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 aequus 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 wee 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."

"Nay! 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 dittails." 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 "Laetus." 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 Matinee 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 "Laetus"! 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. Aug. 17, 1882.

* * * * *

It is one of the sides of X.'s mind which makes me feel her so limited an artist that she seems almost to take up a school as she takes up a lady-friend—"one down another come on." I think her abuse of Wagner now curiously narrow. I can't see why one should not feel the full spell and greater purity of Brahms without dancing in his honour on Wagner's bones!! It seems like her refusing to see any merit in, or derive any enjoyment from modern pictures because she has been "posted" in the Early Italian School. So from year to year these good people who have been to Florence will not even look at a painting by Brett or Peter Graham, though by the very qualities and senses through which one feels the sincerity, the purity, the nobleness, and the fine colour of those great painters, the photographs of whose pictures even stir one's heart,—one surely ought also to take delight in a landscape school which simply did not exist among the ancients. If sea and sky as GOD spreads them before our eyes are admirable, I can't think how one can be blind to delight in such pictures as 'The Fall of the Barometer,' 'The Incoming Tide,' or Leader's 'February Fill-dyke.' Things which no Florentine ever approached, as transcripts of Nature's mood apart from man....

Yesterday we had a most delicious drive through the heather and pines to Crookham. Ah, 'tis a bonny country, and I did laugh when I said to Mr. Walkinshaw, "How glorious the heather is this year!" and he said, "Yes. If only it was growing on its native heath." For a minute I couldn't tell what he meant. Then I discovered that he regards heather as the exclusive property of bonnie Scotland!!!

I think you will be pleased to hear that I did, what I have long wanted, yesterday. Thoroughly made Mrs. Walkinshaw's acquaintance, and thanked her for that old invitation we never accepted to go there to see the Chinnerys' sketches. How Scotch and kindly she is! She insisted on bringing her husband and daughters to be introduced, and sent warmest messages to you. She said she feared you must have quite forgotten her; but I told her she was quite wrong there! She says she has a little Chinnery she meant to give me long ago, and she insists on sending it....

Sept. 1, 1882.

* * * * *

I must tell you that I had such a mixture of pain and pleasure at Britwell in the nearest approach to Trouve I have ever known. A larger dog, and not quite so "Moecent," but in character and ways his living image. The same place on his elbow (which his Aunt was always wanting to gum a bit of astrachan on to); he "took" to his Aunt at once! Nero by name. The sweetest temper. I have kissed the nice soft places on his black lips and shaken hands by the hour!!! Yesterday the others went to a garden-party, so I went on to the Downs to sketch, and when the dogs saw me, off they came, Nero delighted, and little Punch the Pug. They came with me all the way, and lay on the grass while I was sketching, and Nero kept sitting down to save a corner, and watch which way I meant to go, just like dear True! [Sketch.] They were very good, sitting with me on the downs, but they roamed away into the woods after game a good deal on the road home!...

Grenoside. Oct 5, 1882.

* * * * *

I do so long to hear how you like the end of "Laetus." As F.S.'s tale turned out seven pages longer than was accounted for, I had to cut out some of my story, and so have missed the point of its being S. Martin's Day on which Leonard died. S. Martin was a soldier-saint, and the Tug-of-War Hymn is only sung on Saints' Days.

I have completed a tale[42] for the November No., and gave a rough design to Andre for the illustration, which will be in colours. I hope you will like that. There is not a tear in it this time! "Laetus" was too tragic!

[Footnote 42: "Sunflowers and a Rushlight," vol. xvi.]

* * * * *

Will we or will we not have a Persian Puss in our new home by the name of—Marjara?—It is quite perfect! Do Brahmans like cats? I must have a tale about Marjara!!!—

Karava is grand too!

Oh Karava! Oh the Crier! Oh Karava! Oh the Shouter! Oh Karava, oh the Caller! Very glossy are your feathers, Very thievish are your habits, Black and green and purple feathers, Bold and bad your depredations!!!

Doesn't he sound like a fellow in Hiawatha?

Oh, it's a fine language, and must have fine lils in it!

* * * * *

TO MRS. JELF.

Ecclesfield. Oct. 10, 1882.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

Your dear, kind letter was very pleasant sweetmeat and encouragement. I am deeply pleased you like the end of "Laetus"—and feel it to the point—and that my polishings were not in vain! I polished that last scene to distraction in "the oak room" at Offcote!

I should very much like to hear how it hits the General. I think "Pavilions" (as my Yorkshire Jane used to call civilians!) may get a little mixed, and not care so much for the points. Some who have been rather extra kind about it are—Lady W—— (but yesterday she amusingly insisted that she had lived in camp —— at Wimbledon!!)—the Fursdons and "Stella Austin," author of Stumps, etc.—(literary "civilians" who think it the best thing I have ever done), and two young barristers who have been reading it aloud to each other in the Temple—with tears. And yet I fancy many non-military readers may get mixed. P. vouchsafes no word of it to me, but I hear from D. (under the veil of secrecy!) that he and Mr. Anstruther read it together in Egypt with much approval. I am more pleased by military than non-military approval. Old Aldershottians would so easily spot blunders and bad taste!!! Mrs. Murray wrote to me this morning about it—and of course wished they were back in dear old Aldershot!

You make me very egotistical, but I DO wish you to tell me what you, and Aunty, and Madre think of "Sunflowers and a Rushlight," when you read it. I fear it has rather scandalized my Aunt, who is staying with us. She is obviously shocked at the plain-speaking about drains and doctors, and thinks that part ought to have been in an essay—not in a child's tale. I am a little troubled, and should really like (what is seldom soothing!) a candid opinion from each of you. You know how I think the riding some hobbies takes the fine edge off the mind, and if you think I am growing coarse in the cause of sanitation—I beseech you to tell me! As to putting the teaching into an essay—the crux there is that the people one wants to stir up about sanitation are just good family folk with no special literary bias; and they will read a tale when they won't read an essay! But do tell me if any one of you feel that the subject grates, or my way of putting it.

Now, my darling, I must tell you that I have got a telegram from my goodman—the Kapellmeister!—to say he IS to be sent home in "early spring." This is a great comfort. I would willingly have let him stay two months longer to escape spring cold; but he has got to hate the place so fiercely, that I now long for him to get away at any cost. It must be most depressing! The last letter I got, he had had a trip by sea, and said he felt perfectly different till he got back to Colombo, when the oppression seized him again. He has been to Trincomalee, and is charmed with it, and said he could read small print when he got there, but his eyes quite fail in the muggyness of Colombo. However he will cheer up now, I hope! and Nov. and Dec. and Jan. are good months.

Now good-bye, dear. My best love to Aunty and Madre.

Your loving, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

Ecclesfield. October 24, 1882.

... It was very vexatious that the Megha Duta came just too late for last mail. It is a beautiful poem. Every now and then the local colour has a weird charm all its own. It lifts one into another land (without any jarring of railway or steamship!) to realize the locale in which rearing masses of grey cumuli suggest elephants rushing into combat! And the husband's picture of his wife in his absence is as noble, as sympathetic, and as perceptive as anything of the kind I ever read. So full of human feeling and so refined. I enjoyed it very much. It reminded me, oddly enough, more than once of Young's Night Thoughts. I think perhaps (if the charm of another tongue, and the wonder of its antiquity did not lead one to give both more attention and more sympathy than one would perhaps bestow on an English poem) that the poem does not rank much higher than a degree short of the first rank of our poets. But it is very charming. And oh, what a lovely text! It is a most beautiful character....

TO MRS. MEDLEY.

Ecclesfield, Sheffield. November 17, 1822.

MY VERY DEAR MRS. MEDLEY,

There has been long word silence between us! I made a break in it the other day by sending you my new "Picture Poem"—"A Week Spent in a Glass Pond."

It was a sort of repayment of a tender chromolithographic (!) debt.

Do you remember, when Fredericton was our home, and when everything pretty from Old England did look so very pretty—how on one of those home visits from which he brought back bits of civilization—the Bishop brought me a "chromo" of dogs and a fox which has hung in every station we've had since?

Now—as a friend's privilege is—I will talk without fear or favour of myself! The last real contact with you was the Bishop's too brief peep at us in Bowdon—a shadowy time out of which his Amethyst ring flashes on my mind's eye. No! Not Amethyst—what IS the name? Sapphire!—(I have a little mental confusion on the subject. I have a weak—a very weak corner—in my heart for another Bishop, an old friend of your Bishop's—Bishop Harold Browne; and have had the honour now and again of wearing his rings on my thumb—a momentary relaxation of discipline and due respect, which I doubt if your Bishop would admit!!! though I hope he has a little love for me, frightened as I now and then am of him!!!! The last time but one I was at Farnham, I was asked to stay on another two days to catch the Brownes' fortieth wedding-day. Just as we were going down to dinner I reproached the Bishop for not having on his "best" ring! Very luckily—for he said he always made a point of it on his wedding-day—left me like a hot potato in the middle of the stairs and flew off to his room, and returned with the grand sapphire!)

Well, dear—that's a parenthesis—to go back to Bowdon. I was not to boast of there, and after the move to York, and I had fitted up my house and made up for lost time in writing work, I was a very much broken creature, keeping going to Jenner and getting orders to rest!—and then came the order to Malta, not six months after we were sent to York, and I stayed to pack up and sent out all our worldly goods and chattels, and then started myself, and was taken ill in Paris and had to come back, and have been "of no account" for three years.

Well. My news is now far better than once I hoped it ever could be. I'm not strong, but I can work in moderation, though I can't "rackett" the least bit. And—Rex is to come home in Spring!—the season of hope and nest-building—and I am trying not to wonder my wits away as to what part of the British Isles it will be in which I shall lay the cross-sticks and put in the moss and wool of our next nest!! There is every reason to suppose we shall be "at home" for five years, I am thankful to say....

Rex loved Malta, and hates Ceylon. But he has been very good and patient about it.

Latterly he has consoled himself a good deal with the study of Sanscrit, which he means me also to acquire, though I have not got far yet! It is a beautiful character. He says, "Of all the things I have tried Sanscrit is the most utterly delicious! Of the alphabet alone there are (besides the ten vowels and thirty-three simple consonants) rather more than two hundred compound consonants," etc., etc.! He adds, "[Sanskrit: aayi] are my detached initials, but I could write my whole name in 'Devanagiri,' or 'Writing of the Gods.'"

TO A.E.

Ecclesfield. December 8, 1882.

... I got back from Liverpool on Monday. When I called at the Museum on that morning a Dr. Palmer was there, who said, "I was in Taku Forts with your husband," and was very friendly. He gave me a prescription for neuralgia! and sent you his best remembrances.

First and last I have annexed one or two nice "bits of wool for our nest." For 8s. (a price for which I could not have bought the frame, a black one with charming old-fashioned gold-beading of this pattern) [sketch] I bought a real fine old soft mezzotint, after Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Richard Burke. Oh, such a lovely face! Looking lovelier in powder and lace frill. But a charming thing, with an old-fashioned stanza in English deploring his early death, and a motto in Latin. It was a great find, and I carried it home from the Pawnbroker's in triumph!—

I have got a very nice Irish anecdote for you from Mr. Shee:

Two Irishmen (not much accustomed to fashionable circles) at a big party, standing near the door. After a long silence:

Paddy I.—"D'ye mix much in society?"

P. II.—"Not more than six tumblers in the evening."

* * * * *

S. John Evangelist, 1882.

* * * * *

C. "dealt" for me for the old Japanese Gentleman (pottery) on whom I turned my back at L1. He has got him for 15s. You will be delighted with him, and I have just packed him (and a green pot lobster!) in a box with sawdust.

Do you remember how your 'genteel' clerk's wife came (starving) from Islington, or some such place, to us at Aldershot, and told me she had sold all her furniture (as a nice preparation to coming to free but empty quarters) EXCEPT her parlour pier-glass and fire-irons?

I sometimes feel as if I bought house plenishing that packed together about as nicely as that!!! Witness my pottery old gentleman, and my bronze Crayfish....

December 20, 1882.

* * * * *

I am so glad you like "Sunflowers and a Rushlight." It was very pleasurable work, though hard work as usual, writing it. It was written at Grenoside, among the Sunflowers, and generally with dear old Wentworth, the big dog, walking after me or lying at my feet.

You may, or may not, have observed, that the Times critic says, that "of one thing there can be no doubt"—and that is—"Miss Ewing's nationality. No one but a Scotchwoman bred and born could have written the 'Laird and the Man of Peace.'"

It is "rich in pawky humour." But if I can get a copy I'll send it to you. It is complimentary if not true!

I am putting a very simple inscription over our dear Brother. Do you like it?

TROUVE commonly and justly called TRUE. FOUND 1869; LOST 1881, by A.E. and J.H.E.

TO H.K.F.G.

Eccelsfield. December, 1882.

... I rather HOPE to have a story for you for March, which will be laid in France. Will it do if you have it by February 8?...

It is a terribly close subject, and I shall either fail at it, or make it I hope not inferior to "Jackanapes." I don't think it will be long. The characters are so few, I have only plotted it. It will be called—

"THE THINGS THAT ARE SEEN": AN OLD SOLDIER'S STORY.

DRAM. PERS.

MADAME. HER MAID. THE FATHER OF MADAME. THE FATHER OF THE SERGEANT. THE MOTHER OF THE SERGEANT. THE SERGEANT. THE PRIEST. THE MURDERER. A POODLE.

Soldiers, Peasants, Priests, Gendarmes, a Rabble, Reapers—but you know I generally overflow my limits. I hope I can do it, but it tears me to bits! and I've walked myself to bits nearly in plotting it this morning,—a very little written, but I believe I could be ready by February 8. I don't think it will be as long as "Daddy Darwin," not nearly.

Please settle with Mr. B. what you will do about an illustration. The first scene is that of the death-bed of the sergeant's father. I think it would be quite as good a scene for illustration as any, and will, I trust, be ready in a day or two. Is it worth Mr. B.'s while to see if R.C. would do it in shades of brown or grey? (a very chiaroscuro scene in a tumble-down cottage, light from above). All I must have is a good illustration or none at all. (I would send copy of scene to R.C. and ask him.) I think it might pay, because I am certain to want to republish it, and whoever I publish it with will pay half-price for the old illustration. I do myself believe that it might be colour-printed in (say seven instead of seventeen) shades of colour (blues, and browns, and black, and yellow, and white) at much less cost than a full-coloured one, but that I leave to Mr. B.: only I have some strong theories about it, and when I come to town I mean to make Edmund Evans's acquaintance.

Strange to say, I believe I could make the tale illustrate the "Portrait of a Sergeant" if it were possible to get permission to have a thing photoed and reduced from that!!!—Goupil would be the channel in which to inquire—but the artist would not be a leading character, as far as I can see, so it might not be all one could wish. But it is worth investigating....

Or again, I wonder what Herkomer would charge for an etching of the dying old Woodcutter, and his kneeling son? I believe THAT would be the thing!—But the plate must be surfaced so that A.J.M. mayn't exhaust all the good impressions. If Herkomer would etch that, and add a vignette of a scene I could give him with a beautiful peasant girl—or of the old sergeant and the portly and worldly "Madame," we SHOULD "do lovely!" Will you try for that, please?

No more today for

"I am exhaust I can not!"

Your devoted, J.H.E.

Remember I wish for Herkomer. He will be the right man in the right place. R.C. is for dear old England, and this is French and Roman Catholic—and Keltic peasant life.

TO A.E.

January 4, 1883,

* * * * *

Caldecott says his difficulty over my writing is that "the force and finish" of it frightens him. It is painted already and does not need illustration; and he has lingered over "Jackanapes" from the conviction that he could "never satisfy me"!! This difficulty is, I hope, now vanquished. He is hard at work on a full and complete edition of "Jackanapes," of which he has now begged to take the entire control, will "submit" paper and type, etc. to me, and hopes to please. "But you are so particular!"

I need hardly say I have written to place everything in his hands. I am "not such a fool as" to think I can teach him! (though I am insisting upon certain arrangements of types, etc., etc., to give a literary—not Toy Book—aspect to the volume).

Andre I know I help. But then only a man of real talent and mind would accept the help and be willing to be taught. The last batch of A Soldier's Children that came had three pages that grated on me.

1. "They mayn't have much time for their prayers on active service, and we ought to say them instead." The first part of this line is splendidly done by a brush with Zulus among mealies, but the second part (as underlined) was thus. Nice old church (good idea) and the officer's wife and children at prayer. BUT—the lady was like a shop-girl, in a hat and feathers, tight-fitting jacket with skimpy fur edge (inexpressibly vulgar cheap finery style!), kneeling with a highly-developed figure backwards on to the spectator! and with her eyes up in a theatrical gaze heavenwards. Little boy sitting on seat, with his hat on.

2. For "GOD bless the good soldiers like old father and Captain Powder and the men with good conduct medals, and please let the naughty ones be forgiven,"—he had got some men being released out of prison cells.

3. For "There are eight verses and eight Alleluias, and we can't sing very well, but we did our best.

"Only Mary would cry in the verse about 'Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest'!"— —he had got a very poor thing of three children singing.

Now these were all highly-finished drawings. Quite complete, and I know the man is driven with work (for cheap pay!). So I hesitated, and worried myself. At last I took courage and sent them back, having faith in the "thoroughness" which he so eminently works with.

For 1, I sent him a sketch! said the lady must wear a bonnet in church, and her boys must take off their hats! That she must kneel forwards, be dressed in a deep sealskin with heavy fox edge, and have her eyes down, and the children must kneel imitating her, and I should like an old brass on the wall above them with one of those queer old kneeling families in ruffs.

For 2, I said I could not introduce child readers to the cells, and I begged for an old Chelsea Pensioner showing his good conduct medal to a little boy.

3. I suggested the tomb of a Knight Crusader, above which should fall a torn banner with the words, "In Coelo Quies."

Now if he had kicked at having three pictures to do utterly over again, one could hardly have wondered, pressed as he is. But, back they came! "I am indeed much indebted to you," the worst he had to say! The lady in No. 1 now is a lady; and as to the other two, they will be two of the best pages of the book. Old Pensioner first-rate, and Crusader under torn banner just leaving "Coelo Quies," a tomb behind "of S. Ambrose of Milan" with a little dog—and a snowy-moustached old General, with bending shoulders and holding a little girl by the hand, paying devoir at the Departed Warrior's tomb in a ray of rosy sunlight!!

This is the sort of way we are fighting through the Ewing-Andre books.

* * * * *

Ecclesfield. January 10, 1883.

* * * * *

Fancy me "learning a part" again! That has a sort of sound like old times, hasn't it?

I feel half as if I were a fool, and half as if it would be very good fun! R.A. theatricals at Shoeburyness. The FoxStrangways have asked me. Major O'Callaghan is Stage Manager I believe. Then there is a Major Newall, said to be very good. He says he "has a fancy to play 'A Happy Pair' with me!" It is his cheval de bataille I believe.

I think it is best to try and do what one is asked over parts (though they were very polite in offering me a choice), so I said I would try, and am learning it. I think I shall manage it. They now want me to take "A Rough Diamond" as well, Margery. I doubt its being wise to attempt both. It will be rather a strain, I think.

* * * * *

Shoeburyness. January 25, 1883.

* * * * *

I am playing Mrs. Honeyton in "A Happy Pair" with Major Newall. He knows his work well, is a good coach, and very considerate and kind.

In my soul I wish that were all, but they have persuaded me also to take Margery in "A Rough Diamond," and getting THAT up in a week is "rough on" a mediocre amateur like myself!

This is a curious place. Very nice, bar the east winds. I have been down on the shore this morning. The water sobs at your feet, and the ships and the gulls go up and down. Above, a compact little military station clusters together, and everywhere are Guns, Guns, Guns; old guns lying in the grass, new guns shattering the windows, and only not bringing down the plaster because the rooms are ceiled with wood "for the same purpose."...

TO MRS. JELF.

Sunday, April 1883.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

I must write a line to you about your poor friends! It is THE tragedy of this war! Very terrible. I hope the bitterness of death was short, and to gallant spirits like theirs hope and courage probably supported them till the very last, when higher hopes helped them to undo their grasp on this life.

In the dying—they suffered far less than most of us will probably suffer in our beds—but to be at the fullest stretch of manly powers in the service of their country among the world's hopes and fears and turmoils, and to be suddenly called upon to "leave all and follow Christ"—when the "all" for them had most righteously got every force of mind and body devoted to it—must be at least one hard struggle. And death away from home does seem so terrible!

Richard will feel it very much. That Nottingham election seems so short a time ago.

* * * * *

Back from Church! Great haste. We have had that grand hymn with—

"Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest."

I did not forget the poor souls.

Prayers for the dead is one of those things which always seems to me the most curiously obvious and simple of duties!

Your most loving, J.H.E.

71, Warwick Road. April 9, 1883.

DEAREST MARNY,

I write a line to tell you that D. was at S. Paul's yesterday afternoon to Evensong, and to hear Liddon preach.

I know you will like to hear how very gracefully he alluded to your poor friend as "the accomplished Engineer," and to Charrington and Palmer. Of the last—he spoke very feelingly—as to his great loss from the learning point of view. He said—or to this effect—"We laid them here last Friday in the faith of Him who died for their sins and ours, and this is the first Sunday when above their ashes we commemorate that Resurrection through which we hope that they and we shall rise again." The "Drum Band" was duly played after the service, and D. says that crowds remained to listen.

I know you will like to hear this, though I have given a bad second-hand account.

I hope my Goodman gets to Malta to-day or to-morrow!

* * * * *

Ever, dearest Marny, Your loving J.H.E.

TO A.E.

April 24, 1883.

... I sent you a telegram this morning to make you feel quite happy in your holiday. "Real good times" (a Yankeeism I hate, but it is difficult to find its brief equivalent!) are not so common in "this wale" that you should cut yours short. I rather hope this may be in time to catch you (it is not my fault that you will be without letters). If you would like to linger longer—Do. You are not likely to find "the like of" your present surroundings on leave in Scotland, least of all as to sunshine and flowers. One doesn't go to Malta every day. I wish I was there! But I can't be, and ten to one should catch typhoid where you only smell orange-blossoms, and I don't think my sins run in the Dog-in-the-manger line, and I hope you'll quaff your cup of content as deeply as you can.

For one thing winter has returned. We had snow yesterday, and the east wind, the Beast Wind! through which I went this morning to send your telegram was simply killing; dust like steel filings driving into your skin, waves of hard dust with dirty paper foam.—Ugh!!—Spend as much of your leave as you and your friends think well where you are. I've waited three years. I can wait an odd three weeks and welcome! Especially as I am up to my eyes in packing and arranging matters for our new home. What I do hope is you will be happy there! But I believe in laying in happiness like caloric. A good roast keeps one warm a long time!

How often I have thought that philosophers who argue from the premiss of the fleeting nature of pleasure, might give pause if they had had my experience. A body so frail that nearly every pleasure of the senses has had to be enjoyed chiefly after it had "fleeted"—by the memory. Pictures (one of my chiefest pleasures), the theatre, any great sight, sound, or event, being a pleasure after they (and the headache!) have passed away. The "passing pleasures" of life are just those which this world gives very capriciously, but cannot take away! They are possessions as real as ... marqueterie chairs! Of which—more anon,—when you return to the domestic hearth.

* * * * *

I had such a round in Wardour Street the other day! I do wish for a Dutch marqueterie chest of drawers with toilet glass attached, but he is L8! Too much. But (I must let it out!) I got two charming Dutch marqueterie chairs for my drawing-room for 35/- each. You will be surprised to find what nice things we have!...

TO MRS. JELF.

7, Mount Street, Taunton. June 3, 1883.

DEAREST MARNY,

I know you forgive a long silence—especially as I have "packed in spite of you "!

* * * * *

I took lots of time over it all. All my "remains" are piled in cases in the attics, and I have arranged "terms" with the Great Western, and hope to do my moving very cheaply.

We had need economize somewhere, for, my dear! we have been VERY extravagant over our house!!! I should like to hear if you and your dear ladies (I know Auntie would be candid!) think we have been wisely so!—Our predecessor had a cottage and garden for L35—the Col. Commanding only paid L55—and we are paying L70!!!

It is a question of three things: 1st, higher and healthier situation—2nd, modern appliances and drains unconnected with the old town sewers—3rd, my Goodman took a wild fancy to the house—and picked his own den—and said he could "live and be at peace" there: and this means life and death to me!

So we have boldly taken this other house! A mile above the town—on high ground, built by one of the sanitary commission (!), brand new—and with a glorious view. Not a stick in the garden! but things grow fast here. I shall have a charming drawing room 24 feet long (so it will hold me!!!), with two quaint little fire-places with blue tiles. Rex has a very nice den with French doors into the garden, where he seems to hope to "attain Nirwana"—and live apart from the world. Small as I am, I have an odd liking for large rooms (the oxygen partly—and partly that I "quarterdeck" so when I am working—and suffer so in my spine and head from close heat). Now it is very hot here. There's no doubt about it! So, on the whole, I hope we've done well to house ourselves as we have. And we can give a comfortable bedroom to a friend! My dear Marny—you must come and see me! It's really a quaint old town—with a rather foreign-looking cloistered "Place"—and a curious Saturday Market—with such nice red pottery on sale!!

Now to go back—and tell you about my Goodman. He had three weeks of "real high time" in Malta. Then he came home—to Warwick Road. At first I thought him much hot-climatized, and was worried. But he is now looking as well as can be. We had a few very happy days at Ecclesfield. It is a most tender spot with me that he is so fond of my old home! They know his ways—he says he is at peace—and he rambles about among the old books—and the people in the village are so glad to see him—and it is very nice.

He took up his duties here on our 16th wedding day!

The place suits him admirably. I felt sure it would. But I did not hope I should feel as well in it as I do. It IS hot—and not VERY dry—but it is much less relaxing than I thought, and where we have got our house it is high and breezy—and very, very nice. I am most thankful, and only long to get settled and be able to work!

We are in lodgings close to—next door to—the very fine barracks. Our room looks into the barrack-yard, and the dear bugles wake and send us to sleep!

Your loving J.H.E.

Caldecott has done seventeen illustrations to "Jackanapes."

TO MRS. A.P. GRAVES.

June 15, 1883.

MY DEAR MRS. GRAVES,

Once more I thank you for lovely flowers! including one of my chief favourites—a white Iris. It is very good of you. You do not know what pleasure they give me! If you continue to bless me with an occasional nosegay when I move into my house, I shall not so bitterly suffer from the barrenness of the garden.

This is suggestive of the nasty definition of gratitude that it is a keen sense of favours to come!

I have been meaning to write to you to express something of our delight with the "Songs of Old Ireland."

Major Ewing is charmed by the melodies, on which his opinion is worth something and mine is not! and I can't "read them out of a printed book" without an instrument. But—we are equally charmed by the words!!

It is a very rare pleasure to be able to give way to unmitigated enjoyment of modern verse by one's friends. Don't you know? But we have fairly raved over one after the other of these charming songs!

I do hope Mr. Graves does not consider that friendly criticisms come under the head of "personal remarks" and are offensive!

I cannot say how truly I appreciate them. Anything absolutely first-rately done of its kind is always very refreshing, and I do not see how such national songs could be done much better. They are Irish to the core!

Irish in local colour—in wealth of word variety—in poetry of the earliest and freshest type—in shallow passion like a pebbly brook!—and in a certain comicality and shrewdness. Irish—I was going to say in refinement, but that is not the word—modern literature is full of refinements—but Irish in the surpassingly Irish grace of purity, so rare a quality in modern verse!

How we have laughed over Father O'Flynn! Kitty Bawn is perfect of its kind—and No. 1 and No. 2.

It is a most graceful collection. Will it be published soon? My husband says this copy is only a proof.

I am unjustifiably curious to know if Mr. Graves has given much labour and polishing to these fresh impetuous things. It is against all my experiences if he has not!—but then it would be an addition to my experiences to find they were "tossed off"!

They have been a pleasant interlude amid the sordid cares of driving the workmen along! I am getting terribly tired of it!

Yours very sincerely, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO MRS. GOING.

Villa Ponente, Taunton. July 11, 1883.

DEAR MADAM,

Your letter was forwarded to me last month, when I was (and to some extent am still) very very busy in the details of setting up a new home—of the temporary nature of military homes!—as Major Ewing has been posted to Taunton.

As yet there are many things on which I cannot "lay my hand," and a copy of the Tug of War Hymn is among them!

When I can find it—I will lend it to you. Should I omit to do so—please be good enough to jog my memory!

It is a rather "ranting" tune-but has tender associations for my ears.

The soldiers of the Iron Church, South Camp, Aldershot, used to "bolt" with it in the manner described, and some dear little sons of an R.E. officer always called it the "Tug of War Hymn."

With many thanks for your kind sayings, I am, dear Madam,

Yours very truly, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

October 11, 1883.

DEAR MR. GOING,

I append a rough plan of my small garden. We do not stand dead E. and W., but perhaps a little more so than the arrows show. We are very high and the winds are often high too! The walls are brick—and that south bed is very warm. I mean to put bush roses down what is marked the Potato Patch—it is the original soil with one year's potato crop where I am mixing vegetables and flowers. The borders are given up to flowers—mixed herbaceous ones. And on my south wall I have already planted a Wistaria, a blue Passion-flower—and a Rose of Sharon! I am keeping a warm corner for "Fortune's Yellow"—and now looking forward with more delight and gratitude than I can express to "Cloth of Gold"!

I have sent to order the "well-rotted"—and the Gardener for Saturday morning!

Now will you present my grateful acknowledgments to Mrs. Going, and say that with some decent qualms at my own greediness—I "too-too" gratefully accept her further kind offers. I deeply desire some "Ladders to Heaven"—(does she know that old name for Lilies of the Valley?)—and I am devoted to pansies and have only a scrap or two. A neighbour has given me a few Myosotis—but I am a daughter of the horse-leech I fear where flowers are concerned, and if you really have one or two TO SPARE I thankfully accept. The truly Irish liberality of Mrs. Going's suggestions—emboldens me to ask if you happen to have in your garden any of the Hellebores? I have one good clump of Xmas Rose—but I have none of those green-faced varieties for which I have a peculiar predilection.

(I do not expect much sympathy from you! In fact I fear you will think that any one whose taste is so grotesque as to have a devotion for Polyanthuses—Oxlips—Green Hellebores—every variety of Arum (including the "stinking" one!)—Dog's-tooth violets—Irises—Auriculas—coloured primroses—and such dingy and undeveloped denizens of the flower garden—is hardly worthy to possess the glowing colours and last results of development in the Queen of flowers!)

But I DO appreciate roses I assure you.

And I am most deeply grateful to you for letting me benefit by—what is in itself such a treat! your—enthusiasm.

Mrs. Going seems to think that my soil and situation are better than yours.

Could it be possible that you might have any rose under development that you would care to deposit here for the winter and fetch away in the spring? I don't know if change of air and soil is ever good for them?

I fear you'll think mine a barren little patch on which to expend your kindness! But you are a true Ama—teur—and will look at my Villa Garden through rose-coloured spectacles!

Yours gratefully, J.H.E.

TO MRS. JELF,

October 19, 1883.

DEAREST MARNY,

* * * * *

One bit more of egotism before I stop!

You know how I love my bit of garden!—An admirer—specially of "Laetus"—whom I had never seen—an Irishman—and a Dorsetshire Parson. (But who had worked for over twenty years in the slums of London—which it is supposed only the Salvation Army venture to touch!)—

—arrived here last Saturday with nineteen magnificent climbing roses, and has covered two sides of my house and the south wall of my garden!—but one sunny corner has been kept sacred to Aunty's Passion-flower, which is doing well—and one for a rose Mrs. Walkinshaw has promised me. He is a very silent Irishman—a little alarming—possibly from the rather brief, authoritative ways which men who have worked big parishes in big towns often get. When Rex said to him, at luncheon—"How did you who are a Rose Fancier and such a flower maniac—LIVE all those years in such a part of London?" in rather a muttered sort of way he explained,

"Well, I had a friend a little out of town who had a garden, and his wife wanted flowers, and they knew nothing about it: so I made a compact. I provided the roses—I made the soil—I planted them—and I used to go and prune them and look after them. They were magnificent".

"Oh, then you had flowers?"

"Well, I made a compact. They never picked a rose on Saturday. On Saturday night I used to go and clear the place. I had roses over my church on Sundays—and all Festivals. The rest of the year his wife had them."

It struck me as a most touching story—for the man is Rose Maniac. What a sight those roses must have been to the eyes of such a congregation! The Church should have been dedicated to S. Dorothea! He is of the most modest order of Paddies—and as I say a little alarming. I was appalled when I saw the hedge of the "finest-named" roses he brought, and it was very difficult to "give thanks" adequately!—I said once—"I really simply cannot tell you the pleasure you have given me." He said rather grumpily—"You've given me pleasure enough—and to lots of others." Then he suddenly chirped up and said—"Laetus cost me 2s. 6d. though. My wife bet me 2s. 6d. I couldn't read it aloud without crying. I thought I could. But after a page or two—I put my hand in my pocket—I said—There! take your half-crown, and let me cry comfortably when I want to!!!"

My dear, what a screed I have written to you!!

But your letter this morning was a pleasure. There is something so nice in your getting the very hut where—as I think—"Old Father" first began to recover after Cyprus-fever. I wish you had had F. to stride about the old lines also—and knock his head against your door-tops!—Best love to R., F., and the Queers—

Your loving, J.H.E.

Dec. 3, 1883.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

You are always so forbearing!—and I have been driven to a degree by work which I had promised, and have just despatched! Some day it may appeal to "the Queers." For it is a collated (and Bowdlerized!) version of the old Peace Egg Mumming Play for Christmas. I have been often asked about it: and the other day a Canon Portal wrote to me, and he urged me to try and do it, and it is done!

But it was a much larger matter than I had thought. The version I have made up is made up from five different versions, and I hope I have got the cream of them. It will be in the January number, which will be out before Xmas.

I have also been trying to see my way—I SHOULD so like to go to you—and if I can't yet awhile I hope you'll give me another chance.

This week I certainly cannot—thank you, dear! And I don't see my way in December at all. I will post-card you in a day or two again.

I am yours always lovingly, J.H.E.

My garden is great joy to me. Even you, I think, would allow me a moderate amount of "grubbing" in between brain work.

TO MRS. GOING.

Thursday (December 1883).

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

You are too profusely good to me. Have you really given me Quarles? I have never even seen his School of the Heart, and am charmed with it. The Hieroglyphics of the life of Man were in the very old copy of Emblems belonging to my Mother which I have known all my life.

Thank you a thousand times.

I write for a seemingly ungracious purpose, but I know you will comprehend my infirmities! I am not at all well. I had hoped to be better by the time your young ladies came—but luck (and I fear a little chill in the garden!) have been against me. I tried to get Macbeth deferred but it could not be—and I think my only hope of enduring a long drive, and appearing as Lady Macbeth on Saturday evening with any approach to "undaunted mettle"—is to shut myself up in absolute silence and rest for several hours before we start. This, alas! means that it would be better for your young ladies (what is left of them, after brain fag and fish dinners!) to return to you by an earlier train, as I could be "no account" to them on Saturday afternoon.

* * * * *

I'll take care of the poor students though I am not at my best! Their fish is ordered. We will spend a soothing evening on sofas and easy chairs—and go early to bed! They shall have breakfast in bed if they like. This does not sound amusing but I think it will be wholesome for their relics!

Again thanking you for the dear little book—which comes in so nicely for Advent!

TO MRS. R.H. JELF.

DEAREST MARNY,

The Queers' letters are VERY nice. Thank them with my love.

* * * * *

Forgive pencil, dear—I'm in bed. Got rid of my throat—and now all my "body and bones" seem to have given way, I thought it was lumbago or sciatica—but Rex said—"Simply nerve exhaustion from over-writing"—so I took to bed (for I couldn't walk!), high living and quinine! I hope I'll soon be round again. The vile body is a nuisance. I've got a story in my head—and that seems to take the vital force out of my legs!!!

Apropos to Richard's Churchwarden's conscience, does he remember the (possibly churchwarden!) "soul long hovering in fear and doubt"—in A Kempis, who prostrated himself in prayer and groaned—"Oh if I only knew that I should persevere!" To whom came the answer of God—"If thou didst know it, what wouldst thou do then? Continue to do that and thou shalt be safe."

His letter and yours were very comforting. I was just feeling very low about my writing. I always do when I have to re-read for new editions! It does seem such twaddle—and so unlike what I want to say!

Thank you greatly for believing in me!

* * * * *

Your loving, J.H.E.

TO MRS. HOWARD.

Villa Ponente, Taunton. Jan. 18, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. HOWARD,

In this Green Winter (and you know how I love a Green Winter!) you and all your kindness comes back so often to my mind. "Grenoside" is a closed leaf in my life as well as in yours, but it is one that I shall never forget so long as I can remember any of the things that have mitigated the pains of life for me, or added to its pleasures!—The bits of Green Winter I enjoyed with you did both—I hardly know which the most! For the pleasure was very great, and the benefit immeasurable—though now a fair amount of strength and "all my faculties" have come back to me, I feel what a very tedious companion I must have been when vegetating was all I was fit for, and I did such delightful vegetating between your sofa—and Greno Wood.

I want to tell you that I have some bits of you in what does the work of Greno Wood for me here—namely, my little patch of garden, looking out upon, what I call my big fields. For some time I feared the said bits were not going to live, but they have now, I really think, got grip of the ground. They are those offshoots of your American Bramble which you gave to me. And, ere long, I hope to sow a little paper of your poppy seed, and—if two years' keeping has not destroyed its vitality—I may, perchance, send you some of your own poppies to deck your London rooms. You cannot think—or rather I have no doubt that you can!—the refreshment my bit of garden is to me. It has become so dear, that (like an ugly face one loves and ceases to see plain!)—I find it so charming that it is with a start that I recognize that new friends see no beauty in—

[Sketch.]

This four-square patch!!

But A and B are "beds," and there are borders under the brick walls, and a rose-growing admirer of "Laetus" made a pilgrimage to see me!—and brought me nineteen grand climbing roses—and wall S faces nearly quite south, and on it grow Marechal Niel, and Cloth of Gold, and Charles Lefebvre, and Triomphe de Rennes, and a Banksia and Souvenir de la Malmaison, and Cheshunt Hybrid, and a bit of the old Ecclesfield summer white rose—sent by Undine—and some Passion Flowers from dear old Miss Child in Derbyshire—and a Wistaria which the old lady of the lodgings we were in when we first came, tore up, and gave to me, with various other oddments from her garden! and—the American Bramble! And also, by the bye, a very lovely rose, "Fortune's Yellow,"—given to me by a friend in Hampshire.

Major Ewing declares my borders are "so full there is no room for more" which is very nasty of him!—but I have been very lucky in preserving, and even multiplying, the various contributions my bare patch has been blessed with! D. sent me a barrel of bits last autumn from the Vicarage, and Reginald sent me an excellent hamper from Bradfield, and Col. Yeatman sent me a hamper from Wiltshire, and several friends here have given me odds and ends, and our old friend Miss Sulivan, before she went abroad, sent me a farewell memorial of sweet things—Lavender, Rosemary, Cabbage Rose, Moss Rose, and Jessamine!!!—Oh! talking of sweet things, I must tell you—I went into the market here one day this last autumn, and of a man standing there—I bought a dug-up clump of BAY tree—for 2/6.

You know how you indulged my senses with bay leaves when I was far from them? Well, I put my clump and myself into a cab and went home—where I pulled my clump to pieces and made eight nice plants of him—and set me a bay hedge, which has thriven so far very well!!! But then—'tis a Green Winter!

Now I want to know if there is a chance of tempting you down here for a little visit? I have thought that perhaps some time in the Spring the School might be taking holiday, and Harry might be striding off on a week or 10 days' country "breathe,"—and perhaps you would come to me? Or if he were inclined for fresh fields and pastures new, that you would come together, and he might make his head-quarters here, and go over to Glastonbury, etc., etc., etc., whilst we took matters more quietly at home?

I feel it is a long way to come, but it would be so very pleasant to me to welcome you under my own roof!

If you cannot get away in Spring, I must persuade you when London gets hotter and less pleasant!

You must miss your country home—and yet I envy you a few things! London has cords of charm to attract in many ways! I wish I could fly over, and see the Sir Joshuas and one or two things.

(I am stubbornly indifferent to the Spectator's dictum that we like "Sir Joshuas" because we are a nation of snobs!!!)

Ever affectionately yours, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

Do tell me what hope there is of seeing you—and showing you your own bramble on my own wall!

TO MRS. GOING.

March 11, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

I do not think you will ever let me have my Head Gardener here again!

I CAN'T take care of him!

I really could have sat down on the door-step and cried—when our old cabby—"the family coachman" as we call him, arrived and had missed Mr. Going. How he did not miss his train, I cannot conceive! He must have run—he must have flown—he must be a bit uncanny—and the flap-ends of the comforter must have spread into wings—or our clocks must have been beforehand—or the trains were behindhand—

Obviously luck favours him!!

But where was his great-coat?—

He got very damp—and there was no time to hang him out to dry!

Tell him with my love—I have been nailing up the children in the way they should go—and have made a real hedge of cuttings!

I wish the Weeding Woman could see my old Yorkshire "rack." It and its china always lend themselves to flowers, I think. The old English coffee-cups are full of primroses. In a madder-crimson Valery pot are Lent lilies—and the same in a peacock-blue fellow of a pinched and selfish shape. The white violets are in a pale grey-green jar (a miniature household jar) of Marseilles pottery. The polyanthuses singularly become a pet Jap pot of mine of pale yellow with white and black design on it—and a gold dragon—and a turquoise-coloured lower rim.

I am VERY flowery. I must catch the post. I do hope my Head Gardener is not in bed with rheumatic fever!!!! I trust your poor back is rather easier?

Please most gratefully thank the girls for me.

Yours gratefully and affectionately, J.H.E.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

All Fools, 1884.

MY DEAR HEAD GARDENER,

You are too good, and—as to the confusion of one's principles is sometimes the case—your virtues encourage my vices. You make me greedy when I ought only to be grateful.

I've been too busy to write at once, and also somewhat of set purpose abstained—for those bitter winds and hard-caked soil were not suited for transplantation, and still less fit for you to be playing the part of Honest Root-gatherer without your Cardigan Waistcoat!!!!

To-day

"a balmy south wind blows."

I feel convinced some poet says so. If not I do, and it's a fact.

Moreover by a superhuman—or anyhow a super-frail-feminine—effort last Saturday as ever was I took up all that remained of the cabbage garden—spread the heap of ashes, marked out another path by rule of line (not of thumb, as I planted those things you took up and set straight!), made my new walk, and edged it with the broken tiles that came off our roof when "the stormy winds did blow"—an economy which pleased me much. Thus I am now entirely flower-garden—and with room for more flowers!!

Now to your kind offer. I think it will take rather more than 50 bunches of primroses to complete the bank according to your plan—though not 100. Say 70: but if there are a few bunches to spare I shall put them down that border where the laurels are, against the wall under the ivy. They flower there, and other things don't.

Now about the wild daffodils—indeed I would like some!!! I fear I should like enough to do this: [Sketch.]

These be the Poets' narcissus along the edge of the grass above the strawberry bank, and I don't deny I think it would be nice to have a row of wild Daffys (where the red marks are) to precede the same narcissus next spring if we're spared! The Daffys to be planted in the grass of the grass-plat.

I doubt if less than two dozen clumps would 'do it handsome'!!!!!!!!

Now I want your good counsel. This is my back garden: [Sketch.]

Next to Slugs and Snails (to which I have recently added a specimen of)

Puppy Dog's Tails—

my worst enemy is—WIND!

The laurels are growing—for that matter, Xmas is coming!—but still we are very shelterless. I think I would like to plant in Bed A, inter alia—some shrubby things. Now I know your views about moving shrubs are somewhat wider than those of the every-day gardener's—but do you think I dare plant a bush of lauristinus now? It would have to travel a little way, I fancy. There is no man actually in Taunton, I fear, with good shrubs. I mean also to get some Japanese maples. I think I would like a copper-coloured-leaved nut tree. Are nuts hardy? I fear Gum Cistus is coming into flower—and unfit to move! How about rhododendrons? The soil here is said to suit them wonderfully. I could not pretend to buy peat for them—but I know hardy sorts will do in a firm fair soil, and I should like to plant a lilac one—a crimson—a blush—and a white. I think they would do fairly and shelter small fry.

Can I risk it now? and how about hardy azaleas—things I love! If you say—we are too near summer sun for them to get established—I must wait till Autumn.

How has Mrs. Going stood the biting winds? Very unfavourable for one's aches and pains?

Tell her I have got one of those rather queer yellow flowers you condescended to notice!—to bring to her after Easter.

Is it not terrible about Prince Leopold? That poor young wife—and the Queen! What bitter sorrow she has known; also I do regard the loss as a great one for the country, he was so enlightened and so desirous of use in his generation.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO MRS. JELF.

MY DEAREST MARNY,

Thank you, dear, with much love for your Easter card. It is LOVELY (and Easter cards are not very beautiful as a rule). It is on a little stand on my knick-knack table—and looks so well!

I send you a few bits from my garden as an Easter Greeting. They are not much—but we are in a "nip" of bitter N.E. winds—and nothing will "come out."

Also I rather denuded my patch to send a large box to Undine to make the Easter wreaths for my Mother's grave. I was really rather proud of what I managed to scrape together—every bit out of my very own patch—and consequently of my very own planting!

I've got neuralgia to-day with the wind and a fourteen-miles drive for luncheon and two sets of callers since I got back!—so I can't write a letter—but I want you to tell me when you think there's a chance of your taking a run to see me! I seem to have such lots to say! I have found another charm (besides red pots) of our market. If one goes very early on Saturday—one gets such nice old-fashioned flowers, "roots," and big ones too—very cheap! It's a most fascinating ruination by penny-worths!

Good luck to you, dear, in your fresh settling down in the Heimath Land.

Mrs. M—— (where we were lunching) asked tenderly after my large young family—as strangers usually do. Then she said, "But you write so sympathetically of children, and 'A Soldier's Children' is so real—I thought they MUST be yours." On which I explained the Dear Queers to her. To whom be love! and to Richard.

Ever, dear, yours lovingly, J.H.E.

TO MRS. GOING.

Midsummer Day, 1884.

MY DEAR MRS. GOING,

Not a moment till now have I found—to tell you I got home safe and sound, and that your delicious cream was duly and truly appreciated!

The last of it was merged in an admirable Gooseberry Fool!

The roses suffered by the hot journey—but even the least flourishing of them received great admiration—from their size—as the skeletons of saurians make a smaller world stand aghast!!!

This last sentence smacks of Jules Verne! I don't care much for him—after all. It is rather bookmaking.

But I have had a lot of hearty laughs over "the Heroine"! It is very funny—if not very refined. Some of the situations admirable. There is something in the girl's calling her father "Wilkinson" all the way through—quite as comic as anything in Vice Versa—a book which I never managed to get to the end of.

I hope your wedding went well to-day. My sister's—is postponed till the 28th—for the convenience of the best man. If by Thursday (you must be a full two days' post from a Yorkshire country place) the Master had one or two Bouquet D'Or or other white or yellow roses not very fully blown—and your handy Meta would wind wet rags about their stalks and put them in an empty coffee-tin and despatch them by parcels post to Miss Gatty, Ecclesfield Vicarage, Sheffield, Yorks, they would be greatly welcomed to eke out the white decorations of my Mother's grave for the wedding-day. I am wildly watering my Paris Daisies—and hope to get some wild Ox-eye daisies also—as her name was Margaret (and her pet name Meta!). I am applying prayers and slopwater in equal proportions—like any Kelt!—to my Bouquet D'Or and other white and yellow roses! I shall have some double white Canterbury Bells, etc.—but there is coming a lull in the flowers, and they won't re-bloom much till we have rain.

Please give my love to all your party, not forgetting the house dove and the dog—

I reproach my Rufus with his tricks and talents!

I have had great benefit in a fit of neuralgia from your chili paste.

Yours, dear Mrs. Going, Sincerely and affectionately, JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO MRS. JELF.

November 3, 1884.

DEAREST MARNY,

Enclosed is "Daddy Darwin"—for Richard!—and two of the Verse Books for the two dear Queers I had so many luncheons with!

You know I risked printing 20,000 D.D.D. on my own book to cheapen printing—so you'll be glad to hear that after ordering 10,000 at the beginning of last week—S.P.C.K. have ordered another 10,000 at the end of it!! But I've been having such "times" with the printers' and publishers' daemons!!

I must not write, however, for I have been ill also!! A throat attack. We were afraid of diphtheria—but if it were that I should not be writing to you as you'll guess. There has been another outbreak of it just round us, and a good many throats of sorts in its train, but Dr. L—— does not seem to think mine due to much more than exhaustion—and he seemed to think nursing the dog had not been very good for me. He says distemper is typhoid fever!

We had a very jolly little visit from Colonel C——. He was at his very funniest. Mimicked us both to our faces till we yelled again! As Rex said—"Not a bit altered! The old man! Would any other play the bones about his bedroom in his night-shirt?"

He went off waving farewells and shouting—"We'll both come next time—and rouse ye well."

Your loving, J.H.E.

Saturday.

DEAREST MARNY,

You have indeed the sympathy of my whole heart!

God bless and prosper "Old Father" on the war-path and bring him home to his Queers and to you full of honour and glory and interesting experiences!

I know Mr. Anstruther—he is charming. I cannot say how I think it softens one's fears if Richard's strength were still a bit unequal to the strain—to know that he has such a subaltern—adjutant—and C.R.E. He could not have gone arm-in-arm with better comrades—unless the Giant had been ready as sick-nurse in case of need!

But I do feel for you, dear—you are very gallant.

I am not fit to write yet—my head goes so—but I will write you next week about Gordon Browne (a thousand thanks!) and see if I possibly could. Thank you so much.

The drummer's letter is charming. I must copy the bit about tip-toe for Sir Evelyn Wood! I got the enclosed from him—also from Wady Halfa—and I wanted you and R—— to hear the weird drum-band drunkard tale! and see how he likes "Soldier's Children."

Can you kindly return it, dear?

Your most loving, J.H.E.

[In pencil.]

Where does R—— sail from?

I see by to-day's Times the others have sailed from Dartmouth. My dear Marny—can't you and R—— come here en route if only for a night? It would be so nice! It would be such a pleasure to Rex and me to Godspeed him—and he would feel quite like Gladstone if he had an ovation at every stopping point on the Flying Dutchman!

TO COLONEL JELF.

November 18, 1884.

DEAR RICHARD,

I wish you could have paused here—I wish that you were even likely to run through Taunton station in the Flying Dutchman, and that we could have run down to head a cheer for you!—But Gravesend is handier for Marny.

She's a real Briton—and it is that "undaunted mettle" that does "compose" the sinews of "peace with honour" for a country as well as war!

Indeed I'm glad you have your chance—or make a very respectable assumption of that virtus! and I take leave to be doubly glad that it is in a fine climate and with good shoulder to shoulder comrades.

Tell Marny, Colonel Y. B—— in a letter about "Daddy Darwin" is very sympathetic. Another "old standard"—Jelf, he says—is going, and "Mrs. J—— puts a good face on it."

What will the theatricals and the Institute do?—

"Do without," I suppose! I am a lot better the last two days—and struggled off to the town to-day to a missionary meeting! It was a most unusually interesting one about the South American Missions. I must tell Marny about it.—However—at some tea afterwards, I was "interviewed" by one or two people—and one lady asked to introduce a "Major"—whose name I did not catch—as being so devoted to "Soldier's Children." I created quite a sensation by saying that "Old Father" was ordered to Bechuanaland—"Oh, how old are the Queers? Are they really losing Old Father again so soon?"

I feel, by the bye, that it is part of that fatality which besets you and me, that I should have stereotyped you in printers' ink as Old Father!!!

Good-bye.—Godspeed and Good luck to you.

Your affectionate old friend, J.H.E.

TO THE REV. J. GOING.

December 3, 1884.

DEAR "HEAD GARDENER,"

I think there is a blessing on all your benevolences to me which defies ill luck!

After I wrote to Mrs. Going we'd a frost of ten degrees—and I got neuralgia back—and made a dismal picture in my own mind of your good things coming to an iron-bound border—and an Under Gardener deeply died down under eider down and blankets—(even my old labourer being laid up with sore throat and scroomaticks!—but lo and behold, on Monday the air became like new milk—I became like a new Under Gardener—and leave was given to go out. (I am bound to confess that I don't think rose-planting was medically contemplated!) Fortunately the border was ready and well-manured—I only had to dig holes in very soft stuff—but I am very weak, and my stamping powers are never on at all a Nasmyth Hammer sort of scale—but—good luck again!—Major Ewing's orderly arrived with papers to sign—a magnificent individual over six foot—with larger boots than mine and a coal-black melodramatic moustache! Had the Major been present—I should not have dared to ask an orderly in full dress and on duty to defile his boots among Zomerset red-earth, but as I caught him alone I begged his assistance. He looked down very superbly upon me (swathed in fur and woollen shawls, and staggering under a full-sized garden fork) with a twinkle in his eye that prepared me for the least taste of brogue which kept breaking through his studied fine language—and consented most affably. I wish you'd seen him—balancing his figure with a consciousness of maids at the kitchen window, his cane held out, toeing and heeling your roses into their places!! He assured me he understood all about it, and he trode them in very nicely!

How good of you to have sent me such a stock,—and the pansies I wanted. The flower of that lovely mauve and purple one is on the table by me now. One (only one) of your other roses died—the second Gloire near the front door—so when I saw it was hopeless I had that border "picked" up—a very rockery of rubbish came out—good stuff was put in, and one of the Souvenirs de Malmaison is now comfortably established there I hope. This wet weather keeps me a prisoner now—but it is good luck for the roses to settle in. I have had some nice scraps and remains of flowers to cheer me indoors—there are one or two late rosebuds yet!

They are such a pleasure to me—and I am indeed grateful to you for all you have done for my garden! Some of those roses I bought have thrown up hugely long shoots. They were all small plants as you know—so I cut none of them in the autumn. I suppose in the spring I had better cut off these long shoots from the bushes in the open border away from the hedge?

I must not write more—only my thanks afresh. With our best regards.

I am very gratefully yours, J.H.E.

[Written with a typewriter.]

TO MRS. JELF.

Taunton. December 23, 1884.

DEAREST MARNY,

My right arm is disabled with neuralgia, and Rex is working one of his most delightful toys for me. He says I brought my afflictions on myself by writing too prolix letters several hours a day. I've got very much behindhand, or you'd have heard from me before. I must try and be highly condensed. Gordon Browne has done some wonderful drawings for "Laetus." Rex was wild over a "Death or Glory" Lancer, and I think he (the Lancer) and a Highlander would touch even Aunty's heart. They will rank among her largest exceptions. I can't do any Xmas cards this year; I can neither go out nor write. I hoped to have sent you a little Xmas box, of a pair of old brass candlesticks such as your soul desireth. D. and I made an expedition to the very broker's ten days ago, but when I saw the dingy shop choke-full of newly-arrived dirty furniture, and remembered that these streets are reeking with small-pox—as it refuses to "leave us at present"—I thought I should be foolish to go in. D. knows of a pair in Ecclesfield, and I have commissioned her to annex them if possible; but they can't quite arrive in time. In case I don't manage to write Xmas greetings to Aunty and Madre, give them my dear love; and the same to yourself and the Queers. I am proud to tell you that I have persuaded my Admiral to put the Soldiers' Institute on his collecting book of Army and Navy Charities; and when I started it with a small subscription he immediately added the same.

Dear Xmas wishes to you all, and a Happy New Year to Richard also from us both.

Your loving, J.H.E.

[In typewriting.]

TO MISS K. FARRANT.

Taunton. January 4, 1885.

DEAREST KITTY,

I should indeed not have been silent at this season if I had not been ill, and I should have got Rex to print me a note before now, but I kept hoping to be able to write myself, and I rather thought that you would hear that I was laid up, either from D. or M. I have not been very well for some time more than yourself, and I am afraid the root of this breakdown has been overwork. But the weather has been very sunless and wretched, and I have had a fortnight in bed with bad, periodic neuralgia, which has particularly disabled my right arm and head—two important matters in letter-writing. It put an entire stop to my Christmas greetings. I made a little effort for the nephews one day, and had a terrible night afterwards. The lovely blue (china) Dog, who reminds me of an old but incomprehensible Yorkshire saying, "to blush like a blue dog in a dark entry,"—which is what I do when I think that I have not yet said "thank you" for him—is most delightful. You know how I love a bit of colour, and a quaint shape. He arrived with one foot off, but I can easily stick it on. Thank you so much. I must not say more to-day, except to hope you'll feel a little stronger when we see more of the sun; and, thanking you and Francie for your cards—(I was greatly delighted to see my friends the queer fungi again)—and with love to your Mother—who I hope is getting fairly through the winter.

Yours gratefully and affectionately, J.H. EWING.

TO MRS. JELF.

January 22, 1885.

DEAREST M.,

I am so pleased you like the brazen candlesticks.

I have long wanted to tell you how lovely I thought all your Xmas cards. Auntie's snow scene was exquisite—and your Angels have adorned my sick-room for nearly a month! Most beautiful.

I know you'll be glad I had my first "decent" night last night—since December 18!—No very lengthy vigils and no pain to speak of. No pain to growl about to-day. A great advance.

Indeed, dear—I should not only be glad but grateful to go to you by and by for a short fillip. Dr. L—— would have sent me away now if weather, etc. were fit—or I could move.

THE END