Ecclesfield. August 24, 1881.
... André has made the "rough-book" (water colours) of "A week spent in a Glass Pond, By the Great Water Beetle." I only had it a few hours, but I scrambled a bit of the title-page on to the enclosed sheet of green paper for you to see. It is entirely in colours. The name of the tale is beautifully done in letters, the initials of which bud and blossom into the Frogbit (which shines in white masses on the Aldershot Canal!) [Sketch.] To the left the "Water Soldier" (Stratiotes Aloides) with its white blossoms. At the foot of the page "the Great Water Beetle" himself, writing his name in the book—Dyticus Marginalis. There is another blank page at the beginning of the book, where the beetle is standing blacking himself in a penny ink-pot!!!! and another where he is just turning the leaves of a book with his antennæ—the book containing the name of the chromolithographers. He has adopted almost all my ideas, and I told him (though it is not in the tale) "I should like a dog to be with the children in all the pictures, and a cat to be with the old naturalist,"—and he has such a dog (a white bull terrier) [sketch], who waits on the woodland path for them in one picture, noofles in the colander at the water-beasts in another, examines the beetle in a third, stands on his hind legs to peep into the aquarium in a fourth, etc. But I cannot describe it all to you. I have asked to have it again by and by, and will send you a coloured sketch or two from it. I am so much pleased!... Perhaps the best part of the book is the cover. It is very beautiful. The Bell Glass Aquarium (lights in the water beautifully done) carries the title, and reeds, flowers, newts, beetles, dragon-flies, etc., etc., are grouped with wondrous fancy! This entirely his own design....
Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
August 30, 1881.
The four Jones children and their nurse are in lodgings at a place called Whitley on the coast, not far from here. Somebody from here goes to see them most days. To-day Mrs. J. and I went. As we were starting dear "Bob" (the collie who used to belong to the Younghusbands) was determined to go. Mrs. Jones said No. He bolted into the cab and crouched among my petticoats; I begged for him, and he was allowed. At the station he was in such haste he would jump into a 2nd class carriage, and we had hard work to get him out. (This is rather funny, because she usually goes there 2nd class with the children: and he looked at the 1st and would hardly be persuaded to get in.) Well, the coast is rather like Filey, and such a wind was blowing, and such white horses foamed and fretted, and sent up wildly tossed fountains of foam against the rocks, and such grey and white waves swallowed up the sands! I ran and played with the children and the dog—and built a big sand castle ("Early English if not Delia Cruscan"!!), and by good-luck and much sharp hunting among the storm-wrack flung ashore among the foam, found four cork floats, and made the children four ships with paper sails, and had a glorious dose of oxygen and iodine. How strange are the properties of the invisible air! The air from an open window at Ecclesfield gives me neuralgia, and doubly so at Exeter. To-day the wild wind was driving huge tracts of foam across the sands in masses that broke up as they flew, and driving the sand itself after them like a dust-storm. I could barely stand on the slippery rocks, and yet my teeth seemed to settle in my jaws and my face to get pickled (!) and comforted by the wild (and very cold) blast.... Now to sweet repose, but I was obliged to tell you I had been within sound of the sea, aye! and run into and away from the waves, with children and a dog. This is better than a Bath Chair in Brompton Cemetery!...
Thornliebank, Glasgow. September 8, 1881.
... "It is good to be sib to" kindly Scots! and I am having a very pleasant visit. You know the place and its luxuries and hospitalities well.
I came from Newcastle last Friday, and (in a good hour, etc.) bore more in the travelling way than I have managed with impunity since I broke down. I came by the late express, got to Glasgow between 8 and 9 p.m., and had rather a hustle to to get a cab, etc. A nice old porter (as dirty and hairy as a Simian!) secured one at last with a cabby who jabbered in a tongue that at last I utterly lost the running of, and when he suddenly (and as it appeared indignantly!) remounted his box, whipped up, and drove off, leaving me and my boxes, I felt inclined to cry(!), and said piteously to the porter, "What does he say? I cannot understand him!" On which the old Ourang-Outang began to pat me on the shoulder with his paw, and explain loudly and slowly to my Sassenach ears, "He's jest telling ye—that 't'll be the better forrr ye—y'unnerstan'—to hev a caaaab that's got an i(ro)n railing on the tôp of it—for the sake of yourrr boxes." And in due time I was handed over to a cab with an iron railing, the Simian left me, and so friendly a young cabby (also dirty) took me in hand that I began to think he was drunk, but soon found that he was only exceedingly kind and lengthily conversational! When he had settled the boxes, put on his coat, argued out the Crums' family and their residences, first with me and then with his friends on the platform, we were just off when a thought seemed to strike him, and back he came to the open window, and saying "Ye'll be the better of havin' this ap"—scratched it up from the outside with nails like Nebuchadnezzar's. Whether my face looked as if I did not like it or what, I don't know, but down came the window again with a rattle, and he wagged the leather strap almost in my face and said, "there's hôals in't, an' ye can jest let it down to yer own satisfaction if ye fin' it gets clos." Then he rattled it up again, mounted the box, and off we went. Oh, such a jolting drive of six miles! Such wrenching over tramway lines! But I had my fine air-cushions, and my spine must simply be another thing to what it was six months back. Oh, he was funny! I found that he did not know the way to Thornliebank, but having a general idea, and a (no doubt just) faith in his own powers, he swore he did know, and utterly resented asking bystanders. After we got far away from houses, on the bleak roads in the dark night, I merely felt one must take what came. By and by he turned round and began to retrace his steps. I put out my head (as I did at intervals to his great disgust; he always pitched well into me—"We're aal right—just com—pôse yeself," etc.), but he assured me he'd only just gone by the gate. So by and by we drew up, no lights in the lodge, no answer to shouts—then he got down, and in the darkness I heard the gates grating as if they had not been opened for a century. Then under overhanging trees, and at last in the dim light I saw that the walls were broken down and weeds were thick round our wheels. I could bear it no longer, and put out my head again, and I shall never forget the sight. The moon was coming a little bit from behind the clouds, and showed a court-yard in which we had pulled up, surrounded with buildings in ruins, and overgrown with nettles and rank grass. We had not seen a human being since we left Glasgow, at least an hour before,—and of all the places to have one's throat cut in!! The situation was so tight a place, it really gave one the courage of desperation, and I ordered him to drive away at once. I believe he was half frightened himself, and the horse ditto, and never, never was I in anything so nearly turned over as that cab! for the horse got it up a bank. At last it was righted, but not an inch would my Scotchman budge till he'd put himself through the window and confounded himself in apologies, and in explanations calculated to convince me that, in spite of appearances, he knew the way to Thornliebank "pairfeckly well." "Noo, I do beg of ye not to be narrrr-vous. Do not give way to't. Ye may trust me entirely. Don't be discommodded in the least. I'm just pairfectly acquainted with the road. But it'll be havin' been there in the winter that's just misled me. But we're aal right." And all right he did eventually land me here! so late J. had nearly given me up.
To Mrs. Elder.