"Les Solitudes,
"February 2nd.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--How very, very kind of you. I could hardly
believe it when Mrs. Talcott told me that a box was here for me. I
could think of nothing to explain it. Then when we opened it and
saw, row upon row, those beautiful things like pearls in a
casket--it made me feel quite dazed. Nectarines are not things that
you expect to have, in rows, all to yourself. Mrs. Talcott and I
ate two at once, standing there in the hall where we opened them;
we couldn't wait for chairs and plates and silver knives; things
taste best of all when eaten greedily, I think, and I think that
these will all be eaten greedily. It is so kind of you. I thank you
very much.--Yours sincerely,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"February 9th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--It is most kind of you to write me this nice
note and to send me these reviews. I often have to miss the things
that come out in the reviews about my guardian, for the
press-cuttings go to her. Mr. Drew says many clever things, does he
not; he understands music and he understands--at least almost--what
my guardian is to music; but he does not, of course, understand
her. He only sees the greatness and sees it made out of great
things. When one knows a great person intimately one sees all the
little things that make them great; often such very little things;
things that Mr. Drew could not know. That is why his article is, to
me, rather pretentious; nor will you like it, I think. He fills up
with subtleties the gaps in his knowledge, and that makes it all so
artificial. But I am most glad to have, it.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"February 18th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--The beautiful great box of fruit arrived
to-day. It is too good and kind of you. I am wondering now whether
muscatel grapes are not even more my favourites than nectarines!
This is a day of rain and wind, soft rain blowing in gusts and the
wind almost warm. Victor and I have come in very wet and now we are
both before the large wood fire. London seems so far away that New
York hardly seems further. You heard of the great ovation that my
guardian had. I had a note from her yesterday and two of the New
York papers. If you care to read them I will gladly send them; they
tell in full about the first great concert she has given and the
criticism is good. I will ask you to let me have them back when you
have read them.--With many, many thanks.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"February 28th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--I am glad that you liked the box of snowdrops
and that they reached you safely, packed in their moss. I got them
in a little copse a few miles from here. The primroses will soon be
coming now and, if you like, I will send you some of them. I know
one gets them early in London; but don't you like best to open
yourself a box from the country and see them lying in bunches with
their leaves. I like even the slight flatness they have; but mine
are very little flattened; I am good at packing flowers! My
guardian always tells me so! You are probably right in not caring
to see the papers; they are always much alike in what they say. It
was only the glimpse of the great enthusiasm they gave that I
thought might have interested you. Next week she goes to Chicago. I
am afraid she will be very tired. But Miss Scrotton will take care
of her.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"March 17th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--I have taken up my pen for only two purposes
since I left London--to write my weekly letter to my guardian--and
to thank you over and over again. Only now you have quite spoiled
Mrs. Talcott and me for our stewed dried fruit that we used to
think so nice before we lived on grapes and nectarines. Indeed I
have not forgotten the primroses and I shall be so delighted to
pick them for you when the time comes, though I suspect it is sheer
kindness in you that gives me the pleasure of sending you
something. Your nice letter interested me very much. Yes, we have
'Dominique' in the library here, and I will perhaps soon read it; I
say perhaps, because I am reading 'Wilhelm Meister'--my guardian
was quite horrified with me when she found I had never read it--and
must finish that first, and it is very long. Is 'Dominique' indeed
your favourite French novel? My guardian places Stendahl and
Flaubert first. For myself I do not care much for French novels. I
like the Russians best.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"April 2nd.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--You make a charming picture of the primroses in
the blue and white bowls for me. And of your view over the park.
London can be so beautiful; I, too, care for it very much. It is
beautiful here now; the hedges all white with blackthorn and the
woods full of primroses. My guardian must now be in San Francisco!
She is back in New York in May, and is to give three more great
concerts there. I am impatiently waiting for my next letter from
her. I am so glad you like the primroses. Many, many thanks for the
fruit.--Yours sincerely,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"April 5th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--What you say makes me feel quite troubled. I
know you write playfully, yet sometimes one can _dire la vérité en
riant_, and it is as if you had found my letters very empty and
unresponsive. I did not mean them to be that of course; but I am
not at all in the habit of writing letters except to people I am
very intimate with. Indeed, I am in the habit only of writing to my
guardian, and it is difficult for me to think that other people
will be interested in the things I am doing. And in one way I do so
little here. Nothing that I could believe interesting to you;
nothing really but have walks and practise my music and read; and
talk sometimes with Mrs. Talcott. About once in two months the
vicar's wife has tea with us, and about once in two months we have
tea with her; that is all. And I am sure you cannot like
descriptions of landscapes. I love to look at landscapes and
dislike reading what other people have to say about them; and is
not that the same with you? It is quite different that you should
write to me of things and people; for you see so many and you do so
much and you know that to someone in the depths of the country all
this must be very interesting. So do not punish me for my dullness
by ceasing to write to me.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"April 10th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--Of course I will write you descriptions of
landscapes!--and of all my daily routine, if you really care to
hear. No; I am not lonely, though of course I miss my guardian very
much. I have the long, long walks with Victor, in wet weather over
the inland moors along the roads, and in fine weather along the
high cliff paths; sometimes we walk ten miles in an afternoon and
come back very tired for tea. In the evenings I sit with Mrs.
Talcott over the fire. You ask me to describe Mrs. Talcott to you,
and to tell you all about her. She is with me now, and we are in
the morning room, where we always sit; for the great music-room
that opens on the verandah and fronts the sea is shut when my
guardian is not here. This room looks over the sea, too, but from
the side of the house and through an arabesque of trees. The walls
are filled with books and flowering bulbs stand in the windows. We
have had our tea and the sunlight slants in over the white freesia
and white hyacinths. There are primroses everywhere, too, and they
make the room seem more full of sunlight. You could hardly see a
more beautiful room. Mrs. Talcott sits before the fire with her
skirt turned up and her feet in square-toed shoes on the fender and
looks into the fire. She is short and thick and very old, but she
does not seem old; she is hard; not soft and withered. She has a
large, calm face with very yellow skin, and very light blue eyes
set deeply under white eyebrows. Her hair is white and drawn up
tightly to a knot at the top of her head. She wears no cap and
dresses always in black; very plain, with, in the daytime, a collar
of white lawn turning over a black silk stock and bow, such as
young girls wear, and, in the evening, a little fichu of white net,
very often washed, and thin and starchy. And since her skirts are
always very short, and her figure so square, she makes one think of
a funny little girl as well as of an old woman. She comes from the
State of Maine, and she remembers a striving, rough existence in a
little town on the edge of wildernesses. She is a very distant
relation of my guardian's. My guardian's maternal grandparents were
Spanish and lived in New Orleans, and a sister of Señor Bastida's
(Bastida was the name of my guardian's grandfather)--married a New
Englander, from Vermont--and that New Englander was an uncle of
Mrs. Talcott's--do you follow!--her uncle married my guardian's
aunt, you see. Mrs. Talcott, in her youth, stayed sometimes in New
Orleans, and dearly loved the beautiful Dolores Bastida who left
her home to follow Pavelek Okraska. Poor Dolores Okraska had many
sorrows. Her husband was not a good husband and her parents died.
She was very unhappy and before her baby came--she was in Poland
then,--she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married,
too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left
everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage--and what it must
have been in those days!--imagine!--to join her unfortunate
relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott:
'_Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois._' She stayed with Dolores
Okraska until she died a little time after. She brought up her
child. They were in great want; my guardian remembers that she had
sometimes not enough to eat. When she was older and had already
become famous, some relatives of the Bastidas heard of her and
helped; but those were years of great struggle for Mrs. Talcott;
and it is so strange to think of that provincial, simple American
woman with her rustic ways and accent, living in Cracow and Warsaw,
and Vienna, and steadily doing what she had set herself to do. She
speaks French with a most funny accent even yet, though she spent
so many years abroad, so many in Paris. I do not know what would
have become of my guardian if it had not been for her. Her father
loved her, but was very erratic and undisciplined. Mrs. Talcott has
been with my guardian for almost all the time ever since. It is a
great and silent devotion. She is very reticent. She never speaks
of herself. She talks to me sometimes in the evenings about her
youth in Maine, and the long white winters and the sleigh-rides;
and the tapping of the maple-trees in Spring; and the nutting
parties in the fall of the year. I think that she likes to remember
all this; and I love to hear her, for it reminds me of what my
father used to tell me of his youth; and I love especially to hear
of the trailing arbutus, that lovely little flower that grows
beneath the snow; how one brushes back the snow in early Spring and
finds the waxen, sweet, pink flowers and dark, shining leaves under
it. And I always imagine that it is a doubled nostalgia that I feel
and that my mother's Norway in Spring was like it, with snow and
wet woods. There is a line that brings it all over me: 'In May,
when sea-winds pierced our solitudes.' It is by Emerson. The Spring
here is very lovely, too, but it has not the sweetness that arises
from snow and a long winter. Through the whole winter the fuchsias
keep their green against the white walls of the little village,
huddled in between the headlands at the edge of the sea beneath us.
You know this country, don't you? The cliffs are so beautiful. I
love best the great headlands towards the Lizard, black rock or
grey, all spotted with rosettes of orange lichen with sweeps of
grey-green sward sloping to them. Victor becomes quite intoxicated
with the wind on these heights and goes in circles round and round,
like a puppy. Later on, all the slopes are veiled in the delicate
little pink thrift, and the stone walls are festooned with white
campion.
"Then Mrs. Talcott and I have a great deal to do about the little
farm. Mrs. Talcott is so clever at this. She makes it pay besides
giving my guardian all the milk and eggs and bacon, too, she needs.
There is a farmer and his wife, and a gardener and a boy; but with
the beautiful garden we have here it takes most of the day to see
to everything. The farmer's wife is a stern looking woman, but
really very gentle, and she sings hymns all the day long while she
works. She has a very good voice, so that it is sweet to hear her.
Yes; I do play. I have a piano here in the morning-room, and I am
very fond of my music. And, as I have told you, I read a good deal,
too. So there you have all the descriptions and the details. I
liked so much what you told me of the home of your boyhood. When I
saw you, I knew that you were a person who cared for all these
things, even if you were not an artist. What you tell me, too, of
the law-courts and the strange people you see there, and the ugly,
funny side of human life amused me, though it seems to me more
sorrowful than you perhaps feel it. People amuse me very much
sometimes, too; but I have not your eye for their foibles. You draw
them rather as Forain does; I should do it, I suspect, with more
sentimentality. The fruit comes regularly once a week, and punctual
thanks seem inappropriate for what has become an institution. But
you know how grateful I am. And for the weekly _Punch_;--so
_gemütlich_ and _bien pensant_ and, often, very, very funny, with a
funniness that the Continental papers never give one; their jests
are never the jests of the _bien pensant_. It is the acrid
atmosphere of the café they bring, not that of the dinner party,
or, better still, for _Punch_, the picnic. The reviews, too, are
very interesting. Mrs. Talcott reads them a good deal, she who
seldom reads. She says sometimes very acute and amusing things
about politics. My guardian has a horror of politics; but they
rather interest Mrs. Talcott. I know nothing of them; but I do not
think that my guardian would agree with what you say; I think that
she would belong more to your party of freedom and progress. What a
long letter I have written to you! I have never written such a long
one in my life before, except to my guardian.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."
* * * * *
"Les Solitudes,
"April 15th.
"Dear Mr. Jardine,--How very nice to hear that you are coming to
Cornwall for Easter and will be near us--at least Falmouth is quite
near with a motor. It is beautiful country there, too; I have
driven there with my guardian, and it is a beautiful town to see,
lying in a wide curve around its blue bay. It is softer and milder
than here. A bend of the coast makes so much difference. But why am
I telling you all this, when of course you know it! I forget that
anyone knows Cornwall but Mrs. Talcott and my guardian and me. But
you have not seen this bit of the coast, and it excites me to think
that I shall introduce you to our cliffs and to Les Solitudes. If
only my guardian were here! It is not itself, this place, without
her. It is not to see Les Solitudes if you do not see the great
music-room opening its four long windows on the sea and sky; and my
guardian sitting in the shade of the verandah looking over the sea.
But Mrs. Talcott and I will do the honours as best we may and tell
you everything about my guardian that you will wish to know. Let us
hear beforehand the day you are coming; for the cook makes
excellent cakes, and we will have some baked specially for you. How
very nice to see you again.--Sincerely yours,
"Karen Woodruff."