Hortus Inclusus Part 2

REGRETS.

a.s.sISI, _June 9th_ (1874).

Yes, I am a little oppressed just now with overwork, nor is this avoidable. I am obliged to leave all my drawings unfinished as the last days come, and the point possible of approximate completion fatally contracts, every hour to a more ludicrous and warped mockery of the hope in which one began. It is impossible not to work against time, and _that_ is killing. It is not labor itself, but compet.i.tive, anxious, disappointed labor that dries one's soul out.

But don't be frightened about me, you sweet Susie. I know when I _must_ stop; forgive and pity me only, because sometimes, nay often my letter (or word) to Susie must be sacrificed to the last effort on one's drawing.

The letter to one's Susie should be a rest, do you think? It is always more or less comforting, but not rest; it means further employment of the already extremely strained sensational power. What one really wants! I believe the only true restorative is the natural one, the actual presence of one's "helpmeet." The far worse than absence of mine _reverses_ rest, and what is more, destroys one's power of receiving from others or giving.

How much love of mine have _others_ lost, because that poor sick child would not have the part of love that belonged to her!

I am very anxious about your eyes too. For any favor don't write more extracts just now. The books are yours forever and a day--no loan; enjoy any bits that you find enjoyable, but don't copy just now.

I left Rome yesterday, and am on my way home; but, alas! might as well be on my way home from Cochin China, for any chance I have of speedily arriving. Meantime your letters will reach me here with speed, and will be a great comfort to me, if they don't fatigue _you_.

"FRONDES AGRESTES."

PERUGIA, _12th June_ (1874).

I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering of yours, and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says.

Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection should take with reference to my proposed re-publication. I mean to take the botany, the geology, the Turner defense, and the general art criticism of "Modern Painters," as four separate books, cutting out nearly all the preaching, and a good deal of the sentiment. Now what you find pleasant and helpful to you of general maxim or reflection, _must_ be of some value; and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me what no other reader could have done, least of all I myself; keep together, that is to say, what may be right and true of those youthful thoughts. I should like you to add anything that specially pleases you, of whatever kind; but to keep the notion of your book being the didactic one as opposed to the other picturesque and scientific volumes, will I think help you in choosing between pa.s.sages when one or other is to be rejected.

HOW HE FELL AMONG THIEVES.

a.s.sISI, _17th June_ (1874).

I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to write to you. Very difficult and melancholy work, deciphering what remains of a great painter[9] among stains of ruin and blotches of repair, of five hundred years' gathering. It makes me sadder than idleness, which is saying much.

I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of your last letters, about the difficulty I had in unpacking my mind. That is true; one of my chief troubles at present is with the quant.i.ty of things I want to say at once. But you don't know how I find things I laid by carefully in it, all moldy and moth-eaten when I take them out; and what a lot of mending and airing they need, and what a wearisome and bothering business it is compared to the early packing,--one used to be so proud to get things into the corners neatly!

I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I'm in a horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit; and the various sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and to be charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amazement to me. They succeed in getting _everything_ bad; no exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive trees, and the oil's bad; there are no such lovely cattle elsewhere in the world, and the b.u.t.ter's bad; half the country people are shepherds, but there's no mutton; half the old women walk about with a pig tied to their waists, but there's no pork; the vine grows wild anywhere, and the wine would make my teeth drop out of my head if I took a gla.s.s of it; there are no strawberries, no oranges, no melons, the cherries are as hard as their stones, the beans only good for horses, or Jack and the beanstalk, and this is the size of the biggest asparagus--

[Ill.u.s.tration: hand-drawn sketch of asparagus stalk]

I live here in a narrow street ten feet wide only, winding up a hill, and it was full this morning of sheep as close as they could pack, at least a thousand, as far as the eye could reach,--tinkle tinkle, bleat bleat, for a quarter of an hour.

[Footnote 9: Cimabue.]

IN PARADISE.

a.s.sISI, SACRISTAN'S CELL, _25th June_ (1874).

This letter is all upside down, and this first page written last; for I didn't like something I had written about myself last night when I was tired, and have torn it off.

That star you saw beat like a heart must have been a dog star. A planet would not have twinkled. Far mightier, he, than any planet; burning with his own planetary host doubtless round him; and, on some speckiest of the specks of them, evangelical persons thinking our sun was made for _them_.

Ah, Susie, I do not pa.s.s, unthought of, the many sorrows of which you kindly tell me, to show me--for that is in your heart--how others have suffered also.

But, Susie, _you_ expect to see your Margaret again, and you will be happy with her in heaven. I wanted my Rosie _here_. In heaven I mean to go and talk to Pythagoras and Socrates and Valerius Publicola. I shan't care a bit for Rosie there, she needn't think it. What will gray eyes and red cheeks be good for _there_?

These pious sentiments are all written in my sacristan's cell.

This extract book[10] of yours will be most precious in its help to me, provided it is kept within somewhat narrow limits. As soon as it is done I mean to have it published in a strong and pretty but _cheap_ form, and it must not be too bulky. Consider, therefore, not only what you like, but how far and with whom each bit is likely to find consent and service. You will have to choose perhaps, after a little while, among what you have already chosen. I mean to leave it _wholly_ in your hands; it is to be Susie's choice of my writings.

Don't get into a flurry of responsibility, but don't at once write down all you have a mind to; I know you'll find a good deal! for you are exactly in sympathy with me in all things.

[Footnote 10: "Frondes Agrestes."]

a.s.sISI, _9th July, 1874_.

Your lovely letters are always a comfort to me; and not least when you tell me you are sad. You would be far less in sympathy with me if you were not, and in the "everything right" humor of some, even of some really good and kind persons, whose own matters are to their mind, and who understand by "Providence" the power which particularly takes care of _them_. This favoritism which goes so sweetly and pleasantly down with so many pious people is the chief of all stumbling-blocks to _me_. I must pray for everybody or n.o.body, and can't get into any conceptions of relation between Heaven and _me_, if not also between Heaven and earth, (and why Heaven should allow hairs in pens I can't think).

I take great care of myself, be quite sure of that, Susie; the worst of it is, here in a.s.sisi everybody else wants me to take care of them.

Catharine brought me up as a great treat yesterday at dinner, ham dressed with as much garlic as could be stewed into it, and a plate of raw figs, telling me I was to eat them together!

The sun is changing the entire mountains of a.s.sisi into a hot bottle with no flannel round it; but I can't get a ripe plum, peach, or cherry. All the milk turns sour, and one has to eat one's meat at its toughest or the thunder gets into it next day.