Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books Part 6

Peter Paul kissed the tears tenderly from her cheeks.

"Perhaps I shall when I am older, and have shaken off a few more of my whims into the sea. I'll come back yet, Leena, and live very near to you, and grow tulips, and be as good an old bachelor-uncle to your boy as Uncle Jacob is to me."

When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul took her once more into his arms.

"Good-bye, good sister," he said, "I have been back in my childhood again, and G.o.d knows that is both pleasant and good for one."

"And it is funny that you should say so," said Leena, smiling through her tears; "for when we were children you were never happy except in thinking of when you should be a man."

And with this salutary home-thrust (which thoroughly commonplace minds have such a provoking faculty for giving) Leena went back to her children and cattle.

Happy for the artistic temperament that can profit by such rebuffs!

PART III.

Yet, how few believe such doctrine springs From a poor root, Which all the winter sleeps here under foot, And hath no wings To raise it to the truth and light of things; But is stil trod By ev'ry wand'ring clod.

O Thou, Whose Spirit did at first inflame And warm the dead, And by a sacred incubation fed With life this frame, Which once had neither being, forme, nor name, Grant I may so Thy steps track here below,

That in these masques and shadows I may see Thy sacred way; And by those hid ascents climb to that day Which breaks from Thee, Who art in all things, though invisibly, "_The Hidden Flower_."

HENRY VAUGHAN.

One of the causes which helped to develop my sister's interest in flowers was the sight of the fresh ones that she met with on going to live in New Brunswick after her marriage. Every strange face was a subject for study, and she soon began to devote a note-book to sketches of these new friends, naming them scientifically from Professor Asa Gray's _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States_, whilst Major Ewing added as many of the Melicete names as he could glean from Peter, a member of the tribe, who had attached himself to the Ewings, and used constantly to come about their house.

Peter and his wife lived in a small colony of the Melicete Indians, which was established on the opposite side of the St. John River to that on which the Reka Dom stood. Mrs. Peter was the most skilful embroiderer in beads amongst her people, and Peter himself the best canoe-builder. He made a beautiful one for the Ewings, which they constantly used; and when they returned to England his regret at losing them was wonderfully mitigated by the present which Major Ewing gave him of an old gun; he declared no gentleman had ever thought of giving him such a thing before!

Julie introduced several of the North American flowers into her stories. The Tabby-striped Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he "can speak with other tongues," from his ability to converse with a squaw in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and was holding in his hand.

[Footnote 30: _Child Life._ Edited by J.G. Whittier. Nesbitt and Co.]

This allusion was only a slight one, but Julie wrote a complete story on one species of Trillium, having a special affection for the whole genus. Trilliums are amongst the North American herbaceous plants which have lately become fas.h.i.+onable, and easy to be bought in England; but ere they did so, Julie made some ineffectual attempts to transplant tubers of them into English soil; and the last letter she received from Fredericton contained a packet of red Trillium seeds, which came too late to be sown before she died. The species which she immortalized in "The Blind Hermit and the Trinity Flower," was _T.

erythrocarpum_. The story is a graceful legend of an old Hermit whose life was spent in growing herbs for the healing of diseases; and when he, in his turn, was struck with blindness, he could not reconcile himself to the loss of the occupation which alone seemed to make him of use in the world. "They also serve who only stand and wait" was a hard lesson to learn; every day he prayed for some Balm of Gilead to heal his ill, and restore his sight, and the prayer was answered, though not in the manner that he desired. First he was supplied with a serving-boy, who became eyes and feet to him, from grat.i.tude for cures which the Hermit had done to the lad himself; and then a vision was granted to the old man, wherein he saw a flower which would heal his blindness:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRILLIUM ERYTHROCARPUM.]

"And what was the Trinity Flower like, my Father?" asked the boy.

"It was about the size of Herb Paris, my son," replied the Hermit.

"But, instead of being fourfold every way, it numbered the mystic Three. Every part was threefold. The leaves were three, the petals three, the sepals three. The flower was snow-white, but on each of the three parts it was stained with crimson stripes, like white garments dyed in blood."

A root of this plant was sent to the Hermit by a heavenly messenger, which the boy planted, and anxiously watched the growth of, cheering his master with the hope--"Patience, my Father, thou shalt see yet!"

Meantime greater light was breaking in upon the Hermit's soul than had been there before:

"My son, I repent me that I have not been patient under affliction.

Moreover, I have set thee an ill example, in that I have murmured at that which G.o.d--Who knoweth best--ordained for me."

And, when the boy ofttimes repeated, "Thou shalt yet see," the Hermit answered, "If G.o.d will. When G.o.d will. As G.o.d will."

And at last, when the white bud opens, and the blood-like stains are visible within, he who once was blind sees, but his vision is opened on eternal Day.

In _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ for 1877 there is another Flower Legend, but of an English plant, the Lily of the Valley. Julie called the tale by the old-fas.h.i.+oned name of the flower, "Ladders to Heaven." The scenery is pictured from spots near her Yorks.h.i.+re home, where she was accustomed to seeing beautiful valleys blackened by smoke from iron-furnaces, and the woods beyond the church, where she liked to ramble, filled with desolate heaps of black shale, the refuse left round the mouths of disused coal and iron-stone pits. I remember how glad we were when we found the woolly-leaved yellow Mullein growing on some of these dreary places, and helping to cover up their nakedness.

In later years my sister heard with much pleasure that a mining friend was doing what he could to repair the damages he had made on the beauty of the country, by planting over the worked-out mines such trees and plants as would thrive in the poor and useless shale, which was left as a covering to once rich and valuable spots.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARY'S CHURCH, ECCLESFIELD.]

"Brothers of Pity" (_Aunt Judy's Magazine_, 1877) shows a deep and minute insight into the feelings of a solitary child, which one fancies Julie must have acquired by the process of contrast with her own surroundings of seven brethren and sisters. A similar power of perception was displayed in her verses on "An Only Child's Tea-party."

She remembered from experiences of our own childhood what a favourite game "funerals" is with those whose "whole vocation" is yet "endless imitation"; and she had watched the soldiers' children in camp play at it so often that she knew it was not only the bright covering of the Union Jack which made death lovely in their eyes, "Blind Baby" enjoyed it for the sake of the music; and even civilians' children, who see the service devoid of sweet sounds, and under its blackest and most revolting aspect, still are strangely fascinated thereby. Julie had heard about one of these, a lonely motherless boy, whose chief joy was to harness Granny to his "hea.r.s.e" and play at funeral processions round the drawing-room, where his dead mother had once toddled in her turn.

The boy in "Brothers of Pity" is the princ.i.p.al character, and the animals occupy minor positions. c.o.c.k-Robin only appears as a corpse on the scene; and Julie did not touch much on bird pets in any of her tales, chiefly because she never kept one, having too much sympathy with their powers and cravings for flight to reconcile herself to putting them in cages. The flight and recapture of c.o.c.ky in "Lob" were drawn from life, though the bird did not belong to her, but her descriptions of how he stood on the window-sill "scanning the summer sky with his fierce eyes, and flapping himself in the breeze,... bowed his yellow crest, spread his n.o.ble wings, and sailed out into the aether";... and his "dreams of liberty in the tree-tops," all show the light in which she viewed the practice of keeping birds in confinement. Her verses on "Three Little Nest-Birds" and her tale of the Thrush in "An Idyll of the Wood" bear witness to the same feeling.

Major Ewing remembers how often she used to wish, when pa.s.sing bird-shops, that she could "buy the whole collection and set them all free,"--a desire which suggests a quaint vision of her in Seven Dials, with a mixed flock of macaws, canaries, parrots and thrushes shrieking and flying round her head; but the wish was worthy of her in (what Mr. Howells called) "woman's heaven-born ignorance of the insuperable difficulties of doing right."

In this (1877) volume of _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ there is a striking portrait of another kind of animal pet, the "Kit" who is resolved to choose her own "cradle," and not to sleep where she is told. It is needless to say that she gets her own way, since,--

There's a soft persistence about a cat That even a little kitten can show.

She has, however, the grace to purr when she is pleased, which all kits and cats have not!

I'm happy in ev'ry hair of my fur, They may keep the hamper and hay themselves.

There are three other sets of verses in the volume, and all of them were originally written to old wood-cuts, but have since been re-ill.u.s.trated by Mr. Andre, and published by the S.P.C.K.

"A Sweet Little Dear" is the personification of a selfish girl, and "Master Fritz" of an equally selfish boy; but his sister Katerina is delicious by contrast, as she gives heed to his schemes--

And if you make nice feasts every day for me and Nickel, and never keep us waiting for our food, And always do everything I want, and attend to everything I say, I'm sure I shall almost always be good.

And if I'm naughty now and then, it'll most likely be your fault: and if it isn't, you mustn't mind; For even if I seem to be cross, you ought to know that I meant to be kind.

An old-fas.h.i.+oned fairy tale, "The Magician turned Mischief-maker,"

came out in 1877; and a short domestic tale called "A Bad Habit"; but Julie was unable to supply any long contributions this year, as in April her seven-years home at Aldershot was broken up in consequence of Major Ewing being ordered to Manchester, and her time was occupied by the labour and process of removing.

She took down the motto which she had hung over her hearth to temper her joy in the comfort thereof,--_Ut migraturus habita_,--and moved the scroll on to her next resting-place. No one knew better than she the depth of Mrs. Hemans' definition,--"What is home,--and where,--but _with the loving_--" and most truly can it be said that wherever Julie went she carried "Home" with her; freedom, generosity, and loving welcome were always to be found in her house,--even if upholstery and carpets ran short! It was a joke amongst some of her friends that though rose-coloured curtains and bevelled-edged looking-gla.s.ses could be counted upon in their bed-rooms, such commonplace necessities as soap might be forgotten, and the gla.s.ses be fastened in artistic corners of the rooms, rather than in such lights as were best adapted for shaving by!

Julie followed the course of the new lines in which her lot was cast most cheerfully, but the "mighty heart" could not really support the "little body"; and the fatigue of packing, combined with the effects of the relaxing climate of Bowdon, near Manchester, where she went to live, acted sadly upon her const.i.tution. She was able, however, after settling in the North, to pay more frequent visits to Ecclesfield than before; and the next work that she did for _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ bears evidences of the renewal of Yorks.h.i.+re a.s.sociations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH CAMP, ALDERSHOT.]

This story, "We and the World," was specially intended for boys, and the "law of contrast" in it was meant to be drawn between the career which Cripple Charlie spent at home, and those of the three lads who went out into "the world" together. Then, too, she wished, as I mentioned before, to contrast the national types of character in the English, Scotch, and Irish heroes, and to show the good contained in each of them. But the tale seemed to have been begun under an unlucky star. The first half, which came out in the first six numbers of the Magazine for 1878, is excellent as a matter of art; and as pictures of North-country life and scenery nothing can be better than Walnut-tree Farm and Academy, the Miser's Funeral, and the Bee-master's Visit to his Hives on the Moors, combined with attendance at Church on a hot Sunday afternoon in August (it need scarcely be said that the church is a real one). But, good though all this is, it is too long and "out of proportion," when one reflects how much of the plot was left to be unravelled in the other half of the tale. "The World" could not properly be squeezed into a s.p.a.ce only equal in size to that which had been devoted to "Home." If Julie had been in better health, she would have foreseen the dilemma into which she was falling, but she did not, and in the autumn of 1878 she had to lay the tale aside, for Major Ewing was sent to be stationed at York. "We" was put by until the following volume, but for this (1878) one she wrote two other short contributions,--"The Yellow Fly, a Tale with a Sting in it," and "So-so."

To those who do not read between the lines, "So-so" sounds (as he felt) "very soft and pleasant," but to me the tale is in Julie's saddest strain, because of the suspicion of hopelessness that pervades it;--a spirit which I do not trace in any of her other writings.

"Be sure, my child," said the widow to her little daughter, "that you always do just as you are told."