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

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"Well, I had a friend a little out of town who had a garden, and his
wife wanted flowers, and they knew nothing about it: so I made a
compact. I provided the roses--I made the soil--I planted them--and I
used to go and prune them and look after them. They were
_magnificent_".

"Oh, then you _had_ flowers?"

"Well, I made a compact. They never picked a rose on Saturday. On
Saturday night I used to go and clear the place. I had roses over my
church on Sundays--and all Festivals. The rest of the year his wife
had them."

It struck me as a most touching story--for the man is Rose Maniac.
What a sight those roses must have been to the eyes of such a
congregation! The Church should have been dedicated to S. Dorothea! He
is of the most modest order of Paddies--and as I say a little
alarming. I was _appalled_ when I saw the _hedge_ of the
"finest-named" roses he brought, and it was very difficult to "give
thanks" adequately!--I said once--"I really simply cannot tell you
the pleasure you have given me." He said rather grumpily--"You've
given me pleasure enough--and to lots of others." Then he suddenly
_chirped_ up and said--"Laetus cost me _2s. 6d._ though. My wife bet
me _2s. 6d._ I couldn't read it aloud without crying. I thought I
could. But after a page or two--I put my hand in my pocket--I
said--There! take your half-crown, and let me cry comfortably when I
want to!!!"

My dear, what a screed I have written to you!!

But your letter this morning _was_ a pleasure. There is something so
nice in your getting the very hut where--as I think--"Old Father"
first began to recover after Cyprus-fever. I wish you had had F. to
stride about the old lines also--and knock his head against your
door-tops!--Best love to R., F., and the Queers--

Your loving, J.H.E.

Dec. 3, 1883.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

You are always so forbearing!--and I have been driven to a degree by
work which I had promised, and have just despatched! Some day it may
appeal to "the Queers." For it is a collated (and Bowdlerized!)
version of the old Peace Egg Mumming Play for Christmas. I have been
often asked about it: and the other day a Canon Portal wrote to me,
and he urged me to try and do it, and it is done!

But it was a much larger matter than I had thought. The version I have
made up is made up from five different versions, and I hope I have got
the cream of them. It will be in the January number, which will be out
before Xmas.

I have also been trying to see my way--I SHOULD so like to go
to you--and if I can't yet awhile I hope you'll give me another
chance.

This week I certainly cannot--thank you, dear! And I _don't_ see my
way in December at all. I will _post-card_ you in a day or two again.

I am yours always lovingly,
J.H.E.

My garden is great joy to me. Even you, I think, would allow me a
moderate amount of "grubbing" in between brain work.

TO MRS. GOING.

Thursday (December 1883).

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

You are too profusely good to me. Have you really _given me_ Quarles?
I have never even seen his _School of the Heart_, and am charmed with
it. The Hieroglyphics of the life of Man were in the very old copy of
_Emblems_ belonging to my Mother which I have known all my life.

Thank you a thousand times.

I write for a seemingly ungracious purpose, but I know you will
comprehend my infirmities! I am not at all well. I had hoped to be
better by the time your young ladies came--but luck (and I fear a
little chill in the garden!) have been against me. I tried to get
_Macbeth_ deferred but it could not be--and I think my only hope of
enduring a long drive, and appearing as Lady Macbeth on Saturday
evening with any approach to "undaunted mettle"--is to shut myself up
in absolute silence and rest for several hours before we start. This,
alas! means that it would be better for your young ladies (what is
left of them, after brain fag and fish dinners!) to return to you by
an earlier train, as I could be "no account" to them on Saturday
afternoon.

* * * * *

_I'll take care_ of _the poor students_ though I _am_ not at my best!
Their fish is ordered. We will spend a soothing evening on sofas and
easy chairs--and go early to bed! They shall have breakfast in bed if
they like. This does not sound amusing but I think it will be
wholesome for their relics!

Again thanking you for the dear little book--which comes in so nicely
for Advent!

TO MRS. R.H. JELF.

DEAREST MARNY,

The Queers' letters are VERY nice. Thank them with my love.

* * * * *

Forgive pencil, dear--I'm in bed. Got rid of my throat--and now all my
"body and bones" seem to have given way, I thought it was lumbago or
sciatica--but Rex said--"Simply nerve exhaustion from over-writing"--so
I took to bed (for I couldn't walk!), high living and quinine! I hope
I'll soon be round again. The vile body is a nuisance. I've got a story
in my head--and that seems to take the vital force out of my legs!!!

Apropos to Richard's _Churchwarden's_ conscience, does he remember the
(possibly churchwarden!) "soul long hovering in fear and doubt"--in A
Kempis, who prostrated himself in prayer and groaned--"Oh if I only
_knew that I should persevere_!" To whom came the answer of God--"If
thou _didst_ know it, what wouldst thou do then? Continue to _do that_
and thou shalt be safe."

His letter and yours were _very_ comforting. I was just feeling very
low about my writing. I always do when I have to re-read for new
editions! It does seem such twaddle--and so unlike what I want to say!

Thank you greatly for believing in me!

* * * * *

Your loving, J.H.E.

TO MRS. HOWARD.

_Villa Ponente, Taunton._
Jan. 18, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. HOWARD,

In this Green Winter (and _you_ know how I love a Green Winter!) you
and all your kindness comes back so often to my mind. "Grenoside" is a
closed leaf in my life as well as in yours, but it is one that I shall
never forget so long as I can remember any of the things that have
mitigated the pains of life for me, or added to its pleasures!--The
bits of Green Winter I enjoyed with you did both--I hardly know which
the most! For the pleasure was very great, and the benefit
immeasurable--though now a fair amount of strength and "all my
faculties" have come back to me, I feel what a very tedious companion
I must have been when _vegetating_ was all I was fit for, and I did
such delightful vegetating between your sofa--and Greno Wood.

I want to tell you that I have some bits of you in what does the work
of Greno Wood for me here--namely, my little patch of garden, looking
out upon, what I call _my_ big fields. For some time I feared the said
bits were not going to live, but they have now, I really think, got
grip of the ground. They are those offshoots of your American Bramble
which you gave to me. And, ere long, I hope to sow a little paper of
your poppy seed, and--if two years' keeping has not destroyed its
vitality--I may, perchance, send you some of your own poppies to deck
your London rooms. You cannot think--or rather I have no doubt that
you can!--the refreshment my bit of garden is to me. It has become so
dear, that (like an ugly face one loves and ceases to see plain!)--I
find it so charming that it is _with a start_ that I recognize that
new friends see no beauty in--

[_Sketch._]

This four-square patch!!

But A and B are "beds," and there are borders under the brick walls,
and a rose-growing admirer of "Laetus" made a pilgrimage to see
me!--and brought me nineteen grand climbing roses--and wall S faces
_nearly quite_ south, and on it grow Marechal Niel, and Cloth of Gold,
and Charles Lefebvre, and Triomphe de Rennes, and a Banksia and
Souvenir de la Malmaison, and Cheshunt Hybrid, and a bit of the old
Ecclesfield summer white rose--sent by Undine--and some Passion
Flowers from dear old Miss Child in Derbyshire--and a _Wistaria_ which
the old lady of _the lodgings_ we were in when we first came, tore up,
and gave to me, with various other _oddments_ from her garden!
and--the American Bramble! And also, by the bye, a very lovely rose,
"Fortune's Yellow,"--given to me by a friend in Hampshire.

Major Ewing declares my borders are "so full _there is no room for
more_" which is very nasty of him!--but I have been very lucky in
preserving, and even multiplying, the various contributions my bare
patch has been blessed with! D. sent me a _barrel_ of bits last autumn
from the Vicarage, and Reginald sent me an excellent hamper from
Bradfield, and Col. Yeatman sent me a hamper from Wiltshire, and
several friends here have given me odds and ends, and our old friend
Miss Sulivan, before she went abroad, sent me a farewell memorial of
sweet things--Lavender, Rosemary, Cabbage Rose, Moss Rose, and
Jessamine!!!--Oh! talking of sweet things, I must tell you--I went
into the market here one day this last autumn, and of a man standing
there--I bought a dug-up clump of BAY _tree_--for 2/6.

You know how you indulged my senses with bay leaves when I was far
from them? Well, I put my clump and myself into a cab and went
home--where I pulled my clump to pieces and made eight nice plants of
him--and set me a bay hedge, which has thriven so far very well!!! But
then--'tis a Green Winter!

Now I want to know if there is a chance of tempting you down here for
a little visit? I have thought that perhaps some time in the Spring
the School might be taking holiday, and Harry might be striding off on
a week or 10 days' country "breathe,"--and perhaps you would come to
me? Or if he were inclined for fresh fields and pastures new, that you
would come together, and he might make his head-quarters here, and go
over to Glastonbury, etc., etc., etc., whilst we took matters more
quietly at home?

I feel it is a long way to come, but it would be so very pleasant to
me to welcome you under my own roof!

If you cannot get away in Spring, I _must_ persuade you when London
gets hotter and less pleasant!

You _must_ miss your country home--and yet I envy you a few things!
London has cords of charm to attract in many ways! I wish I could _fly
over_, and see the Sir Joshuas and one or two things.

(I am stubbornly indifferent to the _Spectator's_ dictum that we like
"Sir Joshuas" because we are a nation of snobs!!!)

Ever affectionately yours,
JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

Do tell me what hope there is of seeing you--and showing you your own
bramble on my own wall!

TO MRS. GOING.

March 11, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

I do not think you will ever let me have my Head Gardener here again!

I CAN'T take care of him!

I really could have sat down on the door-step and cried--when our old
cabby--"the family coachman" as we call him, arrived and had missed
Mr. Going. How _he_ did not miss his train, I cannot conceive! He must
have run--he must have flown--he _must_ be a bit uncanny--and the
flap-ends of the comforter must have spread into wings--or our clocks
must have been beforehand--or the trains were behindhand--

Obviously luck favours him!!

But where was his great-coat?--

He got very damp--and there was no time to hang him out to dry!

Tell him with my love--I have been nailing up the children in the way
they should go--and have made a real hedge of cuttings!

I wish the Weeding Woman could see my old Yorkshire "rack." It and its
china always lend themselves to flowers, I think. The old English
coffee-cups are full of primroses. In a madder-crimson Valery pot are
Lent lilies--and the same in a peacock-blue fellow of a pinched and
selfish shape. The white violets are in a pale grey-green jar (a
miniature household jar) of Marseilles pottery. The polyanthuses
singularly become a pet _Jap_ pot of mine of pale yellow with white
and black design on it--and a gold dragon--and a turquoise-coloured
lower rim.

I am VERY flowery. I must catch the post. I do hope my Head
Gardener is not in bed with rheumatic fever!!!! I trust your poor back
is rather easier?

Please most gratefully thank the girls for me.

Yours gratefully and affectionately,
J.H.E.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

All Fools, 1884.

MY DEAR HEAD GARDENER,

You are too good, and--as to the confusion of one's principles is
sometimes the case--your virtues encourage my vices. You make me
greedy when I ought only to be grateful.

I've been too busy to write at once, and also somewhat of set purpose
abstained--for those bitter winds and hard-caked soil were not suited
for transplantation, and still less fit for you to be playing the part
of Honest Root-gatherer without your Cardigan Waistcoat!!!!

To-day

"a balmy south wind blows."

I feel convinced some poet says so. If not I do, and it's a fact.

Moreover by a superhuman--or anyhow a super-frail-feminine--effort
last Saturday as ever was I took up all that remained of the cabbage
garden--spread the heap of ashes, marked out another path by rule of
line (not of thumb, as I planted those things you took up and _set
straight_!), made my new walk, and edged it with the broken tiles that
came off our roof when "the stormy winds did blow"--an economy which
pleased me much. Thus I am now entirely flower-garden--and with room
for more flowers!!

Now to your kind offer. I think it will take rather more than 50
bunches of primroses to complete the bank according to your
plan--though not 100. Say 70: but if there are a few bunches to spare
I shall put them down that border where the laurels are, against the
wall under the ivy. They flower there, and other things don't.

Now about the wild daffodils--indeed I _would_ like some!!! I fear I
should like enough to do this: [_Sketch._]

These be the Poets' narcissus along the edge of the grass above the
strawberry bank, and I don't deny I think it would be nice to have a
row of wild Daffys (where the red marks are) to precede the same
narcissus next spring if we're spared! The Daffys to be planted _in
the grass_ of the grass-plat.

I doubt if less than two dozen clumps would 'do it handsome'!!!!!!!!

Now I want your good counsel. This is my back garden: [_Sketch._]

Next to Slugs and Snails (to which I have recently added a specimen
of)

Puppy Dog's Tails--

my worst enemy is--WIND!

The laurels are growing--for that matter, Xmas is coming!--but still
we are very shelterless. I think I would like to plant in Bed A,
_inter alia_--some shrubby things. Now I know your views about moving
shrubs are somewhat wider than those of the every-day gardener's--but
do you think I dare plant a bush of lauristinus now? It would have to
travel a little way, I fancy. There is no man actually in Taunton, I
fear, with good shrubs. I mean also to get some Japanese maples. I
think I would like a copper-coloured-leaved _nut tree_. Are nuts
hardy? I fear Gum Cistus is coming into flower--and unfit to move! How
about rhododendrons? The soil here is said to suit them wonderfully. I
could not pretend to buy peat for them--but I know hardy sorts will do
in a firm fair soil, and I should like to plant a lilac one--a
crimson--a blush--and a white. I think they would do fairly and
shelter small fry.

_Can I risk it now?_ and how about hardy azaleas--things I love! If
you say--we are too near summer sun for them to get established--I
must wait till Autumn.

How has Mrs. Going stood the biting winds? Very unfavourable for one's
aches and pains?

Tell her I have got one of those rather queer yellow flowers you
condescended to notice!--to bring to her after Easter.

Is it not terrible about Prince Leopold? That poor young wife--and the
Queen! What bitter sorrow she has known; also I do regard the loss as
a great one for the country, he was so enlightened and so desirous of
use in his generation.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO MRS. JELF.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

Thank you, dear, with much love for your Easter card. It is
LOVELY (and Easter cards are not very beautiful as a rule).
It is on a little stand on my knick-knack table--and looks so well!

I send you a few bits from my garden as an Easter Greeting. They are
not much--but we are in a "nip" of bitter N.E. winds--and nothing will
"come out."

Also I rather denuded my patch to send a large box to Undine to make
the Easter wreaths for my Mother's grave. I was really rather proud of
what I managed to scrape together--every bit out of my very own
patch--and consequently of my very own planting!

I've got neuralgia to-day with the wind and a fourteen-miles drive for
luncheon and two sets of callers since I got back!--so I can't write a
letter--but I want you to tell me when you think there's a chance of
your taking a run to see me! I seem to have such lots to say! I have
found another charm (besides red pots) of our market. If one goes
_very early_ on Saturday--one gets such nice old-fashioned flowers,
"roots," and big ones too--very cheap! It's a most fascinating
_ruination by penny-worths_!

Good luck to you, dear, in your fresh settling down in the Heimath
Land.

Mrs. M---- (where we were _lunching_) asked tenderly after my large
young family--as strangers usually do. Then she said, "But you write
so sympathetically of children, and 'A Soldier's Children' is so
real--I thought they MUST be yours." On which I explained the
Dear Queers to her. To whom be love! and to Richard.

Ever, dear, yours lovingly,
J.H.E.

TO MRS. GOING.

Midsummer Day, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

Not a moment till now have I found--to tell you I got home safe and
sound, and that your delicious cream was duly and truly appreciated!

The last of it was merged in an admirable Gooseberry Fool!

The roses suffered by the hot journey--but even the least flourishing
of them received great admiration--from their size--as the skeletons
of saurians make a smaller world stand aghast!!!

This last sentence smacks of Jules Verne! I don't care much for
him--after all. It is rather _bookmaking_.

But I have had a lot of hearty laughs over "the Heroine"! It is very
funny--if not _very_ refined. Some of the situations admirable. There
is something in the girl's calling her father "Wilkinson" all the way
through--quite as comic as anything in _Vice Versa_--a book which I
never managed to get to the end of.

I hope your wedding went well to-day. My sister's--is postponed till
the 28th--for the convenience of the best man. If _by Thursday_ (you
must be a full two days' post from a Yorkshire country place) the
Master had _one or two_ Bouquet D'Or or other white or yellow roses
not very fully blown--and your handy Meta would wind wet rags about
their stalks and put them in an empty coffee-tin and despatch them by
parcels post to Miss Gatty, Ecclesfield Vicarage, Sheffield, Yorks,
they would be greatly welcomed to eke out the white decorations of my
Mother's grave for the wedding-day. I am wildly watering my Paris
Daisies--and hope to get some wild Ox-eye daisies also--as her name
was Margaret (and her pet name Meta!). I am applying prayers and
slopwater in equal proportions--like any Kelt!--to my Bouquet D'Or and
other white and yellow roses! I shall have some double white
Canterbury Bells, etc.--but there is coming a _lull_ in the flowers,
and they won't re-bloom much till we have rain.

Please give my love to all your party, not forgetting the house dove
and the dog--

I reproach my Rufus with his tricks and talents!

I have had great benefit in a fit of neuralgia from your chili paste.

Yours, dear Mrs. Going,
Sincerely and affectionately,
JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO MRS. JELF.

November 3, 1884.

DEAREST MARNY,

Enclosed is "Daddy Darwin"--for Richard!--and two of the Verse Books
for the two dear Queers I had so many luncheons with!

You know I risked printing 20,000 D.D.D. on my own book to cheapen
printing--so you'll be glad to hear that after ordering 10,000 at the
beginning of last week--S.P.C.K. have ordered another 10,000 at the
end of it!! But I've been having _such_ "times" with the printers' and
publishers' daemons!!

I must not write, however, for I have been ill also!! A throat attack.
We were afraid of diphtheria--but if it were that I should not be
writing to you as you'll guess. There has been another outbreak of it
just round us, and a good many throats of sorts in its train, but Dr.
L---- does not seem to think mine due to much more than
exhaustion--and he seemed to think nursing the dog had not been very
good for me. He says distemper is typhoid fever!

We had a very jolly little visit from Colonel C----. He was at his
_very_ funniest. Mimicked us both to our faces till we yelled again!
As Rex said--"Not a bit altered! The old man! _Would any other play
the bones about his bedroom in his night-shirt?_"

He went off waving farewells and shouting--"We'll _both_ come next
time--and rouse ye well."

Your loving, J.H.E.

Saturday.

DEAREST MARNY,

You have indeed the sympathy of my whole heart!

God bless and prosper "Old Father" on the war-path and bring him home
to his Queers and to you full of honour and glory and interesting
experiences!

I know Mr. Anstruther--he is charming. I cannot say how I think it
softens one's fears if Richard's strength were still a bit unequal to
the strain--to know that he has such a subaltern--adjutant--and C.R.E.
He could not have gone arm-in-arm with better comrades--unless the
Giant had been ready as sick-nurse in case of need!

But I do feel for you, dear--you are very gallant.

I am not fit to write yet--my head _goes_ so--but I will write you
next week about Gordon Browne (a thousand thanks!) and see if _I_
possibly could. Thank you so much.

The drummer's letter is charming. I must copy the bit about tip-toe
for Sir Evelyn Wood! I got the enclosed from him--also from Wady
Halfa--and I wanted you and R---- to hear the weird drum-band drunkard
tale! and see how he likes "Soldier's Children."

Can you kindly return it, dear?

Your most loving, J.H.E.

[_In pencil._]

Where does R---- sail from?

I see by to-day's _Times_ the others have sailed from Dartmouth. My
dear Marny--can't you and R---- come here _en route_ if only for a
night? It _would_ be so nice! It would be such a pleasure to Rex and
me to Godspeed him--and he would feel _quite like Gladstone_ if he had
an ovation at every stopping point on the Flying Dutchman!

TO COLONEL JELF.

November 18, 1884.

DEAR RICHARD,

I wish you _could_ have paused here--I wish that you were even likely
to run through Taunton station in the Flying Dutchman, and that we
could have run down to head a cheer for you!--But Gravesend is handier
for Marny.

She's a real Briton--and it is that "undaunted mettle" that does
"compose" the sinews of "peace with honour" for a country as well as
war!

Indeed I'm glad you have your chance--or make a very respectable
assumption of that _virtus_! and I take leave to be doubly glad that
it is in a fine climate and with good shoulder to shoulder comrades.

Tell Marny, Colonel Y. B---- in a letter about "Daddy Darwin" is very
sympathetic. Another "old standard"--Jelf, he says--is going, and
"Mrs. J---- puts a good face on it."

What will the theatricals and the Institute do?--

"Do without," I suppose! I am a lot better the last two days--and
struggled off to the town to-day to a missionary meeting! It was a
most unusually interesting one about the South American Missions. I
must tell Marny about it.--However--at some tea afterwards, I was
"interviewed" by one or two people--and one lady asked to introduce a
"Major"--whose name I did not catch--as being so devoted to "Soldier's
Children." I created quite a sensation by saying that "Old Father" was
ordered to Bechuanaland--"Oh, how old are the Queers? Are they really
losing Old Father again so soon?"

I feel, by the bye, that it is part of that fatality which besets you
and me, that I should have stereotyped you in printers' ink as _Old_
Father!!!

Good-bye.--Godspeed and Good luck to you.

Your affectionate old friend,
J.H.E.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

December 3, 1884.

DEAR "HEAD GARDENER,"

I think there is a blessing on all your benevolences to me which
defies ill luck!

After I wrote to Mrs. Going we'd a frost of ten degrees--and I got
neuralgia back--and made a dismal picture in my own mind of your good
things coming to an iron-bound border--and an Under Gardener deeply
_died down_ under eider down and blankets--(even my old labourer being
laid up with sore throat and scroomaticks!--but lo and behold, on
Monday the air became like new milk--I became like a new Under
Gardener--and leave was given to go out. (I am bound to confess that I
don't think rose-planting was medically contemplated!) Fortunately the
border was ready and well-manured--I only had to dig holes in very
soft stuff--but I am very weak, and my stamping powers are never on at
all a Nasmyth Hammer sort of scale--but--good luck again!--Major
Ewing's orderly arrived with papers to sign--a magnificent individual
over six foot--with larger boots than mine and a coal-black
melodramatic moustache! Had the Major been present--I should not have
dared to ask an orderly in full dress and on duty to defile his boots
among Zomerset red-earth, but as I caught him alone I begged his
assistance. He looked down very superbly upon me (swathed in fur and
woollen shawls, and staggering under a full-sized garden fork) with a
twinkle in his eye that prepared me for the least taste of brogue
which kept breaking through his studied fine language--and consented
most affably. I wish you'd seen him--balancing his figure with a
consciousness of maids at the kitchen window, his cane held out,
_toeing_ and _heeling_ your roses into their places!! He assured me he
understood all about it, and he trode them in very nicely!

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