Hortus Inclusus | Page 8

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!
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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 H?tel 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.
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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.
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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 to be done at the same time. It has stranded botany and everything.
I was kept awake half of last night by drunken blackguards howling on the bridge of the Holy Trinity in the pure half-moonlight. This is the kind of discord I have to bear, corresponding to your uncongenial company. But, alas! Susie, you ought at ten years old to have more firmness, and to resolve that you won't be bored. I think I shall try to enforce it on you as a very solemn duty not to lie to people as the vulgar public do. If they bore you, say so, and they'll go away. That is the right state of things.
How am I to know that I don't bore you, when I come, when you're so civil to people you hate?
[Footnote 11: Spanish chapel in S. Maria Novella.]
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PASS OF BOCCHETTA, 1st October (1874).
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All that is lovely and wonderful in the Alps may be seen without