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Title: Fors Clavigera (Volume 1 of 8)
Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: May 8, 2019 [EBook #59456]
Language: English
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FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTERS
TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS
OF GREAT BRITAIN.
BY
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.
Vol. I.
GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1871.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER I.
Denmark Hill,
1st January, 1871.
Friends,
We begin to-day another group of ten years, not in happy
circumstances. Although, for the time, exempted from the direct
calamities which have fallen on neighbouring states, believe me,
we have not escaped them because of our better deservings, nor by
our better wisdom; but only for one or two bad reasons, or for both:
either that we have not sense enough to determine in a great national
quarrel which side is right, or that we have not courage to defend
the right, when we have discerned it.
I believe that both these bad reasons exist in full force; that our
own political divisions prevent us from understanding the laws of
international justice; and that, even if we did, we should not dare
to defend, perhaps not even to assert them, being on this first of
January, 1871, in much bodily fear; that is to say, afraid of the
Russians; afraid of the Prussians; afraid of the Americans; afraid of
the Hindoos; afraid of the Chinese; afraid of the Japanese; afraid of
the New Zealanders; and afraid of the Caffres: and very justly so,
being conscious that our only real desire respecting any of these
nations has been to get as much out of them as we could.
They have no right to complain of us, notwithstanding, since we have
all, lately, lived ourselves in the daily endeavour to get as much
out of our neighbours and friends as we could; and having by this
means, indeed, got a good deal out of each other, and put nothing
into each other, the actually obtained result, this day, is a state
of emptiness in purse and stomach, for the solace of which our boasted
"insular position" is ineffectual.
I have listened to many ingenious persons, who say we are better
off now than ever we were before. I do not know how well off we were
before; but I know positively that many very deserving persons of my
acquaintance have great difficulty in living under these improved
circumstances: also, that my desk is full of begging letters,
eloquently written either by distressed or dishonest people; and that
we cannot be called, as a nation, well off, while so many of us are
either living in honest or in villanous beggary.
For my own part, I will put up with this state of things, passively,
not an hour longer. I am not an unselfish person, nor an Evangelical
one; I have no particular pleasure in doing good; neither do I
dislike doing it so much as to expect to be rewarded for it in another
world. But I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor
do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky,
when there is any--which is seldom, now-a-days, near London--has become
hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of,
where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly.
Therefore, as I have said, I will endure it no longer quietly;
but henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do my poor
best to abate this misery. But that I may do my best, I must not be
miserable myself any longer; for no man who is wretched in his own
heart, and feeble in his own work, can rightly help others.
Now my own special pleasure has lately been connected with a given
duty. I have been ordered to endeavour to make our English youth
care somewhat for the arts; and must put my uttermost strength into
that business. To which end I must clear myself from all sense of
responsibility for the material distress around me, by explaining to
you, once for all, in the shortest English I can, what I know of its
causes; by pointing out to you some of the methods by which it might
be relieved; and by setting aside regularly some small percentage of
my income, to assist, as one of yourselves, in what one and all we
shall have to do; each of us laying by something, according to our
means, for the common service; and having amongst us, at last, be
it ever so small, a national Store instead of a National Debt. Store
which, once securely founded, will fast increase, provided only you
take the pains to understand, and have perseverance to maintain,
the elementary principles of Human Economy, which have, of late,
not only been lost sight of, but wilfully and formally entombed under
pyramids of falsehood.
And first I beg you most solemnly to convince yourselves of the partly
comfortable, partly formidable fact, that your prosperity is in your
own hands. That only in a remote degree does it depend on external
matters, and least of all on forms of government. In all times of
trouble the first thing to be done is to make the most of whatever
forms of government you have got, by setting honest men to work them;
(the trouble, in all probability, having arisen only from the want
of such;) and for the rest, you must in no wise concern yourselves
about them; more particularly it would be lost time to do so at this
moment, when whatever is popularly said about governments cannot but
be absurd, for want of definition of terms. Consider, for instance,
the ridiculousness of the division of parties into "Liberal" and
"Conservative." There is no opposition whatever between those two
kinds of men. There is opposition between Liberals and Illiberals;
that is to say, between people who desire liberty, and who dislike
it. I am a violent Illiberal; but it does not follow that I must be a
Conservative. A Conservative is a person who wishes to keep things as
they are; and he is opposed to a Destructive, who wishes to destroy
them, or to an Innovator, who wishes to alter them. Now, though I
am an Illiberal, there are many things I should like to destroy. I
should like to destroy most of the railroads in England, and all the
railroads in Wales. I should like to destroy and rebuild the Houses
of Parliament, the National Gallery, and the East end of London;
and to destroy, without rebuilding, the new town of Edinburgh, the
north suburb of Geneva, and the city of New York. Thus in many things
I am the reverse of Conservative; nay, there are some long-established
things which I hope to see changed before I die; but I want still to
keep the fields of England green, and her cheeks red; and that girls
should be taught to curtsey, and boys to take their hats off, when
a Professor or otherwise dignified person passes by; and that Kings
should keep their crowns on their heads, and Bishops their crosiers in
their hands; and should duly recognise the significance of the crown,
and the use of the crook.
As you would find it thus impossible to class me justly in either
party, so you would find it impossible to class any person whatever,
who had clear and developed political opinions, and who could define
them accurately. Men only associate in parties by sacrificing their
opinions, or by having none worth sacrificing; and the effect of
party government is always to develope hostilities and hypocrisies,
and to extinguish ideas.
Thus the so-called Monarchic and Republican parties have thrown Europe
into conflagration and shame, merely for want of clear conception of
the things they imagine themselves to fight for. The moment a Republic
was proclaimed in France, Garibaldi came to fight for it as a "Holy
Republic." But Garibaldi could not know,--no mortal creature could
know,--whether it was going to be a Holy or Profane Republic. You
cannot evoke any form of government by beat of drum. The proclamation
of a government implies the considerate acceptance of a code of laws,
and the appointment of means for their execution, neither of which
things can be done in an instant. You may overthrow a government,
and announce yourselves lawless, in the twinkling of an eye, as you
can blow up a ship, or upset and sink one. But you can no more create
a government with a word, than an ironclad.
No; nor can you even define its character in few words; the measure of
sanctity in it depending on degrees of justice in the administration
of law, which are often independent of form altogether. Generally
speaking, the community of thieves in London or Paris have
adopted Republican Institutions, and live at this day without any
acknowledged Captain or Head; but under Robin Hood, brigandage in
England, and under Sir John Hawkwood, brigandage in Italy, became
strictly monarchical. Theft could not, merely by that dignified form
of government, be made a holy manner of life; but it was made both
dexterous and decorous. The pages of the English knights under Sir
John Hawkwood spent nearly all their spare time in burnishing the
knight's armour, and made it always so bright, that they were called
"the White Company." And the Notary of Tortona, Azario, tells us of
them, that these foragers (furatores) "were more expert than any
plunderers in Lombardy. They for the most part sleep by day, and
watch by night, and have such plans and artifices for taking towns,
that never were the like or equal of them witnessed" [1]
The actual Prussian expedition into France merely differs from Sir
John's in Italy by being more generally savage, much less enjoyable,
and by its clumsier devices for taking towns; for Sir John had no
occasion to burn their libraries. In neither case does the monarchical
form of government bestow any Divine right of theft; but it puts
the available forces into a convenient form. Even with respect to
convenience only, it is not yet determinable by the evidence of
history, what is absolutely the best form of government to live
under. There are indeed said to be republican villages (towns?) in
America, where everybody is civil, honest, and substantially
comfortable; but these villages have several unfair advantages--there
are no lawyers in them, no town councils, and no parliaments. Such
republicanism, if possible on a large scale, would be worth fighting
for; though, in my own private mind, I confess I should like to
keep a few lawyers, for the sake of their wigs, and the faces under
them--generally very grand when they are really good lawyers--and for
their (unprofessional) talk. Also I should like to have a Parliament,
into which people might be elected on condition of their never saying
anything about politics, that one might still feel sometimes that one
was acquainted with an M.P. In the meantime Parliament is a luxury
to the British squire, and an honour to the British manufacturer,
which you may leave them to enjoy in their own way; provided only you
make them always clearly explain, when they tax you, what they want
with your money; and that you understand yourselves, what money is,
and how it is got, and what it is good for, and bad for.
These matters I hope to explain to you in this and some following
letters; which, among various other reasons, it is necessary that
I should write in order that you may make no mistake as to the real
economical results of Art teaching, whether in the Universities or
elsewhere. I will begin by directing your attention particularly to
that point.
The first object of all work--not the principal one, but the first
and necessary one--is to get food, clothes, lodging, and fuel.
It is quite possible to have too much of all these things. I know a
great many gentlemen, who eat too large dinners; a great many ladies,
who have too many clothes. I know there is lodging to spare in London,
for I have several houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know
there is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to pound the
roads with, while our men stand idle; or drink till they can't stand,
idle, or any otherwise.
Notwithstanding, there is agonizing distress even in this highly
favoured England, in some classes, for want of food, clothes, lodging,
and fuel. And it has become a popular idea among the benevolent
and ingenious, that you may in great part remedy these deficiencies
by teaching, to these starving and shivering persons, Science and
Art. In their way--as I do not doubt you will believe--I am very fond
of both; and I am sure it will be beneficial for the British nation
to be lectured upon the merits of Michael Angelo, and the nodes of
the moon. But I should strongly object myself to being lectured on
either, while I was hungry and cold; and I suppose the same view of
the matter would be taken by the greater number of British citizens in
those predicaments. So that, I am convinced, their present eagerness
for instruction in painting and astronomy proceeds from an impression
in their minds that, somehow, they may paint or star-gaze themselves
into clothes and victuals. Now it is perfectly true that you may
sometimes sell a picture for a thousand pounds; but the chances
are greatly against your doing so--much more than the chances of a
lottery. In the first place, you must paint a very clever picture;
and the chances are greatly against your doing that. In the second
place, you must meet with an amiable picture-dealer; and the chances
are somewhat against your doing that. In the third place, the amiable
picture-dealer must meet with a fool; and the chances are not always
in favour even of his doing that--though, as I gave exactly the sum
in question for a picture myself, only the other day, it is not for me
to say so. Assume, however, to put the case most favourably, that what
with the practical results of the energies of Mr. Cole, at Kensington,
and the æsthetic impressions produced by various lectures at Cambridge
and Oxford, the profits of art employment might be counted on as a
rateable income. Suppose even that the ladies of the richer classes
should come to delight no less in new pictures than in new dresses;
and that picture-making should thus become as constant and lucrative an
occupation as dress-making. Still, you know, they can't buy pictures
and dresses too. If they buy two pictures a day, they can't buy two
dresses a day; or if they do, they must save in something else. They
have but a certain income, be it never so large. They spend that,
now; and you can't get more out of them. Even if they lay by money,
the time comes when somebody must spend it. You will find that they do
verily spend now all they have, neither more nor less. If ever they
seem to spend more, it is only by running in debt, and not paying;
if they for a time spend less, some day the overplus must come into
circulation. All they have, they spend; more than that, they cannot
at any time; less than that, they can only for a short time.
Whenever, therefore, any new industry, such as this of picture-making,
is invented, of which the profits depend on patronage, it merely means
that you have effected a diversion of the current of money in your
own favour, and to somebody else's loss. Nothing, really, has been
gained by the nation, though probably much time and wit, as well as
sundry people's senses, have been lost. Before such a diversion can
be effected, a great many kind things must have been done; a great
deal of excellent advice given; and an immense quantity of ingenious
trouble taken: the arithmetical course of the business throughout
being, that for every penny you are yourself better, somebody else
is a penny the worse; and the net result of the whole, precisely zero.
Zero, of course, I mean, so far as money is concerned. It may be
more dignified for working women to paint than to embroider; and
it may be a very charming piece of self-denial, in a young lady,
to order a high art fresco instead of a ball-dress; but as far as
cakes and ale are concerned, it is all the same,--there is but so
much money to be got by you, or spent by her, and not one farthing
more, usually a great deal less, by high art than by low. Zero,
also, observe, I mean partly in a complimentary sense to the work
executed. If you have done no good by painting, at least you have
done no serious mischief. A bad picture is indeed a dull thing to
have in a house, and in a certain sense a mischievous thing; but it
won't blow the roof off. Whereas, of most things which the English,
French, and Germans are paid for making now-a-days,--cartridges,
cannon, and the like,--you know the best thing we can possibly hope
is that they may be useless, and the net result of them, zero.
The thing, therefore, that you have to ascertain approximately, in
order to determine on some consistent organization, is the maximum
of wages-fund you have to depend on to start with, that is to say,
virtually, the sum of the income of the gentleman of England. Do
not trouble yourselves at first about France or Germany, or any
other foreign country. The principle of free trade is, that French
gentlemen should employ English workmen, for whatever the English
can do better than the French; and that English gentlemen should
employ French workmen, for whatever the French can do better than
the English. It is a very right principle, but merely extends the
question to a wider field. Suppose, for the present, that France,
and every other country but your own, were--what I suppose you would,
if you had your way, like them to be--sunk under water, and that
England were the only country in the world. Then, how would you live
in it most comfortably? Find out that, and you will then easily find
how two countries can exist together; or more, not only without need
for fighting, but to each other's advantage.
For, indeed, the laws by which two next-door neighbours might live most
happily--the one not being the better for his neighbour's poverty,
but the worse, and the better for his neighbour's prosperity--are
those also by which it is convenient and wise for two parishes, two
provinces, or two kingdoms, to live side by side. And the nature of
every commercial and military operation which takes place in Europe,
or in the world, may always be best investigated by supposing it
limited to the districts of a single country. Kent and Northumberland
exchange hops and coals on precisely the same economical principles as
Italy and England exchange oil for iron; and the essential character
of the war between Germany and France may be best understood by
supposing it a dispute between Lancaster and Yorkshire for the line
of the Ribble. Suppose that Lancashire, having absorbed Cumberland
and Cheshire, and been much insulted and troubled by Yorkshire in
consequence, and at last attacked; and having victoriously repulsed
the attack, and retaining old grudges against Yorkshire, about the
colour of roses, from the fifteenth century, declares that it cannot
possibly be safe against the attacks of Yorkshire any longer, unless it
gets the townships of Giggleswick and Wigglesworth, and a fortress on
Pen-y-gent. Yorkshire replying that this is totally inadmissible, and
that it will eat its last horse, and perish to its last Yorkshireman,
rather than part with a stone of Giggleswick, a crag of Pen-y-gent,
or a ripple of Ribble,--Lancashire with its Cumbrian and Cheshire
contingents invades Yorkshire, and meeting with much Divine assistance,
ravages the West Riding, and besieges York on Christmas day. That is
the actual gist of the whole business; and in the same manner you
may see the downright common-sense--if any is to be seen--of other
human proceedings, by taking them first under narrow and homely
conditions. So, for the present, we will fancy ourselves, what you
tell me you all want to be, independent: we will take no account of
any other country but Britain; and on that condition I will begin to
show you in my next paper how we ought to live, after ascertaining
the utmost limits of the wages-fund, which means the income of our
gentleman; that is to say, essentially, the income of those who have
command of the land, and therefore of all food.
What you call "wages," practically, is the quantity of food which the
possessor of the land gives you, to work for him. There is, finally,
no "capital" but that. If all the money of all the capitalists
in the whole world were destroyed, the notes and bills burnt, the
gold irrecoverably buried, and all the machines and apparatus of
manufactures crushed, by a mistake in signals, in one catastrophe;
and nothing remained but the land, with its animals and vegetables,
and buildings for shelter,--the poorer population would be very little
worse off than they are at this instant; and their labour, instead of
being "limited" by the destruction, would be greatly stimulated. They
would feed themselves from the animals and growing crops; heap here and
there a few tons of ironstone together, build rough walls round them
to get a blast, and in a fortnight, they would have iron tools again,
and be ploughing and fighting, just as usual. It is only we who had the
capital who would suffer; we should not be able to live idle, as we do
now, and many of us--I, for instance--should starve at once: but you,
though little the worse, would none of you be the better eventually,
for our loss--or starvation. The removal of superfluous mouths would
indeed benefit you somewhat, for a time; but you would soon replace
them with hungrier ones; and there are many of us who are quite worth
our meat to you in different ways, which I will explain in due place:
also I will show you that our money is really likely to be useful to
you in its accumulated form, (besides that, in the instances when it
has been won by work, it justly belongs to us,) so only that you are
careful never to let us persuade you into borrowing it, and paying us
interest for it. You will find a very amusing story, explaining your
position in that case, at the 117th page of the 'Manual of Political
Economy,' published this year at Cambridge, for your early instruction,
in an almost devotionally catechetical form, by Messrs. Macmillan.
Perhaps I had better quote it to you entire: it is taken by the author
"from the French."
There was once in a village a poor carpenter, who worked hard
from morning to night. One day James thought to himself, "With
my hatchet, saw, and hammer, I can only make coarse furniture,
and can only get the pay for such. If I had a plane, I should
please my customers more, and they would pay me more. Yes, I am
resolved, I will make myself a plane." At the end of ten days,
James had in his possession an admirable plane which he valued
all the more for having made it himself. Whilst he was reckoning
all the profits which he expected to derive from the use of it,
he was interrupted by William, a carpenter in the neighbouring
village. William, having admired the plane, was struck with the
advantages which might be gained from it. He said to James--
"You must do me a service; lend me the plane for a year." As might
be expected, James cried out, "How can you think of such a thing,
William? Well, if I do you this service, what will you do for me
in return?"
W. Nothing. Don't you know that a loan ought to be gratuitous?
J. I know nothing of the sort; but I do know that if I were to
lend you my plane for a year, it would be giving it to you. To
tell you the truth, that was not what I made it for.
W. Very well, then; I ask you to do me a service; what service
do you ask me in return?
J. First, then, in a year the plane will be done for. You must
therefore give me another exactly like it.
W. That is perfectly just. I submit to these conditions. I think
you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing further.
J. I think otherwise. I made the plane for myself, and not for
you. I expected to gain some advantage from it. I have made the
plane for the purpose of improving my work and my condition;
if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will
gain the profit of it during the whole of that time. I am
not bound to do you such a service without receiving anything
in return. Therefore, if you wish for my plane, besides the
restoration already bargained for, you must give me a new plank
as a compensation for the advantages of which I shall be deprived.
These terms were agreed to, but the singular part of it is that at
the end of the year, when the plane came into James's possession,
he lent it again; recovered it, and lent it a third and fourth
time. It has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends
it. Let us examine this little story. The plane is the symbol of
all capital, and the plank is the symbol of all interest.
If this be an abridgment, what a graceful piece of highly wrought
literature the original story must be! I take the liberty of abridging
it a little more.
James makes a plane, lends it to William on 1st January for a
year. William gives him a plank for the loan of it, wears it out, and
makes another for James, which he gives him on 31st December. On 1st
January he again borrows the new one; and the arrangement is repeated
continuously. The position of William therefore is, that he makes a
plane every 31st of December; lends it to James till the next day,
and pays James a plank annually for the privilege of lending it to
him on that evening. This, in future investigations of capital and
interest, we will call, if you please, "the Position of William."
You may not at the first glance see where the fallacy lies (the writer
of the story evidently counts on your not seeing it at all).
If James did not lend the plane to William, he could only get his
gain of a plank by working with it himself, and wearing it out
himself. When he had worn it out at the end of the year, he would,
therefore, have to make another for himself. William, working with
it instead, gets the advantage instead, which he must, therefore,
pay James his plank for; and return to James, what James would, if
he had not lent his plane, then have had--not a new plane--but the
worn-out one, James must make a new one for himself, as he would have
had to do if no William had existed; and if William likes to borrow
it again for another plank--all is fair.
That is to say, clearing the story of its nonsense, that James makes a
plane annually, and sells it to William for its proper price, which,
in kind, is a new plank. But this arrangement has nothing whatever
to do with principal or with interest. There are, indeed, many very
subtle conditions involved in any sale; one among which is the value
of ideas; I will explain that value to you in the course of time;
(the article is not one which modern political economists have any
familiarity with dealings in;) and I will tell you somewhat also of the
real nature of interest; but if you will only get, for the present, a
quite clear idea of "the Position of William," it is all I want of you.
I remain, your faithful friend,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER II.
Denmark Hill,
1st February, 1871.
Friends,--
Before going farther, you may like to know, and ought to know, what
I mean by the title of these Letters; and why it is in Latin. I can
only tell you in part, for the Letters will be on many things, if I am
able to carry out my plan in them; and that title means many things,
and is in Latin, because I could not have given an English one that
meant so many. We, indeed, were not till lately a loquacious people,
nor a useless one; but the Romans did more, and said less, than any
other nation that ever lived; and their language is the most heroic
ever spoken by men.
Therefore I wish you to know, at least, some words of it, and to
recognize what thoughts they stand for.
Some day, I hope you may know--and that European workmen may know--many
words of it; but even a few will be useful.
Do not smile at my saying so. Of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Chemistry,
you can know but little, at the utmost; but that little, well learnt,
serves you well. And a little Latin, well learnt, will serve you also,
and in a higher way than any of these.
'Fors' is the best part of three good English words, Force, Fortitude,
and Fortune. I wish you to know the meaning of those three words
accurately.
'Force' (in humanity), means power of doing good work. A fool, or a
corpse, can do any quantity of mischief; but only a wise and strong
man, or, with what true vital force there is in him, a weak one,
can do good.
'Fortitude' means the power of bearing necessary pain, or trial of
patience, whether by time, or temptation.
'Fortune' means the necessary fate of a man: the ordinance of his
life which cannot be changed. To 'make your Fortune' is to rule that
appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable.
Fors is a feminine word; and Clavigera, is, therefore, the feminine of
'Claviger.'
Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a rudder.
Gero means 'I carry.' It is the root of our word 'gesture' (the way
you carry yourself); and, in a curious bye-way, of 'jest.'
Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer, Key-bearer,
or Nail-bearer.
Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera corresponds to
one of the three meanings of Fors.
Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of Deed.
Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience.
Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law.
I will tell you what you may usefully know of those three Greek
persons in a little time. At present, note only of the three powers:
1. That the strength of Hercules is for deed, not misdeed; and that
his club--the favourite weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus,
whose form is the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek
sculptors, (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum, and I shall
have much to tell you of him--especially how he helped Hercules in
his utmost need, and how he invented mixed vegetable soup)--was for
subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. 2. That
the Second Fors Clavigera is portress at a gate which she cannot
open till you have waited long; and that her robe is of the colour of
ashes, or dry earth. [2] 3. That the third Fors Clavigera, the power
of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal; and that the notablest crown
yet existing in Europe of any that have been worn by Christian kings,
was--people say--made of a Nail.
That is enough about my title, for this time; now to our work. I
told you, and you will find it true, that, practically, all wages
mean the food and lodging given you by the possessors of the land.
It begins to be asked on many sides how the possessors of the land
became possessed of it, and why they should still possess it, more than
you or I; and Ricardo's 'Theory' of Rent, though, for an economist,
a very creditably ingenious work of fiction, will not much longer be
imagined to explain the 'Practice' of Rent.
The true answer, in this matter, as in all others, is the best. Some
land has been bought; some, won by cultivation: but the greater part,
in Europe, seized originally by force of hand.
You may think, in that case, you would be justified in trying to
seize some yourselves, in the same way.
If you could, you, and your children, would only hold it by the same
title as its present holders. If it is a bad one, you had better not so
hold it; if a good one, you had better let the present holders alone.
And in any case, it is expedient that you should do so, for the present
holders, whom we may generally call 'Squires' (a title having three
meanings, like Fors, and all good; namely, Rider, Shield-bearer,
and Carver), are quite the best men you can now look to for leading:
it is too true that they have much demoralized themselves lately by
horse-racing, bird-shooting, and vermin-hunting; and most of all by
living in London, instead of on their estates; but they are still
(without exception) brave; nearly without exception, good-natured;
honest, so far as they understand honesty; and much to be depended on,
if once you and they understand each other.
Which you are far enough now from doing; and it is imminently
needful that you should: so we will have an accurate talk of them
soon. The needfullest thing of all first is that you should know
the functions of the persons whom you are being taught to think of
as your protectors against the Squires;--your 'Employers,' namely;
or Capitalist Supporters of Labour.
'Employers.' It is a noble title. If, indeed, they have found you
idle, and given you employment, wisely,--let us no more call them mere
'Men' of Business, but rather 'Angels' of Business: quite the best
sort of Guardian Angel.
Yet are you sure it is necessary, absolutely, to look to superior
natures for employment? Is it inconceivable that you should
employ--yourselves? I ask the question, because these Seraphic beings,
undertaking also to be Seraphic Teachers or Doctors, have theories
about employment which may perhaps be true in their own celestial
regions, but are inapplicable under worldly conditions.
To one of these principles, announced by themselves as highly
important, I must call your attention closely, because it has of late
been the cause of much embarrassment among persons in a sub-seraphic
life. I take its statement verbatim, from the 25th page of the
Cambridge catechism before quoted:
"This brings us to a most important proposition respecting
capital, one which it is essential that the student should
thoroughly understand.
"The proposition is this--A demand for commodities is not a demand
for labour.
"The demand for labour depends upon the amount of capital: the
demand for commodities simply determines in what direction labour
shall be employed.
"An example.--The truth of these assertions can best be shown by
examples. Let us suppose that a manufacturer of woollen cloth
is in the habit of spending £50 annually in lace. What does it
matter, say some, whether he spends this £50 in lace or whether
he uses it to employ more labourers in his own business? Does
not the £50 spent in lace maintain the labourers who make the
lace, just the same as it would maintain the labourers who make
cloth, if the manufacturer used the money in extending his own
business? If he ceased buying the lace, for the sake of employing
more cloth-makers, would there not be simply a transfer of the
£50 from the lace-makers to the cloth-makers? In order to find
the right answer to these questions, let us imagine what would
actually take place if the manufacturer ceased buying the lace,
and employed the £50 in paying the wages of an additional number
of cloth-makers. The lace manufacturer, in consequence of the
diminished demand for lace, would diminish the production, and
would withdraw from his business an amount of capital corresponding
to the diminished demand. As there is no reason to suppose that
the lace-maker would, on losing some of his custom, become more
extravagant, or would cease to desire to derive income from the
capital which the diminished demand has caused him to withdraw
from his own business, it may be assumed that he would invest this
capital in some other industry. This capital is not the same as
that which his former customer, the woollen cloth manufacturer,
is now paying his own labourers with; it is a second capital;
and in the place of £50 employed in maintaining labour, there is
now £100 so employed. There is no transfer from lace-makers to
cloth-makers. There is fresh employment for the cloth-makers, and a
transfer from the lace-makers to some other labourers."--Principles
of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 102.
This is very fine; and it is clear that we may carry forward the
improvement in our commercial arrangements by recommending all the
other customers of the lace-maker to treat him as the cloth-maker has
done. Whereupon he of course leaves the lace business entirely, and
uses all his capital in 'some other industry.' Having thus established
the lace-maker with a complete 'second capital' in the other industry,
we will next proceed to develope a capital out of the cloth-maker,
by recommending all his customers to leave him. Whereupon, he will
also invest his capital in 'some other industry,' and we have a Third
capital, employed in the National benefit.
We will now proceed in the round of all possible businesses, developing
a correspondent number of new capitals, till we come back to our
friend the lace-maker again, and find him employed in whatever his
new industry was. By now taking away again all his new customers,
we begin the development of another order of Capitals in a higher
Seraphic circle--and so develope at last an Infinite Capital!
It would be difficult to match this for simplicity; it is more comic
even than the fable of James and William, though you may find it less
easy to detect the fallacy here; but the obscurity is not because
the error is less gross, but because it is threefold. Fallacy 1st
is the assumption that a cloth-maker may employ any number of men,
whether he has customers or not; while a lace-maker must dismiss
his men if he has not customers. Fallacy 2nd: That when a lace-maker
can no longer find customers for lace, he can always find customers
for something else. Fallacy 3rd (the essential one): That the funds
provided by these new customers, produced seraphically from the
clouds, are a 'second capital.' Those customers, if they exist now,
existed before the lace-maker adopted his new business; and were the
employers of the people in that business. If the lace-maker gets them,
he merely diverts their fifty pounds from the tradesmen they were
before employing, to himself; and that is Mr. Mill's 'second capital.'
Underlying these three fallacies, however, there is, in the mind of
'the greatest thinker in England,' some consciousness of a partial
truth, which he has never yet been able to define for himself--still
less to explain to others. The real root of them is his conviction that
it is beneficial and profitable to make broadcloth; and unbeneficial
and unprofitable to make lace; [3] so that the trade of cloth-making
should be infinitely extended, and that of lace-making infinitely
repressed. Which is, indeed, partially true. Making cloth, if it be
well made, is a good industry; and if you had sense enough to read
your Walter Scott thoroughly, I should invite you to join me in sincere
hope that Glasgow might in that industry long flourish; and the chief
hostelry at Aberfoil be at the sign of the "Nicol Jarvie." Also,
of lace-makers, it is often true that they had better be doing
something else. I admit it, with no goodwill, for I know a most kind
lady, a clergyman's wife, who devotes her life to the benefit of her
country by employing lace-makers; and all her friends make presents
of collars and cuffs to each other, for the sake of charity; and as,
if they did not, the poor girl lace-makers would probably indeed be
'diverted' into some other less diverting industry, in due assertion
of the rights of women, (cartridge-filling, or percussion-cap making,
most likely,) I even go the length, sometimes, of furnishing my friend
with a pattern, and never say a word to disturb her young customers
in their conviction that it is an act of Christian charity to be
married in more than ordinarily expensive veils.
But there is one kind of lace for which I should be glad that the
demand ceased. Iron lace. If we must even doubt whether ornamental
thread-work may be, wisely, made on cushions in the sunshine,
by dexterous fingers for fair shoulders,--how are we to think of
Ornamental Iron-work, made with deadly sweat of men, and steady
waste, all summer through, of the coals that Earth gave us for winter
fuel? What shall we say of labour spent on lace such as that?
Nay, says the Cambridge catechism, "the demand for commodities is
not a demand for labour."
Doubtless, in the economist's new earth, cast iron will be had for
asking: the hapless and brave Parisians find it even rain occasionally
out of the new economical Heavens, without asking. Gold will also
one day, perhaps, be begotten of gold, until the supply of that, as
well as of iron, may be, at least, equal to the demand. But, in this
world, it is not so yet. Neither thread-lace, gold-lace, iron-lace,
nor stone-lace, whether they be commodities or incommodities, can be
had for nothing. How much, think you, did the gilded flourishes cost
round the gas-lamps on Westminster Bridge? or the stone-lace of the
pinnacles of the temple of Parliament at the end of it, (incommodious
enough, as I hear;) or the point-lace of the park-railings which you so
improperly pulled down, when you wanted to be Parliamentary yourselves;
(much good you would have got of that!) or the 'openwork' of iron
railings generally--the special glories of English design? Will you
count the cost, in labour and coals, of the blank bars ranged along
all the melancholy miles of our suburban streets, saying with their
rusty tongues, as plainly as iron tongues can speak, "Thieves outside,
and nothing to steal within." A beautiful wealth they are! and a
productive capital! "Well, but," you answer, "the making them was work
for us." Of course it was; is not that the very thing I am telling
you? Work it was; and too much. But will you be good enough to make
up your minds, once for all, whether it is really work that you want,
or rest? I thought you rather objected to your quantity of work;--that
you were all for having eight hours of it instead of ten? You may
have twelve instead of ten, easily,--sixteen, if you like! If it is
only occupation you want, why do you cast the iron? Forge it in the
fresh air, on a workman's anvil; make iron-lace like this of Verona,--
[Illustration]
every link of it swinging loose like a knight's chain mail: then you
may have some joy of it afterwards, and pride; and say you knew the
cunning of a man's right hand. But I think it is pay that you want,
not work; and it is very true that pretty iron-work like that does not
pay; but it is pretty, and it might even be entertaining, if you made
those leaves at the top of it (which are, as far as I can see, only
artichoke, and not very well done) in the likeness of all the beautiful
leaves you could find, till you knew them all by heart. "Wasted time
and hammer-strokes," say you? "A wise people like the English will
have nothing but spikes; and, besides, the spikes are highly needful,
so many of the wise people being thieves." Yes, that is so; and,
therefore, in calculating the annual cost of keeping your thieves, you
must always reckon, not only the cost of the spikes that keep them in,
but of the spikes that keep them out. But how if, instead of flat rough
spikes, you put triangular polished ones, commonly called bayonets;
and instead of the perpendicular bars, put perpendicular men? What
is the cost to you then, of your railing, of which you must feed the
idle bars daily? Costly enough, if it stays quiet. But how, if it
begin to march and countermarch? and apply its spikes horizontally?
And now note this that follows; it is of vital importance to you.
There are, practically, two absolutely opposite kinds of labour going
on among men, for ever. [4]
The first, labour supported by Capital, producing nothing.
The second, labour unsupported by Capital, producing all things.
Take two simple and precise instances on a small scale.
A little while since, I was paying a visit in Ireland, and chanced
to hear an account of the pleasures of a picnic party, who had gone
to see a waterfall. There was of course ample lunch, feasting on the
grass, and basketsful of fragments taken up afterwards.
Then the company, feeling themselves dull, gave the fragments that
remained to the attendant ragged boys, on condition that they should
'pull each other's hair.'
Here, you see, is, in the most accurate sense, employment of food,
or capital, in the support of entirely unproductive labour.
Next, for the second kind. I live at the top of a short but rather
steep hill; at the bottom of which, every day, all the year round,
but especially in frost, coal-waggons get stranded, being economically
provided with the smallest number of horses that can get them along
on level ground.
The other day, when the road, frozen after thaw, was at the worst,
my assistant, the engraver of that bit of iron-work on the 11th page,
was coming up here, and found three coal-waggons at a lock, helpless;
the drivers, as usual, explaining Political Economy to the horses,
by beating them over the heads.
There were half a dozen fellows besides, out of work, or not caring
to be in it--standing by, looking on. My engraver put his shoulder
to a wheel, (at least his hand to a spoke,) and called on the idlers
to do as much. They didn't seem to have thought of such a thing,
but were ready enough when called on. "And we went up screaming,"
said Mr. Burgess.
Do you suppose that was one whit less proper human work than going
up a hill against a battery, merely because, in that case, half of
the men would have gone down, screaming, instead of up; and those
who got up would have done no good at the top?
But observe the two opposite kinds of labour. The first lavishly
supported by Capital, and producing Nothing. The second, unsupported by
any Capital whatsoever,--not having so much as a stick for a tool,--but
called, by mere goodwill, out of the vast void of the world's Idleness,
and producing the definitely profitable result of moving a weight of
fuel some distance towards the place where it was wanted, and sparing
the strength of overloaded creatures.
Observe further. The labour producing no useful result was
demoralizing. All such labour is.
The labour producing useful result was educational in its influence
on the temper. All such labour is.
And the first condition of education, the thing you are all crying
out for, is being put to wholesome and useful work. And it is nearly
the last conditions of it, too; you need very little more; but, as
things go, there will yet be difficulty in getting that. As things
have hitherto gone, the difficulty has been to avoid getting the
reverse of that.
For, during the last eight hundred years, the upper classes of Europe
have been one large Picnic Party. Most of them have been religious
also; and in sitting down, by companies, upon the green grass, in
parks, gardens, and the like, have considered themselves commanded into
that position by Divine authority, and fed with bread from Heaven:
of which they duly considered it proper to bestow the fragments in
support, and the tithes in tuition, of the poor.
But, without even such small cost, they might have taught the
poor many beneficial things. In some places they have taught them
manners, which is already much. They might have cheaply taught them
merriment also:--dancing and singing, for instance. The young English
ladies who sit nightly to be instructed, themselves, at some cost,
in melodies illustrative of the consumption of La Traviata, and
the damnation of Don Juan, might have taught every girl peasant
in England to join in costless choirs of innocent song. Here and
there, perhaps, a gentleman might have been found able to teach his
peasantry some science and art. Science and fine art don't pay; but
they cost little. Tithes--not of the income of the country, but of the
income, say, of its brewers--nay, probably the sum devoted annually by
England to provide drugs for the adulteration of its own beer,--would
have founded lovely little museums, and perfect libraries, in every
village. And if here and there an English churchman had been found
(such as Dean Stanley) willing to explain to peasants the sculpture of
his and their own cathedral, and to read its black-letter inscriptions
for them; and, on warm Sundays, when they were too sleepy to attend
to anything more proper--to tell them a story about some of the
people who had built it, or lay buried in it--we perhaps might have
been quite as religious as we are, and yet need not now have been
offering prizes for competition in art schools, nor lecturing with
tender sentiment on the inimitableness of the works of Fra Angelico.
These things the great Picnic Party might have taught without cost,
and with amusement to themselves. One thing, at least, they were
bound to teach, whether it amused them or not;--how, day by day, the
daily bread they expected their village children to pray to God for,
might be earned in accordance with the laws of God. This they might
have taught, not only without cost, but with great gain. One thing
only they have taught, and at considerable cost.
They have spent four hundred millions [5] of pounds here in England
within the last twenty years!--how much in France and Germany, I will
take some pains to ascertain for you,--and with this initial outlay of
capital, have taught the peasants of Europe--to pull each other's hair.
With this result, 17th January, 1871, at and around the chief palace
of their own pleasures, and the chief city of their delights:
"Each demolished house has its own legend of sorrow, of pain,
and horror; each vacant doorway speaks to the eye, and almost to
the ear, of hasty flight, as armies or fire came--of weeping women
and trembling children running away in awful fear, abandoning the
home that saw their birth, the old house they loved--of startled
men seizing quickly under each arm their most valued goods, and
rushing, heavily laden, after their wives and babes, leaving to
hostile hands the task of burning all the rest. When evening
falls, the wretched outcasts, worn with fatigue and tears,
reach Versailles, St. Germain, or some other place outside
the range of fire, and there they beg for bread and shelter,
homeless, foodless, broken with despair. And this, remember,
has been the fate of something like a hundred thousand people
during the last four months. Versailles alone has about fifteen
thousand such fugitives to keep alive, all ruined, all hopeless,
all vaguely asking the grim future what still worse fate it may
have in store for them."--Daily Telegraph, Jan. 17th, 1871.
That is the result round their pleasant city, and this within their
industrious and practical one: let us keep, for the reference of
future ages, a picture of domestic life, out of the streets of London
in her commercial prosperity, founded on the eternal laws of Supply
and Demand, as applied by the modern Capitalist:
"A father in the last stage of consumption--two daughters nearly
marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting clothing to 'cover
their shame.' The rags that hang around their attenuated frames
flutter in strips against their naked legs. They have no stool or
chair upon which they can sit. Their father occupies the only stool
in the room. They have no employment by which they can earn even a
pittance. They are at home starving on a half-chance meal a day,
and hiding their raggedness from the world. The walls are bare,
there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of dirty rags are upon
it. The dying father will shortly follow the dead mother; and
when the parish coffin encloses his wasted form, and a pauper's
grave closes above him, what shall be his daughters' lot? This is
but a type of many other homes in the district: dirt, misery, and
disease alone flourish in that wretched neighbourhood. 'Fever and
smallpox rage,' as the inhabitants say, 'next door, and next door,
and over the way, and next door to that, and further down.' The
living, dying, and dead are all huddled together. The houses have
no ventilation, the back yards are receptacles for all sorts of
filth and rubbish, the old barrels or vessels that contain the
supply of water are thickly coated on the sides with slime, and
there is an undisturbed deposit of mud at the bottom. There is no
mortuary house--the dead lie in the dogholes where they breathed
their last, and add to the contagion which spreads through the
neighbourhood."--Pall Mall Gazette, January 7th, 1871, quoting
the Builder.
As I was revising this sheet,--on the evening of the 20th of last
month,--two slips of paper were brought to me. One contained, in
consecutive paragraphs, an extract from the speech of one of the
best and kindest of our public men, to the 'Liberal Association'
at Portsmouth; and an account of the performances of the 35-ton
gun called the 'Woolwich infant' which is fed with 700-pound shot,
and 130 pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like the
Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. "The gun was
fired with the most satisfactory result," nobody being hurt, and
nothing damaged but the platform, while the shot passed through the
screens in front at the rate of 1,303 feet per second: and it seems,
also, that the Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For
Mr. Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the Liberals
of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable neutrality "we must
contemplate the contingency of a combined fleet coming from the ports
of Prussia, Russia, and America, and making an attack on England."
Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, Woolwich,
and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind merely like another
case of iron railings--thieves outside, and nothing to steal
within. But the second slip of paper announced approaching help in
a peaceful direction. It was the prospectus of the Boardmen's and
General Advertising Co-operative Society, which invites, from the
"generosity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum," and,
"in addition to the above, a small sum of money by way of capital,"
to set the members of the society up in the profitable business of
walking about London between two boards. Here is at last found for
us, then, it appears, a line of life! At the West End, lounging about
the streets, with a well-made back to one's coat, and front to one's
shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of business; but,
doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie
pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay,
in time, only with proper preliminary expenditure of capital. My
friends, I repeat my question: Do you not think you could contrive
some little method of employing--yourselves? for truly I think the
Seraphic Doctors are nearly at their wits' end (if ever their wits had
a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning to find it difficult to live by
lies of their own; and workmen will not find it much easier to live,
by walking about, flattened between other people's.
Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you to read a
little history with me; perhaps also, because the world's time, seen
truly, is but one long and fitful April, in which every day is All
Fools' day,--we may continue our studies in that month; but on the
first of May, you shall consider with me what you can do, or let me,
if still living, tell you what I know you can do--those of you, at
least, who will promise--(with the help of the three strong Fates),
these three things:
1. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and seek to avenge
no injury.
3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones.
Believe me,
Your faithful friend,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER III.
Denmark Hill,
1st March, 1871.
My Friends,
We are to read--with your leave--some history to-day; the leave,
however, will perhaps not willingly be given, for you may think that
of late you have read enough history, or too much, in Gazettes of
morning and evening. No; you have read, and can read, no history
in these. Reports of daily events, yes;--and if any journal would
limit itself to statements of well-sifted fact, making itself not a
"news"paper, but an "olds"paper, and giving its statements tested and
true, like old wine, as soon as things could be known accurately;
choosing also, of the many things that might be known, those which
it was most vital to know, and summing them in few words of pure
English,--I cannot say whether it would ever pay well to sell it;
but I am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read no other.
But even so, to know only what was happening day by day, would not
be to read history. What happens now is but the momentary scene
of a great play, of which you can understand nothing without some
knowledge of the former action. And of that, so great a play is it,
you can at best understand little; yet of history, as of science,
a little, well known, will serve you much, and a little, ill known,
will do you fatally the contrary of service.
For instance, all your journals will be full of talk, for months to
come, about whose fault the war was; and you yourselves, as you begin
to feel its deadly recoil on your own interests, or as you comprehend
better the misery it has brought on others, will be looking about
more and more restlessly for some one to accuse of it. That is because
you don't know the law of Fate, nor the course of history. It is the
law of Fate that we shall live, in part, by our own efforts, but in
the greater part, by the help of others; and that we shall also die,
in part, for our own faults; but in the greater part for the faults
of others. Do you suppose (to take the thing on the small scale in
which you can test it) that those seven children torn into pieces
out of their sleep, in the last night of the siege of Paris, [6]
had sinned above all the children in Paris, or above yours? or that
their parents had sinned more than you? Do you think the thousands of
soldiers, German and French, who have died in agony, and of women who
have died of grief, had sinned above all other soldiers, or mothers,
or girls, there and here?
It was not their fault, but their Fate. The thing appointed to them by
the Third Fors. But you think it was at least the Emperor Napoleon's
fault, if not theirs? Or Count Bismarck's? No; not at all. The
Emperor Napoleon had no more to do with it than a cork on the top of
a wave has with the toss of the sea. Count Bismarck had very little
to do with it. When the Count sent for my waiter, last July, in the
village of Lauterbrunnen, among the Alps,--that the waiter then and
there packed his knapsack and departed, to be shot, if need were,
leaving my dinner unserved (as has been the case with many other
people's dinners since)--depended on things much anterior to Count
Bismarck. The two men who had most to answer for in the mischief of
the matter were St. Louis and his brother, who lived in the middle
of the thirteenth century. One, among the very best of men; and the
other, of all that I ever read of, the worst. The good man, living
in mistaken effort, and dying miserably, to the ruin of his country;
the bad man living in triumphant good fortune, and dying peaceably,
to the ruin of many countries. Such were their Fates, and ours. I
am not going to tell you of them, nor anything about the French war
to-day; and you have been told, long ago, (only you would not listen,
nor believe,) the root of the modern German power--in that rough
father of Frederick, who "yearly made his country richer, and this
not in money alone (which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes
has no value at all, and even less), but in frugality, diligence,
punctuality, veracity,--the grand fountains from which money, and
all real values and valours, spring for men. As a Nation's Husband,
he seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy the nation
which gets such a Husband, once in the half thousand years. The Nation,
as foolish wives and Nations do, repines and grudges a good deal,
its weak whims and will being thwarted very often; but it advances
steadily, with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and,
after long times, the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest
to the Nation, and to all Nations." [7]
No such harvest is sowing for you,--Freemen and Independent Electors
of Parliamentary representatives, as you think yourselves.
Freemen, indeed! You are slaves, not to masters of any strength or
honour; but to the idlest talkers at that floral end of Westminster
bridge. Nay, to countless meaner masters than they. For though, indeed,
as early as the year 1102, it was decreed in a council at St. Peter's,
Westminster, "that no man for the future should presume to carry on
the wicked trade of selling men in the markets, like brute beasts,
which hitherto hath been the common custom of England," the no less
wicked trade of under-selling men in markets has lasted to this day;
producing conditions of slavery differing from the ancient ones only
in being starved instead of full-fed: and besides this, a state
of slavery unheard of among the nations till now, has arisen with
us. In all former slaveries, Egyptian, Algerine, Saxon, and American,
the slave's complaint has been of compulsory work. But the modern
Politico-Economic slave is a new and far more injured species,
condemned to Compulsory Idleness, for fear he should spoil other
people's trade; the beautifully logical condition of the national
Theory of Economy in this matter being that, if you are a shoemaker,
it is a law of Heaven that you must sell your goods under their price,
in order to destroy the trade of other shoemakers; but if you are not
a shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame, it is a law of Heaven
that you must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide, to put between your
foot and the stones, because that would interfere with the total
trade of shoemaking.
Which theory, of all the wonderful--!
We will wait till April to consider of it; meantime, here is a note I
have received from Mr. Alsager A. Hill, who having been unfortunately
active in organizing that new effort in the advertising business,
designed, as it seems, on this loveliest principle of doing nothing
that will be perilously productive--was hurt by my manner of mention
of it in the last number of Fors. I offered accordingly to print any
form of remonstrance he would furnish me with, if laconic enough;
and he writes to me, "The intention of the Boardmen's Society is not,
as the writer of Fors Clavigera suggests, to 'find a line of life'
for able-bodied labourers, but simply, by means of co-operation, to
give them the fullest benefit of their labour whilst they continue a
very humble but still remunerative calling. See Rule 12. The capital
asked for to start the organization is essential in all industrial
partnerships, and in so poor a class of labour as that of street
board-carrying could not be supplied by the men themselves. With
respect to the 'lies' alleged to be carried in front and behind, it is
rather hard measure to say that mere announcements of public meetings
or places of entertainments (of which street notices chiefly consist)
are necessarily falsehoods."
To which, I have only to reply that I never said the newly-found line
of life was meant for able-bodied persons. The distinction between
able and unable-bodied men is entirely indefinite. There are all
degrees of ability for all things; and a man who can do anything,
however little, should be made to do that little usefully. If you
can carry about a board with a bill on it, you can carry, not about,
but where it is wanted, a board without a bill on it; which is a much
more useful exercise of your ability. Respecting the general probity,
and historical or descriptive accuracy, of advertisements, and their
function in modern economy, I will inquire in another place. You see
I use none for this book, and shall in future use none for any of
my books; having grave objection even to the very small minority
of advertisements which are approximately true. I am correcting
this sheet in the "Crown and Thistle" inn at Abingdon, and under
my window is a shrill-voiced person, slowly progressive, crying,
"Soles, three pair for a shillin'." In a market regulated by reason
and order, instead of demand and supply, the soles would neither have
been kept long enough to render such advertisement of them necessary,
nor permitted, after their inexpedient preservation, to be advertised.
Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure first to strive for leave
to be useful. Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you
are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of,
who are living round you, but on every past act of what has been dust
for a thousand years. So also, does the course of a thousand years
to come, depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you.
Little enough, and perishing, often without reward, however well
spent. Understand that. Virtue does not consist in doing what will be
presently paid, or even paid at all, to you, the virtuous person. It
may so chance; or may not. It will be paid, some day; but the vital
condition of it, as virtue, is that it shall be content in its own
deed, and desirous rather that the pay of it, if any, should be for
others; just as it is also the vital condition of vice to be content
in its own deed, and desirous that the pay thereof, if any, should
be to others.
You have probably heard of St. Louis before now: and perhaps also
that he built the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, of which you may have
seen that I wrote the other day to the Telegraph, as being the most
precious piece of Gothic in Northern Europe; but you are not likely
to have known that the spire of it was Tenterden steeple over again,
and the cause of fatal sands many, quick, and slow, and above all,
of the running of these in the last hour-glass of France; for that
spire, and others like it, subordinate, have acted ever since as
lightning-rods, in a reverse manner; carrying, not the fire of heaven
innocently to earth, but electric fire of earth innocently to heaven,
leaving us all, down here, cold. The best virtue and heart-fire of
France (not to say of England, who building her towers for the most
part with four pinnacles instead of one, in a somewhat quadrumanous
type, finds them less apt as conductors), have spent themselves for
these past six centuries in running up those steeples and off them,
nobody knows where, leaving a "holy Republic" as residue at the bottom;
helpless, clay-cold, and croaking, a habitation of frogs, which poor
Garibaldi fights for, vainly raging against the ghost of St. Louis.
It is of English ghosts, however, that I would fain tell you somewhat
to-day; of them, and of the land they haunt, and know still for
theirs. For hear this to begin with:--
"While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless
for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region,
a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs
at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William" (the
Conqueror). So says, very truly, Mr. Freeman in his History of the
Conquest. Are there any of you who care for this old England, of which
the map has remained unchanged for so long? I believe you would care
more for her, and less for yourselves, except as her faithful children,
if you knew a little more about her; and especially more of what she
has been. The difficulty, indeed, at any time, is in finding out what
she has been; for that which people usually call her history is not
hers at all; but that of her Kings, or the tax-gatherers employed
by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history,
or Mr. Lowe's, yours and mine.
But the history even of her Kings is worth reading. You remember,
I said, that sometimes in church it might keep you awake to be told
a little of it. For a simple instance, you have heard probably of
Absalom's rebellion against his father, and of David's agony at his
death, until from very weariness you have ceased to feel the power of
the story. You would not feel it less vividly if you knew that a far
more fearful sorrow, of the like kind, had happened to one of your
own Kings, perhaps the best we have had, take him for all in all. Not
one only, but three of his sons, rebelled against him, and were urged
into rebellion by their mother. The Prince, who should have been King
after him, was pardoned, not once, but many times--pardoned wholly,
with rejoicing over him as over the dead alive, and set at his father's
right hand in the kingdom; but all in vain. Hard and treacherous to
the heart's core, nothing wins him, nothing warns, nothing binds. He
flies to France, and wars at last alike against father and brother,
till, falling sick through mingled guilt, and shame, and rage, he
repents idly as the fever-fire withers him. His father sends him the
signet ring from his finger in token of one more forgiveness. The
Prince lies down upon a heap of ashes with a halter round his neck,
and so dies. When his father heard it he fainted away three times, and
then broke out into bitterest crying and tears. This, you would have
thought enough for the Third dark Fate to have appointed for a man's
sorrows. It was little to that which was to come. His second son, who
was now his Prince of England, conspired against him, and pursued his
father from city to city, in Norman France. At last, even his youngest
son, best beloved of all, abandoned him, and went over to his enemies.
This was enough. Between him and his children Heaven commanded its
own peace. He sickened and died of grief on the 6th of July, 1189.
The son who had killed him, "repented" now; but there could be no
signet ring sent to him. Perhaps the dead do not forgive. Men say,
as he stood by his father's corpse, that the blood burst from his
nostrils. One child only had been faithful to him, but he was the son
of a girl whom he had loved much, and as he should not; his Queen,
therefore, being a much older person, and strict upon proprieties,
poisoned her; nevertheless poor Rosamond's son never failed him; won a
battle for him in England, which, in all human probability, saved his
kingdom; and was made a bishop, and turned out a bishop of the best.
You know already a little about the Prince who stood unforgiven (as
it seemed) by his father's body. He, also, had to forgive, in his
time; but only a stranger's arrow shot--not those reversed "arrows
in the hand of the giant," by which his father died. Men called him
"Lion-heart," not untruly; and the English as a people, have prided
themselves somewhat ever since on having, every man of them, the
heart of a lion; without inquiring particularly either what sort of
heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart of a lamb might not
sometimes be more to the purpose. But it so happens that the name
was very justly given to this prince; and I want you to study his
character somewhat, with me, because in all our history there is no
truer representative of one great species of the British squire, under
all the three significances of the name; for this Richard of ours was
beyond most of his fellows, a Rider and a Shieldbearer; and beyond
all men of his day, a Carver; and in disposition and unreasonable
exercise of intellectual power, typically a Squire altogether.
Note of him first, then, that he verily desired the good of his people
(provided it could be contrived without any check of his own humour),
and that he saw his way to it a great deal clearer than any of your
squires do now. Here are some of his laws for you:--
"Having set forth the great inconveniences arising from the diversity
of weights and measures in different parts of the kingdom, he, by a
law, commanded all measures of corn, and other dry goods, as also of
liquors, to be exactly the same in all his dominions; and that the
rim of each of these measures should be a circle of iron. By another
law, he commanded all cloth to be woven two yards in breadth within
the lists, and of equal goodness in all parts; and that all cloth
which did not answer this description should be seized and burnt. He
enacted, further, that all the coin of the kingdom should be exactly
of the same weight and fineness;--that no Christian should take any
interest for money lent; and, to prevent the extortions of the Jews,
he commanded that all compacts between Christians and Jews should
be made in the presence of witnesses, and the conditions of them
put in writing." So, you see, in Coeur-de-Lion's day, it was not
esteemed of absolute necessity to put agreements between Christians
in writing! Which if it were not now, you know we might save a great
deal of money, and discharge some of our workmen round Temple Bar,
as well as from Woolwich Dockyards. Note also that bit about interest
of money also for future reference. In the next place observe that
this King had great objection to thieves--at least to any person whom
he clearly comprehended to be a thief. He was the inventor of a mode
of treatment which I believe the Americans--among whom it has not
fallen altogether into disuse--do not gratefully enough recognize as
a Monarchical institution. By the last of the laws for the government
of his fleet in his expedition to Palestine, it is decreed,--"That
whosoever is convicted of theft shall have his head shaved, melted
pitch poured upon it, and the feathers from a pillow shaken over
it, that he may be known; and shall be put on shore on the first
land which the ship touches." And not only so; he even objected to
any theft by misrepresentation or deception,--for being evidently
particularly interested, like Mr. Mill, in that cloth manufacture,
and having made the above law about the breadth of the web, which has
caused it to be spoken of ever since as "Broad Cloth," and besides,
for better preservation of its breadth, enacted that the Ell shall be
of the same length all over the kingdom, and that it shall be made of
iron--(so that Mr. Tennyson's provision for National defences--that
every shop-boy should strike with his cheating yard-wand home, would
be mended much by the substitution of King Richard's honest ell-wand,
and for once with advisable encouragement to the iron trade)--King
Richard finally declares--"That it shall be of the same goodness
in the middle as at the sides, and that no merchant in any part of
the kingdom of England shall stretch before his shop or booth a red
or black cloth, or any other thing by which the sight of buyers is
frequently deceived in the choice of good cloth."
These being Richard's rough and unreasonable, chancing nevertheless,
being wholly honest, to be wholly right, notions of business, the
next point you are to note in him is his unreasonable good humour;
an eminent character of English Squires; a very loveable one; and
available to himself and others in many ways, but not altogether
so exemplary as many think it. If you are unscrupulously resolved,
whenever you can get your own way, to take it; if you are in a
position of life wherein you can get a good deal of it, and if you have
pugnacity enough to enjoy fighting with anybody who will not give it
to you, there is little reason why you should ever be out of humour,
unless indeed your way is a broad one, wherein you are like to be
opposed in force. Richard's way was a very narrow one. To be first
in battle, (generally obtaining that main piece of his will without
question; once only worsted, by a French knight, and then, not at
all good-humouredly,) to be first in recognized command--therefore
contending with his father, who was both in wisdom and acknowledged
place superior; but scarcely contending at all with his brother
John, who was as definitely and deeply beneath him; good-humoured
unreasonably, while he was killing his father, the best of kings,
and letting his brother rule unresisted, who was among the worst;
and only proposing for his object in life to enjoy himself everywhere
in a chivalrous, poetical, and pleasantly animal manner, as a strong
man always may. What should he have been out of humour for? That he
brightly and bravely lived through his captivity is much indeed to
his honour; but it was his point of honour to be bright and brave;
not at all to take care of his kingdom. A king who cared for that,
would have got thinner and sadder in prison.
And it remains true of the English squire to this day, that, for the
most part, he thinks that his kingdom is given him that he may be
bright and brave; and not at all that the sunshine or valour in him
is meant to be of use to his kingdom.
But the next point you have to note in Richard is indeed a very
noble quality, and true English; he always does as much of his work
as he can with his own hands. He was not in any wise a king who would
sit by a windmill to watch his son and his men at work, though brave
kings have done so. As much as might be, of whatever had to be done,
he would stedfastly do from his own shoulder; his main tool being an
old Greek one, and the working God Vulcan's--the clearing axe. When
that was no longer needful, and nothing would serve but spade and
trowel, still the king was foremost; and after the weary retreat to
Ascalon, when he found the place "so completely ruined and deserted,
that it afforded neither food, lodging, nor protection," nor any other
sort of capital,--forthwith, 20th January, 1192--his army and he set
to work to repair it; a three months' business, of incessant toil,
"from which the king himself was not exempted, but wrought with
greater ardour than any common labourer."
The next point of his character is very English also, but less
honourably so. I said but now that he had a great objection to anybody
whom he clearly comprehended to be a thief. But he had great difficulty
in reaching anything like an abstract definition of thieving, such
as would include every method of it, and every culprit, which is an
incapacity very common to many of us to this day. For instance, he
carried off a great deal of treasure which belonged to his father,
from Chinon (the royal treasury-town in France), and fortified
his own castles in Poitou with it; and when he wanted money to go
crusading with, sold the royal castles, manors, woods, and forests,
and even the superiority of the Crown of England over the kingdom of
Scotland, which his father had wrought hard for, for about a hundred
thousand pounds. Nay, the highest honours and most important offices
become venal under him; and from a Princess's dowry to a Saracen
caravan, nothing comes much amiss; not but that he gives generously
also; whole ships at a time when he is in the humour; but his main
practice is getting and spending, never saving; which covetousness is
at last the death of him. For hearing that a considerable treasure
of ancient coins and medals has been found in the lands of Vidomar,
Viscount of Limoges, King Richard sends forthwith to claim this waif
for himself. The Viscount offers him part only, presumably having
an antiquarian turn of mind. Whereupon Richard loses his temper,
and marches forthwith with some Brabant men, mercenaries, to besiege
the Viscount in his castle of Chalus; proposing, first, to possess
himself of the antique and otherwise interesting coin in the castle,
and then, on his general principle of objection to thieves, to hang the
garrison. The garrison, on this, offer to give up the antiquities if
they may march off themselves; but Richard declares that nothing will
serve but they must all be hanged. Whereon the siege proceeding by
rule. and Richard looking, as usual, into matters with his own eyes,
and going too near the walls, an arrow well meant, though half spent,
pierces the strong, white shoulder; the shield-bearing one, carelessly
forward above instead of under shield; or perhaps, rather, when he
was afoot, shieldless, engineering. He finishes his work, however,
though the scratch teases him; plans his assault, carries his castle,
and duly hangs his garrison, all but the archer, whom in his royal,
unreasoning way he thinks better of, for the well-spent arrow. But he
pulls it out impatiently, and the head of it stays in the fair flesh;
a little surgery follows; not so skilful as the archery of those days,
and the lion heart is appeased--
Sixth April, 1199.
We will pursue our historical studies, if you please, in that month
of the present year. But I wish, in the meantime, you would observe,
and meditate on, the quite Anglican character of Richard, to his death.
It might have been remarked to him, on his projecting the expedition to
Chalus, that there were not a few Roman coins, and other antiquities,
to be found in his own kingdom of England, without fighting for them,
but by mere spade labour and other innocuous means;--that even the
brightest new money was obtainable from his loyal people in almost any
quantity for civil asking; and that the same loyal people, encouraged
and protected, and above all, kept clean-handed, in the arts, by their
king, might produce treasures more covetable than any antiquities.
"No;" Richard would have answered,--"that is all hypothetical and
visionary; here is a pot of coin presently to be had--no doubt about
it--inside the walls here:--let me once get hold of that, and then,"--
That is what we English call being "Practical."
Believe me,
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER IV.
Denmark Hill,
1st April, 1871.
My Friends,
It cannot but be pleasing to us to reflect, this day, that if we
are often foolish enough to talk English without understanding it,
we are often wise enough to talk Latin without knowing it. For this
month retains its pretty Roman name, and means the month of Opening;
of the light in the days, and the life in the leaves, and of the
voices of birds, and of the hearts of men.
And being the month of Manifestation, it is pre-eminently the month
of Fools;--for under the beatific influences of moral sunshine,
or Education, the Fools always come out first.
But what is less pleasing to reflect upon, this spring morning, is,
that there are some kinds of education which may be described, not
as moral sunshine, but as moral moonshine; and that, under these,
Fools come out both First--and Last.
We have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on this one point,
that we will have education for all men and women now, and for all
boys and girls that are to be. Nothing, indeed, can be more desirable,
if only we determine also what kind of education we are to have. It is
taken for granted that any education must be good;--that the more of
it we get, the better; that bad education only means little education;
and that the worst thing we have to fear is getting none. Alas, that
is not at all so. Getting no education is by no means the worst thing
that can happen to us. One of the pleasantest friends I ever had in
my life was a Savoyard guide, who could only read with difficulty,
and write scarcely intelligibly, and by great effort. He knew no
language but his own--no science, except as much practical agriculture
as served him to till his fields. But he was, without exception, one of
the happiest persons, and, on the whole, one of the best, I have ever
known: and after lunch, when he had had his half bottle of Savoy wine,
he would generally, as we walked up some quiet valley in the afternoon
light, give me a little lecture on philosophy; and after I had fatigued
and provoked him with less cheerful views of the world than his own,
he would fall back to my servant behind me, and console himself with
a shrug of the shoulders, and a whispered "Le pauvre enfant, il ne
sait pas vivre!"--("The poor child, he doesn't know how to live.")
No, my friends, believe me, it is not the going without education at
all that we have most to dread. The real thing to be feared is getting
a bad one. There are all sorts--good, and very good; bad, and very
bad. The children of rich people often get the worst education that
is to be had for money; the children of the poor often get the best
for nothing. And you have really these two things now to decide for
yourselves in England before you can take one quite safe practical
step in the matter, namely, first, what a good education is; and,
secondly, who is likely to give it you.
What it is? "Everybody knows that," I suppose you would most of you
answer. "Of course--to be taught to read, and write, and cast accounts;
and to learn geography, and geology, and astronomy, and chemistry,
and German, and French, and Italian, and Latin, and Greek and the
aboriginal Aryan language."
Well, when you had learned all that, what would you do next? "Next? Why
then we should be perfectly happy, and make as much money as ever
we liked, and we would turn out our toes before any company." I am
not sure myself, and I don't think you can be, of any one of these
three things. At least, as to making you very happy, I know something,
myself, of nearly all these matters--not much, but still quite as much
as most men, under the ordinary chances of life, with a fair education,
are likely to get together--and I assure you the knowledge does not
make me happy at all. When I was a boy I used to like seeing the sun
rise. I didn't know, then, there were any spots on the sun; now I do,
and am always frightened lest any more should come. When I was a boy,
I used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at
Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire; my whole collection
had cost, perhaps, three half-crowns, and was worth considerably
less; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, about any single stone
in it;--could not even spell their names: but words cannot tell the
joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth
perhaps from two to three thousand pounds; and I know more about some
of them than most other people. But I am not a whit happier, either for
my knowledge, or possessions, for other geologists dispute my theories,
to my grievous indignation and discontentment; and I am miserable about
all my best specimens, because there are better in the British Museum.
No, I assure you, knowledge by itself will not make you happy;
still less will it make you rich. Perhaps you thought I was writing
carelessly when I told you, last month, "science did not pay." But
you don't know what science is. You fancy it means mechanical art;
and so you have put a statue of Science on the Holborn Viaduct,
with a steam-engine regulator in its hands. My ingenious friends,
science has no more to do with making steam-engines than with making
breeches; though she condescends to help you a little in such necessary
(or it may be, conceivably, in both cases, sometimes unnecessary)
businesses. Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people,
mostly poor. Mr. John Kepler, for instance, who is found by Sir Henry
Wotton "in the picturesque green country by the shores of the Donau,
in a little black tent in a field, convertible, like a windmill,
to all quarters, a camera-obscura, in fact. Mr. John invents rude
toys, writes almanacks, practises medicine, for good reasons, his
encouragement from the Holy Roman Empire and mankind being a pension
of 18l. a year, and that hardly ever paid." [8] That is what one gets
by star-gazing, my friends. And you cannot be simple enough, even in
April, to think I got my three thousand pounds'-worth of minerals by
studying mineralogy? Not so; they were earned for me by hard labour; my
father's in England, and many a sun-burnt vineyard-dresser's in Spain.
"What business had you, in your idleness, with their earnings
then?" you will perhaps ask. None, it may be; I will tell you in
a little while how you may find that out; it is not to the point
now. But it is to the point that you should observe I have not kept
their earnings, the portion of them, at least, with which I bought
minerals. That part of their earnings is all gone to feed the miners in
Cornwall, or on the Hartz mountains, and I have only got for myself a
few pieces of glittering (not always that, but often unseemly) stone,
which neither vine-dressers nor miners cared for; which you yourselves
would have to learn many hard words, much cramp mathematics, and
useless chemistry, in order to care for; which, if ever you did care
for, as I do, would most likely only make you envious of the British
Museum, and occasionally uncomfortable if any harm happened to your
dear stones. I have a piece of red oxide of copper, for instance,
which grieves me poignantly by losing its colour; and a crystal of
sulphide of lead, with a chip in it, which causes me a great deal of
concern--in April; because I see it then by the fresh sunshine.
My oxide of copper and sulphide of lead you will not then wisely
envy me. Neither, probably, would you covet a handful of hard brown
gravel, with a rough pebble in it, whitish, and about the size of
a pea; nor a few grains of apparently brass filings, with which the
gravel is mixed. I was but a fool to give good money for such things,
you think? It may well be. I gave thirty pounds for that handful
of gravel, and the miners who found it were ill-paid then; and it
is not clear to me that this produce of their labour was the best
possible. Shall we consider of it, with the help of the Cambridge
Catechism? at the tenth page of which you will find that Mr. Mill's
definition of productive labour is--"That which produces utilities
fixed and embodied in material objects."
This is very fine--indeed, superfine--English; but I can, perhaps,
make the meaning of the Greatest Thinker in England a little more
lucid for you by vulgarizing his terms.
"Object," you must always remember, is fine English for "Thing." It is
a semi-Latin word, and properly means a thing "thrown in your way;" so
that if you put "ion" to the end of it, it becomes Objection. We will
rather say "Thing," if you have no objection--you and I. A "Material"
thing, then, of course, signifies something solid and tangible. It is
very necessary for Political Economists always to insert this word
"material," lest people should suppose that there was any use or
value in Thought or Knowledge, and other such immaterial objects.
"Embodied" is a particularly elegant word; but superfluous, because you
know it would not be possible that a Utility should be disembodied,
as long as it was in a material object. But when you wish to express
yourself as thinking in a great manner, you may say--as, for instance,
when you are supping vegetable soup--that your power of doing so
conveniently and gracefully is "Embodied" in a spoon.
"Fixed" is, I am afraid, rashly, as well as superfluously, introduced
into his definition by Mr. Mill. It is conceivable that some Utilities
may be also volatile, or planetary, even when embodied. But at last
we come to the great word in the great definition--"Utility."
And this word, I am sorry to say, puzzles me most of all; for I never
myself saw a Utility, either out of the body, or in it, and should
be much embarrassed if ordered to produce one in either state.
But it is fortunate for us that all this seraphic language, reduced to
the vulgar tongue, will become, though fallen in dignity and reduced
in dimension, perfectly intelligible. The Greatest Thinker in England
means by these beautiful words to tell you that Productive labour
is labour that produces a Useful Thing. Which, indeed, perhaps,
you knew--or, without the assistance of great thinkers, might have
known, before now. But if Mr. Mill had said so much, simply, you might
have been tempted to ask farther--"What things are useful, and what
are not?" And as Mr. Mill does not know, nor any other Political
Economist going,--and as they therefore particularly wish nobody
to ask them,--it is convenient to say instead of "useful things,"
"utilities fixed and embodied in material objects," because that
sounds so very like complete and satisfactory information, that one
is ashamed, after getting it, to ask for any more.
But it is not, therefore, less discouraging that for the present I have
got no help towards discovering whether my handful of gravel with the
white pebble in it was worth my thirty pounds or not. I am afraid it
is not a useful thing to me. It lies at the back of a drawer, locked
up all the year round. I never look at it now, for I know all about
it: the only satisfaction I have for my money is knowing that nobody
else can look at it; and if nobody else wanted to, I shouldn't even
have that.
"What did you buy it for, then?" you will ask. Well, if you must
have the truth, because I was a Fool, and wanted it. Other people
have bought such things before me. The white stone is a diamond,
and the apparent brass filings are gold dust; but, I admit, nobody
ever yet wanted such things who was in his right senses. Only now,
as I have candidly answered all your questions, will you answer one
of mine? If I hadn't bought it, what would you have had me do with
my money? Keep that in the drawer instead?--or at my banker's, till
it grew out of thirty pounds into sixty and a hundred, in fulfilment
of the law respecting seed sown in good ground?
Doubtless, that would have been more meritorious for the time. But
when I had got the sixty or the hundred pounds--what should I have
done with them? The question only becomes doubly and trebly serious;
and all the more, to me, because when I told you last January that
I had bought a picture for a thousand pounds, permitting myself in
that folly for your advantage, as I thought, hearing that many of you
wanted art Patronage, and wished to live by painting,--one of your own
popular organs, the Liverpool Daily Courier, of February 9th, said, "it
showed want of taste,--of tact," and was "something like a mockery,"
to tell you so! I am not to buy pictures, therefore, it seems;--you
like to be kept in mines and tunnels, and occasionally blown hither and
thither, or crushed flat, rather than live by painting, in good light,
and with the chance of remaining all day in a whole and unextended
skin? But what shall I buy, then, with the next thirty pieces of gold
I can scrape together? Precious things have been bought, indeed, and
sold, before now for thirty pieces, even of silver, but with doubtful
issue. The over-charitable person who was bought to be killed at that
price, indeed, advised the giving of alms; but you won't have alms, I
suppose, you are so independent, nor go into almshouses--(and, truly,
I did not much wonder, as I walked by the old church of Abingdon, a
Sunday or two since, where the almshouses are set round the churchyard,
and under the level of it, and with a cheerful view of it, except
that the tombstones slightly block the light of the lattice-windows;
with beautiful texts from Scripture over the doors, to remind the
paupers still more emphatically that, highly blessed as they were,
they were yet mortal)--you won't go into almshouses; and all the
clergy in London have been shrieking against almsgiving to the lower
poor this whole winter long, till I am obliged, whenever I want to
give anybody a penny, to look up and down the street first, to see
if a clergyman's coming. Of course, I know I might buy as many iron
railings as I please, and be praised; but I've no room for them. I
can't well burn more coals than I do, because of the blacks, which
spoil my books; and the Americans won't let me buy any blacks alive,
or else I would have some black dwarfs with parrots, such as one sees
in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I should, of course, like myself,
above all things, to buy a pretty white girl, with a title--and I could
get great praise for doing that--only I haven't money enough. White
girls come dear, even when one buys them only like coals, for fuel. The
Duke of Bedford, indeed, bought Joan of Arc from the French, to burn,
for only ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year to
the Bastard of Vendôme--and I could and would have given that for her,
and not burnt her; but one hasn't such a chance every day. Will you,
any of you, have the goodness--beggars, clergymen, workmen, seraphic
doctors, Mr. Mill, Mr. Fawcett, or the Politico-Economic Professor
of my own University--I challenge you, I beseech you, all and singly,
to tell me what I am to do with my money.
I mean, indeed, to give you my own poor opinion on the subject in
May; though I feel the more embarrassed in the thought of doing so,
because, in this present April, I am so much a fool as not even to
know clearly whether I have got any money or not. I know, indeed,
that things go on at present as if I had; but it seems to me that
there must be a mistake somewhere, and that some day it will be found
out. For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the
Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the Founding
of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with
some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit
of paper gives me a right to tax you every year, and make you pay me
two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me:
but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to
you, any summer's day, that you had better not? Where would my seven
thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves
a rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no
real existence;--it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two
hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn't got it. And this
is surely a very odd kind of money for a country to boast of. Well,
then, besides this, I have a bit of low land at Greenwich, which,
as far as I see anything of it, is not money at all, but only mud;
and would be of as little use to me as my handful of gravel in the
drawer, if it were not that an ingenious person has found out that
he can make chimney-pots of it; and, every quarter, he brings me
fifteen pounds off the price of his chimney-pots, so that I am always
sympathetically glad when there's a high wind, because then I know my
ingenious friend's business is thriving. But suppose it should come
into his head, in any less windy month than this April, that he had
better bring me none of the price of his chimneys? And even though he
should go on, as I hope he will, patiently,--(and I always give him a
glass of wine when he brings me the fifteen pounds),--is this really
to be called money of mine? And is the country any richer because,
when anybody's chimney-pot is blown down in Greenwich, he must pay
something extra, to me, before he can put it on again?
Then, also, I have some houses in Marylebone, which though indeed very
ugly and miserable, yet, so far as they are actual beams and brick-bats
put into shape, I might have imagined to be real property; only,
you know, Mr. Mill says that people who build houses don't produce
a commodity, but only do us a service. So I suppose my houses are
not "utilities embodied in material objects" (and indeed they don't
look much like it); but I know I have the right to keep anybody from
living in them unless they pay me; only suppose some day the Irish
faith, that people ought to be lodged for nothing, should become an
English one also--where would my money be? Where is it now, except
as a chronic abstraction from other people's earnings?
So again, I have some land in Yorkshire--some Bank "Stock" (I don't
in the least know what that is)--and the like; but whenever I examine
into these possessions, I find they melt into one or another form of
future taxation, and that I am always sitting (if I were working I
shouldn't mind, but I am only sitting) at the receipt of Custom, and
a Publican as well as a sinner. And then, to embarrass the business
further yet, I am quite at variance with other people about the place
where this money, whatever it is, comes from. The Spectator, for
instance, in its article of 25th June of last year, on Mr. Goschen's
"lucid and forcible speech of Friday-week," says that "the country
is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to
the actual workers." But whence, then, did it filter down to us,
the actual idlers? This is really a question very appropriate
for April. For such golden rain raineth not every day, but in a
showery and capricious manner, out of heaven, upon us; mostly, as
far as I can judge, rather pouring down than filtering upon idle
persons, and running in thinner driblets, but I hope purer for the
filtering process, to the "actual workers." But where does it come
from? and in the times of drought between the showers, where does
it go to? "The country is getting rich again," says the Spectator;
but then, if the April clouds fail, may it get poor again? And when
it again becomes poor,--when, last 25th of June, it was poor,--what
becomes, or had become, of the money? Was it verily lost, or only
torpid in the winter of our discontent? or was it sown and buried in
corruption, to be raised in a multifold power? When we are in a panic
about our money, what do we think is going to happen to it? Can no
economist teach us to keep it safe after we have once got it? nor any
"beloved physician"--as I read the late Sir James Simpson is called
in Edinburgh--guard even our solid gold against death, or at least,
fits of an apoplectic character, alarming to the family?
All these questions trouble me greatly; but still to me the strangest
point in the whole matter is, that though we idlers always speak as if
we were enriched by Heaven, and became ministers of its bounty to you;
if ever you think the ministry slack, and take to definite pillage
of us, no good ever comes of it to you; but the sources of wealth
seem to be stopped instantly, and you are reduced to the small gain
of making gloves of our skins; while, on the contrary, as long as we
continue pillaging you, there seems no end to the profitableness of the
business; but always, however bare we strip you, presently, more, to
be had. For instance--just read this little bit out of Froissart--about
the English army in France before the battle of Crecy:--
"We will now return to the expedition of the King of England. Sir
Godfrey de Harcourt, as marshal, advanced before the King, with
the vanguard of five hundred armed men and two thousand archers,
and rode on for six or seven leagues' distance from the main
army, burning and destroying the country. They found it rich and
plentiful, abounding in all things; the barns full of every sort
of corn, and the houses with riches: the inhabitants at their
ease, having cars, carts, horses, swine, sheep, and everything in
abundance which the country afforded. They seized whatever they
chose of all these good things, and brought them to the King's
army; but the soldiers did not give any account to their officers,
or to those appointed by the King, of the gold and silver they
took, which they kept to themselves. When they were come back,
with all their booty safely packed in waggons, the Earl of
Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Thomas Holland, and the
Lord Reginald Cobham, took their march, with their battalion on
the right, burning and destroying the country in the same way
that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt was doing. The King marched, with
the main body, between these two battalions; and every night they
all encamped together. The King of England and Prince of Wales
had, in their battalion, about three thousand men-at-arms, six
thousand archers, ten thousand infantry, without counting those
that were under the marshals; and they marched on in the manner
I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but
without breaking their line of battle. They did not turn towards
Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which in those
days was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such
towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and
many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count eight or nine
score that were engaged in commerce. When the King of England was
come near to the town, he encamped; he would not lodge in it for
fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who
soon conquered it, at a trifling loss, and completely plundered
it. No one can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it,
nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers,
they might have bought enough at a very cheap rate.
"The English then advanced towards Caen, which is a much larger
town, stronger, and fuller of draperies and all other sorts of
merchandize, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine
churches.
"On this day (Froissart does not say what day) the English rose
very early, and made themselves ready to march to Caen: the King
heard mass before sunrise, and afterwards mounting his horse,
with the Prince of Wales, and Sir Godfrey de Harcourt (who was
marshal and director of the army), marched forward in order of
battle. The battalion of the marshals led the van, and came near
to the handsome town of Caen.
"When the townsmen, who had taken the field, perceived the English
advancing, with banners and pennons flying in abundance, and saw
those archers whom they had not been accustomed to, they were
so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and ran for
the town in great disorder.
"The English, who were after the runaways, made great havoc;
for they spared none.
"Those inhabitants who had taken refuge in the garrets, flung
down from them, in these narrow streets, stones, benches, and
whatever they could lay hands on; so that they killed and wounded
upwards of five hundred of the English, which so enraged the King
of England, when he received the reports in the evening, that he
ordered the remainder of the inhabitants to be put to the sword,
and the town burnt. But Sir Godfrey de Harcourt said to him:
'Dear sir, assuage somewhat of your anger, and be satisfied with
what has already been done. You have a long journey yet to make
before you arrive at Calais, whither it is your intention to go:
and there are in this town a great number of inhabitants, who will
defend themselves obstinately in their houses, if you force them
to it: besides, it will cost you many lives before the town can
be destroyed, which may put a stop to your expedition to Calais,
and it will not redound to your honour: therefore be sparing of
your men, for in a month's time you will have call for them.' The
King replied: 'Sir Godfrey, you are our marshal; therefore order
as you please; for this time we wish not to interfere.'
"Sir Godfrey then rode through the streets, his banner displayed
before him, and ordered, in the King's name, that no one should
dare, under pain of immediate death, to insult or hurt man or woman
of the town, or attempt to set fire to any part of it. Several of
the inhabitants, on hearing this proclamation, received the English
into their houses; and others opened their coffers to them, giving
up their all, since they were assured of their lives. However,
there were, in spite of these orders, many atrocious thefts and
murders committed. The English continued masters of the town for
three days; in this time, they amassed great wealth, which they
sent in barges down the river of Estreham, to St. Sauveur, two
leagues off, where their fleet was. The Earl of Huntingdon made
preparations therefore, with the two hundred men-at-arms and his
four hundred archers, to carry over to England their riches and
prisoners. The King purchased, from Sir Thomas Holland and his
companions, the constable of France and the Earl of Tancarville,
and paid down twenty thousand nobles for them.
"When the King had finished his business in Caen, and sent
his fleet to England, loaded with cloths, jewels, gold and
silver plate, and a quantity of other riches, and upwards of
sixty knights, with three hundred able citizens, prisoners;
he then left his quarters and continued his march as before,
his two marshals on his right and left, burning and destroying
all the flat country. He took the road to Evreux, but found he
could not gain anything there, as it was well fortified. He went
on towards another town called Louviers, which was in Normandy,
and where there were many manufactories of cloth: it was rich and
commercial. The English won it easily, as it was not inclosed; and
having entered the town, it was plundered without opposition. They
collected much wealth there; and, after they had done what they
pleased, they marched on into the county of Evreux, where they
burnt everything except the fortified towns and castles, which
the King left unattacked, as he was desirous of sparing his men
and artillery. He therefore made for the banks of the Seine,
in his approach to Rouen, where there were plenty of men-at-arms
from Normandy, under the command of the Earl of Harcourt, brother
to Sir Godfrey, and the Earl of Dreux.
"The English did not march direct towards Rouen, but went to
Gisors, which has a strong castle, and burnt the town. After
this, they destroyed Vernon, and all the country between Rouen
and Pont-de-l'Arche: they then came to Mantes and Meulan, which
they treated in the same manner, and ravaged all the country
round about.
"They passed by the strong castle of Roulleboise, and everywhere
found the bridges on the Seine broken down. They pushed forward
until they came to Poissy, where the bridge was also destroyed;
but the beams and other parts of it were lying in the river.
"The King of England remained at the nunnery of Poissy to the
middle in August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin
Mary."
It all reads at first, you see, just like a piece out of the newspapers
of last month; but there are material differences, notwithstanding. We
fight inelegantly as well as expensively, with machines instead of bow
and spear; we kill about a thousand now to the score then, in settling
any quarrel--(Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a hundred
men; only 25,000 English altogether were engaged at Crecy; and 12,000,
some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); we kill with far ghastlier wounds,
crashing bones and flesh together; we leave our wounded necessarily
for days and nights in heaps on the fields of battle; we pillage
districts twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of
more valuable property; and with a destruction as irreparable as it
is complete; for if the French or English burnt a church one day,
they could build a prettier one the next; but the modern Prussians
couldn't even build so much as an imitation of one; we rob on credit,
by requisition, with ingenious mercantile prolongations of claim;
and we improve contention of arms with contention of tongues, and
are able to multiply the rancour of cowardice, and mischief of lying,
in universal and permanent print; and so we lose our tempers as well
as our money, and become indecent in behaviour as in raggedness; for,
whereas, in old times, two nations separated by a little pebbly stream
like the Tweed, or even the two halves of one nation, separated by
thirty fathoms' depth of salt water (for most of the English knights
and all the English kings were French by race, and the best of them
by birth also)--would go on pillaging and killing each other century
after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards, or disrespect
for, one another,--we can neither give anybody a beating courteously,
nor take one in good part, or without screaming and lying about it:
and finally, we add to these perfected Follies of Action more finely
perfected Follies of Inaction; and contrive hitherto unheard-of ways
of being wretched through the very abundance of peace; our workmen,
here, vowing themselves to idleness, lest they should lower Wages,
and there, being condemned by their parishes to idleness lest they
should lower Prices; while outside the workhouse all the parishioners
are buying anything nasty, so that it be cheap; and, in a word, under
the seraphic teaching of Mr. Mill, we have determined at last that
it is not Destruction, but Production, that is the cause of human
distress; and the "Mutual and Co-operative Colonization Company"
declares, ungrammatically, but distinctly, in its circular sent to
me on the 13th of last month, as a matter universally admitted, even
among Cabinet Ministers--"that it is in the greater increasing power
of production and distribution as compared with demand, enabling the
few to do the work of many, that the active cause of the wide-spread
poverty among the producing and lower-middle classes lay, which entails
such enormous burdens on the Nation, and exhibits our boasted progress
in the light of a monstrous Sham."
Nevertheless, however much we have magnified and multiplied the
follies of the past, the primal and essential principles of pillage
have always been accepted; and from the days when England lay so waste
under that worthy and economical King who "called his tailor lown,"
that "whole families, after sustaining life as long as they could
by eating roots, and the flesh of dogs and horses, at last died of
hunger, and you might see many pleasant villages without a single
inhabitant of either sex," while little Harry Switch-of-Broom sate
learning to spell in Bristol Castle, (taught, I think, properly by
his good uncle the preceptorial use of his name-plant, though they
say the first Harry was the finer clerk,) and his mother, dressed all
in white, escaped from Oxford over the snow in the moonlight, through
Bagley Wood here to Abingdon; and under the snows, by Woodstock, the
buds were growing for the bower of his Rose,--from that day to this,
when the villages round Paris, and food-supply, are, by the blessing
of God, as they then were round London--Kings have for the most part
desired to win that pretty name of "Switch-of-Broom" rather by habit
of growing in waste places; or even emulating the Vision of Dion in
"sweeping--diligently sweeping," than by attaining the other virtue of
the Planta Genista, set forth by Virgil and Pliny, that it is pliant,
and rich in honey; the Lion-hearts of them seldom proving profitable
to you, even so much as the stomach of Samson's Lion, or rendering it a
soluble enigma in our Israel, that "out of the eater came forth meat;"
nor has it been only your Kings who have thus made you pay for their
guidance through the world, but your ecclesiastics have also made you
pay for guidance out of it--particularly when it grew dark, and the
signpost was illegible where the upper and lower roads divided;--so
that, as far as I can read or calculate, dying has been even more
expensive to you than living; and then, to finish the business, as
your virtues have been made costly to you by the clergyman, so your
vices have been made costly to you by the lawyers; and you have one
entire learned profession living on your sins, and the other on your
repentance. So that it is no wonder that, things having gone on thus
for a long time, you begin to think that you would rather live as
sheep without any shepherd, and that having paid so dearly for your
instruction in religion and law, you should now set your hope on a
state of instruction in Irreligion and Liberty, which is, indeed,
a form of education to be had for nothing, alike by the children of
the Rich and Poor; the saplings of the tree that was to be desired to
make us wise, growing now in copsewood on the hills, or even by the
roadsides, in a Republican-Plantagenet manner, blossoming into cheapest
gold, either for coins, which of course you Republicans will call,
not Nobles, but Ignobles; or crowns, second and third hand--(head,
I should say)--supplied punctually on demand, with liberal reduction
on quantity; the roads themselves beautifully public--tramwayed,
perhaps--and with gates set open enough for all men to the free,
outer, better world, your chosen guide preceding you merrily, thus--
[Illustration]
with music and dancing.
You have always danced too willingly, poor friends, to that player
on the viol. We will try to hear, far away, a faint note or two from
a more chief musician on stringed instruments, in May, when the time
of the Singing of Birds is come.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER V.
"For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
Arise, O my fair one, my dove,
And come." [9]
Denmark Hill,
1st May, 1871.
My Friends,
It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to
you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it
was difficult for you to understand.
I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor
words,--the saddest of them perhaps too well. But I have great fear
that you may never come to understand these written above, which are
part of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone.
I fear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass,--the flowers
never appear on the earth;--that for you no bird may ever sing;--for
you no perfect Love arise, and fulfil your life in peace.
"And why not for us, as for others?" will you answer me so, and take
my fear for you as an insult?
Nay, it is no insult;--nor am I happier than you. For me, the birds
do not sing, nor ever will. But they would, for you, if you cared
to have it so. When I told you that you would never understand that
love-song, I meant only that you would not desire to understand it.
Are you again indignant with me? Do you think, though you should
labour, and grieve, and be trodden down in dishonour all your days,
at least you can keep that one joy of Love, and that one honour of
Home? Had you, indeed, kept that, you had kept all. But no men yet,
in the history of the race, have lost it so piteously. In many a
country, and many an age, women have been compelled to labour for their
husband's wealth, or bread; but never until now were they so homeless
as to say, like the poor Samaritan, "I have no husband." Women of
every country and people have sustained without complaint the labour
of fellowship: for the women of the latter days in England it has
been reserved to claim the privilege of isolation.
This, then, is the end of your universal education and civilization,
and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle Ages, and of their
chivalry. Not only do you declare yourselves too indolent to labour
for daughters and wives, and too poor to support them; but you have
made the neglected and distracted creatures hold it for an honour to
be independent of you, and shriek for some hold of the mattock for
themselves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been so low
a level of thought reached by any race, since they grew to be male
and female out of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else they have
been made from, by natural selection,--according to modern science.
That modern science also, Economic and of other kinds, has reached
its climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed function of
the nineteenth century to exhibit in all things the elect pattern
of perfect Folly, for a warning to the farthest future. Thus the
statement of principle which I quoted to you in my last letter, from
the circular of the Emigration Society, that it is over-production
which is the cause of distress, is accurately the most foolish thing,
not only hitherto ever said by men, but which it is possible for men
ever to say, respecting their own business. It is a kind of opposite
pole (or negative acme of mortal stupidity) to Newton's discovery of
gravitation as an acme of mortal wisdom:--as no wise being on earth
will ever be able to make such another wise discovery, so no foolish
being on earth will ever be capable of saying such another foolish
thing, through all the ages.
And the same crisis has been exactly reached by our natural science
and by our art. It has several times chanced to me, since I began
these papers, to have the exact thing shown or brought to me that I
wanted for illustration, just in time [10]--and it happened that on
the very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go to the
Kensington Museum; and there I saw the most perfectly and roundly
ill-done thing which, as yet, in my whole life I ever saw produced
by art. It had a tablet In front of it, bearing this inscription,--
"Statue in black and white marble, a Newfoundland Dog standing
on a Serpent, which rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal
ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief.--English. Present
Century. No. I."
It was so very right for me, the Kensington people having been good
enough to number it "I.," the thing itself being almost incredible
in its one-ness; and, indeed, such a punctual accent over the iota of
Miscreation,--so absolutely and exquisitely miscreant, that I am not
myself capable of conceiving a Number two, or three, or any rivalship
or association with it whatsoever. The extremity of its unvirtue
consisted, observe, mainly in the quantity of instruction which was
abused in it. It showed that the persons who produced it had seen
everything, and practised everything; and misunderstood everything
they saw, and misapplied everything they did. They had seen Roman
work, and Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work;
and misunderstanding of everything had passed through them as the
mud does through earthworms, and here at last was their worm-cast of
a Production.
But the second chance that came to me that day, was more significant
still. From the Kensington Museum I went to an afternoon tea, at a
house where I was sure to meet some nice people. And among the first
I met was an old friend who had been hearing some lectures on botany
at the Kensington Museum, and been delighted by them. She is the kind
of person who gets good out of everything, and she was quite right
in being delighted; besides that, as I found by her account of them,
the lectures were really interesting, and pleasantly given. She had
expected botany to be dull, and had not found it so, and "had learned
so much." On hearing this, I proceeded naturally to inquire what;
for my idea of her was that before she went to the lectures at all,
she had known more botany than she was likely to learn by them. So she
told me that she had learned first of all that "there were seven sorts
of leaves." Now I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven;
because when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it required all
the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them from becoming Eight, or
even Nine, on my hands. So I thought to myself that it would be very
charming if there were only seven sorts of leaves; but that, perhaps,
if one looked the woods and forests of the world carefully through,
it was just possible that one might discover as many as eight sorts;
and then where would my friend's new knowledge of Botany be? So I said,
"That was very pretty; but what more?" Then my friend told me that she
had no idea, before, that petals were leaves. On which, I thought to
myself that it would not have been any great harm to her if she had
remained under her old impression that petals were petals. But I said,
"That was very pretty, too; and what more?" So then my friend told me
that the lecturer said, "the object of his lectures would be entirely
accomplished if he could convince his hearers that there was no such
thing as a flower." Now, in that sentence you have the most perfect
and admirable summary given you of the general temper and purposes
of modern science. It gives lectures on Botany, of which the object
is to show that there is no such thing as a flower; on Humanity,
to show that there is no such thing as a Man; and on Theology,
to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a Man,
but only a Mechanism; no such thing as a God, but only a series of
forces. The two faiths are essentially one: if you feel yourself to
be only a machine, constructed to be a Regulator of minor machinery,
you will put your statue of such science on your Holborn Viaduct,
and necessarily recognize only major machinery as regulating you.
I must explain the real meaning to you, however, of that saying of
the Botanical lecturer, for it has a wide bearing. Some fifty years
ago the poet Goethe discovered that all the parts of plants had a
kind of common nature, and would change into each other. Now this
was a true discovery, and a notable one; and you will find that,
in fact, all plants are composed of essentially two parts--the leaf
and root--one loving the light, the other darkness; one liking to be
clean, the other to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part
up, the other for the most part down; and each having faculties and
purposes of its own. But the pure one which loves the light has, above
all things, the purpose of being married to another leaf, and having
child-leaves, and children's children of leaves, to make the earth
fair for ever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wedding-robes,
and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they have
feasts of honey, and we call them "Flowers."
In a certain sense, therefore, you see the Botanical lecturer was quite
right. There are no such things as Flowers--there are only Leaves. Nay,
farther than this, there may be a dignity in the less happy, but
unwithering leaf, which is, in some sort, better than the brief lily
of its bloom;--which the great poets always knew,--well;--Chaucer,
before Goethe; and the writer of the first Psalm, before Chaucer. The
Botanical lecturer was, in a deeper sense than he knew, right.
But in the deepest sense of all, the Botanical lecturer was, to the
extremity of wrongness, wrong; for leaf, and root, and fruit, exist,
all of them, only--that there may be flowers. He disregarded the life
and passion of the creature, which were its essence. Had he looked for
these, he would have recognized that in the thought of Nature herself,
there is, in a plant, nothing else but its flowers.
Now in exactly the sense that modern Science declares there is no such
thing as a Flower, it has declared there is no such thing as a Man,
but only a transitional form of Ascidians and apes. It may, or may
not be true--it is not of the smallest consequence whether it be or
not. The real fact is, that, seen with human eyes, there is nothing
else but man; that all animals and beings beside him are only made
that they may change into him; that the world truly exists only in the
presence of Man, acts only in the passion of Man. The essence of light
is in his eyes,--the centre of Force in his soul,--the pertinence of
action in his deeds.
And all true science--which my Savoyard guide rightly scorned me when
he thought I had not,--all true science is "savoir vivre." But all
your modern science is the contrary of that. It is "savoir mourir."
And of its very discoveries, such as they are, it cannot make use.
That telegraphic signalling was a discovery; and conceivably, some day,
may be a useful one. And there was some excuse for your being a little
proud when, about last sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day,
and Albert Durer's), you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombay,
and flashed a message along it, and back.
But what was the message, and what the answer? Is India the better
for what you said to her? Are you the better for what she replied?
If not, you have only wasted an all-round-the-world's length of copper
wire,--which is, indeed, about the sum of your doing. If you had had,
perchance, two words of common sense to say, though you had taken
wearisome time and trouble to send them;--though you had written
them slowly in gold, and sealed them with a hundred seals, and sent a
squadron of ships of the line to carry the scroll, and the squadron had
fought its way round the Cape of Good Hope, through a year of storms,
with loss of all its ships but one,--the two words of common sense
would have been worth the carriage, and more. But you have not anything
like so much as that to say, either to India, or to any other place.
You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for
you. That was also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the
sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green,
and blue, and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you
ever looked at them then; not one of you cares for the loss of them
now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw
nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. There was
a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine
as the Vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and
evening--Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the light--walking in fair
procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles
of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash
(which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get
it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised
a Railroad through the valley--you blasted its rocks away, heaped
thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is
gone, and the Gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be
at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton;
which you think a lucrative process of exchange--you Fools Everywhere.
To talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say, though you were
ever so near; to go fast from this place to that, with nothing to do
either at one or the other: these are powers certainly. Much more,
power of increased Production, if you, indeed, had got it, would be
something to boast of. But are you so entirely sure that you have
got it--that the mortal disease of plenty, and afflictive affluence
of good things, are all you have to dread?
Observe. A man and a woman, with their children, properly trained,
are able easy to cultivate as much ground as will feed them; to build
as much wall and roof as will lodge them, and to build and weave as
much cloth as will clothe them. They can all be perfectly happy and
healthy in doing this. Supposing that they invent machinery which
will build, plough, thresh, cook, and weave, and that they have
none of these things any more to do, but may read, or play croquet,
or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that they will neither be
so good nor so happy as without the machines. But I waive my belief
in this matter for the time. I will assume that they become more
refined and moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the
mother of all good. But observe, I repeat, the power of your machine
is only in enabling them to be idle. It will not enable them to live
better than they did before, nor to live in greater numbers. Get
your heads quite clear on this matter. Out of so much ground, only
so much living is to be got, with or without machinery. You may set
a million of steam-ploughs to work on an acre, if you like--out of
that acre only a given number of grains of corn will grow, scratch or
scorch it as you will. So that the question is not at all whether, by
having more machines, more of you can live. No machines will increase
the possibilities of life. They only increase the possibilities
of idleness. Suppose, for instance, you could get the oxen in your
plough driven by a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not even a cream
bowl,--(you have nearly managed to get it driven by an iron goblin,
as it is;)--Well, your furrow will take no more seeds than if you
had held the stilts yourself. But, instead of holding them, you sit,
I presume, on a bank beside the field, under an eglantine;--watch the
goblin at his work, and read poetry. Meantime, your wife in the house
has also got a goblin to weave and wash for her. And she is lying on
the sofa reading poetry.
Now, as I said, I don't believe you would be happier so, but I
am willing to believe it; only, since you are already such brave
mechanists, show me at least one or two places where you are
happier. Let me see one small example of approach to this seraphic
condition. I can show you examples, millions of them, of happy people,
made happy by their own industry. Farm after farm I can show you, in
Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and such other places, where men and
women are perfectly happy and good, without any iron servants. Show
me, therefore, some English family, with its fiery familiar, happier
than these. Or bring me,--for I am not inconvincible by any kind
of evidence,--bring me the testimony of an English family or two
to their increased felicity. Or if you cannot do so much as that,
can you convince even themselves of it? They are perhaps happy, if
only they knew how happy they were; Virgil thought so, long ago,
of simple rustics; but you hear at present your steam-propelled
rustics are crying out that they are anything else than happy, and
that they regard their boasted progress "in the light of a monstrous
Sham." I must tell you one little thing, however, which greatly
perplexes my imagination of the relieved ploughman sitting under his
rose bower, reading poetry. I have told it you before indeed, but I
forget where. There was really a great festivity, and expression of
satisfaction in the new order of things, down in Cumberland, a little
while ago; some first of May, I think it was, a country festival,
such as the old heathens, who had no iron servants, used to keep
with piping and dancing. So I thought, from the liberated country
people--their work all done for them by goblins--we should have some
extraordinary piping and dancing. But there was no dancing at all,
and they could not even provide their own piping. They had their goblin
to pipe for them. They walked in procession after their steam plough,
and their steam plough whistled to them occasionally in the most
melodious manner it could. Which seemed to me, indeed, a return to
more than Arcadian simplicity; for in old Arcadia, ploughboys truly
whistled as they went, for want of thought; whereas, here was verily
a large company walking without thought, but not having any more even
the capacity of doing their own whistling.
But next, as to the inside of the house. Before you got your
power-looms, a woman could always make herself a chemise and
petticoat of bright and pretty appearance. I have seen a Bavarian
peasant-woman at church in Munich, looking a much grander creature,
and more beautifully dressed, than any of the crossed and embroidered
angels in Hesse's high-art frescoes; (which happened to be just above
her, so that I could look from one to the other). Well, here you are,
in England, served by household demons, with five hundred fingers, at
least, weaving, for one that used to weave in the days of Minerva. You
ought to be able to show me five hundred dresses for one that used to
be; tidiness ought to have become five hundred-fold tidier; tapestry
should be increased into cinque-cento-fold iridescence of tapestry. Not
only your peasant-girl ought to be lying on the sofa reading poetry,
but she ought to have in her wardrobe five hundred petticoats instead
of one. Is that, indeed, your issue? or are you only on a curiously
crooked way to it?
It is just possible, indeed, that you may not have been allowed to
get the use of the goblin's work--that other people may have got the
use of it, and you none; because, perhaps, you have not been able to
evoke goblins wholly for your own personal service: but have been
borrowing goblins from the capitalist, and paying interest, in the
"position of William," on ghostly self-going planes; but suppose you
had laid by capital enough, yourselves, to hire all the demons in the
world,--nay,--all that are inside of it; are you quite sure you know
what you might best set them to work at? and what "useful things"
you should command them to make for you? I told you, last month,
that no economist going (whether by steam or ghost) knew what are
useful things and what are not. Very few of you know, yourselves,
except by bitter experience of the want of them. And no demons,
either of iron or spirit, can ever make them.
There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to
Life. No one "knows how to live" till he has got them.
These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, but essential to
Life. No one knows how to live till he has got them.
These are, Admiration, Hope, and Love. [11]
Admiration--the power of discerning and taking delight in what
is beautiful in visible Form, and lovely in human Character; and,
necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful in form, and to
become what is lovely in character.
Hope--the recognition, by true Foresight, of better things to
be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others; necessarily
issuing in the straightforward and undisappointable effort to advance,
according to our proper power, the gaining of them.
Love, both of family and neighbour, faithful, and satisfied.
These are the six chiefly useful things to be got by Political Economy,
when it has become a science. I will briefly tell you what modern
Political Economy--the great "savoir mourir"--is doing with them.
The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them
at your pleasure, or increase, almost without limit, the available
qualities of them.
You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of death, to any
extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pestilence
on the globe as would end all of you. You or your fellows, German and
French, are at present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power
in every direction; chiefly at this moment with corpses, and animal
and vegetable ruin in war: changing men, horses, and garden-stuff
into noxious gas. But everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating
it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you
call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation
into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from
decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease.
On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing
properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely
forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the
trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere,--is literally
infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food.
Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of the earth is
infinite. You can bring rain where you will, by planting wisely and
tending carefully;--drought where you will, by ravage of woods and
neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as
the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools;
so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead
of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river
of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize
an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the
rain; and even that falls dirty.
Then for the third, Earth,--meant to be nourishing for you, and
blossoming. You have learned, about it, that there is no such thing as
a flower; and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains,
inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and
life giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth,
Demeter, [12] into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone--with the voice of
your brother's blood crying out of it, in one wild harmony round all
its murderous sphere.
This is what you have done for the Three Material Useful Things.
Then for the Three Immaterial Useful Things. For Admiration, you have
learnt contempt and conceit. There is no lovely thing ever yet done by
man that you care for, or can understand; but you are persuaded you
are able to do much finer things yourselves. You gather, and exhibit
together, as if equally instructive, what is infinitely bad, with what
is infinitely good. You do not know which is which; you instinctively
prefer the Bad, and do more of it. You instinctively hate the Good,
and destroy it. [13]
Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not so much spirit of it in you
as to begin any plan which will not pay for ten years; nor so much
intelligence of it in you, (either politicians or workmen), as to
be able to form one clear idea of what you would like your country
to become.
Then, thirdly, for Love. You were ordered by the Founder of your
religion to love your neighbour as yourselves.
You have founded an entire Science of Political Economy, on what you
have stated to be the constant instinct of man--the desire to defraud
his neighbour.
And you have driven your women mad, so that they ask no more for
Love, nor for fellowship with you; but stand against you, and ask for
"justice."
Are there any of you who are tired of all this? Any of you, Landlords
or Tenants? Employers or Workmen?
Are there any landlords,--any masters,--who would like better to be
served by men than by iron devils?
Any tenants, any workmen, who can be true to their leaders and to
each other? who can vow to work and to live faithfully, for the sake
of the joy of their homes?
Will any such give the tenth of what they have, and of what they
earn,--not to emigrate with, but to stay in England with; and do what
is in their hands and hearts to make her a happy England?
I am not rich, (as people now estimate riches,) and great part of what
I have is already engaged in maintaining art-workmen, or for other
objects more or less of public utility. The tenth of whatever is left
to me, estimated as accurately as I can, (you shall see the accounts,)
I will make over to you in perpetuity, with the best security that
English law can give, on Christmas Day of this year, with engagement
to add the tithe of whatever I earn afterwards. Who else will help,
with little or much? the object of such fund being, to begin, and
gradually--no matter how slowly--to increase, the buying and securing
of land in England, which shall not be built upon, but cultivated by
Englishmen, with their own hands, and such help of force as they can
find in wind and wave.
I do not care with how many, or how few, this thing is begun,
nor on what inconsiderable scale,--if it be but in two or three
poor men's gardens. So much, at least, I can buy, myself, and
give them. If no help come, I have done and said what I could,
and there will be an end. If any help come to me, it is to be on
the following conditions:--We will try to take some small piece of
English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no
steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended
or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none
idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant
obedience to known law, and appointed persons: no equality upon it;
but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation
of every worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go there
quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the risk of our
lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it
either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or boats;
we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in our gardens, plenty
of corn and grass in our fields,--and few bricks. We will have some
music and poetry; the children shall learn to dance to it and sing
it;--perhaps some of the old people, in time, may also. We will
have some art, moreover; we will at least try if, like the Greeks,
we can't make some pots. The Greeks used to paint pictures of gods
on their pots; we probably, cannot do as much, but we may put some
pictures of insects on them, and reptiles;--butterflies, and frogs,
if nothing better. There was an excellent old potter in France who
used to put frogs and vipers into his dishes, to the admiration of
mankind; we can surely put something nicer than that. Little by little,
some higher art and imagination may manifest themselves among us;
and feeble rays of science may dawn for us. Botany, though too dull
to dispute the existence of flowers; and history, though too simple
to question the nativity of men;--nay--even perhaps an uncalculating
and uncovetous wisdom, as of rude Magi, presenting, at such nativity,
gifts of gold and frankincense.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER VI.
Denmark Hill,
1st June, 1871. [14]
My Friends,
The main purpose of these letters having been stated in the last
of them, it is needful that I should tell you why I approach the
discussion of it in this so desultory way, writing (as it is too true
that I must continue to write,) "of things that you little care for,
in words that you cannot easily understand."
I write of things you care little for, knowing that what you least
care for is, at this juncture, of the greatest moment to you.
And I write in words you are little likely to understand, because
I have no wish (rather the contrary) to tell you anything that you
can understand without taking trouble. You usually read so fast that
you can catch nothing but the echo of your own opinions, which, of
course, you are pleased to see in print. I neither wish to please,
nor displease you; but to provoke you to think; to lead you to think
accurately; and help you to form, perhaps, some different opinions
from those you have now.
Therefore, I choose that you shall pay me the price of two pots of
beer, twelve times in the year, for my advice, each of you who wants
it. If you like to think of me as a quack doctor, you are welcome;
and you may consider the large margins, and thick paper, and ugly
pictures of my book, as my caravan, drum, and skeleton. You would
probably, if invited in that manner, buy my pills; and I should
make a great deal of money out of you; but being an honest doctor,
I still mean you to pay me what you ought. You fancy, doubtless,
that I write--as most other political writers do--my 'opinions';
and that one man's opinion is as good as another's. You are much
mistaken. When I only opine things, I hold my tongue; and work till
I more than opine--until I know them. If the things prove unknowable,
I, with final perseverance, hold my tongue about them, and recommend
a like practice to other people. If the things prove knowable, as
soon as I know them, I am ready to write about them, if need be;
not till then. That is what people call my 'arrogance.' They write
and talk themselves, habitually, of what they know nothing about;
they cannot in anywise conceive the state of mind of a person who will
not speak till he knows; and then tells them, serenely, "This is so;
you may find it out for yourselves, if you choose; but, however little
you may choose it, the thing is still so."
Now it has cost me twenty years of thought, and of hard reading, to
learn what I have to tell you in these pamphlets; and you will find,
if you choose to find, it is true; and may prove, if you choose
to prove, that it is useful: and I am not in the least minded to
compete for your audience with the 'opinions' in your damp journals,
morning and evening, the black of them coming off on your fingers,
and--beyond all washing--into your brains. It is no affair of mine
whether you attend to me or not; but yours wholly; my hand is weary of
pen-holding--my heart is sick of thinking; for my own part, I would not
write you these pamphlets though you would give me a barrel of beer,
instead of two pints, for them:--I write them wholly for your sake;
I choose that you shall have them decently printed on cream-coloured
paper, and with a margin underneath, which you can write on, if you
like. That is also for your sake: it is a proper form of book for
any man to have who can keep his books clean; and if he cannot, he
has no business with books at all. It costs me ten pounds to print
a thousand copies, and five more to give you a picture; and a penny
off my sevenpence to send you the book;--a thousand sixpences are
twenty-five pounds; when you have bought a thousand Fors of me, I
shall therefore have five pounds for my trouble--and my single shopman,
Mr. Allen, five pounds for his; we won't work for less, either of us;
not that we would not, were it good for you; but it would be by no
means good. And I mean to sell all my large books, henceforward, in
the same way; well printed, well bound, and at a fixed price; and the
trade may charge a proper and acknowledged profit for their trouble
in retailing the book. Then the public will know what they are about,
and so will tradesmen; I, the first producer, answer, to the best of
my power, for the quality of the book;--paper, binding, eloquence,
and all: the retail dealer charges what he ought to charge, openly; and
if the public do not choose to give it, they can't get the book. That
is what I call legitimate business. Then as for this misunderstanding
of me--remember that it is really not easy to understand anything,
which you have not heard before, if it relates to a complex subject;
also, it is quite easy to misunderstand things that you are hearing
every day--which seem to you of the intelligiblest sort. But I can
only write of things in my own way and as they come into my head;
and of the things I care for, whether you care for them or not,
as yet. I will answer for it, you must care for some of them, in time.
To take an instance close to my hand: you would of course think it
little conducive to your interests that I should give you any account
of the wild hyacinths which are opening in flakes of blue fire,
this day, within a couple of miles of me, in the glades of Bagley
wood through which the Empress Maud fled in the snow, (and which,
by the way, I slink through, myself, in some discomfort, lest the
gamekeeper of the college of the gracious Apostle St. John should
catch sight of me; not that he would ultimately decline to make a
distinction between a poacher and a professor, but that I dislike
the trouble of giving an account of myself). Or, if even you would
bear with a scientific sentence or two about them, explaining to
you that they were only green leaves turned blue, and that it was
of no consequence whether they were either; and that, as flowers,
they were scientifically to be considered as not in existence,--you
will, I fear, throw my letter, even though it has cost you sevenpence,
aside at once, when I remark to you that these wood hyacinths of Bagley
have something to do with the battle of Marathon, and if you knew it,
are of more vital interest to you than even the Match Tax.
Nevertheless, as I shall feel it my duty, some day, to speak to you
of Theseus and his vegetable soup, so, to-day, I think it necessary
to tell you that the wood-hyacinth is the best English representative
of the tribe of flowers which the Greeks called "Asphodel," and which
they thought the heroes who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, or
in any other battle, fought in just quarrel, were to be rewarded, and
enough rewarded, by living in fields-full of; fields called, by them,
Elysian, or the Fields of Coming, as you and I talk of the good time
'Coming,' though with perhaps different views as to the nature of
the to be expected goodness.
Now what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day to
the Civil Engineers (see Saturday Review, April 29th,) is entirely
true; namely, that in any of our colliery or cartridge-manufactory
explosions, we send as many men (or women) into Elysium as were likely
to get there after the battle of Marathon; [15] and that is, indeed,
like the rest of our economic arrangements, very fine, and pleasant
to think upon; neither may it be doubted, on modern principles of
religion and equality, that every collier and cartridge-filler is as
fit for Elysium as any heathen could be; and that in all these respects
the battle of Marathon is no more deserving of English notice. But
what I want you to reflect upon, as of moment to you, is whether
you really care for the hyacinthine Elysium you are going to? and
if you do, why you should not live a little while in Elysium here,
instead of waiting so patiently, and working so hardly, to be blown
or flattened into it? The hyacinths will grow well enough on the top
of the ground, if you will leave off digging away the bottom of it;
and another plant of the asphodel species, which the Greeks thought
of more importance even than hyacinths--onions; though, indeed, one
dead hero is represented by Lucian as finding something to complain of
even in Elysium, because he got nothing but onions there to eat. But
it is simply, I assure you, because the French did not understand that
hyacinths and onions were the principal things to fill their existing
Elysian Fields, or Champs Elysées, with, but chose to have carriages,
and roundabouts, instead, that a tax on matches in those fields would
be, nowadays, so much more productive than one on Asphodel; and I
see that only a day or two since even a poor Punch's show could not
play out its play in Elysian peace, but had its corner knocked off
by a shell from Mont Valérien, and the dog Toby "seriously alarmed."
One more instance of the things you don't care for, that are vital
to you, may be better told now than hereafter.
In my plan for our practical work, in last number, you remember I
said, we must try and make some pottery, and have some music, and
that we would have no steam engines. On this I received a singular
letter from a resident at Birmingham, advising me that the colours
for my pottery must be ground by steam, and my musical instruments
constructed by it. To this, as my correspondent was an educated person,
and knew Latin, I ventured to answer that porcelain had been painted
before the time of James Watt; that even music was not entirely a
recent invention; that my poor company, I feared, would deserve no
better colours than Apelles and Titian made shift with, or even the
Chinese; and that I could not find any notice of musical instruments
in the time of David, for instance, having been made by steam.
To this my correspondent again replied that he supposed David's
"twangling upon the harp" would have been unsatisfactory to modern
taste; in which sentiment I concurred with him, (thinking of the
Cumberland procession, without dancing, after its sacred, cylindrical
Ark). We shall have to be content, however, for our part, with a
little "twangling" on such roughly-made harps, or even shells, as
the Jews and Greeks got their melody out of, though it must indeed
be little conceivable in a modern manufacturing town that a nation
could ever have existed which imaginarily dined on onions in Heaven,
and made harps of the near relations of turtles on Earth. But to keep
to our crockery, you know I told you that for some time we should not
be able to put any pictures of Gods on it; and you might think that
would be of small consequence: but it is of moment that we should at
least try--for indeed that old French potter, Palissy, was nearly the
last of potters in France, or England either, who could have done
so, if anybody had wanted Gods. But nobody in his time did;--they
only wanted Goddesses, of a demi-divine-monde pattern; Palissy, not
well able to produce such, took to moulding innocent frogs and vipers
instead, in his dishes; but at Sèvres and other places for shaping of
courtly clay, the charmingest things were done, as you probably saw at
the great peace-promoting Exhibition of 1851; and not only the first
rough potter's fields, tileries, as they called them, or Tuileries,
but the little den where Palissy long after worked under the Louvre,
were effaced and forgotten in the glory of the House of France;
until the House of France forgot also that to it, no less than
the House of Israel, the words were spoken, not by a painted God,
"As the clay is in the hands of the potter, so are ye in mine;" and
thus the stained and vitrified show of it lasted, as you have seen,
until the Tuileries again became the Potter's field, to bury, not
strangers in, but their own souls, no more ashamed of Traitorhood,
but invoking Traitorhood, as if it covered, instead of constituting,
uttermost shame;--until, of the kingdom and its glory there is not
a shard left, to take fire out of the hearth.
Left--to men's eyes, I should have written. To their thoughts, is left
yet much; for true kingdoms and true glories cannot pass away. What
France has had of such, remain to her. What any of us can find of
such, will remain to us. Will you look back, for an instant, again
to the end of my last Letter, p. 23, and consider the state of life
described there:--"No liberty, but instant obedience to known law and
appointed persons; no equality, but recognition of every betterness
and reprobation of every worseness; and none idle but the dead."
I beg you to observe that last condition especially. You will debate
for many a day to come the causes that have brought this misery
upon France, and there are many; but one is chief--chief cause,
now and always, of evil everywhere; and I see it at this moment, in
its deadliest form, out of the window of my quiet English inn. It
is the 21st of May, and a bright morning, and the sun shines, for
once, warmly on the wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental pattern,
imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been of wood-work, it
would, doubtless, have been painted to look like brick). Against this
low decorative edifice leans a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen
or eighteen, in a white blouse and brown corduroy trousers, and a
domical felt hat; with the sun, as much as can get under the rim, on
his face, and his hands in his pockets; listlessly watching two dogs
at play. He is a good boy, evidently, and does not care to turn the
play into a fight; [16] still it is not interesting enough to him,
as play, to relieve the extreme distress of his idleness, and he
occasionally takes his hands out of his pockets, and claps them at
the dogs, to startle them.
The ornamental wall he leans against surrounds the county
police-office, and the residence at the end of it, appropriately called
"Gaol Lodge." This county gaol, police-office, and a large gasometer,
have been built by the good people of Abingdon to adorn the principal
entrance to their town from the south. It was once quite one of the
loveliest, as well as historically interesting, scenes in England. A
few cottages and their gardens, sloping down to the river-side,
are still left, and an arch or two of the great monastery; but the
principal object from the road is now the gaol, and from the river
the gasometer. It is curious that since the English have believed
(as you will find the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, quoting
to you from Macaulay, in his leader of the 9th of this month), "the
only cure for Liberty is more liberty," (which is true enough, for
when you have got all you can, you will be past physic,) they always
make their gaols conspicuous and ornamental. Now I have no objection,
myself, detesting, as I do, every approach to liberty, to a distinct
manifestation of gaol, in proper quarters; nay, in the highest, and in
the close neighbourhood of palaces; perhaps, even, with a convenient
passage, and Ponte de' Sospiri, from one to the other, or, at least,
a pleasant access by water-gate and down the river; but I do not see
why in these days of 'incurable' liberty, the prospect in approaching
a quiet English county town should be a gaol, and nothing else.
That being so, however, the country boy, in his white blouse,
leans placidly against the prison wall this bright Sunday morning,
little thinking what a luminous sign-post he is making of himself,
and living gnomon of sun-dial, of which the shadow points sharply to
the subtlest cause of the fall of France, and of England, as is too
likely, after her.
Your hands in your own pockets, in the morning. That is the beginning
of the last day; your hands in other people's pockets at noon; that
is the height of the last day; and the gaol, ornamented or otherwise
(assuredly the great gaol of the grave), for the night. That is
the history of nations under judgment. Don't think I say this to any
single class; least of all specially to you; the rich are continually,
nowadays, reproaching you with your wish to be idle. It is very wrong
of you; but, do they want to work all day, themselves? All mouths
are very properly open now against the Paris Communists because they
fight that they may get wages for marching about with flags. What do
the upper classes fight for, then? What have they fought for since
the world became upper and lower, but that they also might have wages
for walking about with flags, and that mischievously? It is very wrong
of the Communists to steal church-plate and candlesticks. Very wrong
indeed; and much good may they get of their pawnbrokers' tickets. Have
you any notion (I mean that you shall have some soon) how much the
fathers and fathers' fathers of these men, for a thousand years back,
have paid their priests, to keep them in plate and candlesticks? You
need not think I am a republican, or that I like to see priests
ill-treated, and their candlesticks carried off. I have many friends
among priests, and should have had more had I not long been trying to
make them see that they have long trusted too much in candlesticks,
not quite enough in candles; not at all enough in the sun, and least of
all enough in the sun's Maker. Scientific people indeed of late opine
the sun to have been produced by collision, and to be a splendidly
permanent railroad accident, or explosive Elysium: also I noticed,
only yesterday, that gravitation itself is announced to the members
of the Royal Institution as the result of vibratory motion. Some day,
perhaps, the members of the Royal Institution will proceed to inquire
after the cause of--vibratory motion. Be that as it may, the Beginning,
or Prince of Vibration, as modern science has it,--Prince of Peace,
as old science had it,--continues through all scientific analysis,
His own arrangements about the sun, as also about other lights, lately
hidden or burning low. And these are primarily, that He has appointed
a great power to rise and set in heaven, which gives life, and warmth,
and motion, to the bodies of men, and beasts, creeping things, and
flowers; and which also causes light and colour in the eyes of things
that have eyes. And He has set above the souls of men, on earth, a
great law or Sun of Justice or Righteousness, which brings also life
and health in the daily strength and spreading of it, being spoken of
in the priest's language, (which they never explained to anybody, and
now wonder that nobody understands,) as having "healing in its wings:"
and the obedience to this law, as it gives strength to the heart, so
it gives light to the eyes of souls that have got any eyes, so that
they begin to see each other as lovely, and to love each other. That
is the final law respecting the sun, and all manner of minor lights
and candles, down to rushlights; and I once got it fairly explained,
two years ago, to an intelligent and obliging wax-and-tallow chandler
at Abbeville, in whose shop I used to sit sketching in rainy days;
and watching the cartloads of ornamental candles which he used to
supply for the church at the far east end of the town, (I forget
what saint it belongs to, but it is opposite the late Emperor's large
new cavalry barracks,) where the young ladies of the better class in
Abbeville had just got up a beautiful evening service, with a pyramid
of candles which it took at least half an hour to light, and as long
to put out again, and which, when lighted up to the top of the church,
were only to be looked at themselves, and sung to, and not to light
anybody or anything. I got the tallow-chandler to calculate vaguely the
probable cost of the candles lighted in this manner, every day, in all
the churches of France; and then I asked him how many cottagers' wives
he knew round Abbeville itself who could afford, without pinching,
either dip or mould in the evening to make their children's clothes
by, and whether, if the pink and green beeswax of the district were
divided every afternoon among them, it might not be quite as honourable
to God, and as good for the candle trade? Which he admitted readily
enough; but what I should have tried to convince the young ladies
themselves of, at the evening service, would probably not have been
admitted so readily;--that they themselves were nothing more than
an extremely graceful kind of wax-tapers which had got into their
heads that they were only to be looked at, for the honour of God,
and not to light anybody.
Which is indeed too much the notion of even the masculine aristocracy
of Europe at this day. One can imagine them, indeed, modest in
the matter of their own luminousness, and more timid of the tax
on agricultural horses and carts, than of that on lucifers; but it
would be well if they were content, here in England, however dimly
phosphorescent themselves, to bask in the sunshine of May at the end
of Westminster Bridge, (as my boy on Abingdon Bridge,) with their
backs against the large edifice they have built there,--an edifice, by
the way, to my own poor judgment, less contributing to the adornment
of London, than the new police-office to that of Abingdon. But the
English squire, after his fashion, sends himself to that highly
decorated gaol all spring-time; and cannot be content with his hands
in his own pockets, nor even in yours and mine; but claps and laughs,
semi-idiot that he is, at dog-fights on the floor of the House, which,
if he knew it, are indeed dog-fights of the Stars in their courses,
Sirius against Procyon; and of the havock and loosed dogs of war,
makes, as the Times correspondent says they make, at Versailles,
of the siege of Paris, "the Entertainment of the Hour."
You think that, perhaps, an unjust saying of him, as he will,
assuredly, himself. He would fain put an end to this wild work,
if he could, he thinks.
My friends, I tell you solemnly, the sin of it all, down to this last
night's doing, or undoing, (for it is Monday now, I waited before
finishing my letter, to see if the Sainte Chapelle would follow the
Vendôme Column;) the sin of it, I tell you, is not that poor rabble's,
spade and pickaxe in hand among the dead; nor yet the blasphemer's,
making noise like a dog by the defiled altars of our Lady of Victories;
and round the barricades, and the ruins, of the Street of Peace.
This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the most
honourable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nurtured men, who
through their happy and, as they thought, holy lives, have sought,
and still seek, only "the entertainment of the hour." And this robbery
has been taught to the hands,--this blasphemy to the lips,--of the
lost poor, by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ
in vain, and leagued themselves with his chief enemy, "Covetousness,
which is idolatry."
Covetousness, lady of Competition and of deadly Care; idol above the
altars of Ignoble Victory; builder of streets, in cities of Ignoble
Peace. I have given you the picture of her--your goddess and only
Hope--as Giotto saw her; dominant in prosperous Italy as in prosperous
England, and having her hands clawed then, as now, so that she can only
clutch, not work; also you shall read next month with me what one of
Giotto's friends says of her--a rude versifier, one of the twangling
harpers; as Giotto was a poor painter for low price, and with colours
ground by hand; but such cheap work must serve our turn for this time;
also, here, is portrayed for you [17] one of the ministering angels
of the goddess; for she herself, having ears set wide to the wind,
is careful to have wind-instruments provided by her servants for
other people's ears.
[Illustration]
This servant of hers was drawn by the court portrait-painter, Holbein;
and was a councillor at poor-law boards, in his day; counselling
then, as some of us have, since, "Bread of Affliction and Water of
Affliction" for the vagrant as such,--which is, indeed, good advice,
if you are quite sure the vagrant has, or may have, a home; not
otherwise. But we will talk further of this next month, taking into
council one of Holbein's prosaic friends, as well as that singing
friend of Giotto's--an English lawyer and country gentleman, living
on his farm, at Chelsea (somewhere near Cheyne Row, I believe)--and
not unfrequently visited there by the King of England, who would ask
himself unexpectedly to dinner at the little Thames-side farm, though
the floor of it was only strewn with green rushes. It was burnt at
last, rushes, ricks, and all; some said because bread of affliction
and water of affliction had been served to heretics there, its master
being a stout Catholic; and, singularly enough, also a Communist; so
that because of the fire, and other matters, the King at last ceased
to dine at Chelsea. We will have some talk, however, with the farmer,
ourselves, some day soon; meantime and always, believe me,
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
POSTSCRIPT.
25th May (early morning).--Reuter's final telegram, in the Echo of
last night, being "The Louvre and the Tuileries are in flames, the
Federals having set fire to them with petroleum," it is interesting
to observe how, in fulfilment of the Mechanical Glories of our age,
its ingenious Gomorrah manufactures, and supplies to demand, her own
brimstone; achieving also a quite scientific, instead of miraculous,
descent of it from Heaven; and ascent of it, where required, without
any need of cleaving or quaking of earth, except in a superficially
'vibratory' manner.
Nor can it be less encouraging to you to see how, with a sufficiently
curative quantity of Liberty, you may defend yourselves against all
danger of over-production, especially in art; but, in case you should
ever wish to re-'produce' any of the combustibles (as oil, or canvas)
used in these Parisian Economies, you will do well to inquire of the
author of the "Essay on Liberty" whether he considers oil of linseed,
or petroleum, as best fulfilling his definition, "utilities fixed
and embodied in material objects."
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER VII.
Denmark Hill,
1st July, 1871.
My Friends,
It seldom chances, my work lying chiefly among stones, clouds, and
flowers, that I am brought into any freedom of intercourse with my
fellow-creatures; but since the fighting in Paris I have dined out
several times, and spoken to the persons who sat next me, and to others
when I went upstairs; and done the best I could to find out what people
thought about the fighting, or thought they ought to think about it,
or thought they ought to say. I had, of course, no hope of finding
any one thinking what they ought to do. But I have not yet, a little
to my surprise, met with any one who either appeared to be sadder,
or professed himself wiser, for anything that has happened.
It is true that I am neither sadder nor wiser, because of it,
myself. But then I was so sad before, that nothing could make
me sadder; and getting wiser has always been to me a very slow
process,--(sometimes even quite stopping for whole days together),--so
that if two or three new ideas fall in my way at once, it only puzzles
me; and the fighting in Paris has given me more than two or three.
The newest of all these new ones, and, in fact, quite a glistering
and freshly minted idea to me, is the Parisian notion of Communism,
as far as I understand it, (which I don't profess to do altogether,
yet, or I should be wiser than I was, with a vengeance).
For, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old school--reddest also
of the red; and was on the very point of saying so at the end of
my last letter; only the telegram about the Louvre's being on fire
stopped me, because I thought the Communists of the new school, as I
could not at all understand them, might not quite understand me. For
we Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to
everybody, and everybody's property to us; so of course I thought
the Louvre belonged to me as much as to the Parisians, and expected
they would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, to ask
whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message or intimation to that
effect ever reached me.
Then the next bit of new coinage in the way of notion which I have
picked up in Paris streets, is the present meaning of the French word
'Ouvrier,' which in my time the dictionaries used to give as 'Workman,'
or 'Working-man.' For again, I have spent many days, not to say years,
with the working-men of our English school myself; and I know that,
with the more advanced of them, the gathering word is that which I
gave you at the end of my second number--"To do good work, whether we
live or die." Whereas I perceive the gathering, or rather scattering,
word of the French 'ouvrier' is, 'To undo good work, whether we live
or die.'
And this is the third, and the last, I will tell you for the
present, of my new ideas, but a troublesome one: namely, that we
are henceforward to have a duplicate power of political economy; and
that the new Parisian expression for its first principle is not to be
'laissez faire,' but 'laissez refaire.'
I cannot, however, make anything of these new French fashions of
thought till I have looked at them quietly a little; so to-day I will
content myself with telling you what we Communists of the old school
meant by Communism; and it will be worth your hearing, for--I tell you
simply in my 'arrogant' way--we know, and have known, what Communism
is--for our fathers knew it, and told us, three thousand years ago;
while you baby Communists do not so much as know what the name means,
in your own English or French--no, not so much as whether a House of
Commons implies, or does not imply, also a House of Uncommons; nor
whether the Holiness of the Commune, which Garibaldi came to fight
for, had any relation to the Holiness of the 'Communion' which he
came to fight against.
Will you be at the pains, now, however, to learn rightly, and once
for all, what Communism is? First, it means that everybody must work
in common, and do common or simple work for his dinner; and that
if any man will not do it, he must not have his dinner. That much,
perhaps, you thought you knew?--but you did not think we Communists of
the old school knew it also? You shall have it, then, in the words
of the Chelsea farmer and stout Catholic, I was telling you of,
in last number. He was born in Milk Street, London, three hundred
and ninety-one years ago, (1480, a year I have just been telling my
Oxford pupils to remember for manifold reasons,) and he planned a
Commune flowing with milk and honey, and otherwise Elysian; and called
it the 'Place of Wellbeing' or Utopia; which is a word you perhaps
have occasionally used before now, like others, without understanding
it;--(in the article of the Liverpool Daily Post before referred to, it
occurs felicitously seven times). You shall use it in that stupid way
no more, if I can help it. Listen how matters really are managed there.
"The chief, and almost the only business of the government, [18]
is to take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may
follow his trade diligently: yet they do not wear themselves out with
perpetual toil from morning till night, as if they were beasts of
burden, which, as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the
common course of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians; but
they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six
of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after;
they then sup, and, at eight o'clock, counting from noon, go to bed
and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken
up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man's discretion;
yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but
must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various
inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading.
"But the time appointed for labour is to be narrowly examined,
otherwise, you may imagine that, since there are only six hours
appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary
provisions: but it is so far from being true that this time is not
sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things, either
necessary or convenient, that it is rather too much; and this you
will easily apprehend, if you consider how great a part of all other
nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are the
half of mankind; and, if some few women are diligent, their husbands
are idle: then,-- ..."
What then?
We will stop a minute, friends, if you please, for I want you before
you read what then, to be once more made fully aware that this farmer
who is speaking to you is one of the sternest Roman Catholics of
his stern time; and at the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, became Lord High
Chancellor of England in his stead.
"--then, consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that
are called religious men; add to these, all rich men, chiefly those
that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen,
together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept
more for show than use; add to these, all those strong and lusty
beggars that go about, pretending some disease in excuse for their
begging; and, upon the whole account, you will find that the number
of those by whose labours mankind is supplied is much less than you,
perhaps, imagined: then, consider how few of those that work are
employed in labours that are of real service! for we, who measure
all things by money, give rise to many trades that are both vain and
superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury: for if those
who work were employed only in such things as the conveniences of life
require, there would be such an abundance of them, that the prices of
them would so sink that tradesmen could not be maintained by their
gains;"--(italics mine--Fair and softly, Sir Thomas! we must have a
shop round the corner, and a pedlar or two on fair-days, yet;)--"if
all those who labour about useless things were set to more profitable
employments, and if all that languish out their lives in sloth and
idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men
that are at work) were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that
a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either
necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while
pleasure is kept within its due bounds: this appears very plainly
in Utopia; for there, in a great city, and in all the territory that
lies round it, you can scarce find five hundred, either men or women,
by their age and strength capable of labour, that are not engaged
in it! even the heads of government, though excused by the law,
yet do not excuse themselves, but work, that, by their examples,
they may excite the industry of the rest of the people."
You see, therefore, that there is never any fear, among us of the old
school, of being out of work; but there is great fear, among many
of us, lest we should not do the work set us well; for, indeed,
we thoroughgoing Communists make it a part of our daily duty to
consider how common we are; and how few of us have any brains or souls
worth speaking of, or fit to trust to;--that being the, alas, almost
unexceptionable lot of human creatures. Not that we think ourselves,
(still less, call ourselves without thinking so,) miserable sinners,
for we are not in anywise miserable, but quite comfortable for the
most part; and we are not sinners, that we know of; but are leading
godly, righteous, and sober lives, to the best of our power, since
last Sunday; (on which day some of us were, we regret to be informed,
drunk;) but we are of course common creatures enough, the most of us,
and thankful if we may be gathered up in St. Peter's sheet, so as not
to be uncivilly or unjustly called unclean too. And therefore our
chief concern is to find out any among us wiser and of better make
than the rest, and to get them, if they will for any persuasion take
the trouble, to rule over us, and teach us how to behave, and make
the most of what little good is in us.
So much for the first law of old Communism, respecting work. Then
the second respects property, and it is that the public, or common,
wealth, shall be more and statelier in all its substance than private
or singular wealth; that is to say (to come to my own special business
for a moment) that there shall be only cheap and few pictures, if any,
in the insides of houses, where nobody but the owner can see them; but
costly pictures, and many, on the outsides of houses, where the people
can see them: also that the Hôtel-de-Ville, or Hotel of the whole Town,
for the transaction of its common business, shall be a magnificent
building, much rejoiced in by the people, and with its tower seen far
away through the clear air; but that the hotels for private business
or pleasure, cafés, taverns, and the like, shall be low, few, plain,
and in back streets; more especially such as furnish singular and
uncommon drinks and refreshments; but that the fountains which furnish
the people's common drink shall be very lovely and stately, and
adorned with precious marbles, and the like. Then farther, according
to old Communism, the private dwellings of uncommon persons--dukes
and lords--are to be very simple, and roughly put together,--such
persons being supposed to be above all care for things that please
the commonalty; but the buildings for public or common service, more
especially schools, almshouses, and workhouses, are to be externally
of a majestic character, as being for noble purposes and charities;
and in their interiors furnished with many luxuries for the poor and
sick. And, finally and chiefly, it is an absolute law of old Communism
that the fortunes of private persons should be small, and of little
account in the State; but the common treasure of the whole nation
should be of superb and precious things in redundant quantity, as
pictures, statues, precious books; gold and silver vessels, preserved
from ancient times; gold and silver bullion laid up for use, in case
of any chance need of buying anything suddenly from foreign nations;
noble horses, cattle, and sheep, on the public lands; and vast spaces
of land for culture, exercise, and garden, round the cities, full of
flowers, which, being everybody's property, nobody could gather; and
of birds which, being everybody's property, nobody could shoot. And,
in a word, that instead of a common poverty, or national debt, which
every poor person in the nation is taxed annually to fulfil his part
of, there should be a common wealth, or national reverse of debt,
consisting of pleasant things, which every poor person in the nation
should be summoned to receive his dole of, annually; and of pretty
things, which every person capable of admiration, foreigners as well as
natives, should unfeignedly admire, in an æsthetic, and not a covetous
manner (though for my own part I can't understand what it is that I am
taxed now to defend, or what foreign nations are supposed to covet,
here). But truly, a nation that has got anything to defend of real
public interest, can usually hold it; and a fat Latin communist gave
for sign of the strength of his commonalty, in its strongest time,--
"Privatus illis census erat brevis,
Commune magnum;" [19]
which you may get any of your boys or girls to translate for you,
and remember; remembering, also, that the commonalty or publicity
depends for its goodness on the nature of the thing that is common,
and that is public. When the French cried, "Vive la République!" after
the battle of Sedan, they were thinking only of the Publique, in the
word, and not of the Re in it. But that is the essential part of it,
for that "Re" is not like the mischievous Re in Reform, and Refaire,
which the words had better be without; but it is short for res,
which means 'thing'; and when you cry, "Live the Republic," the
question is mainly, what thing it is you wish to be publicly alive,
and whether you are striving for a Common-Wealth, and Public-Thing;
or, as too plainly in Paris, for a Common-Illth, and Public-Nothing,
or even Public-Less-than-nothing and Common Deficit.
Now all these laws respecting public and private property, are
accepted in the same terms by the entire body of us Communists of the
old school; but with respect to the management of both, we old Reds
fall into two classes, differing, not indeed in colour of redness,
but in depth of tint of it--one class being, as it were, only of a
delicately pink, peach-blossom, or dog-rose redness; but the other,
to which I myself do partly, and desire wholly, to belong, as I told
you, reddest of the red--that is to say, full crimson, or even dark
crimson, passing into that deep colour of the blood which made the
Spaniards call it blue, instead of red, and which the Greeks call
phoinikeos, being an intense phoenix or flamingo colour: and this
not merely, as in the flamingo feathers, a colour on the outside,
but going through and through, ruby-wise; so that Dante, who is one
of the few people who have ever beheld our queen full in the face,
says of her that, if she had been in a fire, he could not have seen
her at all, so fire-colour she was, all through. [20]
And between these two sects or shades of us, there is this difference
in our way of holding our common faith, (that our neighbour's property
is ours, and ours his,) namely, that the rose-red division of us are
content in their diligence of care to preserve or guard from injury
or loss their neighbours' property, as their own; so that they may be
called, not merely dog-rose red, but even 'watch-dog-rose' red; being,
indeed, more careful and anxious for the safety of the possessions
of other people, (especially their masters,) than for any of their
own; and also more sorrowful for any wound or harm suffered by any
creature in their sight, than for hurt to themselves. So that they are
Communists, even less in their having part in all common well-being
of their neighbours, than part in all common pain: being yet, on the
whole, infinite gainers; for there is in this world infinitely more
joy than pain to be shared, if you will only take your share when it
is set for you.
The vermilion, or Tyrian-red sect of us, however, are not content
merely with this carefulness and watchfulness over our neighbours'
good, but we cannot rest unless we are giving what we can spare of
our own; and the more precious it is, the more we want to divide it
with somebody. So that above all things, in what we value most of
possessions, pleasant sights, and true knowledge, we cannot relish
seeing any pretty things unless other people see them also; neither
can we be content to know anything for ourselves, but must contrive,
somehow, to make it known to others.
And as thus especially we like to give knowledge away, so we like
to have it good to give, (for, as for selling knowledge, thinking it
comes by the spirit of Heaven, we hold the selling of it to be only
a way of selling God again, and utterly Iscariot's business;) also,
we know that the knowledge made up for sale is apt to be watered
and dusted, or even itself good for nothing; and we try, for our
part, to get it, and give it, pure: the mere fact that it is to be
given away at once to anybody who asks to have it, and immediately
wants to use it, is a continual check upon us. For instance, when
Colonel North, in the House of Commons, on the 20th of last month,
(as reported in the Times,) "would simply observe, in conclusion,
that it was impossible to tell how many thousands of the young men
who were to be embarked for India next September, would be marched,
not to the hills, but to their graves;" any of us Tyrian-reds "would
simply observe" that the young men themselves ought to be constantly,
and on principle, informed of their destination before embarking;
and that this pleasant communicativeness of what knowledge on the
subject was to be got, would soon render quite possible the attainment
of more. So also, in abstract science, the instant habit of making
true discoveries common property, cures us of a bad trick which
one may notice to have much hindered scientific persons lately, of
rather spending their time in hiding their neighbours' discoveries,
than improving their own: whereas, among us, scientific flamingoes
are not only openly graced for discoveries, but openly disgraced for
coveries; and that sharply and permanently; so that there is rarely
a hint or thought among them of each other's being wrong, but quick
confession of whatever is found out rightly. [21]
But the point in which we dark-red Communists differ most from other
people is, that we dread, above all things, getting miserly of virtue;
and if there be any in us, or among us, we try forthwith to get it made
common, and would fain hear the mob crying for some of that treasure,
where it seems to have accumulated. I say, 'seems,' only: for though,
at first, all the finest virtue looks as if it were laid up with the
rich, (so that, generally, a millionaire would be much surprised
at hearing that his daughter had made a petroleuse of herself, or
that his son had murdered anybody for the sake of their watch and
cravat),--it is not at all clear to us dark-reds that this virtue,
proportionate to income, is of the right sort; and we believe that
even if it were, the people who keep it thus all to themselves,
and leave the so-called canaille without any, vitiate what they keep
by keeping it, so that it is like manna laid up through the night,
which breeds worms in the morning.
You see, also, that we dark-red Communists, since we exist only
in giving, must, on the contrary, hate with a perfect hatred all
manner of thieving: even to Coeur-de-Lion's tar-and-feather extreme;
and of all thieving, we dislike thieving on trust most, (so that,
if we ever get to be strong enough to do what we want, and chance
to catch hold of any failed bankers, their necks will not be worth
half an hour's purchase). So also, as we think virtue diminishes in
the honour and force of it in proportion to income, we think vice
increases in the force and shame of it, and is worse in kings and
rich people than in poor; and worse on a large scale than on a narrow
one; and worse when deliberate than hasty. So that we can understand
one man's coveting a piece of vineyard-ground for a garden of herbs,
and stoning the master of it, (both of them being Jews;)--and yet the
dogs ate queen's flesh for that, and licked king's blood! but for two
nations--both Christians--to covet their neighbours' vineyards, all
down beside the River of their border, and slay until the River itself
runs red! The little pool of Samaria!--shall all the snows of the Alps,
or the salt pool of the Great Sea, wash their armour, for these?
I promised in my last letter that I would tell you the main meaning
and bearing of the war, and its results to this day:--now that you
know what Communism is, I can tell you these briefly, and, what is
more to the purpose, how to bear yourself in the midst of them.
The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national
defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all
European nations, are Thieves, and, in their hearts, greedy of their
neighbours' goods, land, and fame.
But besides being Thieves, they are also fools, and have never yet been
able to understand that if Cornish men want pippins cheap, they must
not ravage Devonshire--that the prosperity of their neighbours is,
in the end, their own also; and the poverty of their neighbours, by
the communism of God, becomes also in the end their own. 'Invidia,'
jealousy of your neighbour's good, has been, since dust was first
made flesh, the curse of man; and 'Charitas,' the desire to do
your neighbour grace, the one source of all human glory, power,
and material Blessing.
But war between nations (fools and thieves though they be,) is not
necessarily in all respects evil. I gave you that long extract from
Froissart to show you, mainly, that Theft in its simplicity--however
sharp and rude, yet if frankly done, and bravely--does not corrupt
men's souls; and they can, in a foolish, but quite vital and faithful
way, keep the feast of the Virgin Mary in the midst of it.
But Occult Theft,--Theft which hides itself even from itself, and
is legal, respectable, and cowardly,--corrupts the body and soul of
man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe,
the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists--that
is to say, people who live by percentages or the labour of others;
instead of by fair wages for their own. The Real war in Europe, of
which this fighting in Paris is the Inauguration, is between these
and the workmen, such as these have made him. They have kept him
poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might, without his knowledge,
gather for themselves the produce of his toil. At last, a dim insight
into the fact of this dawns on him; and such as they have made him
he meets them, and will meet.
Nay, the time is even come when he will study that Meteorological
question, suggested by the Spectator, formerly quoted, of the
Filtration of Money from above downwards.
"It was one of the many delusions of the Commune," (says to-day's
Telegraph, 24th June,) "that it could do without rich consumers." Well,
such unconsumed existence would be very wonderful! Yet it is,
to me also, conceivable. Without the riches,--no; but without the
consumers?--possibly! It is occurring to the minds of the workmen that
these Golden Fleeces must get their dew from somewhere. "Shall there
be dew upon the fleece only?" they ask:--and will be answered. They
cannot do without these long purses, say you? No; but they want to
find where the long purses are filled. Nay, even their trying to burn
the Louvre, without reference to Art Professors, had a ray of meaning
in it--quite Spectatorial.
"If we must choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton-mill,"
(wrote the Spectator of August 6th, last year, instructing me in
political economy, just as the war was beginning,) "in the name of
manhood and morality, give us the cotton-mill."
So thinks the French workman also, energetically; only his mill is
not to be in Lancashire. Both French and English agree to have no
more Titians,--it is well,--but which is to have the Cotton-Mill?
Do you see in the Times of yesterday and the day before, 22nd and
23rd June, that the Minister of France dares not, even in this her
utmost need, put on an income tax; and do you see why he dares not?
Observe, such a tax is the only honest and just one; because it tells
on the rich in true proportion to the poor, and because it meets
necessity in the shortest and bravest way, and without interfering
with any commercial operation.
All rich people object to income tax, of course;--they like to pay
as much as a poor man pays on their tea, sugar, and tobacco,--nothing
on their incomes.
Whereas, in true justice, the only honest and wholly right tax is
one not merely on income, but property; increasing in percentage as
the property is greater. And the main virtue of such a tax is that
it makes publicly known what every man has, and how he gets it.
For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree in their dislike
to give an account of the way they get their living; still less,
of how much they have got sewn up in their breeches. It does not,
however, matter much to a country that it should know how its poor
Vagabonds live; but it is of vital moment that it should know how
its rich Vagabonds live; and that much of knowledge, it seems to me,
in the present state of our education, is quite attainable. But that,
when you have attained it, you may act on it wisely, the first need
is that you should be sure you are living honestly yourselves. That
is why I told you, in my second letter, you must learn to obey good
laws before you seek to alter bad ones:--I will amplify now a little
the three promises I want you to make. Look back at them.
I. You are to do good work, whether you live or die. It may be you
will have to die;--well, men have died for their country often, yet
doing her no good; be ready to die for her in doing her assured good:
her, and all other countries with her. Mind your own business with your
absolute heart and soul; but see that it is a good business first. That
it is corn and sweet pease you are producing,--not gunpowder and
arsenic. And be sure of this, literally:--you must simply rather
die than make any destroying mechanism or compound. You are to be
literally employed in cultivating the ground, or making useful things,
and carrying them where they are wanted. Stand in the streets, and
say to all who pass by: Have you any vineyard we can work in,--not
Naboth's? In your powder and petroleum manufactory, we work no more.
I have said little to you yet of any of the pictures engraved--you
perhaps think, not to the ornament of my book.
Be it so. You will find them better than ornaments in time. Notice,
however, in the one I give you with this letter--the "Charity" of
Giotto--the Red Queen of Dante, and ours also,--how different his
thought of her is from the common one.
Usually she is nursing children, or giving money. Giotto thinks there
is little charity in nursing children;--bears and wolves do that for
their little ones; and less still in giving money.
His Charity tramples upon bags of gold--has no use for them. She gives
only corn and flowers; and God's angel given her, not even these--but
a Heart.
Giotto is quite literal in his meaning, as well as figurative. Your
love is to give food and flowers, and to labour for them only.
But what are we to do against powder and petroleum, then? What men
may do; not what poisonous beasts may. If a wretch spit in your face,
will you answer by spitting in his?--if he throw vitriol at you,
will you go to the apothecary for a bigger bottle?
There is no physical crime at this day, so far beyond pardon,--so
without parallel in its untempted guilt, as the making of
war-machinery, and invention of mischievous substance. Two nations
may go mad, and fight like harlots--God have mercy on them;--you,
who hand them carving-knives off the table, for leave to pick up
a dropped sixpence, what mercy is there for you? We are so humane,
forsooth, and so wise; and our ancestors had tar-barrels for witches;
we will have them for everybody else, and drive the witches' trade
ourselves, by daylight; we will have our cauldrons, please Hecate,
cooled (according to the Darwinian theory,) with baboon's blood,
and enough of it, and sell hell-fire in the open street.
II. Seek to revenge no injury. You see now--do not you--a little more
clearly why I wrote that? what strain there is on the untaught masses
of you to revenge themselves, even with insane fire?
Alas, the Taught masses are strained enough also;--have you
not just seen a great religious and reformed nation, with
its goodly Captains,--philosophical, sentimental, domestic,
evangelical-angelical-minded altogether, and with its Lord's Prayer
really quite vital to it,--come and take its neighbour nation by the
throat, saying, "Pay me that thou owest"?
Seek to revenge no injury: I do not say, seek to punish no crime:
look what I hinted about failed bankers. Of that hereafter.
III. Learn to obey good laws; and in a little while you will reach
the better learning--how to obey good Men, who are living, breathing,
unblinded law; and to subdue base and disloyal ones, recognizing in
these the light, and ruling over those in the power, of the Lord of
Light and Peace, whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion, and His
Kingdom from generation to generation.
Ever faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER VIII.
My Friends,
I begin this letter a month before it is wanted, [22] having several
matters in my mind that I would fain put into words at once. It is
the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismallest light
that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer morning,
in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871.
For the sky is covered with grey cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry
black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in
mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible,
yet without any substance, or wreathing, or colour of its own. And
everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they
do before a thunderstorm; only not violently, but enough to show the
passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal enough,
had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had sent. But
during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through meagre
March, through changelessly sullen April, through despondent May,
and darkened June, morning after morning has come grey-shrouded thus.
And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty years
old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best hours of
my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings; and I never saw
such as these, till now.
And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and the
moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about them, I believe,
by this time; and how they move, and what they are made of.
And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move,
nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than they
go, nor make them of anything else, better than they are made. But I
would care much and give much, if I could be told where this bitter
wind comes from, and what it is made of.
For, perhaps, with forethought, and fine laboratory science, one
might make it of something else.
It looks partly as if it were made of poisonous smoke; very possibly
it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a square
of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would not blow to
and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it were made of
dead men's souls--such of them as are not gone yet where they have
to go, and may be flitting hither and thither, doubting, themselves,
of the fittest place for them.
You know, if there are such things as souls, and if ever any of them
haunt places where they have been hurt, there must be many about us,
just now, displeased enough!
You may laugh, if you like. I don't believe any one of you would like
to live in a room with a murdered man in the cupboard, however well
preserved chemically;--even with a sunflower growing out at the top
of his head.
And I don't, myself, like living in a world with such a multitude of
murdered men in the ground of it--though we are making heliotropes
of them, and scientific flowers, that study the sun.
I wish the scientific men would let me and other people study it with
our own eyes, and neither through telescopes nor heliotropes. You
shall, at all events, study the rain a little, if not the sun, to-day,
and settle that question we have been upon so long as to where it
comes from.
All France, it seems, is in a state of enthusiastic delight and
pride at the unexpected facility with which she has got into debt;
and Monsieur Thiers is congratulated by all our wisest papers on his
beautiful statesmanship of borrowing. I don't myself see the cleverness
of it, having suffered a good deal from that kind of statesmanship in
private persons: but I daresay it is as clever as anything else that
statesmen do, now-a-days; only it happens to be more mischievous than
most of their other doings, and I want you to understand the bearings
of it.
Everybody in France who has got any money is eager to lend it to
M. Thiers at five per cent. No doubt; but who is to pay the five
per cent.? It is to be "raised" by duties on this and that. Then
certainly the persons who get the five per cent. will have to pay
some part of these duties themselves, on their own tea and sugar,
or whatever else is taxed; and this taxing will be on the whole of
their trade, and on whatever they buy with the rest of their fortunes;
[23] but the five per cent. only on what they lend M. Thiers.
It is a low estimate to say the payment of duties will take off one
per cent. of their five.
Practically, therefore, the arrangement is that they get four per
cent. for their money, and have all the trouble of customs duties,
to take from them another extra one per cent., and give it them
back again. Four per cent., however, is not to be despised. But who
pays that?
The people who have got no money to lend, pay it; the daily worker and
producer pays it. Unfortunate "William," who has borrowed, in this
instance, not a plane he could make planks with, but mitrailleuses
and gunpowder, with which he has planed away his own farmsteads,
and forests, and fair fields of corn, and having left himself
desolate, now has to pay for the loan of this useful instrument,
five per cent. So says the gently commercial James to him: "Not only
the price of your plane, but five per cent. to me for lending it,
O sweetest of Williams."
Sweet William, carrying generally more absinthe in his brains than wit,
has little to say for himself, having, indeed, wasted too much of his
sweetness lately, tainted disagreeably with petroleum, on the desert
air of Paris. And the people who are to get their five per cent. out
of him, and roll him and suck him,--the sugar-cane of a William that
he is,--how should they but think the arrangement a glorious one for
the nation?
So there is great acclaim and triumphal procession of financiers! and
the arrangement is made; namely, that all the poor labouring persons
in France are to pay the rich idle ones five per cent. annually,
on the sum of eighty millions of sterling pounds, until further notice.
But this is not all, observe. Sweet William is not altogether so soft
in his rind that you can crush him without some sufficient machinery:
you must have your army in good order, "to justify public confidence;"
and you must get the expense of that, beside your five per cent.,
out of ambrosial William. He must pay the cost of his own roller.
Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to.
First, you spend eighty millions of money in fireworks, doing no end
of damage in letting them off.
Then you borrow money, to pay the firework-maker's bill, from any
gain-loving persons who have got it.
And then, dressing your bailiff's men in new red coats and cocked
hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take
the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what
you have borrowed; and the expense of the cocked hats besides.
That is "financiering," my friends, as the mob of the money-makers
understand it. And they understand it well. For that is what it
always comes to, finally; taking the peasant by the throat. He must
pay--for he only can. Food can only be got out of the ground, and all
these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but ways
of getting at last down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the
roots from him as he digs.
And they have got him down, now, they think, well, for a while, poor
William, after his fit of fury and petroleum: and can make their
money out of him for years to come, in the old ways.
Did you chance, my friends, any of you, to see, the other day,
the 83rd number of the Graphic, with the picture of the Queen's
concert in it? All the fine ladies sitting so trimly, and looking
so sweet, and doing the whole duty of woman--wearing their fine
clothes gracefully; and the pretty singer, white-throated, warbling
"Home, sweet home" to them, so morally, and melodiously! Here was
yet to be our ideal of virtuous life, thought the Graphic! Surely,
we are safe back with our virtues in satin slippers and lace
veils;--and our Kingdom of Heaven is come again, with observation,
and crown diamonds of the dazzlingest. Cherubim and Seraphim in
toilettes de Paris,--(blue-de-ciel--vert d'olivier-de-Noé--mauve de
colombe-fusillée,) dancing to Coote and Tinney's band; and vulgar
Hell reserved for the canaille, as heretofore! Vulgar Hell shall be
didactically pourtrayed, accordingly; (see page 17,)--Wickedness
going its way to its poor Home--bitter-sweet. Ouvrier and
petroleuse--prisoners at last--glaring wild on their way to die.
Alas! of these divided races, of whom one was appointed to teach and
guide the other, which has indeed sinned deepest--the unteaching,
or the untaught?--which now are guiltiest--these, who perish, or
those--who forget?
Ouvrier and petroleuse; they are gone their way--to their death. But
for these, the Virgin of France shall yet unfold the oriflamme above
their graves, and lay her blanches lilies on their smirched dust. Yes,
and for these, great Charles shall rouse his Roland, and bid him
put ghostly trump to lip, and breathe a point of war; and the helmed
Pucelle shall answer with a wood-note of Domrémy;--yes, and for these
the Louis they mocked, like his master, shall raise his holy hands,
and pray God's peace.
"Not as the world giveth." Everlasting shame only, and unrest, are the
world's gifts. These Swine of the five per cent. shall share them duly.
La sconoscente vita, che i fe' sozzi
Ad ogni conoscenza or li fa bruni. [24]
Che tutto l'oro, ch'e sotto la luna,
E che già fù, di queste anime stanche
Non poterebbe farne posar una. [25]
"Ad ogni conoscenza bruni:" Dark to all recognition! So they would have
it indeed, true of instinct. "Ce serait l'inquisition," screamed the
Senate of France, threatened with income-tax and inquiry into their
ways and means. Well,--what better thing could it be? Had they not
been blind long enough, under their mole-hillocks, that they should
shriek at the first spark of "Inquisition"? A few things might be
"inquired," one should think, and answered, among honest men, now, to
advantage, and openly? "Ah no--for God's sake," shrieks the Senate,
"no Inquisition. If ever anybody should come to know how we live,
we were disgraced for ever, honest gentlemen that we are."
Now, my friends, the first condition of all bravery is to keep out
of this loathsomeness. If you do live by rapine, stand up like a man
for the old law of bow and spear; but don't fall whimpering down on
your belly, like Autolycus, "grovelling on the ground," when another
human creature asks you how you get your daily bread, with an "Oh,
that ever I was born,--here is inquisition come on me!"
The Inquisition must come. Into men's consciences, no; not now: there
is little worth looking into there. But into their pockets--yes;
a most practicable and beneficial inquisition, to be made thoroughly
and purgatorially, once for all, and rendered unnecessary hereafter,
by furnishing the relieved marsupialia with--glass pockets, for
the future.
You know, at least, that we, in our own society, are to have glass
pockets, as we are all to give the tenth of what we have, to buy
land with, so that we must every one know each other's property to a
farthing. And this month I begin making up my own accounts for you,
as I said I would: I could not, sooner, though I set matters in train
as soon as my first letter was out, and effected (as I supposed!),
in February, a sale of 14,000l. worth of houses, at the West End,
to Messrs. ---- and ----, of ---- Row.
But from then till now, I've been trying to get that piece of business
settled, and until yesterday, 19th July, I have not been able.
For, first there was a mistake made by my lawyer in the list of
the houses: No. 7 ought to have been No. 1. It was a sheer piece of
stupidity, and ought to have been corrected by a dash of the pen;
but all sorts of deeds had to be made out again, merely that they
might be paid for; and it took about three months to change 7 into 1.
At last all was declared smooth again, and I thought I should get my
money; but Messrs. ---- never stirred. My people kept sending them
letters, saying I really did want the money, though they mightn't
think it. Whether they thought it or not, they took no notice of any
such informal communications. I thought they were going to back out
of their bargain; but my man of business at last got their guarantee
for its completion.
"If they've guaranteed the payment, why don't they pay?" thought
I; but still I couldn't get any money. At last I found the lawyers
on both sides were quarrelling over the stamp-duties! Nobody knew,
of the whole pack of them, whether this stamp or that was the right
one! and my lawyers wouldn't give an eighty-pound stamp, and theirs
wouldn't be content with a twenty-pound one.
Now, you know, all this stamp business itself is merely Mr. Gladstone's
[26] way of coming in for his share of the booty. I can't be allowed
to sell my houses in peace, but Mr. Gladstone must have his three
hundred pounds out of me, to feed his Woolwich infant with, and fire
it off "with the most satisfactory result," "nothing damaged but
the platform."
I am content, if only he would come and say what he wants, and take it,
and get out of my sight. But not to know what he does want! and to
keep me from getting my money at all, while his lawyers are asking
which is the right stamp? I think he had better be clear on that
point next time.
But here, at last, are six months come and gone, and the stamp question
is--not settled, indeed, but I've undertaken to keep my man of business
free of harm, if the stamps won't do; and so at last he says I'm to
have my money; and I really believe, by the time this letter is out,
Messrs. ---- will have paid me my 14,000l.
Now you know I promised you the tenth of all I had, when free
from incumbrances already existing on it. This first instalment
of 14,000l. is not all clear, for I want part of it to found a
Mastership of Drawing under the Art Professorship at Oxford; which I
can't do rightly for less than 5,000l. But I'll count the sum left as
10,000l. instead of 9,000l., and that will be clear for our society,
and so, you shall have a thousand pounds down, as the tenth of that,
which will quit me, observe, of my pledge thus far.
A thousand down, I say; but down where? Where can I put it to be
safe for us? You will find presently, as others come in to help us,
and we get something worth taking care of, that it becomes a very
curious question indeed, where we can put our money to be safe!
In the meantime, I've told my man of business to buy 1,000l. consols
in the names of two men of honour; the names cannot yet be
certain. What remains of the round thousand shall be kept to add
to next instalment. And thus begins the fund, which I think we may
advisably call the "St. George's" fund. And although the interest on
consols is, as I told you before, only the taxation on the British
peasant continued since the Napoleon wars, still this little portion
of his labour, the interest on our St. George's fund, will at last
be saved for him, and brought back to him.
And now, if you will read over once again the end of my fifth letter,
I will tell you a little more of what we are to do with this money,
as it increases.
First, let whoever gives us any, be clear in their minds that it is
a Gift. It is not an Investment. It is a frank and simple gift to
the British people: nothing of it is to come back to the giver.
But also, nothing of it is to be lost. The money is not to be spent in
feeding Woolwich infants with gunpowder. It is to be spent in dressing
the earth and keeping it,--in feeding human lips,--in clothing human
bodies,--in kindling human souls.
First of all, I say, in dressing the earth. As soon as the fund
reaches any sufficient amount, the Trustees shall buy with it any
kind of land offered them at just price in Britain. Rock, moor,
marsh, or sea-shore--it matters not what, so it be British ground,
and secured to us.
Then, we will ascertain the absolute best that can be made of every
acre. We will first examine what flowers and herbs it naturally
bears; every wholesome flower that it will grow shall be sown in
its wild places, and every kind of fruit-tree that can prosper;
and arable and pasture land extended by every expedient of tillage,
with humble and simple cottage dwellings under faultless sanitary
regulation. Whatever piece of land we begin to work upon, we shall
treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual labour on it, until
we have every foot of it under as strict care as a flower-garden:
and the labourers shall be paid sufficient, unchanging wages; and
their children educated compulsorily in agricultural schools inland,
and naval schools by the sea, the indispensable first condition of
such education being that the boys learn either to ride or to sail;
the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a proper age to cook all
ordinary food exquisitely; the youth of both sexes to be disciplined
daily in the strictest practice of vocal music; and for morality,
to be taught gentleness to all brute creatures,--finished courtesy
to each other,--to speak truth with rigid care, and to obey orders
with the precision of slaves. Then, as they get older, they are to
learn the natural history of the place they live in,--to know Latin,
boys and girls both,--and the history of five cities: Athens, Rome,
Venice, Florence, and London.
Now, as I told you in my fifth letter, to what extent I may be able to
carry this plan into execution, I know not; but to some visible extent,
with my own single hand, I can and will, if I live. Nor do I doubt
but that I shall find help enough, as soon as the full action of the
system is seen, and ever so little a space of rightly cultivated ground
in perfect beauty, with inhabitants in peace of heart, of whom none
Doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti.
Such a life we have lately been taught by vile persons to think
impossible; so far from being impossible, it has been the actual life
of all glorious human states in their origin.
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini;
Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit;
Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.
But, had it never been endeavoured until now, we might yet learn to
hope for its unimagined good by considering what it has been possible
for us to reach of unimagined evil. Utopia and its benediction are
probable and simple things, compared to the Kakotopia and its curse,
which we had seen actually fulfilled. We have seen the city of Paris
(what miracle can be thought of beyond this?) with her own forts
raining ruin on her palaces, and her young children casting fire
into the streets in which they had been born, but we have not faith
enough in heaven to imagine the reverse of this, or the building
of any city whose streets shall be full of innocent boys and girls
playing in the midst thereof.
My friends, you have trusted, in your time, too many idle words. Read
now these following, not idle ones; and remember them; and trust them,
for they are true:--
"Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold,
I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations
with sapphires.
"And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall
be the peace of thy children.
"In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from
oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall
not come near thee....
"Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy
sake....
"No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue
that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is
the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is
of me, saith the Lord."
Remember only that in this now antiquated translation, "righteousness"
means, accurately and simply, "justice," and is the eternal law of
right, obeyed alike in the great times of each state, by Jew, Greek,
and Roman. In my next letter, we will examine into the nature of this
justice, and of its relation to Governments that deserve the name.
And so believe me
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER IX.
Denmark Hill,
1st September, 1871.
My Friends,
As the design which I had in view when I began these letters (and
many a year before, in the germ and first outlines of it) is now
fairly afoot, and in slow, but determined, beginning of realization,
I will endeavour in this and the next following letter to set its
main features completely before you; though, remember, the design
would certainly be a shallow and vain one, if its bearings could be
either shortly explained, or quickly understood. I have much in my own
hope, which I know you are as yet incapable of hoping, but which your
enemies are dexterous in discouraging, and eager to discourage. Have
you noticed how curiously and earnestly the greater number of public
journals that have yet quoted these papers, allege, for their part,
nothing but the difficulties in our way; and that with as much contempt
as they can venture to express? No editor could say to your face that
the endeavour to give you fresh air, wholesome employment, and high
education, was reprehensible or dangerous. The worst he can venture
to say is, that it is ridiculous,--which you observe is, by most,
declared as wittily as they may.
Some must, indeed, candidly think, as well as say so. Education of
any noble kind has of late been so constantly given only to the idle
classes, or, at least, to those who conceive it a privilege to be idle,
[27] that it is difficult for any person, trained in modern habits
of thought, to imagine a true and refined scholarship, of which the
essential foundation is to be skill in some useful labour. Time and
trial will show which of the two conceptions of education is indeed
the ridiculous one--and have shown, many and many a day before this,
if any one would look at the showing. Such trial, however, I mean anew
to make, with what life is left to me, and help given to me: and the
manner of it is to be this, that, few or many, as our company may be,
we will secure for the people of Britain as wide spaces of British
ground as we can; and on such spaces of freehold land we will cause
to be trained as many British children as we can, in healthy, brave,
and kindly life, to every one of whom there shall be done true justice,
and dealt fair opportunity of "advancement," or what else may, indeed,
be good for them.
"True justice!" I might more shortly have written "justice," only you
are all now so much in the way of asking for what you think "rights,"
which, if you could get them, would turn out to be the deadliest
wrongs;--and you suffer so much from an external mechanism of justice,
which for centuries back has abetted, or, at best, resulted in, every
conceivable manner of injustice--that I am compelled to say "True
justice," to distinguish it from that which is commonly imagined by the
populace, or attainable under the existing laws, of civilized nations.
This true justice--(not to spend time, which I am apt to be too fond
of doing, in verbal definition), consists mainly in the granting to
every human being due aid in the development of such faculties as
it possesses for action and enjoyment; primarily, for useful action,
because all enjoyment worth having (nay, all enjoyment not harmful)
must in some way arise out of that, either in happy energy, or rightly
complacent and exulting rest.
"Due" aid, you see, I have written. Not "equal" aid. One of the
first statements I made to you respecting this domain of ours was
"there shall be no equality in it." In education especially, true
justice is curiously unequal--if you choose to give it a hard name,
iniquitous. The right law of it is that you are to take most pains
with the best material. Many conscientious masters will plead for the
exactly contrary iniquity, and say you should take the most pains
with the dullest boys. But that is not so (only you must be very
careful that you know which are the dull boys; for the cleverest look
often very like them). Never waste pains on bad ground; let it remain
rough, though properly looked after and cared for; it will be of best
service so; but spare no labour on the good, or on what has in it
the capacity of good. The tendency of modern help and care is quite
morbidly and madly in reverse of this great principle. Benevolent
persons are always, by preference, busy on the essentially bad; and
exhaust themselves in efforts to get maximum intellect from cretins,
and maximum virtue from criminals. Meantime, they take no care to
ascertain (and for the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse
to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and crime, and suffer
the most splendid material in child-nature to wander neglected about
the streets, until it has become rotten to the degree in which they
feel prompted to take an interest in it. Now I have not the slightest
intention--understand this, I beg of you, very clearly--of setting
myself to mend or reform people; when they are once out of form they
may stay so, for me. [28] But of what unspoiled stuff I can find to my
hand I will cut the best shapes there is room for; shapes unalterable,
if it may be, for ever.
"The best shapes there is room for," since, according to the conditions
around them, men's natures must expand or remain contracted; and, yet
more distinctly, let me say, "the best shapes that there is substance
for," seeing that we must accept contentedly infinite difference in
the original nature and capacity, even at their purest; which it
is the first condition of right education to make manifest to all
persons--most of all to the persons chiefly concerned. That other
men should know their measure, is, indeed, desirable; but that they
should know it themselves, is wholly necessary.
"By competitive examination of course?" Sternly, no! but under
absolute prohibition of all violent and strained effort--most of
all envious or anxious effort--in every exercise of body and mind;
and by enforcing on every scholar's heart, from the first to the last
stage of his instruction, the irrevocable ordinance of the third Fors
Clavigera, that his mental rank among men is fixed from the hour
he was born,--that by no temporary or violent effort can he train,
though he may seriously injure the faculties he has; that by no manner
of effort can he increase them; and that his best happiness is to
consist in the admiration of powers by him for ever unattainable,
and of arts, and deeds, by him ever inimitable.
Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first actively engaged in
Art teaching, a young Scottish student came up to London to put
himself under me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect
to the qualities looked for by the judges) in various schools of
Art. He worked under me very earnestly and patiently for some time;
and I was able to praise his doings in what I thought very high terms:
nevertheless, there remained always a look of mortification on his
face, after he had been praised, however unqualifiedly. At last, he
could hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more than usually
complimentary, turned to me with an anxious, yet not unconfident
expression, and asked: "Do you think, sir, that I shall ever draw as
well as Turner?"
I paused for a second or two, being much taken aback; and then
answered, [29] "It is far more likely you should be made Emperor of
All the Russias. There is a new Emperor every fifteen or twenty years,
on the average; and by strange hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might
be made Emperor. But there is only one Turner in five hundred years,
and God decides, without any admission of auxiliary cabal, what piece
of clay His soul is to be put in."
It was the first time that I had been brought into direct
collision with the modern system of prize-giving and competition;
and the mischief of it was, in the sequel, clearly shown to me,
and tragically. This youth had the finest powers of mechanical
execution I have ever met with, but was quite incapable of invention,
or strong intellectual effort of any kind. Had he been taught early
and thoroughly to know his place, and be content with his faculty, he
would have been one of the happiest and most serviceable of men. But,
at the Art schools, he got prize after prize for his neat handling;
and having, in his restricted imagination, no power of discerning the
qualities of great work, all the vanity of his nature was brought out
unchecked; so that, being intensely industrious and conscientious,
as well as vain, (it is a Scottish combination of character not
unfrequent, [30]) he naturally expected to become one of the greatest
of men. My answer not only mortified, but angered him, and made him
suspicious of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from being
fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked leave (he was then in my
employment as well as under my teaching) to put himself under another
master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, "if he found the other
master no better to his mind, he might come back to me whenever he
chose." The other master giving him no more hope of advancement than
I did, he came back to me; I sent him into Switzerland, to draw Swiss
architecture; but instead of doing what I bid him, quietly, and nothing
else, he set himself, with furious industry, to draw snowy mountains
and clouds, that he might show me he could draw like Albert Durer,
or Turner;--spent his strength in agony of vain effort;--caught cold,
fell into decline, and died. How many actual deaths are now annually
caused by the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, it would
startle us all if we could know: but the mischief done to the best
faculties of the brain in all cases, and the miserable confusion and
absurdity involved in the system itself, which offers every place,
not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, but to the one who,
on a given day, chances to have bodily strength enough to stand the
cruellest strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and more
lamentable than many deaths.
This, then, shall be the first condition of what education it may
become possible for us to give, that the strength of the youths shall
never be strained; and that their best powers shall be developed in
each, without competition, though they shall have to pass crucial,
but not severe, examinations, attesting clearly to themselves and to
other people, not the utmost they can do, but that at least they can
do some things accurately and well: their own certainty of this being
accompanied with the quite as clear and much happier certainty, that
there are many other things which they will never be able to do at all.
"The happier certainty?" Yes. A man's happiness consists infinitely
more in admiration of the faculties of others than in confidence in
his own. That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him;
all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can share
it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity of partly
understanding a creature above him, is the dog's nobility. Increase
such reverence in human beings, and you increase daily their happiness,
peace, and dignity; take it away, and you make them wretched as well
as vile. But for fifty years back modern education has devoted itself
simply to the teaching of impudence; and then we complain that we
can no more manage our mobs! "Look at Mr. Robert Stephenson," (we
tell a boy,) "and at Mr. James Watt, and Mr. William Shakspeare! You
know you are every bit as good as they; you have only to work in the
same way, and you will infallibly arrive at the same eminence." Most
boys believe the "you are every bit as good as they," without any
painful experiment: but the better-minded ones really take the
advised measures; and as, at the end of all things, there can be
but one Mr. James Watt or Mr. William Shakspeare, the rest of the
candidates for distinction, finding themselves, after all their work,
still indistinct, think it must be the fault of the police, and are
riotous accordingly.
To some extent it is the fault of the police, truly enough,
considering as the police of Europe, or teachers of politeness
and civic manners, its higher classes,--higher either by race or
faculty. Police they are, or else are nothing: bound to keep order,
both by clear teaching of the duty and delight of Respect, and, much
more, by being themselves--Respectable; whether as priests, or kings,
or lords, or generals, or admirals;--if they will only take care to
be verily that, the Respect will be forthcoming, with little pains:
nay, even Obedience, inconceivable to modern free souls as it may
be, we shall get again, as soon as there is anybody worth obeying,
and who can keep us out of shoal water.
Not but that those two admirals and their captains have been sorely,
though needfully, dealt with. It was, doubtless, not a scene of the
brightest in our naval history--that Agincourt, entomologically,
as it were, pinned to her wrong place, off Gibraltar; but in truth,
it was less the captain's fault, than the ironmonger's. You need not
think you can ever have seamen in iron ships; it is not in flesh and
blood to be vigilant when vigilance is so slightly necessary: the
best seaman born will lose his qualities, when he knows he can steam
against wind and tide, [31] and has to handle ships so large that the
care of them is necessarily divided among many persons. If you want
sea-captains indeed, like Sir Richard Grenville or Lord Dundonald,
you must give them small ships, and wooden ones,--nothing but oak,
pine, and hemp to trust to, above or below,--and those, trustworthy.
You little know how much is implied in the two conditions of boys'
education that I gave you in my last letter,--that they shall all
learn either to ride or sail; nor by what constancy of law the power
of highest discipline and honour is vested by Nature in the two
chivalries--of the Horse and the Wave. Both are significative of the
right command of man over his own passions; but they teach, farther,
the strange mystery of relation that exists between his soul and the
wild natural elements on the one hand, and the wild lower animals
on the other. The sea-riding gave their chief strength of temper
to the Athenian, Norman, Pisan, and Venetian,--masters of the arts
of the world: but the gentleness of chivalry, properly so called,
depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier
animal-life, first clearly taught in the myth of Chiron, and in his
bringing up of Jason, Æsculapius, and Achilles, but most perfectly by
Homer in the fable of the horses of Achilles, and the part assigned
to them, in relation to the death of his friend, and in prophecy of
his own. There is, perhaps, in all the 'Iliad' nothing more deep
in significance--there is nothing in all literature more perfect
in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life,
[32] than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses
at the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest
of the gods. You shall read Pope's translation; it does not give you
the manner of the original, but it entirely gives you the passion:--
Meantime, at distance from the scene of blood,
The pensive steeds of great Achilles stood;
Their godlike master slain before their eyes
They wept, and shared in human miseries.
In vain Automedon now shakes the rein,
Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain;
Nor to the fight nor Hellespont they go,
Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe;
Still as a tombstone, never to be moved,
On some good man or woman unreproved
Lays its eternal weight; or fix'd as stands
A marble courser by the sculptor's hands,
Placed on the hero's grave. Along their face,
The big round drops coursed down with silent pace,
Conglobing on the dust. Their manes, that late
Circled their arched necks, and waved in state,
Trail'd on the dust, beneath the yoke were spread,
And prone to earth was hung their languid head:
Nor Jove disdain'd to cast a pitying look,
While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke:
"Unhappy coursers of immortal strain!
Exempt from age, and deathless now in vain!
Did we your race on mortal man bestow,
Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?
For ah! what is there, of inferior birth,
That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth;
What wretched creature of what wretched kind,
Than man more weak, calamitous and blind?
A miserable race! But cease to mourn!
For not by you shall Priam's son be borne
High on the splendid car; one glorious prize
He rashly boasts; the rest our will denies.
Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart,
Ourself with rising spirits swell your heart.
Automedon your rapid flight shall bear
Safe to the navy through the storm of war...."
He said; and, breathing in th' immortal horse
Excessive spirit, urged them to the course;
From their high manes they shake the dust, and bear
The kindling chariot through the parted war.
Is not that a prettier notion of horses than you will get from your
betting English chivalry on the Derby day? [33] We will have, please
heaven, some riding, not as jockeys ride, and some sailing, not as
pots and kettles sail, once more on English land and sea; and out
of both, kindled yet again, the chivalry of heart of the Knight of
Athens, and Eques of Rome, and Ritter of Germany, and Chevalier of
France, and Cavalier of England--chivalry gentle always and lowly,
among those who deserved their name of knight; showing mercy to whom
mercy was due, and honour to whom honour.
It exists yet, and out of La Mancha, too (or none of us could exist),
whatever you may think in these days of ungentleness and Dishonour. It
exists secretly, to the full, among you yourselves, and the recovery of
it again would be to you as the opening of a well in the desert. You
remember what I told you were the three spiritual treasures of your
life--Admiration, Hope, and Love. Admiration is the Faculty of giving
Honour. It is the best word we have for the various feelings of wonder,
reverence, awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work,
and which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear-sighted
persons, as opposed to the "impudence" of base and blind ones. The
Latins called this great virtue "pudor," of which our "impudence"
is the negative; the Greeks had a better word, "aidôs;" too wide
in the bearings of it for me to explain to you to-day, even if it
could be explained before you recovered the feeling;--which, after
being taught for fifty years that impudence is the chief duty of man,
and that living in coal-holes and ash-heaps is his proudest existence,
and that the methods of generation of vermin are his loftiest subject
of science,--it will not be easy for you to do; but your children may,
and you will see that it is good for them. In the history of the five
cities I named, they shall learn, so far as they can understand, what
has been beautifully and bravely done; and they shall know the lives of
the heroes and heroines in truth and naturalness; and shall be taught
to remember the greatest of them on the days of their birth and death;
so that the year shall have its full calendar of reverent Memory. And
on every day, part of their morning service shall be a song in honour
of the hero whose birthday it is: and part of their evening service,
a song of triumph for the fair death of one whose death-day it is:
and in their first learning of notes they shall be taught the great
purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in the
strongest and clearest possible way; and they shall never be taught
to sing what they don't mean. They shall be able to sing merrily when
they are happy, and earnestly when they are sad; but they shall find
no mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity; neither shall they waste and
profane their hearts with artificial and lascivious sorrow.
Regulations which will bring about some curious changes in
piano-playing, and several other things.
"Which will bring." They are bold words, considering how many schemes
have failed disastrously, (as your able editors gladly point out,)
which seemed much more plausible than this. But, as far as I know
history, good designs have not failed except when they were too
narrow in their final aim, and too obstinately and eagerly pushed
in the beginning of them. Prosperous Fortune only grants an almost
invisible slowness of success, and demands invincible patience in
pursuing it. Many good men have failed in haste; more in egotism, and
desire to keep everything in their own hands; and some by mistaking
the signs of their times; but others, and those generally the boldest
in imagination, have not failed; and their successors, true knights
or monks, have bettered the fate and raised the thoughts of men for
centuries; nay, for decades of centuries. And there is assuredly
nothing in this purpose I lay before you, so far as it reaches
hitherto, which will require either knightly courage or monkish
enthusiasm to carry out. To divert a little of the large current
of English charity and justice from watching disease to guarding
health, and from the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue;
to establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals,
and training schools instead of penitentiaries, is not, if you will
slowly take it to heart, a frantic imagination. What farther hope I
have of getting some honest men to serve, each in his safe and useful
trade, faithfully, as a good soldier serves in his dangerous, and too
often very wide of useful one, may seem, for the moment, vain enough;
for indeed, in the last sermon I heard out of an English pulpit, the
clergyman said it was now acknowledged to be impossible for any honest
man to live by trade in England. From which the conclusion he drew was,
not that the manner of trade in England should be amended, but that
his hearers should be thankful they were going to heaven. It never
seemed to occur to him that perhaps it might be only through amendment
of their ways in trade that some of them could ever get there.
Such madness, therefore, as may be implied in this ultimate hope of
seeing some honest work and traffic done in faithful fellowship, I
confess to you: but what, for my own part, I am about to endeavour,
is certainly within my power, if my life and health last a few years
more, and the compass of it is soon definable. First,--as I told you
at the beginning of these Letters,--I must do my own proper work as
well as I can--nothing else must come in the way of that; and for some
time to come, it will be heavy, because, after carefully considering
the operation of the Kensington system of Art-teaching throughout the
country, and watching for two years its effect on various classes of
students at Oxford, I became finally convinced that it fell short of
its objects in more than one vital particular: and I have, therefore,
obtained permission to found a separate Mastership of Drawing in
connection with the Art Professorship at Oxford; and elementary
schools will be opened in the University galleries, next October, in
which the methods of teaching will be calculated to meet requirements
which have not been contemplated in the Kensington system. But how far
what these, not new, but very ancient, disciplines teach, may be by
modern students, either required or endured, remains to be seen. The
organization of the system of teaching, and preparation of examples,
in this school, is, however, at present my chief work,--no light
one,--and everything else must be subordinate to it.
But in my first series of lectures at Oxford, I stated (and cannot
too often or too firmly state) that no great arts were practicable
by any people, unless they were living contented lives, in pure air,
out of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from unnecessary
mechanical occupation. It is simply one part of the practical work I
have to do in Art-teaching, to bring, somewhere, such conditions into
existence, and to show the working of them. I know also assuredly
that the conditions necessary for the Arts of men, are the best for
their souls and bodies; and knowing this, I do not doubt but that it
may be with due pains, to some material extent, convincingly shown;
and I am now ready to receive help, little or much, from any one who
cares to forward the showing of it.
Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, and the Right Hon. William Cowper-Temple,
have consented to be the Trustees of the fund; it being distinctly
understood that in that office they accept no responsibility for the
conduct of the scheme, and refrain from expressing any opinion of
its principles. They simply undertake the charge of the money and
land given to the St. George's fund; certify to the public that it
is spent, or treated, for the purposes of that fund, in the manner
stated in my accounts of it; and, in the event of my death, hold it
for such fulfilment of its purposes as they may then find possible.
But it is evidently necessary for the right working of the scheme that
the Trustees should not, except only in that office, be at present
concerned with or involved in it; and that no ambiguous responsibility
should fall on them. I know too much of the manner of law to hope
that I can get the arrangement put into proper form before the end
of the year; but, I hope, at latest, on the eve of Christmas Day
(the day I named first) to publish the December number of Fors with
the legal terms all clear: until then, whatever sums or land I may
receive will be simply paid to the Trustees, or secured in their name,
for the St. George's Fund; what I may attempt afterwards will be, in
any case, scarcely noticeable for some time; for I shall only work with
the interest of the fund; [34] and as I have strength and leisure:--I
have little enough of the one; and am like to have little of the
other, for years to come, if these drawing-schools become useful,
as I hope. But what I may do myself is of small consequence. Long
before it can come to any convincing result, I believe some of the
gentlemen of England will have taken up the matter, and seen that,
for their own sake, no less than the country's, they must now live
on their estates, not in shooting-time only, but all the year; and
be themselves farmers, or "shepherd lords," and make the field gain
on the street, not the street on the field; and bid the light break
into the smoke-clouds, and bear in their hands, up to those loathsome
city walls, the gifts of Giotto's Charity, corn and flowers.
It is time, too, I think. Did you notice the lovely instances of
chivalry, modesty, and musical taste recorded in those letters in
the 'Times,' giving description of the "civilizing" influence of our
progressive age on the rural district of Margate?
They are of some documentary value, and worth preserving, for several
reasons. Here they are:--
I.--A TRIP TO MARGATE.
To the Editor of the Times.
Sir,--On Monday last I had the misfortune of taking a trip
per steamer to Margate. The sea was rough, the ship crowded,
and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists prostrate
with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I
thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had
been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and
lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had
to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must
be seen to be believed possible in a civilized country. Shouts,
yells, howls of delight greeted every pale-looking passenger, as
he or she got on the pier, accompanied by a running comment of
the lowest, foulest language imaginable. But the most insulted
victims were a young lady, who having had a fit of hysterics on
board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking
old gentleman with a long grey beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick
at all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the
slippery steps leaning on two sticks. "Here's a guy!" "Hallo! you
old thief, you won't get drowned, because you know that you are
to be hung," etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of
that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped
policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed;
and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing
except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course,
no other effect than to draw all the abuse on myself. This is not
an exceptional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have
been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with
the roughness of the sea.
Public exposure is the only likely thing to put a stop to such
ruffianism; and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many
people are ashamed of confessing that they have been to Margate.
I remain, Sir, yours obediently,
C. L. S.
London, August 16.
II.--MARGATE.
To the Editor of the Times.
Sir,--From personal experience obtained from an enforced
residence at Margate, I can confirm all that your correspondent
"C. L. S." states of the behaviour of the mob on the jetty; and
in addition I will venture to say that in no town in England,
or, so far as my experience goes, on the Continent, can such
utterly indecent exhibitions be daily witnessed as at Margate
during bathing hours. Nothing can be more revolting to persons
having the least feelings of modesty than the promiscuous mixing
of the bathers; nude men dancing, swimming, or floating with women
not quite nude, certainly, but with scant clothing. The machines
for males and females are not kept apart, and the latter do not
apparently care to keep within the awnings. The authorities post
notices as to "indecent bathing," but that appears to be all they
think they ought to do.
I am, Sir, yours obediently,
B.
To the Editor of the Times.
Sir,--The account of the scenes which occur at the landing of
passengers at the Margate jetty, given by your correspondent
to-day, is by no means overcharged. But that is nothing. The
rulers of the place seem bent on doing their utmost to keep
respectable people away, or, doubtless, long before this the
class of visitors would have greatly improved. The sea-fronts
of the town, which in the summer would be otherwise enjoyable,
are abandoned to the noisy rule of the lowest kinds of itinerant
mountebanks, organ-grinders, and niggers; and from early morn
till long after nightfall the place is one hopeless, hideous
din. There is yet another grievance. The whole of the drainage is
discharged upon the rocks to the east of the harbour, considerably
above low-water mark; and to the west, where much building is
contemplated, drains have already been laid into the sea, and,
when these new houses are built and inhabited, bathing at Margate,
now its greatest attraction, must cease for ever.
Yours obediently,
Pharos.
Margate, August 18.
I have printed these letters for several reasons. In the first place,
read after them this account of the town of Margate, given in the
'Encyclopædia Britannica,' in 1797: "Margate, a seaport town of Kent,
on the north side of the Isle of Thanet, near the North Foreland. It
is noted for shipping vast quantities of corn (most, if not all,
the product of that island) for London, and has a salt-water bath
at the Post-house, which has performed great cures in nervous and
paralytic cases."
Now this Isle of Thanet, please to observe, which is an elevated (200
to 400 feet) mass of chalk, separated from the rest of Kent by little
rivers and marshy lands, ought to be respected by you (as Englishmen),
because it was the first bit of ground ever possessed in this greater
island by your Saxon ancestors, when they came over, some six or
seven hundred of them only, in three ships, and contented themselves
for a while with no more territory than that white island. Also,
the North Foreland, you ought, I think, to know, is taken for the
terminal point of the two sides of Britain, east and south, in the
first geographical account of our dwelling-place, definitely given
by a learned person. But you ought, beyond all question, to know,
that the cures of the nervous and paralytic cases, attributed seventy
years ago to the "salt-water bath at the Post-house," were much more
probably to be laid to account of the freshest and changefullest
sea-air to be breathed in England, bending the rich corn over that
white dry ground, and giving to sight, above the northern and eastern
sweep of sea, the loveliest skies that can be seen, not in England
only, but perhaps in all the world; able, at least, to challenge the
fairest in Europe, to the far south of Italy.
So it was said, I doubt not rightly, by the man who of all others knew
best; the once in five hundred years given painter, whose chief work,
as separate from others, was the painting of skies. He knew the colours
of the clouds over the sea, from the Bay of Naples to the Hebrides;
and being once asked where, in Europe, were to be seen the loveliest
skies, answered instantly, "In the Isle of Thanet." Where, therefore,
and in this very town of Margate, he lived, when he chose to be quit
of London, and yet not to travel.
And I can myself give this much confirmatory evidence of his
saying;--that though I never stay in Thanet, the two loveliest skies I
have myself ever seen (and next to Turner, I suppose few men of fifty
have kept record of so many), were, one at Boulogne, and the other
at Abbeville; that is to say, in precisely the correspondent French
districts of corn-bearing chalk, on the other side of the Channel.
"And what are pretty skies to us?" perhaps you will ask me: "or what
have they to do with the behaviour of that crowd on Margate Pier?"
Well, my friends, the final result of the education I want you to
give your children will be, in a few words, this. They will know what
it is to see the sky. They will know what it is to breathe it. And
they will know, best of all, what it is to behave under it, as in
the presence of a Father who is in heaven.
Faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER X.
Denmark Hill,
7th September, 1871.
My Friends,
For the last two or three days, the papers have been full of articles
on a speech of Lord Derby's, which, it seems, has set the public mind
on considering the land question. My own mind having long ago been both
set, and entirely made up, on that question, I have read neither the
speech nor the articles on it; but my eye being caught this morning,
fortunately, by the words "Doomsday Book" in my 'Daily Telegraph,'
and presently, looking up the column, by "stalwart arms and heroic
souls of free resolute Englishmen," I glanced down the space between,
and found this, to me, remarkable passage:
"The upshot is, that, looking at the question from a purely mechanical
point of view, we should seek the beau ideal in a landowner cultivating
huge farms for himself, with abundant machinery and a few well-paid
labourers to manage the mechanism, or delegating the task to the
smallest possible number of tenants with capital. But when we bear in
mind the origin of landlordism, of our national needs, and the real
interests of the great body of English tenantry, we see how advisable
it is to retain intelligent yeomen as part of our means of cultivating
the soil."
This is all, then, is it, that your Liberal paper ventures to say
for you? It is advisable to retain a few intelligent yeomen in the
island. I don't mean to find fault with the 'Daily Telegraph': I
think it always means well on the whole, and deals fairly; which is
more than can be said for its highly toned and delicately perfumed
opponent, the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' But I think a "Liberal" paper
might have said more for the "stalwart arms and heroic souls" than
this. I am going myself to say a great deal more for them, though I
am not a Liberal--quite the polar contrary of that.
You, perhaps, have been provoked, in the course of these letters, by
not being able to make out what I was. It is time you should know, and
I will tell you plainly. I am, and my father was before me, a violent
Tory of the old school; (Walter Scott's school, that is to say, and
Homer's,) I name these two out of the numberless great Tory writers,
because they were my own two masters. I had Walter Scott's novels,
and the Iliad, (Pope's translation), for my only reading when I was a
child, on week-days: on Sundays their effect was tempered by 'Robinson
Crusoe' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress'; my mother having it deeply
in her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately,
I had an aunt more evangelical than my mother; and my aunt gave
me cold mutton for Sunday's dinner, which--as I much preferred it
hot--greatly diminished the influence of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,'
and the end of the matter was, that I got all the noble imaginative
teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and yet--am not an evangelical clergyman.
I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that
compulsorily, and every day of the week. (Have patience with me in this
egotism; it is necessary for many reasons that you should know what
influences have brought me into the temper in which I write to you.)
Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own election, but my
mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the
Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud,
hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year;
and to that discipline--patient, accurate, and resolute--I owe, not
only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable,
but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of
my taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily,
as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope might,
perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, as types
of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th
Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most
of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way
of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me,
even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial
or formal English, and the affectation of trying to write like Hooker
and George Herbert was the most innocent I could have fallen into.
From my own masters, then, Scott and Homer, I learned the Toryism
which my best after-thought has only served to confirm.
That is to say a most sincere love of kings, and dislike of everybody
who attempted to disobey them. Only, both by Homer and Scott, I was
taught strange ideas about kings, which I find, for the present,
much obsolete; for, I perceived that both the author of the Iliad
and the author of Waverley made their kings, or king-loving persons,
do harder work than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus always killed
twenty Trojans to other people's one, and Redgauntlet speared more
salmon than any of the Solway fishermen, and--which was particularly a
subject of admiration to me,--I observed that they not only did more,
but in proportion to their doings, got less, than other people--nay,
that the best of them were even ready to govern for nothing, and
let their followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. Of late
it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly the
contrary of this, and that it has been supposed the duty of superior
persons generally to do less, and to get more than anybody else;
so that it was, perhaps, quite as well that in those early days my
contemplation of existent kingship was a very distant one, and my
childish eyes wholly unacquainted with the splendour of courts.
The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays was my father's sister:
she lived at Bridge-end, in the town of Perth, and had a garden full
of gooseberry-bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door opening
to the water, which ran past it clear-brown over the pebbles three
or four feet deep; an infinite thing for a child to look down into.
My father began business as a wine-merchant, with no capital, and a
considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He
accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he began to lay by
anything for himself, for which his best friends called him a fool,
and I, without expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in
such matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite
slab over his grave that he was "an entirely honest merchant." As
days went on he was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick
Square, No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, commanded a view
of a marvellous iron post, out of which the water-carts were filled
through beautiful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa-constrictors;
and I was never weary of contemplating that mystery, and the delicious
dripping consequent); and as years went on, and I came to be four or
five years old, he could command a postchaise and pair for two months
in the summer, by help of which, with my mother and me, he went the
round of his country customers (who liked to see the principal of the
house his own traveller); so that, at a jog-trot pace, and through
the panoramic opening of the four windows of a postchaise, made more
panoramic still to me because my seat was a little bracket in front,
(for we used to hire the chaise regularly for the two months out of
Long Acre, and so could have it bracketed and pocketed as we liked),
I saw all the highroads, and most of the cross ones, of England and
Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every
other year we spent the whole summer; and I used to read the 'Abbot'
at Kinross, and the 'Monastery' in Glen Farg, which I confused with
"Glendearg," and thought that the White Lady had as certainly lived
by the streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen of Scots
in the island of Loch Leven.
It happened also, which was the real cause of the bias of my after
life, that my father had a rare love of pictures. I use the word
"rare" advisedly, having never met with another instance of so
innate a faculty for the discernment of true art, up to the point
possible without actual practice. Accordingly, wherever there was
a gallery to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night;
and in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all the noblemen's houses
in England; not indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures,
but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew
older, the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving,
as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was
probably much happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick
Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle, and have
nothing to be astonished at; but that, at all events, it would not
make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable, to pull
Warwick Castle down. And, at this day, though I have kind invitations
enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months,
live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.
Nevertheless, having formed my notion of kinghood chiefly from the
FitzJames of the 'Lady of the Lake,' and of noblesse from the Douglas
there, and the Douglas in 'Marmion,' a painful wonder soon arose in
my child-mind, why the castles should now be always empty. Tantallon
was there; but no Archibald of Angus:--Stirling, but no Knight of
Snowdoun. The galleries and gardens of England were beautiful to
see--but his Lordship and her Ladyship were always in town, said the
housekeepers and gardeners. Deep yearning took hold of me for a kind of
"Restoration," which I began slowly to feel that Charles the Second
had not altogether effected, though I always wore a gilded oak-apple
very reverently in my button-hole on the 29th of May. It seemed to
me that Charles the Second's Restoration had been, as compared with
the Restoration I wanted, much as that gilded oak-apple to a real
apple. And as I grew older, the desire for red pippins instead of
brown ones, and Living Kings instead of dead ones, appeared to me
rational as well as romantic; and gradually it has become the main
purpose of my life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings.
Hope, this last, for others much more than for myself. I can always
behave as if I had a King, whether I have one or not; but it is
otherwise with some unfortunate persons. Nothing has ever impressed
me so much with the power of kingship, and the need of it, as the
declamation of the French Republicans against the Emperor before
his fall.
He did not, indeed, meet my old Tory notion of a King; and in my own
business of architecture he was doing, I saw, nothing but mischief;
pulling down lovely buildings, and putting up frightful ones carved all
over with L. N.'s: but the intense need of France for a governor of
some kind was made chiefly evident to me by the way the Republicans
confessed themselves paralyzed by him. Nothing could be done in
France, it seemed, because of the Emperor: they could not drive an
honest trade; they could not keep their houses in order; they could
not study the sun and moon; they could not eat a comfortable déjeûner
à la fourchette; they could not sail in the Gulf of Lyons, nor climb
on the Mont d'Or; they could not, in fine, (so they said,) so much as
walk straight, nor speak plain, because of the Emperor. On this side of
the water, moreover, the Republicans were all in the same tale. Their
opinions, it appeared, were not printed to their minds in the Paris
journals, and the world must come to an end therefore. So that,
in fact, here was all the Republican force of France and England,
confessing itself paralyzed, not so much by a real King, as by the
shadow of one. All the harm the extant and visible King did was,
to encourage the dressmakers and stone-masons in Paris,--to pay some
idle people very large salaries,--and to make some, perhaps agreeably
talkative, people, hold their tongues. That, I repeat, was all the harm
he did, or could do; he corrupted nothing but what was voluntarily
corruptible,--crushed nothing but what was essentially not solid:
and it remained open to these Republican gentlemen to do anything
they chose that was useful to France, or honourable to themselves,
between earth and heaven, except only--print violent abuse of this
shortish man, with a long nose, who stood, as they would have it,
between them and heaven. But there they stood, spell-bound; the
one thing suggesting itself to their frantic impotence as feasible,
being to get this one shortish man assassinated. Their children would
not grow, their corn would not ripen, and the stars would not roll,
till they had got this one short man blown into shorter pieces.
If the shadow of a King can thus hold (how many?) millions of men,
by their own confession, helpless for terror of it, what power must
there be in the substance of one?
But this mass of republicans--vociferous, terrified, and mischievous,
is the least part, as it is the vilest, of the great European populace
who are lost for want of true kings. It is not these who stand idle,
gibbering at a shadow, whom we have to mourn over;--they would have
been good for little, even governed;--but those who work and do
not gibber,--the quiet peasants in the fields of Europe, sad-browed,
honest-hearted, full of natural tenderness and courtesy, who have none
to help them, and none to teach; who have no kings, except those who
rob them while they live, no tutors, except those who teach them--how
to die.
I had an impatient remonstrance sent me the other day, by a country
clergyman's wife, against that saying in my former letter, "Dying
has been more expensive to you than living." Did I know, she asked,
what a country clergyman's life was, and that he was the poor man's
only friend?
Alas, I know it, and too well. What can be said of more deadly and
ghastly blame against the clergy of England, or any other country,
than that they are the poor man's only friends?
Have they, then, so betrayed their Master's charge and mind, in
their preaching to the rich;--so smoothed their words, and so sold
their authority,--that, after twelve hundred years entrusting of the
gospel to them, there is no man in England (this is their chief plea
for themselves forsooth) who will have mercy on the poor, but they;
and so they must leave the word of God, and serve tables?
I would not myself have said so much against English clergymen, whether
of country or town. Three--and one dead makes four--of my dear friends
(and I have not many dear friends) are country clergymen; and I know
the ways of every sort of them; my architectural tastes necessarily
bringing me into near relations with the sort who like pointed arches
and painted glass; and my old religious breeding having given me
an unconquerable habit of taking up with any travelling tinker of
evangelical principles I may come across; and even of reading, not
without awe, the prophetic warnings of any persons belonging to that
peculiarly well-informed "persuasion," such, for instance, as those
of Mr. Zion Ward "concerning the fall of Lucifer, in a letter to a
friend, Mr. William Dick, of Glasgow, price twopence," in which I
read (as aforesaid, with unfeigned feelings of concern,) that "the
slain of the Lord shall be MAN-Y; that is, man, in whom death is,
with all the works of carnality, shall be burnt up!"
But I was not thinking either of English clergy, or of any other group
of clergy, specially, when I wrote that sentence; but of the entire
Clerkly or Learned Company, from the first priest of Egypt to the
last ordained Belgravian curate, and of all the talk they have talked,
and all the quarrelling they have caused, and all the gold they have
had given them, to this day, when still "they are the poor man's
only friends"--and by no means all of them that, heartily! though I
see the Bishop of Manchester has, of late, been superintending--I
beg his pardon, Bishops don't superintend--looking on, or over, I
should have said--the recreations of his flock at the seaside; and
"the thought struck him" that railroads were an advantage to them
in taking them for their holiday out of Manchester. The thought may,
perhaps, strike him, next, that a working man ought to be able to find
"holy days" in his home, as well as out of it. [35]
A year or two ago, a man who had at the time, and has still, important
official authority over much of the business of the country, was
speaking anxiously to me of the misery increasing in the suburbs
and back streets of London, and debating, with the good help of the
Oxford Regius Professor of Medicine--who was second in council--what
sanitary or moral remedy could be found. The debate languished,
however, because of the strong conviction in the minds of all three
of us that the misery was inevitable in the suburbs of so vast a
city. At last, either the minister or physician, I forget which,
expressed the conviction. "Well," I answered, "then you must not
have large cities." "That," answered the minister, "is an unpractical
saying--you know we must have them, under existing circumstances."
I made no reply, feeling that it was vain to assure any man actively
concerned in modern parliamentary business, that no measures were
"practical" except those which touched the source of the evil
opposed. All systems of government--all efforts of benevolence, are
vain to repress the natural consequences of radical error. But any
man of influence who had the sense and courage to refuse himself and
his family one London season--to stay on his estate, and employ the
shopkeepers in his own village, instead of those in Bond Street--would
be "practically" dealing with, and conquering, this evil, so far as
in him lay; and contributing with his whole might to the thorough
and final conquest of it.
Not but that I know how to meet it directly also, if any London
landlords choose so to attack it. You are beginning to hear something
of what Miss Hill has done in Marylebone, and of the change brought
about by her energy and good sense in the centre of one of the worst
districts of London. It is difficult enough, I admit, to find a woman
of average sense and tenderness enough to be able for such work;
but there are, indeed, other such in the world, only three-fourths
of them now get lost in pious lecturing, or altar-cloth sewing; and
the wisest remaining fourth stay at home as quiet house-wives, not
seeing their way to wider action; nevertheless, any London landlord
who will content himself with moderate and fixed rent, (I get five per
cent. from Miss Hill, which is surely enough!), assuring his tenants of
secure possession if that is paid, so that they need not fear having
their rent raised, if they improve their houses; and who will secure
also a quiet bit of ground for their children to play in, instead of
the street,--has established all the necessary conditions of success;
and I doubt not that Miss Hill herself could find co-workers able to
extend the system of management she has originated, and shown to be
so effective.
But the best that can be done in this way will be useless ultimately,
unless the deep source of the misery be cut off. While Miss Hill,
with intense effort and noble power, has partially moralized a couple
of acres in Marylebone, at least fifty square miles of lovely country
have been Demoralized outside London, by the increasing itch of the
upper classes to live where they can get some gossip in their idleness,
and show each other their dresses.
That life of theirs must come to an end soon, both here and in Paris,
but to what end, it is, I trust, in their own power still to decide. If
they resolve to maintain to the last the present system of spending the
rent taken from the rural districts in the dissipation of the capitals,
they will not always find they can secure a quiet time, as the other
day in Dublin, by withdrawing the police, nor that park-railings
are the only thing which (police being duly withdrawn) will go
down. Those favourite castle battlements of mine, their internal
"police" withdrawn, will go down also; and I should be sorry to see
it;--the lords and ladies, houseless at least in shooting season,
perhaps sorrier, though they did find the grey turrets dismal in
winter time. If they would yet have them for autumn, they must have
them for winter. Consider, fair lords and ladies, by the time you
marry, and choose your dwelling-places, there are for you but forty
or fifty winters more in whose dark days you may see the snow fall
and wreathe. There will be no snow in Heaven, I presume--still less
elsewhere, (if lords and ladies ever miss of Heaven).
And that some may, is perhaps conceivable, for there are more than a
few things to be managed on an English estate, and to be "faithful"
in those few cannot be interpreted as merely abstracting the rent of
them. Nay, even the Telegraph's beau ideal of the landowner, from a
mechanical point of view, may come short, somewhat. "Cultivating huge
farms for himself with abundant machinery;--" Is that Lord Derby's
ideal also, may it be asked? The Scott-reading of my youth haunts me,
and I seem still listening to the (perhaps a little too long) speeches
of the Black Countess who appears terrifically through the sliding
panel in 'Peveril of the Peak,' about "her sainted Derby." Would
Saint Derby's ideal, or his Black Countess's, of due ordinance for
their castle and estate of Man, have been a minimum of Man therein,
and an abundance of machinery? In fact, only the Trinacrian Legs of
Man, transposed into many spokes of wheels--no use for "stalwart arms"
any more--and less than none for inconveniently "heroic" souls?
"Cultivating huge farms for himself!" I don't even see, after the
sincerest efforts to put myself into a mechanical point of view, how
it is to be done. For himself? Is he to eat the cornricks then? Surely
such a beau ideal is more Utopian than any of mine? Indeed, whether
it be praise- or blame-worthy, it is not so easy to cultivate
anything wholly for oneself, nor to consume, oneself, the products of
cultivation. I have, indeed, before now, hinted to you that perhaps
the "consumer" was not so necessary a person economically, as has been
supposed; nevertheless, it is not in his own mere eating and drinking,
or even his picture-collecting, that a false lord injures the poor. It
is in his bidding and forbidding--or worse still, in ceasing to do
either. I have given you another of Giotto's pictures, this month,
his imagination of Injustice, which he has seen done in his time,
as we in ours; and I am sorry to observe that his Injustice lives
in a battlemented castle and in a mountain country, it appears;
the gates of it between rocks, and in the midst of a wood; but in
Giotto's time, woods were too many, and towns too few. Also, Injustice
has indeed very ugly talons to his fingers, like Envy; and an ugly
quadruple hook to his lance, and other ominous resemblances to the
"hooked bird," the falcon, which both knights and ladies too much
delighted in. Nevertheless Giotto's main idea about him is, clearly,
that he "sits in the gate" pacifically, with a cloak thrown over his
chain-armour (you can just see the links of it appear at his throat),
and a plain citizen's cap for a helmet, and his sword sheathed,
while all robbery and violence have way in the wild places round
him,--he heedless.
Which is, indeed, the depth of Injustice: not the harm you do, but that
you permit to be done,--hooking perhaps here and there something to you
with your clawed weapon meanwhile. The baronial type exists still, I
fear, in such manner, here and there, in spite of improving centuries.
My friends, we have been thinking, perhaps, to-day, more than we ought
of our masters' faults,--scarcely enough of our own. If you would
have the upper classes do their duty, see that you also do yours. See
that you can obey good laws, and good lords, or law-wards, if you once
get them--that you believe in goodness enough to know what a good law
is. A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize and pronounce
it or not; a bad law is one that cannot hold, however much you ordain
and pronounce it. That is the mighty truth which Carlyle has been
telling you for a quarter of a century--once for all he told it you,
and the landowners, and all whom it concerns, in the third book of
'Past and Present' (1845, buy Chapman and Hall's second edition if
you can, it is good print, and read it till you know it by heart),
and from that day to this, whatever there is in England of dullest
and insolentest may be always known by the natural instinct it has to
howl against Carlyle. Of late, matters coming more and more to crisis,
the liberty men seeing their way, as they think, more and more broad
and bright before them, and still this too legible and steady old
sign-post saying, That it is not the way, lovely as it looks, the
outcry against it becomes deafening. Now, I tell you once for all,
Carlyle is the only living writer who has spoken the absolute and
perpetual truth about yourselves and your business; and exactly in
proportion to the inherent weakness of brain in your lying guides,
will be their animosity against Carlyle. Your lying guides, observe,
I say--not meaning that they lie wilfully--but that their nature is to
do nothing else. For in the modern Liberal there is a new and wonderful
form of misguidance. Of old, it was bad enough that the blind should
lead the blind; still, with dog and stick, or even timid walking with
recognized need of dog and stick, if not to be had, such leadership
might come to good end enough; but now a worse disorder has come upon
you, that the squinting should lead the squinting. Now the nature of
bat, or mole, or owl, may be undesirable, at least in the day-time,
but worse may be imagined. The modern Liberal politico-economist of
the Stuart Mill school is essentially of the type of a flat-fish--one
eyeless side of him always in the mud, and one eye, on the side that
has eyes, down in the corner of his mouth,--not a desirable guide for
man or beast. There was an article--I believe it got in by mistake,
but the Editor, of course, won't say so--in the 'Contemporary Review,'
two months back, on Mr. Morley's Essays, by a Mr. Buchanan, with an
incidental page on Carlyle in it, unmatchable (to the length of my poor
knowledge) for obliquitous platitude in the mud-walks of literature.
Read your Carlyle, then, with all your heart, and with the best of
brain you can give; and you will learn from him first, the eternity
of good law, and the need of obedience to it: then, concerning
your own immediate business, you will learn farther this, that the
beginning of all good law, and nearly the end of it, is in these
two ordinances,--That every man shall do good work for his bread:
and secondly, that every man shall have good bread for his work. But
the first of these is the only one you have to think of. If you
are resolved that the work shall be good, the bread will be sure;
if not,--believe me, there is neither steam plough nor steam mill,
go they never so glibly, that will win it from the earth long, either
for you, or the Ideal Landed Proprietor.
Faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XI.
Denmark Hill.
15th October, 1871.
My Friends,
A day seldom passes, now that people begin to notice these Letters
a little, without my receiving a remonstrance on the absurdity of
writing "so much above the level" of those whom I address.
I have said, however, that eventually you shall understand, if you
care to understand, every word in these pages. Through all this year
I have only been putting questions; some of them such as have puzzled
the wisest, and which may, for a long time yet, prove too hard for
you and me: but, next year, I will go over all the ground again,
answering the questions, where I know of any answers; or making them
plain for your examination, when I know of none.
But, in the meantime, be it admitted, for argument's sake, that this
way of writing, which is easy to me, and which most educated persons
can easily understand, is very much above your level. I want to know
why it is assumed so quietly that your brains must always be at a
low level? Is it essential to the doing of the work by which England
exists, that its workmen should not be able to understand scholar's
English, (remember, I only assume mine to be so for argument's sake),
but only newspaper's English? I chanced, indeed, to take up a number
of 'Belgravia' the other day, which contained a violent attack on an
old enemy of mine--'Blackwood's Magazine'; and I enjoyed the attack
mightily, until 'Belgravia' declared, by way of coup-de-grace to
'Blackwood,' that something which 'Blackwood' had spoken of as settled
in one way had been irrevocably settled the other way,--"settled,"
said triumphant 'Belgravia,' "in seventy-two newspapers."
Seventy-two newspapers, then, it seems--or, with a margin,
eighty-two,--perhaps, to be perfectly safe, we had better say
ninety-two--are enough to settle anything in this England of ours,
for the present. But, irrevocably, I doubt. If, perchance, you workmen
should reach the level of understanding scholar's English instead of
newspaper's English, things might a little unsettle themselves again;
and, in the end, might even get into positions uncontemplated by
the ninety-two newspapers,--contemplated only by the laws of Heaven,
and settled by them, some time since, as positions which, if things
ever got out of, they would need to get into again.
And, for my own part, I cannot at all understand why well-educated
people should still so habitually speak of you as beneath their level,
and needing to be written down to, with condescending simplicity,
as flat-foreheaded creatures of another race, unredeemable by any
Darwinism.
I was waiting last Saturday afternoon on the platform of the railway
station at Furness Abbey; (the station itself is tastefully placed so
that you can see it, and nothing else but it, through the east window
of the Abbot's Chapel, over the ruined altar;) and a party of the
workmen employed on another line, wanted for the swiftly progressive
neighbourhood of Dalton, were taking Sabbatical refreshment at the
tavern recently established at the south side of the said Abbot's
Chapel. Presently, the train whistling for them, they came out in
a highly refreshed state, and made for it as fast as they could by
the tunnel under the line, taking very long steps to keep their
balance in the direction of motion, and securing themselves,
laterally, by hustling the wall, or any chance passengers. They
were dressed universally in brown rags, which, perhaps, they felt to
be the comfortablest kind of dress; they had, most of them, pipes,
which I really believe to be more enjoyable than cigars; they got
themselves adjusted in their carriages by the aid of snatches of
vocal music, and looked at us,--(I had charge of a lady and her two
young daughters),--with supreme indifference, as indeed at creatures
of another race; pitiable, perhaps,--certainly disagreeable and
objectionable--but, on the whole, despicable, and not to be minded. We,
on our part, had the insolence to pity them for being dressed in rags,
and for being packed so close in the third-class carriages: the two
young girls bore being run against patiently; and when a thin boy
of fourteen or fifteen, the most drunk of the company, was sent back
staggering to the tavern for a forgotten pickaxe, we would, any of us,
I am sure, have gone and fetched it for him, if he had asked us. For
we were all in a very virtuous and charitable temper: we had had an
excellent dinner at the new inn, and had earned that portion of our
daily bread by admiring the Abbey all the morning. So we pitied the
poor workmen doubly--first, for being so wicked as to get drunk at
four in the afternoon; and, secondly, for being employed in work
so disgraceful as throwing up clods of earth into an embankment,
instead of spending the day, like us, in admiring the Abbey: and I,
who am always making myself a nuisance to people with my political
economy, inquired timidly of my friend whether she thought it all
quite right. And she said, certainly not; but what could be done? It
was of no use trying to make such men admire the Abbey, or to keep
them from getting drunk. They wouldn't do the one, and they would do
the other--they were quite an unmanageable sort of people, and had
been so for generations.
Which, indeed, I knew to be partly the truth, but it only made the
thing seem to me more wrong than it did before, since here were not
only the actual two or three dozen of unmanageable persons, with
much taste for beer, and none for architecture; but these implied the
existence of many unmanageable persons before and after them,--nay,
a long ancestral and filial unmanageableness. They were a Fallen Race,
every way incapable, as I acutely felt, of appreciating the beauty of
'Modern Painters,' or fathoming the significance of 'Fors Clavigera.'
But what they had done to deserve their fall, or what I had done to
deserve the privilege of being the author of those valuable books,
remained obscure to me; and indeed, whatever the deservings may have
been on either side, in this and other cases of the kind, it is always
a marvel to me that the arrangement and its consequences are accepted
so patiently. For observe what, in brief terms, the arrangement
is. Virtually, the entire business of the world turns on the clear
necessity of getting on table, hot or cold, if possible, meat--but,
at least, vegetables,--at some hour of the day, for all of us: for you
labourers, we will say at noon; for us æsthetical persons, we will say
at eight in the evening; for we like to have done our eight hours'
work of admiring abbeys before we dine. But, at some time of day,
the mutton and turnips, or, since mutton itself is only a transformed
state of turnips, we may say, as sufficiently typical of everything,
turnips only, must absolutely be got for us both. And nearly every
problem of State policy and economy, as at present understood, and
practised, consists in some device for persuading you labourers to
go and dig up dinner for us reflective and æsthetical persons, who
like to sit still, and think, or admire. So that when we get to the
bottom of the matter, we find the inhabitants of this earth broadly
divided into two great masses;--the peasant paymasters--spade in hand,
original and imperial producers of turnips; and, waiting on them all
round, a crowd of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, for
some--too often theoretical--service. There is, first, the clerical
person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for giving him moral advice;
then the legal person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for telling
him, in black letter, that his house is his own; there is, thirdly,
the courtly person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for presenting a
celestial appearance to him; there is, fourthly, the literary person,
whom the peasant pays in turnips for talking daintily to him; and there
is, lastly, the military person, whom the peasant pays in turnips
for standing, with a cocked hat on, in the middle of the field, and
exercising a moral influence upon the neighbours. Nor is the peasant
to be pitied if these arrangements are all faithfully carried out. If
he really gets moral advice from his moral adviser; if his house is,
indeed, maintained to be his own, by his legal adviser; if courtly
persons, indeed, present a celestial appearance to him; and literary
persons, indeed, talk beautiful words: if, finally, his scarecrow
do, indeed, stand quiet, as with a stick through the middle of it,
producing, if not always a wholesome terror, at least, a picturesque
effect, and colour-contrast of scarlet with green,--they are all of
them worth their daily turnips. But if, perchance, it happen that he
get immoral advice from his moralist, or if his lawyer advise him that
his house is not his own; and his bard, story-teller, or other literary
charmer, begin to charm him unwisely, not with beautiful words, but
with obscene and ugly words--and he be readier with his response in
vegetable produce for these than for any other sort; finally, if his
quiet scarecrow become disquiet, and seem likely to bring upon him
a whole flight of scarecrows out of his neighbours' fields,--the
combined fleets of Russia, Prussia, etc., as my friend and your
trustee, Mr. Cowper-Temple, has it, (see above, Letter II., p. 21,)
it is time to look into such arrangements under their several heads.
Well looked after, however, all these arrangements have their
advantages, and a certain basis of reason and propriety. But there
are two other arrangements which have no basis on either, and which
are very widely adopted, nevertheless, among mankind, to their
great misery.
I must expand a little the type of my primitive peasant before
defining these. You observe, I have not named among the polite persons
giving theoretical service in exchange for vegetable diet, the large,
and lately become exceedingly polite, class, of artists. For a true
artist is only a beautiful development of tailor or carpenter. As
the peasant provides the dinner, so the artist provides the clothes
and house: in the tailoring and tapestry producing function,
the best of artists ought to be the peasant's wife herself, when
properly emulative of Queens Penelope, Bertha, and Maude; and in the
house-producing-and-painting function, though concluding itself in
such painted chambers as those of the Vatican, the artist is still
typically and essentially a carpenter or mason; first carving wood
and stone, then painting the same for preservation;--if ornamentally,
all the better. And, accordingly, you see these letters of mine are
addressed to the "workmen and labourers" of England,--that is to say,
to the providers of houses and dinners, for themselves, and for all
men, in this country, as in all others.
Considering these two sorts of Providers, then, as one great class,
surrounded by the suppliant persons for whom, together with themselves,
they have to make provision, it is evident that they both have need
originally of two things--land, and tools. Clay to be subdued; and
plough, or potter's wheel, wherewith to subdue it.
Now, as aforesaid, so long as the polite surrounding personages are
content to offer their salutary advice, their legal information, etc.,
to the peasant, for what these articles are verily worth in vegetable
produce, all is perfectly fair; but if any of the polite persons
contrive to get hold of the peasant's land, or of his tools, and put
him into the "position of William," and make him pay annual interest,
first for the wood that he planes, and then for the plane he planes it
with!--my friends, polite or otherwise, these two arrangements cannot
be considered as settled yet, even by the ninety-two newspapers,
with all Belgravia to back them.
Not by the newspapers, nor by Belgravia, nor even by the Cambridge
Catechism, or the Cambridge Professor of Political Economy.
Look to the beginning of the second chapter in the last edition of
Professor Fawcett's Manual of Political Economy, (Macmillan, 1869,
p. 105). The chapter purports to treat of the "Classes among whom
wealth is distributed." And thus it begins:--
We have described the requisites of production to be three: land,
labour, and capital. Since, therefore, land, labour, and capital
are essential to the production of wealth, it is natural to suppose
that the wealth which is produced ought to be possessed by those
who own the land, labour, and capital which have respectively
contributed to its production. The share of wealth which is thus
allotted to the possessor of the land is termed rent; the portion
allotted to the labourer is termed wages, and the remuneration
of the capitalist is termed profit.
You observe that in this very meritoriously clear sentence both the
possessor of the land and the possessor of the capital are assumed
to be absolutely idle persons. If they contributed any labour to the
business, and so confused themselves with the labourer, the problem of
triple division would become complicated directly;--in point of fact,
they do occasionally employ themselves somewhat, and become deserving,
therefore, of a share, not of rent only, nor of profit only, but of
wages also. And every now and then, as I noted in my last letter,
there is an outburst of admiration in some one of the ninety-two
newspapers, at the amount of "work" done by persons of the superior
classes; respecting which, however, you remember that I also advised
you that a great deal of it was only a form of competitive play. In
the main, therefore, the statement of the Cambridge Professor may be
admitted to be correct as to the existing facts; the Holders of land
and capital being virtually in a state of Dignified Repose, as the
Labourer is in a state of--(at least, I hear it always so announced
in the ninety-two newspapers)--Dignified Labour.
But Professor Fawcett's sentence, though, as I have just said, in
comparison with most writings on the subject, meritoriously clear,
yet is not as clear as it might be,--still less as scientific as it
might be. It is, indeed, gracefully ornamental, in the use, in its last
clause, of the three words, "share," "portion," and "remuneration," for
the same thing; but this is not the clearest imaginable language. The
sentence, strictly put, should run thus:--"The portion of wealth
which is thus allotted to the possessor of the land is termed rent;
the portion allotted to the labourer is termed wages; and the portion
allotted to the capitalist is termed profit."
And you may at once see the advantage of reducing the sentence to these
more simple terms; for Professor Fawcett's ornamental language has this
danger in it, that "Remuneration," being so much grander a word than
"Portion," in the very roll of it seems to imply rather a thousand
pounds a day than three-and-sixpence. And until there be scientific
reason shown for anticipating the portions to be thus disproportioned,
we have no right to suggest their being so, by ornamental variety
of language.
Again, Professor Fawcett's sentence is, I said, not entirely
scientific. He founds the entire principle of allotment on the
phrase "it is natural to suppose." But I never heard of any other
science founded on what it was natural to suppose. Do the Cambridge
mathematicians, then, in these advanced days, tell their pupils that
it is natural to suppose the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right ones? Nay, in the present case, I regret to say it has
sometimes been thought wholly unnatural to suppose any such thing; and
so exceedingly unnatural, that to receive either a "remuneration,"
or a "portion," or a "share," for the loan of anything, without
personally working, was held by Dante and other such simple persons
in the middle ages to be one of the worst of the sins that could be
committed against nature: and the receivers of such interest were
put in the same circle of Hell with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And it is greatly to be apprehended that if ever our workmen, under
the influences of Mr. Scott and Mr. Street, come indeed to admire the
Abbot's Chapel at Furness more than the railroad station, they may
become possessed of a taste for Gothic opinions as well as Gothic
arches, and think it "natural to suppose" that a workman's tools
should be his own property.
Which I, myself, having been always given to Gothic opinions, do
indeed suppose, very strongly; and intend to try with all my might
to bring about that arrangement wherever I have any influence;--the
arrangement itself being feasible enough, if we can only begin by
not leaving our pickaxes behind us after taking Sabbatical refreshment.
But let me again, and yet again, warn you, that only by beginning
so,--that is to say, by doing what is in your own power to achieve of
plain right,--can you ever bring about any of your wishes; or, indeed,
can you, to any practical purpose, begin to wish. Only by quiet and
decent exaltation of your own habits can you qualify yourselves to
discern what is just, or to define even what is possible. I hear you
are, at last, beginning to draw up your wishes in a definite manner; (I
challenged you to do so, in 'Time and Tide,' four years ago, in vain),
and you mean to have them at last "represented in Parliament;" but
I hear of small question yet among you, whether they be just wishes,
and can be represented to the power of everlasting Justice, as things
not only natural to be supposed, but necessary to be done. For she
accepts no representation of things in beautiful language, but takes
her own view of them, with her own eyes.
I did, indeed, cut out a slip from the 'Birmingham Morning News,' last
September, (12th,) containing a letter written by a gentleman signing
himself "Justice" in person, and professing himself an engineer,
who talked very grandly about the "individual and social laws of our
nature:" but he had arrived at the inconvenient conclusions that "no
individual has a natural right to hold property in land," and that
"all land sooner or later must become public property." I call this
an inconvenient conclusion, because I really think you would find
yourselves greatly inconvenienced if your wives couldn't go into
the garden to cut a cabbage, without getting leave from the Lord
Mayor and Corporation; and if the same principle is to be carried
out as regards tools, I beg to state to Mr. Justice-in-Person,
that if anybody and everybody is to use my own particular palette
and brushes, I resign my office of Professor of Fine Art. Perhaps,
when we become really acquainted with the true Justice in Person, not
professing herself an engineer, she may suggest to us, as a Natural
Supposition,--"That land should be given to those who can use it,
and tools to those who can use them;" and I have a notion you will
find this a very tenable supposition also.
I have given you, this month, the last of the pictures I want you
to see from Padua;--Giotto's Image of Justice--which, you observe,
differs somewhat from the Image of Justice we used to set up in
England, above insurance offices, and the like. Bandaged close about
the eyes, our English Justice was wont to be, with a pair of grocers'
scales in her hand, wherewith, doubtless, she was accustomed to weigh
out accurately their shares to the landlords, and portions to the
labourers, and remunerations to the capitalists. But Giotto's Justice
has no bandage about her eyes, (Albert Durer's has them round open,
and flames flashing from them,) and weighs, not with scales, but with
her own hands; and weighs not merely the shares, or remunerations
of men, but the worth of them; and finding them worth this or that,
gives them what they deserve--death, or honour. Those are her forms of
"Remuneration."
Are you sure that you are ready to accept the decrees of this true
goddess, and to be chastised or rewarded by her, as is your due,
being seen through and through to your hearts' core? Or will you
still abide by the level balance of the blind Justice of old time;
or rather, by the oblique balance of the squinting Justice of our
modern geological Mud-Period?--the mud, at present, becoming also more
slippery under the feet--I beg pardon, the belly--of squinting Justice,
than was once expected; becoming, indeed, (as it is announced, even
by Mr. W. P. Price, M.P., chairman at the last half-yearly meeting
of the Midland Railway Company,) quite "delicate ground."
The said chairman, you will find, by referring to the 'Pall Mall
Gazette' of August 17th, 1871, having received a letter from Mr. Bass
on the subject of the length of time that the servants of the company
were engaged in labour, and their inadequate remuneration, made the
following remarks:--"He (Mr. Bass) is treading on very delicate
ground. The remuneration of labour, the value of which, like the
value of gold itself, depends altogether on the one great universal
law of supply and demand, is a question on which there is very little
room for sentiment. He, as a very successful tradesman, knows very
well how much the success of commercial operations depends on the
observance of that law; and we, sitting here as your representatives,
cannot altogether close our eyes to it."
Now it is quite worth your while to hunt out that number of the
'Pall Mall Gazette' in any of your free libraries, because a quaint
chance in the placing of the type has produced a lateral comment on
these remarks of Mr. W. P. Price, M.P.
Take your carpenter's rule, apply it level under the words,
"Great Universal Law of Supply and Demand," and read the line it
marks off in the other column of the same page. It marks off this,
"In Khorassan one-third of the whole population has perished from
starvation, and at Ispahan no less than 27,000 souls."
Of course you will think it no business of yours if people are
starved in Persia. But the Great "Universal" Law of Supply and Demand
may some day operate in the same manner over here; and even in the
Mud-and-Flat-fish period, John Bull may not like to have his belly
flattened for him to that extent.
You have heard it said occasionally that I am not a practical
person. It may be satisfactory to you to know, on the contrary, that
this whole plan of mine is founded on the very practical notion of
making you round persons instead of flat. Round and merry, instead
of flat and sulky. And my beau-ideal is not taken from "a mechanical
point of view," but is one already realized. I saw last summer, in
the flesh, as round and merry a person as I ever desire to see. He
was tidily dressed--not in brown rags, but in green velveteen; he
wore a jaunty hat, with a feather in it, a little on one side; he
was not drunk, but the effervescence of his shrewd good-humour filled
the room all about him; and he could sing like a robin. You may say
"like a nightingale," if you like, but I think robin's singing the
best, myself; only I hardly ever hear it now, for the young ladies of
England have had nearly all the robins shot, to wear in their hats,
and the bird-stuffers are exporting the few remaining to America.
This merry round person was a Tyrolese peasant; and I hold it an
entirely practical proceeding, since I find my idea of felicity
actually produced in the Tyrol, to set about the production of it,
here, on Tyrolese principles; which, you will find, on inquiry,
have not hitherto implied the employment of steam, nor submission
to the great Universal Law of Supply and Demand, nor even Demand for
the local Supply of a "Liberal" government. But they do imply labour
of all hands on pure earth and in fresh air. They do imply obedience
to government which endeavours to be just, and faith in a religion
which endeavours to be moral. And they result in strength of limbs,
clearness of throats, roundness of waists, and pretty jackets, and
still prettier corsets to fit them.
I must pass, disjointedly, to matters which, in a written letter, would
have been put in a postscript; but I do not care, in a printed one,
to leave a useless gap in the type. First, the reference in page 11 of
last number to the works of Mr. Zion Ward, is incorrect. The passage I
quoted is not in the "Letter to a Friend," price twopence, but in the
"Origin of Evil Discovered," price fourpence. (John Bolton, Steel House
Lane, Birmingham.) And, by the way, I wish that booksellers would save
themselves, and me, some (now steadily enlarging) trouble, by noting
that the price of these Letters to friends of mine, as supplied by
me, the original inditer, to all and sundry, through my only shopman,
Mr. Allen, is sevenpence per epistle, and not fivepence half-penny;
and that the trade profit on the sale of them is intended to be, and
must eventually be, as I intend, a quite honestly confessed profit,
charged to the customer, not compressed out of the author; which
object may be easily achieved by the retail bookseller, if he will
resolvedly charge the symmetrical sum of Tenpence per epistle over his
counter, as it is my purpose he should. But to return to Mr. Ward;
the correction of my reference was sent me by one of his disciples,
in a very earnest and courteous letter, written chiefly to complain
that my quotation totally misrepresented Mr. Ward's opinions. I
regret that it should have done so, but gave the quotation neither
to represent nor misrepresent Mr. Ward's opinions; but to show, which
the sentence, though brief, quite sufficiently shows, that he had no
right to have any.
I have before noted to you, indeed, that, in a broad sense, nobody has
a right to have opinions; but only knowledges: and, in a practical
and large sense, nobody has a right even to make experiments, but
only to act in a way which they certainly know will be productive of
good. And this I ask you to observe again, because I begin now to
receive some earnest inquiries respecting the plan I have in hand,
the inquiries very naturally assuming it to be an "experiment," which
may possibly be successful, and much more possibly may fail. But it
is not an experiment at all. It will be merely the carrying out of
what has been done already in some places, to the best of my narrow
power, in other places: and so far as it can be carried, it must be
productive of some kind of good.
For example; I have round me here at Denmark Hill seven acres of
leasehold ground. I pay £50 a year ground-rent, and £250 a year
in wages to my gardeners; besides expenses in fuel for hothouses,
and the like. And for this sum of three hundred odd pounds a year
I have some pease and strawberries in summer; some camellias and
azaleas in winter; and good cream, and a quiet place to walk in,
all the year round. Of the strawberries, cream, and pease, I eat
more than is good for me; sometimes, of course, obliging my friends
with a superfluous pottle or pint. The camellias and azaleas stand
in the anteroom of my library; and everybody says, when they come in,
"How pretty!" and my young lady friends have leave to gather what they
like to put in their hair, when they are going to balls. Meantime,
outside of my fenced seven acres--owing to the operation of the great
universal law of supply and demand--numbers of people are starving;
many more, dying of too much gin; and many of their children dying
of too little milk; and, as I told you in my first Letter, for my
own part, I won't stand this sort of thing any longer.
Now it is evidently open to me to say to my gardeners, "I want no
more azaleas or camellias; and no more strawberries and pease than are
good for me. Make these seven acres everywhere as productive of good
corn, vegetables, or milk, as you can; I will have no steam used upon
them, for nobody on my ground shall be blown to pieces; nor any fuel
wasted in making plants blossom in winter, for I believe we shall,
without such unseasonable blossoms, enjoy the spring twice as much
as now; but, in any part of the ground that is not good for eatable
vegetables, you are to sow such wild flowers as it seems to like,
and you are to keep all trim and orderly. The produce of the land,
after I have had my limited and salutary portion of pease, shall be
your own; but if you sell any of it, part of the price you get for
it shall be deducted from your wages."
Now observe, there would be no experiment whatever in any one feature
of this proceeding. My gardeners might be stimulated to some extra
exertion by it; but in any event I should retain exactly the same
command over them that I had before. I might save something out of my
£250 of wages, but I should pay no more than I do now, and in return
for the gift of the produce I should certainly be able to exact
compliance from my people with any such capricious fancies of mine
as that they should wear velveteen jackets, or send their children to
learn to sing; and, indeed, I could grind them, generally, under the
iron heel of Despotism, as the ninety-two newspapers would declare,
to an extent unheard of before in this free country. And, assuredly,
some children would get milk, strawberries, and wild flowers who do
not get them now; and my young lady friends would still, I am firm
in my belief, look pretty enough at their balls, even without the
camellias or azaleas.
I am not going to do this with my seven acres here; first, because
they are only leasehold; secondly, because they are too near London
for wild flowers to grow brightly in. But I have bought, instead,
twice as many freehold acres, where wild flowers are growing now, and
shall continue to grow; and there I mean to live: and, with the tenth
part of my available fortune, I will buy other bits of freehold land,
and employ gardeners on them in this above-stated matter. I may as well
tell you at once that my tithe will be, roughly, about seven thousand
pounds altogether, (a little less rather than more). If I get no help,
I can show what I mean, even with this; but if any one cares to help
me with gifts of either money or land, they will find that what they
give is applied honestly, and does a perfectly definite service:
they might, for aught I know, do more good with it in other ways;
but some good in this way--and that is all I assert--they will do,
certainly, and not experimentally. And the longer they take to think
of the matter the better I shall like it, for my work at Oxford is
more than enough for me just now, and I shall not practically bestir
myself in this land-scheme for a year to come, at least; nor then,
except as a rest from my main business: but the money and land will
always be safe in the hands of your trustees for you, and you need not
doubt, though I show no petulant haste about the matter, that I remain
Faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XII.
Denmark Hill,
23rd December, 1871.
My Friends,
You will scarcely care to read anything I have to say to you this
evening--having much to think of, wholly pleasant, as I hope; and
prospect of delightful days to come, next week. At least, however, you
will be glad to know that I have really made you the Christmas gift I
promised--£7,000 Consols, in all, clear; a fair tithe of what I had:
and to as much perpetuity as the law will allow me. It will not allow
the dead to have their own way, long, whatever licence it grants the
living in their humours: and this seems to me unkind to those helpless
ones;--very certainly it is inexpedient for the survivors. For the
wisest men are wise to the full in death; and if you would give them,
instead of stately tombs, only so much honour as to do their will,
when they themselves can no more contend for it, you would find it
good memorial of them, such as the best of them would desire, and
full of blessing to all men for all time.
English law needs mending in many respects; in none more than in
this. As it stands, I can only vest my gift in trustees, desiring them,
in the case of my death, immediately to appoint their own successors,
and in such continued succession, to apply the proceeds of the
St. George's Fund to the purchase of land in England and Scotland,
which shall be cultivated to the utmost attainable fruitfulness and
beauty by the labour of man and beast thereon, such men and beasts
receiving at the same time the best education attainable by the
trustees for labouring creatures, according to the terms stated in
this book, Fors Clavigera.
These terms, and the arrangement of the whole matter, will become
clearer to you as you read on with me, and cannot be clear at all,
till you do;--here is the money, at any rate, to help you, one day,
to make merry with, only, if you care to give me any thanks, will you
pause now for a moment from your merrymaking, to tell me,--to whom,
as Fortune has ordered it, no merrymaking is possible at this time,
(nor, indeed, much at any time;)--to me, therefore, standing as it were
astonished in the midst of this gaiety of yours, will you tell--what
it is all about?
Your little children would answer, doubtless, fearlessly, "Because
the Child Christ was born to-day:" but you, wiser than your children,
it may be,--at least, it should be,--are you also sure that He was?
And if He was, what is that to you?
I repeat, are you indeed sure He was? I mean, with real happening
of the strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened
near Him, showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood
still over His head? You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and
wish it were so with me; but I have been so puzzled lately by many
matters that once seemed clear to me, that I seldom now feel sure
of anything. Still seldomer, however, do I feel sure of the contrary
of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove that it was
visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible:
and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the
weakest grounds, than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I
envy not at all are those who imagine they believe it, and do not.
For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and
without any manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or
a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised
fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange spiritual
cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical period
of their existence;--an impression which has produced, in past ages,
the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an intellectual
conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determination of its
truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come.
Will you give some little time therefore, to think of it with
me to-day, being, as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then,
let me ask you, is its truth to you? The Child for whose birth you
are rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their
sins; but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious
of any sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you with any one in
particular--lying, or thieving, or the like--my belief is you would
say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind.
Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me--"That is because we have been
saved from our sins; and we are making merry, because we are so
perfectly good."
Well; there would be some reason in such an answer. There is much
goodness in you to be thankful for: far more than you know, or have
learned to trust. Still, I don't believe you will tell me seriously
that you eat your pudding and go to your pantomimes only to express
your satisfaction that you are so very good.
What is, or may be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat? Shall
we consider, a little, what, at all events, it was to the people of
its time; and so make ourselves more clear as to what it might be to
us? We will read slowly.
"And there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out in the field,
keeping watch over their flocks by night."
Watching night and day, that means; not going home. The staying out
in the field is the translation of a word from which a Greek nymph
has her name Agraulos, "the stayer out in fields," of whom I shall
have something to tell you, soon.
"And behold, the Messenger of the Lord stood above them, and the
glory of the Lord lightened round them, and they feared a great fear."
"Messenger." You must remember that, when this was written, the
word "angel" had only the effect of our word--"messenger"--on men's
minds. Our translators say "angel" when they like, and "messenger"
when they like; but the Bible, messenger only, or angel only, as you
please. For instance, "Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works,
when she had received the angels, and sent them forth another way?"
Would not you fain know what this angel looked like? I have always
grievously wanted, from childhood upwards, to know that; and
gleaned diligently every word written by people who said they had
seen angels: but none of them ever tell me what their eyes are like,
or hair, or even what dress they have on. We dress them, in pictures,
conjecturally, in long robes, falling gracefully; but we only continue
to think that kind of dress angelic, because religious young girls,
in their modesty, and wish to look only human, give their dresses
flounces. When I was a child, I used to be satisfied by hearing
that angels had always two wings, and sometimes six; but now nothing
dissatisfies me so much as hearing that; for my business compels me
continually into close drawing of wings; and now they never give me
the notion of anything but a swift or a gannet. And, worse still, when
I see a picture of an angel, I know positively where he got his wings
from--not at all from any heavenly vision, but from the worshipped
hawk and ibis, down through Assyrian flying bulls, and Greek flying
horses, and Byzantine flying evangelists, till we get a brass eagle,
(of all creatures in the world, to choose!) to have the gospel of
peace read from the back of it.
Therefore, do the best I can, no idea of an angel is possible to
me. And when I ask my religious friends, they tell me not to wish
to be wise above that which is written. My religious friends, let
me write a few words of this letter, not to my poor puzzled workmen,
but to you, who will all be going serenely to church to-morrow. This
messenger, formed as we know not, stood above the shepherds, and the
glory of the Lord lightened round them.
You would have liked to have seen it, you think! Brighter than the
sun; perhaps twenty-one coloured, instead of seven-coloured, and as
bright as the lime-light: doubtless you would have liked to see it,
at midnight, in Judæa.
You tell me not to be wise above that which is written; why, therefore,
should you be desirous, above that which is given? You cannot see the
glory of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see
it as bright as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You
might, at least, forty Christmases since: but not now.
You know I must antedate my letters for special days. I am actually
writing this sentence on the second December, at ten in the morning,
with the feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the
last three weeks the days have been one long drift of ragged gloom,
with only sometimes five minutes' gleam of the glory of God, between
the gusts, which no one regarded.
I am taking the name of God in vain, you think? No, my religious
friends, not I. For completed forty years, I have been striving to
consider the blue heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon
and the stars which He hath ordained: but you have left me nothing
now to consider here at Denmark Hill, but these black heavens, the
work of your fingers, and the blotting of moon and stars which you
have ordained; you,--taking the name of God in vain every Sunday,
and His work and His mercy in vain all the week through.
"You have nothing to do with it--you are very sorry for it--and Baron
Liebig says that the power of England is coal?"
You have everything to do with it. Were you not told to come out and
be separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the
evil work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share
with, to be damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin
by putting them out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of
them with you there. But return to your night vision, and explain to
me, if not what the angel was like, at least what you understand him
to have said,--he, and those with him. With his own lips he told the
shepherds there was born a Saviour for them; but more was to be told:
"And suddenly there was with him a multitude of the heavenly host."
People generally think that this verse means only that after one angel
had spoken, there came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but
it means far another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you
find creation summed thus:--"So the heavens and earth were finished,
and all the host of them." Whatever living powers of any order, great
or small, were to inhabit either, are included in the word. The host
of earth includes the ants and the worms of it; the host of heaven
includes,--we know not what;--how should we?--the creatures that are
in the stars which we cannot count,--in the space which we cannot
imagine; some of them so little and so low that they can become flying
poursuivants to this grain of sand we live on; others having missions,
doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on them.
But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the
powers of the outer world which have any concern with ours became
in some way visible now: having interest--they, in the praise,--as
all the hosts of earth in the life, of this Child, born in David's
town. And their hymn was of peace to the lowest of the two hosts--peace
on earth;--and praise in the highest of the two hosts; and, better
than peace, and sweeter than praise, Love, among men.
The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner
of the hosts of heaven, have written something which they suppose
this Song of Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves,
in state, after successful battles. But you hear it, those of
you who go to church in orthodox quarters, every Sunday; and will
understand the terms of it better by recollecting that the Lordship,
which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this, over all
creatures, or over the two Hosts. In the Apocalypse it is "Lord,
All governing"--Pantocrator--which we weakly translate "Almighty";
but the Americans still understand the original sense, and apply it so
to their god, the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their
Father which is in Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word "Sabaoth"
again means all "hosts" or creatures; and it is an important word
for workmen to recollect, because the saying of St. James is coming
true, and that fast, that the cries of the reapers whose wages have
been kept back by fraud, have entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men
at St. Catherine's Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they
live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai.
You see, farther, I have written above, not "good will towards men,"
but "love among men." It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy
to translate at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best
from its use at Christ's baptism--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well-pleased." For, in precisely the same words, the angels say,
there is to be "well-pleasing in men."
Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for
God's glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present,
think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps,
dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, even
when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press,
are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of heaven to
praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you; but you
hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:--that He expected,
then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have even great
satisfaction--well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The
sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose
about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden;
some of them will think it well laid out,--others ill. You are not
solicitous about their opinions; but you like them to love each
other; to build their nests without stealing each other's sticks,
and to trust you to take care of them.
Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world you would leave
off telling its Master your opinions of Him, and, much more, your
quarrelling about your opinions of Him; but would simply trust Him,
and mind your own business modestly, He might have more satisfaction
in you than He has had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one
years, or than He seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and
seventy-second. For first, instead of behaving like sparrows and
robins, you want to behave like those birds you read the Gospel from
the backs of,--eagles. Now the Lord of the garden made the claws of
eagles for them, and your fingers for you; and if you would do the
work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would, without doubt,
have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to have
claws--not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto's Injustice
has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so you set to
work to make yourselves manifold claws,--far-scratching;--and this
smoke, which hides the sun and chokes the sky--this Egyptian darkness
that may be felt--manufactured by you, singular modern children of
Israel, that you may have no light in your dwellings, is none the
fairer, because cast forth by the furnaces, in which you forge your
weapons of war.
A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed,
once saw the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace;
but not with envy of the country.
Your English power is coal? Well; also the power of the Vale of Siddim
was in slime,--petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities
fell there; and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men.
Emmanuel! God with us!--how often, you tenderly-minded Christians, have
you desired to see this great sight,--this Babe lying in a manger? Yet,
you have so contrived it, once more, this year, for many a farm in
France, that if He were born again, in that neighbourhood, there would
be found no manger for Him to lie in; only ashes of mangers. Our clergy
and lawyers dispute, indeed, whether He may not be yet among us; if not
in mangers, in the straw of them, or the corn. An English lawyer spoke
twenty-six hours but the other day--the other four days, I mean--before
the Lords of her Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, to prove
that an English clergyman had used a proper quantity of equivocation
in his statement that Christ was in Bread. Yet there is no harm in
anybody thinking that He is in Bread,--or even in Flour! The harm is,
in their expectation of His Presence in gunpowder.
Present, however, you believe He was, that night, in flesh, to any
one who might be warned to go and see Him. The inn was quite full;
but we do not hear that any traveller chanced to look into the
cow-house; and most likely, even if they had, none of them would have
been much interested in the workman's young wife, lying there. They
probably would have thought of the Madonna, with Mr. John Stuart Mill,
('Principles of Political Economy,' 8vo, Parker, 1848, vol. ii., page
321,) that there was scarcely "any means open to her of gaining a
livelihood, except as a wife and mother;" and that "women who prefer
that occupation might justifiably adopt it--but, that there should
be no option, no other carrière possible, for the great majority of
women, except in the humbler departments of life, is one of those
social injustices which call loudest for remedy."
The poor girl of Nazareth had less option than most; and with her
weak "be it unto me as Thou wilt," fell so far below the modern
type of independent womanhood, that one cannot wonder at any degree
of contempt felt for her by British Protestants. Some few people,
nevertheless, were meant, at the time, to think otherwise of her. And
now, my working friends, I would ask you to read with me, carefully,
for however often you may have read this before, I know there are
points in the story which you have not thought of.
The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born to them
"in David's village." We are apt to think that this was told, as of
special interest to them, because David was a King.
Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a King;
but a Shepherd like themselves. "To you, shepherds, is born this
day a Saviour in the shepherd's town;" that would be the deep sound
of the message in their ears. For the great interest to them in the
story of David himself must have been always, not that he had saved
the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or written Psalms, but that he had
kept sheep in those very fields they were watching in; and that his
grandmother [36] Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by.
And they said hastily, "Let us go and see."
Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not of
worshipping? Even when they do see the Child, it is not said that
they worshipped. They were simple people, and had not much faculty of
worship; even though the heavens had opened for them, and the hosts of
heaven had sung. They had been at first only frightened; then curious,
and communicative to the bystanders: they do not think even of making
any offering, which would have been a natural thought enough, as it
was to the first of shepherds: but they brought no firstlings of their
flock--(it is only in pictures, and those chiefly painted for the
sake of the picturesque, that the shepherds are seen bringing lambs,
and baskets of eggs). It is not said here that they brought anything,
but they looked, and talked, and went away praising God, as simple
people,--yet taking nothing to heart; only the mother did that.
They went away:--"returned," it is said,--to their business, and never
seem to have left it again. Which is strange, if you think of it. It
is a good business truly, and one much to be commended, not only in
itself, but as having great chances of "advancement"--as in the case
of Jethro the Midianite's Jew shepherd and the herdsman of Tekoa;
besides that keeper of the few sheep in the wilderness, when his
brethren were under arms afield. But why are they not seeking for some
advancement now, after opening of the heavens to them? or, at least,
why not called to it afterwards, being, one would have thought, as
fit for ministry under a shepherd king, as fishermen, or custom-takers?
Can it be that the work is itself the best that can be done by simple
men; that the shepherd Lord Clifford, or Michael of the Green-head
ghyll, are ministering better in the wilderness than any lords or
commoners are likely to do in Parliament, or other apostleship; so
that even the professed Fishers of Men are wise in calling themselves
Pastors rather than Piscators? Yet it seems not less strange that
one never hears of any of these shepherds any more. The boy who made
the pictures in this book for you could only fancy the Nativity,
yet left his sheep, that he might preach of it, in his way, all his
life. But they, who saw it, went back to their sheep.
Some days later, another kind of persons came. On that first day,
the simplest people of his own land;--twelve days after, the wisest
people of other lands, far away: persons who had received, what you
are all so exceedingly desirous to receive, a good education; the
result of which, to you,--according to Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the
page of the chapter on the probable future of the labouring classes,
opposite to that from which I have just quoted his opinions about the
Madonna's line of life--will be as follows:--"From this increase of
intelligence, several effects may be confidently anticipated. First:
that they will become even less willing than at present to be led,
and governed, and directed into the way they should go, by the mere
authority and prestige of superiors. If they have not now, still less
will they have hereafter, any deferential awe, or religious principle
of obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them."
It is curious that, in this old story of the Nativity, the greater
wisdom of these educated persons appears to have produced upon them
an effect exactly contrary to that which you hear Mr. Stuart Mill
would have "confidently anticipated." The uneducated people came
only to see, but these highly trained ones to worship; and they have
allowed themselves to be led, and governed, and directed into the way
which they should go, (and that a long one,) by the mere authority
and prestige of a superior person, whom they clearly recognize as a
born king, though not of their people. "Tell us, where is he that is
born King of the Jews, for we have come to worship him."
You may perhaps, however, think that these Magi had received a
different kind of education from that which Mr. Mill would recommend,
or even the book which I observe is the favourite of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer--'Cassell's Educator.' It is possible; for they were
looked on in their own country as themselves the best sort of Educators
which the Cassell of their day could provide, even for Kings. And
as you are so much interested in education, you will, perhaps, have
patience with me while I translate for you a wise Greek's account of
the education of the princes of Persia; account given three hundred
years, and more, before these Magi came to Bethlehem.
"When the boy is seven years old he has to go and learn all about
horses, and is taught by the masters of horsemanship, and begins to
go against wild beasts; and when he is fourteen years old, they give
him the masters whom they call the Kingly Child-Guiders: and these are
four, chosen the best out of all the Persians who are then in the prime
of life--to wit, the most wise man they can find, and the most just,
and the most temperate, and the most brave; of whom the first, the
wisest, teaches the prince the magic of Zoroaster; and that magic is
the service of the Gods: also, he teaches him the duties that belong
to a king. Then the second, the justest, teaches him to speak truth
all his life through. Then the third, the most temperate, teaches him
not to be conquered by even so much as a single one of the pleasures,
that he may be exercised in freedom, and verily a king, master of all
things within himself, not slave to them. And the fourth, the bravest,
teaches him to be dreadless of all things, as knowing that whenever
he fears, he is a slave."
Three hundred and some odd years before that carpenter, with his
tired wife, asked for room in the inn, and found none, these words
had been written, my enlightened friends; and much longer than that,
these things had been done. And the three hundred and odd years
(more than from Elizabeth's time till now) passed by, and much fine
philosophy was talked in the interval, and many fine things found out:
but it seems that when God wanted tutors for His little Prince,--at
least, persons who would have been tutors to any other little prince,
but could only worship this one,--He could find nothing better than
those quaint-minded masters of the old Persian school. And since then,
six times over, three hundred years have gone by, and we have had a
good deal of theology talked in them;--not a little popular preaching
administered; sundry Academies of studious persons assembled,--Paduan,
Parisian, Oxonian, and the like; persons of erroneous views carefully
collected and burnt; Eton, and other grammars, diligently digested; and
the most exquisite and indubitable physical science obtained,--able,
there is now no doubt, to extinguish gases of every sort, and explain
the reasons of their smell. And here we are, at last, finding it still
necessary to treat ourselves by Cassell's Educator,--patent filter of
human faculty. Pass yourselves through that, my intelligent working
friends, and see how clear you will come out on the other side.
Have a moment's patience yet with me, first, while I note for you one
or two of the ways of that older tutorship. Four masters, you see,
there were for the Persian Prince. One had no other business than to
teach him to speak truth; so difficult a matter the Persians thought
it. We know better,--we. You heard how perfectly the French gazettes
did it last year, without any tutor, by their Holy Republican
instincts. Then the second tutor had to teach the Prince to be
free. That tutor both the French and you have had for some time back;
but the Persian and Parisian dialects are not similar in their use of
the word "freedom"; of that hereafter. Then another master has to teach
the Prince to fear nothing; him, I admit, you want little teaching
from, for your modern Republicans fear even the devil little, and
God, less; but may I observe that you are occasionally still afraid
of thieves, though as I said some time since, I never can make out
what you have got to be stolen.
For instance, much as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this
Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of it, I know an English
gentleman who was offered the other day a picture of it, by a good
master,--Raphael,--for five-and-twenty pounds; and said it was too
dear: yet had paid, only a day or two before, five hundred pounds
for a pocket-pistol that shot people out of both ends, so afraid of
thieves was he. [37]
None of these three masters, however, the masters of justice,
temperance, or fortitude, were sent to the little Prince at
Bethlehem. Young as He was, He had already been in some practice
of these; but there was yet the fourth cardinal virtue, of which,
so far as we can understand, He had to learn a new manner for His
new reign: and the masters of that were sent to Him--the masters of
Obedience. For He had to become obedient unto Death.
And the most wise--says the Greek--the most wise master of all,
teaches the boy magic; and this magic is the service of the gods.
My skilled working friends, I have heard much of your magic
lately. Sleight of hand, and better than that, (you say,) sleight of
machine. Léger-de-main, improved into léger-de-mécanique. From the
West, as from the East, now, your American and Arabian magicians attend
you; vociferously crying their new lamps for the old stable lantern
of scapegoat's horn. And for the oil of the trees of Gethsemane,
your American friends have struck oil more finely inflammable. Let
Aaron look to it, how he lets any run down his beard; and the wise
virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine la Pétroleuse, with
her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster,
and completes the worship of her Christ.
Christmas, the mass of the Lord's anointed;--you will hear of devices
enough to make it merry to you this year, I doubt not. The increase
in the quantity of disposable malt liquor and tobacco is one great
fact, better than all devices. Mr. Lowe has, indeed, says the Times
of June 5th, "done the country good service, by placing before it,
in a compendious form, the statistics of its own prosperity.... The
twenty-two millions of people of 1825 drank barely nine millions
of barrels of beer in the twelve months: our thirty-two millions now
living drink all but twenty-six millions of barrels. The consumption of
spirits has increased also, though in nothing like the same proportion;
but whereas sixteen million pounds of tobacco sufficed for us in
1825, as many as forty-one million pounds are wanted now. By every
kind of measure, therefore, and on every principle of calculation,
the growth of our prosperity is established." [38]
Beer, spirits, and tobacco, are thus more than ever at your command;
and magic besides, of lantern, and harlequin's wand; nay, necromancy if
you will, the Witch of Endor at number so and so round the corner, and
raising of the dead, if you roll away the tables from off them. But of
this one sort of magic, this magic of Zoroaster, which is the service
of God, you are not likely to hear. In one sense, indeed, you have
heard enough of becoming God's servants; to wit, servants dressed
in His court livery, to stand behind His chariot, with gold-headed
sticks. Plenty of people will advise you to apply to Him for that sort
of position: and many will urge you to assist Him in carrying out His
intentions, and be what the Americans call helps, instead of servants.
Well! that may be, some day, truly enough; but before you can be
allowed to help Him, you must be quite sure that you can see Him. It is
a question now, whether you can even see any creature of His--or the
least thing that He has made,--see it,--so as to ascribe due worth,
or worship to it,--how much less to its Maker?
You have felt, doubtless, at least those of you who have been brought
up in any habit of reverence, that every time when in this letter
I have used an American expression, or aught like one, there came
upon you a sense of sudden wrong--the darting through you of acute
cold. I meant you to feel that: for it is the essential function of
America to make us all feel that. It is the new skill they have found
there;--this skill of degradation; others they have, which other
nations had before them, from whom they have learned all they know,
and among whom they must travel, still, to see any human work worth
seeing. But this is their speciality, this their one gift to their
race,--to show men how not to worship,--how never to be ashamed in the
presence of anything. But the magic of Zoroaster is the exact reverse
of this, to find out the worth of all things and do them reverence.
Therefore, the Magi bring treasures, as being discerners of treasures,
knowing what is intrinsically worthy, and worthless; what is best
in brightness, best in sweetness, best in bitterness--gold, and
frankincense, and myrrh. Finders of treasure hid in fields, and
goodliness in strange pearls, such as produce no effect whatever on
the public mind, bent passionately on its own fashion of pearl-diving
at Gennesaret.
And you will find that the essence of the mis-teaching, of your
day, concerning wealth of any kind, is in this denial of intrinsic
value. What anything is worth, or not worth, it cannot tell you: all
that it can tell is the exchange value. What Judas, in the present
state of Demand and Supply, can get for the article he has to sell, in
a given market, that is the value of his article:--Yet you do not find
that Judas had joy of his bargain. No Christmas, still less Easter,
holidays, coming to him with merrymaking. Whereas, the Zoroastrians,
who "take stars for money," rejoice with exceeding great joy at
seeing something, which--they cannot put in their pockets. For, "the
vital principle of their religion is the recognition of one supreme
power; the God of Light--in every sense of the word--the Spirit who
creates the world, and rules it, and defends it against the power of
evil." [39]
I repeat to you, now, the question I put at the beginning of my
letter. What is this Christmas to you? What Light is there, for your
eyes, also, pausing yet over the place where the Child lay?
I will tell you, briefly, what Light there should be;--what lessons
and promise are in this story, at the least. There may be infinitely
more than I know; but there is certainly, this.
The Child is born to bring you the promise of new life. Eternal or not,
is no matter; pure and redeemed, at least.
He is born twice on your earth; first, from the womb, to the life of
toil; then, from the grave, to that of rest.
To His first life He is born in a cattle-shed, the supposed son of
a carpenter; and afterwards brought up to a carpenter's craft.
But the circumstances of His second life are, in great part, hidden
from us: only note this much of it. The three principal appearances
to His disciples are accompanied by giving or receiving of food. He
is known at Emmaus in breaking of bread; at Jerusalem He Himself eats
fish and honey to show that He is not a spirit; and His charge to
Peter is "when they had dined," the food having been obtained under
His direction.
But in His first showing Himself to the person who loved Him best, and
to whom He had forgiven most, there is a circumstance more singular
and significant still. Observe--assuming the accepted belief to be
true,--this was the first time when the Maker of men showed Himself to
human eyes, risen from the dead, to assure them of immortality. You
might have thought He would have shown Himself in some brightly
glorified form,--in some sacred and before unimaginable beauty.
He shows Himself in so simple aspect, and dress, that she, who, of all
people on the earth, should have known Him best, glancing quickly back
through her tears, does not know Him. Takes Him for "the gardener."
Now, unless absolute orders had been given to us, such as would have
rendered error impossible, (which would have altered the entire temper
of Christian probation); could we possibly have had more distinct
indication of the purpose of the Master--born first by witness of
shepherds, in a cattle-shed, then by witness of the person for whom He
had done most, and who loved Him best, in the garden, and in gardener's
guise, and not known even by His familiar friends till He gave them
bread--could it be told us, I repeat, more definitely by any sign or
indication whatsoever, that the noblest human life was appointed to
be by the cattle-fold and in the garden; and to be known as noble in
breaking of bread?
Now, but a few words more. You will constantly hear foolish and
ignoble persons conceitedly proclaiming the text, that "not many wise
and not many noble are called."
Nevertheless, of those who are truly wise, and truly noble, all are
called that exist. And to sight of this Nativity, you find that,
together with the simple persons, near at hand, there were called
precisely the wisest men that could be found on earth at that moment.
And these men, for their own part, came--I beg you very earnestly
again to note this--not to see, nor talk--but to do reverence. They
are neither curious nor talkative, but submissive.
And, so far as they came to teach, they came as teachers of one
virtue only: Obedience. For of this Child, at once Prince and Servant,
Shepherd and Lamb, it was written: "See, mine elect, in whom my soul
delighteth. He shall not strive, nor cry, till he shall bring forth
Judgment unto Victory."
My friends, of the black country, you may have wondered at my telling
you so often,--I tell you nevertheless, once more, in bidding you
farewell this year,--that one main purpose of the education I want
you to seek is, that you may see the sky, with the stars of it again;
and be enabled, in their material light--"riveder le stelle."
But, much more, out of this blackness of the smoke of the Pit, the
blindness of heart, in which the children of Disobedience blaspheme God
and each other, heaven grant to you the vision of that sacred light,
at pause over the place where the young Child was laid; and ordain
that more and more in each coming Christmas it may be said of you,
"When they saw the Star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."
Believe me your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
NOTES
[1] Communicated to me by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, of Venice, from
his yet unpublished work, 'The English in Italy in the 14th Century.'
[2] See Carey's translation of the ninth book of Dante's 'Purgatory,'
line 105.
[3] I assume the Cambridge quotation to be correct: in my old edition
(1848), the distinction is between 'weavers and lace-makers' and
'journeymen bricklayers;' and making velvet is considered to be
the production of a 'commodity,' but building a house only doing a
'service.'
[4] I do not mean that there are no other kinds, nor that well-paid
labour must necessarily be unproductive. I hope to see much done,
some day, for just pay, and wholly productive. But these, named in the
text, are the two opposite extremes; and, in actual life, hitherto,
the largest means have been usually spent in mischief, and the most
useful work done for the worst pay.
[5] £992,740,328, in seventeen years, say the working men of Burnley,
in their address just issued--an excellent address in its way, and
full of very fair arithmetic--if its facts are all right; only I don't
see, myself, how, "from fifteen to twenty-five millions per annum,"
make nine hundred and ninety-two millions in seventeen years.
[6] Daily Telegraph, 30th January, 1871.
[7] Carlyle's Frederick, Book IV., chap. iii.
[8] Carlyle, Frederick, vol. i. p. 321 (first edition).
[9] Song of Solomon 2 : 11-13
[10] Here is another curious instance: I have but a minute ago finished
correcting these sheets, and take up the Times of this morning, April
21st, and find in it the suggestion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
for the removal of exemption from taxation, of Agricultural horses
and carts, in the very nick of time to connect it, as a proposal for
economic practice, with the statement of economic principle respecting
Production, quoted on last page.
[11] Wordsworth, "Excursion," Book 4th; in Moxon's edition, 1857
(stupidly without numbers to lines), vol. vi., p. 135.
[12] Read this, for instance, concerning the Gardens of Paris:--one
sentence in the letter is omitted; I will give it in full elsewhere,
with its necessary comments:--
"To the Editor of the Times.
5th April, 1871.
"Sir,--As the paragraph you quoted on Monday from the Field gives
no idea of the destruction of the gardens round Paris, if you
can spare me a very little space I will endeavour to supplement it.
"The public gardens in the interior of Paris, including the
planting on the greater number of the Boulevards, are in a
condition perfectly surprising when one considers the sufferings
even well-to-do persons had to endure for want of fuel during
the siege. Some of them, like the little oases in the centre
of the Louvre, even look as pretty as ever. After a similar
ordeal it is probable we should not have a stick left in London,
and the presence of the very handsome planes on the Boulevards,
and large trees in the various squares and gardens, after the
winter of 1870-71, is most creditable to the population. But
when one goes beyond the Champs Elysées and towards the Bois,
down the once beautiful Avenue de l'Impératrice, a sad scene of
desolation presents itself. A year ago it was the finest avenue
garden in existence; now a considerable part of the surface where
troops were camped is about as filthy and as cheerless as Leicester
Square or a sparsely furnished rubbish yard.
"The view into the once richly-wooded Bois from the huge and
ugly banks of earth which now cross the noble roads leading
into it is desolate indeed, the stump of the trees cut down
over a large extent of its surface reminding one of the dreary
scenes observable in many parts of Canada and the United States,
where the stumps of the burnt or cut-down pines are allowed to
rot away for years. The zone of the ruins round the vast belt
of fortifications I need not speak of, nor of the other zone of
destruction round each of the forts, as here houses and gardens
and all have disappeared. But the destruction in the wide zone
occupied by French and Prussian outposts is beyond description. I
got to Paris the morning after the shooting of Generals Clement
Thomas and Lecomte, and in consequence did not see so much of it
as I otherwise might have done; but round the villages of Sceaux,
Bourg-la-Reine, L'Hay, Vitry, and Villejuif, I saw an amount of
havoc which the subscriptions to the French Horticultural Relief
Fund will go but a very small way to repair. Notwithstanding all
his revolutions and wars, the Frenchman usually found time to
cultivate a few fruit trees, and the neighbourhood of the villages
above mentioned were only a few of many covered by nurseries of
young trees. When I last visited Vitry, in the autumn of 1868, the
fields and hill-sides around were everywhere covered with trees;
now the view across them is only interrupted by stumps about a
foot high. When at Vitry on the 28th of March, I found the once
fine nursery of M. Honoré Dufresne deserted, and many acres once
covered with large stock and specimens cleared to the ground. And
so it was in numerous other cases. It may give some notion of
the effect of the war on the gardens and nurseries around Paris,
when I state that, according to returns made up just before my
visit to Vitry and Villejuif, it was found that around these two
villages alone 2,400,400 fruit and other trees were destroyed. As
to the private gardens, I cannot give a better idea of them
than by describing the materials composing the protecting bank
of a battery near Sceaux. It was made up of mattresses, sofas,
and almost every other large article of furniture, with the earth
stowed between. There were, in addition, nearly forty orange and
oleander tubs gathered from the little gardens in the neighbourhood
visible in various parts of this ugly bank. One nurseryman at
Sceaux, M. Keteleer, lost 1,500 vols. of books, which were not
taken to Germany, but simply mutilated and thrown out of doors to
rot.... Multiply these few instances by the number of districts
occupied by the belligerents during the war, and some idea of
the effects of glory on gardening in France may be obtained.
"W. Robinson."
[13] Last night (I am writing this on the 18th of April) I got a
letter from Venice, bringing me the, I believe, too well-grounded,
report that the Venetians have requested permission from the government
of Italy to pull down their Ducal Palace, and "rebuild" it. Put up a
horrible model of it, in its place, that is to say, for which their
architects may charge a commission. Meantime, all their canals are
choked with human dung, which they are too poor to cart away, but
throw out at their windows.
And all the great thirteenth-century cathedrals in France have been
destroyed, within my own memory, only that architects might charge
commission for putting up false models of them in their place.
[14] I think it best to publish this letter as it was prepared for
press on the morning of the 25th of last month, at Abingdon, before
the papers of that day had reached me. You may misinterpret its tone,
and think it is written without feeling; but I will endeavour to
give you, in my next letter, a brief statement of the meaning, to the
French and to all other nations, of this war, and its results: in the
meantime, trust me, there is probably no other man living to whom,
in the abstract, and irrespective of loss of family and property,
the ruin of Paris is so great a sorrow as it is to me.
[15] Of course this was written, and in type, before the late
catastrophe in Paris; and the one at Dunkirk is, I suppose, long since
forgotten, much more our own good beginning at--Birmingham--was it? I
forget, myself, now.
[16] This was at seven in the morning; he had them fighting at
half-past nine.
[17] Engraved, as also the woodcut in the April number, carefully after
Holbein, by my coal-waggon-assisting assistant: but he has missed his
mark somewhat, here; the imp's abortive hands, hooked processes only,
like Envy's, and pterodactylous, are scarcely seen in their clutch
of the bellows, and there are other faults. We will do it better for
you, afterwards.
[18] I spare you, for once, a word for 'government' used by this
old author, which would have been unintelligible to you, and is so,
except in its general sense, to me, too.
[19] Horace, Odes, Book II, Ode XV.
[20] "Tanto rossa, ch' appena fora dentro al fuoco nota."--Purg.,
xxix. 122.
[21] Confession always a little painful, however; scientific envy being
the most difficult of all to conquer. I find I did much injustice to
the botanical lecturer, as well as to my friend, in my last letter;
and, indeed, suspected as much at the time; but having some botanical
notions myself, which I am vain of, I wanted the lecturer's to be
wrong, and stopped cross-examining my friend as soon as I had got
what suited me. Nevertheless, the general statement that follows,
remember, rests on no tea-table chat; and the tea-table chat itself
is accurate, as far as it goes.
[22] I have since been ill, and cannot thoroughly revise my sheets; but
my good friend Mr. Robert Chester, whose keen reading has saved me many
a blunder ere now, will, I doubt not, see me safely through the pinch.
[23] "The charge on France for the interest of the newly-created
debt, for the amount advanced by the Bank, and for the annual
repayments--in short, for the whole additional burdens which the
war has rendered necessary--is substantially to be met by increased
Customs and Excise duties. The two principles which seem to have
governed the selection of these imposts are, to extort the largest
amount of money as it is leaving the hand of the purchaser, and to
enforce the same process as the cash is falling into the hand of the
native vendor; the results being to burden the consumer and restrict
the national industry. Leading commodities of necessary use--such
as sugar and coffee, all raw materials for manufacture, and all
textile substances--have to pay ad valorem duties, in some cases
ruinously heavy. Worse still, and bearing most seriously on English
interests, heavy export duties are to be imposed on French products,
among which wine, brandy, liqueurs, fruits, eggs, and oilcake stand
conspicuous--these articles paying a fixed duty; while all others,
grain and flour, we presume, included, will pay 1 per cent. ad
valorem. Navigation dues are also to be levied on shipping, French and
foreign; and the internal postage of letters is to be increased 25 per
cent. From the changes in the Customs duties alone an increased revenue
of £10,500,000 is anticipated. We will not venture to assert that
these changes may not yield the amount of money so urgently needed;
but if they do, the result will open up a new chapter in political
economy. Judging from the experience of every civilised State, it is
simply inconceivable that such a tariff can be productive, can possess
the faculty of healthy natural increase, or can act otherwise than as
a dead weight on the industrial energies of the country. Every native
of France will have to pay more for articles of prime necessity,
and will thus have less to spare on articles of luxury--that is, on
those which contribute most to the revenue, with the least of damage
to the resources of his industry. Again, the manufacturer will have
the raw material of his trade enhanced in value; and, though he may
have the benefit of a drawback on his exports, he will find his home
market starved by State policy. His foreign customer will purchase
less, because the cost is so much greater, and because his means are
lessened by the increase in the prices of food through the export duty
on French products. The French peasant finds his market contracted
by an export duty which prevents the English consumers of his eggs,
poultry, and wine from buying as largely as they once did; his profits
are therefore reduced, his piece of ground is less valuable, his
ability to pay taxes is lessened. The policy, in short, might almost
be thought expressly devised to impoverish the entire nation when it
most wants enriching--to strangle French industry by slow degrees,
to dry up at their source the main currents of revenue. Our only
hope is, that the proposals, by their very grossness, will defeat
themselves."--Telegraph, June 29th.
[24] Dante, Inferno, Canto VII. v. 53-54
[25] Dante, Inferno, Canto VII. v. 63-65
[26] Of course the Prime Minister is always the real tax-gatherer;
the Chancellor of the Exchequer is only the cat's-paw.
[27] Infinite nonsense is talked about the "work done" by the upper
classes. I have done a little myself, in my day, of the kind of work
they boast of; but mine, at least, has been all play. Even lawyer's,
which is, on the whole, the hardest, you may observe to be essentially
grim play, made more jovial for themselves by conditions which make
it somewhat dismal to other people. Here and there we have a real
worker among soldiers, or no soldiering would long be possible;
nevertheless young men don't go into the Guards with any primal or
essential idea of work.
[28] I speak in the first person, not insolently, but necessarily,
being yet alone in this design: and for some time to come the
responsibility of carrying it on must rest with me, nor do I ask
or desire any present help, except from those who understand what I
have written in the course of the last ten years, and who can trust
me, therefore. But the continuance of the scheme must depend on the
finding men staunch and prudent for the heads of each department of
the practical work, consenting, indeed, with each other as to certain
great principles of that work, but left wholly to their own judgment as
to the manner and degree in which they are to be carried into effect.
[29] I do not mean that I answered in these words, but to the effect
of them, at greater length.
[30] We English are usually bad altogether in a harmonious way, and
only quite insolent when we are quite good-for-nothing; the least good
in us shows itself in a measure of modesty; but many Scotch natures,
of fine capacity otherwise, are rendered entirely abortive by conceit.
[31] "Steam has, of course, utterly extirpated seamanship," says
Admiral Rous, in his letter to 'The Times' (which I had, of course, not
seen when I wrote this). Read the whole letter and the article on it in
'The Times' of the 17th, which is entirely temperate and conclusive.
[32] The myth of Balaam; the cause assigned for the journey of the
first King of Israel from his father's house; and the manner of
the triumphal entry of the greatest King of Judah into His capital,
are symbolic of the same truths; but in a yet more strange humility.
[33] Compare also. Black Auster at the Battle of the Lake, in
Macaulay's 'Lays of Rome.'
[34] Since last Fors was published I have sold some more property,
which has brought me in another ten thousand to tithe; so that I have
bought a second thousand Consols in the names of the Trustees--and
have received a pretty little gift of seven acres of woodland,
in Worcestershire, for you, already--so you see there is at least
a beginning.
[35] See § 159, (written seven years ago,) in 'Munera Pulveris.'
[36] Great;--father's father's mother.
[37] The papers had it that several gentlemen concurred in this piece
of business; but they put the Nativity at five-and-twenty thousand,
and the Agincourt, or whatever the explosive protector was called,
at five hundred thousand.
[38] This last clause does not, you are however to observe, refer in
the great Temporal Mind, merely to the merciful Dispensation of beer
and tobacco, but to the general state of things, afterwards thus
summed with exultation: "We doubt if there is a household in the
kingdom which would now be contented with the conditions of living
cheerfully accepted in 1825."
[39] Max Müller: 'Genesis and the Zend-Avesta.'
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