Hortus Inclusus | Page 4

lovely old age have been forced into my thoughts often by dreadful contrast during these days in Italy. You who are so purely and brightly happy in all natural and simple things, seem now to belong to another and a younger world. And your letters have been to me like the pure air of Yewdale Crags breathed among the Pontine Marshes; but you must not think I am ungrateful for them when I can't answer. You can have no idea how impossible it is for me to do all the work necessary even for memory of the things I came here to see; how much escapes me, how much is done in a broken and weary way. I am the only author on art who does the work of illustration with his own hand; the only one therefore--and I am not insolent in saying this--who has learned his business thoroughly; but after a day's drawing I assure you one cannot sit down to write unless it be the merest nonsense to please Joanie. Believe it or not, there is no one of my friends whom I write so scrupulously to as to you. You may be vexed at this, but indeed I can't but try to write carefully in answer to all your kind words, and so sometimes I can't at all. I must tell you, however, to-day, what I saw in the Pompeian frescoes--the great characteristic of falling Rome, in her furious desire of pleasure, and brutal incapability of it. The walls of Pompeii are covered with paintings meant only to give pleasure, but nothing they represent is beautiful or delightful, and yesterday, among other calumniated and caricatured birds, I saw one of my Susie's pets, a peacock; and he had only eleven eyes in his tail. Fancy the feverish wretchedness of the humanity which in mere pursuit of pleasure or power had reduced itself to see no more than eleven eyes in a peacock's tail! What were the Cyclops to this?
I hope to get to Rome this evening, and to be there settled for some time, and to have quieter hours for my letters.
[Footnote 7: The death of Miss Margaret Beever.]
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ROME, H?TEL DE RUSSIE, 8th May, '74.
I have your sweet letter about Ulysses, the leaves, and the Robins. I have been feeling so wearily on this journey, the want of what--when I had it, I used--how often! to feel a burden--the claim of my mother for at least a word, every day. Happy, poor mother, with two lines--and I--sometimes--nay--often--thinking it hard to have to stay five minutes from what I wanted to do--to write them.
I am despising, now, in like senseless way, the privilege of being able to write to you and of knowing that it will please you to hear--even that I can't tell you anything! which I cannot, this morning--but only, it is a little peace and rest to me to write to my Susie.
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ROME, 23d May, 1874.
A number of business letters and the increasing instinct for work here as time shortens, have kept me too long from even writing a mere mamma-note to you; though not without thought of you daily.
I have your last most lovely line about your sister--and giving me that most touching fact about poor Dr. John Brown, which I am grieved and yet thankful to know, that I may better still reverence his unfailing kindness and quick sympathy. I have a quite wonderful letter from him about you; but I will not tell you what he says, only it is so very, very true, and so very, very pretty, you can't think.
I have written to my bookseller to find for you, and send a complete edition of "Modern Painters," if findable. If not, I will make my assistant send you down my own fourth and fifth volumes, which you can keep till I come for them in the autumn.
There is nothing now in the year but autumn and winter. I really begin to think there is some terrible change of climate coming upon the world for its sin, like another deluge. It will have its rainbow, I suppose, after its manner--promising not to darken the world again, and then not to drown.
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ROME, 24th May, 1874 (Whit-Sunday).
I have to-day, to make the day whiter for me, your lovely letter of the 15th,[8] telling me your age. I am so glad it is no more; you are only thirteen years older than I, and much more able to be my sister than mamma, and I hope you will have many years of youth yet. I think I must tell you in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said, or part of it at least. He said you had the