Part 4
By the way, what a shame it is that we keep that word "jealous" in the second commandment, as if it meant that God was jealous of images. It means burning, zealous or full of life, visiting, etc., _i.e._, necessarily when leaving the father leaving the child; necessarily, when giving the father life, giving life to the child, and to thousands of the race of them that love me.
It is very comic the way people have of being so particular about the second and fourth commandments, and breaking all the rest with the greatest comfort. For me, I try to keep all the rest rather carefully, and let the second and fourth take care of themselves.
Cold quite gone; now it's your turn, Susie. I've got a love letter in Chinese, and can't read it!
* * * * *
WINDSOR CASTLE, _2d January, 1878_.
I'm horribly sulky this morning, for I expected to have a room with a view, if the room was ever so little, and I've got a great big one looking into the Castle yard, and I feel exactly as if I was in a big modern county jail with beautiful turrets of modern Gothic.
I came to see Prince Leopold, who has been a prisoner to his sofa lately, but I trust he is better; he is very bright and gentle, under severe and almost continual pain. My dear little Susie, about that rheumatism of yours? If it wasn't for that, how happy we both ought to be, living in Thwaites and woods, instead of nasty castles! Well, about that Shakespeare guide? I cannot, cannot, at all fancy what it is. In and out among the stars; it sounds like a plan for stringing the stars. I am so very glad you told me of it.
"Unwritten books in my brain?" Yes, but also in how many other brains of quiet people, books unthought of, "In the Book and Volume" which will be read some day in Heaven, aloud, "When saw we thee?" Yes, and "When _read_ we ourselves?"
My dear Susie, if I were to think really _lost_, what you for instance have new found in your own powers of receiving and giving pleasure, the beautiful faculties you have, scarcely venturing even to show the consciousness of them, when it awakes in you, what a woeful conception I should have of God's not caring for us. He will gather all the wheat into His garner.
* * * * *
INGLETON, _17th January_ (1878).
It's a charming post here, and brings me my letters the first thing in the morning; and I took care to tell nobody where I was going, except people I wanted to hear from. What a little busy bee of a Susie you've been to get all those extracts ready by this time. I've got nothing done all the while I've been away, but a few mathematical figures, and the less I do the less I find I can do it; and yesterday, for the first time these twenty years at least, I hadn't so much as a "plan" in my head all day. But I had a lot to look at in the moorland flowers and quiet little ancient Yorkshire farmhouses, not to speak of Ingleborough, who was, I think, a little depressed because he knew you were only going to send your remembrances and not your love to him. The clouds gathered on his brow occasionally in a fretful manner, but towards evening he resumed his peace of mind and sends you his "remembrances" and his "blessing." I believe he saves both you and me from a great deal of east wind.
Well, I've got a plan in my head _this_ morning for the new extracts. Shall we call them "Lapides (or "Marmora") Portici"; and put a little preface to them about the pavement of St. Mark's porch and its symbolism of what the education of a good man's early days must be to him? I think I can write something a little true and trustworthy about it.
* * * * *
_26th November._
I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you rightly for bread, sweet odors, roses and pearls, and must just allow myself to be fed, scented, rose-garlanded and bepearled as if I were a poor little pet dog or pet pig. But my cold is better, and I _am_ getting on with this botany; but it is really too important a work to be pushed for a week or a fortnight. And Mary and you will be pleased at last, I am sure.
I have only to-day got my four families, Clarissa, Lychnis, Scintilla, and Mica, perfectly and simply defined.[25] See how nicely they come.
A. Clarissa changed from Dianthus, which is bad Greek (and all my pretty flowers have names of girls). Petal _jagged_ at the outside.
B. Lychnis. Petal _divided in two_ at the outside, and the fringe retired to the top of the limb.
C. Scintilla. (Changed from Stellaria, because I want Stella for the house leeks.) Petal formed by the _two_ lobes of lychnis without the retired fringe.
D. Mica. _Single_ lobed petal.
When once these four families are well understood in typical examples, how easy it will be to attach either subordinate groups or specialities of habitat, as in America, to some kinds of them! The entire order, for their purity and wildness, are to be named, from Artemis, "Artemides", instead of Caryophyllaceae; and next them come the Vestals (mints, lavenders, etc.); and then the Cytheride Viola, Veronica, Giulietta, the last changed from Polygala.
That third Herb Robert one is just the drawing that nobody but me (never mind grammar) could have made. Nobody! because it means ever so much careful watching of the ways of the leaf, and a lot of work in cramp perspective besides. It is not quite right yet, but it _is_ nice.
[Footnote 25: "Proserpina,"]
* * * * *
It is so nice to be able to find anything that is in the least new to _you_, and interesting; my rocks are quite proud of rooting that little saxifrage.
I'm scarcely able to look at one flower because of the two on each side, in my garden just now. I want to have bees' eyes, there are so many lovely things.
I must tell you, interrupting my botanical work this morning, something that has just chanced to me.
I am arranging the caryophylls, which I mass broadly into "Clarissa," the true jagged-leaved and clove-scented ones; "Lychnis," those whose leaves are essentially in two lobes; "Arenaria," which I leave untouched; and "Mica," a new name of my own for the pearlworts of which the French name is to be Miette, and the representative type (now Sagina procumbens) is to be in--
_Latin_--Mica amica. _French_--Miette l'amie. _English_--Pet pearlwort.
Then the next to this is to be--
_Latin_--Mica millegrana. _French_--Miette aux mille perles. _English_--Thousand pearls.
Now this on the whole I consider the prettiest of the group, and so look for a plate of it which I can copy. Hunting all through my botanical books, I find the best of all is Baxter's Oxford one, and determine at once to engrave that. When turning the page of his text I find: "The specimen of this curious and interesting little plant from which the accompanying drawing was made was communicated to me by Miss Susan Beever. To the kindness of this young lady, and that of her sister, Miss Mary Beever, I am indebted for the four plants figured in this number."
I have copied lest you should have trouble in looking for the book, but now, you darling Susie, please tell me whether I may not separate these lovely pearlworts wholly from the spergulas,--by the pearlworts having only two leaves like real pinks at the joints, and the spergulas, a _cluster_; and tell me how the spergulas scatter their seeds, I can't find any account of it.
* * * * *
I would fain have come to see that St. Bruno lily; but if I don't come to see Susie and you, be sure I am able to come to see nothing. At present I am very deeply involved in the classification of the minerals in the Sheffield Museum, important as the first practical arrangement ever yet attempted for popular teaching, and this with my other work makes me fit for nothing in the afternoon but wood-chopping. But I will call to-day on Dr. Brown's friends.
I hope you will not be too much shocked with the audacities of the new number[26] of "Proserpina," or with its ignorances. I am going during my wood-chopping really to ascertain in my own way what simple persons ought to know about tree growth, and give it clearly in the next number. I meant to do the whole book very differently, but can only now give the fragmentary pieces as they chance to come, or it would never be done at all.
You must know before anybody else how the exogens are to be completely divided. I keep the four great useful groups, mallow, geranium, mint, and wallflower, under the head of domestic orders, that their sweet service and companionship with us may be understood; then the water-lily and the heath, both four foils, are to be studied in their solitudes (I shall throw all that are not four foils out of the Ericaceae); then finally there are to be seven orders of the dark proserpine, headed by the draconids (snapdragons), and including the anemones, hellebores, ivies, and forget-me-nots.
What plants I cannot get ranged under these 12+4+2+7==25 in all, orders, I shall give broken notices of, as I have time, leaving my pupils to arrange them as they like. I can't do it all.
The whole household was out after breakfast to-day to the top of the moor to plant cranberries; and we squeezed and splashed and spluttered in the boggiest places the lovely sunshine had left, till we found places squashy and squeezy enough to please the most particular and coolest of cranberry minds; and then each of us choosing a little special bed of bog, the tufts were deeply put in with every manner of tacit benediction, such as might befit a bog and a berry, and many an expressed thanksgiving to Susie and to the kind sender of the luxuriant plants. I have never had gift from you, dear Susie, more truly interesting and gladdening to me, and many a day I shall climb the moor to see the fate of the plants and look across to the Thwaite. I've been out most of the forenoon and am too sleepy to shape letters, but will try and get a word of thanks to the far finder of the dainty things to-morrow.
What loveliness everywhere in a duckling sort of state just now.
[Footnote 26: Part 5.]
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
I hope you did not get a chill in the garden. The weather is a little wrong again, but I am thankful for last night's sunset.
You know our English Bible is only of James 1st time--Stalk is a Saxon word, and gets into English I fancy as early as the Plantagenets--but I have not hunted it down.--I'm just in the same mess with "pith," but I'm finding out a great deal about the thing though not the word, for next "Deucalion," in chopping my wood.
You know, "Funckia" won't last long. I am certain I shall have strength enough to carry my system of nomenclature at least as far, as to exclude people's individual names.
I won't even have a "Susia"--stay--that's Christian--yes, I will have a Susia. But not a "Beeveria," though----
* * * * *
TO MISS BEEVER.
_20th January, 1879._
You will not doubt the extreme sorrow with which I have heard of all that was ordered to be, of terrible, in your peaceful and happy household. Without for an instant supposing, but, on the contrary, utterly refusing to admit, that such calamities[27] may be used to point a moral (all useful morality having every point that God meant it to have, perfectly sharp and bright without any burnishing of _ours_), still less to adorn a tale (the tales of modern days depending far too much upon Scythian decoration with Death's heads), I, yet, if I had been Mr. Chapman, would have pointed out that all concealments, even of trivial matters, on the part of young servants from kind mistresses, are dangerous no less than unkind and ungenerous, and that a great deal of preaching respecting the evil nature of man and the anger of God might be spared, if children and servants were only taught, as a religious principle, to tell their mothers and mistresses, when they go out, exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. I think both you and Miss Susan ought to use every possible means of changing, or at least checking, the current of such thoughts in your minds; and I am in hopes that you may have a little pleasure in examining the plates in the volume of Sibthorpe's "F. Graeca" which I send to-day, in comparison with those of "F. Danica." The vulgarity and lifelessness of Sibthorpe's plates are the more striking because in mere execution they are the more elaborate of the two; the chief point in the "F. Danica" being the lovely artistic skill. The drawings for Sibthorpe, by a young German, were as exquisite as the Dane's, but the English engraver and colorist spoiled all.
I will send you, if you like them, the other volumes in succession. I find immense interest in comparing the Greek and Danish forms or conditions of the same English flower.
I send the second volume, in which the Rufias are lovely, and scarcely come under my above condemnation. The _first_ is nearly all of grass.
[Footnote 27: One of our younger servants had gone on to the frozen lake; the ice gave way, and she was drowned.--S. B.]
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD, _4th February_ (1879).
You know I'm getting my Oxford minerals gradually to Brantwood, and whenever a box comes, I think whether there are any that I don't want myself, which might yet have leave to live on Susie's table. And to-day I've found a very soft purple agate, that looks as if it were nearly melted away with pity for birds and flies, which is like Susie; and another piece of hard wooden agate with only a little ragged sky of blue here and there, which is like me; and a group of crystals with grass of Epidote inside, which is like what my own little cascade has been all the winter by the garden side; and so I've had them all packed up, and I hope you will let them live at the Thwaite.
Then here are some more bits, if you will be a child. Here's a green piece, long, of the stone they cut those green weedy brooches out of, and a nice mouse-colored natural agate, and a great black and white one, stained with sulphuric acid, black but very fine always, and interesting in its lines.
Oh dear, the cold; but it's worth _any_ cold to have that delicious Robin dialogue. Please write some more of it; you hear all they say, I'm sure.
I cannot tell you how delighted I am with your lovely gift to Joanie. The perfection of the stone, its exquisite color, and superb weight, and flawless clearness, and the delicate cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of the Lake, make it altogether the most perfect mineralogical and heraldic jewel that Joanie could be bedecked with, and it is as if Susie had given her a piece of Coniston Water itself.
And the setting is delicious, and positively must not be altered. I shall come on Sunday to thank you myself for it. Meantime I'm working hard at the Psalter, which I am almost sure Susie will like.
* * * * *
BRANTWOOD.
I am so very glad you like Sir Philip so much.
I've sent for, and hope to get him for you. He was shot before he had done half his Psalter--His sister finished it, but very meanly in comparison, you can tell the two hands on the harp at a mile off.
The photograph--please say--like all photos whatsoever, is only nature dirtied and undistanced.--If that is all one wants in trees,--they might be dead all the year round.
* * * * *
_25th May_ (1879).
This is a most wonderful stone that Dr. Kendall has found--at least to _me_. I have never seen anything quite like it, the arborescent forms of the central thread of iron being hardly ever assumed by an ore of so much metallic luster. I think it would be very desirable to cut it, so as to get a perfectly smooth surface to show the arborescent forms; if Dr. Kendall would like to have it done, I can easily send it up to London with my own next parcel.
I want very much to know exactly where it was found; might I come and ask about it on Dr. Kendall's next visit to you? I could be there waiting for him any day.
What lovely pictures you would have made in the old butterfly times, of opal and felspar! What lost creatures we all are, we nice ones! The Alps and clouds that _I_ could have done, if I had been shown how.
* * * * *
_27th June_ (1879).
Everybody's gone! and I have all the new potatoes, and all the asparagus, and all the oranges and everything, and my Susie too, all to myself.
I wrote in my diary this morning that really on the whole I never felt better in my life. Mouth, eyes, head, feet, and fingers all fairly in trim; older than they were, yes, but if the head and heart grow wiser, they won't want feet or fingers some day.
And I'll come to be cheered and scolded myself the moment I've got things a little to rights here. I think imps get into the shelves and drawers, if they're kept long locked, and must be caught like mice. The boys have been very good, and left everything untouched; but the imps; and to hear people say there aren't any! How happy you and I should always be if it weren't for them!
How gay you were and how you cheered me up after the dark lake.
Please say "John Inglesant" is harder than real history and of no mortal use. I couldn't read four pages of it. Clever, of course.
* * * * *
HERNE HILL, _14th August, 1880_.
I've _just_ finished my Scott paper:[28] but it has retouchings and notings yet to do. I couldn't write a word before; haven't so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at chess to Macdonald, for, you know, to keep a chess player waiting for a move is like keeping St. Lawrence unturned.
[Footnote 28: "Fiction Fair and Foul", No. 3.]
* * * * *
_21st August, 1880._
I'm leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Restante, Abbeville.
I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn't much time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all the time. And I gave the hippopotamus _whole_ buns, and he was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to him six yards off; never missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop up again.
And I lunched with Cardinal Manning, and he gave me _such_ a plum pie. I never tasted a Protestant pie to touch it.
* * * * *
Now you're just wrong about my darling Cardinal. See what it is to be jealous! He gave me lovely soup, roast beef, hare and currant jelly, puff pastry like Papal pretensions--you had but to breathe on it and it was nowhere--raisins and almonds, and those lovely preserved cherries like kisses kept in amber. And told me delicious stories all through lunch. _There_!
And we really do see the sun here! And last night the sky was all a spangle and delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them and spikiness softened off by a young darling of a moon.
* * * * *
AMIENS, _29th August, 1880_.
You have been made happy doubtless with us by the news from Herne Hill. I've only a telegram yet though, but write at once to congratulate you on your little goddaughter.
Also to say that I am very well, and sadly longing for Brantwood; but that I am glad to see some vestige of beloved things here, once more.
We have glorious weather, and I am getting perfect rest most of the day--mere saunter in the sunny air, taking all the good I can of it. To-morrow we get (D.V.) to Beauvais, where perhaps I may find a letter from Susie; in any case you may write to Hotel Meurice, Paris.
The oleanders are coming out and geraniums in all cottage windows, and golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all the fields.
* * * * *
BEAUVAIS, _3d September, 1880_.
We are having the most perfect weather I ever saw in France, much less anywhere else, and I'm taking a thorough rest, writing scarcely anything and sauntering about old town streets all day.
I made a little sketch of the lake from above the Waterhead which goes everywhere with me, and it is so curious when the wind blows the leaf open when I am sketching here at Beauvais, where all is so differently delightful, as if we were on the other side of the world.
I think I shall be able to write some passages about architecture yet, which Susie will like. I hear of countless qualities being discovered in the new little Susie! And all things will be happy for me if you send me a line to Hotel Meurice saying _you_ are happy too.
* * * * *
PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).
I have all your letters, and rejoice in them; though it is a little sadder for you looking at empty Brantwood, than for me to fancy the bright full Thwaite, and then it's a great shame that I've everything to amuse me, and lovely Louvres and shops and cathedrals and coquettes and pictures and plays and prettinesses of every color and quality, and you've only your old, old hills and quiet lake. Very thankful I shall be to get back to them, though.
We have finished our Paris this afternoon, and hope to leave for Chartres on Monday.
* * * * *
HOTEL DE MEURICE, PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).
Is it such pain to you when people say what they ought not to say about _me_? But when do they say what they ought to say about anything? Nearly everything I have ever done or said is as much above the present level of public understanding as the Old Man is above the Waterhead.