Part 16 (1/2)
I am better, but not right yet. There is no fear of sore throat, I think, but some of prolonged tooth worry. It is more stomachic than coldic, I believe, and those tea cakes are too crisply seductive! What _can_ it be, that subtle treachery that lurks in tea cakes, and is wholly absent in the rude honesty of toast?
The metaphysical effect of tea cake last night was, that I had a perilous and weary journey in a desert, in which I had to dodge hostile tribes round the corners of pyramids.
A very sad letter from Joanie tells me she was going to Scotland last night, at which I am not only very sorry but very cross.
A chirping cricket on the hearth advises me to keep my heart up.
Your happy letters (with the sympathetic misery of complaint of dark days) have cheered me as much as anything could do.
The sight of one of my poor ”Companions of St. George,” who has sent me, not a widow's but a parlor-maid's (an old school-mistress) ”all her living,” and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle--dying, I say, _slowly_, of consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with sorrow, mixed partly with fear, lest she should not have done all she could for her children!
The sight of all this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends!
Oh me, Susie, what _is_ to become of me in the next world, who have in this life all my good things!
What a sweet, careful, tender letter this is! I re-inclose it at once for fear of mischief, though I've scarcely read, for indeed my eyes are weary, but I see what gentle mind it means.
Yes, you will love and rejoice in your Chaucer more and more. Fancy, I've never time, now, to look at him,--obliged to read even my Homer and Shakespeare at a scramble, half missing the sense,--the business of life disturbs one so.
HERNE HILL.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of Ruskin's room]
Here's your letter first thing in the morning, while I'm sipping my coffee in the midst of such confusion as I've not often achieved at my best. The little room, which I think is as nearly as possible the size of your study, but with a lower roof, has to begin with--A, my bed; B, my basin stand; C, my table; D, my chest of drawers; thus arranged in relation to E, the window (which has still its dark bars to prevent the little boy getting out); F, the fireplace; G, the golden or mineralogical cupboard; and H, the grand entrance. The two dots with a back represent my chair, which is properly solid and not _un_-easy.
Three others of lighter disposition find place somewhere about. These with the chimney-piece and drawer's head are covered, or rather heaped, with all they can carry, and the morning is just looking in, astonished to see what is expected of it, and smiling--(yes, I may fairly say it is smiling, for it is cloudless for its part above the smoke of the horizon line)--at Sarah's hope and mine, of ever getting that room into order by twelve o'clock. The chimney-piece with its bottles, spoons, lozenge boxes, matches, candlesticks, and letters jammed behind them, does appear to me entirely hopeless, and this the more because Sarah,[45] when I tell her to take a bottle away that has a mixture in it which I don't like, looks me full in the face, and says ”she _won't_, because I may want it.” I submit, because it is so nice to get Sarah to look one full in the face. She really is the prettiest, round faced, and round eyed girl I ever saw, and it's a great shame she should be a housemaid; only I wish she would take those bottles away. She says I'm looking better to-day, and I think I'm feeling a little bit more,--no, I mean, a little bit less demoniacal. But I still can do that jackdaw beautifully.
[Footnote 45: Our Herne Hill parlor-maid for four years. One of quite the brightest and handsomest types of English beauty I ever saw, either in life, or fancied in painting.--J. R.]
I am quite sure you would have felt like Albert Durer, had you gone on painting wrens.
The way Nature and Heaven waste the gifts and souls they give and make, pa.s.ses all wonder. You might have done anything you chose, only you were too modest.
No, I never _will_ call you my dear lady; certainly, if it comes to that, something too dreadful will follow.
I am most interested in your criticism of ”Queen Mary.” I have not read it, but the choice of subject is entirely morbid and wrong, and I am sure all you say must be true. The form of decline which always comes on mental power of Tennyson's pa.s.sionately sensual character, is always of seeing ugly things, a kind of delirium tremens. Turner had it fatally in his last years.