Hortus Inclusus | Page 4

See "Præterita", Vol. III., Chap. vii.]
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NAPLES, 2d May, 1874.
I heard of your great sorrow[7] from Joan six days ago, and have not
been able to write since. Nothing silences me so much as sorrow, and
for this of yours I have no comfort. I write only that you may know that
I am thinking of you, and would help you if I could. And I write to-day
because your lovely letters and your 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, HÔTEL 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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