LETTER LVII.

I have received, from the author, M. Émile de Lavelaye, his pamphlet,—“Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations, with an introductory Letter by Mr. Gladstone.” I do not know why M. de Lavelaye sent me this pamphlet. I thank him for the courtesy; but he has evidently read none of my books, or must have been aware that he could not have written anything more contrary to the positions which I am politically maintaining. On the other hand, I have read none of his books, and I gather from passages in his pamphlet that there may be much in them to which I should be able to express entire adhesion.

But of the pamphlet in question, and its preface, he [248]will, I trust, pardon my speaking in the same frank terms which I should have used had it accidentally come under my notice, instead of by the author’s gift. The pamphlet is especially displeasing to me, because it speaks of ‘Liberty’ under the common assumption of its desirableness; whereas my own teaching has been, and is, that Liberty, whether in the body, soul, or political estate of men, is only another word for Death, and the final issue of Death, putrefaction: the body, spirit, and political estate being alike healthy only by their bonds and laws; and by Liberty being instantly disengaged into mephitic vapour.

But the matter of this pamphlet, no less than the assumption it is based on, is hateful to me; reviving, as it does, the miserable question of the schism between Catholic and Protestant, which is entirely ridiculous and immaterial; and taking no note whatever of the true and eternal schism, cloven by the very sword of Michael, between him that serveth God, and him that serveth Him not.

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(The passage now and henceforward omitted in this place, contained an attack on Mr. Gladstone written under a complete misconception of his character. See, for explanation of it, the beginning of the third letter [249]in the second series of Fors. The blank space is left partly in order not to confuse the Index references, partly in due memorial of rash judgment.)

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The fact being that I am, at this central time of my life’s work, at pause because I cannot set down any form of religious creed so simple, but that the requirement of its faithful signature by persons desiring to become Companions of St. George, would exclude some of the noblest champions of justice and charity now labouring for men; while, on the other hand, I cannot set down the first principles of children’s noble education without finding myself in collision with an almost resistless infidel mob, which is incapable of conceiving—how much less of obeying—the first laws of human decency, order, and honour. So that indeed I am fain to ask, with my Leeds correspondent, in last Fors, page 234, what is to be done for young folks to whom “music has little attraction, except in the form of dance, and pictures are nothing”?

With her pardon, pictures are much to this class of young people. The woodcuts of halfpenny novels representing scenes of fashionable life,—those representing men murdering their wives, in the ‘Police News,’—and, finally, those which are to be bought only in the [250]back-shop,—have enormous educational influence on the young British public: which its clergymen, alike ignorant of human nature and human art, think to counteract—by decorating their own churches, forsooth,—and by coloured prints of the story of Joseph; while the lower tribes of them—Moodys and Sankeys—think to turn modern musical taste to account by fitting negro melodies to hymns.

And yet, my correspondent may be thankful that some remnant of delight is still taken in dance-music. It is the last protest of the human spirit, in the poor fallen creatures, against the reign of the absolute Devil, Pandemonium with Mammon on the throne, instead of Lucifer,—the Son of the Earth, Lord of Hell, instead of the Son of the Morning.

Let her stand in the midst of the main railroad station at Birmingham; and think—what music, or dancing, or other entertainment fit for prodigal sons, could be possible in that pious and little prodigal locality.1 Let her read the account of our modern pastoral music, at page 15 of my fifth letter,—of modern Venetian “Barcarolle,” page 14 of Letter XIX. and 12 of Letter XX.,—and of our modern Campanile, and Muezzin call to prayer, at page 262 of this Fors.

“Work is prayer”—thinks your Wakefield Mahometan;—his vociferous minaret, in the name, and by [251]the name, of the Devil, shall summon English votaries to such worship for five miles round; that is to say, over one hundred square miles of English land, the Pandemoniacal voice of the Archangel-trumpet thus arouses men out of their sleep; and Wakefield becomes Wakeful-field, over that blessed space of acre-age.

Yes; my correspondent may be thankful that still some feeble lust for dancing on the green,—still some dim acknowledgment, by besotted and stupefied brains, of the laws of tune and time known to their fathers and mothers—remains possible to the poor wretches discharged by the excursion trains for a gasp of breath, and a gleam of light, amidst what is left to them, and us, of English earth and heaven. Waltzing, drunk, in the country roads by our villages; yet innocently drunk, and sleepy at sunset; not like their born masters and teachers, dancing, wilfully, the cancan of hell, with harlots, at seven in the morning.2

Music and dancing! They are quite the two primal instruments of education. Make them licentious; let Mr. John Stuart Mill have the dis-ordering of them, so that—(see page 18 of Letter XII.)—“no one shall be guided, or governed, or directed in the way they should go,”—and they sink to lower and lower depth—till the dance becomes Death’s; and the music—a shriek of death by strychnine. But let Miriam and David, and the Virgins of Israel, have the ordering of them, and [252]the music becomes at last the Eternal choir; and the Dance, the Karol-dance of Christmas, evermore.3

Virgins of Israel, or of England, richly clad by your kings, and “rejoicing in the dance,” how is it you do not divide this sacred,—if sacred,—joy of yours with the poor? If it can ever be said of you, as birds of God,

“Oh beauteous birds, methinks ye measure

Your movements to some heavenly tune,”

can you not show wherein the heavenliness of it consists, to—suppose—your Sunday-school classes? At present, you keep the dancing to yourselves, and graciously teach them the catechism. Suppose you were to try, for a little while, learning the catechism yourselves; and teaching them—to dance?

Howbeit, in St. George’s schools, this, the most ‘decorous,’ rightly taught, of all exercises, shall not fail of its due discipline to any class whatsoever:—reading, writing, and accounts may all be spared where pupils show no turn to any of those scholarships, but music and dancing, never.4 Generally, however, it will be the best singers and dancers who ask for teaching also in literature and art; for all, there shall at least [253]be the way open to these; and for none, danger or corruption possible in these. For in their libraries there shall be none but noble books, and in their sight none but noble art.

There is no real difficulty or occasion for dispute in choosing these. Admit the principle of selection, and the practice is easy enough; only, like all practical matters, the work must be done by one man, sufficiently qualified for it; and not by a council. If he err, the error may be represented by any one cognizant of it, and by council corrected. But the main work must be done single-handed.

Thus, for the use of the St. George’s Company, I shall myself, if my life is spared, write out a list of books which without any question will be found serviceable in their libraries;5—a system of art instruction which will be secure so far as it reaches; and a list of purchaseable works of art, which it will be desirable to place in the national schools and museums of the company. With this list of purchaseable works, I shall name, as I have time, those in the museums of Europe which ought to be studied, to the exclusion of those on which time would be wasted.

I have no doubt that this work, though done at first for the St. George’s Company, will be found generally useful, and especially that the system of drawing arranged [254]for them will in many respects supersede that of Kensington. I had intended to write it separately for the use of schools; but after repeated endeavours to arrange it in a popular form, find that it will not so shape itself availably, but must consist of such broad statements of principle as my now enlarged experience enables me to make; with references to the parts of my other books in which they are defended or illustrated: and of directions for practice given as I can get illustrations of them prepared; leaving the systematization of them to be made by the master of each drawing school, according to the requirements of his scholars. (See page 19 of Letter IX.)

For example of the impossibility of publishing on a system. It happens to be now fine weather here in Lancashire;—I am able, therefore, to draw out of doors; and am painting a piece of foreground vegetation, which I don’t want to be used by students till after at least fifty other exercises have been gone through. But I must do this one while light and life serve; and not wait till I am sixty, to do work which my eyes are not good enough for at fifty-five.

And if the readers of Fors think my letters too desultory, let them consider what this chief work, specified in page 20 of Letter IX., involves. No one has the least notion of the quantity of manual labour I have to go through, to discharge my duty as a teacher of Art. Look at the frontispiece to Letter XX., which [255]is photographed from one of my architectural sketches; and if you can draw, copy a bit of it;—try merely the bead moulding with its dentils, in the flat arch over the three small ones, lowest on the left. Then examine those three small ones themselves. You think I have drawn them distorted, carelessly, I suppose. No. That distortion is essential to the Gothic of the Pisan school; and I measured every one of the curves of those cusps on the spot, to the tenth of an inch; and I ought to be engraving and publishing those drawings, by rights; but, meantime, your Pisan Republicans dash the chapel down, for a job in rebuilding it;—and the French Emperor dashes every cathedral in France to pieces, to find his masons work,—and gets for result, Reuter’s telegram, (page 21 of Letter VI.); and I, with my eyes full of dust and driven smoke, am obliged to leave my own work, and write Fors, more and more necessarily becoming principal, as I find all my other work rendered vain.

Nevertheless, in the course of Fors itself, I shall try to give, as aforesaid, art instruction enough for all need, if any one cares to obey it. How little any one is likely to care, the closing paragraphs of the letter from Wakefield show so clearly that I think it desirable to print them here consecutively, as part of the text of Fors itself.

“Yet people tell me that those were very benighted Tory days I am regretting. Wakefield was always held [256]to be a Tory place, given up hand and foot to the magnates who owned the great estate round. I know how when a small thing in frilled slops, but with my bosom full of patriotic pride in our town, I used to feel bitterly depressed at hearing a rising Radical Leeds clothier, who came to see us, sometimes denounce Wakefield as a ‘one-eyed hoil,’ his emphatic way of indicating our want of sweep of vision. I remember he generally capped his arguments by demanding, in sonorous tones, if any men worthy of the name of Britons would put up with that ‘obsolete monopoly’ of the soke mills.

“To tell truth, I am afraid that we felt a good deal of mean-spirited admiration for the neighbouring squires and lords on the occasions when they showed themselves and their handsome carriages in our streets: but at least the Wentworths and Pilkingtons and Squire Waterton were gentlemen and scholars; our new magnates have nothing to boast but their money. It seems to me better that people should boast of the old oaks of Walton, and the old pictures of —— Priory, than tell how many thousands an iron lord made by the last rise in iron: and that is what they talk of now. And if the iron kings have supplanted the landlords, they are not any more free. The old farmers might vote blindly out of blind respect for the old landlords; but is it not better than the newly-enfranchised puddlers and strikers selling votes openly for the price of a [257]gallon of whisky? We have lost a good deal, although we are long rid of the soke monopoly, which used to be a standing reproach to us. I think that the town bought off the soke just after the Corn Law agitation, when the great railways began to enclose the wide meadows about the town with their ugly ramparts and arches, where the trains keep up a continual scream.

“But the wool and corn magnates of the place held to their old traditions long after that; and when Titus Salt asked for a footing in the town that he might build there his great alpaca factories, he was rejected. I had gone abroad then, but my heart was in the old place, and I caught up eagerly all concerning it. Sometimes I heard doleful accounts of its decadence—how the big houses were empty altogether, how the inns were closed, the coaches stopped, the river traffic diminished, and the great corn warehouses by the bridge falling to ruin. There was no trace left of the gaieties that once gave the town the name of ‘Merrie Wakefield.’ All the smart young men were leaving it to push their way in Leeds or Manchester, and the girls left behind were growing up into a population of old maids.

“So the doleful story went on for many a year. But insensibly the key changed. Mills were springing up, and shops; and the houses had gone up in rent. The sleepy streets were thronged with workers; in [258]short, the town seemed new-born altogether. And the ——s,—I knew the ——s,—nobody would have thought it, such a simple kind of man as old —— seemed; yet the tale ran that he could buy up all Wakefield, and young Bill was going to live in —— Hall!! Young Bill in —— Hall! one of the most sacred spots my memory cherished.

“I remembered him well,—an audacious boy, with a gift for wry faces, and always up to some street prank. I remembered the well-worn jacket and battered cap that his father’s thrift imposed on him. And he was to be one of new rulers of the bright new time! and lord it in those venerable oaken chambers sacred to Lady ——‘s ghost! It seemed incredible; but twenty years had changed everything. Old ——, the father—a man of the true old English grain, had, in my young days, a foundry at the lower end of the town, and was said even then to be worth a ‘mint of money.’ Worthy folks were he and his; but still people of whom the loftier town’s-folk took no cognizance socially, for was not the wife’s father old Robin the Pedlar? A good old soul he was, who peddled to frugal farm wives the best thread and needles that could be got,—and took no alms from his kinsfolk, and lived and died in blameless humble honesty. And his grandson now rules in the hall where old Robin, perchance, took a humble bit and sup at the back door. He has a Scotch estate besides, and only failed [259]of Parliament last year because he bribed his way a little too openly. My enlightened friends look upon his rise as one of the grandest signs of the grand new time; but I cannot rejoice with them. When I see how he and his like are doing their worst to foul the air and blacken the fields about the town, I cannot help wishing the squires back in —— Hall.

“Men say, too, that he is a stronger Tory than the bluest of the old squires. He has forgotten old Robin of the bobbins, and rules the people from whom he sprang, with an iron hand, as such often do. Naturally, his success has attracted others, and the town will soon be surrounded with forges. On the once green Calder bank, where I used to see garlands of brown pears ripening in the sweet sunshine, there is a desert of dross and ashes, and twenty black throats vomiting fire and fumes into the summer sky; and under the big sheds you see hundreds of the liberated Britons of these improved days, toiling, half-naked, in sweltering heat and din, from morning to evening. This, however, is ‘the activity and spread of the iron trade,’ which our local paper tells us ‘are the most satisfactory pledge of the future progress and prosperity of our town.’

“I wish that I could believe it; but it vexes me beyond comfort to see the first landscape I knew and loved blighted by the smoke of the forges, and to find one sweet association after another swept away. [260]

“Even Sunday brings no respite to the eye. The forges are fired up shortly after noonday, and many of the long chimneys follow suit. And in the town the noise is so constant, you can scarcely hear the church chimes unless you are close to the tower.

“Did you ever hear Wakefield chimes? We were very proud of them in the old time. They had a round of pleasant sleepy tunes, that never failed us through summer suns and winter frost; and came to be bound up indelibly with the early memories of us children. How I loved to hear them as I bounded, full of morning gladness, across the green Vicar’s Croft to school; or at night when lying an unwilling prisoner in bed, before the warm summer evening was ended. To my childish fancy there was a strange wizardry bound up with that dark church steeple, frosted and crumbling with age, which would break out overhead into mysterious music when I was far afield, but expecting it.

“Years after, when poor and lonely in a great foreign city, I came, one bitter winter’s day, upon an obscure cloister church standing by a frozen river. It was a city without bells, and I had often longed for the familiar sound. I was dreadfully homesick that day, and stood upon the bridge, hapless, and listless; looking at the strange spire, the strange houses and frozen-up boats, in a kind of dream. Suddenly the cloister tower struck the hour,—four o’clock of a dark December day, and presently it broke into a chime. [261]

“It was a very simple ditty; but what a passion of longing it wakened for England and the old chimes of that little English town! I felt as if my heart could bear no more. I must go home; I must see the old places again, cost what it might. But morning brought fresh counsels, and many a year passed before I revisited the old place.

“At last I was there again, after many disappointments, and laid my head to rest once more beneath the shadow of the old steeple.

“I woke with an expectant heart. It was a bright May day, such as I remembered twenty years before. The big church bell tolled nine: then came a pause, and my thirsty ears were strained to catch the first sounds of the dear old chimes. ‘Ding’ went a treble bell high in the air, the first note of ‘Tara’s Halls,’ and then!—a hideous sound I cannot describe, a prolonged malignant yell, broke from the sky and seemed to fill the earth. I stopped my ears and ran indoors, but the sound followed to the innermost chambers. It gathered strength and malignancy every moment, and seemed to blast all within its reach. It lasted near two minutes, and ended with a kind of spasm and howl that made every nerve shudder. I do not exaggerate. I cannot adequately describe the hideous sound. When I had recovered my wits, I asked the meaning of this horrible noise. My informant, a rising young townsman of the new stamp, told me that it was the new steam-whistle [262]at the foundry, commonly called the ‘American Devil;’ that it was the most powerful in the West Riding, and could be heard five miles off.

“It was only at half-power then, calling the workmen from breakfast; but at six in the morning I could hear it in double force. I asked if it was possible that people would quietly put up with such a hideous disturbance. He owned that the old inhabitants did not like it; but then, he said, they were a sleepy set, and wanted stirring up.

“Indeed, I actually found that the town was infected by four other similar whistles, profaning dawn and eve with their heaven-defying screech.

“The nuisance has been abolished since, I hear. They say it actually killed one old lady by starting her up just at the only moment when it was possible for her weary nerves to get sleep. She happened to have a relation in the town council: a stir was made about it, and the whistles were suppressed.

“But the peaceful, half town, half rural life of Wakefield is gone for ever, I fear.

“Silk-mills and dye-works are encroaching on the corn-fields and pastures; rows of jerry-built cottages are creeping up Pinder’s Fields, where I used to pull orchises; greasy mill-girls elbow ladies in the Westgate, and laugh and jeer at passing young men in a way that would have horrified the old inhabitants. And everywhere there is an indescribable smokiness and dirtiness more demoralizing than any tongue can tell, or mind conceive. [263]

“Well, it is the ‘march of the times.’ It will go on, I suppose, as in other quiet pleasant English towns, until all the sweet Calder valley is swallowed up in the smoke of Tophet. They will cut the snowdrop wood down, and cover Heath Common with cheap villas, and make the old hall into an ‘institution.’ You know how it will be. A river black with filth and stagnant with foulness, a wilderness of toiling suburbs such as you saw at Bradford; and where the cowslips and the corn grew, the earth will be thick with ‘institutions.’ There will be a Blind Institution, and an Eye and Ear Institution, an Orthopædic Institution, and a Magdalen Institution, and Mechanics’ Institutions; and we shall hear a great deal of the liberality and beneficence of the cotton and iron kings of the place. But will all this compensate one little child for robbing it of its God-given birthright of earth and sky?

“I cannot believe it.

“Poor little martyrs! There will be no ‘swallow twittering from the straw-built shed’ for them,—only the American Devil calling father to his hot, hard day’s labour. What can they make of it all? What kind of outlook will they have in coming years from the bridge of my early recollections? What I saw on the Medlock yesterday—such a hideous sight!—yet my husband remembers catching fish there. The gases would kill a fish like a lightning-stroke, now.

“And the poor children! It makes me so sad, having [264]some of my own, to think of those who will be born there, with hearts as hungry for nature and truth as mine was; who will never see God’s heaven, save through grimy panes and smoke; who will have no sweet cowslip-fields to walk in,—only the defiled pavement; who will grow hard and sour before childhood is over, with the riddle of their joyless lives.

“How I have drifted on.

“Your allusion to Wakefield Bridge in the Fors of February (?) unloosed a flood of long-buried recollections.

“This is what you draw on yourself by opening your heart to others. Pray forgive the trespass on your time.

“Yours gratefully,

“E. L.” [265]