's the Dean of Christ's Church, who is as big as any bishop,
read the services, and the psalms and anthems were lovely; and then I
dined with Henry Acland and his family, where I am an adopted
son,--all the more wanted yesterday because the favorite son Herbert
died this year in Ceylon,--the first death out of seven sons. So they
were glad to have me. Then I've all my Turners here, and shall really
enjoy myself a little to-day, I think; but I do wish I could be at
Brantwood too.
Oh dear, I've scribbled this dreadfully. Can you really read my
scribble, Susie? Love, you may always read, however scribbled.
* * * * *
OXFORD, _27th December_, 1877.
By the way, what a shame it is that we keep that word "jealous" in the
second commandment, as if it meant that God was jealous of images. It
means burning, zealous or full of life, visiting, etc., _i.e._,
necessarily when leaving the father leaving the child; necessarily,
when giving the father life, giving life to the child, and to
thousands of the race of them that love me.
It is very comic the way people have of being so particular about the
second and fourth commandments, and breaking all the rest with the
greatest comfort. For me, I try to keep all the rest rather carefully,
and let the second and fourth take care of themselves.
Cold quite gone; now it's your turn, Susie. I've got a love letter in
Chinese, and can't read it!
* * * * *
WINDSOR CASTLE,
_2d January, 1878_.
I'm horribly sulky this morning, for I expected to have a room with a
view, if the room was ever so little, and I've got a great big one
looking into the Castle yard, and I feel exactly as if I was in a big
modern county jail with beautiful turrets of modern Gothic.
I came to see Prince Leopold, who has been a prisoner to his sofa
lately, but I trust he is better; he is very bright and gentle, under
severe and almost continual pain. My dear little Susie, about that
rheumatism of yours? If it wasn't for that, how happy we both ought to
be, living in Thwaites and woods, instead of nasty castles! Well,
about that Shakespeare guide? I cannot, cannot, at all fancy what it
is. In and out among the stars; it sounds like a plan for stringing
the stars. I am so very glad you told me of it.
"Unwritten books in my brain?" Yes, but also in how many other brains
of quiet people, books unthought of, "In the Book and Volume" which
will be read some day in Heaven, aloud, "When saw we thee?" Yes, and
"When _read_ we ourselves?"
My dear Susie, if I were to think really _lost_, what you for instance
have new found in your own powers of receiving and giving pleasure,
the beautiful faculties you have, scarcely venturing even to show the
consciousness of them, when it awakes in you, what a woeful conception
I should have of God's not caring for us. He will gather all the wheat
into His garner.
* * * * *
INGLETON, _17th January_ (1878).
It's a charming post here, and brings me my letters the first thing in
the morning; and I took care to tell nobody where I was going, except
people I wanted to hear from. What a little busy bee of a Susie you've
been to get all those extracts ready by this time. I've got nothing
done all the while I've been away, but a few mathematical figures,
and the less I do the less I find I can do it; and yesterday, for the
first time these twenty years at least, I hadn't so much as a "plan"
in my head all day. But I had a lot to look at in the moorland flowers
and quiet little ancient Yorkshire farmhouses, not to speak of
Ingleborough, who was, I think, a little depressed because he knew you
were only going to send your remembrances and not your love to him.
The clouds gathered on his brow occasionally in a fretful manner, but
towards evening he resumed his peace of mind and sends you his
"remembrances" and his "blessing." I believe he saves both you and me
from a great deal of east wind.
Well, I've got a plan in my head _this_ morning for the new extracts.
Shall we call them "Lapides (or "Marmora") Portici"; and put a little
preface to them about the pavement of St. Mark's porch and its
symbolism of what the education of a good man's early days must be to
him? I think I can write something a little true and trustworthy about
it.
* * * * *
_26th November._
I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you rightly for
bread, sweet odors, roses and pearls, and must just allow myself to be
fed, scented, rose-garlanded and bepearled as if I were a poor little
pet dog or pet pig. But my cold is better, and I _am_ getting on with
this botany; but it is really too important a work to be pushed for a
week or a fortnight. And Mary and you will be pleased at last, I am
sure.
I have only to-day got my four families, Clarissa, Lychnis, Scintilla,
and Mica, perfectly and simply defined.[25] See how nicely they come.
A. Clarissa changed from Dianthus, which is bad Greek (and all
my pretty flowers have names of girls). Petal _jagged_ at the
outside.
B. Lychnis. Petal _divided in two_ at the outside, and the
fringe retired to the top of the limb.
C. Scintilla. (Changed from Stellaria, because I want Stella for
the house leeks.) Petal formed by the _two_ lobes of lychnis
without the retired fringe.