Part 4 (1/2)
WHARFE IN FLOOD.
BOLTON ABBEY, _24th January, 1875_.
The black rain, much as I growled at it, has let me see Wharfe in flood; and I would have borne many days in prison to see that.
No one need go to the Alps to see wild water. Seldom unless in the Rhine or Rhone themselves at their rapids, have I seen anything much grander. An Alpine stream, besides, nearly always has its bed full of loose stones, and becomes a series of humps and dumps of water wherever it is shallow; while the Wharfe swept round its curves of sh.o.r.e like a black Damascus saber, coiled into eddies of steel. At the Strid, it had risen eight feet vertical since yesterday, sheeting the flat rocks with foam from side to side, while the treacherous mid-channel was filled with a succession of boiling domes of water, charged through and through with churning white, and rolling out into the broader stream, each like a vast sea wave bursting on a beach.
There is something in the soft and comparatively unbroken slopes of these Yorks.h.i.+re shales which must give the water a peculiar sweeping power, for I have seen Tay and Tummel and Ness, and many a big stream besides, savage enough, but I don't remember anything so grim as this.
I came home to quiet tea and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped half my cream jugful (and yet I had plenty) sitting on my shoulder,--and Life of Sir Walter Scott. I was reading his great Scottish history tour, when he was twenty-three, and got his materials for everything nearly, but especially for Waverley, though not used till long afterwards.
Do you recollect Gibbie Gellatly? I was thinking over that question of yours, ”What did I think?”[13] But, my dear Susie, you might as well ask Gibbie Gellatly what _he_ thought. What does it matter what any of us think? We are but simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very inconsistent and wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the ashes, perhaps--but for the next world! Why don't you ask your squirrel what _he_ thinks too? The great point--the one for all of us--is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to crack our nuts innocently through winter and rough weather.
I shall post this to-morrow as I pa.s.s through Skipton or any post-worthy place on my way to Wakefield. Write to Warwick. Oh me, what places England had, when she was herself! Now, rail stations mostly. But I never can make out how Warwick Castle got built by that dull bit of river.
[Footnote 13: Of the things that shall be, hereafter.--J. R.]
”FRONDES.”
WAKEFIELD, _25th January, 1875_.
Here's our book in form at last, and it seems to me just a nice size, and on the whole very taking. I've put a touch or two more to the preface, and I'm sadly afraid there's a naughty note somewhere. I hope you won't find it, and that you will like the order the things are put in.
Such ill roads as we came over to-day, I never thought to see in England.
CASTLETON, _26th January, 1875_.
Here I have your long dear letter. I am very thankful I can be so much to you. Of all the people I have yet known, you are the only one I can find complete sympathy in; you are so nice and young without the hardness of youth, and may be the best of sisters to me. I am not so sure about letting you be an elder one; I am not going to be lectured when I'm naughty.
I've been so busy at _wasps_ all day coming along, having got a nice book about them. It tells me, too, of a delightful German doctor who kept tame hornets,--a whole nest in his study! They knew him perfectly, and would let him do anything with them, even pull bits off their nest to look in at it.
Wasps, too, my author says, are really much more amiable than bees, and never get angry without cause. All the same, they have a tiresome way of inspecting one, too closely, sometimes, I think.
I'm immensely struck with the Peak Cavern, but it was in twilight.
I'm going to stay here all to-morrow, the place is so entirely unspoiled. I've not seen such a primitive village, rock, or stream, this twenty years; Langdale is as sophisticated as Pall Mall in comparison.
WASP STINGS.