  1891-1895 MISS GREENAWAY’S FIRST EXHIBITION—THE HON. GERALD PONSONBY—‘ALMANACKS’—CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO—BOOK-PLATES—LADY MARIA PONSONBY—WORKS SOLD—‘THE LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL’—DEATH OF MRS. GREENAWAY—LADY MAYO—BRANTWOOD AGAIN—K. G.’S CRITICISM OF MODERN ART—MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF—FRIENDSHIP WITH MISS VIOLET DICKINSON—RELIGIOUS OPINIONS—RUSKIN—VIEWS ON MR. GEORGE MEREDITH, ETC. On a letter to Ruskin. For the last year or two Kate Greenaway had shown unmistakable signs of failing energy, and in 1891 her friend Mr. Anderson of the Orient Line sought to persuade her to take a sea-voyage on the steamship Garonne: it must not be supposed, however, that she was yet showing the first symptoms of the illness which was to terminate ten years later in her death. She published no work this year except the Almanack and, though scarcely worthy of repeated mention, the title-page designed for The Orient Guide, as a graceful acknowledgment of Mr. Anderson’s kindly friendship. At the Royal Academy, she was represented by a ‘Girl’s Head,’ and at the Royal Institute by ‘An Old Farm House’ and ‘A Cottage in Surrey.’ But the year was far from being uneventful, for now for the first time she determined to hold a ‘one-man’ exhibition of her water-colour drawings at the Gallery of the Fine Art Society, at 148, New Bond Street. The following letters of this year exhibit her perennial love of spring flowers, with which Lady Mayo now constantly supplied her, in return for which on this occasion she sent a drawing of St. John’s wort, bluebell, and apple-blossom; and we recognise once more her fastidious terror lest she should receive payment for what was not precisely to the taste of her clients. Kate Greenaway to Lady Mayo Dear Lady Mayo—Your lovely flowers have just come. It is too good of you to have such kind thought and remembrance of me. I thank you very much. I think nothing gives me such joy and delight as spring flowers, and after this long, long winter how delightful it is to have them back again. The springs always come late to us here; it is such a cold place. I am just now going into Surrey to paint primroses. I feel I must send you a flower also. I wish it could be as lovely as yours!—With kind regards and again thanks, yours very sincerely, Kate Greenaway. PORTRAIT OF A LADY. In pencil and water-colour—an experimental drawing. In the possession of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby. The following letter probably refers to the first of a set of tiny water-colour portraits of children executed for Mr. Ponsonby which show what she might have accomplished if she had set herself seriously to the painting of miniatures:— Kate Greenaway to Mr. Ponsonby 50, Frognal, Hampstead, N.W., 5th October 1891. Dear Mr. Ponsonby—I am long in sending you the drawing, and now I do send it, I am afraid you will feel it very unsatisfactory; I feel it so myself—it is so much more difficult to me—doing a Portrait than a purely fancy drawing. Now I can’t make up my mind if it requires more darks or not. If you feel that let me have it back and I will put them in. I am rather afraid to do more. I have puzzled over it until I don’t know what it wants really. But one thing is certain, you must not have it if you do not care for it. I should be so sorry if you did,—it would really pain me and you know it would not matter in the least. I should be the gainer—having had such a pleasant time with you and a pretty little girl to draw—so please be very sure you don’t keep it if it is not what you wish. The African marigolds are still beautiful—the memories of Christchurch and Poole are still vivid—I did so very much like seeing them. I believe seeing old towns and villages are my greatest enjoyments,—if only I did not make such abject sketches. I saw the salmon-coloured house on my way home.—With kind regards, yours sincerely, Kate Greenaway. For the next nine years (1892-1900) there were no new publications with Kate Greenaway’s name on the title-page with the exception of the Almanacks. These were published in 1892, 3, 4, and 5 by George Routledge & Sons as heretofore. In 1896 there was none: perhaps, as we have said, because that for 1895 had been ‘made up’—much against K. G.’s will—from old and comparatively unsuccessful work; still, as we see later, an application was made to Miss Greenaway for an almanack, but she was indisposed to do it. In 1897 the last was published by J. M. Dent & Co. Of these charming booklets complete sets are now not easy to obtain, and readily fetch four or five times their original cost. In 1892 there was a small exhibition of twenty of her water-colours by Messrs. Van Baerle in Glasgow, and an important commission executed for the Dowager Lady Ashburton. In 1893 five of her drawings were sold at the Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, for forty-five guineas. These were the The modern passion for book-plate collecting was at this time at its height and Kate came in for her meed of praise at the hands of Mr. Egerton Castle in his English Book-plates of this year, and at the hands, too, of Miss Norna Labouchere in her Ladies’ Book-plates, of two years later. In the former are reproduced those designed by Miss Greenaway for ‘Frederick Locker’ and his son ‘Godfrey Locker-Lampson,’ and in the latter for ‘Dorothy Locker-Lampson’ and ‘Sarah Nickson.’ Amongst others for whom she designed book-plates may be mentioned Lady Victoria Herbert, Miss Vera Samuel (a child’s book-plate), Mrs. J. Black, and Mr. Stuart M. Samuel. Most of those mentioned are here reproduced. Although the publications of these closing years of her life were scanty it must not be supposed that K. G. allowed her pencil and brush to be idle. This was far from the case. It is true that her work done for reproduction was nearly at an end, but she was devoting herself with unabated enthusiasm, so far as her health would allow, to the more congenial task of painting small easel pictures in water-colour in view of future exhibitions at the Fine Art Society’s gallery. JOAN PONSONBY, 1891. From a miniature in the possession of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby. The following letter shows her hard at work for her next public appearance, and the entry of this year, the only entry in her long range of laconic diaries of an introspective nature—‘To remember to keep resolution firmly and to think how much can be made of Art and Life,’—demonstrates the spirit in which she was working. Kate Greenaway to Mr. Ponsonby 50, Frognal, Hampstead, N.W., 29th Dec. 1893. Dear Mr. Ponsonby—I believe the Exhibition is finally settled at LAST—drawings to be sent in on the 15th, and Private View to take place on the 20th.... And it is nice weather to get on in! Black night here the last three days.... Mr. Huish of course changes the date about nine times. First they couldn’t, then they could. First the small room and then the big one. HE suggested Palms to fill up the corners. Think of my poor little works floating about in that big room. I wrote a beautiful letter, suggesting that a considerable amount of Palms seemed inevitable—but the letter was not allowed to be sent, my brother considered it FLIPPANT and unbusiness-like. I thought this rather hard, as I had abstained from remarking that a few apple trees or roses might be more in accordance with the sentiment of my drawings than plants of an Oriental character. However I am going to have the small room. Shall you be still in London? Nothing will get finished if this fog lasts. I was desperately [sorry] not to see the tree—but there was no help. I wrote to Lady Maria in so much of a hurry—I hope I explained clearly, and that I am hoping to come to tea when a leisure afternoon comes to Lady Maria to have me. I wish you and Lady Maria a very happy New Year.—Yours sincerely, Kate Greenaway. I’m too delighted that the shops are once more open—and that the Post comes and goes. The exhibition opened on January 22, and the gross proceeds were £1,067: 16s. (net £799). The most important works were ‘The Green Seat’ (40 guineas), ‘The Stick Fire’ (35 guineas), ‘The Cherry Woman’ (40 guineas), ‘The little Go-Cart’ (36 guineas), ‘Cottages’ (45 guineas), ‘Jack and Jill’ (20 guineas), ‘The Fable of the Girl and her Milk Pail’ (40 guineas), ‘Lucy Locket’ (30 guineas), ‘Standing for her Picture’ (25 guineas), ‘Two Little Sisters’ (25 guineas), ‘The Toy Horse’ (25 guineas), ‘Belinda’ (25 guineas), ‘Down the Steps’ (25 guineas), ‘Apple Trees’ (55 guineas), ‘Over the Tea’ (35 guineas), ‘A Spring Copse’ (40 guineas), ‘The Old Steps’ (35 guineas), ‘Under the Rose Tree’ (25 guineas), ‘At a Garden Door’ (35 guineas), and ‘A Buttercup Field’ (£30). This year she began her connection with The Ladies’ Home Journal, published in Philadelphia, which, with its circulation of 700,000, did much to enlarge her circle of American admirers. The connection lasted through four numbers and proved highly remunerative. Thirty pounds was paid her per page for the serial rights only of seven or eight beautiful little pen-and-ink drawings illustrating delightful verses by Miss Laura E. Richards. They The fact is that her genius for drawing for the press had now grown fitful, and that she felt this herself is proved by her refusal at this time to undertake the illustration of Messrs. Longman’s Reading Books for elementary schools, which a few years earlier would have made a very strong appeal to her. Doubtless, too, her health had much to do with it and disinclined her to bind herself to the dates and exactions which it is incumbent on publishers to set. After two years’ absence from the walls of the Royal Institute she was now again represented by the portrait of ‘A Girl,’ which was the forerunner of an unbroken series of exhibits until 1897. On February the 2nd, the little circle at Frognal was further sadly reduced by the deeply-mourned death of Mrs. Greenaway, of whose fine and sterling character the reader has caught glimpses in the earlier chapters. The strain of this sorrow coming immediately after the exhaustion consequent upon the exhibition of her pictures, resulted in some months of broken health, and it was not until May that Miss Greenaway found herself again fit for work. Soon after her mother’s death she wrote:— Kate Greenaway to Mr. Ponsonby 50, Frognal, Hampstead, N.W., 10th Feb. 1894. Dear Mr. Ponsonby—Thank you so much for your kind letter. You and Lady Maria have been so KIND. I can’t tell you HOW much it has been to me to feel I have such friends as you always are to me. We certainly do feel desolate and strange, but I know in time the very dreadful feeling will pass off, though I also know life must be for ever a different feeling, for I have never felt the same since my father died.... I am sorry you also have had a sad loss—I have seen many notices of it in the Papers. The longer I live the less I understand the scheme of life that comprises so much sadness in it. I wish we could understand more. Will you tell Lady Maria I am so looking forward to seeing her? I feel like Lady Dorothy, who once, when you had gone abroad, said she was glad you had rainy weather because you should have stayed in London.—Yours sincerely, Kate Greenaway. MABEL PONSONBY. Pencil and Tint. In the possession of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby. After a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Locker-Lampson at Rowfant to recuperate her health she wrote:— Kate Greenaway to Lady Maria Ponsonby 39, Frognal, 9 May 1894. Dear Lady Maria Ponsonby—I have had you and Mr. Ponsonby so much in my mind for the last two weeks—and I feel so much I would like to write to you, but don’t you trouble to write to me, if you are too busy. It is a pleasure to write to you—anyhow. I think I feel to my real friends as I do to my favourite books—they get into my mind after a separation and I am impelled to write to them or read them as the case may be. I think of one of Mr. Locker-Lampson’s favourite stories of Carlyle, who said to Mr. Allingham—‘Have a care, Allingham, have a care—there’s a danger of your making yourself a bit of a bore.’ These are not quite the words—the original ones are better put.—I fear that danger as regards myself. I came home from Rowfant last week. I had a nice time. I think I am feeling stronger, but sometimes I do not feel very well, but of course it is rather a slow process, and it requires patience, which quality I don’t possess. Are you coming to Green Street this month? will you allow the bore to come and see you, as soon as you do, one afternoon? It will be nice to see you again. I think about you so often. The Pictures are not much this year—I mean at the New Gallery and the Academy, but I’ve only seen both in a dense crowd so it is hardly fair to say—but the Modern Art strikes me as very FUNNY. I would like to go with Mr. Ponsonby to the R.A. I’d like to see the effect on him of certain Productions—I am sure you would feel the same (shall I call it lovely delight) as I do—in viewing these works of art.—I suppose I’ve grown old and old-fashioned—but really you never saw such creatures as disport themselves on these canvases. You go and look, and let me go with you. Will you tell Mr. Ponsonby the garden has been made so tidy that I shall venture to take him round it when he next comes to Hampstead? The woodbine and carnations are alive and look as if they will do well. I am at work again now—my ideas are coming back to me. I We have such gloomy skies every day, it spoils the lovely spring look; if only it would rain and be done with it! You see I grumble. It does me good. I do hope you will soon be in town, and do let me come to tea soon.—With kind regards to Mr. Ponsonby, your affectionate Kate Greenaway. And to Lady Mayo, who had again sent her some spring flowers:— Kate Greenaway to Lady Mayo Dear Lady Mayo—What lovely flowers! I thank you so much. There are two of my dearest loves—tulips and that beautiful double white narcissus. But I have entirely succumbed to the fascinations of a new beauty, the lovely greeny white ranunculus, the pale lilac anemones also. But they are all so lovely and are an immense delight to me. I always rejoice over a new flower. I wish I had time to paint them all, but I have not just now for I am doing a river scene from my studio window. You will say you do not remember a river there. Perhaps, but I will show you the drawing if I have the pleasure of seeing you some time. The spring trees change so quickly, but I am going to put your tulips into this very drawing, where a little girl carries a large bunch of them. The striped ones are so wonderful, the real old-fashioned ones. They are one of my earliest recollections. I remember walking up a path in my aunt’s garden that was two long lines of them, and I was so small that I remember bending them down to me to look at their wonderful centres. Again thank you very much for the joy you have given me.—Yours sincerely, Kate Greenaway. EILEEN PONSONBY. Pencil and Tint. In the possession of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby. In the latter part of July she paid a visit to Mr. Ruskin and wrote of it:— Kate Greenaway to Mr. Ponsonby 39, Frognal, Hampstead, N.W., 9th August 1894. Dear Mr. Ponsonby—I am only just home from Coniston; it has been quite beautiful. I found Mr. Ruskin so much better than I expected, of course not his old self, yet even at times there really seemed no difference—it has been great happiness—and the country there—as you know—is lovely beyond words. I went to see Wordsworth’s country and his two houses, Rydal Mount and Dove Cottage—the Cottage is so pretty and they are getting back all the old furniture—(protected by strings from the enthusiastic Americans). I sent you the little plants from the Brantwood Garden. I thought it would be of interest to you to have them—that is the pink and the white. The other is a little bit from our garden, you said you would like to have—I can give you plenty more if it does not live. Will you please give my love to Lady Maria—I meant to have written to her before this, but I really had no moments while I was away, but I shall write to her in a day or two before I go to Cromer, where I think I am going next week. I am looking forward to Bournemouth, it is always such a happy time for me—it is very close and warm here. I hoped I should by now have felt stronger than I do—but I daresay it takes time.—Yours sincerely, Kate Greenaway. On October 16th, she writes to Lady Maria Ponsonby:— Tell Mr. Ponsonby I HATE Beardsley more than ever. It is the Private View of the Portrait Painters at the New Gallery to-morrow. 21st Oct. All these days ago and no letter finished—not a moment of time have I had. Some of the Portrait Painters have been slightly up to games. Indeed I’m rather inclined to think a Portrait Exhibition is slightly trying. The different expressions give rather the feeling of what children call making faces. And then there are the different schools. Some you look at through a hazy mist. Others confront you in deadly black and ugliness. I can’t somehow help feeling a great deal of Funniness whenever I now visit an exhibition of Pictures. By November 1st she is again at work and writes to Ruskin:— I have been drawing a baby six months old this morning. I wished for the back of its head, but I proved so fascinating, it would only gaze at me, with a stony stare. The drawing did not prosper—but the baby was a dear. And on Nov. 29 this child of forty-eight writes of the ‘precocious woman of thirteen’ (as quaintly alleged) of whom all the world was then talking: Kate Greenaway to Ruskin I finished the first volume of Marie Bashkirtseff. Have you ever read it? I think her odious—simply—but the book is wonderful in a way, so vivid, and though you—or rather I—hate her you feel she must be clever. You ought to read it if you have never done so. Johnny won’t see it is clever because he hates her, but I dislike her but feel she is clever. It is a study of supreme vanity, making yourself the centre of all things. It is queer to be ambitious in that way. You can’t feel it a noble ambition—very much the reverse. She is grown up at thirteen when she ought to be having the most beautiful child’s thoughts. I feel it quite dreadful to miss that happy time out of your life. Perhaps one prefers one thing, one another. I hated to be grown-up, and cried when I had my first long dress, but I know many long to be grown-up, but even that longing is childish—but this unfortunate girl was grown-up without knowing it. Still, her history does affect me, I keep thinking about her. She is so strange—so desperately worldly, and I think so cruel—because she was so vain. I wonder if you have ever read it. The year 1894, which had begun so sadly with the death of Mrs. Greenaway, had happily in store for Kate the beginning of one of her rare and highly valued intimacies. The acquaintanceship, which soon ripened into friendship and then into warm affection, began with a written request in May for the loan of some of her pictures for an Exhibition in Southwark. The writer was Miss Violet Dickinson, to whom a little later on she was personally introduced by a common friend. From that time forward the two ladies, the old and the young, were much in each other’s company at ‘private views’ and other ceremonies, and the fact that her friend was tall and slim beyond the average and Kate as noticeably short and stout, not only drew attention to their companionship but served as a constant text for the exercise of Kate’s humorous invention. Their correspondence by letter was incessant and Miss Greenaway’s pencil was generally requisitioned to give an added note of piquancy and fancy to her written communications. Many of these little thumb-nail sketches, through Miss Dickinson’s kindness, are reproduced in this volume, together with numerous extracts from the letters. One note there is upon which Kate is for ever harping, an underlying fear which is for ever haunting her. As we know she was slow at making friendships, but when they were made they became an essential feature of her existence, and she was in constant terror lest they should be lost. ‘Don’t begin to find me very dull—don’t begin not to want me. Yet you can’t help it if you do. I suppose I am so slow and you are so quick’—is but one amongst innumerable examples of the little panics into which she would causelessly fall. BROTHER AND SISTER. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Charles P. Johnson, Esq. Into one other essential characteristic of hers we obtain some insight in these letters. That Kate held no very definite or orthodox religious opinions, although she had a strong religious instinct, is hinted at in many of her letters to Ruskin and others. But it is only from her letters to Miss Dickinson that we are able to gather anything positive on a subject upon which in conversation her natural reserve restrained her from enlarging. On this last matter she writes:—‘I am such a reserved person. You tell everything to everybody and I can’t. There’s numbers of things I often long to say to you but I do not dare—and yet you are the one person in the world I’d like to talk about them with.’ To a friend she said one day:—‘I am very religious though people may not think it, but it is in my own way,’ and the following extracts from letters to Miss Dickinson give us some idea of what that way was:— March 22, 1896. You can go into a beautiful new country if you stand under a large apple tree and look up to the blue sky through the white flowers—to go to this scented land is an experience. I suppose I went to it very young before I could really remember and that is why I have such a wild delight in cowslips and apple-blossom—they always give me the same strange feeling of trying to remember, as if I had known them in a former world. I always feel Wordsworth must have felt that a little too—when he wrote the ‘Intimations of Immortality’—I mean the trying to remember. It’s such a beautiful world, especially in the spring. It’s a pity it’s so sad also. I often reproach the plan of it. It seems as if some less painful and repulsive end could have been found for its poor helpless inhabitants—considering the wonderfulness of it all.—WELL, it isn’t the least use troubling. April 29, 1897. I think Death is the one thing I can’t reconcile with a God. After such wonderful life, it seems such a miserable ending—to go out of life with pain. Why need it be? July 8, 1896. You think, I know, that people are well off when they leave this world, but then there’s the uncertain other—or nothing—it is a mystery I wish we had known more about. It feels to me so strange beyond anything I can think, to be able to believe in any of the known religions. Yet how beautiful if you but could. Fancy feeling yourself saved—as they say, set apart to have a great reward. For what? Those poor little bits of sacrifice—while many and many an unregenerate one is making such big ones—but isn’t to go to heaven? July 10, 1896. Did you ever believe at all in religion, I mean did you ever believe it as the Bible gives it? I never did—it’s so queer.—Why, one tries to be good simply because you must—are so unhappy if you don’t.—A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o’clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning’s post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that—it made me really cry, I was so grateful. Dec. 13, 1896. I could never believe as long as I can remember—yet I went through all sorts of religious phases of my own—times when I used to write down yes or no in a little book each night as to whether I had done all I thought right in the day or not—oh, and lots of things—but I have never believed—in that religion—though I do in my own. A woman once said to me, ‘Any religion that is to be any good to one must be one they make for themselves,’—and it is so. She, curiously, was a clergyman’s wife. June 14, 1897. I wish there was no death. It’s so horrible, things having to be killed for us to eat them—it feels so wicked. Yet we have to do it—or die ourselves. These are the sort of things that make you doubt of a future life. There’s some people would say animals have no souls—but they have—some sort.... Don’t you wish you knew if you had got an eternal soul or not? People believe half things in such a funny way, and mix up right and wrong—so that I am so often nearly thinking, is there a right and wrong—only I know there is—but I would like it decided once for all what is right and what is wrong. Nov. 3, 1897. I’m depressed too by the horrid tales about people. You don’t know how miserable it makes me—I’m so sorry—it takes all the joy out of things. Goodness is so beautiful and so much best. I hate narrow people who would take all the beauty and gaiety from the world. I love all that, but I hate wickedness. Oh, it is such a pity—and the things people say are horrid. I wish they would not tell me. In her correspondence with Miss Violet Dickinson, Kate’s spirits would sometimes overflow into sketches of a character more broadly comic than the public generally has had any example of. Thus, during the hot July of 1896, she dashes off a sketch of herself enjoying the ‘bliss’ of a shower from a watering-can, and writes:— What are you doing in this tropical heat—I’m so hot. I’m crimson when I set out—and purple when I get there—oh, everywhere. Out in the garden—the sun blazes on me.... On the 10th December she accounts for her temporary seclusion by a sketch of herself as a solitary hermit withdrawn from the far-off world; and a month later, still in the comic mood, she pictures herself in the throes of composition, and writes in answer to her friend’s remark upon her verses: ‘Dear’ (her method of addressing well-loved intimates, omitting their names):— Kate Greenaway to Miss Violet Dickinson Dear. Yes it is a fine thing to have a friend who writes lovely poems ...? Across the lonely desert grand, With desolate despair. And after a vigorous thumb-nail sketch of the said desert, she adds:— You can’t do as good as that—besides you can’t make a picter. The year 1895, which marks Kate’s last appearance in the Royal Academy exhibitions, with a ‘Baby Boy,’ also found her represented at the Liverpool Exhibition, and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours by ‘Gleaners going Home,’ ‘Girl and Two Children,’ ‘Little Girl in Red,’ and ‘Taking a Nosegay.’ Otherwise the year was uneventful save for her now one-sided correspondence with Ruskin, from which we take the following letters and extracts. They present us with intimate glimpses of her artistic and literary tastes; her hatred of change and the confusion of life; her discontent with her work and her determination to do better in the future; her love of space; her artistic methods; her views upon the Impressionist tendency of art; and last, but not in her eyes less important, extracts from Rover’s biography. On a Letter to Miss Violet Dickinson. (showing ‘K. G.’ in a comic vein). On a Letter to Miss Violet Dickinson (showing ‘K. G.’ in a humorous mood). On a Letter to Miss Violet Dickinson (An example of ‘K. G.’s’ spirit of caricature.) THE BRACKEN GATHERERS. From the water-colour drawing in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. W. Le Poer Trench. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin 39, Frognal, The New Year, 1895. ... I have been to the Venetian Exhibition ... There are some beautiful Ladies’ Portraits in such lovely dresses and their hair done into those big rolls all round their faces. I was so impressed by two heads by Giorgione—one a Shepherd with a Flute, And Christmas is over and it is nearly the New Year—I fear I am glad Christmas is over for I want some lighter days. I don’t like getting up in the morning when the moon is shining—and the stars are still about. I see the sun rise as I have my breakfast, pale and cold—but it is very nice to see the daylight come. I am finishing General Marbot: It is a truly wonderful book, it seems hardly possible people could be so brave—as they are—and most certainly as I could not be—I certainly hope England may never be invaded in my time—too fearful. How I wish I could have come in to tea with you on New Year’s Day. Suppose there was a little tap at your study door—and I came Did I tell you Eddie had come home (from Plauen in Germany) for Christmas—so all my time is taken up in making it a merry time. I had them all to tea and he danced and sang Nursery Rhymes and Looby Loo. Do you know that? it is so pretty. And then I think you would have liked to have seen my sister’s little girl and little boy dance the Barn Dance—I would like to paint it—she is very pretty, and so is the little boy. To-morrow we all go to Olympia—and on Wednesday to Drury Lane—on Thursday I have another tea with more children—Saturday is the sad day he has to go back again. All the little Correggio curls are gone now. New Year’s Day was my Mother’s Birthday, so I shall be with no one on that day—except I shall think of the study and you at 5 o’clock, and think I am coming to tea there. It is shivery—ice everywhere—How much I wish things would not change so much—so soon—so often—I can never understand the plan of life at all, it is all so strange—try which way you will to think it out—it all seems of no use—yet you go on trying for this—for that—really for some mysterious end—you don’t know. ... I hope you will have a very very Happy Year, and have beautiful days, and lots of sunshine—and for myself I will wish that I may see you again before it is ended. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Feb. 10, 1895. Did you ever in your life read one of George Meredith’s novels? it requires you to be in an angelic frame of mind or else it is that sort of worry—trying to make out what he means—for it isn’t encouraging while he describes all his people laughing at a brilliant joke, for you to be unable to see the drift of it. Whatever you do don’t read Lord Ormont and his Aminta. It all comes of my being sentimental and romantic. The title was so lovely, but don’t you be induced by any means to begin it. But if you do want to read something that is uncommonly nice get Passages from some Memoirs by Mrs. Ritchie and read about the children’s party at Charles Dickens’, about Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle, about her recollections of her childish days in Paris, her remembrance of Leech, of Charlotte BrontË—it is all so nice, so kind, so clever. I hear from Mr. Locker-Lampson that there is a real new poet, brand new; he says his name is Davidson and he has written a poem called The Ballad of a Nun. That’s all I know of it for I have not When daisies pied and violets blue And all the shepherd swains shall sing How the beautiful words come into your mind—and then it is spring and you forget it is snowing outside and the wind whirling the wreaths of snow about. It is very Arctic snow, I never saw such lovely little crystals.... Do you know, I had made up my mind to send you a real valentine—and I invented all, just how it was all to go—then I had a horrid cold and could only think how nice to go to sleep, so the poor valentine never got done. I was very sorry but it could not be helped. And I had also a good deal to do to my Institute drawings, which are very bad. So perhaps it is as well I had the cold, only it was all so nicely ready. I have got five bad drawings—‘Gleaners going Home,’ ‘A Little Girl in Red,’ ‘A Girl nursing a Baby,’ ‘Another Little Girl and a Green Cradle,’ and ‘A Girl walking with two Little Children.’ The ‘Gleaners’ is, I think, the best—I fear you would say of a bad lot. Never mind, I’m going to begin beautiful things directly I can get rid of these—which is next Tuesday—but I always think they are going to be beautiful when I begin, then I generally get to hate them before they are done. On a Letter to Ruskin. Nov. 11, 1895. I am still in a state of great perplexity as to what work to do and as to what to agree to about books. There is no Almanack this year. Now they want to do it again and I find it hard to decide if I will or not—partly because I do not make up my mind about what I want to do in other ways. But often when I feel like this I wait, and an inspiration comes. Some beautiful picture or drawing will make me long to do something. The worst of it is, I ought always to do everything the moment it suggests itself, or very likely by the time I go to do it the spirit of it has vanished. I do the technical part of painting so badly, and every one else seems to do it so well. I have no settled way of working—I am always trying this or that. That is why I get on Does this all bore you or interest you? I am so sorry I can’t draw when I am with you and can’t do drawings you like much now. One reason is I am never as strong as I was and I can’t bear the strain. It is a considerable one to do a large pencil drawing of that sort. It wants to be so fresh and spontaneous—if it is rubbed out at all it is spoiled. Kate Greenaway To Ruskin Nov. 30th, 1895. You will be grieved to hear that Rover yesterday had a fearful fight with his always enemy, the yellow dog, a truly amiable deer-hound; why Rover’s enemy we can’t tell. The fight resulted in a real black eye for Rover, who could not see out of it all yesterday. This morning it is better and he has been standing on his hind legs looking out of the window the last half-hour—liking to look, as he can see again this morning, but also I fear hoping his enemy may pass by and he may renew the fight. The yellow dog has sometimes made overtures of friendship but Rover remains obdurate. I fear he likes an enemy—it offers an agreeable excitement.... The truth of Rover’s enmity for the great yellow dog is that one day his tail got caught in the gate, which was a sight not to be resisted by the previously friendly and amiable yellow dog, who at once set teeth in it. Rover was deeply offended at the time, and after brooding awhile over his grievance determined on action. Thus the strained relations of a few days developed into hostilities, thereafter constantly renewed. Dec. 3. Some cows have come into the field opposite which have now entirely absorbed Rover’s interest. He remains fixed at the dining-room window gazing upon them with a fixed gaze, as much as to say, ‘What are these extraordinary large quiet animals, who don’t run about and bark?’ A SURREY COTTAGE. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Alfred Emmott, Esq., M.P. Kate Greenaway To Ruskin Dec. 9, 1895. I am still doing all sorts of drawing—pencil ones with colour—I think them rather pretty. I wish you would like a new sort—a little—I seem to want to put in shade so much more than I used to. I have got to love the making out of form by shade—the softness of it. I love things soft and beautiful—not angular and hard as it is the fashion to like them now. To be an impressionist opens a good wide space for leaving a good deal that is difficult to do undone—at least so it seems to me. It is so easy to begin, so difficult to finish. A Sketch of Kate Greenaway’s Model, Mary. On a Letter to Ruskin. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dec. 9, 1895. I have been reading Mrs. Thrale’s letters, which have interested me very much. It must have been a mixed pleasure having Johnson Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dec. 16, 1895. I am reading a horrid book by a man with a horrid face. I once saw the author, and I said, ‘Who is that loathsome man?’—Well, I read no more of his books—that’s settled. |
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