NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
In an interesting letter “for self and mates” a Manchester working man asks me the meaning of “Fors Clavigera” (surely enough explained in II. 4?) and whether I mean by vulgarity “commonness,” and why I say that doing anything in a hurry is vulgar. I do not mean by vulgarity, commonness. A daisy is common; and a baby, not uncommon. Neither are vulgar. Has my correspondent really no perception of the difference between good breeding and vulgarity?—if he will tell me this, I will try to answer him more distinctly: meantime, if in the Salford Library there is a copy of my ‘Modern Painters,’ let him look at Vol. V., Part IX., Chap. VII.
He says also that he and his mates must do many things in a hurry.
I know it. But do they suppose such compulsion is a law of Heaven? or that, if not, it is likely to last?
I was greatly pleased by Mr. Affleck’s letter, and would have told him so; only he gave me his address in Gordon Street, without telling me of what town. His post-mark was Galashiels, which I tried, and Edinburgh; but only with embarrassment to Her Majesty’s service.
Another communication, very naïve and honest, came from a Republican of literary tastes, who wished to assist me in the development of my plans in ‘Fors;’ and, in the course of resulting correspondence, expressed his willingness to answer any questions I might wish to put to him. I answered that I imagined myself, as far as I thought needful for me, acquainted with his opinions; but that perhaps he might wish to know something more definite about mine, and that if he liked to put any questions to me, I would do my best to reply intelligibly. Whereupon, apparently much pleased, he sent me the following eleven interrogations, to each of which I have accordingly given solution, to the best of my ability.
1. “Can the world—its oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, continents, islands, or portions thereof, be rightfully treated by human legislators as the ‘private property’ of individuals?”
Ans. Certainly. Else would man be more wretched than the beasts, who at least have dens of their own.
2. “Should cost be the limit of price?”
Ans. It never was, and never can be. So we need not ask whether it should be.
3. “Can one man rightfully tax another man?”
Ans. By all means. Indeed, I have seldom heard of anybody who would tax himself.
4. “Can a million men rightfully tax other men?”
Ans. Certainly, when the other men are not strong enough to tax the million.
5. “Should not each adult inhabitant of a country (who performs service equivalent in value to his or her use of the service of other inhabitants) have electoral rights granted equal to those granted to any other inhabitant?”
Ans. Heaven forbid! It is not everybody one would set to choose a horse, or a pig. How much less a member of Parliament?
6. “Is it not an injustice for a State to require or try to enforce, allegiance to the State from self-supporting adults, who have never been permitted to share in the framing or endorsing of the laws they are expected to obey?”
Ans. Certainly not. Laws are usually most beneficial in operation on the people who would have most strongly objected to their enactment.
7. “The Parliament of this country is now almost exclusively composed of representatives of the classes whose time is mostly occupied in consuming and destroying. Is this statement true? If true—is it right that it should be so?”
Ans. The statement is untrue. A railway navvy consumes, usually, about six times as much as an average member of Parliament; and I know nothing which members of Parliament kill, except time, which other people would not kill, if they were allowed to. It is the Parliamentary tendency to preservation, rather than to destruction, which I have mostly heard complained of.
8. “The State undertakes the carriage and delivery of letters. Would it be just as consistent and advisable for the State to undertake the supply of unadulterated and wholesome food, clean and healthy dwellings, elementary, industrial, and scientific instruction, medical assistance, a national paper money, and other necessities?”
Ans. All most desirable. But the tax-gatherers would have a busy life of it!
9. “Should not a State represent the co-operation of all the people of a country, for the benefit of all?”
Ans. You mean, I suppose, by “a State” the Government of a State. The Government cannot “represent” such co-operation; but can enforce it, and should.
10. “Is the use of scarce metals as material of which to make ‘currency,’ economical and beneficent to a nation?”
Ans. No; but often necessary: see ‘Munera Pulveris,’ chap. iii.
11. “Is that a right condition of a people, their laws, and their money which makes ‘interest’ for use of money legal and possible to obtain?”
Ans. See ‘Fors Clavigera,’ throughout, which indeed I have written to save you the trouble of asking questions on such subjects.
It might be well if my Republican correspondent for his own benefit, would write down an exact definition of the following terms used by him:—
- 1. “Private property.”
- 2. “Tax.”
- 3. “State.”
[2] The reason of this honour to Sir Walter was that he had been the first English knight who rode into France after the king had quartered the Fleur-de-Lys. [↑]
[3] I omit much, without putting stars, in these bits of translation. By the way, in last ‘Fors,’ p. 21, note, for “insert,” read “omit.” [↑]
[4] Not unfairly; only having to fight for their Calais instead of getting in for a bribe. [↑]
[5] Besogne. “The thing that has to be done”—word used still in household service, but impossible to translate; we have no such concentrated one in English. [↑]
[6] The passage is entirely spoiled in Johnes’ translation by the use of the word ‘gallant’ instead of ‘gentle’ for the French ‘gentil.’ The boy was not yet nineteen, (born at Woodstock, June 15, 1330,) and his father thirty-six: fancy how pretty to see the one waiting on the other, with the French knights at his side. [↑]
[7] Sacred fillet, or “diadema,” the noblest, as the most ancient, crown. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXVI.
Brantwood, Coniston,
3rd January, 1873.
“By St. George,” said the English, “you say true!”
If, by the same oath, the English could still, now-a-days, both say and do true, themselves, it would be a merrier England. I hear from those of my acquaintance who are unhappy enough to be engaged in commercial operations, that their correspondents are “failing in all directions.”
Failing! What business has anybody to fail?
I observe myself to be getting into the habit of always thinking the last blockheadism I hear, or think of, the biggest. But this system of mercantile credit, invented simply to give power and opportunity to rogues, and enable them to live upon the wreck of honest men—was ever anything like it in the world before? That the wretched, impatient, scrambling idiots, calling themselves commercial men, forsooth, should not be able so much as to see this plainest of all facts, that any given sum of money will be as serviceable to commerce in the pocket of the seller of the goods, as of the buyer; and that nobody gains one farthing by “credit” in the long run. It is precisely as great a loss to commerce that every seller has to wait six months for his money, as it is a gain to commerce that every buyer should keep his money six months in his pocket. In reality there is neither gain nor loss—except by roguery, when the gain is all to the rogue, and the loss to the true man.
In all wise commerce, payment, large or small, should be over the counter. If you can’t pay for a thing—don’t buy it. If you can’t get paid for it—don’t sell it. So, you will have calm days, drowsy nights, all the good business you have now, and none of the bad.
(Just as I am correcting this sheet I get a lovely illuminated circular, printed in blue and red, from Messrs. Howell, James, and Co., silk mercers, etc., to the Royal Family, which respectfully announces that their half-yearly clearance sale
COMMENCES JANUARY 27th.
and continues one month, and that the whole of the valuable stock will be completely overhauled, and large portions subjected to such reductions in price, as will ensure their being disposed of prior to the commencement of the approaching spring season. Each department will present special attractions in the way of bargains, and ladies will have an opportunity of purchasing the highest class of goods at prices quite as low as those of inferior manufacture. What a quite beautiful and generally satisfactory commercial arrangement, most obliging H. and J.!)
If, however, for the nonce, you chance to have such a thing as a real “pound” in your own pocket, besides the hypothetical pounds you have in other people’s—put it on the table, and let us look at it together.
As a piece of mere die-cutting, that St. George is one of the best bits of work we have on our money.[1] But as a design,—how brightly comic it is! The horse looking abstractedly into the air, instead of where precisely it would have looked, at the beast between its legs: St. George, with nothing but his helmet on (being the last piece of armour he is likely to want), putting his naked feet, at least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, well forward, that the dragon may with the greatest convenience get a bite at them; and about to deliver a mortal blow at him with a sword which cannot reach him by a couple of yards—or, I think, in George III.’s piece—with a field-marshal’s truncheon.
Victor Carpaccio had other opinions on the likelihood of matters in this battle. His St. George exactly reverses the practice of ours. He rides armed, from shoulder to heel, in proof—but without his helmet. For the real difficulty in dragon-fights, as you shall hear, is not so much to kill your dragon, as to see him; at least to see him in time, it being too probable that he will see you first. Carpaccio’s St. George will have his eyes about him, and his head free to turn this way or that. He meets his dragon at the gallop—catches him in the mouth with his lance—carries him backwards off his fore feet, with the spear point out at the back of his neck. But Victor Carpaccio had seen knights tilting; and poor Pistrucci, who designed this St. George for us, though he would have been a good sculptor in luckier circumstances, had only seen them presenting addresses as my Lord Mayor, and killing turtle instead of dragon.
And, to our increasing sorrow, modern literature is as unsatisfactory in its picturing of St. George as modern art. Here is Mr. Emerson’s bas-relief of the Saint, given in his ‘English Traits,’ a book occasionally wise, and always observant as to matters actually proceeding in the world; but thus, in its ninth chapter, calumnious of our Georgic faith:
“George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and informer; he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a faction to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. 361, George was dragged to prison. The prison was burst open by the mob, and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this precious knave became, in good time, Saint George of England—patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world!”
Here is a goodly patron of our dainty doings in Hanover Square! If all be indeed as our clear-sighted, unimaginative, American cousin tells us. But if all be indeed so, what conclusion would our American cousin draw from it? The sentence is amusing—the facts (if facts) surprising. But what is to follow? Mr. Emerson’s own conclusion is “that nature trips us up when we strut.” But that is, in the first place, untrue absolutely, for Nature teaches all cock-sparrows, and their like (who are many) to strut; and never without wholesome effect on the minds of hen-sparrows, and their like, who are likewise many. But in its relative, if not absolute, truth, is this the conclusion here wisely to be gathered? Are “chivalry, victory, civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern world,” generally to be described as “strutting?” And is the discovery of the peculations of George of Cilicia a wholesome reproof, administered by Nature, to those unnatural modes of thinking and feeling?
Mr. Emerson does not think so. No modern person has truer instinct for heroism than he: nay, he is the only man I know of, among all who ever looked at books of mine, who had nobleness enough to understand and believe the story of Turner’s darkening his own picture that it might not take the light out of Lawrence’s. The level of vulgar English temper is now sunk so far below the power of doing such a thing, that I never told the story yet, in general society, without being met by instant and obstinate questioning of its truth, if not by quiet incredulity. But men with “the pride of the best blood of England” can believe it; and Mr. Emerson believes it. And yet this chivalry, and faith, and fire of heart, recognised by him as existent, confuse themselves in his mind with effete Gothic tradition; and are all “tripped up” by his investigation, itself superficial, of the story of St. George. In quieter thought, he would have felt that the chivalry and victory, being themselves real, must have been achieved, at some time or another, by a real chevalier and victor,—nay, by thousands of chevaliers and victors. That instead of one St. George, there must have been armies of St. Georges;—that this vision of a single Knight was as securely the symbol of knights innumerable, as the one Dragon of sins and trials innumerable; and no more depended for its vitality, or virtue, on the behaviour of George of Cilicia than the terror of the present temptation depends on the natural history of the rattlesnake. And farther, being an American, he should have seen that the fact of the Christian world’s having made a bishop of a speculating bacon-seller, and afterwards kept reverent record of this false St. George, but only obscure record of its real St. Georges, was by no means an isolated fact in the history of the Christian world,—but rather a part of its confirmed custom and “practical education;” and that, only the other day, St. James Fiske, canonised tearfully in America, and bestrewn with tuberoses and camellias, as above described, (xv. 14), was a military gentleman of exactly the type of the Cilician St. George.
Farther. How did it never occur to Mr. Emerson that, whether his story of the bookcollecting bishop were true or not, it was certainly not the story told to Cœur-de-Lion, or to Edward III., when they took St. George for their Master? No bookcollecting episcopal person, had he been ever so much a saint, would have served them to swear by, or to strike by. They must have heard some other story;—not, perhaps, one written down, nor needing to be written. A remembered story,—yet, probably, a little truer than the written one; and a little older.
It is, above all, strange that the confusion of his own first sentence did not strike him, “George of Cappadocia, born in Cilicia.” It is true that the bacon-selling and book-collecting Arian bishop was born in Cilicia, and that this Arian bishop was called George. But the Arians only contrived to get this bishop of theirs thought of as a saint at all, because there was an antecedent St. George, with whom he might be confused; a St. George, indeed, “of Cappadocia;” and as it chanced that their own bishop came out of Cappadocia to his bishopric, very few years after his death sufficed to render the equivocation possible. But the real St. George had been martyred seventy years before, A.D. 290, whereas the Arian bishop was killed in 361. And this is the story of the real St. George, which filled the heart of the early Christian church, and was heard by Cœur-de-Lion and by Edward III., somewhat in this following form, it, luckily for us, having been at least once fairly written out, in the tenth century, by the best eastern scholar who occupied himself with the history of Saints. I give you an old English translation of it, rather than my own, from p. 132 of the ‘Historie of that most famous Saint and Souldier of Christ Jesus, St. George of Cappadocia, asserted from the fictions of the middle ages of the Church, and opposition of the present, by Peter Heylyn; printed in London for Henry Seyle, and to be sold at his shop the signe of the Tyger’s head in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1631.’
“St. George was born in Cappadocia, of Christian parents, and those not of the meanest qualitie: by whom he was brought up in true Religion, and the feare of God. Hee was no sooner past his Childhood, but hee lost his father, bravely encountring with the enemies of Christ; and thereupon departed with his afflicted Mother into Palestine, whereof she was a native; and where great fortunes and a faire inheritance did fall unto him. Thus qualified in birth, and being also of an able bodie, and of an age fit for employment in the warres; hee was made a Colonell.” (This word is explained, above, xv. 15.) “In which employment hee gave such testimonies of his valour, and behav’d himselfe so nobly; that forthwith Diocletian, not knowing yet that he was a Christian, advanc’d him to the place and dignitie of his Councell for the warres; (for so on good authoritie I have made bold to render ‘Comes’ in this place and time). About this time his Mother dyed: and hee, augmenting the heroicke resolutions of his mind, with the increase of his revenue, did presently applie himselfe unto the Court and service of his Prince; his twentieth yeere being even then compleat and ended.”
“But Diocletian being soon after compelled into his persecution of the Christians” (Heylyn now gives abstract of his author,) “and warrants granted out unto the officers and rulers of the Provinces to speed the execution, and that done also in frequent senate, the Emperour there himself in person, St. George, though not yet sainted, could continue no longer, but there exposed himself unto their fury and his owne glory:” (Translation begins again.)
“When therefore George, even in the first beginnings, had observ’d the extraordinarie cruelty of these proceedings, hee presently put off his military habiliments, and, making dole of all his substance to the poore, on the third Session of the Senate, when the Imperiall decree was to be verified, quite voide of feare, he came into the Senate-house, and spake unto them in this manner. ‘How long, most noble Emperour and you Conscript Fathers, will you augment your tyrannies against the Christians? How long will you enact unjust and cruell Lawes against them, compelling those which are aright instructed in the faith, to follow that Religion, of whose truth your selves are doubtfull. Your Idols are no Gods, and I am bold to say againe, they are not. Be not you longer couzned in the same errour. Our Christ alone is God, he only is the Lord, in the glory of the Father. Eyther do you therefore acknowledge that Religion which undoubtedly is true: or else disturbe not them by your raging follies, which would willingly embrace it.’ This said, and all the Senate wonderfully amazed at the free speech and boldnesse of the man;” (and no wonder;—my own impression is indeed that most martyrs have been made away with less for their faith than their incivility. I have always a lurking sympathy with the Heathen;) “they all of them turn’d their eyes upon the Emperour, expecting what hee would reply: who beckoning to Magnentius, then Consull, and one of his speciall Favourites, to returne an answere; hee presently applyed himselfe to satisfie his Prince’s pleasure.”
“Further” (says Heylyn) “we will not prosecute the storie in our Authors words, which are long and full of needlesse conference; but will briefly declare the substance of it, which is this. Upon St. George’s constant profession of his Faith, they wooed him first with promises of future honours, and more faire advancements: but finding him unmoveable, not to be wrought upon with words, they tried him next with torments: not sparing anything which might expresse their cruelty or enoble his affliction. When they saw all was fruitlesse, at last the fatall Sentence was pronounced against him in this manner: that, beeing had againe to prison, hee should the following day be drawne through the City and beheaded.
“Which sentence was accordingly performed, and George invested with the glorious Crowne of Martyrdome upon the 23. day of April, Anno Domini nostri, 290.”
That is St. George’s “true” story, how far literally true is of no moment; it is enough for us that a young soldier, in early days of Christianity, put off his armour, and gave up his soul to his Captain, Christ; and that his death did so impress the hearts of all Christian men who heard of it, that gradually he became to them the leader of a sacred soldiership, which conquers more than its mortal enemies, and prevails against the poison, and the shadow, of Pride, and Death.
And above all, his putting off his knight’s armour, especially the military belt, as then taking service with Christ instead of the Roman Emperor, impressed the minds of the later Christian knights; because of the law referred to by St. Golden-Lips (quoted by Heylyn farther on), “No one, who is an officer, would dare to appear without his zone and mantle before him who wears the diadem.” So that having thus voluntarily humbled himself, he is thought of as chiefly exalted among Christian soldiers, and called, not only “the great Martyr,” but the “Standard Bearer,” (Tropæophorus). Whence he afterwards becomes the knight bearing the bloody cross on the argent field, and the Captain of Christian war.
The representation of all his spiritual enemies under the form of the Dragon was simply the natural habit of the Greek mind: the stories of Apollo delivering Latona from the Python, and of Perseus delivering Andromeda from the sea monster, had been as familiar as the pitcher and wine-cups they had been painted on, in red and black, for a thousand years before: and the name of St. George, the “Earthworker,” or “Husbandman,”[2] connected him instantly, in Greek thoughts, not only with the ancient dragon, Erichthonius, but with the Spirit of agriculture, called “Thricewarrior” to whom the dragon was a harnessed creature of toil. Yet, so far as I know, it was not until the more strictly Christian tradition of the armed archangel Michael confused its symbolism with that of the armed saint, that the dragon enters definitely into the story of St. George. The authoritative course of Byzantine painting, sanctioned and restricted by the Church in the treatment of every subject, invariably represents St. George as the soldier Martyr, or witness, before Diocletian, never as victor over the dragon:[3] his story, as the painters tell it, corresponds closely with that of St. Catherine of Sinai;[4] and is, in the root of it, truth, and in the branching of it, beautiful dream, of the same wild and lovely character. And we might as well confuse Catherine of Sinai with Catherine of Siena (or for that matter, Catherine de Medicis!), as St. George of the Eastern Church with George the Arian. And this witness of painting remains simple and unbroken, down to the last days of Venice. St. Mark, St. Nicholas, and St. George are the three saints who are seen, in the vision of the Fisherman, delivering Venice from the fiends. St. George, first “of the seaweed,” has three other churches besides in Venice; and it will be the best work I have ever done in this broken life of mine, if I can some day show you, however dimly, how Victor Carpaccio has painted him in the humblest of these,—the little chapel of St. George on the “Shore of the Slaves.” There, however, our dragon does not fail us, both Carpaccio and Tintoret having the deepest convictions on that subject;—as all strong men must have; for the Dragon is too true a creature, to all such, spiritually. That it is an indisputably living and venomous creature, materially, has been the marvel of the world, innocent and guilty, not knowing what to think of the terrible worm; nor whether to worship it, as the Rod of their lawgiver, or to abhor it as the visible symbol of the everlasting Disobedience.
Touching which mystery, you must learn one or two main facts.
The word ‘Dragon,’ means “the Seeing Creature,” and I believe the Greeks had the same notion in their other word for a serpent, “ophis.” There were many other creeping, and crawling, and rampant things; the olive stem and the ivy were serpentine enough, blindly; but here was a creeping thing that saw!
The action of the cobra, with its lifted and levelled head, and the watchfulness of the coiled viper impressed the Egyptians and Greeks intensely. To the Egyptian the serpent was awful and sacred, and became the ornament on the front of the King’s diadems (though an evil spirit also, when not erect). The Greeks never could make up their minds about it. All human life seems to them as the story of Laocoon. The fiery serpents slay us for our wisdom and fidelity;—then writhe themselves into rest at the feet of the Gods.
The Egyptians were at the same pause as to their Nile Dragon, for whom I told you they built their labyrinth. “For in the eyes of some of the Egyptians, the crocodiles are sacred; but by others they are held for enemies. And it is they who dwell by the Lake Mœris, who think them greatly sacred. Every one of these lake people has care of his own crocodile, taught to be obedient to the lifting of finger. And they put jewels of enamel and gold into their ears, and bracelets on their forefeet, and feed them with the sacred shew-bread daily, and attend upon them, that they may live beautiful lives; and, when they die, bury them, embalmed, in holy tombs.” (Thus religion, as a pious friend, I observe, writes in a Devonshire paper the other day, leads to the love of Nature!) “But they of the city Elephantine eat their crocodiles, holding them nowise sacred. Neither do they call them crocodiles, but champsæ; it is the Ionians who call them “crocodiles,” because they think them like the little crocodiles that live in the dry stone walls.”
I do not know if children generally have strong associative fancy about words; but when I was a child, that word “Crocodile” always seemed to me very terrific, and I would even hastily, in any book, turn a leaf in which it was printed with a capital C. If anybody had but told me the meaning of it—“a creature that is afraid of crocuses!”
That, at least, is all I can make of it, now; though I can’t understand how this weakness of the lizard mind was ever discovered, for lizards never see crocuses, that I know of. The next I meet in Italy, (poor little, glancing, panting things,—I miss them a little here from my mossy walls)—shall be shown an artificial crocus, Paris-made; we will see what it thinks of it! But however it came to be given, for the great Spirit-Lizard, the name is a good one. For as the wise German’s final definition of the Devil (in the second part of Faust) is that he is afraid of roses, so the earliest and simplest possible definition of him is that in spring time he is afraid of crocuses; which I am quite sure, both our farmers and manufacturers are now, in England, to the utmost. On the contrary, the Athenian Spirit of Wisdom was so fond of crocuses that she made her own robe crocus-colour, before embroidering it with the wars of the Giants; she being greatly antagonistic to the temper which dresses sisters of charity in black, for a crocus-colour dress was much the gayest—not to say the giddiest—thing she could possibly wear in Athens.
And of the crocus, vernal, and autumnal, more properly the enchanted herb of Colchis, (see, by the way, White’s ‘History of Selborne’ at the end of its 41st letter) I must tell you somewhat more in next letter; meantime, look at the saffron crest in the centre of it, carefully, and read, with some sympathy, if you can, this true story of a crocus, which being told me the other day by one who, whether I call him friend or not, is indeed friendly to me, and to all whom he can befriend, I begged him to write it for your sakes, which he has thus graciously done:—
A STORY OF A FLOWER.
“It is impossible to describe the delight which I took in my first flower, yet it was only a poor peeky, little sprouting crocus. Before I begin the story, I must, in two lines, make known my needy state at the time when I became the owner of the flower. I was in my eleventh year, meanly clothed, plainly fed, and penniless; an errand boy in receipt of one shilling and sixpence a week, which sum I consumed in bread and shoe leather. Yet I was happy enough, living in a snug cottage in the suburbs of Oxford, within sight of its towers, and within hearing of its bells. In the back yard of my home were many wonders. The gable end of a barn was mantled with ivy, centuries old, and sparrows made their home in its leafage; an ancient wall, old as the Norman tower at the other end of the town, was rich in gilly-flowers; a wooden shed, with red tiles, was covered by a thriving “tea tree,” so we called it, which in summer was all blossom, pendant mauve coloured blossoms. This tree managed to interlace its branches among the tiles so effectively as in the end to lift off the whole roof in a mass, and poise it in the air. Bees came in swarms to sip honey at the blossoms: I noted civilised hive bees, and large ones whose waxen cells were hidden in mossy banks in the woods—these had crimson and saffron tinted bodies, or, for variety, hairy shapes of sombre green and black. I was never weary of my wall-flowers, and bees, and butterflies. But, so it is, I happened one day to get a glimpse of a college garden about the end of February, or the beginning of March, when its mound of venerable elms was lit up with star-like yellow flowers. The dark earth was robed as with a bright garment of imperial, oriental splendour. It was the star-shaped aconite, as I believe, but am not sure, whose existence in flower is brief, but glorious, when beheld, as I beheld it, in masses. Henceforth, if Old Fidget, the gardener, was not at the back gate of St. J—— I peeped through the keyhole at my yellow garden bed, which seemed flooded with sunlight, only broken by patches of rich black earth, which formed strange patterns, such as we see on Japanese screens of laquer and bronze, only that the flowers had a glory of their own. Well, I looked through the keyhole every time I passed, and that was four times daily, and always with increased interest for my flowering aconite. But oh! trouble upon trouble, one day I found the keyhole stopt, and there was an end of my daily joy, and of the interest which had been awakened in me, in a new way, for the wonders of nature. My love of flowers, however, increased, and I found means to feed my love. I had often observed Old Fidget, the head gardener, and his mates, bring out wheelbarrow loads of refuse from the shrubbery and flower beds, and throw them in a heap along the garden wall without, where a long, deep trench had become the well-known receptacle for rubbish. Such places were common in town suburbs in those days. The rubbish consisted of cuttings of shrubs and plants, and rakings of flower-borders, but more bountifully, of elm leaves, and the cast off clothing of chestnut trees, which soon lay rotting in flaky masses, until I happened to espy a fragment of a bulb, and then, the rubbish of the garden, which concealed sprouting chestnuts, knew no rest. I went, one holiday, and dug deep, with no other implement than my hands, into this matted mass. I laboured, till at length, in a mass of closely pressed leaves, I came upon a perfect crocus. It lay like a dead elfin infant in its forest grave. I was enchanted, and afraid to touch it, as one would fear to commit a piece of sacrilege. It lay in its green robes, which seemed spun from dainty silken threads unsoiled by mortal hands. Its blossom of pale flesh tint lay concealed within a creamy opalescent film, which seemed to revive and live when the light penetrated the darksome tomb, contrasting with the emerald robes, and silken, pliant roots. At length I lifted the flower from its bed, and carried it to my garden plot with breathless care. My garden plot, not much larger than a large baking dish, was enclosed by broken tiles, a scrubby place, unsuited to my newly discovered treasure. I broke up the earth and pulverised it with my fingers, but its coarseness was incurable. I abandoned it as I thought of some mole hills in a neighbouring copse, and soon my plot was filled deeply with soft sandy soil, fit for my flower. And then came the necessity of protecting it from the searching March winds, which I did effectually by covering it with a flower pot, and the season wore on, and soft, mild days set in apace, and my flower, which was ever uppermost in my thoughts, whether sleeping or waking, began to show signs of life, as day by day I permitted the sun to look at it, until at length, one sunny, silent, Sunday morning, it opened its glowing, golden, sacramental cup, gleaming like light from heaven—dropt in a dark place, living light and fire. So it seemed to my poor vision, and I called the household and the neighbours from their cares to share my rapture. But alas! my dream was ended; the flower had no fascination for those who came at my call. It was but a yellow crocus to them—some laughed, some tittered, some jeered me, and old Dick Willis, poor man, who got a crust by selling soft water by the pail, he only rubbed his dim eyes, and exclaimed in pity, “God bless the poor boy!”
Little thinking how much he was already blessed,—he—and his flower!
For indeed Crocus and Carduus are alike Benedict flowers, if only one knew God’s gold and purple from the Devil’s, which, with St. George’s help, and St. Anthony’s,—the one well knowing the flowers of the field, and the other those of the desert,—we will try somewhat to discern.
[1] The best is on George III.’s pound, 1820, the most finished in work on George IV.’s crown-piece, 1821. [↑]
[2] More properly ‘named from the husbandman.’ Thus Lycus is ‘a wolf,’ Lycius, ‘named from the wolf,’ or ‘wolfish.’ So, Georgus is ‘a husbandman,’ Georgius, ‘named from the husbandman,’ or ‘husbandmannish.’ [↑]
[3] See the complete series of subjects as given by M. Didron in his ‘Iconographie Chrétienne’ (8vo. Paris, 1845, p. 369), and note the most interesting trace of the idea of Triptolemus, in the attendant child with the water-pitcher behind the equestrian figure of the Saint. [↑]
[4] You will find that in my 19th letter, p. 11, I propose that our St. George’s Company in England shall be under the patronage also of St. Anthony in Italy. And in general, we will hold ourselves bound to reverence, in one mind, with Carpaccio and the good Painters and Merchants of Venice, the eight great Saints of the Greek Church,—namely (in the order M. Didron gives them)—the Archangel Michael, the Precursor (John Baptist), St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Nicholas, St. George, Ste. Catherine of Sinai, and St. Anthony, these being patrons of our chief occupations, (while, over our banking operations we will have for patron or principal manager, the more modern Western Saint, Francis of Assisi;) meaning always no disrespect to St. Jerome or Ste. Cecilia, in case we need help in our literature or music. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXVII.
Brantwood, 27th January, 1873.
“If it were not so, I would have told you.”
I read those strange words of St. John’s gospel this morning, for at least the thousandth time; and for the first time, that I remember, with any attention. It is difficult, if not impossible, to attend rightly without some definite motive, or chance-help, to words which one has read and re-read till every one of them slips into its place unnoticed, as a familiar guest,—unchallenged as a household friend. But the Third Fors helped me, to-day, by half effacing the n in the word Mona, in the tenth century MS. I was deciphering; and making me look at the word, till I began to think of it, and wondered. You may as well learn the old meaning of that pretty name of the isle of Anglesea. “In my Father’s house,” says Christ, “are many monas,”—remaining-places—“if it were not so, I would have told you.”
Alas, had He but told us more clearly that it was so!
I have the profoundest sympathy with St. Thomas, and would fain put all his questions over again, and twice as many more. “We know not whither Thou goest.” That Father’s house,—where is it? These “remaining-places,” how are they to be prepared for us?—how are we to be prepared for them?
If ever your clergy mean really to help you to read your Bible,—the whole of it, and not merely the bits which tell you that you are miserable sinners, and that you needn’t mind,—they must make a translation retaining as many as possible of the words in their Greek form, which you may easily learn, and yet which will be quit of the danger of becoming debased by any vulgar English use. So also, the same word must always be given when it is the same; and not in one place translated “mansion,” and in another “abode.” (Compare verse 23 of this same chapter.[1]) Not but that “mansion” is a very fine Latin word, and perfectly correct, (if only one knows Latin,) but I doubt not that most parish children understand by it, if anything, a splendid house with two wings, and an acre or two of offices, in the middle of a celestial park; and suppose that some day or other they are all of them to live in such, as well as the Squire’s children; whereas, if either “mona” or “remaining” were put in both verses, it is just possible that sometimes both the Squire and the children, instead of vaguely hoping to be lodged some day in heaven by Christ and His Father, might take notice of their offer in the last verse I have quoted, and get ready a spare room both in the mansion and cottage, to offer Christ and His Father immediately, if they liked to come into lodgings on earth.
I was looking over some of my own children’s books the other day, in the course of rearranging the waifs and strays of Denmark Hill at Brantwood; and came upon a catechism of a very solemn character on the subject of the County of Kent. It opens by demanding “the situation of Kent;” then, the extent of Kent,—the population of Kent, and a sketch of the history of Kent; in which I notice with interest that hops were first grown in Kent in 1524, and petitioned against as a wicked weed in 1528. Then, taking up the subject in detail, inquiry is made as to “the situation of Dover?” To which the orthodox reply is that Dover is pleasantly situated on that part of the island of Great Britain nearest the Continent, and stands in a valley between stupendous hills. To the next question, “What is the present state of Dover?” the well-instructed infant must answer, “That Dover consists of two parts, the upper, called the Town, and the lower, the Pier; and that they are connected by a long narrow street, which, from the rocks that hang over it, and seem to threaten the passenger with destruction, has received the name of Snaregate Street.” The catechism next tests the views of the young respondent upon the municipal government of Dover, the commercial position of Dover, and the names of the eminent men whom Dover has produced; and at last, after giving a proper account of the Castle of Dover and the two churches in Dover, we are required to state whether there is not an interesting relic of antiquity in the vicinity of Dover; upon which, we observe that, about two miles north-west from Dover, are the remains of St. Radagune’s Abbey, now converted into a farm-house; and finally, to the crucial interrogation—“What nobleman’s seat is near Dover?” we reply, with more than usual unction, that “In the Parish of Waldershaw, five miles and a half from Dover, is Waldershaw Park, the elegant seat of the Earl of Guildford, and that the house is a magnificent structure, situated in a vale, in the centre of a well-wooded Park.” Whereat I stopped reading; first, because St. Radagune’s Abbey, though it is nothing but walls with a few holes through them by which the cows get in for shelter on windy days, was the first “remaining” of Antiquity I ever sketched, when a boy of fourteen, spending half my best BB pencil on the ivy and the holes in the walls; and, secondly, the tone of these two connected questions in the catechism marks exactly the curious period in the English mind when the worship of St. Radagune was indeed utterly extinct, so that her once elegant mansion becomes a farm-house, as in that guise fulfilling its now legitimate function:—but the worship of Earls of Guildford is still so flourishing that no idea would ever occur to the framers of catechism that the elegant seats of these also were on the way to become farm-houses.
Which is nevertheless surely the fact:—and the only real question is whether St. Radagune’s mansion and the Earl of Guildford’s are both to be farm-houses, or whether the state of things at the time of the Dover Catechism may not be exactly reversed,—and St. Radagune have her mansion and park railed in again, while the Earl’s walls shelter the cows on windy days. For indeed, from the midst of the tumult and distress of nations, fallen wholly Godless and lordless, perhaps the first possibility of redemption may be by cloistered companies, vowed once more to the service of a divine Master, and to the reverence of His saints.
You were shocked, I suppose, by my catalogue, in last Fors, of such persons, as to be revered by our own Company. But have you ever seriously considered what a really vital question it is to you whether St. Paul and St. Pancras, (not that I know myself at this moment, who St. Pancras was,—but I’ll find out for next Fors,)—St. George and St. Giles, St. Bridget and St. Helen, are really only to become the sponsors of City parishes, or whether you mean still to render them any gratitude as the first teachers of what used to be called civilization; nay, whether there may not even be, irrespective of what we now call civilization—namely, coals and meat at famine prices,—some manner of holy living and dying, of lifting holy hands without wrath, and sinking to blessed sleep without fear, of which these persons, however vaguely remembered, have yet been the best patterns the world has shown us.
Don’t think that I want to make Roman Catholics of you, or to make anything of you, except honest people. But as for the vulgar and insolent Evangelical notion, that one should not care for the Saints,—nor pray to them,—Mercy on us!—do the poor wretches fancy that God wouldn’t be thankful if they would pray to anybody, for what it was right they should have; or that He is piqued, forsooth, if one thinks His servants can help us sometimes, in our paltry needs.
“But they are dead, and cannot help us, nor hear!”
Alas; perchance—no. What would I not give to be so much a heretic as to believe the Dead could hear!—but are there no living Saints, then, who can help you? Sir C. Dilke, or Mr. Beales, for instance? and if you don’t believe there are any parks or monas abiding for you in heaven, may you not pull down some park railings here, and—hold public meetings in them, of a Paradisiacal character?
Indeed, that pulling down of the Piccadilly railings was a significant business. “Park,” if you will look to your Johnson, you will find is one of quite the oldest words in Europe; vox antiquissima, a most ancient word, and now a familiar one among active nations. French, Parc, Welsh, the same, Irish, Pairc, “being” a piece of ground enclosed and stored with wild beasts of chase. Manwood, in his Forest Law, defines it thus, “A park is a place for privilege for wild beasts of venery, and also for other wild beasts that are beasts of the forest and of the chase, and those wild beasts are to have a firm peace and protection there, so that no man may hurt or chase them within the park, without licence of the owner: a park is of another nature than either a chase or a warren; for a park must be enclosed, and may not lie open—if it does, it is a good cause of seizure into the King’s hands.” Or into King Mob’s for parliamentary purposes—and how monstrous, you think, that such pleasant habitations for wild beasts should still be walled in, and in peace, while you have no room to—speak in,—I had like to have said something else than speak—but it is at least polite to you to call it ‘speaking.’
Yes. I have said so, myself, once or twice;—nevertheless something is to be said for the beasts also. What do you think they were made for? All these spotty, scaly, finned, and winged, and clawed things, that grope between you and the dust, that flit between you and the sky. These motes in the air—sparks in the sea—mists and flames of life. The flocks that are your wealth—the moth that frets it away. The herds upon a thousand hills,—the locust,—and the worm, and the wandering plague whose spots are worlds. The creatures that mock you, and torment. The creatures that serve and love you, (or would love if they might,) and obey. The joys of the callow nests and burrowed homes of Earth. The rocks of it, built out of its own dead. What is the meaning to you of all these,—what their worth to you?
No worth, you answer, perhaps; or the contrary of worth. In fact, you mean to put an end to all that. You will keep pigeons to shoot—geese to make pies of—cocks for fighting—horses to bet on—sheep for wool, and cows for cheese. As to the rest of the creatures, you owe no thanks to Noah; and would fain, if you could, order a special deluge for their benefit; failing that, you will at all events get rid of the useless feeders as fast as possible.
Indeed, there is some difficulty in understanding why some of them were made. I lost great part of my last hour for reading, yesterday evening, in keeping my kitten’s tail out of the candles,—a useless beast, and still more useless tail—astonishing and inexplicable even to herself. Inexplicable, to me, all of them—heads and tails alike. “Tiger—tiger—burning bright”—is this then all you were made for—this ribbed hearthrug, tawny and black?
If only the Rev. James McCosh were here! His book is; and I’m sure I don’t know how, but it turns up in re-arranging my library. ‘Method of the Divine Government Physical and Moral.’ Preface begins. “We live in an age in which the reflecting portion of mankind are much addicted to the contemplation of the works of Nature. It is the object of the author in this Treatise to interrogate Nature with the view of making her utter her voice in answer to some of the most important questions which the inquiring spirit of man can put.” Here is a catechumen for you!—and a catechist! Nature with her hands behind her back—Perhaps Mr. McCosh would kindly put it to her about the tiger. Farther on, indeed, it is stated that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, and I observe that the author, with the shrinking modesty characteristic of the clergy of his persuasion, feels that, even the intellect of a McCosh cannot, without risk of error, embrace more than the present method of the Divine management of Creation. Wherefore “no man,” he says, “should presume to point out all the ways in which a God of unbounded resources might govern the universe.”
But the present way—(allowing for the limited capital,)—we may master that, and pay our compliments to God upon it? We will hope so; in the meantime I can assure you, this creation of His will bear more looking at than you have given, yet, however addicted you may be to the contemplation of Nature; (though I suspect you are more addicted to the tasting of her,) and that if instead of being in such a hurry to pull park railings down, you would only beg the owners to put them to their proper use, and let the birds and beasts, which were made to breathe English air as well as you, take shelter there, you would soon have a series of National Museums more curious than that in Great Russell Street; and with something better worth looking at in them than the sacred crocodiles. Besides, you might spare the poor beasts a little room on earth, for charity, if not for curiosity. They have no mansions preparing for them elsewhere.
What! you answer; indignant,—“All that good land given up to beasts!” Have you ever looked how much or little of England is in park land? I have here, by me, Hall’s Travelling Atlas of the English Counties; which paints conveniently in red the railroads, and in green the parks (not conscious, probably—the colourist—of his true expression of antagonism by those colours).
The parks lie on the face of each county like a few crumbs on a plate; if you could turn them all at once into corn land, it would literally not give you a mouthful extra of dinner. Your dog, or cat, is more costly to you, in proportion to your private means, than all these kingdoms of beasts would be to the nation.
“Cost what they might, it would be too much”—think you? You will not give those acres of good land to keep beasts?
Perhaps not beasts of God’s making; but how many acres of good land do you suppose, then, you do give up, as it is, to keep beasts He never made,—never meant to be made,—the beasts you make of yourselves?
Do you know how much corn land in the United Kingdom is occupied in supplying you with the means of getting drunk?
Mind, I am no temperance man. You should all have as much beer and alcohol as was good for you if I had my way. But the beer and alcohol which are not good for you,—which are the ruin of so many of you, suppose you could keep the wages you spend in that liquor in the savings bank, and left the land, now tilled to grow it for you, to natural and sober beasts?—Do you think it would be false economy?—Why, you might have a working men’s park for nothing, in every county, bigger than the Queen’s! and your own homes all the more comfortable.
I had no notion myself, till the other day, what the facts were, in this matter. Get, if you can, Professor Kirk’s ‘Social Politics,’ (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.,) and read, for a beginning, his 21st chapter, on land and liquor; and then, as you have leisure, all the book, carefully. Not that he would help me out with my park plan; he writes with the simple idea that the one end of humanity is to eat and drink; and it is interesting to see a Scotch Professor thinking the lakes of his country were made to be ‘Reservoirs,’ and particularly instancing the satisfaction of thirsty Glasgow out of Loch Katrine; so that, henceforward, it will be proper in Scotch economical circles not to speak of the Lady of the Lake, but of the Lady of the Reservoir. Still, assuming that to eat and drink is the end of life, the Professor shows you clearly how much better this end may be accomplished than it is now. And the broad fact which he brings out concerning your drink is this; that about one million five hundred thousand acres of land in the United Kingdom are occupied in producing strong liquor (and I don’t see that he has included in this estimate what is under the wicked weeds of Kent; it is curious what difficulty people always seem to have in putting anything accurately into short statement). The produce of this land, which is more than all the arable for bread in Scotland, after being manufactured into drink, is sold to you at the rates,—the spirits, of twenty-seven shillings and sixpence for two shillings’ worth; and the beer, of two shillings for threepence-halfpenny worth. The sum you spend in these articles, and in tobacco, annually, is ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX MILLIONS OF POUNDS; on which the pure profit of the richer classes, (putting the lower alehouse gains aside) is, roughly, a hundred millions. That is the way the rich Christian Englishman provides against the Day of Judgment, expecting to hear his Master say to him, “I was thirsty—and ye gave me drink—Two shillings’ worth for twenty-seven and sixpence.”
Again; for the matter of lodging. Look at the Professor’s page 73. There you find that in the street dedicated in Edinburgh to the memory of the first Bishop of Jerusalem, in No. 23, there are living 220 persons. In the first floor of it live ten families,—forty-nine persons; in the second floor, nine families—fifty-four persons; and so on, up to six floors, the ground-floor being a shop; so that “the whole 220 persons in the building are without one foot of the actual surface of the land on which to exist.”
“In my Father’s house,” says Christ, “are many mansions.” Verily, that appears to be also the case in some of His Scotch Evangelical servants’ houses here. And verecund Mr. McCosh, who will not venture to suggest any better arrangement of the heavens,—has he likewise no suggestion to offer as to the arrangement of No. 23, St. James’s Street?
“Whose fault is it?” do you ask?
Immediately, the fault of the landlords; but the landlords from highest to lowest, are more or less thoughtless and ignorant persons, from whom you can expect no better. The persons really answerable for all this are your two professed bodies of teachers; namely, the writers for the public press, and the clergy.
Nearly everything that I ever did of any use in this world has been done contrary to the advice of my friends; and as my friends are unanimous at present in begging me never to write to newspapers, I am somewhat under the impression that I ought to resign my Oxford professorship, and try to get a sub-editorship in the ‘Telegraph’. However, for the present, I content myself with my own work, and have sustained patiently, for thirty years, the steady opposition of the public press to whatever good was in it, (said ‘Telegraph’ always with thanks excepted) down to the article in the ‘Spectator’ of August 13th, 1870, which, on my endeavour to make the study of art, and of Greek literature, of some avail in Oxford to the confirmation of right principle in the minds of her youth, instantly declared that “the artistic perception and skill of Greece were nourished by the very lowness of her ethical code, by her lack of high aims, by her freedom from all aspirations after moral good, by her inability even to conceive a Hebrew tone of purity, by the fact that she lived without God, and died without hope.”
“High aims” are explained by the ‘Spectator,’ in another place, to consist in zeal for the establishment of cotton mills. And the main body of the writers for the public press are also—not of that opinion—for they have no opinions; but they get their living by asserting so much to you.
Against which testimony of theirs, you shall hear, to-day, the real opinion of a man of whom Scotland once was proud; the man who first led her to take some notice of that same reservoir of hers, which Glasgow,—Clyde not being deep enough for her drinking, or perhaps, (see above, xvi. 16) not being now so sweet as stolen waters,—cools her tormented tongue with.
“The poor laws into which you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart-loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical remedies, such as general systems of education, and so forth. But a man with a broken constitution might as well put faith in Spilsburg or Godbold. It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is productive of real benefit.
“There is a terrible evil in England to which we are strangers” (some slight acquaintance has been raked up since, Sir Walter,) “the number, to wit, of tippling houses, where the labourer, as a matter of course, spends the overplus of his earnings. In Scotland there are few; and the Justices are commendably inexorable in rejecting all application for licences where there appears no public necessity for granting them. A man, therefore, cannot easily spend much money in liquor, since he must walk three or four miles to the place of suction, and back again, which infers a sort of malice prepense of which few are capable; and the habitual opportunity of indulgence not being at hand, the habits of intemperance, and of waste connected with it, are not acquired. If financiers would admit a general limitation of the alehouses over England to one-fourth of the number, I am convinced you would find the money spent in that manner would remain with the peasant, as a source of self-support and independence. All this applies chiefly to the country; in towns, and in the manufacturing districts, the evil could hardly be diminished by such regulations. There would, perhaps, be no means so effectual as that (which will never be listened to) of taxing the manufacturers according to the number of hands which they employ on an average, and applying the produce in maintaining the manufacturing poor. If it should be alleged that this would injure the manufacturers, I would boldly reply,—‘And why not injure, or rather limit, speculations, the excessive stretch of which has been productive of so much damage to the principles of the country, and to the population, whom it has, in so many respects, degraded and demoralized?’ For a great many years, manufacturers, taken in a general point of view, have not partaken of the character of a regular profession, in which all who engaged with honest industry and a sufficient capital might reasonably expect returns proportional to their advances and labour,—but have, on the contrary, rather resembled a lottery, in which the great majority of the adventurers are sure to be losers, although some may draw considerable advantage. Men continued for a great many years to exert themselves, and to pay extravagant wages, not in hopes that there could be a reasonable prospect of an orderly and regular demand for the goods they wrought up, but in order that they might be the first to take advantage of some casual opening which might consume their cargo, let others shift as they could. Hence extravagant wages on some occasions; for these adventurers who thus played at hit or miss, stood on no scruples while the chance of success remained open. Hence, also, the stoppage of work, and the discharge of the workmen, when the speculators failed of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;—for whoever gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-wages and over-living, and necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and render only fit for the almshouse, in prosecution of their own adventures, though it operated as a check on the increase of manufacturers, would be a measure just in itself, and beneficial to the community. But it would never be listened to;—the weaver’s beam, and the sons of Zeruiah, would be too many for the proposers.
“This is the eleventh of August; Walter, happier than he will ever be again, perhaps, is preparing for the moors. He has a better dog than Trout, and rather less active. Mrs. Scott and all our family send kind love. Yours ever. W. S.”
I have italicized one sentence in this letter, written in the year 1817 (what would the writer have thought of the state of things now?)—though I should like, for that matter, to italicise it all. But that sentence touches the root of the evil which I have most at heart, in these letters, to show you; namely, the increasing poverty of the country through the enriching of a few. I told you, in the first sentence of them, that the English people was not a rich people; that it “was empty in purse—empty in stomach.” The day before yesterday, a friend, who thinks my goose pie not an economical dish! sent me a penny cookery book, a very desirable publication, which I instantly sat down to examine. It starts with the great principle that you must never any more roast your meat, but always stew it; and never have an open fire, but substitute, for the open fire, close stoves, all over England.
Now observe. There was once a dish, thought peculiarly English—Roast Beef. And once a place, thought peculiarly English—the Fireside. These two possessions are now too costly for you. Your England, in her unexampled prosperity, according to the ‘Morning Post,’ can no longer afford either her roast beef—or her fireside. She can only afford boiled bones, and a stove-side.
Well. Boiled bones are not so bad things, neither. I know something more about them than the writer of the penny cookery book. Fifty years ago, Count Rumford perfectly ascertained the price, and nourishing power, of good soup; and I shall give you a recipe for Theseus’ vegetable diet, and for Lycurgus’ black and Esau’s red pottage, for your better pot-luck. But what next?
To-day, you cannot afford beef—to-morrow, are you sure that you will be still able to afford bones? If things are to go on thus, and you are to study economy to the utmost, I can beat the author of the penny cookery book even on that ground. What say you to this diet of the Otomac Indians; persons quite of our present English character? “They have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing. They are men of a very robust constitution, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. While the waters of the Orinoco are low, they subsist on fish and turtles, but at the period of its inundations, (when the fishing ceases) they eat daily, during some months, three quarters of a pound of clay, slightly hardened by fire”[2]—(probably stewable in your modern stoves with better effect).—“Half, at least” (this is Father Gumilla’s statement, quoted by Humboldt) “of the bread of the Otomacs and the Guamoes is clay—and those who feel a weight on their stomach, purge themselves with the fat of the crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to continue to eat pure earth.” “I doubt”—Humboldt himself goes on, “the manteca de caiman being a purgative. But it is certain that the Guamoes are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh, of the crocodile.”
We have surely brickfields enough to keep our clay from ever rising to famine prices, in any fresh accession of prosperity;—and though fish can’t live in our rivers, the muddy waters are just of the consistence crocodiles like: and, at Manchester and Rochdale, I have observed the surfaces of the streams smoking, so that we need be under no concern as to temperature. I should think you might produce in them quite ‘streaky’ crocodile,—fat and flesh concordant,—St. George becoming a bacon purveyor, as well as seller, and laying down his dragon in salt; (indeed it appears, by an experiment made in Egypt itself, that the oldest of human words is Bacon;) potted crocodile will doubtless, also, from countries unrestrained by religious prejudices, be imported, as the English demand increases, at lower quotations; and for what you are going to receive, the Lord make you truly thankful.