Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books Part 23

_Ecclesfield, Sheffield._ July 23, 1880.

MY DEAR MR. CALDECOTT,

I am sending you a number of "Jackanapes" in case you have lost your other.

I have made marks against places from some of which I think you could select easy scenes; I mean easy in the sense of being on the lines where your genius has so often worked.

I will put some notes about each at the end of my letter. What I now want to ask you is whether you _could_ do me a few ill.u.s.trations of the vignette kind for "Jackanapes," so that it might come out at Christmas. Christmas _ought_ to mean October! so it would of course be very delightful if you could have completed them in September--and as soon as might be. But do not WORRY your brain about dates. I would rather give it up than let you feel the fetters of Time, which, when they drag one at one's work, makes the labour double. But if you will begin them, and _see_ if they come pretty readily to your fingers, I shall only too well understand it if after all you can't finish in time for this season!

In short I won't press _you_ for all my wishes!--but I do feel rather disposed to struggle for a good place amongst the hosts of authors who are besetting you; and as I am not physically or mentally well const.i.tuted for surviving amongst the fittest, if there is _much shoving_ (!) I want to place my plea on record.

So will you try?--

It was very kind of you and your wife to have us to see your sketches.

I hope you are taking in ozone in the country.

Yours ever, J.H.E.

[NOTES.]

Respectfully suggested scenes to choose from.

Initial T out of the old tree on the green, with perhaps _to secure portrait_ the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag _a la_ an old Chelsea Pensioner.

1. A lad carrying his own long-bow (by regulation his own height) and trudging by his pack-horse's side, the horse laden with arrows for Flodden Field (September 9, 1513). Small figures back view (!) going westwards--poetic bit of moorland and sky.

2. If you _like_--a portrait of the little Miss Jessamine in Church.

3 to 5. You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type). Old inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ones) scattered in the fray.

The Black Captain, with his hand on his horse's mane, bigger--(so as to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or _small_ on his horse stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused behind Master Johnson (page 707).

6. Pretty vignetted portrait of the little Miss J., three-quarter length, about size of page 29 of _Old Christmas_. Scene, girl's bedroom--she with her back to mirror, face buried in her hands, "crying for the Black Captain"; her hair down to just short of her knees, the back of her hair catching light from window and reflected in the gla.s.s. Old Miss Jessamine (portrait) talking to her "like a Dutch uncle" about the letter on the dressing-table; aristocratic outline against window, and (as Queen Anne died) "with one finger up"!!!!! (These portraits would make No. 2 needless probably.)

7. Not worth while. I had thought of a very small quay scene with slaves, a "black ivory"--and a Quaker's back! (Did you ever read the correspondence between Charles Napier and Mr. Gurney on Trade and War?)

8. A very pretty elopement please! Finger-post pointing to Scotland--Captain _not_ in uniform of course.

9 or 10--hardly; too close to the elopement which we _must_ have!

11. You are sure to make that pretty.

12. Might be a very small shallow vignette of the field of Waterloo. I will look up the hours, etc., and send you word.

13. As you please--or any part of this chapter.

16. I mean a tombstone like this [_Sketch of flat-topped tombstone_], very common with us.

17, 18. I leave to you.

19 or 20, might suit you.

21. Please let me try and get you a photo of a handsome old general!!

I think I will try for General MacMurdo, an old Indian hero of the most slas.h.i.+ng description and great good looks.

22. I thought some comic scene of a gentleman in feather-bed and nightcap with a paper--"Rumours of Invasion" conspicuous--might be vignetted into a corner.

23 might be fine, and go down side of page; quite alone as vignette, or distant indication of Jackanapes looking after or up at him.

24. Should you require military information for any scene here?

25-26. I hope you could see your way to 26. Back view of horses--"Lollo the 2nd" and a screw, Tony lying over his holding on by the neck and trying to get at his own reins from Jackanapes' hand.

J.'s head turned to him in full glow of the sunset against which they ride; distant line of dust and "retreat" and curls of smoke.

The next chapter requires perhaps a good deal of "war material" to paint with, and strictly soldier-type faces.

27. The cobbler giving his views might be a good study with an advertis.e.m.e.nt somewhere of the old "souled and healed cheap."

28. This scene I think you might like, and please on the wall have a hatchment with "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (excuse my bad Latinity if I have misquoted).

29 would make a pretty scene, I think, and

30 would make me too happy if you scattered pretty groups and back views of the young people, "the Major" and one together, in one of your perfect bits of rural English summer-time.

If there _were_ to be a small vignette at the end, I should like a wayside Calvary with a shadowy Knight in armour, lance in rest, approaching it from along a long flat road.

Now please (it is nearly post time!) forgive how very badly I have written these probably confusing suggestions. I am not very well, and my head and _thumb_ both fail me.

If you can do it, do it as you like. I will send you a photo of an officer who will do for the Black Captain, and will try and secure a General also. If you could lay your hands on the Ill.u.s.trated Number that was "extra" for the death of the Prince Imperial--a R.A. officer close by the church door, helping in one end of the coffin, is a very typical military face.

Yours, J.H.E.

TO A.E.

July 30, 1880.

Oh, with what sympathy I hear you talk of Shakespeare. Nay! not Dante and not Homer--not Chaucer--and not Goethe--"not Lancelot nor another"

are really his peers.

Here blossom sonnets that one puts on a par with his--there, _in another man's_ work the illimitable panorama of varied and life-like men and women "merely players," may draw laughter and tears (Crabbe, and much of d.i.c.kens and other men, and Don Quixote). His coa.r.s.e wit and satire and shrewdness, when he is least pure, may I suppose find rivals in some of the eighteenth or seventeenth century English writers, and in the marvellous brilliancy of French ones. When he is purest and highest I cannot think of a Love Poet to touch him.