_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.
* * * * *