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... André has made the "rough-book" (water colours) of "A week spent
in a Glass Pond, By the Great Water Beetle." I only had it a few
hours, but I scrambled a bit of the title-page on to the enclosed
sheet of green paper for you to see. It is entirely in colours. The
name of the tale is beautifully done in letters, the initials of which
_bud and blossom_ into the Frogbit (which shines in white masses on
the Aldershot Canal!) [_Sketch._] To the left the "Water Soldier"
(_Stratiotes Aloides_) with its white blossoms. At the foot of the
page "the Great Water Beetle" himself, writing his name in the
book--_Dyticus Marginalis_. There is another blank page at the
beginning of the book, where the beetle is standing blacking himself
in a penny ink-pot!!!! and another where he is just turning the leaves
of a book with his antennæ--the book containing the name of the
chromolithographers. He has adopted almost all my ideas, and I told
him (though it is not in the tale) "I should like a _dog_ to be with
the children in all the pictures, and a cat to be with the old
naturalist,"--and he has such a dog (a white bull terrier) [_sketch_],
who waits on the woodland path for them in one picture, _noofles_ in
the colander at the water-beasts in another, examines the beetle in a
third, stands on his hind legs to peep into the aquarium in a fourth,
etc. But I cannot describe it all to you. I have asked to have it
again by and by, and will send you a coloured sketch or two from it. I
am so much pleased!... Perhaps the best part of the book is _the
cover_. It is very beautiful. The Bell Glass Aquarium (lights in the
water beautifully done) carries the title, and reeds, flowers, newts,
beetles, dragon-flies, etc., etc., are grouped with wondrous fancy!
This entirely his own design....
_Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne._
August 30, 1881.
* * * * *
The four Jones children and their nurse are in lodgings at a place
called Whitley on the coast, not far from here. Somebody from here
goes to see them most days. To-day Mrs. J. and I went. As we were
starting dear "Bob" (the collie who used to belong to the
Younghusbands) was determined to go. Mrs. Jones said No. He bolted
into the cab and crouched among my petticoats; I begged for him, and
he was allowed. At the station he was in such haste he _would_ jump
into a 2nd class carriage, and we had hard work to get him out. (This
_is_ rather funny, because she usually goes there 2nd class with the
children: and he looked at the 1st and would hardly be persuaded to
get in.) Well, the coast is rather like Filey, and such a wind was
blowing, and _such_ white horses foamed and fretted, and sent up
wildly tossed fountains of foam against the rocks, and such grey and
white waves swallowed up the sands! I ran and played with the children
and the dog--and built a big sand castle ("Early English if not Delia
Cruscan"!!), and by good-luck and much sharp hunting among the
storm-wrack flung ashore among the foam, found four cork floats, and
made the children four ships with paper sails, and had a glorious dose
of oxygen and iodine. How strange are the properties of the invisible
air! The air from an open window at Ecclesfield gives me neuralgia,
and doubly so at Exeter. To-day the wild wind was driving huge tracts
of foam across the sands in masses that broke up as they flew, and
driving the sand itself after them like a dust-storm. I could barely
stand on the slippery rocks, and yet my teeth seemed to _settle in my
jaws_ and my face to get PICKLED (!) and comforted by the
wild (and very cold) blast.... Now to sweet repose, but I was obliged
to tell you I had been within sound of the sea, aye! and run into and
away from the waves, with children and a dog. This is better than a
Bath Chair in Brompton Cemetery!...
_Thornliebank, Glasgow._ September 8, 1881.
... "It is good to be sib to" kindly Scots! and I am having a very
pleasant visit. You know the place and its luxuries and hospitalities
well.
I came from Newcastle last Friday, and (in a good hour, etc.) bore more
in the travelling way than I have managed with impunity since I broke
down. I came by the late express, got to Glasgow between 8 and 9 p.m.,
and had rather a hustle to to get a cab, etc. A nice old porter (as
dirty and hairy as a Simian!) secured one at last with a cabby who
jabbered in a tongue that at last I utterly lost the running of, and
when he suddenly (and as it appeared indignantly!) remounted his box,
whipped up, and drove off, leaving me and my boxes, I felt inclined to
cry(!), and said piteously to the porter, "What _does_ he say? I
_cannot_ understand him!" On which the old Ourang-Outang began to pat me
on the shoulder with his paw, and explain loudly and slowly to my
Sassenach ears, "He's jest telling ye--that 't'll be the better forrr
ye--y'unnerstan'--to hev a caaaab that's got an i(ro)n railing on the
tôp of it--for the sake of yourrr boxes." And in due time I was handed
over to a cab with an iron railing, the Simian left me, and so friendly
a young cabby (also dirty) took me in hand that I began to think he was
drunk, but soon found that he was only exceedingly kind and lengthily
conversational! When he had settled the boxes, put on his coat, argued
out the Crums' family and their residences, first with me and then with
his friends on the platform, we were just off when a thought seemed to
strike him, and back he came to the open window, and saying "Ye'll be
the better of havin' this ap"--scratched it up from the outside with
nails like Nebuchadnezzar's. Whether my face looked as if I did not like
it or what, I don't know, but down came the window again with a rattle,
and he wagged the leather strap almost in my face and said, "there's
_hôals_ in't, an' ye can jest let it down to yer own satisfaction if ye
fin' it gets clos." Then he rattled it up again, mounted the box, and
off we went. Oh, _such_ a jolting drive of six miles! Such wrenching
over tramway lines! But I had my fine air-cushions, and my spine must
simply be another thing to what it was six months back. Oh, he was
funny! I found that he did NOT know the way to Thornliebank, but having
a general idea, and a (no doubt just) faith in his own powers, he swore
he did know, and utterly resented asking bystanders. After we got far
away from houses, on the bleak roads in the dark night, I merely felt
one must take what came. By and by he turned round and began to retrace
his steps. I put out my head (as I did at intervals to his great
disgust; he always pitched well into me--"We're aal right--just
com--pôse yeself," etc.), but he assured me he'd only just gone by the
gate. So by and by we drew up, no lights in the lodge, no answer to
shouts--then he got down, and in the darkness I heard the gates grating
as if they had not been opened for a century. Then under overhanging
trees, and at last in the dim light I saw that the walls were broken
down and weeds were thick round our wheels. I could bear it no longer,
and put out my head again, and I shall never forget the sight. The moon
was coming a little bit from behind the clouds, and showed a court-yard
in which we had pulled up, surrounded with buildings in ruins, and
overgrown with nettles and rank grass. We had not seen a human being
since we left Glasgow, at least an hour before,--and of all the places
to have one's throat cut in!! The situation was so tight a place, it
really gave one the courage of desperation, and I ordered him to drive
away at once. I believe he was half frightened himself, and the horse
ditto, and never, never was I in anything so nearly turned over as that
cab! for the horse got it up a bank. At last it was righted, but not an
inch would my Scotchman budge till he'd put himself through the window
and confounded himself in apologies, and in explanations calculated to
convince me that, in spite of appearances, he knew the way to
Thornliebank "pairfeckly well." "Noo, I do beg of ye not to be
narrrr-vous. Do NOT give way to't. Ye may trust me entirely. Don't be
discommodded in the least. I'm just pairfectly acquainted with the road.
But it'll be havin' been there in the winter that's just misled me. But
we're aal right." And all right he did eventually land me here! so late
J. had nearly given me up.
* * * * *
TO MRS. ELDER.
_Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield._
October 26, 1881.
DEAREST AUNT HORATIA,
* * * * *
D. says you would like some of the excellent Scotch stories I heard
from Mr. Donald Campbell. I wish I could take the wings of a swallow
and tell you them. You must supply gaps from your imagination.
They were as odd a lot of tales as I ever heard--_drawled_ (oh so
admirably drawled, without the flutter of an eyelid, or the quiver of
a muscle) by a Lowland Scotchman, and queerly characteristic of the
Lowland Scotch race!!!! Picture this slow phlegmatic rendering to your
"mind's eye, Horatia!"
A certain excellent woman after a long illness--departed this life,
and the Minister went to condole with the Widower. "The Hand of
affliction has been heavy on yu, Donald. Ye've had a sair loss in
your Jessie."
"Aye--aye--I've had a sair loss in my Jessie--an' a heavy ex-pense."
* * * * *
A good woman lost her husband, and the Minister made his way to the
court where she lived. He found her playing cards with a friend. But
she was _æquus ad occasionem_--as Charlie says!--
"Come awa', Minister! Come awa' in wi' ye. Ye'll see _I'm just hae-ing
a trick with the cairds to ding puir Davie oot o' my heid_."
* * * * *
I don't know if the following will _read_ comprehensibly. _Told_ it
was overwhelming, and was a prime favourite with the Scotch audience.
Hoo oor Baby was _burrrned_.
(How our Baby was burnt.)
(You must realize a kind of amiable bland _whine_ in the way of
telling this. A caressing tone in the Scotch drawl, as the good lady
speaks of _oor wee Wullie_, etc. Also a roll of the r's on the word
burned.)
"Did ye never hear hoo oor wee Baby was burrrned? Well ye see--it was
_this_ way. The Minister and me had been to _Peebles_--and we were
awfu' tired, and we were just haeing oor bit suppers--when oor wêê
Wullie cam doon-stairs and he says--'Mither, Baby's _burrrning_.'
"--Y'unerstan it was the day that the Minister and me were at Peebles.
We were _awful_ tired, and we were just at oor suppers, and the
Minister says (very loud and nasal), '_Ca'll Nurrse_!'--but as it
rarely and unfortunitly happened--Nurrse was washing and she couldna
be fashed.
"And in a while our WEE Wullie cam down the stairs again, and
he says--'Mither! Baby's burning.'
"--as I was saying the Minister and me had been away over at Peebles,
and we were in the verra midst of oor suppers, and I said to him--'Why
didna ye call Nurse?'--and off he ran.
"--and there was the misfirtune of it--Nurrse was washing, and she
wouldn't be fashed.
"And--in--a while--oor weee Wullie--came doon the stairs again--and
he says 'Mither! Baby's burrrned.' And that was the way oor poor woe
baby was burnt!"
* * * * *
Now for one English one and then I must stop to-day. I flatter myself
I can tell this with a nice mincing and yet vinegar-ish voice.
"When I married my 'Usbin I had no expectation that he would live
three week.
"But Providence--for wise purposes no doubt!--has seen fit to spare
him three years.
"And there he sits, all day long, a-reading the _Illustrious News_."
Now I must stop....
Your loving niece,
JULIANA HORATIA EWING.
TO A.E.
_Grenoside._ Advent Sunday, 1881.
* * * * *
On one point I think I have improved in my sketching. I have been long
wanting to get a _quick style_ sketching not painting. Because I shall
never have the time, or the time and strength to pursue a more
finished style with success. Now I have got paper on which I can make
no corrections (so it forces me to be "to the point"), and which takes
colour softly and nicely. I have to aim at very correct drawing _at
once_, and I lay in a good deal both of form and shade with a very
soft pencil and then wash colour over; and with the colour I aim at
blending tints as I go on, putting one into the other whilst it is
wet, instead of washing off, and laying tint over tint, which the
paper won't bear. I am doing both figures and landscape, and in the
same style. I think the nerve-vigour I get from the fresh air helps me
to decision and choice of colours. But I shall bore you with this
gallop on my little hobby horse!...
November 30.
... I have sketched up to to-day, but it was cold and sunless, so I
did some village visiting. I am known here, by the bye, as "_Miss
Gatty as was_"! I generally go about with a tribe of children after
me, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin! They are now fairly trained to
keeping behind me, and are curiously civil in taking care of my traps,
pouring out water for me, and keeping each other in a kind of rough
order by rougher adjurations!
"Keep out o' t' _leet_ can't ye?"
"Na then! How's shoo to see through thee?"
"Shoo's gotten t' Dovecot in yon book, and shoo's got little Liddy
Kirk--and thy moother wi' her apron over her heead, and Eliza Flowers
sitting upo' t' doorstep wi' her sewing--and shoo's got t'
woodyard--and Maester D. smooking his pipe--and shoo's gotten _Jack_."
"Nây! Has shoo gotten Jack?"
"Shoo _'as_. And shoo's gotten ould K. sitting up i' t' shed corner
chopping wood, and shoo's bound to draw him and Dronfield's lad
criss-cross sawing."
"Aye. Shoo did all Greno Wood last week, they tell me."
"Aye. And shoo's done most o' t' village this week. What's shoo bound
to do wi' 'em all?"
"_Shoo'll piece 'em all together and mak a big picter of t' whole
place._" (These are true bills!)
Mr. S---- brings in some amusing _ana_ of the village on this subject.
A.W., a nice lad training for schoolmaster, was walking to Chapeltown
with several _rolls of wall paper_ and a big wall paste-brush, when he
was met by "Ould K." (a cynical old beggar, and vainer than any girl,
who has been affronted because I put Master D. into my foreground, and
not him), who said to him--"Well, lad! I see thou's _going out
mapping_, like t' rest on 'em." This evening Mr. S---- tells me his
landlord told him that some men who work for a very clever file-cutter
here, who is _facile princeps_ at his trade, but _mean_, and keeps
"the shop" cold and uncomfortable for his workmen--devised yesterday
the happy thought of going to their Gaffer and telling him that I had
been sketching down below (true) and was coming up their way, and that
I was sure to expect a glint of fire in the shop, which ought to look
its best. According to N. he took the bait completely, piled a roaring
fire, and as the day wore on kept wandering restlessly out and peering
about for me! When they closed for the night he said it was strange I
hadn't been, but he reckoned I was sure to be there next day, and he
could wish I would "tak him wi' his arm uplifted to strike." (He is a
very powerful smith.) I think I _must_ go if the shop is at all
picturesque....
Nov. 25, 1881.
* * * * *
Be happy in a small round. But, none the less, all the more does it
refresh me to get the wave of all your wider experience to flood my
narrow ones--and to enjoy all the _calm_ bits of your language study
and the like. And oh, I am _very_ glad about the Musical Society!
Though I dare say you'll have some _mauvais quarts d'heure_ with the
strings in damp weather!...
I have really got some pretty sketches done the last few days. Not
_finished_ ones, the weather is not fit for long sitting; but H.H. has
given me some "Cox" paper, a rough kind of stuff something like what
_sugar_ is wrapped up in, and with a very soft black pencil I have
been getting in quick outlines--and then tinting them with thin pure
washes of colour. I have been doing one of the Clog-shop. This quaint
yard has doors--old doors--which long since have been painted a most
charming red. Then the old shop is red-tiled, and an old stone-chimney
from which the pale blue smoke of the wood-fire floats softly off
against the tender tints of the wood, on the edge of which lie fallen
logs with yellow ends, ready for the clog-making, and all the bare
brown trees, and the green and yellow sandstone walls, and Jack the
Daw hopping about. The old man at the clog-yard was very polite to me
to-day. He said, "It's a pratty bit of colour," and "It makes a nicet
sketch now you're getting in the _dit_tails." He went some distance
yesterday to get me some india-rubber, and then wanted me to keep it!
He's a perfect "picter card" himself. I must try and get _his_
portrait.
* * * * *
_Ecclesfield._ Dec. 23, 1881.
... I cannot tell you the pleasure it gives me that you say what you
do of "Daddy Darwin." No; it will not make me overwork. I think, I
hope, nothing ever will again. Rather make me doubly careful that I
may not lose the gift you help me to believe I have. I have had very
kind letters about it, and Mrs. L. sent me a sweet little girl dressed
in pink--a bit of Worcester China!--as "Phoebe Shaw."...
Aunt M. sent "Daddy Darwin" to T. Kingdon (he is now Suffragan Bishop
to Bishop Medley), and she sent us his letter. I will copy what he
says: "'Daddy Darwin' is very charming--directly I read it I took it
off to the Bishop--and he read it and cried over it with joy, and then
read it again, and it has gone round Fredericton by this time. The
story is beautifully told, and the picture is quite what it should be.
When I look at the picture I think nothing could beat it, and then
when I read the story I think the story is best--till I look again at
the picture, and I can only say that _together_ I don't think they
could be beaten at all in their line. I have enjoyed them much. There
is such a wonderful fragrance of the Old Country about them."
I thought you would like to realize the picture of our own dear old
Bishop crying with joy over it! What a young heart! tenderer than many
in their teens; and what unfailing affection and sympathy....
January 17, 1882.
* * * * *
Mrs. O'M. is delighted with "Daddy Darwin." I had a most curious
letter about it from Mrs. S., a very clever one and very flattering!
F.S. too wrote to D., and said things almost exactly similar. It seems
odd that people should express such a sense of "purity" with the "wit
and wisdom" of one's writing! It seems such an odd reflection on the
tone of other people's writings!!! But the minor writers of the
"Fleshly school" are perhaps producing a reaction! Though it's
_marvellous_ what people will read, and think "so clever!" Some novels
lately--_Sophy_ and _Mehalah_, deeply recommended to me, have made me
aghast. I'm not very young, nor I think very priggish; but I do
decline to look at life and its complexities solely and entirely from
a point of view that (bar Christian names and the English language)
would do equally well for a pig or a monkey. If I _am_ no more than a
Pig, I'm a fairly "learned" pig, and will back myself to get some
small piggish pleasures out of this mortal stye, before I go to the
Butcher!! But--IF--I am something very different, and very much
higher, I won't ignore my birthright, or sell it for Hog'swash,
because it involves the endurance of some pain, and the exercise of
some faith and hope and charity! _Mehalah_ is a well-written book,
with a delicious sense of local colour in nature. And it is (pardon
the sacrilege!) a LOVE _story_! The focus point of the hero's
(!) desire would at quarter sessions, or assizes, go by the plain
names of outrage and murder, and he succeeds in drowning himself with
the girl who hates him lashed to him by a chain. In not one other
character of the book is there an indication that life has an aim
beyond the lusts of the flesh, and the most respectable characters are
the tenants whose desires are summed up in the desire of more suet
pudding and gravy!! To any one who KNOWS the poor! who knows
what faiths and hopes (true or untrue) support them in consumption and
cancer, in hard lives and dreary deaths, the picture is as untrue as
it is (to me!) disgusting.
* * * * *
March 22, 1882.
* * * * *
On Saturday night I went down with A. and L. to Battersea, to one of
the People's Concerts. I enclose the programme. It is years since I
have enjoyed anything so much as _Thomas's_ Harp-playing. (He is not
Ap-Thomas, but he _is_ the Queen's Harper.) His hands on those strings
were the hands of a _Wizard_, and form and features nearly as quaint
as those of Mawns seemed to dilate into those of a poet. It was very
marvellous.
Did I tell you that Lady L. has sent _me_ a ticket this year for her
Sunday afternoons at the Grosvenor? We went on Sunday. The paintings
there just now are Watts's. Our old blind friend at Manchester has
sent a lot. It is a very fine collection. I think few paintings do
beat Watts's 'Love and Death'--Death, great and irresistible, wrapped
in shrowd-like drapery, is pushing relentlessly over the threshold of
a home, where the portal is climbed over by roses and a dove plays
about the lintel. You only see his back. But, facing you, Love, as a
young boy, torn and flushed with passion and grief, is madly striving
to keep Death back, his arms strained, his wings crushed and broken in
the unequal struggle.
Beside the paintings it was great fun seeing the company! Princess
Louise was there, and lots of minor stars. And--my Welsh Harper was
there! I had a long chat with him. He talks like a true artist, and
WE must know him hereafter. When I said that when I heard him
play the 'Men of Harlech,' I understood how Welshmen fought in the
valleys if their harpers played upon the hills (_most true!_), he
seized my hand in both his, and thanked me so excitedly I was quite
alarmed for fear Mrs. Grundy had an eye round the corner!!!
* * * * *
_Amesbury_, May 28, 1182.
... 'Tis a sweet, sweet spot! Not one jot or one tittle of the old
charm has forsaken it. Clean, clean shining streets and little
houses, pure, pure air!--a changeful and lovely sky--the green
watermeads and silvery willows--the old patriarch in his smock--the
rushing of the white weir among the meadows, the grey bridge, the big,
peaceful, shading trees, the rust-coloured lichen on the graves where
the forefathers of the hamlet sleep (oh what a place for sleep!), the
sublime serenity of that incomparable church tower, about which the
starlings wheel, some of them speaking words outside, and others
replying from the inside (where they have no business to be!) through
the belfry windows in a strange chirruping antiphon, as if outside
they sang:
"Have you found a house, and a nest where you may lay your young?
(and from within):
Even Thy altars, O Lord of Hosts! my King and my God!"
D. and I wandered (how one _wanders_ here) a long time there yesterday
evening. Then we went up to the cemetery on the hill, with that
beautiful lych-gate you were so fond of. I picked you a forget-me-not
from the old Rector's grave, for he has gone home, after fifty-nine
years' pastorship of Amesbury. His wife died the year before. Their
graves are beautifully kept with flowers.
_Whit-Monday_, 9.30 p.m. We are in the upper sitting-room to-day, the
lower one having been reserved for "trippers." It is a glorious
night--beyond the open window one of several Union Jacks waves in the
evening breeze, and one of several brass bands has just played its way
up the street. How these admirable musicians have found the lungs to
keep it up as they have done since an early hour this morning they
best know! Oh, how we have laughed! How _you_ would have laughed!! It
has been the most good-humoured, civil crowd you can imagine! Such
banners! such a "gitting of them" up and down the street by ardent
"Foresters" and other clubs in huge green sashes and flowers
everywhere! Before we were up this morning they were hanging flags
across the street, and seriously threatening the stability of that
fine old window!
When I was dressed enough to pull up the blind and open the window
some green leaves fluttered in in the delicious breeze. I went off
into raptures, thinking it was a big _Vine_ I had not noticed before,
creeping outside!!
It was a maypole of sycamore branches, placed there by the
Foresters!!!
Frances Peard laughed at me much for something like to this I said at
Torquay! She said, "You are just like my old mother. Whenever we pass
a man who has used a fusee, she always becomes knowing about tobacco,
and says, _There_, Frances, my dear--there IS a fine cigar.'"
* * * * *
... We came here last Thursday. When I got to Porton D. had sent an
air-cushion in the fly, and though I had a five miles drive it was
through this exquisite air on a calm, lovely evening, and by the time
we got to a spot on the Downs where a little Pinewood breaks the
expanse of the plains, the good-humoured driver and I were both on our
knees on the grass digging up plots of the exquisite Shepherd's Thyme,
which carpets the place with blue!
Yesterday we drove by Stonehenge to Winterbourne Stoke. It was
glaring, and I could not do much sketching, but the drive over the
downs was like drinking in life at some primeval spring. (And this
though the wind did give me acute neuralgia in my right eye, but yet
the air was so exquisitely refreshing that I could cover my eye with a
handkerchief and still enjoy!) The charm of these unhedged, unbounded,
un-"cabined, cribbed, confined" _prairies_ is all their own, and very
perfect! And _such_ flowers _enamel_ (it _is_ a good simile in spite
of Alphonse Karr!) the close fine grass! The pale-yellow rock cistus
in clumps, the blue "shepherd's thyme" in tracts of colour, sweet
little purple-capped orchids, spireas and burnets, and everywhere "the
golden buttercup" in sheets of gleaming yellow, and the soft wind
blows and blows, and the black-nosed sheep come up the leas, and I
drink in the breeze! Oh, those flocks of black-faced lambs and sheep
are TOO-TOO! and I must tell you that the old Wiltshire
"ship-dog" is nearly extinct. I regret to say that he is not found
equal to "the Scotch" in business habits, and one see Collies
everywhere now....
_London._ June 29, 1882.
* * * * *
I had a great treat last Sunday. One you and I will share when you
come home. D., U., and I took Jack to church at the Chelsea Hospital,
and we went round the Pensioners' Rooms, kitchen, sick-wards, etc.
afterwards, with old Sir Patrick Grant and Col. Wadeson, V.C. (Govr.
and Lieut.-Govr.), and a lot of other people.
It is an odd, perhaps a savage, mixture of emotions, to kneel at one's
prayers with some _pride_ under fourteen French flags--_captured_
(including one of Napoleon's while he was still Consul, with a red cap
of Liberty as big as your hat!), and hard by the FIVE bare
staves from which the FIVE standards taken at Blenheim have
rotted to dust!--and then to pass under the great Russian standard
(twenty feet square, I should say!) that is festooned above the door
of the big hall. If Rule Britannia IS humbug--and we are mere
Philistine Braggarts--why doesn't Cook organize a tour to some German
or other city, where we can sit under fourteen captured British
Colours, and be disillusioned once for all!!! Where is the Hospital
whose walls are simply decorated like some Lord Mayor's show with
trophies taken from us and from every corner of the world? (You know
Lady Grant was in the action at Chillianwallah and has the medal?) We
saw two Waterloo men, and Jack was handed about from one old veteran
to another like a toy. "Grow up a brave man," they said, over and over
again. But "The Officer," as he called Colonel Wadeson, was his chief
pride, he being in full uniform and cocked hat!!
And I must tell you--in the sick ward I saw a young man, fair-curled,
broad-chested, whose face seemed familiar. He was with Captain
Cleather at the Aldershot Gym., fell, and is "going home"--slowly, and
with every comfort and kindness about him, but of spinal paralysis.
It _did_ seem hard lines! He was at the Amesbury March Past, and we
had a long chat about it.
* * * * *
July 21, 1882.
* * * * *
I cannot tell you how it pleases me that you liked the bit about
Aldershot in "Lætus." I hope that it must have _grated_ very much if I
had done it badly or out of taste, on any one who knows it as well as
you do; and that its moving your sympathies does mean that I have done
it pretty well. I cannot tell you the pains I expended on it! All
those sentences about the Camp were written in scraps and corrected
for sense and euphony, etc., etc., bit by bit, like "Jackanapes"!!!
Did I tell you about "Tuck of Drum"? Several people who saw the proof,
pitched into me, "Never heard of such an expression." I was convinced
I knew it, and as I said, as a _poetical_ phrase; but I could not
charge my memory with the quotation: and people exasperated me by
regarding it as "camp slang." I got Miss S. to look in her
_Shakespeare's Concordance_, but in vain, and she wrote severely, "My
Major lifts his eyebrows at the term." I was in despair, but I sent
the proof back, trusting to my instincts, and sent a postcard to Dr.
Littledale, and got a post-card back by return--"Scott"--"Rokeby."
"With burnished brand and musketoon,
So gallantly you come,
I rede you for a bold dragoon,
That lists the tuck of drum."--
"I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum,
My comrades take the spear."
And I copied this on to another postcard and added, _Tell your Major!_
and despatched it to Miss S.! She said, "You _did_ Cockadoodle!"--
But isn't it _exquisite_? _What_ a creature Scott was! Could words,
could a long romance, give one a finer picture of the ex-soldier
turned "Gentleman of the Road"? The touch of regret--"I list no more
the tuck of drum," and the soldierly necessity for a "call"--and then
_such_ a call!
When the Beetle _sounds his hum_--
The Dor Beetle!--
I hope you will like the tale as a whole. It has been long in my head.
* * * * *
Oh! how funny Grossmith was! Yesterday I was at the Matinée for the
Dramatic School, and he did a "Humorous Sketch" about Music, when he
said with care-carked brows that there was only one man's music that
_thoroughly_ satisfied him (after touching on the various
schools!)--and added--"my own." It was inexpressibly funny. His
"Amateur Composer" would have made you die!
Ah, but THE treat, such a treat as I have not heard for
years--was that old Ristori RECITED the 5th Canto of the
_Inferno_. I did not remember which it was, and feared I should not be
able to follow, but it proved to be "Francesca." Never could I have
believed it possible that reciting could be like that. I could have
gone into a corner and cried my heart out afterwards, the tension was
so extreme. And oh what power and WHAT refinement!
* * * * *
July 28, 1882.
* * * * *
Last Saturday D. and I went down to Aldershot to the Flat Races!!! As
we went along, tightly packed in a carriage full of ladies in what may
be termed "dazzling toilettes," pretty girls and Dowager Mammas
everywhere!--and as we ran past the familiar "Brookwood North Camp,"
where white "canvas" shone among the heather (and the heather, the cat
heather, oh SO bonny! with here and there a network of the
red threads of the dodder, so thick that it looked like red flowers),
and all the ladies, young and old, craned forward to see the tents,
etc., I really laughed at myself for the accuracy of my own
descriptions in "Lætus"! P. met us at the R.E. Mess, where we had
luncheon. After lunch we went to the familiar stables, and inspected
the kit for Egypt. Then P. drove us to the Race Course. I met a lot of
old friends. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught were there. It all
looked very pretty, the camp is so much grown up with plantations now.
The air was wondrous sweet. P. drove us back to the Mess for tea, and
then down to the station. It was a great pleasure, though rather a sad
one. Everybody was very grave. A sort of feeling, "What will be the
end?"...
_The Castle, Farnham._
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