“As to what it is about, I think it’s a little scene in Heaven (I am always pretending to know so much about that place!), a sort of patrol going to look to the battlements, some such thought as in Marlowe’s lovely line:  ‘Now walk the angels on the walls of Heaven.’  But I wanted it to be so different, and my old eyes cannot help me to finish it as I want—­so forgive it and accept it with all its accompanying crowd of good wishes to you.  They were always in my mind as I did it.

“And come back soon from that America and stay here, and never go away again.  Indeed I do wish you boundless happiness, and for our sake, such a length of life that you might shudder if I were to say how long.

“Ever your poor artist,

“E.B.-J.

“If it is so faint that you can scarcely see it, let that stand for modest humility and shyness—­as I had only dared to whisper.”

Another time, when I had sent him a trifle for some charity, he wrote: 

“Dear Lady,—­

“This morning came the delightful crinkly paper that always means you!  If anybody else ever used it, I think I should assault them!  I certainly wouldn’t read their letter or answer it.

“And I know the check will be very useful.  If I thought much about those wretched homes, or saw them often, I should do no more work, I know.  There is but one thing to do—­to help with a little money if you can manage it, and then try hard to forget.  Yes, I am certain that I should never paint again if I saw much of those hopeless lives that have no remedy.  I know of such a dear lad about my Phil’s age who has felt this so sharply that he has given his happy, lucky, petted life to give himself wholly to share their squalor and unlovely lives—­doing all he can, of evenings when his work is over, to amuse such as have the heart to be amused, reading to them and telling them about histories and what not—­anything he knows that can entertain them.  And this he has daily done for about a year, and if he carries it on for his life time he shall have such a nimbus that he will look top-heavy with it.

“No, you would always have been lovely and made some beauty about you if you had been born there—­but I should have got drunk and beaten my family and been altogether horrible!  When everything goes just as I like, and painting prospers a bit, and the air is warm and friends well and everything perfectly comfortable, I can just manage to behave decently, and a spoilt fool I am—­that’s the truth.  But wherever you were, some garden would grow.

“Yes, I know Winchelsea and Rye and Lynn and Hythe—­all bonny places, and Hythe has a church it may be proud of.  Under the sea is another Winchelsea, a poor drowned city—­about a mile out at sea, I think, always marked in old maps as ‘Winchelsea Dround.’  If ever the sea goes back on that changing coast there may be great fun when the spires and towers come up again.  It’s a pretty land to drive in.