Hortus Inclusus | Page 8

About the Narcissus, please. I want them for my fishpond stream rather
than for the bee-house one. The fishpond stream is very doleful, and
wants to dance with daffodils if they would come and teach it. How
happy we are in our native streams. A thunder-storm swelled the Tiber
yesterday, and it rolled over its mill weirs in heaps, literally, of tossed
water, the size of haycocks, but black brown like coffee with the
grounds in it, mixed with a very little yellow milk. In some lights the
foam flew like cast handfuls of heavy gravel. The chief flowers here are
only broom and bindweed, and I begin to weary for my heather and for
my Susie; but oh dear, the ways are long and the days few.
* * * * *
LUCCA, 29th July (1874).
I'm not going to be devoured when I come, by anybody, unless you like
to. I shall come to your window with the birds, to be fed myself.
And please at present always complain to me whenever you like. It is
the over boisterous cheerfulness of common people that hurts me; your
sadness is a help to me.
You shall have whatever name you like for your book provided you
continue to like it after thinking over it long enough. You will not like
"Gleanings," because you know one only gleans refuse--dropped
ears--that other people don't care for. You go into the garden and gather
with choice the flowers you like best. That is not gleaning!
* * * * *
LUCCA, 10th August (1874).

I have been grieved not to write to you; but the number of things that
vex me are so great just now, that unless by false effort I could write
you nothing nice. It is very dreadful to live in Italy, and more dreadful
to see one's England and one's English friends, all but a field or two,
and a stream or two, and a one Susie and one Dr. Brown, fast becoming
like Italy and the Italians.
I have too much sympathy with your sorrow to write to you of it. What
I have not sympathy with, is your hope; and how cruel it is to say this!
But I am driven more and more to think there is to be no more good for
a time, but a reign of terror of men and the elements alike; and yet it is
so like what is foretold before the coming of the Son of man that
perhaps in the extremest evil of it I may some day read the sign that our
redemption draws nigh.
Now, Susie, invent a nice cluster of titles for the book and send them to
me to choose from, to Hôtel de l'Arno, Florence. I must get that out
before the day of judgment, if I can. I'm so glad of your sweet flatteries
in this note received to-day.
* * * * *
FLORENCE, 25th August (1874).
I have not been able to write to you, or any one lately, whom I don't
want to tease, except Dr. Brown, whom I write to for counsel. My time
is passed in a fierce steady struggle to save all I can every day, as a
fireman from a smoldering ruin, of history or aspect. To-day, for
instance, I've been just in time to ascertain the form of the cross of the
Emperor, representing the power of the State in the greatest political
fresco of old times--fourteenth century. By next year, it may be next
month, it will have dropped from the wall with the vibration of the
railway outside, and be touched up with new gilding for the mob.
I am keeping well, but am in a terrible spell (literally, "spell,"
enchanted maze, that I can't get out of) of work.
I was a little scandalized at the idea of your calling the book

"word-painting." My dearest Susie, it is the chief provocation of my life
to be called a "word-painter" instead of a thinker. I hope you haven't
filled your book with descriptions. I thought it was the thoughts you
were looking for?
"Posie" would be pretty. If you ask Joanie she will tell you perhaps too
pretty for me, and I can't think a bit to-night, for instead of robins
singing I hear only blaspheming gamesters on the other side of the
narrow street.
* * * * *
FLORENCE, 1st September (1874).
Don't be in despair about your book. I am sure it will be lovely. I'll see
to it the moment I get home, but I've got into an entirely unexpected
piece of business here, the interpretation of a large chapel[11] full of
misunderstood, or not at all understood, frescoes; and I'm terribly afraid
of breaking down, so much drawing has