Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books. Horatia K. F. Eden
describing and understanding children unless she possessed some of her own. There is a graceful touch at the end of "Lob," which seems to me one of the most delicate evidences of her universal sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men—and women! It is similar in character to the passage I alluded to in "Timothy's Shoes," where they clatter away for the last time, into silence.
Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long intervals) his "restless times," when his good "missis" would bring out a little store laid by in one of the children's socks, and would bid him "Be off, and get a breath of the sea air," but on condition that the sock went with, him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his absence with that confidence in her knowledge of "the master," which is so mysterious to the unmarried.
"The sock 'll bring him home," said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and never could say what he had been doing.
In 1874 Julie wrote "A Great Emergency" as a serial for the Magazine, and took great pains to corroborate the accuracy of her descriptions of barge life for it.[24] I remember our inspecting a barge on the canal at Aldershot, with a friend who understood all its details, and we arranged to go on an expedition in it to gain further experience, but were somehow prevented. The allusions to Dartmouth arose from our visit there, of which I have already spoken, and which took place whilst she was writing the tale; and her knowledge of the intricacies of the Great Eastern Railway between Fenchurch Street Station and North Woolwich came from the experience she gained when we went on expeditions to Victoria Docks, where one of our brothers was doing parochial work under Canon Boyd.
[24] Letter, July 22, 1874.
During 1874 five of her "Verses for Children" came out in the Magazine, two of which, "Our Garden," and "Three Little Nest-Birds," were written to fit old German woodcuts. The others were "The Dolls' Wash," "The Blue Bells on the Lea," and "The Doll's Lullaby." She wrote an article on "May-Day, Old Style and New Style," in 1874, and also contributed fifty-two brief "Tales of the Khoja,"[25] which she adapted from the Turkish by the aid of a literal translation of them given in Barker's Reading-Book of the Turkish Language, and by the help of Major Ewing, who possessed some knowledge of the Turkish language and customs, and assisted her in polishing the stories. They are thoroughly Eastern in character, and full of dry wit.
[25] "Miscellanea," vol. xvii.
I must here digress to speak of some other work that my sister did during the time she lived in Aldershot. Both she and Major Ewing took great interest in the amateur concerts and private musical performances that took place in the camp, and the V.C. in "The Story of a Short Life," with a fine tenor voice, and a "fastidious choice in the words of the songs he sang," is a shadow of these past days. The want that many composers felt of good words for setting to music, led Julie to try to write some, and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were written by my sister and two of her brothers, and the Rev. G.J. Chester. This book became a standing joke amongst them, because one of the reviewers said it contained "songs by four writers, one of whom was a poet," and he did not specify the one by name.
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