Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books | Page 5

inspired by some fine
woodcuts in a German "A B C book," that we could none of us then
read, and in later years some of her best efforts were suggested by
illustrations, and written to fit them. I know, too, that in arranging the
plots and wording of her stories she followed the rules that are pursued
by artists in composing their pictures. She found great difficulty in
preventing herself from "overcrowding her canvas" with minor
characters, owing to her tendency to throw herself into complete
sympathy with whatever creature she touched; and,
sometimes,--particularly in tales which came out as serials, when she
wrote from month to month, and had no opportunity of correcting the
composition as a whole,--she was apt to give undue prominence to
minor details, and throw her high lights on to obscure corners, instead
of concentrating them on the central point. These artistic rules kept her
humour and pathos,--like light and shade,--duly balanced, and made the
lights she "left out" some of the most striking points of her work.
[Illustration: POST MILL, DENNINGTON.]
But to go back to the stories she told us as children. Another of our
favourite ones related to a Cavalier who hid in an underground passage
connected with a deserted Windmill on a lonely moor. It is needless to
say that, as we were brought up on Marryat's Children of the New
Forest, and possessed an aunt who always went into mourning for King

Charles on January 30, our sympathies were entirely devoted to the
Stuarts' cause; and this persecuted Cavalier, with his big hat and boots,
long hair and sorrows, was our best beloved hero. We would always let
Julie tell us the "Windmill Story" over again, when her imagination
was at a loss for a new one. Windmills, I suppose from their
picturesqueness, had a very strong attraction for her. There were none
near our Yorkshire home, so, perhaps, their rarity added to their value
in her eyes; certain it is that she was never tired of sketching them, and
one of her latest note-books is full of the old mill at Frimley, Hants,
taken under various aspects of sunset and storm. Then Holland, with its
low horizons and rows of windmills, was the first foreign land she
chose to visit, and the "Dutch Story," one of her earliest written efforts,
remains an unfinished fragment; whilst "Jan of the Windmill" owes
much of its existence to her early love for these quaint structures.
It was not only in the matter of fairy tales that Julie reigned supreme in
the nursery, she presided equally over our games and amusements. In
matters such as garden-plots, when she and our eldest sister could each
have one of the same size, they did so; but, when it came to there being
one bower, devised under the bending branches of a lilac bush, then the
laws of seniority were disregarded, and it was "Julie's Bower." Here, on
benches made of narrow boards laid on inverted flower-pots, we sat
and listened to her stories; here was kept the discarded dinner-bell, used
at the funerals of our pet animals, and which she introduced into "The
Burial of the Linnet."[3] Near the Bower we had a chapel, dedicated to
St. Christopher, and a sketch of it is still extant, which was drawn by
our eldest sister, who was the chief builder and caretaker of the shrine;
hence started the funeral processions, both of our pets and of the stray
birds and beasts we found unburied. In "Brothers of Pity"[4] Julie gave
her hero the same predilection for burying that we had indulged in.
[Footnote 3: "Verses for Children, and Songs for Music."]
[Footnote 4: "Brothers of Pity, and other Tales of Beasts and Men."]
She invented names for the spots that we most frequented in our walks,
such as "The Mermaid's Ford," and "St. Nicholas." The latter covered a
space including several fields and a clear stream, and over this locality

she certainly reigned supreme; our gathering of violets and cowslips, or
of hips and haws for jam, and our digging of earth-nuts were limited by
her orders. I do not think she ever attempted to exercise her prerogative
over the stream; I am sure that, whenever we caught sight of a dark tuft
of slimy Batrachospermum in its clear depths, we plunged in to secure
it for Mother, whether Julie or any other Naiad liked it or no! But "the
splendour in the grass and glory in the flower" that we found in "St.
Nicholas" was very deep and real, thanks to all she wove around the
spot for us. Even in childhood she must have felt, and imparted to us, a
great deal of what she put into the hearts of the children in "Our
Field."[5] To