January 11, 1880.
Very dear to me are all your "tender and true" regards for the old home—the grey-green nest (more grey now than green!) a good deal changed and weatherbeaten, but not quite deserted—which is bound up with so much of our lives! It is one of the points on which we feel very much alike, our love for things, and places, and beasts!!! Another chord of sympathy was very strongly pulled by your writing of the "grey-green fields," and sending your love to them. No one I ever met has, I think, quite your sympathy with exactly what the external world of out-of-doors is to me and has been ever since I can remember. From days when the batch of us went-out-walking with the Nurses, and the round moss-edged holes in the roots of gnarled trees in the hedges, and the red leaves of Herb Robert in autumn, and all the inexhaustible wealth of hedges and ditches and fields, and the Shroggs, and the brooks, were happiness of the keenest kind—to now when it is as fresh and strong as ever; it has been a pleasure which has balanced an immense lot of physical pain, and which (between the affectation of the sort of thing being fashionable—and other people being destitute of the sixth sense to comprehend it—so that one feels a fool either way)—one rarely finds any one to whom one can comfortably speak of it, and be understanded of them. It is the one of my peculiarities which you have never doubted or misunderstood ever since we knew each other! I fancy we must (as it happens) see those things very much alike. That grey-green winter tone (for which I have a particular love) has been "on my mind" for days, and it was odd you should send your love to it. Don't think me daft to make so much of a small matter, I am sure it is not so to me. It is what would make me content in so many corners of the world! And I thought when I read your letter, that if we live to be old together, we have a common and an unalienable source of "that mysterious thing felicity" in any small sunny nook where we may end our days—so long as there is a bit of yellow sandstone to glow, or a birch stem to shine in the sun!...
[Grenoside.] February 21, 1880.
I whiled away my morning in bed to-day by going through the Lay of the Last Minstrel. There are lovely bits in it.
Reading away at Mrs. Browning lately has very much confirmed my notion that the fault of her things is lack of condensation. They are almost without exception too long. I doubt if one should ever leave less than fifty per cent. of a situation to one's readers' own imagination, if one aims at the highest class of readers. That swan song to Camöens from his dying lady would have been very perfect in five verses. As it is, one gets tired even of the exquisite refrain "Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" (an expression he had used about her eyes in a song, and which haunts her).
The other night we had Sergeant Dickinson up. He has lately settled in the village. He was in the Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava (17th Lancers), and also at Alma, Inkerman, and Sebastopol. He has also the Mutiny Medal and Good Conduct and Service one, so he is a good specimen. Curious luck, he never had a scratch (!). Says he has had far "worse wounds" performing in Gyms., as he was a good swordsman, etc. He told us some dear tales of old Sir Colin Campbell. He said his men idolized him, but their wives rather more so, and if any of them failed to send home remittances, the spouses wrote straight off to Sir Colin, who had up "Sandy or Wully" for remonstrance, and stopped his grog "till I hear again from your wife, man."
On one occasion he saw a drummer-boy drunk, and a sergeant near. Sir Colin: "Sergeant, does yon boy belong to your company?"