TO MISS BEEVER
10th January, 1883.
I cannot tell you how grateful and glad I am, to have your lovely note and to know that the Bewick gave you pleasure, and that you are so entirely well now, as to enjoy anything requiring so much energy and attention to this degree. For indeed I can scarcely now take pleasure myself in things that give me the least trouble to look at, but I know that the pretty book and its chosen wood-cuts ought to be sent to you, first of all my friends (I have not yet thought of sending it to any one else), and I am quite put in heart after a very despondent yesterday, passed inanely, in thinking of what I couldn't do, by feeling what you can, and hoping to share the happy Christmas time with you and Susie in future years. Will you please tell my dear Susie I'm going to bring over a drawing to show! (so thankful that I am still able to draw after these strange and terrible illnesses) this afternoon. I am in hopes it may clear, but dark or bright I'm coming, about half past three, and am ever your and her most affectionate and faithful servant.
24th September, 1884.
I wandered literally "up and down" your mountain garden—(how beautifully the native rocks slope to its paths in the sweet evening light, Susiesque light!)—with great happiness and admiration, as I went home, and I came indeed upon what I conceived to be—discovered in the course of recent excavations—two deeply interesting thrones of the ancient Abbots of Furness, typifying their humility in that the seats thereof were only level with the ground between two clusters of the earth; contemplating cyclamen, and their severity of penance, in the points of stone prepared for the mortification of their backs; but truly, Susie's seat of repose and meditation I was unable as yet to discern, but propose to myself further investigation of that apple-perfumed paradise, and am ever your devoted and enchanted
[Transcriber's Note: no ending to the sentence here.]
Oxford, 1st December (1884).
I gave my fourteenth, and last for this year, lecture this afternoon with vigor and effect, and am safe and well (D.G.), after such a spell of work as I never did before. I have been thrown a week out in all my plans, by having to write two new Lectures, instead of those the University was frightened at. The scientists slink out of my way now, as if I was a mad dog, for I let them have it hot and heavy whenever I've a chance at them.
But as I said, I'm a week late, and though I start for the North this day week, I can't get home till this day fortnight at soonest, but I hope not later than to-morrow fortnight. Very thankful I shall be to find myself again at the little room door.
Fancy Mary Gladstone forgiving me even that second naughtiness! 37 She's going to let me come to see her this week, and to play to me, which is a great comfort.
St. Susie, 27th November, 1885.
Behold Athena and Apollo both come to bless you on your birthday, and all the buds of the year to come, rejoice with you, and your poor cat 38 is able to purr again, and is extremely comfortable and even cheerful "to-day." And we will make more and more of all the days, won't we, and we will burn our candle at both beginnings instead of both ends, every day beginning two worlds—the old one to be lived over again, the new to learn our golden letters in. Not that I mean to write books in that world. I hope to be set to do something, there; and what lovely "receptions" you will have in your little heavenly Thwaite, and celestial teas! And you won't spoil the cream with hot water, will you, any more?
The whole village is enjoying itself, I hear, and the widows and orphans to be much the better for it, and altogether, you and I have a jolly time of it, haven't we?
20th February, 1886.
I haven't had anything nice to send you this ever so long, but here's a little bird's nest of native silver which you could almost live in as comfortably as a tit. It will stand nicely on your table without upsetting, and is so comfortable to hold, and altogether I'm pleased to have got it for you.
Brantwood, 1st March, 1886.
Yes, I knew you would like that silver shrine! and it is an extremely rare and perfect specimen. But you need not be afraid in handling it; if the little bit of spar does come off it, or out of it, no matter.
But of course nobody else should touch it, till you give them leave, and show them how.
I am sorry for poor Miss Brown, and for your not having known the Doctor. He should have come here when I told him. I believe he would have been alive yet, and I never should have been ill.
I believe you know more Latin than I do, and can certainly make more delightful use of it.
Your mornings' ministry to the birds must be remembered for you by the angels who paint their feathers. They will all, one day, be birds of Paradise, and say, when the adverse angel accuses you of being naughty to some people, "But we were hungry and she gave us corn, and took care that nobody else ate it."
I am indeed thankful you are better. But you must please tell me what the thing was I said which gave you so much pain. Do you recollect also what the little bit in "Proserpina" was that said so much to you? Were you not thinking of "Fors"?
I am very thankful for all your dear letters always—greatly delighted above all with the squirrel one, and Chaucer. Didn't he love squirrels! 39 and don't I wish I was a squirrel in Susie's pear trees, instead of a hobbling disconsolate old man, with no teeth to bite, much less crack, anything, and particularly forbidden to eat nuts!
Your precious letter, showing me you are a little better, came this morning, with the exquisite feathers, one, darker and lovelier than any I have seen, but please, I still want one not in the least flattened; all these have lost just the least bit of their shell-like bending. You can so easily devise a little padding to keep two strong cards or bits of wood separate for one or two to lie happily in. I don't mind giving you this tease, for the throat will be better the less you remember it. But for all of us, a dark sky is assuredly a poisonous and depressing power, which neither surgery nor medicine can resist. The difference to me between nature as she is now, and as she was ten years ago, is as great as between Lapland and Italy, and the total loss of comfort in morning and evening sky, the most difficult to resist of all spiritual hostility.
22d May, 1886.
Of course the little pyramid in crystal is a present. With that enjoyment of Pinkerton, 40 you will have quite a new indoors interest, whatever the rain may say.
How very lucky you asked me what basalt was! How much has come out of it (written in falling asleep)! I've been out all the morning and am so sleepy.
But I've written a nice little bit of "Præterita" before I went out, trying to describe the Rhone at Geneva. I think Susie will like it, if nobody else.
That "not enjoying the beauty of things" goes ever so much deeper than mere blindness. It is a form of antagonism, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of demonology in otherwise good people, or shall we say in "good people"? You know we are not good at all, are we now?
I don't think you've got any green in your mica. I've sent you a bit inclosed with some jealous spots in.
26th November, 1886.
Do you know how to make sugar candy? In my present abject state the only way of amusing myself I can hit on is setting the girls of the school to garden and cook! By way of beginning in cooking I offered to pay for any quantity of wasted sugar if they could produce me a crystal or two of sugar candy. (On the way to Twelfth cakes, you know, and sugar animals. One of Francesca's friends made her a life-size Easter lamb in sugar.) The first try this morning was brought me in a state of sticky jelly.
And after sending me a recipe for candy, would you please ask Harry to look at the school garden? I'm going to get the boys to keep that in order; but if Harry would look at it and order some mine gravel down for the walks, and, with Mr. Brocklebank's authority (to whom I have spoken already), direct any of the boys who are willing to form a corps of little gardeners, and under Harry's orders make the best that can be made of that neglected bit of earth, I think you and I should enjoy hearing of it.
I told a Cambridge man yesterday that he had been clever enough to put into a shilling pamphlet all the mistakes of his generation.
27th November, 1886.
For once, I have a birthday stone for you, a little worth your having, and a little gladsome to me in the giving. It is blue like the air that you were born into, and always live in. It is as deep as gentians, and has their gleams of green in it, and it is precious all through within and without, as Susie herself is. Many and many returns of all the birthdays that have gone away, and crowds yet of those that never were here before.
MISCELLANEOUS
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
24th December, 1877.
This is just for Christmas love, and I'm quite well and up to work this morning, and the first thing I opened here was St. Ursula from Mr. Gould—and I hope the darling will be with me and you and him, and all good lovers and laborers everywhere. Love to Mary. Also to the servants. Also to the birds. If any mice are about—also to them, —and in a hush-a-bye to the Squirrels—wherever they are.
Brantwood.
This reminiscence of birds—entirely delightful—puts me on a thought of better work that you can do for me than even the Shakespeare notes. Each day, when you are in spirits,—never as an effort, sit down and tell me—as in this morning's note—whatever you remember about birds—going back to very childhood—and just chatting on, about all you have seen of them and done for them.
You will make a little book as delightful—nay, much more delightful than White of Selborne—and you will feel a satisfaction in the experience of your real knowledge—power of observation—and loving sentiment, in a way to make them even more exemplary and helpful.
Now don't say you can't—but begin directly to-morrow morning.
Brantwood, 1880.
What am I about all this while?
Well—I wake every morning at four—can't help it—to see the morning light—Perhaps I go to sleep again—but never for long—then I do really very good work in the mornings—but by the afternoon I'm quite beaten and can do nothing but lie about in the wood.
However—the Prosody and Serpent lectures are just finishing off and then I shall come to see you in the morning! while I am awake.
I went out before breakfast this morning, half asleep—and saw what I thought was a red breasted woodpecker as big as a pigeon! Presently it came down on the lawn and I made up my mind it was only a robin about the size of a small partridge!
Can it have been a cross-bill?
Brantwood.
I've had this cold five days now and it's worse than ever, and yet I feel quite well in other respects, and the glorious sunshine is a great joy to me. Also Prince Leopold's words, 41 seen to-day. Very beautiful in themselves—and—I say it solemnly—just, more than ever I read before of friend's sayings. It is strange—I had no conception he saw so far into things or into me.
It is the greatest help that has ever been given me (in the view the public will take of it).
Brantwood.
A heap half a foot high of unanswered letters pouring and tottering across the table must pour and fall as they will, while I just say how thankful I am for yours always, and how, to-day, I must leave letters, books and all to work on that lovely Trientalis which Mary sent me. It has a peculiar set of trine leaves which Linnæus noticed and named it for—modern botanists have no notion of it.
I think both Mary and you will be deeply interested in seeing it worked out. I've been at it since seven o'clock.
Yes, if I had known you were in the garden! Alas—one never can know what one wants to—I was all that afternoon seeing the blacksmith make a chopper!
Broadlands, Romsey,
15th October (1875).
I was very thankful for your letter this morning—having heard you were unwell and being a little despondent myself—more than of late—an Italian nobleman is here who cares for nothing but shooting, and everybody thinks it perfectly right!
It is a great joy to me that you find so much in the "Stones of Venice"—I hope that book is worth the time it took me to write it, every year of youth seems to me in looking back, now so precious.
How very strange I should give you quietness, myself being always disquieted in heart—a Ghost of poor Samuel—helpless—in sight of ruining Israel.
To think of the difference between these two scenes,—Samuel at his feast sending the prepared portion to the expected Saul.
And Samuel the Ghost—with his message.
Well—this is a cheering letter to send my poor Susie. It's all that Italian Duke.
Brantwood.
If ever a Gentiana Verna demeans itself to you at Brantwood—I'll disown it and be dreadfully ashamed for it! The other little things if they'll condescend to come shall be thanked and honored with my best. Only please now don't send me more asparagus!
I feel so piggish and rabbitish in eating you out of all your vegetables, that I'm afraid to speak lest it should turn out grunting, and to shake my head for fear of feeling flappy at the ears.
But—please—Is the bread as brown as it used to be? I think you're cosseting me up altogether and I don't like the white bread so well!
Brantwood.
What can you mean about your ignorance—or my astonishment at it? Indeed you are a naughty little Susie to think such things. I never come to the Thwaite but you and your sister tell me all kinds of things I didn't know, and am so glad to know.
I send a book of architect's drawings of Pisa, which I think will interest you—only you must understand that the miserable Frenchman who did it, could not see the expression of face in any of the old sculptures, nor draw anything but hard mechanical outlines—and the charm of all these buildings is this almost natural grace of free line and color.
The little tiny sketch of mine, smallest in the sheet of 4 (the other sheet only sent to keep its face from rubbing) will show you what the things really are like—the whole front of the dome, plate XI. (the wretch can't even have his numbers made legibly) is of arches of this sweet variable color.
Please can your sister or you plant a grain or grains of corn for me, and watch them into various stages of germination. 42 I want to study the mode of root and blade development. And I am sure you two will know best how to show it me.
Brantwood, 30th December, 1883.
I heard with extreme sorrow yesterday of your mischance, and with the greater, that I felt the discomfort and alarm of it would be increased to you—in their depressing power by a sense of unkindness to you on my part in not having been to see you—nor even read the letter which would have warned me of your accident. But you must remember that Christmas is to me a most oppressive and harmful time—the friends of the last thirty years of life all trying to give what they cannot give—of pleasure, or receive what—from me, they can no more receive—the younger ones especially thinking they can amuse me by telling me of their happy times—which I am so mean as to envy and am doubly distressed by the sense of my meanness in doing so.
And my only resource is the quiet of my own work, to which—these last days—I have nearly given myself altogether. Yet I had read your letter as far as the place where you said you wanted one and then, began to think what I should say—and "read no further" 43 that day—and now here is this harm that had befallen you—which I trust, nevertheless, is of no real consequence, and this one thing I must say once for all, that whatever may be my feelings to you—you must never more let yourself imagine for an instant they can come of any manner of offense? That thought is real injustice to me. I have never, and never can have, any other feeling towards you than that of the deepest gratitude, respect, and affection—too sorrowfully inexpressible and ineffectual—but never changing. I will drive, walk, or row, over to see you on New Year's day—if I am fairly well—be the weather what it will. I hope the bearer will bring me back a comforting report as to the effects of your accident and that you will never let yourself again be discomforted by mistrust of me, for I am and shall ever be
Your faithful and loving servant,
John Ruskin.
I never heard the like—my writing good! and just now!! If you only saw the wretched notes on the back of lecture leaves!
But I am so very glad you think it endurable, and it is so nice to be able to give you a moment's pleasure by such a thing. I'm better to-day, but still extremely languid. I believe that there is often something in the spring which weakens one by its very tenderness; the violets in the wood send one home sorrowful that one isn't worthy to see them, or else, that one isn't one of them.
It is mere Midsummer dream in the wood to-day.
You could not possibly have sent me a more delightful present than this Lychnis; it is the kind of flower that gives me pleasure and health and memory and hope and everything that Alpine meadows and air can. I'm getting better generally, too. The sun did take one by surprise at first.
How blessedly happy Joanie and the children were yesterday at the Thwaite! I'm coming to be happy myself there to-morrow (D.V.).
Here are the two bits of study I did in Malham Cove; the small couples of leaves are different portraits of the first shoots of the two geraniums. I don't find in any botany an account of their little round side leaves, or of the definite central one above the branching of them.
Here's your lovely note just come. I am very thankful that the "Venice" gives you so much pleasure.
I have, at least, one certainty, which few authors could hold so surely, that no one was ever harmed by a book of mine; they may have been offended, but have never been discouraged or discomforted, still less corrupted.
There's a saucy speech for Susie's friend. You won't like me any more if I begin to talk like that.
A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby; both are the pure earth of clay crystallized. No one knows why one is red and the other blue.
A diamond is pure coal crystallized.
An opal, pure flint—in a state of fixed jelly.
I'm in a great passion with the horrid people who write letters to tease my good little Susie. I won't have it. She shall have some more stones to-morrow.
I must have a walk to-day, and can't give account of them, but I've looked them out. It's so very nice that you like stones. If my father, when I was a little boy, would only have given me stones for bread, how I should have thanked him.
What infinite power and treasure you have in being able thus to enjoy the least things, yet having at the same time all the fastidiousness of taste and imagination which lays hold of what is greatest in the least, and best in all things!
Never hurt your eyes by writing; keep them wholly for admiration and wonder. I hope to write little more myself of books, and to join with you in joy over crystals and flowers in the way we used to do when we were both more children than we are.
TO MISS BEEVER
I am ashamed not to have sent you a word of expression of my real and very deep feelings of regard and respect for you, and of my, not fervent (in the usual phrase, which means only hasty and ebullient), but serenely warm, hope that you may keep your present power of benevolent happiness to length of many days to come. But I hope you will sometimes take the simpler view of the little agate box than that of birthday token, and that you will wonder sometimes at its labyrinth of mineral vegetable! I assure you there is nothing in all my collection of agates in its way quite so perfect as the little fiery forests of dotty trees in the corner of the piece which forms the bottom. I ought to have set it in silver, but was always afraid to trust it to a lapidary.
What you say of the Greek want of violets is also very interesting to me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries that Homer means the blue iris by the word translated "violet."
Thursday morning.
I'm ever so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But why wasn't I there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowledge? To think of that poor bird's genius and love of scarlet ribbons, shut up in a cage! What it might have come to!
If ever my St. George's schools come to any perfection, they shall have every one a jackdaw to give the children their first lessons in arithmetic. I'm sure he could do it perfectly. "Now, Jack, take two from four, and show them how many are left." "Now, Jack, if you take the teaspoon out of this saucer, and put it into that, and then if you take two teaspoons out of two saucers, and put them into this, and then if you take one teaspoon out of this, and put it into that, how many spoons are there in this, and how many in that?"—and so on.
Oh, Susie, when we do get old, you and I, won't we have nice schools for the birds first, and then for the children?
That photograph is indeed like a visit; how thankful I am that it is still my hope to get the real visit some day!
I was yesterday and am always, certainly at present, very unwell, and a mere trouble to my Joanies and Susies and all who care for me. But I'm painting another bit of moss which I think Susie will enjoy, and hope for better times.
Did you see the white cloud that stayed quiet for three hours this morning over the Old Man's summit? It was one of the few remains of the heaven one used to see. The heaven one had a Father in, not a raging enemy.
I send you Rogers' "Italy," that is no more. I do think you'll have pleasure in it.
I've been made so miserable by a paper of Sir J. Lubbock's on flowers and insects, that I must come and whine to you. He says, and really as if he knew it, that insects, chiefly bees, entirely originate flowers; that all scent, color, pretty form, is owing to bees; that flowers which insects don't take care of, have no scent, color, nor honey.
It seems to me, that it is likelier that the flowers which have no scent, color, nor honey, don't get any attention from the bees.
But the man really knows so much about it, and has tried so many pretty experiments, that he makes me miserable.
So I'm afraid you're miserable too. Write to tell me about it all.
It is very lovely of you to send me so sweet a note when I have not been near you since the tenth century. But it is all I can do to get my men and my moor looked after; they have both the instinct of doing what I don't want, the moment my back's turned; and then there has not been light enough to know a hawk from a hand-saw, or a crow from a ptarmigan, or a moor from a meadow. But how much better your eyes must be when you can write such lovely notes!
I don't understand how the strange cat came to love you so quickly, after one dinner and a rest by the fire! I should have thought an ill-treated and outcast animal would have regarded everything as a trap, for a month at least,—dined in tremors, warmed itself with its back to the fire, watching the door, and jumped up the chimney if you stepped on the rug.
If you only knew the good your peacock's feathers have done me, and if you could only see the clever drawing I'm making of one from the blue breast! You know what lovely little fern or equisetum stalks of sapphire the filaments are; they beat me so, but they're coming nice.
That is so intensely true what you say about Turner's work being like nature's in its slowness and tenderness. I always think of him as a great natural force in a human frame.
So nice all you say of the "Ethics"! And I'm a monster of ingratitude, as bad as the Dragon of Wantley. Don't like Dr. Brown's friend's book at all. It's neither Scotch nor English, nor fish nor flesh, and it's tiresome.
I'm in the worst humor I've been in this month, which is saying much; and have been writing the wickedest "Fors" I ever wrote, which is saying more; you will be so angry.
[Return to footnote]
I'm so very glad you will mark the bits you like, but are there not a good many here and there that you don't like?—I mean that sound hard or ironical. Please don't mind them. They're partly because I never count on readers who will really care for the prettiest things, and it gets me into a bad habit of expressing contempt which is not indeed any natural part of my mind.
It pleases me especially that you have read "The Queen of the Air." As far as I know, myself, of my books, it is the most useful and careful piece I have done. But that again—did it not shock you to have a heathen goddess so much believed in? (I've believed in English ones long ago). If you can really forgive me for "The Queen of the Air," there are all sorts of things I shall come begging you to read some day.
21st July.
I'm always looking at the Thwaite, and thinking how nice it is that you are there. I think it's a little nice, too, that I'm within sight of you, for if I hadn't broken, I don't know how many not exactly promises, but nearly, to be back at Oxford by this time, I might have been dragged from Oxford to London, from London to France, from France who knows where? But I'm here, and settled to produce, as soon as possible, the following works—
1. New number of "Love's Meinie", on the Stormy Petrel.
2. New ditto of "Proserpina", on sap, pith, and bark.
3. New ditto of "Deucalion", on clouds.
4. New "Fors", on new varieties of young ladies.
5. Two new numbers of "Our Fathers", on Brunehaut, and Bertha her niece, and St. Augustine and St. Benedict.
6. Index and epilogue to four Oxford lectures.
7. Report and account of St. George's Guild.
And I've had to turn everything out of every shelf in the house, for mildew and moths.
And I want to paint a little bank of strawberry leaves.
And I've to get a year's dead sticks out of the wood, and see to the new oat field on the moor, and prepare lectures for October!
I'm so idle. I look at the hills out of bed, and at the pictures off the sofa. Let us both be useless beings; let us be butterflies, grasshoppers, lambs, larks, anything for an easy life. I'm quite horrified to see, now that these two have come back, what a lot of books I've written, and how cruel I've been to myself and everybody else who ever has to read them. I'm too sleepy to finish this note.
13th June.
I do not know when I have received, or how I could receive so great an encouragement in all my work, as I do in hearing that you, after all your long love and watchfulness of flowers, have yet gained pleasure and insight from "Proserpina" as to leaf structure. The examples you send me are indeed admirable. Can you tell me the exact name of the plant, that I may quote it?
Yes, and the weather also is a great blessing to me—so lovely this morning.
I'm getting steadily better, and breathing the sunshine a little again in soul and lips. But I always feel so naughty after having had morning prayers, and that the whole house is a sort of little Bethel that I've no business in.
I'm reading history of early saints too, for my Amiens book, and feel that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or boiled, or something unpleasant, and I don't know if I'm a saint or a sinner in the least, in mediæval language. How did saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saintship?
It is such a joy to hear that you enjoy anything of mine, and a double joy to have your sympathy in my love of those Italians. How I wish there were more like you! What a happy world it would be if a quarter of the people in it cared a quarter as much as you and I do, for what is good and true:
That Nativity is the deepest of all. It is by the master of Botticelli, you know; and whatever is most sweet and tender in Botticelli he owes to Lippi.
But, do you know, I quite forget about Cordelia, and where I said it! please keep it till I come. I hope to be across to see you to-morrow.
They've been doing photographs of me again, and I'm an orang-outang as usual, and am in despair. I thought with my beard I was beginning to be just the least bit nice to look at. I would give up half my books for a new profile.
What a lovely day since twelve o'clock! I never saw the lake shore more heavenly.
I am very thankful that you like this "St. Mark's" so much, and do not feel as if I had lost power of mind. I think the illness has told on me more in laziness than foolishness. I feel as if there was as much in me as ever, but it is too much trouble to say it. And I find myself reconciled to staying in bed of a morning to a quite woeful extent. I have not been affected so much by melancholy, being very thankful to be still alive, and to be able to give pleasure to some people.
You have greatly helped me by this dear little note. And the bread's all right, brown again, and I'm ready for asparagus of any stoutness, there! Are you content! But my new asparagus is quite visible this year, though how much would be wanted for a dish I don't venture to count, but must be congratulated on its definitely stalky appearance.
I was over the water this morning on school committee. How bad I have been to let those poor children be tormented as they are all this time! I'm going to try and stop all the spelling and counting and catechising, and teach them only—to watch and pray.
The oranges make me think I'm in a castle in Spain!
Your letters always warm me a little, not with laughing, but with the soft glow of life, for I live mostly with "la mort dans l'ame." (It is curious that the French, whom one thinks of as slight and frivolous, have this true and deep expression for the forms of sorrow that kill, as opposed to those that discipline and strengthen.) And your words and thoughts just soften and warm like west wind.
It is nice being able to please you with what I'm writing, and that you can tell people I'm not so horrid.
Here's the "Fors" you saw the proof of, but this isn't quite right yet.
The Willy 44 quotations are very delightful. Do you know that naughty "Cowley" at all? There's all kind of honey and strawberries in him.