LETTER XL.
I am obliged to go to Italy this spring, and find beside me, a mass of Fors material in arrear, needing various explanation and arrangement, for which I have no time. Fors herself must look to it, and my readers use their own wits in thinking over what she has looked to. I begin with a piece of Marmontel, which was meant to follow, ‘in due time,’ the twenty-first letter,—of which, please glance at the last four pages again. This following bit is from another story professing to give some account of Molière’s Misanthrope, in his country life, after his last quarrel with Celimène. He calls on a country gentleman, M. de Laval, “and was received by him with the simple and serious courtesy which announces neither the need nor the vain desire of making new connections. Behold, said he, a man who does not surrender himself at once. I esteem him the more. He congratulated M. de Laval [74]on the agreeableness of his solitude. You come to live here, he said to him, far from men, and you are very right to avoid them.
I, Monsieur! I do not avoid men; I am neither so weak as to fear them, so proud as to despise them, or so unhappy as to hate them.
This answer struck so home that Alceste was disconcerted by it; but he wished to sustain his debût, and began to satirize the world.
I have lived in the world like another, said M. de Laval, and I have not seen that it was so wicked. There are vices and virtues in it,—good and evil mingled,—I confess; but nature is so made, and one should know how to accommodate oneself to it.
On my word, said Alceste, in that unison the evil governs to such a point that it chokes the other. Sir, replied the Viscount, if one were as eager to discover good as evil, and had the same delight in spreading the report of it,—if good examples were made public as the bad ones almost always are,—do you not think that the good would weigh down the balance?1 But gratitude speaks so low, and indignation so loudly, that you cannot hear but the last. Both friendship and esteem are commonly moderate in their praises; they imitate the modesty of honour, in praise, while [75]resentment and mortification exaggerate everything they describe.
Monsieur, said Alceste to the Viscount, you make me desire to think as you do; and even if the sad truth were on my side, your error would be preferable. Ah, yes, without doubt, replied M. de Laval, ill-humour is good for nothing, the fine part that it is, for a man to play, to fall into a fit of spite like a child!—and why? For the mistakes of the circle in which one has lived, as if the whole of nature were in the plot against us, and responsible for the hurt we have received.
You are right, replied Alceste, it would be unjust to consider all men as partners in fault; yet how many complaints may we not justly lodge against them, as a body? Believe me, sir, my judgment of them has serious and grave motives. You will do me justice when you know me. Permit me to see you often! Often, said the Viscount, will be difficult. I have much business, and my daughter and I have our studies, which leave us little leisure; but sometimes, if you will, let us profit by our neighbourhood, at our ease, and without formality, for the privilege of the country is to be alone, when we like.
Some days afterwards Monsieur de Laval returned his visit, and Alceste spoke to him of the pleasure that he doubtless felt in making so many people happy. It is a beautiful example, he said, and, to the shame of men, a very rare one. How many persons there are, more powerful [76]and more rich than you, who are nothing but a burden to their inferiors! I neither excuse nor blame them altogether, replied M. de Laval. In order to do good, one must know how to set about it; and do not think that it is so easy to effect our purpose. It is not enough even to be sagacious; it is needful also to be fortunate; it is necessary to find sensible and docile persons to manage:2 and one has constantly need of much address, and patience, to lead the people, naturally suspicious and timid, to what is really for their advantage. Indeed, said Alceste, such excuses are continually made; but have you not conquered all these obstacles? and why should not others conquer them? I, said M. de Laval, have been tempted by opportunity, and seconded by accident.3 The people of this province, at the time that I came into possession of my estate, were in a condition of extreme distress. I did but stretch my arms to them; they gave themselves up to me in despair. An arbitrary tax had been lately imposed upon them, which they regarded with so much terror that they preferred sustaining hardships to making any appearance of having wealth; and I found, current through the country, this desolating and destructive maxim, ‘The more we work, the more we shall be trodden down.’ (It is [77]precisely so in England to-day, also.) “The men dared not be laborious; the women trembled to have children.”
I went back to the source of the evil. I addressed myself to the man appointed for the reception of the tribute. Monsieur, I said to him, my vassals groan under the weight of the severe measures necessary to make them pay the tax. I wish to hear no more of them; tell me what is wanting yet to make up the payment for the year, and I will acquit the debt myself. Monsieur, replied the receiver, that cannot be. Why not? said I. Because it is not the rule. What! is it not the rule to pay the King the tribute that he demands with the least expense and the least delay possible? Yes, answered he, that would be enough for the King, but it would not be enough for me. Where should I be if they paid money down? It is by the expense of the compulsory measures that I live; they are the perquisites of my office. To this excellent reason I had nothing to reply, but I went to see the head of the department, and obtained from him the place of receiver-general for my peasants.
My children, I then said to them, (assembling them on my return home,) I have to announce to you that you are in future to deposit in my hands the exact amount of the King’s tribute, and no more. There will be no more expenses, no more bailiff’s visits. Every Sunday at the bank of the parish, your wives shall bring me their savings, and insensibly you shall find yourselves out of debt. Work now, and cultivate your land; make the most of it [78]you can; no farther tax shall be laid on you. I answer for this to you—I who am your father. For those who are in arrear, I will take some measures for support, or I will advance them the sum necessary,4 and a few days at the dead time of the year, employed in work for me, will reimburse me for my expenses. This plan was agreed upon, and we have followed it ever since. The housewives of the village bring me their little offerings: I encourage them, and speak to them of our good King; and what was an act of distressing servitude, has become an unoppressive act of love.
Finally, as there was a good deal of superfluous time, I established the workshop that you have seen; it turns everything to account, and brings into useful service time which would be lost between the operations of agriculture: the profits of it are applied to public works. A still more precious advantage of this establishment is its having greatly increased the population—more children are born, as there is certainty of extended means for their support.”
Now note, first, in this passage what material of loyalty and affection there was still in the French heart before the Revolution; and, secondly, how useless it is to be a good King, if the good King allows his officers to live upon the cost of compulsory measures.5 [79]And remember that the French Revolution was the revolt of absolute loyalty and love against the senseless cruelty of a “good King.”
Next, for a little specimen of the state of our own working population; and the “compulsory—not measures, but measureless license,” under which their loyalty and love are placed,—here is a genuine working woman’s letter; and if the reader thinks I have given it him in its own spelling that he may laugh at it, the reader is wrong.
“May 12, 1873.
“Dear ——
“Wile Reading the herald to Day on the subject on shortor houers of Labour 6 I was Reminded of A cercomstance that came under my hone notis when the 10 hours sistom Began in the cotton mills in Lancashire I was Minding a mesheen with 30 treds in it I was then maid to mind 2 of 30 treds each with one shilling Advance of wages wich was 5s for one and 6s for tow with an increes of speed and with improved mecheens in A few years I was minding tow mecheens with tow 100 trads Each and Dubel speed for 9s perweek so that in our improved condation we had to turn out some 100 weght per day and we went as if the Devel was After us for 10 houers per day and with that comparetive small Advance in money and the feemals have [80]ofton Been carred out fainting what with the heat and hard work and those that could not keep up mst go and make room for a nother and all this is Done in Christian England and then we are tould to Be content in the station of Life in wich the Lord as places us But I say the Lord never Did place us there so we have no Right to Be content o that Right and not might was the Law yours truely C. H. S.”
Next to this account of Machine-labour, here is one of Hand-labour, also in a genuine letter,—this second being to myself; (I wish the other had been also, but it was to one of my friends.)
“Beckenham, Kent,
“Sept. 24, 1873.
“That is a pleasant evening in our family when we read and discuss the subjects of ‘Fors Clavigera,’ and we frequently reperuse them, as for instance, within a few days, your August letter. In page 16 I was much struck by the notice of the now exploded use of the spinning wheel. My mother, a Cumberland woman, was a spinner, and the whole process, from the fine thread that passed through her notable fingers, and the weaving into linen by an old cottager—a very ‘Silas Marner,’—to the bleaching on the orchard grass, was well known to my sister7 and myself, when children.
“When I married, part of the linen that I took to [81]my new home was my mother’s spinning, and one fine table-cloth was my grandmother’s. What factory, with its thousand spindles, and chemical bleaching powders, can send out such linen as that, which lasted three generations? 8
“I should not have troubled you with these remarks, had I not at the moment when I read your paragraph on hand-spinning, received a letter from my daughter, now for a time resident in Coburg, (a friend of Octavia Hill’s,) which bears immediately on the subject. I have therefore ventured to transcribe it for your perusal, believing that the picture she draws from life, beautiful as it is for its simplicity, may give you a moment’s pleasure.”
“Coburg, Sept. 4, 1873.
“On Thursday I went to call on Frau L.; she was not in; so I went to her mother’s, Frau E., knowing that I should find her there. They were all sitting down to afternoon coffee, and asked me to join them, which I gladly did. I had my work-basket with me, and as they were all at work, it was pleasant to do the same thing. Hildigard was there; in fact she lives there, to take care of Frau E. since she had her fall and stiffened her ankle, a year ago. Hildigard took her spinning, and tied on her white apron, filled the little brass basin of the spinning-wheel with water, to wet her fingers, and set the wheel a-purring. I have never seen [82]the process before, and it was very pretty to see her, with her white fingers, and to hear the little low sound. It is quite a pity, I think, ladies do not do it in England,—it is so pretty, and far nicer work than crotchet, and so on, when it is finished. This soft linen made by hand is so superior to any that you get now. Presently the four children came in, and the great hunting dog, Feldman; and altogether I thought, as dear little Frau E. sat sewing in her arm-chair, and her old sister near her at her knitting, and Hildigard at her spinning, while pretty Frau L. sewed at her little girl’s stuff-skirt,—all in the old-fashioned room full of old furniture, and hung round with miniatures of still older dames and officers, in, to our eyes, strange stiff costumes, that it was a most charming scene, and one I enjoyed as much as going to the theatre,—which I did in the evening.”
A most charming scene, my dear lady, I have no doubt; just what Hengler’s Circus was, to me, this Christmas. Now for a little more of the charming scenery outside, and far away.
“12, Tunstall Terrace, Sunderland,
“14th Feb., 1874.
“My dear Sir,—The rice famine is down upon us in earnest, and finds our wretched ‘administration’ unprepared—a ministration unto death!
“It can carry childish gossip ‘by return of post’ into [83]every village in India, but not food; no, not food even for mothers and babes. So far has our scientific and industrial progress attained.
“To-night comes news that hundreds of deaths from starvation have already occurred, and that even high-caste women are working on the roads;—no food from stores of ours except at the price of degrading, health-destroying, and perfectly useless toil. God help the nation responsible for this wickedness!
“Dear Mr. Ruskin, you wield the most powerful pen in England, can you not shame us into some sense of duty, some semblance of human feeling? [Certainly not. My good sir, as far as I know, nobody ever minds a word I say, except a few nice girls, who are a great comfort to me, but can’t do anything. They don’t even know how to spin, poor little lilies!]
“I observe that the ‘Daily News’ of to-day is horrified at the idea that Disraeli should dream of appropriating any part of the surplus revenue to the help of India in this calamity [of course], and even the ‘Spectator’ calls that a ‘dangerous’ policy. So far is even ‘the conscience of the Press’ [What next?] corrupted by the dismal science.
“I am, yours truly.”
So far the Third Fors has arranged matters for me; but I must put a stitch or two into her work.
Look back to my third letter, for March, 1871, page 5. You see it is said there that the French war [84]and its issues were none of Napoleon’s doing, nor Count Bismarck’s; that the mischief in them was St. Louis’s doing; and the good, such as it was, the rough father of Frederick the Great’s doing.
The father of Frederick the Great was an Evangelical divine of the strictest orthodoxy,—very fond of beer, bacon, and tobacco, and entirely resolved to have his own way, supposing, as pure Evangelical people always do, that his own way was God’s also. It happened, however, for the good of Germany, that this king’s own way, to a great extent, was God’s also,—(we will look at Carlyle’s statement of that fact another day,)—and accordingly he maintained, and the ghost of him,—with the help of his son, whom he had like to have shot as a disobedient and dissipated character,—maintains to this day in Germany, such sacred domestic life as that of which you have an account in the above letter. Which, in peace, is entirely happy, for its own part; and, in war, irresistible.
‘Entirely blessed,’ I had written first, too carelessly. I have had to scratch out the ‘blessed’ and put in ‘happy.’ For blessing is only for the meek and merciful, and a German cannot be either; he does not understand even the meaning of the words. In that is the intense, irreconcilable difference between the French and German natures. A Frenchman is selfish only when he is vile and lustful; but a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and morality. A Frenchman is arrogant [85]only in ignorance; but no quantity of learning ever makes a German modest. “Sir,” says Albert Durer of his own work, (and he is the modestest German I know,) “it cannot be better done.” Luther serenely damns the entire gospel of St. James, because St. James happens to be not precisely of his own opinions.
Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lombardy, they bombard Venice, steal her pictures, (which they can’t understand a single touch of,) and entirely ruin the country, morally and physically, leaving behind them misery, vice, and intense hatred of themselves, wherever their accursed feet have trodden. They do precisely the same thing by France,—crush her, rob her, leave her in misery of rage and shame; and return home, smacking their lips, and singing Te Deums.
But when the French conquer England, their action upon it is entirely beneficent. Gradually, the country, from a nest of restless savages, becomes strong and glorious; and having good material to work upon, they make of us at last a nation stronger than themselves.
Then the strength of France perishes, virtually, through the folly of St. Louis;—her piety evaporates, her lust gathers infectious power, and the modern Cité rises round the Sainte Chapelle.
It is a woful history. But St. Louis does not perish selfishly; and perhaps is not wholly dead yet,—whatever Garibaldi and his red-jackets may think about him, and their ‘Holy Republic.’ [86]
Meantime Germany, through Geneva, works quaintly against France, in our British destiny, and makes an end of many a Sainte Chapelle, in our own sweet river islands. Read Froude’s sketch of the Influence of the Reformation on Scottish Character, in his “Short studies on great subjects.” And that would be enough for you to think of, this month; but as this letter is all made up of scraps, it may be as well to finish with this little private note on Luther’s people, made last week.
4th March, 1874.—I have been horribly plagued and misguided by evangelical people, all my life; and most of all lately; but my mother was one, and my Scotch aunt; and I have yet so much of the superstition left in me, that I can’t help sometimes doing as evangelical people wish,—for all I know it comes to nothing.
One of them, for whom I still have some old liking left, sent me one of their horrible sausage-books the other day, made of chopped-up Bible; but with such a solemn and really pathetic adjuration to read a ‘text’ every morning, that, merely for old acquaintance’ sake, I couldn’t refuse. It is all one to me, now, whether I read my Bible, or my Homer, at one leaf or another; only I take the liberty, pace my evangelical friend, of looking up the contexts if I happen not to know them.
Now I was very much beaten and overtired yesterday, chiefly owing to a week of black fog, spent in looking [87]over the work of days and people long since dead; and my ‘text’ this morning was, “Deal courageously, and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good.” It sounds a very saintly, submissive, and useful piece of advice; but I was not quite sure who gave it; and it was evidently desirable to ascertain that.
For, indeed, it chances to be given, not by a saint at all, but by quite one of the most self-willed people on record in any history,—about the last in the world to let the Lord do that which seemed Him good; if he could help it, unless it seemed just as good to himself also,—Joab the son of Zeruiah. The son, to wit, of David’s elder sister; who, finding that it seemed good to the Lord to advance the son of David’s younger sister to a place of equal power with himself, unhesitatingly smites his thriving young cousin under the fifth rib, while pretending to kiss him, and leaves him wallowing in blood in the midst of the highway. But we have no record of the pious or resigned expressions he made use of on that occasion. We have no record, either, of several other matters one would have liked to know about these people. How it is, for instance, that David has to make a brother of Saul’s son;—getting, as it seems, no brotherly kindness—nor, more wonderful yet, sisterly kindness—at his own fireside. It is like a German story of the seventh son—or the seventh bullet—as far as the brothers are concerned; but these sisters, had they also no love for their brave [88]young shepherd brother? Did they receive no countenance from him when he was king? Even for Zeruiah’s sake, might he not on his death-bed have at least allowed the Lord to do what seemed Him good with Zeruiah’s son, who had so well served him in his battles, (and so quietly in the matter of Bathsheba,) instead of charging the wisdom of Solomon to find some subtle way of preventing his hoar head from going down to the grave in peace? My evangelical friend will of course desire me not to wish to be wise above that which is written. I am not to ask even who Zeruiah’s husband was?—nor whether, in the West-end sense, he was her husband at all?—Well; but if I only want to be wise up to the meaning of what is written? I find, indeed, nothing whatever said of David’s elder sister’s lover;—but, of his younger sister’s lover, I find it written in this evangelical Book-Idol, in one place, that his name was Ithra, an Israelite, and in another that it was Jether, the Ishmaelite. Ithra or Jether, is no matter; Israelite or Ishmaelite, perhaps matters not much; but it matters a great deal that you should know that this is an ill written, and worse trans-written, human history, and not by any means ‘Word of God;’ and that whatever issues of life, divine or human, there may be in it, for you, can only be got by searching it; and not by chopping it up into small bits and swallowing it like pills. What a trouble there is, for instance, just now, in all manner of people’s minds, about Sunday keeping, [89]just because these evangelical people will swallow their bits of texts in an entirely indigestible state, without chewing them. Read your Bibles honestly and utterly, my scrupulous friends, and stand by the consequences,—if you have what true men call ‘faith.’ In the first place, determine clearly, if there is a clear place in your brains to do it, whether you mean to observe the Sabbath as a Jew, or the day of the Resurrection, as a Christian. Do either thoroughly; you can’t do both. If you choose to keep the ‘Sabbath,’ in defiance of your great prophet, St. Paul, keep the new moons too, and the other fasts and feasts of the Jewish law; but even so, remember that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath also, and that not only it is lawful to do good upon it, but unlawful, in the strength of what you call keeping one day Holy, to do Evil on other six days, and make those unholy; and, finally, that neither new-moon keeping, nor Sabbath keeping, nor fasting, nor praying, will in anywise help an evangelical city like Edinburgh to stand in the judgment higher than Gomorrah, while her week-day arrangements for rent from her lower orders are as follows:9—
“We entered the first room by descending two steps. It seemed to be an old coal-cellar, with an earthen floor, shining in many places from damp, and from a greenish [90]ooze which drained through the wall from a noxious collection of garbage outside, upon which a small window could have looked had it not been filled up with brown paper and rags. There was no grate, but a small fire smouldered on the floor, surrounded by heaps of ashes. The roof was unceiled, the walls were rough and broken, the only light came in from the open door, which let in unwholesome smells and sounds. No cow or horse could thrive in such a hole. It was abominable. It measured eleven feet by six feet, and the rent was 10d. per week, paid in advance. It was nearly dark at noon, even with the door open; but as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I saw that the plenishings consisted of an old bed, a barrel with a flagstone on the top of it for a table, a three-legged stool, and an iron pot. A very ragged girl, sorely afflicted with ophthalmia, stood among the ashes doing nothing. She had never been inside a school or church. She did not know how to do anything, but ‘did for her father and brother.’ On a heap of straw, partly covered with sacking, which was the bed in which father, son, and daughter slept, the brother, ill with rheumatism and sore legs, was lying moaning from under a heap of filthy rags. He had been a baker ‘over in the New Town,’ but seemed not very likely to recover. It looked as if the sick man had crept into his dark, damp lair, just to die of hopelessness. The father was past work, but ‘sometimes got an odd job to do.’ The sick man had supported the three. It [91]was hard to be godly, impossible to be cleanly, impossible to be healthy in such circumstances.
“The next room was entered by a low, dark, impeded passage about twelve feet long, too filthy to be traversed without a light. At the extremity of this was a dark winding stair which led up to four superincumbent storeys of crowded subdivided rooms; and beyond this, to the right, a pitch-dark passage with a ‘room’ on either side. It was not possible to believe that the most grinding greed could extort money from human beings for the tenancy of such dens as those to which this passage led. They were lairs into which a starving dog might creep to die, but nothing more. Opening a dilapidated door, we found ourselves in a recess nearly six feet high, and nine feet in length by five in breadth. It was not absolutely dark, yet matches aided our investigations even at noonday. There was an earthen floor full of holes, in some of which water had collected. The walls were black and rotten, and alive with woodlice. There was no grate. The rent paid for this evil den, which was only ventilated by the chimney, is 1s. per week, or £2 12s. annually! The occupier was a mason’s labourer, with a wife and three children. He had come to Edinburgh in search of work, and could not afford a ‘higher rent.’ The wife said that her husband took the ‘wee drap.’ So would the President of the Temperance League himself if he were hidden away in such a hole. The contents of this lair on our first visit were a great heap [92]of ashes and other refuse in one corner, some damp musty straw in another, a broken box in the third, with a battered tin pannikin upon it, and nothing else of any kind, saving two small children, nearly nude, covered with running sores, and pitiable from some eye disease. Their hair was not long, but felted into wisps, and alive with vermin. When we went in they were sitting among the ashes of an extinct fire, and blinked at the light from our matches. Here a neighbour said they sat all day, unless their mother was merciful enough to turn them into the gutter. We were there at eleven the following night, and found the mother, a decent, tidy body, at ‘hame.’ There was a small fire then, but no other light. She complained of little besides the darkness of the house, and said, in a tone of dull discontent, she supposed it was ‘as good as such as they could expect in Edinburgh.’ ” [93]
1 Well said, the Viscount. People think me a grumbler; but I wholly believe this,—nay, know this. The world exists, indeed, only by the strength of its silent virtue. ↑
2 Well said, Viscount, again! So few people know the power of the Third Fors. If I had not chanced to give lessons in drawing to Octavia Hill, I could have done nothing in Marylebone, nor she either, for a while yet, I fancy. ↑
3 A lovely, classic, unbetterable sentence of Marmontel’s, perfect in wisdom and modesty. ↑
4 Not for a dividend upon it, I beg you to observe, and even the capital to be repaid in work. ↑
5 Or, worse still, as our public men do, upon the cost of non-compulsory measures! ↑
6 These small “powers” of terminal letters in some of the words are very curious. ↑
7 A lady high in the ranks of kindly English literature. ↑
9 Notes on Old Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1869. Things may possibly have mended in some respects in the last five years, but they have assuredly, in the country villages, got tenfold worse. ↑
