I am still indignant at this nasty place London. Thackeray, whom I came
up to see, went off to Brighton the night after I arrived, and has not re-
appeared: but I must wait some time longer for him. Thank Miss Barton
much for the _kit_; if it is but a kit: my old woman is a great lover of
cats, and hers has just _kitted_, and a wretched little blind puling
tabby lizard of a thing was to be saved from the pail for me: but if Miss
Barton's is a _kit_, I will gladly have it: and my old lady's shall be
disposed of--not to the pail. Oh rus, quando te aspiciam? Construe
that, Mr. Barton.--I am going to send down my pictures to Boulge, if I
can secure them: they are not quite secure at present. If they vanish, I
snap my fingers at them, Magi and all--there is a world (alas!) elsewhere
beyond pictures--Oh, oh, oh, oh--
I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We ascended from his dining room
carrying pipes and tobacco up through two stories of his house, and got
into a little dressing room near the roof: there we sat down: the window
was open and looked out on nursery gardens, their almond trees in
blossom, and beyond, bare walls of houses, and over these, roofs and
chimneys, and roofs and chimneys, and here and there a steeple, and whole
London crowned with darkness gathering behind like the illimitable
resources of a dream. I tried to persuade him to leave the accursed den,
and he wished--but--but--perhaps he _didn't_ wish on the whole.
When I get back to Boulge I shall recover my quietude which is now all in
a ripple. But it is a shame to talk of such things. So Churchyard has
caught another Constable. Did he get off our Debach boy that set the
shed on fire? Ask him that. Can'st thou not minister to a mind
diseased, etc.
A cloud comes over Charlotte Street and seems as if it were sailing
softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed shower upon the lilac buds
and thirsty anemones somewhere in Essex; or, who knows?, perhaps at
Boulge. Out will run Mrs. Faiers, and with red arms and face of woe haul
in the struggling windows of the cottage, and make all tight. Beauty Bob
{159} will cast a bird's eye out at the shower, and bless the useful wet.
Mr. Loder will observe to the farmer for whom he is doing up a dozen of
Queen's Heads, that it will be of great use: and the farmer will agree
that his young barleys wanted it much. The German Ocean will dimple with
innumerable pin points, and porpoises rolling near the surface sneeze
with unusual pellets of fresh water--
Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer cloud,
Without our special wonder?
Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand in the middle of it
are all in a maze, except poor Matthews of Bedford, who fixes his eyes
upon a wooden Cross and has no misgiving whatsoever. When I was at his
chapel on Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on some
of the people to say merely this, that they believed Christ had redeemed
them: and first one got up and in sobs declared she believed it: and then
another, and then another--I was quite overset:--all poor people: how
much richer than all who fill the London Churches. Theirs is the kingdom
of Heaven!
This is a sad farrago. Farewell.
_To Mrs. Charlesworth_.
[27 _April_, 1844?]