Your loving, J.H.E.
To Mrs. Howard.
Villa Ponente, Taunton.
Jan. 18, 1884.
My Dear Mrs. Howard,
In this Green Winter (and you know how I love a Green Winter!) you and all your kindness comes back so often to my mind. "Grenoside" is a closed leaf in my life as well as in yours, but it is one that I shall never forget so long as I can remember any of the things that have mitigated the pains of life for me, or added to its pleasures!—The bits of Green Winter I enjoyed with you did both—I hardly know which the most! For the pleasure was very great, and the benefit immeasurable—though now a fair amount of strength and "all my faculties" have come back to me, I feel what a very tedious companion I must have been when vegetating was all I was fit for, and I did such delightful vegetating between your sofa—and Greno Wood.
I want to tell you that I have some bits of you in what does the work of Greno Wood for me here—namely, my little patch of garden, looking out upon, what I call my big fields. For some time I feared the said bits were not going to live, but they have now, I really think, got grip of the ground. They are those offshoots of your American Bramble which you gave to me. And, ere long, I hope to sow a little paper of your poppy seed, and—if two years' keeping has not destroyed its vitality—I may, perchance, send you some of your own poppies to deck your London rooms. You cannot think—or rather I have no doubt that you can!—the refreshment my bit of garden is to me. It has become so dear, that (like an ugly face one loves and ceases to see plain!)—I find it so charming that it is with a start that I recognize that new friends see no beauty in—
[Sketch.]
This four-square patch!!
But A and B are "beds," and there are borders under the brick walls, and a rose-growing admirer of "Laetus" made a pilgrimage to see me!—and brought me nineteen grand climbing roses—and wall S faces nearly quite south, and on it grow Maréchal Niel, and Cloth of Gold, and Charles Lefebvre, and Triomphe de Rennes, and a Banksia and Souvenir de la Malmaison, and Cheshunt Hybrid, and a bit of the old Ecclesfield summer white rose—sent by Undine—and some Passion Flowers from dear old Miss Child in Derbyshire—and a Wistaria which the old lady of the lodgings we were in when we first came, tore up, and gave to me, with various other oddments from her garden! and—the American Bramble! And also, by the bye, a very lovely rose, "Fortune's Yellow,"—given to me by a friend in Hampshire.
Major Ewing declares my borders are "so full there is no room for more" which is very nasty of him!—but I have been very lucky in preserving, and even multiplying, the various contributions my bare patch has been blessed with! D. sent me a barrel of bits last autumn from the Vicarage, and Reginald sent me an excellent hamper from Bradfield, and Col. Yeatman sent me a hamper from Wiltshire, and several friends here have given me odds and ends, and our old friend Miss Sulivan, before she went abroad, sent me a farewell memorial of sweet things—Lavender, Rosemary, Cabbage Rose, Moss Rose, and Jessamine!!!—Oh! talking of sweet things, I must tell you—I went into the market here one day this last autumn, and of a man standing there—I bought a dug-up clump of bay tree—for 2/6.
You know how you indulged my senses with bay leaves when I was far from them? Well, I put my clump and myself into a cab and went home—where I pulled my clump to pieces and made eight nice plants of him—and set me a bay hedge, which has thriven so far very well!!! But then—'tis a Green Winter!