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

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The Preface to this book is well worth the study of those who are
interested in the composition of Fairy literature; and the theories on
which Julie wrote her own tales.[28]

[Footnote 28: Letter, Septuagesima, 1869.]

She also wrote (in 1875) an article on "Little Woods," and a domestic
story called "A very Ill-tempered Family."

The incident of Isobel's reciting the _Te Deum_ is a touching one,
because the habit of repeating it by heart, especially in bed at
night, was one which Julie herself had practised from the days of
childhood, when, I believe, it was used to drive away the terrors of
darkness. The last day on which she expressed any expectation of
recovering from her final illness was one on which she said, "I think
I must be getting better, for I've repeated the _Te Deum_ all through,
and since I've been ill I've only been able to say a few sentences at
once." This was certainly the last time that she recited the great
Hymn of Praise before she joined the throng of those who sing it day
and night before the throne of God. The German print of the
Crucifixion, on which Isobel saw the light of the setting sun fall, is
one which has hung over my sister's drawing-room fire-place in every
home of wood or stone which she has had for many years past.

The Child Verse, "A Hero to his Hobby-horse," came out in the Magazine
volume for 1875, and, like many of the other verses, it was written to
fit a picture.

One of the happiest inspirations from pictures, however, appeared in
the following volume (1876), the story of "Toots and Boots," but
though the picture of the ideal Toots was cast like a shadow before
him, the actual Toots, name and all complete, had a real existence,
and his word-portrait was taken from life. He belonged to the mess of
the Royal Engineers in the South Camp, Aldershot, and was as
dignified as if he held the office of President. I shall never forget
one occasion on which he was invited to luncheon at Mrs. Ewing's hut,
that I might have the pleasure of making his acquaintance; he had to
be unwillingly carried across the Lines in the arms of an obliging
subaltern, but directly he arrived, without waiting even for the first
course, he struggled out of the officer's embrace and galloped back to
his own mess-table, tail erect and thick with rage at the indignity he
had undergone.

"Father Hedgehog and his Friends," in this same volume (1876), was
also written to some excellent German woodcuts; and it, too, is a
wonderfully brilliant sketch of animal life; perhaps the human beings
in the tale are scarcely done justice to. We feel as if Sybil and
Basil, and the Gipsy Mother and Christian, had scarcely room to
breathe in the few pages that they are crowded into; there is
certainly too much "subject" here for the size of the canvas!--but
Father Hedgehog takes up little space, and every syllable about him is
as keenly pointed as the spines on his back. The method by which he
silenced awkward questions from any of his family is truly delightful:

"Will the donkey be cooked when he is fat?" asked my mother.

"I smell valerian," said my father, on which she put out her nose,
and he ran at it with his prickles. He always did this when he was
annoyed with any of his family; and though we knew what was coming,
we are all so fond of valerian, we could never resist the
temptation to sniff, just on the chance of there being some about.

Then, the following season, we find the Hedgehog Son grown into a
parent, and, with the "little hoard of maxims" he had inherited,
checking the too inquiring minds of his offspring:

"What is a louis d'or?" cried three of my children; and "What is
brandy?" asked the other four.

"I smell valerian," said I; on which they poked out their seven
noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an
Encyclopaedia on all fours must adopt _some_ method of checking the
inquisitiveness of the young.

One more quotation must be made from the end of the story, where
Father Hedgehog gives a list of the fates that befell his children:

Number one came to a sad end. What on the face of the wood made him
think of pheasants' eggs I cannot conceive. I'm sure I never said
anything about them! It was whilst he was scrambling along the edge
of the covert, that he met the Fox, and very properly rolled
himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he
rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into
the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was
scrambling to shore, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed
him. I do hate slyness!

It seems scarcely conceivable that any one can sympathize sufficiently
with a Hedgehog as to place himself in the latter's position, and
share its paternal anxieties,--but I think Julie was able to do so,
or, at any rate, her translations of the Hedgepig's whines were so
_ben trovati_, they may well stand until some better interpreter of
the languages of the brute creation rises up amongst us. As another
instance of her breadth of sympathy with beasts, let us turn to "A
Week Spent in a Glass Pond" (which also came out in _Aunt Judy's
Magazine_ for 1876), and quote her summary of the Great Water-beetle's
views on life:

After living as I can, in all three--water, dry land, and air,--I
certainly prefer to be under water. Any one whose appetite is as
keen, and whose hind-legs are as powerful as mine, will understand
the delights of hunting, and being hunted, in a pond; where the
light comes down in fitful rays and reflections through the water,
and gleams among the hanging roots of the frog-bit, and the fading
leaves of the water-starwort, through the maze of which, in and
out, hither and thither, you pursue and are pursued, in cool and
skilful chase, by a mixed company of your neighbours, who dart, and
shoot, and dive, and come and go, and any one of whom, at any
moment, may either eat you or be eaten by you. And if you want
peace and quiet, where can one bury oneself so safely and
completely as in the mud? A state of existence without mud at the
bottom, must be a life without repose!

I must here venture to remark, that the chief and lasting value of
whatever both my sister and my mother wrote about animals, or any
other objects in Nature, lies in the fact that they invariably took
the utmost pains to verify whatever statements they made relating to
those objects. Spiritual Laws can only be drawn from the Natural World
when they are based on Truth.

Julie spared no trouble in trying to ascertain whether Hedgehogs _do_
or do not eat pheasants' eggs; she consulted _The Field_, and books on
sport, and her sporting friends, and when she found it was a disputed
point, she determined to give the Hedgepig the benefit of the doubt.
Then the taste for valerian, and the fox's method of capture, were
drawn from facts, and the gruesome details as to who ate who in the
Glass Pond were equally well founded!

This (1876) volume of the Magazine is rich in contributions from
Julie, the reason being that she was stronger in health whilst she
lived at Aldershot than during any other period of her life. The sweet
dry air of the "Highwayman's Heath"--bared though it was of
heather!--suited her so well, she could sleep with her hut windows
open, and go out into her garden at any hour of the evening without
fear of harm. She liked to stroll out and listen to "Retreat" being
sounded at sundown, especially when it was the turn of some regiment
with pipes to perform the duty; they sounded so shrill and weird,
coming from the distant hill through the growing darkness.

[Illustration: OUR LATEST PET--A REFUGEE PUP, WHOM WE HAVE SAVED FROM
THE COMMON HANGMAN.]

We held a curious function one hot July evening during Retreat, when,
the Fates being propitious, it was the turn of the 42nd Highlanders to
play. My sister had taken compassion on a stray collie puppy a few
weeks before, and adopted him; he was very soft-coated and fascinating
in his ways, despite his gawky legs, and promised to grow into a
credit to his race. But it seemed he was too finely bred to survive
the ravages of distemper, for, though he was tenderly nursed, he died.
A wreath of flowers was hung round his neck, and, as he lay on his
bier, Julie made a sketch of him, with the inscription, "The Little
Colley, Eheu! Taken in, June 14. In spite of care, died July 1.
_Speravimus meliora_." Major Ewing, wearing a broad Scotch bonnet,
dug a grave in the garden, and as we had no "dinner-bell" to muffle,
we waited till the pipers broke forth at sundown with an appropriate
air, and then lowered the little Scotch dog into his resting-place.

During her residence at Aldershot Julie wrote three of her longest
books--"A Flat Iron for a Farthing," "Six to Sixteen," and "Jan of the
Windmill," besides all the shorter tales and verses that she
contributed to the Magazine between 1870 and 1877. The two short tales
which seem to me her very best came out in 1876, namely, "Our Field"
(about which I have already spoken) and "The Blind Man and the Talking
Dog." Both the stories were written to fit some old German woodcuts,
but they are perfectly different in style; "Our Field" is told in the
language and from the fresh heart of a Child; whilst the "Blind Man"
is such a picture of life from cradle to grave--aye, and stretching
forward into the world beyond,--as could only have come forth from the
experiences of Age. But though this be so, the lesson shown of how the
Boy's story foreshadows the Man's history, is one which cannot be
learned too early.

Julie never pictured a dearer dog than the Peronet whom she originated
from the fat stumpy-tailed puppy who is seen playing with the children
in the woodcut to "Our Field."

People sometimes asked us what kind of a dog he was, but we never
knew, except that he was the nicest possible kind.... Peronet was
as fond of the Field as we were. What he liked were the little
birds. At least, I don't know that he liked them, but they were
what he chiefly attended to. I think he knew that it was our field,
and thought he was the watch-dog of it; and whenever a bird settled
down anywhere, he barked at it, and then it flew away, and he ran
barking after it till he lost it; by that time another had settled
down, and then Peronet flew at him, all up and down the hedge. He
never caught a bird, and never would let one sit down, if he could
see it.

Then what a vista is opened by the light that is "left out" in the
concluding words:--

I know that Our Field does not exactly belong to us. I wonder whom
it does belong to? Richard says he believes it belongs to the
gentleman who lives at the big red house among the trees. But he
must be wrong; for we see that gentleman at church every Sunday,
but we never saw him in Our Field.

And I don't believe anybody could have such a field of their very
own, and never come to see it, from one end of summer to the other.

It is almost impossible to quote portions of the "Blind Man" without
marring the whole. The story is so condensed--only four pages in
length; it is one of the most striking examples of my sister's
favourite rule in composition, "never use two words where one will
do." But from these four brief pages we learn as much as if four
volumes had been filled with descriptions of the characters of the
Mayor's son and Aldegunda,--from her birthday, on which the boy
grumbled because "she toddles as badly as she did yesterday, though
she's a year older," and "Aldegunda sobbed till she burst the strings
of her hat, and the boy had to tie them afresh,"--to the day of their
wedding, when the Bridegroom thinks he can take possession of the
Blind Man's Talking Dog, because the latter had promised to leave his
master and live with the hero, if ever he could claim to be perfectly
happy--happier than him whom he regarded as "a poor wretched old
beggar in want of everything."

As they rode together in search of the Dog:

Aldegunda thought to herself--"We are so happy, and have so much,
that I do not like to take the Blind Man's dog from him"; but she
did not dare to say so. One--if not two--must bear and forbear to
be happy, even on one's wedding-day.

And, when they reached their journey's end, Lazarus was no longer "the
wretched one ... miserable, poor, and blind," but was numbered amongst
the blessed Dead, and the Dog was by his grave:

"Come and live with me, now your old master is gone," said the
young man, stooping over the dog. But he made no reply.

"I think he is dead, sir," said the gravedigger.

"I don't believe it," said the young man, fretfully. "He was an
Enchanted Dog, and he promised I should have him when I could say
what I am ready to say now. He should have kept his promise." But
Aldegunda had taken the dog's cold head into her arms, and her
tears fell fast over it.

"You forget," she said; "he only promised to come to you when you
were happy, if his old master was not happier still: and perhaps--"

"I remember that you always disagree with me," said the young man,
impatiently. "You always did so. Tears on our wedding-day, too! I
suppose the truth is, that no one is happy."

Aldegunda made no answer, for it is not from those one loves that
he will willingly learn that with a selfish and imperious temper
happiness never dwells.

The "Blind Man" was inserted in the Magazine as an "Old-Fashioned
Fairy Tale," and Julie wrote another this year (1876) under the same
heading, which was called "I Won't."

She also wrote a delightfully funny Legend, "The Kyrkegrim turned
Preacher," about a Norwegian Brownie, or Niss, whose duty was "to keep
the church clean, and to scatter the marsh marigolds on the floor
before service," but, like other church-sweepers, his soul was
troubled by seeing the congregation neglect to listen to the preacher,
and fall asleep during his sermons. Then the Kyrkegrim, feeling sure
that he could make more impression on their hardened hearts than the
priest did, ascended from the floor to the pulpit, and tried to set
the world to rights; but eventually he was glad to return to his
broom, and leave "heavier responsibilities in higher hands."

She contributed "Hints for Private Theatricals. In Letters from Burnt
Cork to Rouge Pot," which were probably suggested by the private
theatricals in which she was helping at Aldershot; and she wrote four
of her best Verses for Children: "Big Smith," "House-building and
Repairs," "An Only Child's Tea-party," and "Papa Poodle."

"The Adventures of an Elf" is a poem to some clever silhouette
pictures of Fedor Flinzer's, which she freely adapted from the German.
"The Snarling Princess" is a fairy tale also adapted from the German;
but neither of these contributions was so well worth the trouble of
translation as a fine dialogue from the French of Jean Mace called
"War and the Dead," which Julie gave to the number of _Aunt Judy_ for
October 1866.[29] "The Princes of Vegetation" (April 1876) is an
article on Palm-trees, to which family Linnaeus had given this noble
title.

[Footnote 29: These translations are included in "Miscellanea," vol.
xvii.]

The last contribution, in 1876, which remains to be mentioned is
"Dandelion Clocks," a short tale; but it will need rather a long
introduction, as it opens out into a fresh trait of my sister's
character, namely, her love for flowers.

It need scarcely be said that she wrote as accurately about them as
about everything else; and, in addition to this, she enveloped them in
such an atmosphere of sentiment as served to give life and
individuality to their inanimate forms. The habit of weaving stories
round them began in girlhood, when she was devoted to reading Mr. J.G.
Wood's graceful translation of Alphonse Karr's _Voyage autour de mon
Jardin_. The book was given to her in 1856 by her father, and it
exercised a strong influence upon her mind. What else made the
ungraceful Buddlaea lovely in her eyes? I confess that when she pointed
out the shrub to me, for the first time, in Mr. Ellacombe's garden, it
looked so like the "Plum-pudding tree" in the "Willow pattern," and
fell so far short of my expectation of the plant over which the two
florists had squabbled, that I almost wished that I had not seen it!
Still I did not share their discomfiture so fully as to think "it no
longer good for anything but firewood!"

Karr's fifty-eighth "Letter" nearly sufficed to enclose a declaration
of love in every bunch of "yellow roses" which Julie tied together;
and to plant an "Incognito" for discovery in every bed of tulips she
looked at; whilst her favourite Letter XL., on the result produced by
inhaling the odour of bean flowers, embodies the spirit of the ideal
existence which she passed, as she walked through the fields of our
work-a-day world:

The beans were in full blossom. But a truce to this cold-hearted
pleasantry. No, it is not a folly to be under the empire of the
most beautiful--the most noble feelings; it is no folly to feel
oneself great, strong, invincible; it is not a folly to have a
good, honest, and generous heart; it is no folly to be filled with
good faith; it is not a folly to devote oneself for the good of
others; it is not a folly to live thus out of real life.

No, no; that cold wisdom which pronounces so severe a judgment upon
all it cannot do; that wisdom which owes its birth to the death of
so many great, noble, and sweet things; that wisdom which only
comes with infirmities, and which decorates them with such fine
names--which calls decay of the powers of the stomach and loss of
appetite sobriety; the cooling of the heart and the stagnation of
the blood a return to reason; envious impotence a disdain for
futile things;--this wisdom would be the greatest, the most
melancholy of follies, if it were not the commencement of the death
of the heart and the senses.

"Dandelion Clocks" resembles one of Karr's "Letters" in containing the
germs of a three volumed romance, but they _are_ the germs only--and
the "proportions" of the picture are consequently well preserved.
Indeed, the tale always reminds me of a series of peaceful scenes by
Cuyp, with low horizons, sleek cattle, and a glow in the sky
betokening the approach of sunset. First we have "Peter Paul and his
two sisters playing in the pastures" at blowing dandelion clocks:

Rich, green, Dutch pastures, unbroken by hedge or wall, which
stretched--like an emerald ocean--to the horizon and met the sky.
The cows stood ankle-deep in it and chewed the cud, the clouds
sailed slowly over it to the sea, and on a dry hillock sat Mother,
in her broad sun-hat, with one eye to the cows, and one to the
linen she was bleaching, thinking of her farm.

The actual _outlines_ of this scene may be traced in the German
woodcut to which the tale was written, but the _colouring_ is Julie's!
The only disturbing element in this quiet picture is Peter Paul's
restless, inquiring heart. What wonder that when his bulb-growing
uncle fails to solve the riddle of life, Peter Paul should go out into
the wider world and try to find a solution for himself? But the
answers to our life problems full often are to be found within, for
those who will look, and so Peter Paul comes back after some years to
find that:

The elder sister was married and had two children. She had grown up
very pretty--a fair woman, with liquid misleading eyes. They looked
as if they were gazing into the far future, but they did not see an
inch beyond the farm. Anna was a very plain copy of her in body; in
mind she was the elder sister's echo. They were very fond of each
other, and the prettiest thing about them was their faithful love
for their mother, whose memory was kept as green as pastures after
rain.

Peter Paul's temperament, however, was not one that could adapt itself
to a stagnant existence; so when his three weeks on shore are ended,
we see him on his way from the Home Farm to join his ship:

Leena walked far over the pastures with Peter Paul. She was very
fond of him, and she had a woman's perception that they would miss
him more than he could miss them.

"I am very sorry you could not settle down with us," she said, and
her eyes brimmed over.

Peter Paul kissed the tears tenderly from her cheeks.

"Perhaps I shall when I am older, and have shaken off a few more of
my whims into the sea. I'll come back yet, Leena, and live very
near to you, and grow tulips, and be as good an old bachelor-uncle
to your boy as Uncle Jacob is to me."

* * * * *

When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul
took her once more into his arms.

"Good-bye, good sister," he said, "I have been back in my childhood
again, and GOD knows that is both pleasant and good for one."

"And it is funny that you should say so," said Leena, smiling
through her tears; "for when we were children you were never happy
except in thinking of when you should be a man."

And with this salutary home-thrust (which thoroughly commonplace
minds have such a provoking faculty for giving) Leena went back to her
children and cattle.

Happy for the artistic temperament that can profit by such rebuffs!

PART III.

Yet, how few believe such doctrine springs
From a poor root,
Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,
And hath no wings
To raise it to the truth and light of things;
But is stil trod
By ev'ry wand'ring clod.

O Thou, Whose Spirit did at first inflame
And warm the dead,
And by a sacred incubation fed
With life this frame,
Which once had neither being, forme, nor name,
Grant I may so
Thy steps track here below,

That in these masques and shadows I may see
Thy sacred way;
And by those hid ascents climb to that day
Which breaks from Thee,
Who art in all things, though invisibly,
"_The Hidden Flower_."

HENRY VAUGHAN.

One of the causes which helped to develop my sister's interest in
flowers was the sight of the fresh ones that she met with on going to
live in New Brunswick after her marriage. Every strange face was a
subject for study, and she soon began to devote a note-book to
sketches of these new friends, naming them scientifically from
Professor Asa Gray's _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United
States_, whilst Major Ewing added as many of the Melicete names as he
could glean from Peter, a member of the tribe, who had attached
himself to the Ewings, and used constantly to come about their house.
Peter and his wife lived in a small colony of the Melicete Indians,
which was established on the opposite side of the St. John River to
that on which the Reka Dom stood. Mrs. Peter was the most skilful
embroiderer in beads amongst her people, and Peter himself the best
canoe-builder. He made a beautiful one for the Ewings, which they
constantly used; and when they returned to England his regret at
losing them was wonderfully mitigated by the present which Major Ewing
gave him of an old gun; he declared no gentleman had ever thought of
giving him such a thing before!

Julie introduced several of the North American flowers into her
stories. The Tabby-striped Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is
called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]),
appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish
hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his
sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he "can
speak with other tongues," from his ability to converse with a squaw
in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and
was holding in his hand.

[Footnote 30: _Child Life._ Edited by J.G. Whittier. Nesbitt and Co.]

This allusion was only a slight one, but Julie wrote a complete story
on one species of Trillium, having a special affection for the whole
genus. Trilliums are amongst the North American herbaceous plants
which have lately become fashionable, and easy to be bought in
England; but ere they did so, Julie made some ineffectual attempts to
transplant tubers of them into English soil; and the last letter she
received from Fredericton contained a packet of red Trillium seeds,
which came too late to be sown before she died. The species which she
immortalized in "The Blind Hermit and the Trinity Flower," was _T.
erythrocarpum_. The story is a graceful legend of an old Hermit whose
life was spent in growing herbs for the healing of diseases; and when
he, in his turn, was struck with blindness, he could not reconcile
himself to the loss of the occupation which alone seemed to make him
of use in the world. "They also serve who only stand and wait" was a
hard lesson to learn; every day he prayed for some Balm of Gilead to
heal his ill, and restore his sight, and the prayer was answered,
though not in the manner that he desired. First he was supplied with a
serving-boy, who became eyes and feet to him, from gratitude for
cures which the Hermit had done to the lad himself; and then a vision
was granted to the old man, wherein he saw a flower which would heal
his blindness:--

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