TO MR. BLACKWOOD.
WINDSOR,
8th March.
I entirely agree with you in respect to Miss Martineau. The curious limited folly of her apparent common-sense struck me in St. Andrews, and I thought it would make a good article. The autobiography seems much worse than could have been expected. How such a commonplace mind could have attained the literary position she did fills me with amazement. How did she manage it? I can only look and wonder. I will send the paper rather late, I fear, but I think it is worth while doing it.
Granville Hotel, Ramsgate,
March.
...Why — how — did Miss Martineau get such a reputation? There is nothing so puzzling. I wanted to have put in a word or two about some curious comments of hers on public-school life as illustrated by Tom Brown, and the enormous depravities and low vices caused by — the boys breakfasting alone, and cooking sausages for themselves! which I got in St. Andrews, when I first contemplated this paper; but I have not the book, and the article, I fear, is already too long.
Windsor,
19th April.
I send the concluding chapter of the ‘Divine Comedy.’ I am very sorry to have been so long with it, but the work has been serious. It has given me a great deal of trouble. One’s brain needs to be very clear to follow all the theological arguments that go on in heaven. One hopes it is less doctrinal now up there, or one would certainly prefer the sunny hillside low down in Purgatory! There is only a short chapter now on the Prose works (with a little about the Canzoniere) to complete the book, which is a very good pennyworth, so far as labour goes. I will slip over the prose as lightly as possible: with a bad cold, and a considerable degree of unwellness otherwise, and various domestic cares, the Convito, &c., are far from easy reading — and this east wind!...
In June of this year Mrs. Oliphant celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of her connection with ‘Maga.’ Mr. John Blackwood was, of course, the guest of the day; but there were many notable and interesting people present, few indeed of whom now survive.
Windsor,
June.
The day I had decided on for my party was the 16th [of June], that being Saturday and the most convenient day; but the 19th or 23rd would do equally well. Pray, as you will be the special guest, choose which you prefer, and let me know: if you would send me word by return of post it would be kind, as I must ask my people, and had forgotten how time is running on.
I propose to hold the solemnity at Magna Charta, a charming little house on the banks of the river which a friend of mine sometimes lends me.
From A. W. Kinglake to Mrs. Oliphant.
28 Hyde Park Place, Marble Arch, W.,
June 20, 1877.
Dear Mrs. Oliphant, — Your fete of yesterday was a charming one, and for once a fulfilment of what one imagined it might be if all should go well. You reigned so brightly over your guests that everybody seemed pleased.
And this morning I receive the Dante. I had learnt accidentally from Mr. Langford that you had kindly directed that a copy of the volume should be sent me, and am greatly pleased.
But there is yet another blessing that yesterday brought me. When I came back to London last evening, I went to one of my clubs to have some tea, and look — with but little hope — for a novel really attractive to me after having finished ‘Mrs. Arthur,’ and then — a happy surprise, for I had never been prepared for it by any advertisement — I found awaiting me ‘Carita’! As far as I have gone I like it immensely.
With my kind regards to your guest (Miss Blackwood) and to your sons — both such nice young fellows — believe me, dear Mrs. Oliphant, very truly yours,
A. W. Kinglake.
To Mr. Frank Wilson.
Windsor,
20th July.
...Don’t suppose for a moment (I am answering your last letter, which perhaps you have forgotten all about by this time) that we think, from our experience, Anglo-Indians to be bores. Your letters would be interesting even if everything about you was not so interesting as it is at home. I find your letters always you, which is the very best thing letters can be. At the same time, I can understand the temptation of getting gossipy and grumbly among yourselves. But it really is the same everywhere. All society is made up of small circles, and talks its own special small-talk. I at least have never found yet the bigger kind that some people talk grand about; and yours, though it may be flat to you, is piquant and strange to us....
Tids is by way of working tolerably hard. He also does a tolerable amount of cricket, and it is very pleasant to have him at home. You say I used to say you had no energy: I suppose we elder people are inclined to think so with all boys, I can only hope Tiddy will take heart o’ grace as you have done as soon as he gets real work in hand, though I don’t think (this in my own defence!) that I said you were without energy the last year or two before you went away.
Cecco’s first “summer examination” is just coming on, and I am rather anxious about it. He will be dreadfully disappointed if he does not get into sixth form next half, and that of course depends entirely on the number of boys who leave....The children go away next Saturday, the 28th, and we follow a week later; so that the summer, we may calculate, is now about over. And it has been, on the whole, a coldish one, though with breaks of hot weather.
To Miss Walker.
St. Andrews.
...I am deep in De Quincey, on whom I am doing a paper. Please do the proof as soon as you possibly can. The boys are very busy, as you may suppose, what with work (of which a little does get done), golf, and lawn-tennis. Tids especially is much in request, as it seems he is really a very good lawn-tennis player. Cecco seems going into literature in a funny kind of subterraneous way. He showed me a rather impassioned speech out of a tragedy, which he seems to be doing in fragments, and I came upon a bit of a story the other day in his beautiful handwriting, neither of them bad at all. But I fear he is less good at steady study of the plodding kind than I supposed. How curiously appearances deceive. I believe now that he is right in what he has always said, that he does less work than Tiddy. He is full of fragmentary literary occupation much more than Tiddy, but I fear, I fear he does not “plod,” that grand necessity of scholastic success, any more than his brother.
St. Andrews.
...Did I tell you that the boys were getting up a ball — a bachelors’ ball (save the mark! Cecco being one of the bachelors). It is to come off to-morrow night, and we are all in a state of excitement about it, this house being the headquarters, and Cyril the treasurer and everything. You will hear all about it from Cecco. We have been hearing the Principal preach this morning, a fine, eloquent, striking, inconclusive sermon, preached with a good deal of emotion. He must take a great deal out of himself in preaching.
To Mr. Frank Wilson.
St. Andrews,
Sept. 25th.
...I am very glad to have had so many more of your letters lately, though sorry to see that you have had an attack of fever....It could not be hoped that you would always escape fever, and I am thankful your first attack has not been very serious. I shall be anxious till I get your next letter. Is it not a little rash of you to take no change this year? or can you not get away from your work?...
This new outbreak in Afghanistan is very alarming. Do you know anybody that is in it, or do you hear much about it? It is complicating the elections here, which adds to the usual excitement on the subject. It was expected that Parliament would be dissolved, but now it is supposed that it will go on till its full time is over, as Government is not anxious to face the constituencies after this new misfortune. I am very glad that the retrenchments in India won’t affect you. I hope they may do you good and bring promotion. I should like very much to have some photograph of your works. Couldn’t you make the man do your house and surroundings? I should so very much like to know your scenery, so to speak, and be able to picture you and the things and people about you to myself.
Windsor,
12th October.
…Here we are at home again, and a great contrast it is to St. Andrews. The trees in the Crescent are growing so tall and so thick that there seems no sky at all after the great vault that is over the Links, and which every year I continue making the most futile attempts to draw. “Your hills, mamma,” the boys said derisively as we went past Leuchars. I wish that you, who can draw, would only be as persevering. If you would do a little scratch from your window at your various “cholsies” (isn’t that the word?) it would be such a pleasure to me, and help me to realise your surroundings, which it is so very difficult to do, — do, there’s a good boy....
I suspect that what you say about having lost or not sufficiently used your time at Cooper’s Hill is what every one feels when formal education is over. But education never stops, and perhaps if we did not always feel “how much more I might have done,” we would be intolerable prigs or cease to be human creatures at all, I feel as if I were only beginning to get into the heart of work and see what may be made of it now, and the mere learning of that will have cost, no doubt, on the other side, perhaps more than it is worth — limitations and formalities and want of spontaneousness. I can perfectly understand your interest in mile 10. I have always thought that to make, to bring order and meaning and use out of nothing, must be the most delightful sensation in the world. My first hero was to have built a lighthouse…
To Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
16th November.
...This is Cyril’s twenty-first birthday, a great family event. We are to keep it to-morrow, when he is coming home with two nights’ leave, graciously granted by the Master. How these children spring out of nothing! Jack will be following his example in a month or two; but Jack has more to come of age for than my poor Tids, who is “lord of his presence and no land beside.” He is a very good sweet-hearted boy, and very tender to me, but I can’t help feeling doubtful whether he has enough of the sterner stuff in him to get success in those thorny ways of law (not to say life) which he is bound for. I am going to enter him directly at the Inner Temple. If all these boys of ours had but ten thousand a-year what delightful fellows they would be! I fear that is what our modern education trains them for, more than anything else.
To F. R. Oliphant (when at Oxford for his matriculation).
Windsor,
November 24.
My dearest Cecco, — You can’t think how miserable and empty the house looks, and how hard it is to realise that you are not coming in late or early. I don’t at all like this first experiment in loneliness. When you are both at Oxford I shall either have to go there too or hang myself, which latter experiment would be uncomfortable. I hope I may hear from you to-morrow how you have got on these two days. I am anxious to know all about it, and I hope you will be more explicit in your descriptions than Tids is; indeed, I trust you will adopt rather the Frankian than the Tiddy-ish style of literature, for though a clever and entertaining letter is very nice, it is better to know really what you are about day by day, respecting which Mr. Tids leaves one much in the dark. I hope you have been getting a little pleasure out of your first flight from home as well as doing well in the examination. Was the Master gracious to you?
If you have not written to-day be sure you do so tomorrow, and make Tiddy also do so. I want to hear all about you both to keep me going, which otherwise would be dismal work. I don’t know that anything has been going on since you went away, except the dinner-party at the Ritchies’ which I told Tids about. Captain Maurice, who is a neighbour of ours now in Park Street, and who went with us, is rather an acquisition. He is the author of one of the clever military essays, the one (if you remember the story) that was pitched in at Colonel Hamley’s door (he being the judge) just as the clock was striking the very limits of the hour allowed for “showing up” (a la Tiddy), and which got the first prize.
Mr. Tarver is going to give a reading at St. Stephen’s on Monday evening, Hamlet and the Gravediggers, Mr. Smith of Eton being Hamlet! — very like Hamlet, indeed, Mr. Tarver thinks.
I wonder what you two will do with yourselves to-morrow. I trust it will not be a hopeless day like this. God bless you, my dearest boy, and my Tids too. Be sure you both write. — Your loving mother, M, O. W. O.
The next letter is addressed to Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who had only very recently ceased to be Miss Thackeray.
To Mrs. Richmond Ritchie.
14th December.
Here is your autograph, my dear Annie. I have never done such a thing for anybody before, but I am delighted to have a word from you (even though you have so cunningly disguised your new initials that I protest I don’t know what the last one is!) and to hear something about you. I have been gleaning what scraps of information I could from the dear people at Brock Hill, who, alas! are at Brock Hill no longer. My holidays have begun — that is, I have got Cyril home, and Cecco’s labours will soon be over, and that, you know, is my special argument for happiness. We must manage to get up to town early in the year, and get a glimpse of you among other pleasant things. I am glad the darkest of the dark winter days is over for you, dear, and that you have now support and solace by your side to counteract all the heaviness of recollection.
The new will never quite push out the old, but happiness is certainly the one elixir of life.
We have been having Mr. Ruskin here again havering in his usual celestial way, and we are planning theatricals with Mrs. Cornish in the part of Portia, which I think is altogether suitable to her. Won’t you come and see her? I am busy as usual spinning continual webs that never come to much. I am very glad to see that you have begun again. I always feel you to be of the party with your pretty Felicias, and keep looking for you round the corner of every sentence.
God bless you, my dear, in all ways. I suppose I may, notwithstanding his dignified position as the head of a house, send my love to Richmond.
To Mr. Frank Wilson.
Windsor,
28th December.
I have not written to you now for two or three mails, and here we are in the midst of the holidays, Christmas over, and the end of the year close at hand. I have been a little gloomy in myself, thinking how noiselessly and certainly these passing years bring one towards the end; but I need not trouble you with these fancies, which I hope will not come to anything except passing clouds, which at my age are rather desirable than otherwise, for it does not seem a good thing to get too much into the habit of living, as one is tempted to do, more as one gets old than when one is young. Christmas will be entirely out of everybody’s thoughts and 1878 well begun before you get this, so I need not say very much about it, but wish you a very happy year, my dear boy, and a good one…
What a comfort, my dear Frank, that you have found the career that suits you, and are doing well in it and liking it. Nothing gives me so much consolation.