_[October 27, 1874], Edinburgh, Thursday._
It is cold, but very sunshiny and dry; I wish you were here; it would
suit you and it doesn't suit me; if we could change? This is the Fast
day--Thursday preceding bi-annual Holy Sacrament that is--nobody does
any work, they go to Church twice, they read nothing secular (except the
newspapers, that is the nuance between Fast day and Sunday), they eat
like fighting-cocks. Behold how good a thing it is and becoming well to
fast in Scotland. I am progressing with _John Knox and Women No. 2_; I
shall finish it, I think, in a fortnight hence; and then I shall begin
to enjoy myself. _J. K. and W. No. 2_ is not uninteresting however; it
only bores me because I am so anxious to be at something else which I
like better. I shall perhaps go to Church this afternoon from a sort of
feeling that it is rather a wholesome thing to do of an afternoon; it
keeps one from work and it lets you out so late that you cannot weary
yourself walking and so spoil your evening's work.
_Friday._--I got your letter this morning, and whether owing to that, or
to the fact that I had spent the evening before in comparatively riotous
living, I managed to work five hours and a half well and without
fatigue; besides reading about an hour more at history. This is a thing
to be proud of.
We have had lately some of the most beautiful sunsets; our autumn
sunsets here are always admirable in colour. To-night there was just a
little lake of tarnished green deepening into a blood-orange at the
margins, framed above by dark clouds and below by the long roof-line of
the Egyptian buildings on what we call the Mound, the statues on the top
(of her Britannic Majesty and diverse nondescript Sphinxes) printing
themselves off black against the lit space.
_Saturday._--It has been colder than ever; and to-night there is a
truculent wind about the house, shaking the windows and making a hollow
inarticulate grumbling in the chimney. I cannot say how much I hate the
cold. It makes my scalp so tight across my head and gives me such a
beastly rheumatism about my shoulders, and wrinkles and stiffens my
face; O I have such a _Sehnsucht_ for Mentone, where the sun is shining
and the air still, and (a friend writes to me) people are complaining of
the heat.
_Sunday._--I was chased out by my lamp again last night; it always goes
out when I feel in the humour to write to you. To-day I have been to
Church, which has not improved my temper I must own. The clergyman did
his best to make me hate him, and I took refuge in that admirable poem
the Song of Deborah and Barak; I should like to make a long scroll of
painting (say to go all round a cornice) illustrative of this poem; with
the people seen in the distance going stealthily on footpaths while the
great highways go vacant; with the archers besetting the draw-wells;
with the princes in hiding on the hills among the bleating sheep-flocks;
with the overthrow of Sisera, the stars fighting against him in their
courses and that ancient river, the river Kishon, sweeping him away in
anger; with his mother looking and looking down the long road in the red
sunset, and never a banner and never a spear-clump coming into sight,
and her women with white faces round her, ready with lying comfort. To
say nothing of the people on white asses.
O, I do hate this damned life that I lead. Work--work--work; that's all
right, it's amusing; but I want women about me and I want pleasure. John
Knox had a better time of it than I, with his godly females all leaving
their husbands to follow after him; I would I were John Knox; I hate
living like a hermit. Write me a nice letter if ever you are in the
humour to write to me, and it doesn't hurt your head. Good-bye.--Ever
your faithful friend,