TO MRS. HARRY Coghill.
Davos,
January.
I must write to thank you for your kindness to Madge, of which she spoke so very gratefully and warmly. She had, I gather from her letter, rather broken down while she was with you, with the feeling of the season, and the dreadful change from all the associations that were familiar to her, of that new-year time. It can never be again as it has been in our diminished house, and perhaps it was better for all of us that it passed over under such changed conditions — if anything can be called better or worse. To the young ones, of course, the passage of time will do much, to me little; but I have tried to subdue that longing to be done with the days of life which was so strong upon me, for I know my Tiddy can have no need of me now, and the others have, so long as I can hold out....
My news about Cecco is all that could be desired. Dr. Ruedi has seen him again, and finds the improvement progressing so well that he says, if all continues in the same way, he will be well in spring. I am very, very thankful, though my heart seems so dead to all thoughts but one that I scarcely seem to feel it. This is one great and strange consequence of the great parting, that the one who is gone, and who while he was present with us was the subject of many thoughts indeed, yet thoughts crossed and broken with a hundred other interests, becomes far more present, close, and intensely felt in every movement of life than if he were by one’s side. The first result of the separation is thus to make all separation impossible, to bring him nearer and make him dearer than ever before. It shows how little death is, and yet how unspeakably great, cutting off all response.
I am very well, all the same, nothing touches me, and working very hard. I sometimes think that to be made ill by suffering, as other people are, would soften a little the pain; but I get the full sharpness of it in every way, though it is different at my age from the tempest of younger days. I think I am learning patience, and am soothed by the thought that it cannot be a very long time. I used to be appalled at thought of the long years to come when my Maggie led; now, they can’t be very long.
Pardon me for dropping into the usual weary strain. I shall have to give up writing letters, for I feel that I must weary out my friends.
The health Mrs. Oliphant thought so cruelly strong did give way at this time, and she had a sharp attack of illness, to the great distress of Cecco and her adopted daughter. It would seem that the high altitudes so often beneficial to younger people are far from wholesome for their elders. The bad effect of the climate on a system so hardly tried was very nearly fatal in this case, and the little party moved as soon as they possibly could to a milder air.
To Mr. Blackwood.
Davos-Platz,
24th February.
…I am still very far from well, and the doctor tells me that I must not expect to be so till I leave here. It appears that the High Alps are not good for elder people, and almost always produce a collapse of some kind. Mine has been attended by very severe internal pain, of which I have had a few attacks before, but none so repeated and continued. I tried very hard to finish your article, and was in hopes to have done till the last moment, when another attack settled the question. I am better now, but in an irritated and feeble state, afraid to eat anything. Half in bed, however, I have managed to get through the proofs, and on next Monday, the 2nd March, we are to get off to San Remo, where the doctor says Cecco will do as well as here for the rest of the spring, Davos having strengthened and set him up so much. This of course removes all my objections to leaving. For many reasons I shall be very glad. These months have been very dreary; and to see the fair face of nature again after looking on nothing but dazzling snow, may convey a little solace to the sick soul as well as body.
Villa degli Olivi, San Remo,
March 23.
…Are you not rather rash in committing ‘Maga’ to such very doubtful greatness as General Booth’s, Sir Edgar Boehm’s, and that of George Macdonald’s poetry? I don’t feel quite sure with the last paper whether it is in earnest or not, or if your contributor means to make fun of Macdonald, who is often a noble writer, but not, I think, according to these specimens, in poetry....Mr. Geddes seems to me to write the most dreadful nonsense, and his style is surely not worthy of ‘Maga.’ Forgive one of your oldest contributors for saying so....
This reminds me of my great negligence in not having thanked you before for the review of ‘Royal Edinburgh.’ I should have credited Mr. Skelton with it, but that his own work was included with mine. In any case, whoever executed the work, many thanks for having it done. I presume the article on dear Mr. Kinglake was Sir Edward Hamley’s, and I am grateful to him too for what he says of our dear old friend’s kind interest in my books. I was so ill when the Magazine arrived, and so altogether out of sorts, that I had not the heart to write to you about them, as I ought to have done. Pray forgive me. Mr. Kinglake directed that I was to have a souvenir of him, and his nurse has sent me a little table which used to stand by his chair, but what I should still more like to get would be his photograph. I got Mrs. Kinglake, his sister-in-law’s address, to send for one, but I have not written to her, and scarcely like to trouble her on the subject. Are you in correspondence with any of his family, and could you get me this? I should very much like to have it.
To the Hon, Emily Lawless.
Windsor,
Saturday Night, late, 30th May.
Dear Emily, — The sight even of your handwriting is a pleasure, and your praise is very delightful, and gave me a surprised sensation of real pleasure still more warm. I had not, somehow, expected it. Pray believe, what is most completely the truth, that there is no one whose opinion I believe more, or whom I am more glad to please, and what you say of the book20 is exactly what I should have most wished to accomplish. I am very glad that you think I have succeeded. The newspapers, you see, are trying hard to throw a little mud — though, as far as I am myself concerned, I have no reason to complain; but I am indeed very much satisfied to have more or less secured their memory from misconception. I quite recognise the truth of your affectionate blame, that I don’t care much about my own standing as an author. It would have been more sensible to have done so — to have shown a more proper regard for it when I was younger; but then life has always been at hard if not high pressure for me, and there have always been so many other things that were more important. Do you know, I am sometimes inclined to think that a little pomposity is coming on! I begin to have a faint consciousness of stilts, and of an inclination to think that a person of my standing should be treated with respect, which amuses me, as a new feature in what Colonel Lockhart used to call “the other fellow” who is one’s self.
F. R. Oliphant to Mr. Blackwood.
Royal Library, Windsor Castle,
August 14.
I am sending you a little paper suggested by our stay at Davos last winter, which I have had by me for some time, to see if you could make any use of it. The next month or two seems to be just the time when it would come in handy, as people are thinking of where they are to go for the winter, and I daresay would be glad of some account of a place like Davos, which is apt at first mention to frighten people who are ordered out there. You may observe that I had originally always spoken of the place I was writing about as St. Johann — the very little-known alternative name of Davos-Platz, — as an alias gives one a freer hand in writing of things that have actually taken place; but I have changed it back to Davos just for the reason that it might be more useful so. It has at any rate the merit of being short.
I think Archie spoke to you about some sketches of our journey in Palestine which appeared in the ‘Spectator,’ and which I am just now putting together with some additions to see if they would make a volume. I will send them to you in a week or so to see what you think could be made of them. It would have to be a very small volume, I fancy.
The Davos paper appeared in the ‘Spectator.’ The “Notes” alluded to above made a useful and very interesting little volume, and was published by Messrs Blackwood. The dedication of the book “to my brother Cyril” makes it a touching memento of the two, who were so warmly attached to each other.
Mrs. Oliphant to Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
17th October,
I send you my Old Saloon paper, which I hope you will like. I have used, as you will perceive, few books, and I trust you will not think I have done wrong by bringing in Rudyard Kipling, who I think wants something more than the praise which is so liberally dealt to him in the newspapers. You will think, however, that I am still more liberal in my praise....
I have some books over, which will do for another time. Should you like another Old Saloon for January? or would you prefer a story of a more or less “unseen” character which is simmering in my mind? It may not come to anything, but again it may.
We are leaving here (this house) in about a fortnight, and Windsor in the middle of next month, and it is on the cards that we may not return again here, where so much of our life has been spent. My own house I will never go back to, and the whole place has become unutterably sad.
This decision could not be adhered to, and the diminished family returned to the old home at Windsor late in the summer of 1892. The Jerusalem book was published by Macmillan at this time.
The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone to Mrs. Oliphant.
Biarritz,
December 28.
Dear Mrs. Oliphant, — The beautiful volume which you have so kindly sent me came, I need hardly say, introduced not only by your much too flattering note, but by abundant recollections of knowledge and of pleasure derived from you on many previous literary occasions.
I have begun the perusal, and I much hope, and cannot doubt, that your living portraitures of Scripture characters will impress upon many minds an important portion of those evidences of the sacred volume which are so much higher than the “higher criticism,” and which have a range of flight beyond its reach, — Allow me to remain with many thanks faithfully yours,
W. E. Gladstone.