It is a sunny sweet day, so that I have been strolling about in the garden without a jacket. It is strangely pleasant being here, the old scenes without, and all Sir Howard Elphinstone's pretty things within.

The Jelfs are staying in the Elphinstones' hut. In the matter of pictures I do not always agree with Sir Howard, but his decorative taste is very good, and the things he has picked up in all parts of the world are delightful. "Et ego, etc." We have things and things as it is, and shall pick up more! He is so very ingenious, and has made a dado over the mantelpiece, with a white or coloured border on which he puts pictures and photographs; in the centre is a square of coloured material with other things mounted on it. I foresee making a similar design for our Malta mantelpiece, with a gold Maltese cross in the centre and tiles round ill.u.s.trating the eight Beat.i.tudes....

I am intensely enjoying this bit here. Yesterday the Jelfs and the boys and I had a long wander by the ca.n.a.l where the larches and the birches are getting their tenderest tints on.... On Thursday evening I went to the Tin Church, with the old bell _tankling_ as I went in, and the mess bugles tootling afar as I came out. Bell the schoolmaster and baritone started as if I were a ghost, and sent me a book for the special hymn. Not a soul in the officers' seats--but a good choir and a very fair congregation of men and barrack families. Said I to myself, "I've been living in wealthy Bowdon and in ecclesiastical York, and not had this. Well done--the Tug of War and the Tin Tabernacle and the Camp! and unpaid soldiers and their sons to sing the Lord's Song in the land of their pilgrimage!"

To-day I went with Mrs. Jelf to a meeting at the Club House about "Coffee Houses." When we got in a "rehearsal" (dramatic) was going on, and the chaff was "Have you come for the rehearsal or the coffee-house?" We "Coffee-housers" adjourned to the Whist Room. Sir Thos. Steele in the chair. I had a long chat with him. He says Music and the Drama have declined dreadfully. The meeting was full of friends. "Mat Irvine" nearly wrung my hand off, and I sat by poor Knollys, who is heart-broken at the death of that dear little soul, Captain Barton. It was a first-rate meeting, mixed military and Aldershot tradesmen--a very "nice feeling" displayed--altogether it was wonderfully pleasant.

_Exeter._ May 16, 1879.

... The weather alternates here between North-Easters and mugginess, and I have never slept without fires yet. All the same I have had some lovely _drives_, which you know are so good for me. When Mrs. Fox Strangways couldn't go the Colonel has taken me alone 12 or 14 miles in the dog-cart with a very "free-going" but otherwise prettily-behaved little mare named Daphne. The tumbledown of hills and dales is very pretty here, and the deep red of the earth, and the whitewashed and thatched cottages. Very pretty bits for sketching if it had been sketching-weather....

I hope to get several things done in London. Jean Ingelow has burst out rather about my writings, and wants me to do something "in the style of Madam Liberality," and let her try to get it into _Good Words_, as she thinks I ought to try for a wider audience. I shall certainly go and see her, and talk over matters.... I was _very_ much pleased Sir Anthony Home had been so much pleased with "Jan." To draw tears from a V.C. and a fine old Scotch medico is very gratifying!

Capt. Patten said their own Dr. Craig had also been delighted with it.

When "We and the World" is done I mean to rest well on my oars, and then try and aim at something to give me a better footing if I can....

June 14, 1879.

... I am getting as devoted to Browning as you. It is very funny--this sudden and simultaneous light on him!

May 23, 1879.

[_Sketch._]

Forty-four of these aquatic plant tubs stand in one part of the back premises of Clyst S. George Rectory, full of truly wondrous varieties.

The above is a thing like white ta.s.sels and purple-pink buds. Fancy how I revel in them, and in the garden, which holds 1640 species of herbaceous perennials all labelled and indexed!! The old Rector (he is 89) is as hard at it as ever. He is so pleased to be listened to, and it is enormously interesting though somewhat fatiguing, and leaves me no time whatever for anything else! My brain whirls with tiles, mosaics, tesserae, bell-castings, bell-marks, and mottos, electros, squeezes, rubbings, etc., etc. His latest plant fad is Willows and Bamboos, of which he has countless kinds growing and flourishing!!! He is infirm, but it is very grand to see life rich with interests, and with work that will benefit others--so near the grave!

We'd a funny scene this morning when I went over the church with him, and had to write my name in the book.

Very testily--"The _date_, my dear, put the date!"

"I have put it."

More testily at being in the wrong--"Then put your address, put your address."

I hesitated, and he threw up his hands: "Bless me! you've not got one.

It has always puzzled me so what made _you_ take a fancy to a soldier."

He had been very full of all kinds of ancient Church matters--a wonderful bell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in a very remarkable inscription, etc.,--so I seized the pen and wrote--_Strada Maria Stella, Malta_--and "I du thenk" (as they say here) it will considerably puzzle the old s.e.xton!!!!!

Soon after sunrise on Ascension Day I was woke clear and clean by the bells _breaking into song_. You know campanology is his great hobby.

They rang changes, with long pauses between. Bells often try me very much, at Ecclesfield _par exemple_, but I really enjoyed these....

May 24, 1879.

... A very pathetic bit of private news of poor little MacDowell. He was sent by the General to tell them to strike the tents, and was urging on the ammunition to the front, and encouraging the bandsmen to carry it, when a Zulu shot him. A good and not painful end--G.o.d bless him! The Capt. Jones who told this, said also that one little bugler killed three big Zulus with his side-arms before he fell! Also that a private of the 24th saved Chard's life at Rorke's Drift by pushing his head down, so that a bullet went over it!

_Woolwich._ Whit Monday, 1879.

Don't think you have all the picturesque beggars to yourself! Out in a street of Woolwich with Mrs. O'Malley the other day I saw this--[_Sketch._] The eyes though very clear and intense-looking decided me at once the man was blind, though he had no dog, and was only walking solemnly on, with a _carved fiddle_ of white wood under his arm! I ran back after him, and went close in front of him. He gazed and saw nothing. Then I touched him and said, "Are you blind?"

He started and said, "Very nearly." I gave him a penny, for which he thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The _handle part_ (forgive my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North American Indian _art_, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. This has been a lucky day for me." He was a shipwright--can play the piano, he says--lives in the workhouse in winter and comes out in summer--with the flowers--and his fiddle! I knew you would like me to give something to that _povero fratello_.

_Woolwich._ June 6, 1879.

... _The_ painter of the Academy this year is Mrs. Butler!! I do hope some day somewhere you may see _The Remnants of an Army_ and _Recruits for the Connaught Rangers_. The first is in the _Academy Notes_, which I send you. The second is at least as fine. [_Sketch._] The landscape effect is the opal-like sky and bright light full of moisture after rain--heavy clouds hang above--the mountains are a leaden blue--and the sky of all exquisite pale shades of bright colour. Down the wet moor road comes the group. Two very tall, dark-eyed Connaught "boys"--one with a set face and his hands in his pockets looking straight out of the picture--the other with a yearning of Keltic emotion looking back at the hills as if his heart was breaking. The strapping young sergeant looks very grave; but an "old soldier" behind is lighting his pipe, and a bugler is holding back a dog. One of the best faces is that of the drummer who walks first, and whose 13-year-old face is so furrowed about the brow with oppressive anxiety--very truthful!

_The Remnants of an Army_ is of course overpowering by the mere subject, and it is n.o.bly painted. The man and his horse are wonderful alike. There is nothing to touch these two. But I _would_ like to steal Peter Graham's _The Seabirds' Resting-Place_. Such penguins sitting on wet rocks with wet Fucus _growing on_ them! Such myriads more in the _sea-mist_ that hides the horizon-line--sitting on distant rocks!--and _such_ green waves--by the light of a sunbeam into one of which you see Laminaria fronds and lumps of Fucus tossing up and down.

You feel wet and ozoney to come near it! There are some very fine men's portraits, and Orchardson's _Gamblers Hard Hit_ is the best thing of his, I think, that I know....

... There is a very beautiful old gun in the a.r.s.enal upon a gun-carriage with wheels thus [_Sketch_], and with bas-reliefs of St.

Paul and the Viper. It is needless to say the gun came from the island called Melita! But for cunning workmanship and fine bold designs and delicate execution the Chinese guns are the ones! I am taking rubbings of the patterns for decorative purposes! They were taken in the war.

There is yet one picture I must tell you of--"_A Musical Story by Chopin_"--the boy playing to a group of lads and a tutor. His utterly absorbed face is _admirable_. It is a very pretty thing. Not marvellous, but very good.

August 5, 1879.

I must tell you that it is _on the cards_ that Caldecott is going to do a coloured picture for me _to write to_, for the October No. of _A.J.M._ (so that it will bind up with the 1879 volume and be the Frontispiece). He is so fragile he can't "hustle," but he wants to do it. D---- and he became great friends in London, and I think now he would help us whenever he could. We have been bold enough to "speak our minds" pretty freely to him, about wasting his time over second-rate "society" work for _Graphic_, etc., etc., when he has such a genius to interpret humour and pathos for good writers, and no real writing gifts himself. (He has done some things called _Flirtation in France_, supplying both letter-press and sketches!--that are terrible to any one who has gone heart and soul into his House that Jack built!!!) I've told him frankly if he "_draws down to me_" in the hopes of making _my_ share easy by making his commonplace, and gives me a "rising young family in sand-boots and frilled trousers with an over-fed mercantile mamma," my "few brains will utterly congeal," but I have made two suggestions to _him_, so closely on his own lines that if hints help him I think he would find it easy. You know _horses_ are really his specialite. I have asked him to give me a coloured thing and one or two rough sketches, Either

An Old Coaching Day's Idyll or--A Trooper's Tragedy.

The same beginning for either:

Child learning to ride on hobby-horse rocking-horse donkey pony etc. etc.

Then (if coaching) an old haunted-looking posting-house on a coaching road (Hog's Back!)--a highwayman--a broken-down postilion--a girl on a pillion, etc., etc.

Or, if military:

A yokel watching a cavalry regiment in Autumn Manoeuvres over a bridge.

A Horse and Trooper--Riding for life (here or Hereafter!) with another man across his saddle.

Of course it may only hamper him to have hints (I've not heard yet), but I hope anyhow he'll do something for me.