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

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I do not know that there is in the early chapters anything that can be
called "petty," more than in the speech of the devils to our Lord,
and His suffering them to go into the swine.

We must, however, beware that we do not, when we say "petty," merely
mean at bottom what is altogether different from our ordinary notions,
formed by daily and general experience of life, as we ourselves find
it.

All this long yarn, and not a word about your health, which is
shameful. We both do heartily rejoice that you are better, and only
hope for everybody's sake and your own, you will nurse and husband
your strength....

Your affectionate old friend,
JOHN FREDERICTON.

TO A.E.

April 10, 1880.

* * * * *

The night before last I dined with Jean Ingelow. I went in to dinner
with Alfred Hunt (a water-colour painter to whose work Ruskin is
devoted). A _very_ unaffected, intelligent, agreeable man; we had a
very pleasant chat. On my other side sat a dear old Arctic Explorer,
old _Ray_. I fell quite in love with him, and with the nice Scotch
accent that overtook him when he got excited. Born and bred in the
Orkneys, almost, as he said, _in the sea_; this wild boyhood of
familiarity with winds and waves, and storms and sports, was the
beginning of the life of adventure and exploration he has led. He told
me some very interesting things about Sir John Franklin. He said that
great and good as he was there were qualities which he had not, the
lack of which he believed cost him his life. He said Sir John went
well and gallantly at his end, if he could keep to the lines he had
laid down; but he had not "fertility of resource for the unforeseen,"
and didn't _adapt_ himself. As an instance, he said, he always made
his carriers _march_ along a given line. If stores were at A, and the
point to be reached B, by the straight line from A to B he would send
the local men he had _hired_ through bog and over boulder, whereas if
he said to any of them, "B is the place you must meet me at," with
the knowledge of natives and the instinct of savages they would have
gone with half the labour and twice the speed. He said too that
Franklin's party suffered terribly because none of his officers were
_sportsmen_, which, he said, simply means starvation if your stores
fail you. We had a long talk about scientific men and their
_deductions_, and he said quaintly, "Ye see, I've just had a lot of
rough expeerience from me childhood; and things have happened now and
again that make me not just put implicit faith in all scientific
dicta. I must tell you, Mrs. Ewing, that when I was a young man, and
just back from America and the Arctic Regions, where I'd lived and
hunted from a mere laddie, I went to a lecture delivered by one of the
verra _first_ men of the day (whose name for that reason I won't give
to ye) before some three thousand listeners and the late Prince
Consort; and there on the table was the head and antlers of a male
reindeer--beasts that, as I'm telling ye, I knew _sentimately_, and
had killed at all seasons. And this man, who, as I'm telling ye, was
one of the verra furrrst men of the day (which is the reason why I'm
not giving ye his name) spoke on, good and bad, and then he said,
'Ladies and gentlemen, and your Royal Highness, be good enough to look
at the head of this Reindeer. Here ye see the antlers,' and so forth,
'and ye'll obsairve that there's a horn that has the shape of a shovel
and protrudes over the beast's eyes in a way that must be horribly
inconvenient. But when ye see its shape, ye'll perceive one of the
most beautiful designs of Providence, a _proveesion_ as we may say;
for this inconvenient horn is so shaped that with it the beast can
shovel away the deep winter snow and find its accustomed food.'

"And when I heard this I just shook with laughing till a man I knew
saw me, and asked what I was laughing at, and I said, 'Because I
happen to know that the male reindeer _sheds its antlers_ every year
in the beginning of November, _snow shovel_ and all, and does not
resume them till spring.'"!!!!!!

* * * * *

April 26, 1880.

* * * * *

Curious your writing to me about Dante's Hell--and Lethe. Two books in
my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and
spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the
most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE
as strongly in those who have been carefully brought up apart from
"religious convictions" as in those whose minds have been soaked in
them). One was Flaxman's _Dante_, the other Selous's illustrations in
the same style to the _Pilgrim's Progress_. I do not know whether I
suffered more in my childhood than other children. Possibly, as my
head was a good deal too big for my body! But I remember two troubles
that haunted me. One that I should get tired of Eternity. Another that
I couldn't be happy in Heaven unless I could _forget_. And in this
latter connection I loved indescribably one of Flaxman's best designs.
[_Sketch._] I can't remember it well enough to draw decently, but this
was the attitude of Dante whom Beatrice was just laving in the Waters
of Forgetfulness before they entered Paradise.

And even more fond was I of the passing of the great river by
Christiana and her children, and by that mixed company of the brave
and the weak, the young and the old, the gentle and the
impatient,--and that grand touch by which the "Mr. Ready-to-Halt" of
the long Pilgrimage crossed the waters of Death without fear or
fainting.

* * * * *

Why should you think I should differ with Dante in his estimate of
sin? I doubt if I could rearrange his Circles, except that "Lust" is a
wide word, as = Passion I should probably leave it where it is; but
there are hideous forms of it which are inextricably mingled, if not
identical with Cruelty,--and Cruelty I should put at the lowest round
of all.

_Clyst S. George._ April 30, 1880.

* * * * *

We have had rather a chaff with Mr. Ellacombe (who in his ninety-first
year is as keen a gardener as ever!) because he has many strange sorts
of _Fritillary_, and when I told him I had seen and gone wild over a
sole-coloured pale yellow one which I saw exhibited in the
Horticultural Gardens, he simply put me down--"No, my dear, there's no
such thing; there's a white Fritillary I can show you outside, and
there's _Fritillaria Lutea_ which is yellow and spotted, but there's
no such plant as you describe." Still it evidently made him restless,
and he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him
_shaves_ about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to
describe a white Crown Imperial--a thing that has _never been_!" Later
he announced--"I have written to Barr and Sugden--'Gentlemen! Here's
another White Elephant. A lady has seen a sole-coloured Yellow
Fritillary!'"

This morning B. and S. wrote back, and are obliged to confess that "a
yellow Fritillary has been produced," but (not being the producers)
they add, "It is not a good yellow." _Pour moi_, I take leave to judge
of colours as well as Barr and Sugden, and can assure you it is a very
lovely yellow, pale and chrome-y. It has been like a chapter out of
Alphonse Karr!

One of the horticultural papers is just about to publish Mr.
Ellacombe's old list of the things he has grown in his own garden.
Three thousand species!

* * * * *

I hope you liked that _Daily Telegraph_ article on the Back Gardener I
sent you? It is really fine workmanship in the writing line as well as
being amusing. I abuse the Press often enough, but I will say such
Essays (for they well deserve the name) are a great credit to the
age--in Penny Dailies!!!

"The Nursery Nonsense of the Birds," "A Stratified Chronology of
Occupancies," "Waves of Whims," etc., etc., are the work of a man who
can use his tools with a master's hand, or at least a _skilled_
worker's!

I am reading another French novel, by Daudet, _Jack_. So far (as I
have got) it is marvellous _writing_. "Le petit Roi--Dahomey" in the
school "des pays chauds" is a Dickenesque character, but quite
marvellous--his fate--his "gri-gri"--his final Departure to the land
where all things are so "made new" that "the former" do not "come into
mind"--having in that supreme hour _forgotten_ alike his sufferings,
his tormentors, and his friends--and only babbling in Dahomeian in
that last dream in which his spirit returned to its first earthly home
before "going home" for Good!--is superb!!! The possible meanness and
brutality of civilized man in Paris--the possible grandeur and obvious
immortality of the smallest, youngest, "gri-gri" worshipping nigger of
Dahomey oh it is wonderful altogether, and I should fancy
SUCH a sketch of the _incompris_ poet and the rest of the
clique!! "_C'est_ LUI."

* * * * *

_Ecclesfield, Sheffield._ July 23, 1880.

MY DEAR MR. CALDECOTT,

I am sending you a number of "Jackanapes" in case you have lost your
other.

I have made marks against places from some of which I think you could
select easy scenes; I mean easy in the sense of being on the lines
where your genius has so often worked.

I will put some notes about each at the end of my letter. What I now
want to ask you is whether you _could_ do me a few illustrations of
the vignette kind for "Jackanapes," so that it might come out at
Christmas. Christmas _ought_ to mean October! so it would of course be
very delightful if you could have completed them in September--and as
soon as might be. But do not WORRY your brain about dates. I
would rather give it up than let you feel the fetters of Time, which,
when they drag one at one's work, makes the labour double. But if you
will begin them, and _see_ if they come pretty readily to your
fingers, I shall only too well understand it if after all you can't
finish in time for this season!

In short I won't press _you_ for all my wishes!--but I do feel rather
disposed to struggle for a good place amongst the hosts of authors who
are besetting you; and as I am not physically or mentally well
constituted for surviving amongst the fittest, if there is _much
shoving_ (!) I want to place my plea on record.

So will you try?--

* * * * *

It was very kind of you and your wife to have us to see your sketches.
I hope you are taking in ozone in the country.

Yours ever,
J.H.E.

[NOTES.]

Respectfully suggested scenes to choose from.

Initial T out of the old tree on the green, with perhaps _to secure
portrait_ the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag _a la_
an old Chelsea Pensioner.

1. A lad carrying his own long-bow (by regulation his own height) and
trudging by his pack-horse's side, the horse laden with arrows for
Flodden Field (September 9, 1513). Small figures back view (!) going
westwards--poetic bit of moorland and sky.

2. If you _like_--a portrait of the little Miss Jessamine in Church.

3 to 5. You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the
ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures
including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type). Old
inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ones) scattered in the
fray.

The Black Captain, with his hand on his horse's mane, bigger--(so as
to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or _small_ on his horse
stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a
puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused
behind Master Johnson (page 707).

6. Pretty vignetted portrait of the little Miss J., three-quarter
length, about size of page 29 of _Old Christmas_. Scene, girl's
bedroom--she with her back to mirror, face buried in her hands,
"crying for the Black Captain"; her hair down to just short of her
knees, the back of her hair catching light from window and reflected
in the glass. Old Miss Jessamine (portrait) talking to her "like a
Dutch uncle" about the letter on the dressing-table; aristocratic
outline against window, and (as Queen Anne died) "with one finger
up"!!!!! (These portraits would make No. 2 needless probably.)

7. Not worth while. I had thought of a very small quay scene with
slaves, a "black ivory"--and a Quaker's back! (Did you ever read the
correspondence between Charles Napier and Mr. Gurney on Trade and
War?)

8. A very pretty elopement please! Finger-post pointing to
Scotland--Captain _not_ in uniform of course.

9 or 10--hardly; too close to the elopement which we _must_ have!

11. You are sure to make that pretty.

12. Might be a very small shallow vignette of the field of Waterloo. I
will look up the hours, etc., and send you word.

13. As you please--or any part of this chapter.

16. I mean a tombstone like this [_Sketch of flat-topped tombstone_],
very common with us.

17, 18. I leave to you.

19 or 20, might suit you.

21. Please let me try and get you a photo of a handsome old general!!
I think I will try for General MacMurdo, an old Indian hero of the
most slashing description and great good looks.

22. I thought some comic scene of a gentleman in feather-bed and
nightcap with a paper--"Rumours of Invasion" conspicuous--might be
vignetted into a corner.

23 might be fine, and go down side of page; quite alone as vignette,
or distant indication of Jackanapes looking after or up at him.

24. Should you require military information for any scene here?

25-26. I hope you could see your way to 26. Back view of
horses--"Lollo the 2nd" and a screw, Tony lying over his holding on by
the neck and trying to get at his own reins from Jackanapes' hand.
J.'s head turned to him in full glow of the sunset against which they
ride; distant line of dust and "retreat" and curls of smoke.

The next chapter requires perhaps a good deal of "war material" to
paint with, and strictly soldier-type faces.

27. The cobbler giving his views might be a good study with an
advertisement somewhere of the old "souled and healed cheap."

28. This scene I think you might like, and please on the wall have a
hatchment with "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (excuse my bad
Latinity if I have misquoted).

29 would make a pretty scene, I think, and

30 would make me too happy if you scattered pretty groups and back
views of the young people, "the Major" and one together, in one of
your perfect bits of rural English summer-time.

If there _were_ to be a small vignette at the end, I should like a
wayside Calvary with a shadowy Knight in armour, lance in rest,
approaching it from along a long flat road.

Now please (it is nearly post time!) forgive how very badly I have
written these probably confusing suggestions. I am not very well, and
my head and _thumb_ both fail me.

If you can do it, do it as you like. I will send you a photo of an
officer who will do for the Black Captain, and will try and secure a
General also. If you could lay your hands on the Illustrated Number
that was "extra" for the death of the Prince Imperial--a R.A. officer
close by the church door, helping in one end of the coffin, is a very
typical military face.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

July 30, 1880.

* * * * *

Oh, with what sympathy I hear you talk of Shakespeare. Nay! not Dante
and not Homer--not Chaucer--and not Goethe--"not Lancelot nor another"
are really his peers.

Here blossom sonnets that one puts on a par with his--there, _in
another man's_ work the illimitable panorama of varied and life-like
men and women "merely players," may draw laughter and tears (Crabbe,
and much of Dickens and other men, and Don Quixote). His coarse wit
and satire and shrewdness, when he is least pure, may I suppose find
rivals in some of the eighteenth or seventeenth century English
writers, and in the marvellous brilliancy of French ones. When he is
purest and highest I cannot think of a Love Poet to touch him.
Tennyson perhaps nearest. But _he_ seems quite unable to fathom the
heart of a noble woman with any _strength_ of her own, or any
knowledge of the world. "Enid" is to me intolerable as well as the
degraded legend it was founded on. Perhaps the brief thing of Lady
Godiva is the nearest approach, and Elaine faultless as the picture of
a maiden-heart brought up in "the innocence of ignorance." But he can
write fairly of "fair women." Scott runs closer, but his are paintings
from without. "Jeanie Deans" is bad to beat!!

Shelley comes to his side when _weirdness_ is concerned.

"Five fathom deep thy father lies," etc.,

is run hard by--

"Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
_Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come._"

But I will not bore you with comparisons. My upshot is that no one of
the many who may rival him in SOME of his perfections, COMBINE them all
in ONE genius. In all these philosophizing days--who touches him in
philosophy? From the simplest griefs and pleasures and humanity at its
simplest--Macduff over the massacre of his wife and children--to all
that the most delicate brain may search into and suffer, as Hamlet--or
the ten thousand exquisite womanish thoughts of Portia, a creature of
brain power and feminine fragility--

"By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great world."

* * * * *

TO C.T.G.

_Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield._
Aug. 3, 1880.

* * * * *

_A propos_ of my affairs ... next year we might do something with some
of my "small gems." Don't _you_ like "Aldegunda" (Blind Man and Talking
Dog)? D. does so much. Do you like the "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher,"
"Ladders to Heaven," and "Dandelion Clocks"?...

... As you know, these _little_ things are the chief favourites with
my more educated friends, whose kindness consoles me for the much
labour I spend on so few words (The "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher" was
"in hand" two years!!!), and I think their only chance would be to be
so dressed and presented as to specially and downrightly appeal to
those who would value the Art of the Illustrator, and perhaps
recognize the refinement of labour with which the letter-press has
been ground down, and clipped, and condensed, and selected--till, as
it would appear to the larger buying-public, there is _wonderfully
little left you for your money_!!...

Poor old Cruikshank! How well--and willingly--he would have done
"Kyrkegrim turned Preacher." He said, when he read my things, "the
Fairies came and danced to him"--which pleased me much.

* * * * *

Yesterday I pulled myself together and wrote straight to the printers,
to the effect that the suffering the erratic and careless printing of
"We and the World" cost me was such that I was obliged to protest
against X. and Sons economizing by using boys and untrained incapables
to print (printing from print being easier, and therefore adapted for
teaching the young P.D. how to set up type), pointing out one sentence
in which (clear type in _A.J.M._) the words "insist on guiding my fate
by lines of their own ruling" was printed to the effect that they
wouldn't insist on _gilding_ my _faith_, etc., _their_ being changed
to _there_. All of which the _reader_ had overlooked--to concern
himself with my Irish brogue--and certain _reiterations of words_
which he mortally hates, and which I regard the chastened use of, as
like that of the _plural of excellence_ in Hebrew!

(He would have put that demoniacal mark [symbol: checkmark]
against one of the summers in "All the fragrance of summer
when summer was gone"!!!)

I sent SUCH a polite message PER X. to his reader,
thanking him much for trying to mend my brogue (which had already
passed through the hands of three or four Irishmen, including Dr.
Todhunter and Dr. Littledale), but proposing that for the future we
should confine ourselves to our respective trades,--That the printer
should print from copy, and not out of his own head--that the reader
should read for clerical errors and bad printing, which would leave me
some remnant of time and strength to attend to the language and
sentiments for which I alone was responsible. My dear love, I must
stop.

Ever your devoted,
J.H.E.

TO A.E.

_Farnham Castle, Surrey._
Oct. 10, 1880.

DIARY OF MRS. PEPYS.

"_Oct. 9._--Passed an ill night, and did early resolve to send a
carrier pigeon unto the Castle to notify that I must lie where I was,
being unable to set forward. But on rising I found myself not so ill
that I need put others to inconvenience; so I did but order a cab and
set forth at three in the afternoon, in pouring rain. My hostess sent
with me David her footman, who saved me all trouble with my luggage,
and so forth from Frimley to Farnham. A pause at the South Camp
Station, dear familiar spot, a little before which the hut where my
good lord lay before we were married loomed somewhat drearily through
the mist and rain. At Farnham the Lord Bishop's servitor was waiting
for me, and took all my things, leading me to a comfortable carriage
and so forth to the Castle.

Somewhat affrighted at the hill, which is steep, and turns suddenly;
but recovered my steadfastness in thinking that no horses could know
the way so well as these.

The Bishopess and her daughter received me on the stair-case, and we
had tea in the book-gallery, a most pleasing apartment.

Thence to my room to rest till dinner. It is a mighty fine apartment,
vast and high, with long windows having deep embrasures, and looking
down upon the cedars and away over the whole town, which is a pretty
one.

Methinks if I were a state prisoner, I would fain be imprisoned in an
upper chamber, looking level with these same cedar-branches, whereon,
mayhap, some bird might build its nest for mine entertainment.

Dinner at 8.15. Wore my ancient brocade newly furbished with
olive-green satin, and tinted lace about my neck, fastened with a
brooch made like to a Maltese Cross, green stockings and shoes
embroidered with flowers.

Was taken down to dinner by Sir Thos. Gore Browne, an exceeding
pleasant old soldier, elder brother to the Bishop,--having before
dinner had much talk with his Lordship, whom I had not remembered to
have been the dear friend of our dear friend the Lord Bishop of
Fredericton, when both prelates were curates in Exeter."

* * * * *

I am very much enjoying my visit to this dear old Castle. They are
superabundantly kind! After the evening yesterday everybody, visitors
and family, all trooped into the dimly-lighted chapel for Evening
Prayer. They sang "Jerusalem the Golden," and Gen. Lysons sang away
through his glass, in his K.C.B. star, and came up to compliment me
about it afterwards....

October 22, 1880.

Yesterday was Trafalgar Day. About half-a-dozen old Admirals of ninety
and upwards met and dined together! I don't know what I would not have
given to have been present at that most ghostly banquet! How like a
dream, a shadow, a bubble, a passing vapour, and all the rest of it,
must life not have seemed to these ex-midshipmen of the _Victory_ and
the _Temeraire_! muffling their poor old throats against this sudden
frost, and toddling to table, and hobnobbing their glass in
old-fashioned ways to immortal memories,

"here in London's central roar,
Where the sound of those, he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for Evermore!"

The cold is sudden and most severe. I fear it will hustle some of
those dear old Admirals to rejoin their ancient comrade--the "Saviour
of the silver-coasted isle."

* * * * *

May 1881.

"The Harbour Bay was clear as glass--
So smooth--ly was it strewn!
And on--the Bay--the moonlight lay
And--the--Shad--ow of--the Moon!"

--thus was it at 11 p.m. on the night of the 4th of May, when I looked
out of my bedroom window at Place Castle, Fowey, on the coast of
Cornwall!!!!--(and we must also remember that Isolde was married to
the King of Cornwall, and lived probably in much such a place as
Place!)

* * * * *

I caught a train on to Fowey, which I reached about 5. There I found a
brougham and two fiery chestnuts waiting for me, and after some
plunging at the train away went my steeds, and we turned almost at
once into the drive. There is no park to Place that I could see, but
the drive is _sui generis_! You keep going through _cuttings_ in the
rock, so that it has an odd feeling of a drive _on the stage_ in a
Fairy Pantomime. On your right hand the cliff is _tapestried_, almost
hidden, by wild-flowers and ferns in the wealthiest profusion!
Unluckily the wild garlic smells dreadfully, but its exquisite white
blossoms have a most aerial effect, with pink campion, Herb Robert,
etc., etc. On the left hand you have perpetual glimpses of the harbour
as it lies below--oh, _such_ a green! I never saw such before--"as
green as em-er-ald!"--and the roofs of the ancient borough of
Fowey!--I hope by next mail to have photographs to send you of the
place. It perpetually reminded me of the Ancient Mariner. As to Place
(P. Castle they call it now), the photographs will really give you a
better idea of it than I can. You must bear in mind that the harbour
of Fowey and a castle, carrying artillery, have been in the hands of
the Treffrys from time immemorial.... We went over the Church, a fine
old Church with a grand tower, standing just below the Castle. The
Castle itself is chiefly Henry VI, and Henry VII. I never saw such
elaborate stone carving as decorates the outside. There are beautiful
"Rose" windows close to the ground, and the Lilies of France, of
course, are everywhere. The chief drawing-room is a charming room,
hung with pale yellow satin damask, and with beautiful Louis Quinze
furniture. The porphyry hall is considered one of _the_ sights, the
roof, walls, and floor are all of red Cornish porphyry....

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