"High as Lea Hurst is, one seems on a pinnacle, with the clouds careering round one. Down below is a garden with stone terraces and flights of steps--the planes of these terraces being perfectly gorgeous with masses of hollyhocks, dahlias, nasturtiums, geraniums, etc. Then a sloping meadow losing itself in a steep wooded descent (such tints over the wood!) to the river Derwent, the rocks on the other side of which form the first distance, and are of a red colour streaked with misty purple. Beyond this, interlacing hills, forming three ranges of distance; the first, deep brown with decaying heather; the next, in some purple shadow, and the last catching some pale, watery sunlight." "I am left alone," continued Mrs. Gaskell, "established high up, in two rooms, opening one out of the other--the old nurseries." (The inner one, in which Mrs. Gaskell slept, was, when Parthenope grew up, her bedroom.) "It is curious how simple it is. The old carpet doesn't cover the floor. No easy chair, no sofa, a little curtainless bed, a small glass. In the outer room--the former day nursery--Miss Florence's room when she is at home, everything is equally simple; now, of course, the bed is reconverted into a sofa; two small tables, a few bookshelves, a drab carpet only partially covering the clean boards, and stone-coloured walls--as cold in colouring as need be, but with one low window on one side, trellised over with Virginian creeper as gorgeous as can be; and the opposite one, by which I am writing, looking over such country!"[6] [6] From a letter to Catherine Winkworth, October 20, 1854, kindly communicated by Miss Meta Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell had gone to stay at Lea Hurst with the understanding that she was to have a quiet time for writing, remaining in the house as long as she might wish after the family had left it. For other passages from the letter, see pp. 39, 41, 139. The sound of the Derwent was often in Florence's ears. When she was in the Hospital at Scutari any fretting in the Straits recalled it to her. "How I like," she said on a stormy night, "to hear that ceaseless roar; it puts me in mind of the dear Derwent; how often I have listened to it from the nursery window."