August 9, 1879.

I was reading again at _Robert Falconer_ the other day. What _grand_ bits there are in it? With such _bosh_ close by. So like Ruskin in that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he "has his senses," or knows anything about "the poor." "The Gospel" is pretty plain about drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers, false swearers, wh.o.r.emongers, and "all liars"--I wonder whether these trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!

But oh, that description to the _son_ of what it sounded like when _his father_ played the _Flowers of the Forest_ on his fiddle, isn't to be beaten in any language I believe! All the Scotch la.s.ses after Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the men who lay on Flodden Field!--"La.s.ses to reap and la.s.ses to bind--La.s.ses to stook." etc., etc., and "no a word I'll warrant ye, to the orra lad that didna gang wi' the lave"!!!![40] and the lad's outburst in reply, "I'd raither be gratten for nor kissed!"

[Footnote 40: _Robert Falconer_, chap. xix.]

Poor Z----! They don't teach that at Academies and Staff Colleges, nor in the Penny-a-line of newspaper correspondents and the like--but he should get some woman to soak it into his brains that the men women will love are men who would rather be "gratten for" in honour than be kissed in shame.

_Ecclesfield._ August 23, 1879.

Talking of drawings, what do you think? Caldecott has done me the most _lovely_ coloured thing to write a short tale to for October _A.J.M._ It is very good of him. He has simply drawn what I asked, but it is quite lovely!

A village Green, sweet little old Church, and house and oak tree, etc., etc. in distance, a small boy with aureole of fair hair on a red-haired pony, coming full tilt across it blowing a penny trumpet and scattering pretty ladies, geese, c.o.c.ks and hens from his path. His dog running beside him! You will be delighted!

September 1, 1879.

I have done my little story to Caldecott's picture, and I have a strong notion that it will please you. It is called "Jackanapes."... I shall be so _disappointed_ if you don't like "Jackanapes." But I think it is just what you will like!! I think you will cry over him!

September 19, 1879.

Isn't it a great comfort that I have finished the serial story, and "Jackanapes"?--so that I am now quite free, and never mean to write against time again. I know you never cared for the serial; however, it is done, and tolerably satisfactory I think. "Jackanapes" I do hope you will like, picture and all. C---- sent Mr. Ruskin "Our Field," and I am proud to hear he says it is not a mere story--it's a poem! Great praise from a great man!

October 11, 1879.

I was knocked up yesterday in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin at Herne Hill. I find him _far_ more _personally_ lovable than I had expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm.

So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such clear Scotch turquoise eyes.

He had been out to buy buns and grapes for _me_ (!), carrying the buns home himself very carefully that they might not be crushed!! We are so utterly at one on some points: it is very delightful to hear him talk.

I mean it is uncommonly pleasant to hear things one has long thought very vehemently, put to one by a Master!! _Par exemple._ You know my mania about the indecent-cruel element in French art, and how the Frenchiness of Victor Hugo chokes me from appreciating him: just as we were going away yesterday Mr. Ruskin called out, "There is something I MUST show Aunt Judy," and fetched two photos. One, an old court with bits of old gothic tracery mixed in with a modern tumbledown building--peaceful old doorway, wild vine twisting up the lintel, modern shrine, dilapidated waterb.u.t.t, sunshine straggling in--as far as the beauty of contrast and suggestiveness and form and (one could fancy) colour could go, perfect as a picture. (R---- didn't say all this, but we agreed as to the obvious beauty, etc.) Then he brought out the other photo, and said, "but the French artist cannot rest with that, it must be heightened and stained with blood," and there was the court (photo from a French picture), with two children lying murdered in the sunshine.

Another point we met on was my desire to write a tale on Commercial Honour. He was delighted, and will I think furnish me with "tips." His father was a merchant of the old school. And then to my delight I found him soldier-mad!! So we got on very affably, and I hope to go and stay there when I go home next summer.

November 7, 1879.

Friends are truly kind. Miss Mundella sent two season tickets for the Monday "Pop." to D---- and me. I managed to go and stay for most of it. Norman Neruda, Piatti, and _Janotha_--have you heard Janotha play the piano? I think she is _very_ wonderful. It is so absolutely without affectation, and so _selfless_, and yet such a mastery of the instrument. Her _rippling_ pa.s.sages are like music writ in water, and she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, and quite young. We sat quite near to Browning, who is a nice-looking old man, delightfully _clean_. He seemed to delight in Neruda and Piatti, and followed the music with a score of his own.

_Ecclesfield._ Sat.u.r.day, January 31, 1880.

How beautiful a day is to-day I cannot tell you! It does refresh me!... Head and spine very shaky this morning so that I could not get warm; but I wrapped in my fur cloak, and went out into the sunshine, up and down, up and down the churchyard flags. A sunny old kirkyard is a nice place, I always think, for aged folk and invalids to creep up and down in, and "Tombstone Morality" isn't half as wearing to the nerves as the problems of _life_!...

_Greno House_, Tuesday.

Harry Howard drove me up yesterday. It was _just_ as much as I could bear; but I lay on the sofa till dinner, and went to bed at eight, and though my head kept me awake at first, I did well on the whole.

Breakfast in bed, a bigger one than I have eaten for three weeks, and since then I have had an hour's drive. The roughness of the roads is unlucky, but the air _divine_! Such sweet sunshine, and Greno Wood, with yellow remains of bush and bracken, and heavy mosses on the sandstone walls, and tiny streams trickling through boggy bits of the wood, and coming out over the wall to overflow those picturesque stone troughs which are so oddly numerous, and which I had in my head when I wrote the first part of "Mrs. Overtheway."

January 11, 1880.

Very dear to me are all your "tender and true" regards for the old home--the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted--which is bound up with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!!

Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever met has, I think, _quite_ your sympathy with exactly what the external world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind--to now when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable--and other people being dest.i.tute of the sixth sense to comprehend it--so that one feels a fool either way)--one rarely finds any one to whom one can comfortably speak of it, and be _understanded_ of them. It is the one of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) _see_ those things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me _content_ in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small sunny nook where we may end our days--so long as there is a bit of yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...

[_Grenoside._] February 21, 1880.

I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. There are lovely bits in it.