Hortus Inclusus Part 4

WHARFE IN FLOOD.

BOLTON ABBEY, _24th January, 1875_.

The black rain, much as I growled at it, has let me see Wharfe in flood; and I would have borne many days in prison to see that.

No one need go to the Alps to see wild water. Seldom unless in the Rhine or Rhone themselves at their rapids, have I seen anything much grander. An Alpine stream, besides, nearly always has its bed full of loose stones, and becomes a series of humps and dumps of water wherever it is shallow; while the Wharfe swept round its curves of sh.o.r.e like a black Damascus saber, coiled into eddies of steel. At the Strid, it had risen eight feet vertical since yesterday, sheeting the flat rocks with foam from side to side, while the treacherous mid-channel was filled with a succession of boiling domes of water, charged through and through with churning white, and rolling out into the broader stream, each like a vast sea wave bursting on a beach.

There is something in the soft and comparatively unbroken slopes of these Yorkshire shales which must give the water a peculiar sweeping power, for I have seen Tay and Tummel and Ness, and many a big stream besides, savage enough, but I don't remember anything so grim as this.

I came home to quiet tea and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped half my cream jugful (and yet I had plenty) sitting on my shoulder,--and Life of Sir Walter Scott. I was reading his great Scottish history tour, when he was twenty-three, and got his materials for everything nearly, but especially for Waverley, though not used till long afterwards.

Do you recollect Gibbie Gellatly? I was thinking over that question of yours, "What did I think?"[13] But, my dear Susie, you might as well ask Gibbie Gellatly what _he_ thought. What does it matter what any of us think? We are but simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very inconsistent and wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the ashes, perhaps--but for the next world! Why don't you ask your squirrel what _he_ thinks too? The great point--the one for all of us--is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to crack our nuts innocently through winter and rough weather.

I shall post this to-morrow as I pa.s.s through Skipton or any post-worthy place on my way to Wakefield. Write to Warwick. Oh me, what places England had, when she was herself! Now, rail stations mostly. But I never can make out how Warwick Castle got built by that dull bit of river.

[Footnote 13: Of the things that shall be, hereafter.--J. R.]

"FRONDES."

WAKEFIELD, _25th January, 1875_.

Here's our book in form at last, and it seems to me just a nice size, and on the whole very taking. I've put a touch or two more to the preface, and I'm sadly afraid there's a naughty note somewhere. I hope you won't find it, and that you will like the order the things are put in.

Such ill roads as we came over to-day, I never thought to see in England.

CASTLETON, _26th January, 1875_.

Here I have your long dear letter. I am very thankful I can be so much to you. Of all the people I have yet known, you are the only one I can find complete sympathy in; you are so nice and young without the hardness of youth, and may be the best of sisters to me. I am not so sure about letting you be an elder one; I am not going to be lectured when I'm naughty.

I've been so busy at _wasps_ all day coming along, having got a nice book about them. It tells me, too, of a delightful German doctor who kept tame hornets,--a whole nest in his study! They knew him perfectly, and would let him do anything with them, even pull bits off their nest to look in at it.

Wasps, too, my author says, are really much more amiable than bees, and never get angry without cause. All the same, they have a tiresome way of inspecting one, too closely, sometimes, I think.

I'm immensely struck with the Peak Cavern, but it was in twilight.

I'm going to stay here all to-morrow, the place is so entirely unspoiled. I've not seen such a primitive village, rock, or stream, this twenty years; Langdale is as sophisticated as Pall Mall in comparison.

WASP STINGS.

BOLTON BRIDGE, _Sat.u.r.day_.

I never was more thankful than for your sweet note, being stopped here by bad weather again; the worst of posting is that one has to think of one's servant outside, and so lose a day.

It was bitter wind and snow this morning, too bad to send any human creature to sit idle in. Black enough still, and I more than usual, because it is just that point of distinction from brutes which I truly say is our only one,[14] of which I have now so little hold.

The bee Fors[15] will be got quickly into proof, but I must add a good deal to it. I can't get into good humor for natural history in this weather.

I've got a good book on wasps which says they are our chief protectors against flies. In c.u.mberland the wet cold spring is so bad for the wasps that I partly think this may be so, and the terrible plague of flies in August might perhaps be checked by our teaching our little Agneses to keep wasps' nests instead of bees.

Yes, that is a pretty bit of mine about Hamlet, and I think I must surely be a little pathetic sometimes, in a doggish way.

"You're so dreadfully faithful!" said Arthur Severn to me, fretting over the way I was being ill-treated the other day by R.

Oh dear, I wish I were at Brantwood again, now, and could send you my wasp book! _It_ is pathetic, and yet so dreadful,--the wasp bringing in the caterpillar for its young wasp, stinging each enough to paralyze but not to kill, and so laying them up in the cupboard.

I wonder how the clergymen's wives will feel after the next Fors or two! I've done a bit to-day which I think will go in with a shiver. Do you recollect the curious _thrill_ there is--the cold _tingle_ of the pang of a nice deep wasp sting?

Well, I'm not in a fit temper to write to Susie to-day, clearly.

[Footnote 14: I've forgotten what it was, and don't feel now as if I had 'got hold' of _any_ one.--J. R.]

[Footnote 15: See "Fors Clavigera", Letter LI.]

BOLTON STRID.

I stopped here to see the Strid again--not seen these many years. It is curious that life is embittered to me, now, by its former pleasantness; while _you_ have of these same places painful recollections, but you could enjoy them now with your whole heart.

Instead of the drive with the poor over-labored one horse through the long wet day, here, when I was a youth, my father and mother brought me,[16] and let me sketch in the Abbey and ramble in the woods as I chose, only demanding promise that I should not go near the Strid.

Pleasant drives, with, on the whole, well paid and pleased drivers, never with over-burdened cattle; cheerful dinner or tea waiting for me always, on my return from solitary rambles. Everything right and good for me, except only that they never put me through any trials to harden me, or give me decision of character, or make me feel how much they did for me.

But that error was a fearful one, and cost them and me, Heaven only knows how much. And now, I walk to Strid, and Abbey, and everywhere, with the ghosts of the past days haunting me, and other darker spirits of sorrow and remorse and wonder. Black spirits among the gray, all like a mist between me and the green woods. And I feel like a caterpillar,--stung _just enough_. Foul weather and mist enough, of quite a real kind besides. An hour's sunshine to-day, broken up speedily, and now veiled utterly.

[Footnote 16: In 1837.]