LETTER LVI.

I believe my readers will scarcely thank me for printing, this month, instead of the continuation of the letter from Wakefield, a theological essay by Mr. Lyttel. But it is my first business, in Fors, to be just,—and only my second or third to be entertaining; so that any person who conceives himself to have been misrepresented must always have my types at his command. On the other side, I must point out, before entering further into controversy of any kind, the constant habit in my antagonists of misrepresenting me. For instance; in an article forwarded to me from a local paper, urging what it can in defence of the arrangements noticed by me as offensive, at Kirby Lonsdale and Clapham, I find this sentence:

“The squire’s house does not escape, though one can see no reason for the remark unless it be that Mr. Ruskin dislikes lords, squires, and clergymen.”

Now I have good reason for supposing this article [218]to have been written by a gentleman;—and even an amiable gentleman,—who, feeling himself hurt, and not at all wishing to hurt anybody, very naturally cries out: and thinks it monstrous in me to hurt him; or his own pet lord, or squire. But he never thinks what wrong there may be in printing his own momentary impression of the character of a man who has been thirty years before the public, without taking the smallest pains to ascertain whether his notion be true or false.

It happens, by Fors’ appointment, that the piece of my early life which I have already written for this month’s letter, sufficiently answers the imputation of my dislike to lords and squires. But I will preface it, in order to illustrate my dislike of clergymen, by a later bit of biography; which, at the rate of my present progress in giving account of myself, I should otherwise, as nearly as I can calculate, reach only about the year 1975.

Last summer, in Rome, I lodged at the Hotel de Russie; and, in the archway of the courtyard of that mansion, waited usually, in the mornings, a Capuchin friar, begging for his monastery.

Now, though I greatly object to any clergyman’s coming and taking me by the throat, and saying ‘Pay me that thou owest,’ I never pass a begging friar without giving him sixpence, or the equivalent fivepence of foreign coin;—extending the charity even occasionally as far as tenpence, if no fivepenny-bit chance to be in my purse. And this particular begging friar having a [219]gentle face, and a long white beard, and a beautiful cloak, like a blanket; and being altogether the pleasantest sight, next to Sandro Botticelli’s Zipporah, I was like to see in Rome in the course of the day, I always gave him the extra fivepence for looking so nice; which generosity so worked on his mind,—(the more usual English religious sentiment in Rome expending itself rather in buying poetical pictures of monks than in filling their bellies),—that, after some six or seven doles of tenpences, he must needs take my hand one day, and try to kiss it. Which being only just able to prevent, I took him round the neck and kissed his lips instead: and this, it seems, was more to him than the tenpences, for, next day, he brought me a little reliquary, with a certificated fibre in it of St. Francis’ cloak, (the hair one, now preserved at Assisi); and when afterwards I showed my friend Fra Antonio, the Assisi sacristan, what I had got, it was a pleasure to see him open his eyes, wider than Monsieur the Syndic at Hansli’s fifty thousand crowns. He thought I must have come by it dishonestly; but not I, a whit,—for I most carefully explained to the Capuchin, when he brought it me, that I was more a Turk than a Catholic;—but he said I might keep the reliquary, for all that.

Contenting myself, for the moment, with this illustration of my present dislike of clergymen, I return to earlier days. [220]

But for the reader’s better understanding of such further progress of my poor little life as I may trespass on his patience in describing, it is now needful that I give some account of my father’s mercantile position in London.

The firm of which he was head partner may be yet remembered by some of the older city houses, as carrying on their business in a small counting-house on the first floor of narrow premises, in as narrow a thoroughfare of East London,—Billiter Street, the principal traverse from Leadenhall Street into Fenchurch Street.

The names of the three partners were given in full on their brass plate under the counting-house bell,—Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq.

Mr. Domecq’s name should have been the first, by rights, for my father and Mr. Telford were only his agents. He was the sole proprietor of the estate which was the main capital of the firm,—the vineyard of Macharnudo, the most precious hillside, for growth of white wine, in the Spanish peninsula. The quality of the Macharnudo vintage essentially fixed the standard of Xeres ‘sack’ or ‘dry’—secco—sherris, or sherry, from the days of Henry the Fifth to our own;—the unalterable and unrivalled chalk-marl of it putting a strength into the grape which age can only enrich and darken,—never impair.

Mr. Peter Domecq was, I believe, Spanish born; and partly French, partly English bred: a man of strictest [221]honour, and kindly disposition; how descended, I do not know; how he became possessor of his vineyard, I do not know; what position he held, when young, in the firm of Gordon, Murphy, and Company, I do not know; but in their house he watched their head-clerk, my father, during his nine years of duty, and when the house broke up, asked him to be his own agent in England. My father saw that he could fully trust Mr. Domecq’s honour, and feeling;—but not so fully either his sense, or his industry: and insisted, though taking only his agent’s commission, on being both nominally, and practically, the head-partner of the firm.

Mr. Domecq lived chiefly in Paris; rarely visiting his Spanish estate, but having perfect knowledge of the proper processes of its cultivation, and authority over its labourers almost like a chief’s over his clan. He kept the wines at the highest possible standard; and allowed my father to manage all matters concerning their sale, as he thought best. The second partner, Mr. Henry Telford, brought into the business what capital was necessary for its London branch. The premises in Billiter Street belonged to him; and he had a pleasant country house at Widmore, near Bromley; a quite far-away Kentish village in those days.

He was a perfect type of an English country gentleman of moderate fortune;—unmarried, living with three unmarried sisters—who, in the refinement of their highly [222]educated, unpretending, benevolent, and felicitous lives, remain in my memory more like the figures in a beautiful story than realities. Neither in story, nor in reality, have I ever again heard of, or seen, anything like Mr. Henry Telford;—so gentle, so humble, so affectionate, so clear in common sense, so fond of horses,—and so entirely incapable of doing, thinking, or saying, anything that had the slightest taint in it of the racecourse or the stable.

Yet I believe he never missed any great race; passed the greater part of his life on horseback; and hunted during the whole Leicestershire season;—but never made a bet, never had a serious fall, and never hurt a horse. Between him and my father there was absolute confidence, and the utmost friendship that could exist without community of pursuit. My father was greatly proud of Mr. Telford’s standing among the country gentlemen; and Mr. Telford was affectionately respectful to my father’s steady industry and infallible commercial instinct. Mr. Telford’s actual part in the conduct of the business was limited to attendance in the counting-house during two months at Midsummer, when my father took his holiday, and sometimes for a month at the beginning of the year, when he travelled for orders. At these times Mr. Telford rode into London daily from Widmore, signed what letters and bills needed signature, read the papers, and rode home again: any matters needing deliberation were referred to my father, [223]or awaited his return. All the family at Widmore would have been limitlessly kind to my mother and me, if they had been permitted any opportunity; but my mother always felt, in cultivated society,—and was too proud to feel with patience,—the defects of her own early education, and therefore (which was the true and fatal sign of such defect) never familiarly visited any one whom she did not feel to be, in some sort, her inferior.

Nevertheless, Mr. Telford had a singularly important influence in my education. By, I believe, his sister’s advice, he gave me, as soon as it was published, the illustrated edition of Rogers’ ‘Italy.’ This book was the first means I had of looking carefully at Turner’s work: and I might, not without some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the entire direction of my life’s energies. But it is the great error of thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which gave the accident importance. The essential point to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could understand Turner’s work when I saw it; not by what chance or in what year it was first seen.

Poor Mr. Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma primarily responsible for my Turner insanities.

In a more direct, though less intended way, his help to me was important. For, before my father thought it right to hire a carriage for the above mentioned [224]Midsummer holiday, Mr. Telford always lent us his own travelling chariot.

Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious of travelling carriages, for two persons, or even for two persons and so much of third personage as I possessed at three years old. The one in question was hung high, so that we could see well over stone dykes and average hedges out of it; such elevation being attained by the old-fashioned folding-steps, with a lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of the door,—steps which it was one of my chief travelling delights to see the hostlers fold up and down; though my delight was painfully alloyed by envious ambition to be allowed to do it myself:—but I never was,—lest I should pinch my fingers.

The ‘dickey,’—(to think that I should never till this moment have asked myself the derivation of that word, and now be unable to get at it!)—being, typically, that commanding seat in her Majesty’s mail, occupied by the Guard; and classical, even in modern literature, as the scene of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s arrangements with Sam,—was thrown far back in Mr. Telford’s chariot, so as to give perfectly comfortable room for the legs (if one chose to travel outside on fine days), and to afford beneath it spacious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward miscellaneous luggage. Over which—with all the rest of forward and superficial luggage—my nurse Anne presided, both as guard and [225]packer; unrivalled, she, in the flatness and precision of her in-laying of dresses, as in turning of pancakes; the fine precision, observe, meaning also the easy wit and invention of her art; for, no more in packing a trunk than commanding a campaign, is precision possible without foresight.

Posting, in those days, being universal, so that at the leading inns in every country town, the cry “Horses out!” down the yard, as one drove up, was answered, often instantly, always within five minutes, by the merry trot through the archway of the booted and bright-jacketed rider, with his caparisoned pair,—there was no driver’s seat in front: and the four large, admirably fitting and sliding windows, admitting no drop of rain when they were up, and never sticking as they were let down, formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw the country round, to the full half of the horizon. My own prospect was more extended still, for my seat was the little box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it; set upright in front (and well forward), between my father and mother. I was thus not the least in their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. When no object of particular interest presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with the postboy—on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my father’s legs for horses; at first theoretically only, with dexterous motion of wrist; but ultimately in a quite practical and [226]efficient manner, my father having presented me with a silver-mounted postillion’s whip.

The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the fifteenth of May, or thereabouts;—my father’s birthday was the tenth; on that day I was always allowed to gather the gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the Herne Hill garden; so that we could not leave before that festa. The holiday itself consisted in a tour for orders through half the English counties; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my aunt in Scotland.

The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always early enough in the morning to arrive comfortably to four-o’clock dinner. Generally, therefore, getting off at six o’clock, a stage or two were done before breakfast, with the dew on the grass, and first scent from the hawthorns: if in the course of the midday drive there were any gentleman’s house to be seen,—or, better still, a lord’s—or, best of all, a duke’s,—my father baited the horses, and took my mother and me reverently through the state rooms; always speaking a little under our breath to the housekeeper, major domo, or other authority in charge; and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary illustrations of the history and domestic ways of the family might fall from their lips. [227]My father had a quite infallible natural judgment in painting; and though it had never been cultivated so as to enable him to understand the Italian schools, his sense of the power of the nobler masters in northern work was as true and passionate as the most accomplished artist’s. He never, when I was old enough to care for what he himself delighted in, allowed me to look for an instant at a bad picture; and if there were a Reynolds, Velasquez, Vandyck, or Rembrandt in the rooms, he would pay the surliest housekeepers into patience until we had seen it to heart’s content; if none of these, I was allowed to look at Guido, Carlo Dolce—or the more skilful masters of the Dutch school—Cuyp, Teniers, Hobbema, Wouwermans; but never at any second-rate or doubtful examples.

I wonder how many of the lower middle class are now capable of going through a nobleman’s house, with judgment of this kind; and yet with entirely unenvious and reverent delight in the splendour of the abode of the supreme and beneficent being who allows them thus to enter his paradise?

If there were no nobleman’s house to be seen, there was certainly, in the course of the day’s journey, some ruined castle or abbey; some celebrated village church, or stately cathedral. We had always unstinted time for these; and if I was at disadvantage because neither my father nor mother could tell me enough history to make the buildings authoritatively interesting, I had at [228]least leisure and liberty to animate them with romance in my own fashion.

I am speaking, however, now, of matters relating to a more advanced age than that to which I have yet brought myself:—age in which all these sights were only a pleasant amazement to me, and panoramic apocalypse of a lovely world.

Up to that age, at least, I cannot but hope that my readers will agree with me in thinking the tenour of my life happy, and the modes of my education, on the whole, salutary.

Admitting them to have been so, I would now question farther; and, I imagine, such question cannot but occur to my readers’ minds, also,—how far education, and felicities, of the same kind, may be attainable for young people in general.

Let us consider, then, how many conditions must meet; and how much labour must have been gone through, both by servile and noble persons, before this little jaunty figure, seated on its box of clothes, can trot through its peaceful day of mental development.

I. A certain number of labourers in Spain, living on dry bread and onions, must have pruned and trodden grapes;—cask-makers, cellarmen, and other functionaries attending on them.

II. Rough sailors must have brought the wine into the London Docks.

III. My father and his clerks must have done a great [229]deal of arithmetical and epistolary work, before my father could have profit enough from the wine to pay for our horses, and our dinner.

IV. The tailor must have given his life to the dull business of making clothes—the wheelwright and carriage-maker to their woodwork—the smith to his buckles and springs—the postillion to his riding—the horse-breeder and breaker to the cattle in his field and stable,—before I could make progress in this pleasant manner, even for a single stage.

V. Sundry English Kings and Barons must have passed their lives in military exercises, and gone to their deaths in military practices, to provide me with my forenoons’ entertainments in ruined castles; or founded the great families whose servants were to be my hosts.

VI. Vandyck and Velasquez, and many a painter before them, must have spent their lives in learning and practising their laborious businesses.

VII. Various monks and abbots must have passed their lives in pain, with fasting and prayer; and a large company of stonemasons occupied themselves in their continual service, in order to provide me, in defect of castles and noblemen’s seats, with amusement in the way of abbeys and cathedrals.

How far, then, it remains to be asked, supposing my education in any wise exemplary, can all these advantages be supplied by the modern school board, to every little boy born in the prosperous England of this [230]day? And much more in that glorious England of the future; in which there will be no abbeys, (all having been shaken down, as my own sweet Furness is fast being, by the luggage trains); no castles, except such as may have been spared to be turned into gaols, like that of “time-honoured Lancaster,” also in my own neighbourhood; no parks, because Lord Derby’s patent steam agriculture will have cut down all the trees; no lords, nor dukes, because modern civilization won’t be Lorded over, nor Led anywhere; no gentlemen’s seats, except in the Kirby Lonsdale style; and no roads anywhere, except trams and rails?

Before, however, entering into debate as to the methods of education to be adopted in these coming times, let me examine a little, in next letter, with help from my readers of aristocratic tendencies, what the real product of this olden method of education was intended to be; and whether it was worth the cost.

For the impression on the aristocratic mind of the day was always (especially supposing I had been a squire’s or a lord’s son, instead of a merchant’s) that such little jaunty figure, trotting in its easy chariot, was, as it were, a living diamond, without which the watch of the world could not possibly go; or even, that the diminutive darling was a kind of Almighty Providence in its first breeches, by whose tiny hands and infant fiat the blessings of food and [231]raiment were continually provided for God’s Spanish labourers in His literal vineyard; for God’s English sailors, seeing His wonders in the deep; for God’s tailors’ men, sitting in attitude of Chinese Josh for ever; for the divinely appointed wheelwrights, carpenters, horses and riders, hostlers and Gaius-mine-hosts, necessary to my triumphal progress; and for my nurse behind in the dickey. And it never once entered the head of any aristocratic person,—nor would ever have entered mine, I suppose, unless I had “the most analytical mind in Europe,”—that in verity it was not I who fed my nurse, but my nurse me; and that a great part of the world had been literally put behind me as a dickey,—and all the aforesaid inhabitants of it, somehow, appointed to be nothing but my nurses; the beautiful product intended, by papa and mamma, being—a Bishop, who should graciously overlook these tribes of inferior beings, and instruct their ignorance in the way of their souls’ salvation.

As the master of the St. George’s Company, I request their permission to convey their thanks to Mr. Plimsoll, for his Christian, knightly, and valiant stand, made against the recreant English Commons, on Thursday, 22nd July, 1875. [233]