Horatia K. F. Eden - Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books

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Those lazy ripples damp their boots so nicely!

In the Exeter Station sat a ---- [_Sketch_] Bull Dogue. O dear! He
looked so "savidge," and was so nervous; every train made him tremble
in every limb! I bought him a penny bun, but he was too nervous to
eat, though he looked very grateful. The porter promised me to give
him plenty of water, and as I gave the porter plenty of coppers I hope
he did!

Tell Stephen the flowers on the railway banks give you quite a turn!
Crimson, pale pink, and dead-white Valerian against a deep blue sky in
hot sunshine make one not know whether to PAINT or press!

As to Dartmouth itself it is a mixture of Matlock, Whitby and
Antwerp!!! The defect is it is really oil the river, not on the sea,
but the neighbouring bays are so get-at-able we have settled here. The
town is very old. Some of the streets, or rather terraces--if a
perfectly irregular perching and jumbling of houses up and down a
steep lull can be called a terrace--are very curious. [_Sketch._]

Flowers everywhere....

TO H.K.F.G.

July 12, 1874.

Dr. Edghill preached a fine sermon this morning on "Friend! wherefore
art thou come?" Terribly didactic on the fate of Judas, but the
practical application was wonderful and _so_ like him! It being
chiefly on the "patient love of Christ." Quite merciless on Judas, and
on the coarseness, coldness and brutalness of betrayal by the
tenderest sign of human love. "But" (plunging head-first among the
Engineers!) "if there's any man sitting here with a heart and
conscience every bit as black as Judas's _in that hour_: to thee,
Brother, in this hour--in thy worst and vilest hour--Jesus
speaks--'_Friend!_--You may have worn out human love, you may try your
hardest to wear out Mine'"--(parenthesis to the A.S.C. and a nautical
_hitch_ of half his surplice)--("and we all try hard enough, _that's_
certain!)--'but _you never can_--Friend, still My Friend!'" (Pull up,
and obvious need of bronchial troches. Tonsure mopped and a
re-commencement.) "Then there's the appeal to the _conscience_ as well
as to the _heart_. _Wherefore art thou come?_ what art thou
about--what is thy object? I tell you what, I believe if Judas had
answered this in plain language to himself he would have stopped short
even then. And we should stop short of many a sin if we'd _face_ what
we're going to do" (Dangerous precipitation of the whole Chaplain at
the heads of the privates below.) "Some of you ask yourselves that
question to-day--this evening _as you're walking to Aldershot_,
'Wherefore am I come?' And don't let the Devil put something else into
your head, but just _answer it_," etc. etc.

He's not exactly an _equal_ or a _finished_ preacher for highly
educated ears, but that sort of transparent candour which he has makes
him _very_ affecting when on his favourite topic, the inexhaustible
love of God. His face when he quotes--"The Son of God Who loved _Me_
and gave Himself for _Me_," is like a man showing the Rock he has
clung to himself in shipwreck.

TO C.T.G.

_X Lines._ July 22, 1874.

DEAREST CHARLIE,

It was a _great_ disappointment not to see you! Now don't fail me next
week--you scoundrel! I want you _most_ particularly for most selfish
reasons. I am just taking my hero[38] into Victoria Docks, and want to
dip my brush in _Couleur locale_ with your help. Do come, and we'll go
up to London by _barge_ and sketch all the way!!! I know an A1
Bargemaster, and we can get beds at the inns _en route_. A two days'
voyage! Or we can go for a shorter period and come home by rail. It
won't cost us much.

[Footnote 38: "A Great Emergency," vol. xi.]

I am so glad to think of you in the dear _Old_--_New_ Forest.

* * * * *

Now mind you come--if only to see my Nelson (bureau) Relic!! It is
such a comfort to me and _my papers_!

Ever your most loving sister,
J.H.E.

TO MRS. ELDER.

_X Lines, South Camp._ August 7, 1874.

MY DEAR AUNT HORATIA,

I have begged the Tiger Tom for you!

He is the handsomest I ever saw, with such a head! His name is
_Peter_. [_Sketch._]

Nothing--I assure you, can exceed his beauty--or the depth of his
stripes....

If I had not too many cats already I should have adopted Peter long
ago. We always quote William Blake's poem to him when we see him
prowling about our garden.

"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright,
In the forest of the night,
What immortal Hand and Eye
Framed thy fearful symmetry?"

Do you remember it?

I feel _quite a wretch_ not to like your "Ploughman"[39] as well as
usual. There is always poetry in your things, but TO ME the
_spirit_ of this one has not quite that reality which is the highest
virtue of "a sentiment"--or at least its greatest strength. But I may
be wrong. Only that kind of constant lifting of the soul from the
labour of daily drudgery to the Father of our spirits seems to me one
of the highest, latest, and most refined Christian Graces in natures
farthest removed from "the ape and tiger," and most at leisure for
contemplative worship. I know there are exceptions. Rural
contemplative saints among shepherds and ploughmen. But that the
agricultural labourer as a type seeks "Nature's God" at the
plough-tail and in the bosom of his family I fear is _not_ the
case--and it would be very odd if poverty and ignorance did lead to
such results, even in the advantages of an "open-air" life. Perhaps
Burns knew such a Cottar on Saturday Nights as he painted--he wasn't
_sick_ himself! unless you interpret _a neet wi' Burns_ by that
poem!--and there has been one contemplative Shepherd on Salisbury
Plain--though the proverb says--

"Salisbury Plain
Is seldom without a thief or twain."

--_not_ I believe supposed to refer to highwaymen!! and agricultural
labourers stand (among trades) statistically high (or low!) for the
crime of murder.

[Footnote 39: Sonnet by H.S. Elder, _Aunt Judy's Magazine_.]

But I won't inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate
conviction _in my inside_ that dear Mother was right in the idea that
it is the learned--not the ignorant--who wonder, and that the
ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising
sun--though YOUR mind might overflow with awe and admiration.
As to the last verse--that a "cot" should ever be "cheerful" which
"serves him for" washhouse, kitchen, nursery and all--is a triumph of
the "softening influence of use"--and I concede it to you! But where
"he reigns as a king his toils forgot" is, I am convinced, at the
Black Bull with highly-drugged beer!!!!!!

Now am I _not_ a Brute?

And yet it is _very_ pretty, and--strange to say--the class to whom I
believe it would be acceptable, is the class of whom I believe it is
not (typically) true, and PERHAPS it is good for every class
to have an _ideal_ of its own circumstances before its eyes. But I
don't think it is good for rich people's children to grow up with the
belief that twelve shillings a week, and cider and a pig, are the
wisest and happiest earthly circumstances in which humanity with large
families can be placed for their temporal and spiritual progress. I
don't think it ever leads to a wish in the young Squire to exchange
with Hodge for the good of his own soul, but I think it fosters a
fixed conviction that Hodge has nothing to complain of, _plus_ being
placed at a particular advantage as to his eternal concerns.

Will you ever forgive me? I like the descriptive parts so much, the
"rival cocks at dawn"--the "autumn's mist and spring's soft rain," the
team that "turn in their trace in the furrow's face," and the
life-like descriptions in verse 4. It is as true to one's observation
as it is graceful....

Your loving niece,
J.H.E.

TO A.E.

_Ecclesfield._ May 14, 1876.

[_Sketch._] Do you remember Whitley Hall? I used to be so fond of the
place when I was a child, and no one lived there but an old woman--old
Esther Woodhouse--with a face like an ideal witch--at the lodge. As
you know I always hated _writing down_--but long before I accomplished
a tale on paper I wrote a novel _in my head_ to Whitley Hall, and used
to walk about in the wood there, by the pond--_to think it_!

_York._ February 23, 1879.

... Yesterday was sunny though cold, and I had a delicious drive to
Escrick and Naburn. Oh, it _does_ send thrills of delight through me,
when the hay-coloured hedge-grass begins to mix itself with green, and
the hedges have a very brown-madderish tint in the sun, and all the
trunks of all the old trees are far greener than the fields, and the
earth is turned over, and the rooks hold Parliaments.

* * * * *

[_York._] Easter Day, 1879.

... I went to Church at S. John's, Mr. Wilberforce's Church; I had
never been in it. That window with S. Christopher, and those strange
representations of the Trinity, and the five Master Yorkes kneeling
all in blue on one side, and their four sisters on the other, is very
wonderful. One of the most wonderful. How fascinating these dear old
churches are! Mr. Wilberforce has a fine voice, a most rich and
flexible baritone, and sings ballads with a great deal of taste and
expression. I shall for ever love York and its marble-white walls and
dear old churches, but "Benedetta sia 'l giorno e 'l mese e 'l anno,"
when you set your face with your black poodle towards the island
called Melita! This north-east wind which still blows _cruelly_ would
have made you very ill, I think....

I must tell you of another thing. On Thursday I went to the Blind
School to a concert. I went rather against my will, for you know I was
sadly impressed before by their _very_ unhealthy and miserable look,
but oh, dear, they do sing well! and it was very affecting. One of the
Barnbys teaches them. They have a good organ, and one of the blind men
played very well. They sang very refinedly. No doubt they are well
taught, but no doubt also the sense of hearing is delicate with
them....

_Frimhurst._ April 18, 1879.

I got here safely yesterday, though I had a horrid headache on
Wednesday, and expected to arrive here in very bad condition. I felt
rather bad yesterday morning, but as I drew near, marvellous to
relate, my headache went away! Oh! I thought so much of you, as the
misty network of pines against the sky--the stretches of moor--the
flashes of the canal--and all the dear familiar Heimath Land came
nearer and nearer....

It is still "chill April" even here, but wonderfully different from
Yorkshire. Sunshine--and green things so much more forward--and birds
singing their very throats out.

"Lion," the mastiff, I am rather frightened of, but he loves me and
gives me paws over and over again. He is pawing me now and will
interrupt.

April 22.

The weather is intensely cold again, though nothing can make this
country quite dreary--but cold it is! Still there are all the dear old
features, I did not know the Mitchett side (of the Frimhurst bridge)
of the canal; but I have been a good way down getting water-weeds--but
of course you know it well. It is curiously like bits of the S. John
[New Brunswick] River. One could almost see birch-bark canoes at
points.

To-day the Jelfs came. It was an affecting meeting, our first since
he was so ill in Cyprus, and he said, "It used to seem so little
likely one would ever again see the old faces."... He spoke at once
about your calling this country Heimath Land, saying it seemed the
very word.

I am going on Thursday to stay with the Jelfs till Monday; I shall be
so thankful to get a Sunday in the old Tin Tabernacle.

_K Lines, South Camp, Heimath Land._
April 25.

It is a sunny sweet day, so that I have been strolling about in the
garden without a jacket. It is strangely pleasant being here, the old
scenes without, and all Sir Howard Elphinstone's pretty things within.
The Jelfs are staying in the Elphinstones' hut. In the matter of
pictures I do not always agree with Sir Howard, but his decorative
taste is very good, and the things he has picked up in all parts of
the world are delightful. "Et ego, etc." We have things and things as
it is, and shall pick up more! He is so very ingenious, and has made a
dado over the mantelpiece, with a white or coloured border on which he
puts pictures and photographs; in the centre is a square of coloured
material with other things mounted on it. I foresee making a similar
design for our Malta mantelpiece, with a gold Maltese cross in the
centre and tiles round illustrating the eight Beatitudes....

I am intensely enjoying this bit here. Yesterday the Jelfs and the
boys and I had a long wander by the canal where the larches and the
birches are getting their tenderest tints on.... On Thursday evening I
went to the Tin Church, with the old bell _tankling_ as I went in, and
the mess bugles tootling afar as I came out. Bell the schoolmaster and
baritone started as if I were a ghost, and sent me a book for the
special hymn. Not a soul in the officers' seats--but a good choir and
a very fair congregation of men and barrack families. Said I to
myself, "I've been living in wealthy Bowdon and in ecclesiastical
York, and not had this. Well done--the Tug of War and the Tin
Tabernacle and the Camp! and unpaid soldiers and their sons to sing
the Lord's Song in the land of their pilgrimage!"

To-day I went with Mrs. Jelf to a meeting at the Club House about
"Coffee Houses." When we got in a "rehearsal" (dramatic) was going on,
and the chaff was "Have you come for the rehearsal or the
coffee-house?" We "Coffee-housers" adjourned to the Whist Room. Sir
Thos. Steele in the chair. I had a long chat with him. He says Music
and the Drama have declined dreadfully. The meeting was full of
friends. "Mat Irvine" nearly wrung my hand off, and I sat by poor
Knollys, who is heart-broken at the death of that dear little soul,
Captain Barton. It was a first-rate meeting, mixed military and
Aldershot tradesmen--a very "nice feeling" displayed--altogether it
was wonderfully pleasant.

_Exeter._ May 16, 1879.

... The weather alternates here between North-Easters and mugginess, and
I have never slept without fires yet. All the same I have had some
lovely _drives_, which you know are so good for me. When Mrs. Fox
Strangways couldn't go the Colonel has taken me alone 12 or 14 miles in
the dog-cart with a very "free-going" but otherwise prettily-behaved
little mare named Daphne. The tumbledown of hills and dales is very
pretty here, and the deep red of the earth, and the whitewashed and
thatched cottages. Very pretty bits for sketching if it had been
sketching-weather....

I hope to get several things done in London. Jean Ingelow has burst
out rather about my writings, and wants me to do something "in the
style of Madam Liberality," and let her try to get it into _Good
Words_, as she thinks I ought to try for a wider audience. I shall
certainly go and see her, and talk over matters.... I was _very_ much
pleased Sir Anthony Home had been so much pleased with "Jan." To draw
tears from a V.C. and a fine old Scotch medico is very gratifying!
Capt. Patten said their own Dr. Craig had also been delighted with it.
When "We and the World" is done I mean to rest well on my oars, and
then try and aim at something to give me a better footing if I
can....

June 14, 1879.

... I am getting as devoted to Browning as you. It is very funny--this
sudden and simultaneous light on him!

May 23, 1879.

[_Sketch._]

Forty-four of these aquatic plant tubs stand in one part of the back
premises of Clyst S. George Rectory, full of truly wondrous varieties.
The above is a thing like white tassels and purple-pink buds. Fancy
how I revel in them, and in the garden, which holds 1640 species of
herbaceous perennials all labelled and indexed!! The old Rector (he is
89) is as hard at it as ever. He is so pleased to be listened to, and
it is enormously interesting though somewhat fatiguing, and leaves me
no time whatever for anything else! My brain whirls with tiles,
mosaics, tesserae, bell-castings, bell-marks, and mottos, electros,
squeezes, rubbings, etc., etc. His latest plant fad is Willows and
Bamboos, of which he has countless kinds growing and flourishing!!! He
is infirm, but it is very grand to see life rich with interests, and
with work that will benefit others--so near the grave!

We'd a funny scene this morning when I went over the church with him,
and had to write my name in the book.

Very testily--"The _date_, my dear, put the date!"

"I have put it."

More testily at being in the wrong--"Then put your address, put your
address."

I hesitated, and he threw up his hands: "Bless me! you've not got one.
It has always puzzled me so what made _you_ take a fancy to a
soldier."

He had been very full of all kinds of ancient Church matters--a
wonderful bell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in a very remarkable
inscription, etc.,--so I seized the pen and wrote--_Strada Maria
Stella, Malta_--and "I du thenk" (as they say here) it will
considerably puzzle the old sexton!!!!!

Soon after sunrise on Ascension Day I was woke clear and clean by the
bells _breaking into song_. You know campanology is his great hobby.
They rang changes, with long pauses between. Bells often try me very
much, at Ecclesfield _par exemple_, but I really enjoyed these....

May 24, 1879.

... A very pathetic bit of private news of poor little MacDowell. He
was sent by the General to tell them to strike the tents, and was
urging on the ammunition to the front, and encouraging the bandsmen to
carry it, when a Zulu shot him. A good and not painful end--God bless
him! The Capt. Jones who told this, said also that one little bugler
killed three big Zulus with his side-arms before he fell! Also that a
private of the 24th saved Chard's life at Rorke's Drift by pushing his
head down, so that a bullet went over it!

_Woolwich._ Whit Monday, 1879.

* * * * *

Don't think you have all the picturesque beggars to yourself! Out in a
street of Woolwich with Mrs. O'Malley the other day I saw
this--[_Sketch._] The eyes though very clear and intense-looking
decided me at once the man was blind, though he had no dog, and was
only walking solemnly on, with a _carved fiddle_ of white wood under
his arm! I ran back after him, and went close in front of him. He
gazed and saw nothing. Then I touched him and said, "Are you blind?"
He started and said, "Very nearly." I gave him a penny, for which he
thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it
himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The _handle part_ (forgive
my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North
American Indian _art_, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He
asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a
husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose
coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. This has been a
lucky day for me." He was a shipwright--can play the piano, he
says--lives in the workhouse in winter and comes out in summer--with
the flowers--and his fiddle! I knew you would like me to give
something to that _povero fratello_.

_Woolwich._ June 6, 1879.

... _The_ painter of the Academy this year is Mrs. Butler!! I do hope
some day somewhere you may see _The Remnants of an Army_ and _Recruits
for the Connaught Rangers_. The first is in the _Academy Notes_, which
I send you. The second is at least as fine. [_Sketch._] The landscape
effect is the opal-like sky and bright light full of moisture after
rain--heavy clouds hang above--the mountains are a leaden blue--and
the sky of all exquisite pale shades of bright colour. Down the wet
moor road comes the group. Two very tall, dark-eyed Connaught
"boys"--one with a set face and his hands in his pockets looking
straight out of the picture--the other with a yearning of Keltic
emotion looking back at the hills as if his heart was breaking. The
strapping young sergeant looks very grave; but an "old soldier" behind
is lighting his pipe, and a bugler is holding back a dog. One of the
best faces is that of the drummer who walks first, and whose
13-year-old face is so furrowed about the brow with oppressive
anxiety--very truthful!

_The Remnants of an Army_ is of course overpowering by the mere
subject, and it is nobly painted. The man and his horse are wonderful
alike. There is nothing to touch these two. But I _would_ like to
steal Peter Graham's _The Seabirds' Resting-Place_. Such penguins
sitting on wet rocks with wet Fucus _growing on_ them! Such myriads
more in the _sea-mist_ that hides the horizon-line--sitting on distant
rocks!--and _such_ green waves--by the light of a sunbeam into one of
which you see Laminaria fronds and lumps of Fucus tossing up and down.
You feel wet and ozoney to come near it! There are some very fine
men's portraits, and Orchardson's _Gamblers Hard Hit_ is the best
thing of his, I think, that I know....

... There is a very beautiful old gun in the Arsenal upon a
gun-carriage with wheels thus [_Sketch_], and with bas-reliefs of St.
Paul and the Viper. It is needless to say the gun came from the island
called Melita! But for cunning workmanship and fine bold designs and
delicate execution the Chinese guns are the ones! I am taking rubbings
of the patterns for decorative purposes! They were taken in the war.

There is yet one picture I must tell you of--"_A Musical Story by
Chopin_"--the boy playing to a group of lads and a tutor. His utterly
absorbed face is _admirable_. It is a very pretty thing. Not
marvellous, but very good.

August 5, 1879.

* * * * *

I must tell you that it is _on the cards_ that Caldecott is going to
do a coloured picture for me _to write to_, for the October No. of
_A.J.M._ (so that it will bind up with the 1879 volume and be the
Frontispiece). He is so fragile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do
it. D---- and he became great friends in London, and I think now he
would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak
our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over
second-rate "society" work for _Graphic_, etc., etc., when he has such
a genius to interpret humour and pathos for good writers, and no real
writing gifts himself. (He has done some things called _Flirtation in
France_, supplying both letter-press and sketches!--that are terrible
to any one who has gone heart and soul into his House that Jack
built!!!) I've told him frankly if he "_draws down to me_" in the
hopes of making _my_ share easy by making his commonplace, and gives
me a "rising young family in sand-boots and frilled trousers with an
over-fed mercantile mamma," my "few brains will utterly congeal," but
I have made two suggestions to _him_, so closely on his own lines that
if hints help him I think he would find it easy. You know _horses_ are
really his specialite. I have asked him to give me a coloured thing
and one or two rough sketches, Either

An Old Coaching Day's Idyll
or--A Trooper's Tragedy.

The same beginning for either:

Child learning to ride on
hobby-horse
rocking-horse
donkey
pony
etc. etc.

Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching
road (Hog's Back!)--a highwayman--a broken-down postilion--a girl on a
pillion, etc., etc.

Or, if military:

A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a
bridge.

A Horse and Trooper--Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another
man across his saddle.

Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet),
but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.

* * * * *

August 9, 1879.

* * * * *

I was reading again at _Robert Falconer_ the other day. What _grand_
bits there are in it? With such _bosh_ close by. So like Ruskin in
that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the
problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but
nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or
knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about
drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers,
false swearers, whoremongers, and "all liars"--I wonder whether these
trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!

But oh, that description to the _son_ of what it sounded like when
_his father_ played the _Flowers of the Forest_ on his fiddle, isn't
to be beaten in any language I believe! All the Scotch lasses after
Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the
men who lay on Flodden Field!--"Lasses to reap and lasses to
bind--Lasses to stook." etc., etc., and "no a word I'll warrant ye, to
the orra lad that didna gang wi' the lave"!!!![40] and the lad's
outburst in reply, "I'd raither be gratten for nor kissed!"

[Footnote 40: _Robert Falconer_, chap. xix.]

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