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An Old Coaching Day's Idyll
or--A Trooper's Tragedy.
The same beginning for either:
Child learning to ride on
hobby-horse
rocking-horse
donkey
pony
etc. etc.
Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching
road (Hog's Back!)--a highwayman--a broken-down postilion--a girl on a
pillion, etc., etc.
Or, if military:
A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a
bridge.
A Horse and Trooper--Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another
man across his saddle.
Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet),
but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.
* * * * *
August 9, 1879.
* * * * *
I was reading again at _Robert Falconer_ the other day. What _grand_
bits there are in it? With such _bosh_ close by. So like Ruskin in
that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!
When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the
problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but
nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or
knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about
drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers,
false swearers, whoremongers, and "all liars"--I wonder whether these
trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!
But oh, that description to the _son_ of what it sounded like when
_his father_ played the _Flowers of the Forest_ on his fiddle, isn't
to be beaten in any language I believe! All the Scotch lasses after
Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the
men who lay on Flodden Field!--"Lasses to reap and lasses to
bind--Lasses to stook." etc., etc., and "no a word I'll warrant ye, to
the orra lad that didna gang wi' the lave"!!!![40] and the lad's
outburst in reply, "I'd raither be gratten for nor kissed!"
[Footnote 40: _Robert Falconer_, chap. xix.]
Poor Z----! They don't teach that at Academies and Staff Colleges, nor
in the Penny-a-line of newspaper correspondents and the like--but he
should get some woman to soak it into his brains that the men women
will love are men who would rather be "gratten for" in honour than be
kissed in shame.
* * * * *
_Ecclesfield._ August 23, 1879.
* * * * *
Talking of drawings, what do you think? Caldecott has done me the most
_lovely_ coloured thing to write a short tale to for October _A.J.M._
It is very good of him. He has simply drawn what I asked, but it is
quite lovely!
A village Green, sweet little old Church, and house and oak tree,
etc., etc. in distance, a small boy with aureole of fair hair on a
red-haired pony, coming full tilt across it blowing a penny trumpet
and scattering pretty ladies, geese, cocks and hens from his path. His
dog running beside him! You will be delighted!
* * * * *
September 1, 1879.
I have done my little story to Caldecott's picture, and I have a
strong notion that it will please you. It is called "Jackanapes."... I
shall be so _disappointed_ if you don't like "Jackanapes." But I think
it is just what you will like!! I think you will cry over him!
September 19, 1879.
Isn't it a great comfort that I have finished the serial story, and
"Jackanapes"?--so that I am now quite free, and never mean to write
against time again. I know you never cared for the serial; however, it
is done, and tolerably satisfactory I think. "Jackanapes" I do hope
you will like, picture and all. C---- sent Mr. Ruskin "Our Field," and
I am proud to hear he says it is not a mere story--it's a poem! Great
praise from a great man!
October 11, 1879.
* * * * *
I was knocked up yesterday in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin
at Herne Hill. I find him _far_ more _personally_ lovable than I had
expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but
he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm.
So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such clear
Scotch turquoise eyes.
He had been out to buy buns and grapes for _me_ (!), carrying the buns
home himself very carefully that they might not be crushed!! We are so
utterly at one on some points: it is very delightful to hear him talk.
I mean it is uncommonly pleasant to hear things one has long thought
very vehemently, put to one by a Master!! _Par exemple._ You know my
mania about the indecent-cruel element in French art, and how the
Frenchiness of Victor Hugo chokes me from appreciating him: just as we
were going away yesterday Mr. Ruskin called out, "There is something I
MUST show Aunt Judy," and fetched two photos. One, an old
court with bits of old gothic tracery mixed in with a modern
tumbledown building--peaceful old doorway, wild vine twisting up the
lintel, modern shrine, dilapidated waterbutt, sunshine straggling
in--as far as the beauty of contrast and suggestiveness and form and
(one could fancy) colour could go, perfect as a picture. (R---- didn't
say all this, but we agreed as to the obvious beauty, etc.) Then he
brought out the other photo, and said, "but the French artist cannot
rest with that, it must be heightened and stained with blood," and
there was the court (photo from a French picture), with two children
lying murdered in the sunshine.
Another point we met on was my desire to write a tale on Commercial
Honour. He was delighted, and will I think furnish me with "tips." His
father was a merchant of the old school. And then to my delight I
found him soldier-mad!! So we got on very affably, and I hope to go
and stay there when I go home next summer.
* * * * *
November 7, 1879.
Friends are truly kind. Miss Mundella sent two season tickets for the
Monday "Pop." to D---- and me. I managed to go and stay for most of
it. Norman Neruda, Piatti, and _Janotha_--have you heard Janotha play
the piano? I think she is _very_ wonderful. It is so absolutely
without affectation, and so _selfless_, and yet such a mastery of the
instrument. Her _rippling_ passages are like music writ in water, and
she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the
subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in
any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, and quite young. We
sat quite near to Browning, who is a nice-looking old man,
delightfully _clean_. He seemed to delight in Neruda and Piatti, and
followed the music with a score of his own.
_Ecclesfield._ Saturday, January 31, 1880.
How beautiful a day is to-day I cannot tell you! It does refresh
me!... Head and spine very shaky this morning so that I could not get
warm; but I wrapped in my fur cloak, and went out into the sunshine,
up and down, up and down the churchyard flags. A sunny old kirkyard is
a nice place, I always think, for aged folk and invalids to creep up
and down in, and "Tombstone Morality" isn't half as wearing to the
nerves as the problems of _life_!...
* * * * *
_Greno House_, Tuesday.
Harry Howard drove me up yesterday. It was _just_ as much as I could
bear; but I lay on the sofa till dinner, and went to bed at eight, and
though my head kept me awake at first, I did well on the whole.
Breakfast in bed, a bigger one than I have eaten for three weeks, and
since then I have had an hour's drive. The roughness of the roads is
unlucky, but the air _divine_! Such sweet sunshine, and Greno Wood,
with yellow remains of bush and bracken, and heavy mosses on the
sandstone walls, and tiny streams trickling through boggy bits of the
wood, and coming out over the wall to overflow those picturesque stone
troughs which are so oddly numerous, and which I had in my head when I
wrote the first part of "Mrs. Overtheway."
* * * * *
January 11, 1880.
* * * * *
Very dear to me are all your "tender and true" regards for the old
home--the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal
changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted--which is bound up
with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel
very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!!
Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of
the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever
met has, I think, _quite_ your sympathy with exactly what the external
world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can
remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the
Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees
in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all
the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the
Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind--to now
when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which
has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the
affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable--and other people
being destitute of the sixth sense to comprehend it--so that one feels
a fool either way)--one rarely finds any one to whom one can
comfortably speak of it, and be _understanded_ of them. It is the one
of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever
since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) _see_ those
things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a
particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you
should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a
small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me
_content_ in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read
your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and
an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small
sunny nook where we may end our days--so long as there is a bit of
yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...
[_Grenoside._] February 21, 1880.
* * * * *
I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the _Lay of
the Last Minstrel_. There are lovely bits in it.
Reading away at Mrs. Browning lately has very much confirmed my notion
that the fault of her things is lack of condensation. They are almost
without exception too long. I doubt if one should ever leave less than
fifty per cent. of a situation to one's readers' own imagination, if
one aims at the highest class of readers. That swan song to Camöens
from his dying lady would have been very perfect in FIVE
verses. As it is, one gets tired even of the exquisite refrain
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" (an expression he had used about her
eyes in a song, and which haunts her).
The other night we had Sergeant Dickinson up. He has lately settled in
the village. He was in the Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava (17th
Lancers), and also at Alma, Inkerman, and Sebastopol. He has also the
Mutiny Medal and Good Conduct and Service one, so he is a good
specimen. Curious luck, he never had a _scratch_ (!). Says he has had
far "worse wounds" performing in Gyms., as he was a good swordsman,
etc. He told us some _dear_ tales of old Sir Colin Campbell. He said
his men idolized him, but their wives rather more so, and if any of
them failed to send home remittances, the spouses wrote straight off
to Sir Colin, who had up "Sandy or Wully" for remonstrance, and
stopped his grog "till I hear again from your wife, man."
On one occasion he saw a drummer-boy drunk, and a sergeant near. Sir
Colin: "Sergeant, does yon boy belong to your company?"
Sergeant: "He does not, sir."
"Does he draw a rum allowance?"
"He does, sir."
"Well, away to the Captain of his company, and say it's my orders that
the oldest soldier in this bairn's company is to draw his rum, till he
feels convinced it's for the lad's benefit that he should tak it
himsel'--and that'll not be just yet awhile I'm thinking."
Some brilliant tales too of the wit and gallantry of Irish comrades,
several of whom wore the kilt. And almost neatest of all, a story of
coming across a fellow-villager among the Highlanders:
"But I were fair poozled He came from t' same place as me, and a
clever Yorkshireman too, and he were talking as Scotch as any of 'em.
So I says, 'Why I'm beat! what are YOU talking Scotch for,
and you a Knaresborough man?' 'Whisht! whisht! Dickinson,' he says,
'we mun A' be Scotch in a Scotch regiment--or there's no
living.'"...
February 19, 1880.
I have been re-reading the _Legend of Montrose_ and the _Heart of
Midlothian_ with _such_ delight, and poems of both the Brownings, and
Ruskin, and _The Woman in White_, and _Tom Brown's Schooldays_, etc.,
etc.!!! I have got two volumes of _The Modern Painters_ back with me
to go at.
What a treat your letters are! Bits are _nearly_ as good as being
there. The sunset you saw with Miss C----, and the shadowy groups of
the masquers below in the increasing mists of evening, painted itself
as a whole on to my brain--in the way _scenes_ of Walter Scott always
did. Like the farewell to the Pretender in _Red Gauntlet_, and the
black feather on the quicksand in _The Bride of Lammermuir_.
March 1, 1880.
* * * * *
The ball must have been a grand sight, but I think, judging from the
list, that your dress as Thomas the Rhymer stands out in marked
_individuality_. Nothing shows more how few people are at all
_original_ than the absence of any thing striking or quaint in most of
the characters assumed at a Fancy Ball. This, however, is Pampering
the Pride of you members of the Mutual Admiration Society. You must
not become cliquish--no not Ye Yourselves!!!!
Above all _you_ must never lose that gracious quality (for which I
have so often given you a prize) of patience and sympathy with small
musicians and jangling pianos in the houses of kind and hospitable
Philistines. Besides, I like you to be largely gracious and popular.
All the same I confess that it is a grievance that music (and sherry!)
are jointly regarded as necessary to be supplied by all hosts and
hostesses--whether they can give you them good or not! People do not
cram their bad drawings down your throats in similar fashion, Still
what is, is--and Man is more than Music--and I have never felt the
real mastership you hold in music more than when you have beaten a
march out of some old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious
bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of
an organist whom Mr. R---- petted till he didn't know his shock head
from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at
their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and
silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants.
And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!! I have heard enough
good playing to be able to gauge him!...
Incapacity for every other kind of effort is giving me leisure for a
feast of reading and _re-reading_ such as I have not indulged for
years. Amongst other things I have read for the first time Black's
_Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_--it is _very_ charming indeed, and
if you haven't read it, some time you should. As a rule I detest
German heroes _to English books_, but Von Rosen is irresistible! and
the refrain outbreaks of his jealousy are really high art, when he
unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif--"but
that young man of Twickenham--he is a most pitiful fellow--" you feel
Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von
Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how
tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. But Black has very
artistically managed his hero's idioms so as to give great effect. And
as we have a brain wave on about Womanhood you may like, as much as I
have, V. Rosen's sketch of English women (to whom he gives the palm
over those of other nations). Speaking of some others--"very nice to
look at perhaps, and very charming in their ways perhaps, but not
sensible, honest, frank like the English woman, _and not familiar with
the seriousness of the world, and not ready to see the troubles of
other people_. But your English-woman _who is very frank to be
amused_, and can enjoy herself when there is a time for that, who is
_generous in time of trouble and is not afraid_, and can be firm and
active and yet very gentle, and who does not think always of herself,
but is ready to help other people, and can look after a house and
manage affairs--that is a better kind of woman I think--more to be
trusted--more of a companion--oh, there is no comparison!"
It is very good, isn't it?--and he is mending the fire during this
outburst, and keeps piling coal on coal as he warms with his subject.
I must also just throw you two quotations from Macaulay's most
interesting _Life and Letters_. Quotations within quotations, for they
are extracts.
"Antoni Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true."
(BROWNING.)
"There is na workeman
That can both worken wel and hastilie
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie."
(CHAUCER.)
By the bye, the italics in Black's quotations are _mine_. Good wording
I think.
But how one does go back with delight to Scott! I confess I think to
have written the _Heart of Midlothian_ is to have put on record the
existence of a moral atmosphere in one's own nation as grand as the
ozone of mountains. WHAT a contrast to that of French novels
(with no disrespect to the brilliant art and refreshing brain
quickness of the latter); but Ruskin's appeal to the responsibility of
those who wield Arts instead of Trades recurs to one as one under
which Scott might have laid his hand upon his breast, and looked
upwards with a clear conscience....
March 16, 1880.
* * * * *
I quite agree with you about an artlessness and roughness in Scott's
work. I thought what I had dwelt on was the magnificent _tone_ of the
_H. of Midlothian_. Also he has two of the first (first in rank and
order if not first in degree) qualifications for a writer of
fiction--Dramatism and individuality amongst his characters. He had
(rather perhaps one should say), the quality which is _nascitur non
fit_--Imagination. It is the great defect, _I think_, of some of our
best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly
little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest
palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious--Imagination
limited--Dramatism--nil!
She draws people she has seen (Mrs. Poyser) like a photograph--she
imagines a Daniel Deronda, and he is about "as natural as waxworks."
"I've been reading Jean Ingelow's _Fated to be Free_ lately, and it is
a marvellous mixture of beauty and failure. But _lovely_ passages.
Incisive as G. Eliot, and from the point of view of a tenderer mind
and experience. This is beautiful, isn't it?
"Nature before it has been touched by man is almost always beautiful,
strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given
it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and
helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it
and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity,
and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by
his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it
cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully
and as well as it did before."
The double edge of the sentiment is very exquisite, and the truth of
the natural fact very perfect as observation, and the book is full of
such writing. But oh, dear! the confusion of plot is so maddening you
have a delirious feeling that everybody is getting engaged to his
half-sister or widowed stepmother, and keep turning back to make sure!
But the dramatism is very good and leads you on....
March 22, 1880.
... I am getting you a curious little present. It is Thos. À Kempis's
_De Imitatione Christi_ in Latin _and Arabic_. A scarce edition
printed in Rome. I think you will like to have it. That old Thomas was
much more than a mere monk. A man for all time, his monasticism being
but a fringe upon the robe of his wisdom and _honest_ Love of God. It
will be curious to see how it lends itself to Arabic. Well, I fancy.
Being in very proverbial mould. Such verses as this (I quote roughly
from memory):
"That which thou dost not understand when thou readest thou shalt
understand in the day of thy visitation: for there be secrets of
religion which are not known till they be felt and are not felt but in
the Day of a great calamity!" (a piece of wisdom with application to
other experiences besides religious ones). I think this will read well
in the language of the East. As also "In omnibus rebus Respice Finem,"
etc.....
* * * * *
Tuesday.
I am quite foolishly disappointed. The À Kempis is gone already! It is
a new Catalogue, and I fancied it was an out-o'-way chance. It seems
Ridler has no other Arabic books whatever. He may not have known its
value. It "went" for six shillings!!!
* * * * *
TO THE BISHOP OF FREDERICTON.
_131, Finborough Road, South Kensington._
March 23, 1880.
MY DEAR LORD,
I thank you with all my heart for the gift of your book,[41] and yet
more for the kindly inscription, which affected me much.
[Footnote 41: _The Book of Job_, translated from the Hebrew Text by
John, Bishop of Fredericton.]
As one gets older one feels distance--or whatever parts one from
people one cares for--worse and worse, I think!--However, whatever
helps to remedy the separation is all the dearer!
I had devoured enough of your notes, to have laughed more than once
and almost to have heard you speak, before I moved from the chair in
which the book found me, and had read all the Introduction. I could
HEAR you say that "Bildad uttered a few trusims in a pompous
tone"!
What I have read of your version seems to me grand, bits here and
there I certainly had never felt the poetical power of before. Rex
will be delighted with it!
I fully receive all you say about Satan and the Sons of God. But I
think a certain painfulness about such portions of Holy Writ--does not
come from (1) Unwillingness to lay one's hand upon one's mouth and be
silent before God. (2) Or difficulty about the Personality of Satan. I
fancy it is because in spite of oneself it is painful that one of the
rare liftings of the Great Veil between us and the "ways" of the
Majesty of God should disclose a scene of such petty features--a sort
of wrangling and experimentalizing, that it would be _pleasanter_ to
be able to believe was a parable brought home to our vulgar
understandings rather than a real vision of the Lord our Strength.
I am, my dear Lord,
Your grateful and ever affectionate old friend,
J.H.E.
TO J.H.E.
_Fredericton._ April 8, 1880.
MY DEAR MRS. EWING,
I will not let the mail go out without proving that I am not a bad
correspondent, and without thanking you for your delightful letter.
Oh! why don't you squeeze yourself sometimes into that funny little
house opposite Miss Bailey's, and let me take a cup of tea off the
cushions, or some other place where the books would allow it to be
put? And why don't you allow me to stumble over my German? And why
doesn't Rex, Esq. (for Rex is too familiar even for a Bishop) correct
my musical efforts? How terrible this word _past_ is! The past is at
all events _real_, but the future is so shadowy, and like the ghosts
of Ulysses it entirely eludes one's grasp. I speak of course of things
that belong to this life. It was (I assure you) a treat to lay hold of
you and your letters, and (a minor consideration) to find that even
your handwriting had not degenerated, and had not become like spiders'
legs dipped in ink and crawling on the paper, as is the case of some
nameless correspondents. There was only one word I could not make out.
In personal appearance the letters stood thus, _[Greek: us]_. It looks like
"us," or like the Greek _[Greek: un]_, which being interpreted is
"pig." But M----, who is far cleverer than I am, at once oracularly
pronounced it "very," and I believe her and you too....
I was greatly tickled in your getting _amusement_ out of "Job," the
last book where one would have expected to find it; but stop--I
recollect it is out of _me_, not the patriarch, that you find
something to smile at, and no doubt you are right, for no doubt I say
ridiculous things sometimes. _Au sérieux_, it pleases me much that you
enter into my little book, and evidently have _read_ it, for I have
had complimentary letters from people who plainly had not read a word,
and to the best of my belief never will. I wish you had been more
critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of
which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter
myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly
unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of
the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the
whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed
Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet one
admires his word-painting while one longs to kick him! I am glad to
see the _Church Times_ agrees with me in the early character of the
book. There is not a trace in it of later Jewish history or feeling.
The argument on the other side is derived from Aramaic words only,
which words are not unsuitable to a writer who either lived, _or had
lived_ out of Palestine, and scholars agree now that they may belong
either to a very late or a very early time, and are used by people
familiar with the cognate languages of the East.
A word about your very natural feeling on the subject of Satan. I
suppose that Inspiration does not interfere with the character of mind
belonging to the inspired person. The writer thinks Orientally, within
the range of thought common to the age, and patriarchal knowledge, so
that he could neither think nor write as S. Paul or S. John, even
though inspired. We criticize his writing (when we do criticize it)
from the standpoint of the nineteenth century, _i.e._ from the
accumulated knowledge, successive revelations, and refined
civilization of several thousand years.
Its extreme simplicity of description may appear to us trivial. But is
not the fact indubitable that God tries us as He did Job, though by
different methods? And is not our Lord's expression, "whom Satan hath
bound, lo! these eighteen years," and S. Paul's, "to deliver such an
one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," analogous to the
account in Job? One has only to try to transfer oneself to the
patriarchal age, when there was no Bible, no Lord Jesus come in the
flesh, but when at intervals divine revelations were given by personal
manifestations and then withdrawn, and to take out of oneself all one
has known about God from a child, to view the account as an Oriental
would look at it, not as a Western Christian. The "experiment" (so to
speak) involves one of the grandest questions in the world--Is
religion only a refined selfishness, or is there such a thing as real
faith and love of God, apart from any temporal reward? The devil
asserts the negative and so (observe) do Job's so-called friends; but
Job proves the affirmative, and hence amidst certain unadvised
expressions he (in the main) speaks of God the thing that is right.
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
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