What translation of Aristophanes is that? I must get it. I've lost I
can't tell you how much knowledge and power through false pride in
refusing to read translations, though I couldn't read the original
without more trouble and time than I could spare; nevertheless, you
must not think this English gives you a true idea of the original. The
English is much more "English" in its temper than its words.
Aristophanes is far more dry, severe, and concentrated; his words are
fewer, and have fuller flavor; this English is to him what currant
jelly is to currants. But it's immensely useful to me.
Yes, that is very sweet about the kissing. I have done it to rocks
often, seldom to flowers, not being sure that they would like it.
I recollect giving a very reverent little kiss to a young sapling
that was behaving beautifully in an awkward chink, between two great
big ones that were ill-treating it. Poor me, (I'm old enough, I hope,
to write grammar my own way,) my own little self, meantime, never by
any chance got a kiss when I wanted it,--and the better I behaved, the
less chance I had, it seemed.
* * * * *
I never thought the large packet was from you; it was thrown aside
with the rest, till evening, and only opened _then_ by chance. I was
greatly grieved to find what I had thus left unacknowledged. The
drawings are entirely beautiful and wonderful, but, like all the good
work done in those bygone days, (Donovan's own book being of
inestimable excellence in this kind,) they affect me with profound
melancholy in the thought of the loss to the entire body of the nation
of all this perfect artistic capacity, and sweet will, for want of
acknowledgment, system, and direction. I must write a careful passage
on this matter in my new Elements of Drawing. Your drawings have been
sent me not by you, but by my mistress Fors, for a text. It is no
wonder, when you can draw like this, that you care so much for all
lovely nature. But I shall be ashamed to show you my peacock's
feather; I've sent it, however.
* * * * *
It is _very_ sweet of you to give me your book, but I accept it at
once most thankfully. It is the best type I can show of the perfect
work of an English lady in her own simple peace of enjoyment and
natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty
things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too
cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks;
it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished
proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Saturday's
post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal
of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in
my Greek.
* * * * *
It is a great joy to me that _you_ like the Wordsworth bits; there are
worse coming; but I've been put into a dreadful passion by two of my
cleverest girl pupils "going off pious!" It's exactly like a nice pear
getting "sleepy;" and I'm pretty nearly in the worst temper I _can_ be
in, for W. W. But what _are_ these blessed feathers? Everything that's
best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. What incomparable little
creature wears such things, or lets fall! The "fringe of flame" is
Carlyle's, not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often
mistake one for the other now.
* * * * *
You cannot in the least tell what a help you are to me, in caring so
much for my things and seeing what I try to do in them. You are quite
one of a thousand for sympathy with everybody, and one of the ten
times ten thousand, for special sympathy with my own feelings and
tries. Yes, that second column is rather nicely touched, though I say
it, for hands and eyes of sixty-two; but when once the wind stops I
hope to do a bit of primrosey ground that will be richer.
* * * * *
Here, not I, but a thing with a dozen of colds in its head, am!
I caught one cold on Wednesday last, another on Thursday, two on
Friday, four on Saturday, and one at every station between this and
Ingleborough on Monday. I never was in such ignoble misery of cold.
I've no cough to speak of, nor anything worse than usual in the way of
sneezing, but my hands are cold, my pulse nowhere, my nose tickles
and wrings me, my ears sing--like kettles, my mouth has no taste, my
heart no hope of ever being good for anything, any more. I never
passed such a wretched morning by my own fireside in all my days, and
I've quite a fiendish pleasure in telling you all this, and thinking
how miserable you'll be too. Oh me, if I ever get to feel like myself
again, won't I take care of myself.
* * * * *
The feathers nearly made me fly away from all my Psalters and
Exoduses, to you, and my dear Peacocks. I wonder when Solomon got his
ivory and apes and peacocks, whether he ever had time to look at them.
He couldn't always be ordering children to be chopped in two. Alas, I
suppose his wisdom, in England of to-day, would have been taxed to
find out which mother lied in saying which child _wasn't_ hers!
I've been writing to Miss R. again, and Miss L.'s quite right to stay
at home. "She thinks I have an eagle's eye." Well, what else should I
have, in day time? together with my cat's eye in the dark? But you may
tell her I should be very sorry if my eyes were _no_ better than
eagles'! "Doth the eagle know what is in the pit"?[46] _I_ do.
[Footnote 46: Blake.]
* * * * *
I hope you will be comforted in any feeling of languor or depression
in yourself by hearing that I also am wholly lack lustrous,
_de_pressed, _op_pressed, _com_pressed, and _down_pressed
by a quite countless pressgang of despondencies, humilities, remorses,
shamefacednesses, all overnesses, all undernesses, sicknesses,
dullnesses, darknesses, sulkinesses, and everything that rhymes to
lessness and distress, and that I'm sure you and I are at present the
mere targets of the darts of the ----, etc., etc., and Mattie's
waiting and mustn't be loaded with more sorrow; but I can't tell you
how sorry I am to break my promise to-day, but it would not be safe
for me to come.
* * * * *
I'm a little better, but can't laugh much yet, and won't cry if I can
help it. Yet it always makes me _nearly_ cry, to hear of those poor
working men trying to express themselves and nobody ever teaching
them, nor anybody in all England, knowing that painting is an _art_,
and sculpture also, and that an untaught man can no more carve or
paint, than play the fiddle. All efforts of the kind, mean simply that
we have neither master nor scholars in any rank or any place. And I,
also, what have _I_ done for Coniston schools yet! I don't deserve an
oyster shell, far less an oyster.
* * * * *
KIRBY LONSDALE,
_Thursday evening_.
You won't get this note to-morrow, I'm afraid, but after that I think
they will be regular till I reach Oxford. It is very nice to know that
there is some one who does care for a letter, as if she were one's
sister. You would be glad to see the clouds break for me; and I had
indeed a very lovely morning drive and still lovelier evening, and
full moonrise here over the Lune.
I suppose it is Kirk-by-Lune's Dale? for the church, I find, is a very
important Norman relic. By the way, I should tell you, that the
_colored_ plates in the "Stones of Venice" do great injustice to my
drawings; the patches are worn on the stones. My _drawings_ were not
_good_, but the plates are total failures. The only one even of the
engravings, which is rightly done is the (_last_, I think, in
Appendix) inlaid dove and raven. I'll show you the drawing for that
when I come back, and perhaps for the San Michele, if I recollect to
fetch it from Oxford, and I'll fetch you the second volume, which has
really good plates. That blue beginning, I forgot to say, is of the
Straits of Messina, and it is really _very_ like the color of the sea.
That is intensely curious about the parasitical plant of Borneo.
But--very dreadful!
* * * * *
You are like Timon of Athens, and I'm like one of his parasites. The
oranges are delicious, the brown bread dainty; what the melon is going
to be I have no imagination to tell. But, oh me, I had such a lovely
letter from Dr. John, sent me from Joan this morning, and I've lost
it. It said, "Is Susie as good as her letters? If so, she must be
better. What freshness of enjoyment in everything she says!"
Alas! not in everything she feels in _this_ weather, I fear. Was ever
anything so awful?
* * * * *
Do you know, Susie, everything that has happened to me (and the leaf I
sent you this morning may show you it has had some hurting in it) is
_little_ in comparison to the crushing and depressing effect on me, of
what I learn day by day as I work on, of the cruelty and ghastliness
of the _nature_ I used to think so Divine? But, I get out of it by
remembering, This is but a crumb of dust we call the "world," and a
moment of eternity which we call "time." Can't answer the great
question to-night.
* * * * *
I can only thank you for telling me; and say, Praised be God for
giving him back to us.
Worldly people say "Thank God" when they get what they want; as if it
amused God to plague them, and was a vast piece of self-denial on His
part to give them what they liked. But I, who am a simple person,
thank God when He hurts me, because I don't think he likes it any more
than I do; but I can't _praise_ Him, because--I don't understand
why--I can only praise what's pretty and pleasant, like getting back
our doctor.
* * * * *
_26th November._
And to-morrow I'm not to be there; and I've no present for you, and I
am so sorry for both of us; but oh, my dear little Susie, the good
people all say this wretched makeshift of a world is coming to an end
next year, and you and I and everybody who likes birds and roses are
to have new birthdays and presents of such sugar plums. Crystals of
candied cloud and manna in sticks with no ends, all the way to the
sun, and white stones; and new names in them, and heaven knows what
besides.
It sounds all too good to be true; but the good people are positive of
it, and so's the great Pyramid, and the Book of Daniel, and the "Bible
of Amiens." You can't possibly believe in any more promises of mine, I
know, but if I _do_ come to see you this day week, don't think it's a
ghost; and believe at least that we all love you and rejoice in your
birthday wherever we are.
I'm so thankful you're better.
Reading my old diary, I came on a sentence of yours last year about
the clouds being all "trimmed with swansdown," _so_ pretty. (I
copied it out of a letter.) The thoughts of you always trim _me_
with swansdown.
* * * * *
I never got your note written yesterday; meant at least to do it even
after post time, but was too stupid, and am infinitely so to-day also.
Only I _must_ pray you to tell Sarah we all had elder wine to finish
our evening with, and I mulled it myself, and poured it out in the
saucepan into the expectants' glasses, and everybody asked for more;
and I slept like a dormouse. But, as I said, I am so stupid this
morning that----. Well, there's no "that" able to say how stupid I
am, unless the fly that wouldn't keep out of the candle last night;
and _he_ had some notion of bliss to be found in candles, and I've
no notion of anything.
* * * * *
The blue sky is so wonderful to-day and the woods after the rain so
delicious for walking in that I must still delay any school talk one
day more. Meantime I've sent you a book which is in a nice large print
and may in some parts interest you. I got it that I might be able to
see Scott's material for "Peveril;" and it seems to me that he might
have made more of the real attack on Latham House, than of the
fictitious one on Front de Boeuf's castle, had he been so minded, but
perhaps he felt himself hampered by too much known fact.
* * * * *
But you gave my present before[47] a month ago, and I've been
presenting myself with all sorts of things ever since; and now it's
not half gone. I'm very thankful for this, however, just now, for St.
George, who is cramped in his career, and I'll accept it if you like
for him. Meantime I've sent it to the bank, and hold him your debtor.
I've had the most delicious gift besides, I ever had in my life,--the
Patriarch of Venice's blessing written with his own hand, with his
portrait.
I'll bring you this to see to-morrow and a fresh Turner.
[Footnote 47: "Frondes" money.]
* * * * *
The weather has grievously depressed me this last week, and I have not
been fit to speak to anybody. I had much interruption in the early
part of it though, from a pleasant visitor; and I have not been able
to look rightly at your pretty little book. Nevertheless, I'm quite
sure your strength is in private letter writing, and that a curious
kind of shyness prevents your doing yourself justice in print. You
might also surely have found a more pregnant motto about bird's nests!
Am not I cross? But these gray skies are mere poison to my thoughts,
and I have been writing such letters, that I don't think many of my
friends are likely to speak to me again.
* * * * *