I never thought the large packet was from you; it was thrown aside with the rest, till evening, and only opened _then_ by chance. I was greatly grieved to find what I had thus left unacknowledged. The drawings are entirely beautiful and wonderful, but, like all the good work done in those bygone days, (Donovan"s own book being of inestimable excellence in this kind,) they affect me with profound melancholy in the thought of the loss to the entire body of the nation of all this perfect artistic capacity, and sweet will, for want of acknowledgment, system, and direction. I must write a careful pa.s.sage on this matter in my new Elements of Drawing. Your drawings have been sent me not by you, but by my mistress Fors, for a text. It is no wonder, when you can draw like this, that you care so much for all lovely nature. But I shall be ashamed to show you my peac.o.c.k"s feather; I"ve sent it, however.
It is _very_ sweet of you to give me your book, but I accept it at once most thankfully. It is the best type I can show of the perfect work of an English lady in her own simple peace of enjoyment and natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks; it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Sat.u.r.day"s post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in my Greek.
It is a great joy to me that _you_ like the Wordsworth bits; there are worse coming; but I"ve been put into a dreadful pa.s.sion by two of my cleverest girl pupils "going off pious!" It"s exactly like a nice pear getting "sleepy;" and I"m pretty nearly in the worst temper I _can_ be in, for W. W. But what _are_ these blessed feathers? Everything that"s best of gra.s.s and clouds and chrysoprase. What incomparable little creature wears such things, or lets fall! The "fringe of flame" is Carlyle"s, not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often mistake one for the other now.
You cannot in the least tell what a help you are to me, in caring so much for my things and seeing what I try to do in them. You are quite one of a thousand for sympathy with everybody, and one of the ten times ten thousand, for special sympathy with my own feelings and tries. Yes, that second column is rather nicely touched, though I say it, for hands and eyes of sixty-two; but when once the wind stops I hope to do a bit of primrosey ground that will be richer.
Here, not I, but a thing with a dozen of colds in its head, am!
I caught one cold on Wednesday last, another on Thursday, two on Friday, four on Sat.u.r.day, and one at every station between this and Ingleborough on Monday. I never was in such ign.o.ble misery of cold.
I"ve no cough to speak of, nor anything worse than usual in the way of sneezing, but my hands are cold, my pulse nowhere, my nose tickles and wrings me, my ears sing--like kettles, my mouth has no taste, my heart no hope of ever being good for anything, any more. I never pa.s.sed such a wretched morning by my own fireside in all my days, and I"ve quite a fiendish pleasure in telling you all this, and thinking how miserable you"ll be too. Oh me, if I ever get to feel like myself again, won"t I take care of myself.
The feathers nearly made me fly away from all my Psalters and Exoduses, to you, and my dear Peac.o.c.ks. I wonder when Solomon got his ivory and apes and peac.o.c.ks, whether he ever had time to look at them.
He couldn"t always be ordering children to be chopped in two. Alas, I suppose his wisdom, in England of to-day, would have been taxed to find out which mother lied in saying which child _wasn"t_ hers!
I"ve been writing to Miss R. again, and Miss L."s quite right to stay at home. "She thinks I have an eagle"s eye." Well, what else should I have, in day time? together with my cat"s eye in the dark? But you may tell her I should be very sorry if my eyes were _no_ better than eagles"! "Doth the eagle know what is in the pit"?[46] _I_ do.
[Footnote 46: Blake.]
I hope you will be comforted in any feeling of languor or depression in yourself by hearing that I also am wholly lack l.u.s.trous, _de_pressed, _op_pressed, _com_pressed, and _down_pressed by a quite countless pressgang of despondencies, humilities, remorses, shamefacednesses, all overnesses, all undernesses, sicknesses, dullnesses, darknesses, sulkinesses, and everything that rhymes to lessness and distress, and that I"m sure you and I are at present the mere targets of the darts of the ----, etc., etc., and Mattie"s waiting and mustn"t be loaded with more sorrow; but I can"t tell you how sorry I am to break my promise to-day, but it would not be safe for me to come.
I"m a little better, but can"t laugh much yet, and won"t cry if I can help it. Yet it always makes me _nearly_ cry, to hear of those poor working men trying to express themselves and n.o.body ever teaching them, nor anybody in all England, knowing that painting is an _art_, and sculpture also, and that an untaught man can no more carve or paint, than play the fiddle. All efforts of the kind, mean simply that we have neither master nor scholars in any rank or any place. And I, also, what have _I_ done for Coniston schools yet! I don"t deserve an oyster sh.e.l.l, far less an oyster.
KIRBY LONSDALE, _Thursday evening_.
You won"t get this note to-morrow, I"m afraid, but after that I think they will be regular till I reach Oxford. It is very nice to know that there is some one who does care for a letter, as if she were one"s sister. You would be glad to see the clouds break for me; and I had indeed a very lovely morning drive and still lovelier evening, and full moonrise here over the Lune.
I suppose it is Kirk-by-Lune"s Dale? for the church, I find, is a very important Norman relic. By the way, I should tell you, that the _colored_ plates in the "Stones of Venice" do great injustice to my drawings; the patches are worn on the stones. My _drawings_ were not _good_, but the plates are total failures. The only one even of the engravings, which is rightly done is the (_last_, I think, in Appendix) inlaid dove and raven. I"ll show you the drawing for that when I come back, and perhaps for the San Michele, if I recollect to fetch it from Oxford, and I"ll fetch you the second volume, which has really good plates. That blue beginning, I forgot to say, is of the Straits of Messina, and it is really _very_ like the color of the sea.
That is intensely curious about the parasitical plant of Borneo.
But--very dreadful!
You are like Timon of Athens, and I"m like one of his parasites. The oranges are delicious, the brown bread dainty; what the melon is going to be I have no imagination to tell. But, oh me, I had such a lovely letter from Dr. John, sent me from Joan this morning, and I"ve lost it. It said, "Is Susie as good as her letters? If so, she must be better. What freshness of enjoyment in everything she says!"
Alas! not in everything she feels in _this_ weather, I fear. Was ever anything so awful?
Do you know, Susie, everything that has happened to me (and the leaf I sent you this morning may show you it has had some hurting in it) is _little_ in comparison to the crushing and depressing effect on me, of what I learn day by day as I work on, of the cruelty and ghastliness of the _nature_ I used to think so Divine? But, I get out of it by remembering, This is but a crumb of dust we call the "world," and a moment of eternity which we call "time." Can"t answer the great question to-night.
I can only thank you for telling me; and say, Praised be G.o.d for giving him back to us.
Worldly people say "Thank G.o.d" when they get what they want; as if it amused G.o.d to plague them, and was a vast piece of self-denial on His part to give them what they liked. But I, who am a simple person, thank G.o.d when He hurts me, because I don"t think he likes it any more than I do; but I can"t _praise_ Him, because--I don"t understand why--I can only praise what"s pretty and pleasant, like getting back our doctor.
_26th November._
And to-morrow I"m not to be there; and I"ve no present for you, and I am so sorry for both of us; but oh, my dear little Susie, the good people all say this wretched makeshift of a world is coming to an end next year, and you and I and everybody who likes birds and roses are to have new birthdays and presents of such sugar plums. Crystals of candied cloud and manna in sticks with no ends, all the way to the sun, and white stones; and new names in them, and heaven knows what besides.
It sounds all too good to be true; but the good people are positive of it, and so"s the great Pyramid, and the Book of Daniel, and the "Bible of Amiens." You can"t possibly believe in any more promises of mine, I know, but if I _do_ come to see you this day week, don"t think it"s a ghost; and believe at least that we all love you and rejoice in your birthday wherever we are.
I"m so thankful you"re better.
Reading my old diary, I came on a sentence of yours last year about the clouds being all "trimmed with swansdown," _so_ pretty. (I copied it out of a letter.) The thoughts of you always trim _me_ with swansdown.
I never got your note written yesterday; meant at least to do it even after post time, but was too stupid, and am infinitely so to-day also.
Only I _must_ pray you to tell Sarah we all had elder wine to finish our evening with, and I mulled it myself, and poured it out in the saucepan into the expectants" gla.s.ses, and everybody asked for more; and I slept like a dormouse. But, as I said, I am so stupid this morning that----. Well, there"s no "that" able to say how stupid I am, unless the fly that wouldn"t keep out of the candle last night; and _he_ had some notion of bliss to be found in candles, and I"ve no notion of anything.