_To Miss Muir Mackenzie._
Lamb House, Rye.
Wednesday night. [Oct. 17, 1901].
Dear Miss Muir Mackenzie,
One almost infallibly begins--at least the perpetually criminal _I_
do--with the assurance that one has, from long since, been on the
point--! And it remains eternally true; which makes no difference,
however, in your being bored to hear it. Besides, if I _had_ been
writing a month ago I shouldn't, perhaps, be writing now; and that I
_am_ writing now is a present joy to me--which I would barter for none
other, no mere luxury of conscience. I haven't, for weeks, strolled
through my now blighted and stricken _jardinet_ without reverting
gratefully in thought to you as its titular directress; without wishing,
at once, that it were more worthy of you, and recognising, recalling
your hand and mind, in most of its least humiliating features. Your kind
visit, so scantly honoured, so meagrely recorded (I mean by
commemorative tablet, or other permanent demonstration,) lives again in
some of the faded phenomena of the scene--and the blush revives which
the sense of how poor a host I was caused even then to visit my cheek. I
want you in particular to know what a joy and pride your great proud and
pink tobacco-present has proved. It has overlorded the confused and
miscellaneous border in which your masterly eye recognised its
imperative--not to say imperial--place, and it has reduced by its mere
personal success all the incoherence around it to comparative
insignificance. What a bliss, what a daily excitement, all summer, to
see it grow by leaps and bounds and to feel it happy and hearty--as much
as it could be in its strange exile and inferior company. It has all
prospered--though some a little smothered by more vulgar neighbours; and
the tallest of the brotherhood are still as handsome as ever, with a
particular shade of watered wine-colour in the flower that I much
delight in. And yet--niny that I am!--I don't know what to do with them
for next year. My gardener opines that we leave them, as your perennial
monument, just as they are. But I have vague glimmerings of conviction
that we cut them down to a mere small protrusion above ground--and we
probably both are fully wrong. Or do we extract precious seed and plant
afresh? Forgive my feeble (I repeat) flounderings. I feel as the dunce
of an infant school trying to babble Greek to Professor Jebb (or
suchlike.) I am none the less hoping that the garden will be less
dreadful and casual next year. We've ordered 105 roses--also divers
lilies--and made other vague dashes. Oh, you should be in controlling
permanence! Actually we are painfully preparing to become bulbous and
parti-coloured. One _must_ occupy the gardener. The grapes have been bad
(bless their preposterous little pretensions!) but the figs
unprecedently numerous. And so on, and so on. And it has been for me a
rather feverish and _accidente_ summer; I mean through the constant
presence of family till a month ago, and through a prolonged domestic
upheaval ever since. I sit amid the ruins of a once happy household,
clutching a charwoman with one hand, and a knife-boy--from
Lilliput--with the other. A man and his wife, who had lived with me for
long, long years, and were (in spite of growing infirmities and the
darker and darker shadow of approaching doom) the mainstay of my
existence, were sacrificed to the just gods three or four weeks ago, and
I've picnicked (for very relief) ever since--making futile attempts at
reconstruction for which I have had no time, and yet which have consumed
so much of it that none has been left, as I began by hinting, for
correspondence. I've been up to London over it, and haunted Hastings,
and wired to friends, and almost appealed to the Grand Governess--only
deterred by the fear of hearing from her that it isn't her province. Yet
I did wonder if I couldn't lawfully work it in under kitchen-garden. No
matter; my fate closes round me again, and the first thing I think of
now when I wake up in the morning is that a "cook-housekeeper" in a
Gorringe (?) costume (?) is to arrive next week. I tremble at her. If
the worst comes to the worst I _shall_ make you responsible. I walked
over to Winchelsea this afternoon and returned, in darkness and wet, by
the far-off station and the merciful train--always re-weaving the legend
of your wet exile there. It blows, it rains, it rages to-night--for the
first time here for six months. I hope you haven't had again to eat
overmuch the bread of banishment. I haven't asked you for your
news--have only jabbered my own; but I believe you not unaware that this
is but a subtler art for extracting from you the whole of your
herbaceous (and other) history. May it have been mild and merciful.
Good-night--or, as usual, good-morning--I am going to bed, but it has
been for some time to-morrow. Yours, dear Miss Muir Mackenzie, very
gratefully and faithfully,