Hortus Inclusus Part 9

What lovely pictures you would have made in the old b.u.t.terfly times, of opal and felspar! What lost creatures we all are, we nice ones! The Alps and clouds that _I_ could have done, if I had been shown how.

_27th June_ (1879).

Everybody's gone! and I have all the new potatoes, and all the asparagus, and all the oranges and everything, and my Susie too, all to myself.

I wrote in my diary this morning that really on the whole I never felt better in my life. Mouth, eyes, head, feet, and fingers all fairly in trim; older than they were, yes, but if the head and heart grow wiser, they won't want feet or fingers some day.

And I'll come to be cheered and scolded myself the moment I've got things a little to rights here. I think imps get into the shelves and drawers, if they're kept long locked, and must be caught like mice.

The boys have been very good, and left everything untouched; but the imps; and to hear people say there aren't any! How happy you and I should always be if it weren't for them!

How gay you were and how you cheered me up after the dark lake.

Please say "John Inglesant" is harder than real history and of no mortal use. I couldn't read four pages of it. Clever, of course.

HERNE HILL, _14th August, 1880_.

I've _just_ finished my Scott paper:[28] but it has retouchings and notings yet to do. I couldn't write a word before; haven't so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at chess to Macdonald, for, you know, to keep a chess player waiting for a move is like keeping St.

Lawrence unturned.

[Footnote 28: "Fiction Fair and Foul", No. 3.]

_21st August, 1880._

I'm leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Restante, Abbeville.

I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn't much time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all the time. And I gave the hippopotamus _whole_ buns, and he was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to him six yards off; never missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop up again.

And I lunched with Cardinal Manning, and he gave me _such_ a plum pie. I never tasted a Protestant pie to touch it.

Now you're just wrong about my darling Cardinal. See what it is to be jealous! He gave me lovely soup, roast beef, hare and currant jelly, puff pastry like Papal pretensions--you had but to breathe on it and it was nowhere--raisins and almonds, and those lovely preserved cherries like kisses kept in amber. And told me delicious stories all through lunch. _There_!

And we really do see the sun here! And last night the sky was all a spangle and delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them and spikiness softened off by a young darling of a moon.

AMIENS, _29th August, 1880_.

You have been made happy doubtless with us by the news from Herne Hill. I've only a telegram yet though, but write at once to congratulate you on your little G.o.ddaughter.

Also to say that I am very well, and sadly longing for Brantwood; but that I am glad to see some vestige of beloved things here, once more.

We have glorious weather, and I am getting perfect rest most of the day--mere saunter in the sunny air, taking all the good I can of it.

To-morrow we get (D.V.) to Beauvais, where perhaps I may find a letter from Susie; in any case you may write to Hotel Meurice, Paris.

The oleanders are coming out and geraniums in all cottage windows, and golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all the fields.

BEAUVAIS, _3d September, 1880_.

We are having the most perfect weather I ever saw in France, much less anywhere else, and I'm taking a thorough rest, writing scarcely anything and sauntering about old town streets all day.

I made a little sketch of the lake from above the Waterhead which goes everywhere with me, and it is so curious when the wind blows the leaf open when I am sketching here at Beauvais, where all is so differently delightful, as if we were on the other side of the world.

I think I shall be able to write some pa.s.sages about architecture yet, which Susie will like. I hear of countless qualities being discovered in the new little Susie! And all things will be happy for me if you send me a line to Hotel Meurice saying _you_ are happy too.

PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).

I have all your letters, and rejoice in them; though it is a little sadder for you looking at empty Brantwood, than for me to fancy the bright full Thwaite, and then it's a great shame that I've everything to amuse me, and lovely Louvres and shops and cathedrals and coquettes and pictures and plays and prettinesses of every color and quality, and you've only your old, old hills and quiet lake. Very thankful I shall be to get back to them, though.

We have finished our Paris this afternoon, and hope to leave for Chartres on Monday.

HoTEL DE MEURICE, PARIS, _4th September_ (1880).

Is it such pain to you when people say what they ought not to say about _me_? But when do they say what they ought to say about anything? Nearly everything I have ever done or said is as much above the present level of public understanding as the Old Man is above the Waterhead.

We have had the most marvelous weather thus far, and have seen Paris better than ever I've seen it yet,--and to-day at the Louvre we saw the Casette of St. Louis, the Coffre of Anne of Austria, the porphyry vase, made into an eagle, of an old Abbe Segur, or some such name. All these you can see also, you know, in those lovely photographs of Miss Rigbye's, if you can only make out in this vile writing of mine what I mean.

But it is so hot. I can scarcely sit up or hold the pen, but tumble back into the chair every half minute and unb.u.t.ton another b.u.t.ton of waistcoat, and gasp a little, and nod a little, and wink a little, and sprinkle some eau de Cologne a little, and try a little to write a little, and forget what I had to say, and where I was, and whether it's Susie or Joan I'm writing to; and then I see some letters I've never opened that came by this morning's post, and think I'd better open them perhaps; and here I find in one of them a delightful account of the quarrel that goes on in this weather between the nicest elephant in the Zoo' and his keeper, because he won't come out of his bath. I saw them at it myself, when I was in London, and saw the elephant take up a stone and throw it hard against a door which the keeper was behind,--but my friend writes, "I _must_ believe from what I saw that the elephant knew he would injure the man with the stones, for he threw them hard to the _side_ of him, and then stood his ground; when, however, he threw water and wetted the man, he plunged into the bath to avoid the whip; not fearing punishment when he merely showed what he could do and did not."

The throwing the stone hard at the door when the keeper was on the other side of it, must have been great fun for him!

I am so sorry to have crushed this inclosed scrawl. It has been carried about in my pocket to be finished, and I see there's no room for the least bit of love at the bottom. So here's a leaf full from the Bois de Boulogne, which is very lovely; and we drive about by night or day, as if all the sky were only the roof of a sapphire palace set with warm stars.

CHARTRES, _8th September_ (1880).

(_Hotel du Grande Monarque._)