III. L’ESTERELLE 531

to say Alps-Don’t be Kinfishery* dear S^t. Crumpet; how good it was of you to give yr Turners that you love so much to the Oxford Museum From Paris we started early on Wednesday morning & travelled all day & all the night in the train-Yes you would have said “Poor Posie” I was bored But we got over it very well-It was so pleasant to be running after the sun to the south (Dont be Kingfishery) & awaking at about 5 in the morning to see long plains of greyheaded silvery olives and here and there pink perky peach trees dancing among them-And there were groups of dark cool cypress trees pointing upwards, & hills & grey rocks sloping to the sea-the Mediterranean. So we shook off our sleepiness, at least Papa Mama and I did for Emily & Adčle still slept; & saw behind those peaks of craggy hills a pink smile coming in the sky telling us that the morning had come really at last. So we watched & suddenly there rose (popped w^d be a better word for it really rose in one instant)

such a sun-“nor dim, nor red” (you know the verse) & then dipped back again below the hills It was so beautiful-But I shocked Mama by saying “Jack in the box” which awoke Emily who declared of course she had been wide awake and had seen it all. Why do people always do that, S^t. Crumpet? This was just before we came to Marseilles. It had been snowing the day before & it was nice to go to sleep & wake up in the summer-We got to Toulon and there we spent the day & oh Archigosaurus we saw so many Lacertas there; again we thought of you-How can you wish to be a parrot†-are you not our saint-You wouldn’t look a bit nice in a gold laced cap; don’t you know blue is the colour you should wear. At Toulon it was like July-I don’t like such heat-Transplantation & scorching is too much for an Irish rose-But I sat with

Mama and Emily on a rock & sketched Toulon Harbour, (or rather tried to) for you St. Crumpet. Then the next we posted, the country was so beautiful some of it & towards evening we saw snowy peaks, they were the mountains of Savoy. I was pretty tired that night & we had to sleep at Frejus such a disagreeable place. The next day we had six horses to our carriage for it was a hilly road. We walked about two hours of the way over the hills‡ You know what sort of a view there was at the top, S^t. Crumpet & how one stands & stares & says nothing because the words of Grand Glorious, Beautiful etc cannot in one quarter express what one thinks. You the author of M-Ps c^d describe it Irish roses can’t. But I can tell you how my cousins the moorland roses nodded at me as I passed and how they couldn’t understand why Irish hedge roses bloomed in July instead of March

59. I can tell you how the fields were white with Narcissi, how the roads were edged with mauve-coloured anemones & how the scarlet anemones

* Kingfishery. Sitting sulkily on a branch.

† I suppose I had not expressed this farther condition, of being her father’s parrot.

‡ The pass of the Esterelle, between Fréjus and Nice; more beautiful, always, to me, than all the groves and cliffs of the Riviera.-J. R., 1889.

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