LETTER XLI.

Paris, 1st April, 1874.

I find there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is possible still to see blue sky in London in the early morning. It was entirely pure as I drove down past my old Denmark Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street Station, on Monday morning last; gate, closed now on me for evermore, that used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from work in Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, and the roses of the spring, prime or late—what are they to me?

But I want to know, rather, what are they to you? What have you, workers in England, to do with April, or May, or June either; your mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, do they? and you can’t get more smoke up the chimneys because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you so much as know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the heathen souls, so despised of you [102]Christians? Nevertheless, I have a word or two to say to you in the light of the hawthorn blossom, only you must read some rougher ones first. I have printed the June Fors together with this, because I want you to read the June one first, only the substance of it is not good for the May-time; but read it, and when you get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions between the sins of the hot heart and the cold, come back to this, for I want you to think in the flush of May what strength is in the flush of the heart also. You will find that in all my late books (during the last ten years) I have summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of gentleness and justice; gentleness being the virtue which distinguishes gentlemen from churls, and justice that which distinguishes honest men from rogues. Now gentleness may be defined as the Habit or State of Love; the Red Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter Seventh); and ungentleness or clownishness, the opposite State or Habit of Lust.

Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men: the love of what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely in things, and what is lovely in report. And these three loves have each their relative corruption, a lust—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished from a churl by the purity of sentiment he can reach in all these three passions: by his imaginative love, as [103]opposed to lust; his imaginative possession of wealth as opposed to avarice; his imaginative desire of honour as opposed to pride.

And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or labourer for whom I write to understand what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share them, if he will; but the crisis and horror of this present time are that its desire of money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly attainable by common persons, are gradually making churls of all men; and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even the conception of them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl mind; so that, to take only so poor an instance of them as my own life—because I have passed it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have laboured always for the honour of others, not my own, and have chosen rather to make men look to Turner and Luini, than to form or exhibit the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil; therefore the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for a [104]bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the “effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin.”

Now of these despised sentiments, which in all ages have distinguished the gentleman from the churl, the first is that reverence for womanhood which, even through all the cruelties of the Middle Ages, developed itself with increasing power until the thirteenth century, and became consummated in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the highest arts and purest thoughts of that age.

To the common Protestant mind the dignities ascribed to the Madonna have been always a violent offence; they are one of the parts of the Catholic faith which are openest to reasonable dispute, and least comprehensible by the average realistic and materialist temper of the Reformation. But after the most careful examination, neither as adversary nor as friend, of the influences of Catholicism for good and evil, I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of its noblest and most vital graces, and has never been otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. I do not enter into any question as to the truth or fallacy of the idea; I no more wish to defend the historical or theological position of the Madonna than that of St. Michael or St. Christopher; but I am certain that to the habit of reverent belief in, and contemplation of, the character ascribed to the heavenly hierarchies, we must ascribe the highest results yet achieved in human nature, [105]and that it is neither Madonna-worship nor saint-worship, but the evangelical self-worship and hell-worship—gloating, with an imagination as unfounded as it is foul, over the torments of the damned, instead of the glories of the blest,—which have in reality degraded the languid powers of Christianity to their present state of shame and reproach. There has probably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the length and breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity, in which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives of women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of the poor Israelite maiden, “He that is mighty hath magnified me, and Holy is His name.” What we are about to substitute for such magnifying in our modern wisdom, let the reader judge from two slight things that chanced to be noticed by me in my walk round Paris. I generally go first to Our Lady’s Church, for though the towers and most part of the walls are now merely the modern model of the original building, much of the portal sculpture is still genuine, and especially the greater part of the lower arcades of the north-west door, where the common entrance is. I always held these such valuable pieces of the thirteenth century work that I had them cast, in mass, some years ago, brought away casts, eight feet high by twelve wide, and gave them to the [106]Architectural Museum. So as I was examining these, and laboriously gleaning what was left of the old work among M. Violet le Duc’s fine fresh heads of animals and points of leaves, I saw a brass plate in the back of one of the niches, where the improperly magnified saints used to be. At first I thought it was over one of the usual almsboxes which have a right to be at church entrances (if anywhere); but catching sight of an English word or two on it, I stopped to read, and read to the following effect:—

“F. du Larin,
office
of the
Victoria Pleasure Trips
And Excursions to Versailles.
Excursions to the Battle-fields round Paris.

“A four-horse coach with an English guide starts daily from Notre Dame Cathedral, at 10½ a.m. for Versailles, by the Bois de Boulogne, St. Cloud, Montretout, and Ville d’Avray. Back in Paris at 5½ p.m. Fares must be secured one day in advance at the entrance of Notre Dame.

The Manager, H. du Larin.”

“Magnificat anima mea Dominum, quia respexit humilitatem ancillæ Suæ.” Truly it seems to be time that God should again regard the lowliness of His handmaiden, now that she has become keeper of the coach [107]office for excursions to Versailles. The arrangement becomes still more perfect in the objects of this Christian joyful pilgrimage (from Canterbury, as it were, instead of to it), the “Battle-fields round Paris!”

From Notre Dame I walked back into the livelier parts of the city, though in no very lively mood; but recovered some tranquillity in the Marché aux fleurs, which is a pleasant spectacle in April, and then made some circuit of the Boulevards, where, as the third Fors would have it, I suddenly came in view of one of the temples of the modern superstition, which is to replace Mariolatry. For it seems that human creatures must imagine something or someone in Apotheosis, and the Assumption of the Virgin, and Titian’s or Tintoret’s views on that matter being held reasonable no more, apotheosis of some other power follows as a matter of course. Here accordingly is one of the modern hymns on the Advent of Spring, which replace now in France the sweet Cathedral services of the Mois de Marie. It was printed in vast letters on a white sheet, dependent at the side of the porch or main entrance to the fur shop of the “Compagnie Anglo-Russe.”

“Le printemps s’annonce avec son gracieux cortège de rayons et de fleurs. Adieu, l’hiver! C’en est bien fini! Et cependant il faut que toutes ces fourrures soient enlevées, vendues, données, dans ces 6 jours. C’est une aubaine inesperée, un placement fabuleux; car, qu’on ne l’oublie pas, la fourrure vraie, la belle, la riche, a toujours [108]sa valeur intrinsique. Et, comme couronnement de cette sorte d’Apothéose la Cie. Anglo-Russe remet gratis à tout acheteur un talisman merveilleux pour conserver la fourrure pendant 10 saisons.”

“Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.”

The Anglo-Russian company having now superseded Divine labour in such matters, you have also, instead of the grand old Dragon-Devil with his “Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil,” only a little weasel of a devil with an ermine tip to his tail, advising you, “Ye shall be as Gods, buying your skins cheap.”

I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Genesis? My good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book of Genesis as the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you know the flaws, and never have known the book, nor can know it. And it is at present much the worse for you; for indeed the stories of this book of Genesis have been the nursery tales of men mightiest whom the world has yet seen in art, and policy, and virtue, and none of you will write better stories for your children, yet awhile. And your little Cains will learn quickly enough to ask if they are their brother’s keepers, and your little Fathers of Canaan merrily enough to show their own father’s nakedness without dread either of banishment or malediction; but many a day will pass, and their evil [109]generations vanish with it, in that sudden nothingness of the wicked, “He passed away, and lo, he was not,” before one will again rise, of whose death there may remain the Divine tradition, “He walked with God, and was not, for God took him.” Apotheosis! How the dim hope of it haunts even the last degradation of men; and through the six thousand years from Enoch, and the vague Greek ages which dreamed of their twin-hero stars, declines, in this final stage of civilization, into dependence on the sweet promise of the Anglo-Russian tempter, with his ermine tail, “Ye shall be as Gods, and buy cat-skin cheap.”

So it must be. I know it, my good wiseacres. You can have no more Queens of Heaven, nor assumptions of triumphing saints. Even your simple country Queen of May, whom once you worshipped for a goddess—has not little Mr. Faraday analysed her, and proved her to consist of charcoal and water, combined under what the Duke of Argyll calls the “reign of law”? Your once fortune-guiding stars, which used to twinkle in a mysterious manner, and to make you wonder what they were,—everybody knows what they are now: only hydrogen gas, and they stink as they twinkle. My wiseacre acquaintances, it is very fine, doubtless, for you to know all these things, who have plenty of money in your pockets, and nothing particular to burden your chemical minds; but for the poor, who have nothing in their pockets, and the wretched, who have much on their [110]hearts, what in the world is the good of knowing that the only heaven they have to go to is a large gasometer?

“Poor and wretched!” you answer. “But when once everybody is convinced that heaven is a large gasometer, and when we have turned all the world into a small gasometer, and can drive round it by steam, and in forty minutes be back again where we were,—nobody will be poor or wretched any more. Sixty pounds on the square inch,—can anybody be wretched under that general application of high pressure?”

(Assisi, 15th April.)

Good wiseacres, yes; it seems to me, at least, more than probable: but if not, and you all find yourselves rich and merry, with steam legs and steel hearts, I am well assured there will be found yet room, where your telescopes have not reached, nor can,—grind you their lenses ever so finely,—room for the quiet souls, who choose for their part, poverty, with light and peace.

I am writing at a narrow window, which looks out on some broken tiles and a dead wall. A wall dead in the profoundest sense, you wiseacres would think it. Six hundred years old, and as strong as when it was built, and paying nobody any interest, and still less commission, on the cost of repair. Both sides of the street, or pathway rather,—it is not nine feet wide,—are similarly built with solid blocks of grey marble, arched rudely above [111]the windows, with here and there a cross on the keystones.

If I chose to rise from my work and walk a hundred yards down this street (if one may so call the narrow path between grey walls, as quiet and lonely as a sheep-walk on Shap Fells,) I should come to a small prison-like door; and over the door is a tablet of white marble let into the grey, and on the tablet is written, in contracted Latin, what in English signifies:—

“Here, Bernard the Happy1

Received St. Francis of Assisi,

And saw him, in ecstacy.”

Good wiseacres, you believe nothing of the sort, do you? Nobody ever yet was in ecstacy, you think, till now, when they may buy cat-skin cheap?

Do you believe in Blackfriars Bridge, then; and admit that some day or other there must have been reason to call it “Black Friar’s”? As surely as the bridge stands over Thames, and St. Paul’s above it, these two men, Paul and Francis, had their ecstacies, in bygone days, concerning other matters than ermine tails; and still the same ecstacies, or effeminate sentiments, are possible to human creatures, believe it or not as you will. I am [112]not now, whatever the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ may think, an ecstatic person myself. But thirty years ago I knew once or twice what joy meant, and have not forgotten the feeling; nay, even so little a while as two years ago, I had it back again—for a day. And I can assure you, good wiseacres, there is such a thing to be had; but not in cheap shops, nor, I was going to say, for money; yet in a certain sense it is buyable—by forsaking all that a man hath. Buyable—literally enough—the freehold Elysian field at that price, but not a doit cheaper; and I believe, at this moment, the reason my voice has an uncertain sound, the reason that this design of mine stays unhelped, and that only a little group of men and women, moved chiefly by personal regard, stand with me in a course so plain and true, is that I have not yet given myself to it wholly, but have halted between good and evil, and sit still at the receipt of custom, and am always looking back from the plough.

It is not wholly my fault this. There seem to me good reasons why I should go on with my work in Oxford; good reasons why I should have a house of my own with pictures and library; good reasons why I should still take interest from the bank; good reasons why I should make myself as comfortable as I can, wherever I go; travel with two servants, and have a dish of game at dinner. It is true, indeed, that I have given the half of my goods and more to the poor; it is true also that the work in Oxford is not a matter [113]of pride, but of duty with me; it is true that I think it wiser to live what seems to other people a rational and pleasant, not an enthusiastic, life; and that I serve my servants at least as much as they serve me. But, all this being so, I find there is yet something wrong; I have no peace, still less ecstacy. It seems to me as if one had indeed to wear camel’s hair instead of dress coats before one can get that; and I was looking at St. Francis’s camel’s-hair coat yesterday (they have it still in the sacristy), and I don’t like the look of it at all; the Anglo-Russian Company’s wear is ever so much nicer,—let the devil at least have this due.

And he must have a little more due even than this. It is not at all clear to me how far the Beggar and Pauper Saint, whose marriage with the Lady Poverty I have come here to paint from Giotto’s dream of it,—how far, I say, the mighty work he did in the world was owing to his vow of poverty, or diminished by it. If he had been content to preach love alone, whether among poor or rich, and if he had understood that love, for all God’s creatures, was one and the same blessing; and that, if he was right to take the doves out of the fowler’s hand, that they might build their nests, he was himself wrong when he went out in the winter’s night on the hills, and made for himself dolls of snow, and said, “Francis, these—behold—these are thy wife and thy children.” If instead of quitting his father’s trade, that he might nurse lepers, he had made [114]his father’s trade holy and pure, and honourable more than beggary, perhaps at this day the Black Friars might yet have had an unruined house by Thames shore, and the children of his native village not be standing in the porches of the temple built over his tomb, to ask alms of the infidel. [115]

1 “Bernard the happy.” The Beato of Mont Oliveto; not Bernard of Clairvaux. The entire inscription is, “received St. Francis of Assisi to supper and bed”; but it I had written it so, it would have appeared that St. Francis’s ecstacy was in consequence of his getting his supper. ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.