I feel, by the bye, that it is part of that fatality which besets you and me, that I should have stereotyped you in printers’ ink as Old Father!!!

Good-bye.—­Godspeed and Good luck to you.

Your affectionate old friend,
J.H.E.

TO THE REV.  J. GOING.

December 3, 1884.

DEAR “HEAD GARDENER,”

I think there is a blessing on all your benevolences to me which defies ill luck!

After I wrote to Mrs. Going we’d a frost of ten degrees—­and I got neuralgia back—­and made a dismal picture in my own mind of your good things coming to an iron-bound border—­and an Under Gardener deeply died down under eider down and blankets—­(even my old labourer being laid up with sore throat and scroomaticks!—­but lo and behold, on Monday the air became like new milk—­I became like a new Under Gardener—­and leave was given to go out. (I am bound to confess that I don’t think rose-planting was medically contemplated!) Fortunately the border was ready and well-manured—­I only had to dig holes in very soft stuff—­but I am very weak, and my stamping powers are never on at all a Nasmyth Hammer sort of scale—­but—­good luck again!—­Major Ewing’s orderly arrived with papers to sign—­a magnificent individual over six foot—­with larger boots than mine and a coal-black melodramatic moustache!  Had the Major been present—­I should not have dared to ask an orderly in full dress and on duty to defile his boots among Zomerset red-earth, but as I caught him alone I begged his assistance.  He looked down very superbly upon me (swathed in fur and woollen shawls, and staggering under a full-sized garden fork) with a twinkle in his eye that prepared me for the least taste of brogue which kept breaking through his studied fine language—­and consented most affably.  I wish you’d seen him—­balancing his figure with a consciousness of maids at the kitchen window, his cane held out, toeing and heeling your roses into their places!!  He assured me he understood all about it, and he trode them in very nicely!

How good of you to have sent me such a stock,—­and the pansies I wanted.  The flower of that lovely mauve and purple one is on the table by me now. One (only one) of your other roses died—­the second Gloire near the front door—­so when I saw it was hopeless I had that border “picked” up—­a very rockery of rubbish came out—­good stuff was put in, and one of the Souvenirs de Malmaison is now comfortably established there I hope.  This wet weather keeps me a prisoner now—­but it is good luck for the roses to settle in.  I have had some nice scraps and remains of flowers to cheer me indoors—­there are one or two late rosebuds yet!

They are such a pleasure to me—­and I am indeed grateful to you for all you have done for my garden!  Some of those roses I bought have thrown up hugely long shoots.  They were all small plants as you know—­so I cut none of them in the autumn.  I suppose in the spring I had better cut off these long shoots from the bushes in the open border away from the hedge?