Part 15 (1/2)

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 b.u.t.terflies, gra.s.shoppers, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 mediaeval language. How did saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saints.h.i.+p?

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 sh.o.r.e 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.