THE GENTLEST ART

I

CHILDREN AND GRANDFATHERS

Marjorie Fleming writes her first letter

MY DEAR ISA,

I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a

letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay—birsay is a word which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature.

Two Edinburgh Reviewers

The Rev. Sydney Smith threatens his little granddaughter with awful penalties for omitting to stamp his letter properly

OH, you little wretch! your letter cost me fourpence.

I will pull all the plums out of your puddings; I will undress your dolls and steal their under petticoats; you shall have no currant-jelly to your rice; I will kiss you till you cannot see out of your eyes; when nobody else whips you, I will do so; I will fill you so full of sugar-plums that they shall run out of your nose and ears; lastly, your frocks shall be so short that they shall not come below your knees. Your loving grandfather,

SYDNEY SMITH

Lord Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review becomes very

human

(To a Grandchild)

CRAIGCROOK, June 20, 1848 you

Y SONSY NANCY! - I love

MY

very much, and think very often of your dimples, and your pimples, and your funny little plays, and all your pretty ways; and I send you my blessing, and wish I were kissing, your sweet rosy lips, or your fat finger-tips; and that you were here, so that I could hear you stammering words, from a mouthful of curds; and a great purple tongue (as broad as it's long); and see your round eyes, open wide with surprise, and your wondering look, to find yourself at Craigcrook! To-morrow is Maggie's birthday, and we have built up a great bonfire in honour of it; and Maggie Rutherfurd (do you remember her at all?)

Frankie's Freckles

is coming out to dance round it; and all the servants are to drink her health, and wish her many happy days with you and Frankie, - and all the mammays and pappys, whether grand or not grand. We are very glad to hear that she and you love each other so well, and are happy in making each other happy; and that you do not forget dear Tarley or Frankie, when they are out of sight, nor Granny either,- -or even old Granny pa, who is in most danger of being forgotten, he thinks. We have had showery weather here, but the garden is full of flowes; and Frankie has a new wheel-barrow, and does a great deal of work, and some mischief now and then. All the dogs are very well; and Foxey is mine, and Froggy is Tarley's, and Frankie has taken up with great white Neddy, so that nothing is left for Granny but old barking Jacky and Dover when the carriage comes. The donkey sends his compliments to you, and maintains that you are a cousin of his! or a near relation, at all events. He wishes, too, that you and Maggie would come; for he thinks that you will not be so heavy on his back as Tarley and Maggie Rutherfurd, who now ride him without mercy.

a

corner of the carpet, He is very good, and

This is Sunday, and Ali is at church — Granny and I taking care of Frankie till she comes back, and he is now hammering very busily at which he says does not lie flat. really too pretty for a boy, though I think his two eyebrows are growing into one, -stretching and meeting each other above his nose! But he has not so many freckles as Tarley, who has a very fine crop of them, which she and I encourage as much as we can. I hope you and Maggie will lay in a stock of them, as I think no little girl can be pretty without them in summer. Our pea-hens are suspected of having young families in some

"The Little Span-Long Elf"

hidden place, for though they pay us short visits now and then, we see them but seldom, and always alone. If you and Maggie were here with your sharp eyes, we think you might find out their secret, and introduce us to a nice new family of young peas. The old papa cock, in the meantime says he knows nothing about them, and does not care a farthing! We envy you your young peas of another kind, for we have none yet, nor any asparagus neither, and hope you will bring some down to us in your lap. Tarley sends her love, and I send mine to you all; though I shall think most of Maggie to-morrow morning, and of you when your birth morning comes. When is that do you know? It is never dark now here, and we might all go to bed without candles. And so bless you ever and ever, my dear dimply pussie. — Your very loving GRANDPA

John Keats is pleased to be an uncle

MY

WINCHESTER, September [17], Friday [1819]

-...

Y DEAR GEORGE, I admire the exact admeasurement of my niece in your mother's letter. O! the little span-long elf. I am not the least a judge of the proper weight and size of an infant. Never trouble yourselves about that. She is sure to be a fine woman. Let her have only delicate nails both on hands and feet, and both as small as a May-fly's, who will live you his life on a 3 square inch of oak-leaf; and nails she must have quite different from the market-women here, who plough into butter and make a quarter-pound taste of it.

I intend to write a letter to your wife, and there I may say more on this little plump subject—I hope she's

Dilke's Parental Mania

plump. "Still harping on my daughter!" This Winchester is a place tolerably well suited to me: there is a fine cathedral, a college, a Roman Catholic chapel, a Methodist do., an Independent do.; and there is not one loom or anything like manufacturing beyond bread and butter in the whole city.

There are a number of rich Catholics in the place. It is a respectable, ancient, aristocratic place, and moreover it contains a nunnery. Our set are by no means so hail fellow well met on literary subjects as we were wont to be. Reynolds has turn'd to the law. By the bye, he brought out a little piece at the Lyceum call'd One, Two, Three, Four: by Advertisement. It met with complete success. The meaning of this odd title is explained when I tell you the principal actor is a mimic, who takes off four of our best performers in the course of the farce. Our stage is loaded with mimics. I did not see the piece, being out of town the whole time it was in progress. Dilke is entirely swallowed up in his boy. 'Tis really lamentable to what a pitch he carries a sort of parental mania.

I had a letter from him at Shanklin. He went on a word or two about the Isle of Wight, which is a bit of [a] hobby horse of his, but he soon deviated to his boy. "I am sitting," says he, "at the window, expecting my boy from school." I suppose I told you somewhere that he lives in Westminster, and his boy goes to school there, where he gets beaten, and every bruise he has, and I daresay deserves, is very bitter to Dilke. The place I am speaking of puts me in mind of a circumstance which occurred lately at Dilke's. I think it very rich and dramatic and quite illustrative of the little quiet fun that he will enjoy sometimes.

First I must tell you that their house is at the corner