[Aldershot.] March 22, 1870.
My Darling Mother,
I am so very much pleased that you think better of Benjy[36] now. As I have plenty of time, I mean to go through it, and soften Benjy down a bit. He is an awful boy, and I think I can make him less repulsive. The fact is the story was written in fragments, and I was anxious to show that it was not a little boyish roughness that I meant to make a fuss and "point a moral" about—nor did I want to go into fine-drawn questions about the cruelties of sport, and when I came to join the bits into a whole and copy out, I found I had overproved my point and made Benjy a fearful brute. But there are some hideously cruel boys, and I do think a certain devilish type of cruelty is generally combined with a certain lowness and meanness of general style—even in born gentlemen—and though quite curable, I would like to hear what the boys think of it, if it would not bore them to read it. But I certainly shall soften Benjy down—and will attend to all your hints—and put in the "Mare's Nest" (many thanks!). Tell D. I do not know how I could alter about Rough—unless I take out his death altogether—but beg her to observe that he was not the least neglected as to food, etc.; what he died of was joy after his anxiety....
[36] Included in "Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, and other Tales," vol. vii.
[Aldershot.] May Day, 1870.
... I have got some work into my head which has been long seething there, and will, I think, begin to take shape. It is about flowers—the ancestry of flowers; whether the flowers will tell their own family records, or what the plot will be I have not yet planned, and it will take me some time to collect my data, but the family histories of flowers which came originally from old Mexico in the days of Montezuma, and the floating gardens, and the warriors who wore nosegays, and the Indians who paddled the floating gardens on which they lived up the waters of that gorgeous city with early vegetables for the chiefs—would be rather weird! And then the strange fashions and universal prevalence of Japanese gardening. The wistaria rioting in the hedges, and the great lilies wild over the hills. Ditto the camellias. With all the queer little thatched Japanese huts that always have lumps of iris on the top, which the Japanese ladies use for bandoline. Then the cacti would have queer legends of South America, where the goats climb the steep rocks and dig them up with their horns and roll them down into the valley, and kick and play with them till the spines get rubbed off, and then devour them at leisure. I give you these instances in case anything notable about flowers comes in your way, "when found to make a note of" for me....
To Mrs. Elder.
Ecclesfield, October 25, 1871.
My Dearest Aunt Horatia,
Your letter was shown to me, and I cannot tell you how much obliged to you I am for the prospect of the gold thimble, a thing I have always wished to possess.