Dearest: I have made a bad beginning of the week: I wonder how it will
end? it all comes of my not seeing enough of you. Time hangs heavy on my
hands, and the Devil finds me the mischief!
I prevailed upon myself to go on Sunday and listen to our new lately
appointed vicar: for I thought it not fair to condemn him on the strength
of Mrs. P----'s terrible reporting powers and her sensuous worship of his
full-blown flowers of speech--"pulpit-pot-plants" is what I call them.
It was not worse and not otherwise than I had expected. I find there are
only two kinds of clerics as generally necessary to salvation in a country
parish--one leads his parishioners to the altar and the other to the
pulpit: and the latter is vastly the more popular among the articulate and
gad-about members of his flock. This one sways himself over the edge of
his frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that and
his windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car,
till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for a
parachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, with
which he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of his
hearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All his
arguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are worth answering.
Well, well, I shall be all the freer for your visit when you come next
Sunday, and any Sunday after that you will: and he shall come in to tea if
you like and talk to you in quite a cultured and agreeable manner, as he
can when his favorite beverage is before him.
I discover that I get "the snaps" on a Monday morning, if I get them at
all. The M.-A. gets them on the Sunday itself, softly but regularly: they
distress no one, and we all know the cause: her fingers are itching for
the knitting which she mayn't do. Your Protestant ignores Lent as a Popish
device, a fond thing vainly invented: but spreads it instead over
fifty-two days in the year. Why, I want to know, cannot I change the
subject?
Sunday we get no post (and no collection except in church) unless we send
down to the town for it, so Monday is all the more welcome: but this I
have been up and writing before it arrives--therefore the "snaps."
Our postman is a lovely sight. I watched him walking up the drive the
other morning, and he seemed quite perfection, for I guessed he was
bringing me the thing which would make me happy all day. I only hope the
Government pays him properly.
I think this is the least pleasant letter I have ever sent you: shall I
tell you why? It was not the sermon: he is quite a forgivable good man in
his way. But in the afternoon that same Mrs. P---- came, got me in a
corner, and wanted to unburden herself of invective against your mother,
believing that I should be glad, because her coldness to me has become
known! What mean things some people can think about one! I heard nothing:
but I am ruffled in all my plumage and want stroking. And my love to your
mother, please, if she will have it. It is only through her that I get
you.--Ever your very own.