But I won't inflict any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction in my inside that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned—not the ignorant—who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the glory of the rising sun—though your mind might overflow with awe and admiration. As to the last verse—that a "cot" should ever be "cheerful" which "serves him for" washhouse, kitchen, nursery and all—is a triumph of the "softening influence of use"—and I concede it to you! But where "he reigns as a king his toils forgot" is, I am convinced, at the Black Bull with highly-drugged beer!!!!!!
Now am I not a Brute?
And yet it is very pretty, and—strange to say—the class to whom I believe it would be acceptable, is the class of whom I believe it is not (typically) true, and perhaps it is good for every class to have an ideal of its own circumstances before its eyes. But I don't think it is good for rich people's children to grow up with the belief that twelve shillings a week, and cider and a pig, are the wisest and happiest earthly circumstances in which humanity with large families can be placed for their temporal and spiritual progress. I don't think it ever leads to a wish in the young Squire to exchange with Hodge for the good of his own soul, but I think it fosters a fixed conviction that Hodge has nothing to complain of, plus being placed at a particular advantage as to his eternal concerns.
Will you ever forgive me? I like the descriptive parts so much, the "rival cocks at dawn"—the "autumn's mist and spring's soft rain," the team that "turn in their trace in the furrow's face," and the life-like descriptions in verse 4. It is as true to one's observation as it is graceful....
Your loving niece,
J.H.E.
To A.E.
Ecclesfield. May 14, 1876.
[Sketch.] Do you remember Whitley Hall? I used to be so fond of the place when I was a child, and no one lived there but an old woman—old Esther Woodhouse—with a face like an ideal witch—at the lodge. As you know I always hated writing down—but long before I accomplished a tale on paper I wrote a novel in my head to Whitley Hall, and used to walk about in the wood there, by the pond—to think it!