Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books Part 14

Your ever affectionate, J.H.E.

TO MRS. GATTY.

_Fredericton._ June 8, 1868.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,

Does the above sketch give you the faintest idea of what it is to paddle up and down these lovely rivers with their smaller tributaries and winding creeks, on a still sunny afternoon? It really is the most fascinating amus.e.m.e.nt we have tried yet. Mr. Bliss took us out the other day, it being the first time either of us was in a canoe, and Rex took one of the paddles, and got on so well that we intend to have a canoe of our own. Peter Poultice is building it, and I hope soon to send you a sketch of Rex paddling his own canoe! Of us, I may say, for I tried a paddle to-day, and mean to have a little one of my own to give _my_ valuable a.s.sistance in helping the canoe along. Next month when Rex can get away we think of going up the river to "Grand Falls"

(the next thing to Niagara, they say) by steamer, taking our canoe with us, and then paddling ourselves home with the stream. About eighty miles. Of course we should do it bit by bit, sleeping at stopping-places. One art Rex has not yet acquired, and it _looks_ awful! A sort of juggler's trick, that of _carrying_ his canoe.

Imagine taking hold of the side of a canoe that would hold six people, throwing it up and overturning it neatly on your head, without injuring either your own skull or the canoe's bottom.... This canoeing is really a source of great pleasure to us, and will more thaw double the enjoyment of summer to me. With a canoe Rex can "pull" me to a hundred places where a short walk from the sh.o.r.e will give me sketching, botanizing, and all I want! Moreover, the summer heat at times oppresses my head, and then to get on the water gives a cool breeze, and _freshens one up_ in a way that made me think of what it must be to people in India to get to "the hills." I have never wished for some of you more than on this lovely river, gliding about close to the water (you sit on the very bottom of the canoe), all the trees just bursting into green, and the water reflecting everything exquisitely. Kingfishers and all kinds of birds flitting about and singing unfamiliar songs; bob-o-links going "twit-twit," little yellow birds, kingbirds, crows, and the robin-thrushes everywhere. I landed to-day at one place, and went into a wood to try and get flowers. I only got one good one, but it was very lovely! Two crows were making wild cries for the loss of one of their young ones which some boys had taken, and as I went on I heard the queer chirrup (like a bird's note) of Adjidaumo the squirrel! and he ran across my path and into a hollow tree. It is a much smaller squirrel than ours, about the size of a water rat, and beautifully striped.

The only drawback to the paddling is that the beloved Hector cannot go with us. He would endanger the safety of the canoe. One has to sit very still....

June 16, 1868.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,

We sent off the first part of "Kerguelen's Land" yesterday.... Rex is so much pleased with the story that _I_ am quite in spirits about it, and hope you may think as favourably. He thinks if you read the end bit before you get the rest you will never like it, and yet I am very anxious to take the chance of the first part's having gone, as I want a proof--so if you do not get the first part, please put this by till you do, and don't read it.

Would it be possible for Wolf to ill.u.s.trate it? If he knows the breeding islands of the Albatross he would make a lovely thing of it.

This is the last _story_. There will only be a _conclusion_ now. I have got my "information" from Rex, and "Homes without Hands."--The only point I am in doubt about is whether the parent birds would have remained on the island so _long_--I mean for _months_. Do you know any naturalist who would tell you this? When they are not breeding they seem to have no home, as they follow ships for weeks.

How we miss Dr. Harvey, and his _fidus Achates_--poor old Dr.

Fisher!--I so often want things "looked up"--and we do lack books here!...

_Fredericton_. November 3, 1868.

... I _must_ tell you what Mrs. Medley said to me this evening as we came out of church. She said, "It is an odd place to begin in about it, but I must thank you for the end of Mrs. Overtheway. The pathos of those old Albatrosses! The Bishop and I cried over them. I suppose it's the highest compliment we can pay you to say it is equal to anything of your Mother's, and that you are a worthy daughter of your Mother." Wasn't that a splendid bit of praise to hear all these miles away from one's dear old wonderful old Mother?...

To H.K.F.G.

_Fredericton N.B._ Tuesday, December 8, 1868.

... Tell the dear Mother, please, that I got dissatisfied with my story, and _recast it_ and began again--and got on awfully well, and was very well satisfied with it. But Rex read what was done and doesn't care for it a bit--in fact quite the reverse, which has rather upset my hopes. However, he says he cannot properly judge till it is finished, so I am going to finish it off, and if he likes it better then, I shall send it next mail. It is a regular child's story--about Toys--not at all sentimental--in fact meant to be amusing; but as Rex read it with a face for a funeral, I don't know how it will be. I don't somehow think the idea is bad. It is (roughly) this: A pickle of a boy with a very long-suffering sister (I hope you won't object to her being called Dot. You know it's a very common pet name, and it "shooted" so well) gets all her toys and his own and makes an "earthquake of Lisbon" in which they are all smashed. From which a friend tells them the story of a dream she is supposed to have had (but I flattered myself the dream was rather neatly done up) of getting into fairyland to the Land of Lost Toys--where she meets all her old toys that she destroyed in her youth. Here she is shown in a kind of vision Dutch and German people making these toys with much pains and industry, and is given a lot of material and set to do the like. Failing this she is condemned to suffer what she inflicted on the toys, each one pa.s.sing its verdict upon her. Eventually a doll (MY Rosa!!!!) that she had treated very well rescues her, and the story reverts to the sister and brother, who takes to amusing himself by establishing himself as toy-mender to the establishment, instead of cultivating his b.u.mp of destructiveness. I sketch the idea because (if the present story fails) if you think the _idea_ good I would try to recast it again. If I send it as it is, it is pretty sure to come by the Halifax mail next week.... I do miss poor dear old Dr.

Fisher, so! I very much wanted some statistics about toy-making. You never read anything about the making of common Dutch toys did you?...

_Fredericton_, December 8, 1868.

Tell Mother I think she ought to get _Henry_ Kingsley to write for _Aunt Judy's Magazine_. The _children_ and the _dogs_ in his novels are the best part of them. They are utterly first rate! I am sure he would make a hit with a child and dog story.

I told you that Bishop Ewing had written me such a charming letter, and sent me a sermon of his? This mail he sent us a number of the _Scottish Witness_ with "Jerusalem the Golden" in Gaelic in it....

To MRS. GATTY.

_Fredericton, N.B._

Easter Monday, 1869,

You are very dear and good about our ups and downs, and it makes me doubly regret that I cannot reward you by conveying a perfectly truthful _impression_ of our life, etc. here to your mind, I trace in your very dearness and goodness about it, in your worrying more about discomfort for me in our moves than about your own hopes of our meeting at Home, how little able one is to do so by mere letters, I wish it did not lead you to the unwarrantable conclusion that it is because you are "weak and old" that you do not appreciate the uncertainties of our military housekeeping, and can only "admire" the coolness with which I look forward to breaking up our cosy little establishment, just when we were fairly settled down. You can hardly believe how well I understand your feelings for me, _because I have so fully gone through them for myself_. I never had D.'s "spirit" for a wandering life, and it is out of the fulness of my experience that I _know_ and wish unspeakably that I could convey to you, how very much of one's shrinking dread has all the _unreality_ of fear of an _unknown_ evil. When I look back to all I looked forward to with fear and trembling in reference to all the strangenesses of my new life, I understand your feelings better than you think. I am too much your daughter not to be strongly tempted to "beat my future brow," much more so than to be over-hopeful. Rex is given that way too in his own line; and we often are brought to say together how inexcusable it is when everything turns out so much better than we expected, and when "G.o.d" not only "chains the dog till night," but often never lets him loose at all! Still the natural terrors of an untravelled and not herculean woman about the ups and downs of a wandering, homeless sort of life like ours are not so comprehensible by him, he having travelled so much, never felt a qualm of sea-sickness, and less than the average of home-sickness, from circ.u.mstances. It is one among my many reasons for wishing to come Home soon, that one chat would put you in possession of more idea of our pa.s.sing home, the nest we have built for a season, and the wood it is built in, and the birds (of many feathers) amongst whom we live, than any _letters_ can do.... You can imagine the state of (far from blissful) ignorance of military life, tropical heat, Canadian inns, etc., etc., in which I landed at Halifax after such a sudden wrench from the old Home, and such a very far from cheerful voyage, and all the anecdotes of the summer heat, the winter cold, the spring floods, the houses and the want of houses, the servants and the want of servants, the impossibility of getting anything, and the ruinous expense of it when got! which people pour into the ears of a new-comer just because it is a more sensational and entertaining (and _quite_ as stereotyped) a subject of conversation as the weather and the crops. The points may be (isolatedly) true; but the whole impression one receives is alarmingly false! And I can only say that my experience is so totally different from my fears, and from the cook-stories of the "profession," that I don't mean to request Rex to leave Our Department at present!...

TO MRS. GATTY,

_Fredericton._ Septuagesima, 1869.

... I am sending you two fairy stories for your editorial consideration. They are not intended to form part of "The Brownies"

book--they are an experiment on my part, and _I do not mean to put my name to them_.

You know how fond I have always been of fairy tales of the Grimm type.

Modern fairy tales always seem to me such _very_ poor things by comparison, and I have two or three theories about the reason of this.

In old days when I used to tell stories to the others, I used to have to produce them in considerable numbers and without much preparation, and as that argues a _certain_ amount of imagination, I have determined to try if I can write a few fairy tales of the genuine "uninstructive" type by following out my theories in reference to the old traditional ones. Please _don't_ let out who writes them (if you put them in, and if any one cares to inquire!), for I am very anxious to hear if they elicit any comments from your correspondents to confirm me in my views. In one sense you must not expect them to be original. _My aim is_ to imitate the "old originals," and I mean to stick close to orthodox traditions in reference to the proceedings of elves, dwarfs, nixes, pixies, etc., and if I want them to use such "common properties of the fairy stage"--as unscrupulous foxes, stupid giants, successful younger sons, and the traditional "fool"--with much wisdom under his folly (such as Hans in Luck)--who suggests the court fools with their odd mixture of folly and shrewdness. _One_ of my theories is that all real fairy tales (of course I do not allude to stories of a totally different character in which fairy machinery is used, as your Fairy G.o.dmothers, my "Brownies," etc., etc.), that all real "fairy tales" should be written as if they were oral traditions taken down from the lips of a "story teller." This is where modern ones (and modern editions of Grimm, _vide_ "Grimm's Goblins,"

otherwise a delicious book) fail, and the extent to which I have had to cut out reflections, abandon epithets, and shorten sentences, since I began, very much confirms my ideas. I think the Spanish ones in _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ must have been so obtained, and the contrast between them and the "Lost Legends" in this respect is marked. There are plenty of children who can appreciate "The Rose and the Ring,"

"The Water Babies," your books, and the most poetical and suggestive dreams of Andersen. But (if it can be done) I think there is also a strong demand for new combinations of the Step-mother, the Fox, the Luck Child, and the Kings, Princesses, Giants, Witches, etc. of the old traditions. I say combinations advisedly, for I suppose _not_ half of Grimm's Household Stories have "original" plots. They are palpable "_rechauffees_" of each other, and the few original germs might, I suspect, be counted on one's fingers, even in fairy-lore, and then traced back to a very different origin. Of course the market is abundantly stocked with modern versions, but I don't think they are done the right way. This is, however, for the Editorial ear, and to gain your unbiased criticism. But, above all, don't tell any friends that they are mine for the present. Of course if they DID succeed, I would republish and add my name. But I want to be incognito for the present--1st, to get free criticism; 2nd, to give them fair play; 3rd, not to do any damage to my reputation in another "walk" of story-writing. I do not in the least mean to give up my own style and take to fairy tale-telling, but I would like to try this experiment....

Monday, April 19, 1869.

... I have two or three _schemes_ in my head.

"Mrs. Overtheway" (_2nd series_), "Fatima's Flowers," etc.

"The Brownies (and other Tales)."

"Land of Lost Toys," "Three Christmas Trees," "Idyll," etc.

"Boneless," "Second Childhood," etc., etc.

"The Other Side of the World," etc., etc.

"Goods and Chattels" (quite vague as yet).

"A Sack of Fairy Tales" (in abeyance).

"A Book of _weird queer_ Stories" (none written yet).