I am ashamed not to have sent you a word of expression of my real and
very deep feelings of regard and respect for you, and of my not
_fervent_ (in the usual phrase, which means only hasty and ebullient),
but serenely _warm_, hope that you may keep your present power of
benevolent happiness to length of many days to come. But I hope you
will sometimes take the simpler view of the little agate box than
that of birthday token, and that you will wonder sometimes at its
labyrinth of mineral vegetable! I assure you there is nothing in all
my collection of agates in its way quite so perfect as the little
fiery forests of dotty trees in the corner of the piece which forms
the bottom. I ought to have set it in silver, but was always afraid to
trust it to a lapidary.
What you say of the Greek want of violets is also very interesting to
me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries that Homer means the
blue iris by the word translated "violet."
* * * * *
_Thursday morning._
I'm ever so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But why wasn't I
there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowledge? To think of that
poor bird's genius and love of scarlet ribbons, shut up in a cage!
What it might have come to!
If ever my St. George's schools come to any perfection, they shall
have every one a jackdaw to give the children their first lessons in
arithmetic. I'm sure he could do it perfectly. "Now, Jack, take two
from four, and show them how many are left." "Now, Jack, if you take
the teaspoon out of this saucer, and put it into _that_, and then if
you take two teaspoons out of two saucers, and put them into this, and
then if you take one teaspoon out of this, and put it into that, how
many spoons are there in this, and how many in that?"--and so on.
Oh, Susie, when we _do_ get old, you and I, won't we have nice schools
for the birds first, and then for the children?
That photograph is indeed like a visit; how thankful I am that it is
still my hope to get the real visit some day!
I was yesterday and am always, certainly at present, very unwell, and
a mere trouble to my Joanies and Susies and all who care for me. But
I'm painting another bit of moss which I think Susie will enjoy, and
hope for better times.
Did you see the white cloud that stayed quiet for three hours this
morning over the Old Man's summit? It was one of the few remains of
the heaven one used to see. The heaven one had a Father in, not a
raging enemy.
I send you Rogers' "Italy," that is no more. I do think you'll have
pleasure in it.
* * * * *
I've been made so miserable by a paper of Sir J. Lubbock's on flowers
and insects, that I must come and whine to you. He says, and really as
if he knew it, that insects, chiefly bees, entirely originate flowers;
that all scent, color, pretty form, is owing to bees; that flowers
which insects don't take care of, have no scent, color, nor honey.
It seems to me, that it is likelier that the flowers which have no
scent, color, nor honey, don't get any attention from the bees.
But the man really knows so much about it, and has tried so many
pretty experiments, that he makes me miserable.
So I'm afraid you're miserable too. Write to tell me about it all.
It is very lovely of you to send me so sweet a note when I have not
been near you since the tenth century. But it is all I can do to get
my men and my moor looked after; they have both the instinct of doing
what I don't want, the moment my back's turned; and then there has not
been light enough to know a hawk from a hand-saw, or a crow from a
ptarmigan, or a moor from a meadow. But how much better your eyes must
be when you can write such lovely notes!
I don't understand how the strange cat came to love you so quickly,
after one dinner and a rest by the fire! I should have thought an
ill-treated and outcast animal would have regarded everything as a
trap, for a month at least,--dined in tremors, warmed itself with its
back to the fire, watching the door, and jumped up the chimney if you
stepped on the rug.
If you only knew the good your peacock's feathers have done me, and if
you could only see the clever drawing I'm making of one from the blue
breast! You know what lovely little fern or equisetum stalks of
sapphire the filaments are; they beat me so, but they're coming nice.
* * * * *
That is so intensely true what you say about Turner's work being like
nature's in its slowness and tenderness. I always think of him as a
great natural force in a human frame.
_So_ nice all you say of the "Ethics"! And I'm a monster of
ingratitude, as bad as the Dragon of Wantley. Don't like Dr. Brown's
friend's book at all. It's neither Scotch nor English, nor fish nor
flesh, and it's tiresome.
I'm in the worst humor I've been in this month, which is saying much;
and have been writing the wickedest "Fors" I ever wrote, which is
saying more; you will be _so_ angry.
* * * * *
I'm so very glad you will mark the bits you like, but are there not a
good many here and there that you _don't_ like?--I mean that sound
hard or ironical. Please don't mind them. They're partly because I
never count on readers who will really care for the prettiest things,
and it gets me into a bad habit of expressing contempt which is not
indeed any natural part of my mind.
It pleases me especially that you have read "The Queen of the Air." As
far as I know, myself, of my books, it is the most useful and careful
piece I have done. But that again--did it not shock you to have a
heathen goddess so much believed in? (I've believed in English ones
long ago). If you can really forgive me for "The Queen of the Air,"
there are all sorts of things I shall come begging you to read some
day.
* * * * *
_21st July._
I'm always looking at the Thwaite, and thinking how nice it is that
you are there. I think it's a little nice, too, that _I'm_ within
sight of you, for if I hadn't broken, I don't know how many not
exactly promises, but nearly, to be back at Oxford by this time, I
might have been dragged from Oxford to London, from London to France,
from France who knows where? But I'm here, and settled to produce, as
soon as possible, the following works--
1. New number of "Love's Meinie," on the Stormy Petrel.
2. New ditto of "Proserpina," on sap, pith, and bark.
3. New ditto of "Deucalion," on clouds.
4. New "Fors," on new varieties of young ladies.
5. Two new numbers of "Our Fathers," on Brunehaut, and
Bertha her niece, and St. Augustine and St. Benedict.
6. Index and epilogue to four Oxford lectures.
7. Report and account of St. George's Guild.
And I've had to turn everything out of every shelf in the house, for
mildew and moths.
And I want to paint a little bank of strawberry leaves.
And I've to get a year's dead sticks out of the wood, and see to the
new oat field on the moor, and prepare lectures for October!
I'm _so_ idle. I look at the hills out of bed, and at the pictures off
the sofa. Let us _both_ be useless beings; let us be butterflies,
grasshoppers, lambs, larks, anything for an easy life. I'm quite
horrified to see, now that these two have come back, what a lot of
books I've written, and how cruel I've been to myself and everybody
else who ever has to read them. I'm too sleepy to finish this note.
* * * * *
_13th June._
I do not know when I have received, or how I _could_ receive so great
an encouragement in all my work, as I do in hearing that you, after
all your long love and watchfulness of flowers, have yet gained
pleasure and insight from "Proserpina" as to leaf structure. The
examples you send me are indeed admirable. Can you tell me the exact
name of the plant, that I may quote it?
Yes, and the weather also is a great blessing to me--so lovely this
morning.
* * * * *
I'm getting steadily better, and breathing the sunshine a little again
in soul and lips. But I always feel so naughty after having had
morning prayers, and that the whole house is a sort of little Bethel
that I've no business in.
I'm reading history of early saints too, for my Amiens book, and feel
that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or boiled, or something
unpleasant, and I don't know if I'm a saint or a sinner in the least,
in mediaeval language. How did saints feel themselves, I wonder, about
their saintship?
* * * * *
It is _such_ a joy to hear that you enjoy anything of mine, and a
double joy to have your sympathy in my love of those Italians. How I
wish there were more like you! What a happy world it would be if a
quarter of the people in it cared a quarter as much as you and I do,
for what is good and true:
That Nativity _is_ the deepest of all. It is by the master of
Botticelli, you know; and whatever is most sweet and tender in
Botticelli he owes to Lippi.
But, do you know, I quite forget about Cordelia, and where I said it!
please keep it till I come. I hope to be across to see you to-morrow.
They've been doing photographs of me again, and I'm an orang-outang as
usual, and am in despair. I thought with my beard I was beginning to
be just the least bit nice to look at. I would give up half my books
for a new profile.
What a lovely day since twelve o'clock! I never saw the lake shore
more heavenly.
I am very thankful that you like this "St. Mark's" so much, and do not
feel as if I had lost power of mind. I think the illness has told on
me more in laziness than foolishness. I feel as if there was as much
_in_ me as ever, but it is too much trouble to say it. And I find
myself reconciled to staying in bed of a morning to a quite woeful
extent. I have not been affected so much by melancholy, being very
thankful to be still alive, and to be able to give pleasure to some
people.
You have greatly helped me by this dear little note. And the bread's
all right, brown again, and I'm ready for asparagus of any stoutness,
there! Are you content! But my new asparagus is quite _visible_ this
year, though how much would be wanted for a dish I don't venture to
count, but must be congratulated on its definitely stalky appearance.
I was over the water this morning on school committee. How bad I have
been to let those poor children be tormented as they are all this
time! I'm going to try and stop all the spelling and counting and
catechising, and teach them only--to watch and pray.
The oranges make me think I'm in a castle in Spain!
* * * * *
Your letters always warm me a little, not with laughing, but with the
soft glow of life, for I live mostly with "la mort dans l'ame." (It is
curious that the French, whom one thinks of as slight and frivolous,
have this true and deep expression for the forms of sorrow that kill,
as opposed to those that discipline and strengthen.) And your words
and thoughts just soften and warm like west wind.
It is nice being able to please you with what I'm writing, and that
you can tell people I'm not so horrid.
Here's the "Fors" you saw the proof of, but _this_ isn't quite right
yet.
The Willy[44] quotations are very delightful. Do you know that naughty
"Cowley" at all? There's all kind of honey and strawberries in him.
It is bitter cold here these last days. I don't stir out, but must
this afternoon. I've to go out to dinner and work at the Arundel
Society. And if you only knew what was in my thoughts you would be
_so_ sorry for me, that I can't tell you.
[Footnote 44: Shakespeare.]
* * * * *