Hortus Inclusus | Page 6

again, oneself
and they! (As if there were two Susies, or could be!)

Ever my one Susie's very loving J. RUSKIN.
* * * * *

REGRETS.
ASSISI, June 9th (1874).
Yes, I am a little oppressed just now with overwork, nor is this
avoidable. I am obliged to leave all my drawings unfinished as the last
days come, and the point possible of approximate completion fatally
contracts, every hour to a more ludicrous and warped mockery of the
hope in which one began. It is impossible not to work against time, and
that is killing. It is not labor itself, but competitive, anxious,
disappointed labor that dries one's soul out.
But don't be frightened about me, you sweet Susie. I know when I must
stop; forgive and pity me only, because sometimes, nay often my letter
(or word) to Susie must be sacrificed to the last effort on one's drawing.
The letter to one's Susie should be a rest, do you think? It is always
more or less comforting, but not rest; it means further employment of
the already extremely strained sensational power. What one really
wants! I believe the only true restorative is the natural one, the actual
presence of one's "helpmeet." The far worse than absence of mine
reverses rest, and what is more, destroys one's power of receiving from
others or giving.
How much love of mine have others lost, because that poor sick child
would not have the part of love that belonged to her!
I am very anxious about your eyes too. For any favor don't write more
extracts just now. The books are yours forever and a day--no loan;
enjoy any bits that you find enjoyable, but don't copy just now.
I left Rome yesterday, and am on my way home; but, alas! might as
well be on my way home from Cochin China, for any chance I have of

speedily arriving. Meantime your letters will reach me here with speed,
and will be a great comfort to me, if they don't fatigue you.
* * * * *

"FRONDES AGRESTES."
PERUGIA, 12th June (1874).
I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering of yours,
and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says.
Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection should take
with reference to my proposed re-publication. I mean to take the botany,
the geology, the Turner defense, and the general art criticism of
"Modern Painters," as four separate books, cutting out nearly all the
preaching, and a good deal of the sentiment. Now what you find
pleasant and helpful to you of general maxim or reflection, must be of
some value; and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me
what no other reader could have done, least of all I myself; keep
together, that is to say, what may be right and true of those youthful
thoughts. I should like you to add anything that specially pleases you,
of whatever kind; but to keep the notion of your book being the
didactic one as opposed to the other picturesque and scientific volumes,
will I think help you in choosing between passages when one or other
is to be rejected.
* * * * *

HOW HE FELL AMONG THIEVES.
ASSISI, 17th June (1874).
I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to write to you.
Very difficult and melancholy work, deciphering what remains of a

great painter[9] among stains of ruin and blotches of repair, of five
hundred years' gathering. It makes me sadder than idleness, which is
saying much.
I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of your last letters,
about the difficulty I had in unpacking my mind. That is true; one of
my chief troubles at present is with the quantity of things I want to say
at once. But you don't know how I find things I laid by carefully in it,
all moldy and moth-eaten when I take them out; and what a lot of
mending and airing they need, and what a wearisome and bothering
business it is compared to the early packing,--one used to be so proud
to get things into the corners neatly!
I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I'm in a horrible inn kept
by a Garibaldian bandit; and the various sorts of disgusting dishes sent
up to look like a dinner, and to be charged for, are a daily increasing
horror and amazement to me. They succeed in getting everything bad;
no exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe,
anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive trees, and
the oil's bad; there are no such lovely cattle elsewhere in the world,