Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books Part 16

_Brighton_. April 17, 1872.

... I got here all right, and wonderfully little tired, though the train shook a good deal the latter part of the way.

Oh! the FLOWERS! The cowslips, the purple orchids, the kingcups, the primroses! And the grey, drifting c.u.muli with gaps of blue, and the cinnamon and purple woods, broken with yellowish poplars and pale willows, with red farms, and yellow gorse lighted up by the sun!!! The oaks just beginning to break out in yellowish tufts, [_Sketch._] I can't tell you what lovely sketches I pa.s.sed between Aldershot and Redhill!

On to Brighton I took charge of a small boy being sent by a fond mother to school. When I mention that he was nine years old,--and informed me--that he had got "a jolly book," which proved to be _A School for Fathers_, that his own school wasn't _much of a one_, and he was going to leave, and ate hard-boiled eggs and crystallized oranges by the way--you will see how this generation waxes apace!!

_Ecclesfield_. May 27, 1872.

... The weather is very nice now. I stayed till the end of the Litany in church yesterday, and then slipped out by the organ door and sat with Mother. I sat on the Boy's school side of the chancel, where a little lad near me was singing _alto_ (not a "second" of thirds!) strong and steady as a thrush in a hedge!! The music went very well.

The country looks lovely, _but for the smoke_. If it had but our blue distance it would be grand. But the

"wreathed smoke afar That o'er the town like mist upraised Hung, hiding sun and star,"

gets worse every year! And when I think of our lovely blue and grey folds of distance, and bright skies, and tints, I feel quite _Ruskinish_ towards mills and manufactories.

TO C.T. GATTY.

_X Lines, South Camp, Aldershot._ August 10, 1873.

MY VERY DEAR OLD CHARLIE,

Don't you suppose your sister is forgetting you. Two causes have delayed your drawings.

1. I have been working--oh _so_ hard! It was because Mr. Bell announced that he wanted a "volume," and that for the Xmas Market one must begin at once in July!

Such is compet.i.tion!

He had an idea that something which had not appeared in any magazine would be more successful than reprints. _So_ I have written "Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, or the Luck of Lingborough," and you will recognize your _c.o.c.kie_ in it! I have taken no end of pains with it, and it has been a matter of seven or eight hours a day lately. I mean the last few days. Rather too much. It knocked me off my sleep, and reduced "my poor back" to the consistency of pith. But I am picking up, partly by such gross material aid as _bottled stout_ affords! and any amount of fresh air blowing in full draughts over my bed at night!!

2. I _have_ been at work for you, but I get so horribly dissatisfied with my things. No; I must do some real steady _work_ at it. One can't jump with a little "nice feeling" and plenty of theories into what can give any lasting pleasure to oneself or any one else. I will send you shortly (I hope) a copy of one of Sir Hope Grant's Chinnerys, and perhaps a wee thing of Ecclesfield. The worst of drawing is, it wants mind as well as hands. One can't go at it _jaded_ from head work, as one could "sew a long white seam" or any mechanical thing!...

When D---- was with me, we went to a _fete_ in the North Camp Gardens, and I was talking to Lady Grant about the Chinnerys, and the "happy thought" struck her to introduce me to a Mr. Walkinshaw. They live somewhere in this country, and Mrs. Walkinshaw came up afterwards to ask if she might call on me, as they have a Chinnery collection (gathered in China), and Mr. Walkinshaw would show them to me!... I mean to collect all possible information on the subject, and either to write myself, or _prime you_ to write an article on him some day!

TO C.T. GATTY.

_X Lines._ August 20, 1873.

DEAR OLD BOY,

... I enjoyed your letter very much, and am so glad you keep "office hours." It is very good of you not to be angry with my good advice!

"Experientia does it," as Mr. 'Aughton would say.... _I_ break down about once in three months like clockwork--from sheer overwork. I certainly am never happy idle; but I have too often to sit in sackcloth in the depths of my heart--whilst everybody is beseeching me to be "idle"--from a consciousness that, not from doing nothing, but by doing B when I should have done A, and C when I should have done B, a kind of indolence at the critical moment, I have _wasted_ my strength and time, not MERELY overworked myself. Also that on _many_ things--drawing, languages, etc.--I have spent in my life a great deal of labour with little result, because it has not been consecutive and methodical. One would like one's own failures to be one's friends' stepping-stones. I _may_ say too that I have an excuse which, thank G.o.d, you can't plead now--ill-health. It is not always easy, even for oneself, to judge when languor at the precise instant of recurring duty is spine-ache from brain work, and the sofa is the remedy,--or when it is what (in reference to an unpublished--indeed unwritten--story on this head) I call Boneless on the spine! MY back is apt to ache in any case!... I am trying to teach myself that if one _has_ been working, one has not necessarily been working to good purpose, and that one may waste strength and forces of all sorts, as well as time!

Curious that _you_ and D---- should both have quoted that saying of J.H.

Newman to me in one week! I also will adopt it! Indeed "bit by bit" is the only way _I_ feel equal to improve in _anything_, and I do think it is G.o.d's way of teaching and leading us all as a rule, and it is the principle on the face of all His creation--_Gradual_ growth. The art of being happy was never difficult to me. I think I am permitted an unusual _intensity_ of joy in common cheap pleasures and natural beauties--fresh air, colour, etc., etc., to compensate for some ill-health and deprivations.

Herewith comes my "Portrait by Spoker," and a copy of a Chinnery. The first-fruits of "regular" work at drawing an hour a day!!!

Farewell, Beloved.... Ever your very loving old sister, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO A.E.

_Ecclesfield Vicarage, Sheffield_.

Sunday, Oct. 5, 1873.

... It is all over. She _is_ with your Father and Mother, and the dear Bishop, and my two brothers, and many an old friend who has "gone before." Had she been merely a friend she is one of those whose loss cannot but be felt more as years and experience make one realize the value of certain n.o.ble qualities, and their rarity; but if G.o.d has laid a heavy cross upon us in this blow,--which seems such a blow in spite of long preparing!--He has given us every comfort, every concession to the weaknesses of our love in the accidents of her death.... It was an ideal end. G.o.d Who had permitted her to suffer so sorely in body, and to be often visited in old times--by dread of death and of "death-agonies," parted the waves of the last Jordan, and she "went through dryshod!"... The sense of her higher state is so overwhelming, one _cannot_ indulge a _common_ sorrow. For myself I can only say that I feel as if I were a child again in respect of her. She is as much with _me_ now, as with any of her children, even if I am in Jamaica or Ceylon. _Now_ she knows and sees my life, and I have a feeling as if she were an ever-present _conscience_ to me (as a mother's _presence_ makes a child alive to what is right and what is wrong), which I hope by G.o.d's grace may never leave me and may make me more worthy of having had such a Mother....

TO C.T. GATTY,

_R Lines; South Camp._ January 4, 1874.

DEARLY BELOVED,

What _would_ I give to have a visit from you! I fear you did not get home at Xmas! Thank you a thousand times for your card--I think it almost the very prettiest I ever saw!

... As I am not prompt _to time_ with my Xmas Box I may as well be appropriate in kind. Is there any trifle you are "in want" of?

"Price ner object," as Emmanuel Eaton (the old Nursery man) (very appropriately) named his latest Fuchsia, when he saw us children turning down the Wood End Lane in the Donkey Carriage on a birthday, flush of coppers--and bashful about abating prices!

... I was on the border of sending you a nice collection of poetry--and a shadow crossed my brain that you have said you "don't care about poetry"--"Lives there a man with soul so dead"--or does the great commercial whirl weary out the brain?--If I am wrong and you like it--will you have (if you don't possess) Trench's fine collection of poems of all dates?

Your ever devoted J.H.E.

TO C.T. GATTY,

_X Lines, South Camp._ March 13, 1874.

MY DEAREST CHARLIE,

I am _quite a brute_ not to have written before. I didn't, because (to say the truth!) I had a "return compliment" in the Valentine line in my head, and I never got time to do it! You know what the _pressure_ of work is, and I have had a lot in hand, and been _very_ far from well.

It was VERY good of you to send me a Val., and much appreciated.

I also owe you thanks for a copy of the "fretful" Porcupine [_Sketch_]