Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising; private codes, generally kept in cipher for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties—lessons, parish work, and so forth.
I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder if I really keep them better? But if not, may God, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives us in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which God lights for most of us while life is young?
In spite, however, of my sister's contentment with her lot, and the kindness and hospitality shown to her at this time by relations and friends, her position was far from comfortable; and Madam Liberality's hospitable soul was sorely tried by having no home to which she could welcome her friends, whilst her fragile body battled against constantly moving from one house to another when she was often unfit to do anything except keep quiet and at rest. She was not able to write much, and during 1880 only contributed two poems to Aunt Judy's Magazine, "Grandmother's Spring," and "Touch Him if You Dare."
To the following volume (1881) she again was only able to give two other poems, "Blue and Red; or the Discontented Lobster," and "The Mill Stream"; but these are both much longer than her usual Verses for Children—and, indeed, are better suited for older readers—though the former was such a favourite with a three-year-old son of one of our bishops that he used to repeat it by heart.
In November 1881, Aunt Judy's Magazine passed into the hands of a fresh publisher, and a new series was begun, with a fresh outside cover which Mr. Caldecott designed for it. Julie was anxious to help in starting the new series, and she wrote "Daddy Darwin's Dovecot" for the opening number. All the scenery of this is drawn from the neighbourhood of Ecclesfield, where she had lately been spending a good deal of her time, and so refreshed her memory of its local colouring. The story ranks equal to "Jackanapes" as a work of literary art, though it is an idyll of peace instead of war, and perhaps, therefore, appeals rather less deeply to general sympathies; but I fully agree with a noted artist friend, who, when writing to regret my sister's death, said, "'Jackanapes' and 'Daddy Darwin' I have never been able to read without tears, and hope I never may." Daddy had no actual existence, though his outward man may have been drawn from types of a race of "old standards" which is fast dying out. The incident of the theft and recovery of the pigeons is a true one, and happened to a flock at the old Hall farm near our home, which also once possessed a luxuriant garden, wherein Phoebe might have found all the requisites for her Sunday posy. A "tea" for the workhouse children used to be Madam Liberality's annual birthday feast; and the spot where the gaffers sat and watched the "new graft" strolling home across the fields was so faithfully described by Julie from her favourite Schroggs Wood, that when Mr. Caldecott reproduced it in his beautiful illustration, some friends who were well acquainted with the spot, believed that he had been to Ecclesfield to paint it.
ECCLESFIELD HALL
Julie's health became somewhat better in 1882, and for the Magazine this year she wrote as a serial tale "Lætus Sorte Meâ; or, the Story of a Short Life." This was not republished as a book until four days before my sister's death, and it has become so well known from appearing at this critical time that I need say very little about it. A curious mistake, however, resulted from its being published then, which was that most of the reviewers spoke of it as being the last work that she wrote, and commented on the title as a singularly appropriate one, but those who had read the tale in the Magazine were aware that it was written three years previously, and that the second name was put before the first, as it was feared the public would be perplexed by a Latin title. The only part of the book that my sister added during her illness was Leonard's fifth letter in Chapter X. This she dictated, because she could not write. She had intended to give Saint Martin's history when the story came out in the Magazine, but was hindered by want of space.[32] Many people admire Leonard's story as much as that of Jackanapes, but to me it is not quite so highly finished from an artistic point of view. I think it suffered a little from being written in detachments from month to month. It is, however, almost hypercritical to point out defects, and the circumstances of Leonard's life are so much more within the range of common experiences than those of Jackanapes, it is probable that the lesson of the Short Life, during which a V.C. was won by the joyful endurance of inglorious suffering, may be more helpful to general readers than that of the other brief career, in which Jackanapes, after "one crowded hour of glorious life," earned his crown of victory.
[32] Letter, Oct. 5, 1882.
On one of Julie's last days she expressed a fear to her doctor that she was very impatient under her pain, and he answered, "Indeed you are not; I think you deserve a Victoria Cross for the way in which you bear it." This reply touched her very much, for she knew the speaker had not read Leonard's Story; and we used to hide the proof-sheets of it, for which she was choosing head-lines to the pages, whenever her doctors came into the room, fearing that they would disapprove of her doing any mental work.