FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER LXXII.
Venice, 9th November, 1876, 7 morning.
I have set my writing-table close to the pillars of the great window of the Ca’ Ferro, which I drew, in 1841, carefully, with those of the next palace, Ca’ Contarini Fasan. Samuel Prout was so pleased with the sketch that he borrowed it, and made the upright drawing from it of the palace with the rich balconies, ‘which now represents his work very widely as a chromolithotint.[1]
Between the shafts of the pillars, the morning sky is seen pure and pale, relieving the grey dome of the church of the Salute; but beside that vault, and like it, vast thunderclouds heap themselves above the horizon, catching the light of dawn upon them where they rise, far westward, over the dark roof of the ruined Badia;—but all so massive, that, half an hour ago, in the dawn, I scarcely knew the Salute dome and towers [[378]]from theirs; while the sea-gulls, rising and falling hither and thither in clusters above the green water beyond my balcony, tell me that the south wind is wild on Adria.
“Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ.”—The Sea has her Lord, and the sea-birds are prescient of the storm; but my own England, ruler of the waves in her own proud thoughts, can she rule the tumult of her people, or, pilotless, even so much as discern the thunderclouds heaped over her Galilean lake of life?
Here is a little grey cockle-shell, lying beside me, which I gathered, the other evening, out of the dust of the Island of St. Helena; and a brightly-spotted snail-shell, from the thistly sands of Lido; and I want to set myself to draw these, and describe them, in peace.
‘Yes,’ all my friends say, ‘that is my business; why can’t I mind it, and be happy?’
Well, good friends, I would fain please you, and myself with you; and live here in my Venetian palace, luxurious; scrutinant of dome, cloud, and cockle-shell. I could even sell my books for not inconsiderable sums of money if I chose to bribe the reviewers, pay half of all I got to the booksellers, stick bills on the lamp-posts, and say nothing but what would please the Bishop of Peterborough.
I could say a great deal that would please him, and yet be very good and useful; I should like much again [[379]]to be on terms with my old publisher, and hear him telling me nice stories over our walnuts, this Christmas, after dividing his year’s spoil with me in Christmas charity. And little enough mind have I for any work, in this seventy-seventh year that’s coming of our glorious century, wider than I could find in the compass of my cockle-shell.
But alas! my prudent friends, little enough of all that I have a mind to may be permitted me. For this green tide that eddies by my threshold is full of floating corpses, and I must leave my dinner to bury them, since I cannot save; and put my cockle-shell in cap, and take my staff in hand, to seek an unincumbered shore. This green sea-tide!—yes, and if you knew it, your black and sulphurous tides also—Yarrow, and Teviot, and Clyde, and the stream, for ever now drumly and dark as it rolls on its way, at the ford of Melrose.
Yes, and the fair lakes and running waters in your English park pleasure-grounds,—nay, also the great and wide sea, that gnaws your cliffs,—yes, and Death, and Hell also, more cruel than cliff or sea; and a more neutral episcopal person than even my Lord of Peterborough[2] stands, level-barred balance in hand,—waiting (how long?) till the Sea shall give up the dead which are in it, and Death, and Hell, give up the dead which are in them. [[380]]
Have you ever thought of, or desired to know, the real meaning of that sign, seen with the human eyes of his soul by the disciple whom the Lord loved? Yes, of course you have! and what a grand and noble verse you always thought it! “And the Sea——” Softly, good friend,—I know you can say it off glibly and pompously enough, as you have heard it read a thousand times; but is it, then, merely a piece of pomp? mere drumming and trumpeting, to tell you—what might have been said in three words—that all the dead rose again, whether they had been bedridden, or drowned, or slain? If it means no more than that, is it not, to speak frankly, bombast, and even bad and half unintelligible bombast?—for what does ‘Death’ mean, as distinguished from the Sea,—the American lakes? or Hell as distinguished from Death,—a family vault instead of a grave?
But suppose it is not bombast, and does mean something that it would be well you should think of,—have you yet understood it,—much less, thought of it? Read the whole passage from the beginning: “I saw the Dead, small and great, stand before God. And the Books were opened;”—and so to the end.
‘Stand’ in renewed perfectness of body and soul—each redeemed from its own manner of Death.
For have not they each their own manner? As the seed by the drought, or the thorn,—so the soul by the soul’s hunger, and the soul’s pang;—athirst in the springless sand; choked in the return-wave of Edom; grasped by [[381]]the chasm of the earth: some, yet calling “out of the depths;” but some—“Thou didst blow with Thy wind, and the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” But now the natural grave, in which the gentle saints resigned their perfect body to the dust, and perfect spirit to Him who gave it;—and now the wide sea of the world, that drifted with its weeds so many breasts that heaved but with the heaving deep;—and now the Death that overtook the lingering step, and closed the lustful eyes;—and now the Hell, that hid with its shade, and scourged with its agony; the fierce and foul spirits that had forced its gates in flesh:[3]—all these the Loved Apostle saw compelled to restore their ruin; and all these, their prey, stand once again, renewed, as their Maker made them, before their Maker. “And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it, and Death, and Hell, the dead which were in them.”
Not bombast, good reader, in any wise; nor a merely soothing melody of charming English, to be mouthed for a ‘second lesson.’
But is it worse than bombast, then? Is it, perchance, pure Lie?
Carpaccio, at all events, thought not; and this, as I have told you, is the first practical opinion of his I want you to be well informed of.
Since that last Fors was written, one of my friends found for me the most beautiful of all the symbols in [[382]]the picture of the Dream;—one of those which leap to the eyes when they are understood, yet which, in the sweet enigma, I had deliberately twice painted, without understanding.
At the head of the princess’s bed is embroidered her shield; (of which elsewhere)—but on a dark blue-green space in the cornice above it is another very little and bright shield, it seemed,—but with no bearing. I painted it, thinking it was meant merely for a minute repetition of the escutcheon below, and that the painter had not taken the trouble to blazon the bearings again. (I might have known Carpaccio never would even omit without meaning.) And I never noticed that it was not in a line above the escutcheon, but exactly above the princess’s head. It gleams with bright silver edges out of the dark-blue ground—the point of the mortal Arrow!
At the time it was painted the sign would necessarily have been recognised in a moment; and it completes the meaning of the vision without any chance of mistake.
And it seems to me, guided by such arrow-point, the purpose of Fors that I should make clear the meaning of what I have myself said on this matter, throughout the six years in which I have been permitted to carry on the writing of these letters, and to preface their series for the seventh year, with the interpretation of this Myth of Venice.
I have told you that all Carpaccio’s sayings are of knowledge, not of opinion. And I mean by knowledge, [[383]]communicable knowledge. Not merely personal, however certain—like Job’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ but discovered truth, which can be shown to all men who are willing to receive it. No great truth is allowed by nature to be demonstrable to any person who, foreseeing its consequences, desires to refuse it. He has put himself into the power of the Great Deceiver; and will in every effort be only further deceived, and place more fastened faith in his error.
This, then, is the truth which Carpaccio knows, and would teach:—
That the world is divided into two groups of men; the first, those whose God is their God, and whose glory is their glory, who mind heavenly things; and the second, men whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame,[4] who mind earthly things. That is just as demonstrable a scientific fact as the separation of land from water. There may be any quantity of intermediate mind, in various conditions of bog;—some, wholesome Scotch peat,—some, Pontine marsh,—some, sulphurous slime, like what people call water in English manufacturing towns; but the elements of Croyance and Mescroyance are always chemically separable out of the putrescent mess: by the faith that is in it, what life or good it can still keep, or [[384]]do, is possible; by the miscreance in it, what mischief it can do, or annihilation it can suffer, is appointed for its work and fate. All strong character curdles itself out of the scum into its own place and power, or impotence: and they that sow to the Flesh do of the Flesh reap corruption; and they that sow to the Spirit, do of the Spirit reap Life.
I pause, without writing ‘everlasting,’ as perhaps you expected. Neither Carpaccio nor I know anything about Duration of life, or what the word translated ‘everlasting’ means. Nay, the first sign of noble trust in God and man, is to be able to act without any such hope. All the heroic deeds, all the purely unselfish passions of our existence, depend on our being able to live, if need be, through the Shadow of Death: and the daily heroism of simply brave men consists in fronting and accepting Death as such, trusting that what their Maker decrees for them shall be well.
But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know also, are precisely the things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and their apprentices, tell you that you can’t know, because “eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,” the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them to us,—to Carpaccio, and Angelico, and Dante, and Giotto, and Filippo Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, and me, and to every child that has been taught to know its Father in heaven,—by the [[385]]Spirit: because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit in some measure, and in such measure have entered into our rest.
“The things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Hereafter, and up there, above the clouds, you have been taught to think;—until you were informed by your land-surveyors that there was neither up nor down; but only an axis of x and an axis of y; and by aspiring aeronauts that there was nothing in the blue but damp and azote. And now you don’t believe these things are prepared anywhere? They are prepared just as much as ever, when and where they used to be: just now, and here, close at your hand. All things are prepared,—come ye to the marriage. Up and down on the old highways which your fathers trod, and under the hedges of virgin’s bower and wild rose which your fathers planted, there are the messengers crying to you to come. Nay, at your very doors, though one is just like the other in your model lodging houses,—there is One knocking, if you would open, with something better than tracts in His basket;—supper, and very material supper, if you will only condescend to eat of angel’s food first. There are meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; doth not your Father know that ye have need of these things? But if you make your belly your only love, and your meats your only masters, God shall destroy both it and them.
Truly it is hard for you to hear the low knocking in [[386]]the hubbub of your Vanity Fair. You are living in the midst of the most perfectly miscreant crowd that ever blasphemed creation. Not with the old snap-finger blasphemy of the wantonly profane, but the deliberate blasphemy of Adam Smith: ‘Thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour’s goods.’ Here’s one of my own boys getting up that lesson beside me for his next Oxford examination. For Adam Smith is accepted as the outcome of Practical Philosophy, at our universities; and their youth urged to come out high in competitive blasphemy. Not the old snap-finger sort,[5] I repeat, but that momentary sentiment, deliberately adopted for a national law. I must turn aside for a minute or two to explain this to you.
The eighth circle of Dante’s Hell (compare Fors of December, 1872, p. 13,) is the circle of Fraud, divided into ten gulphs; in the seventh of these gulphs are the Thieves, by Fraud,—brilliantly now represented by the men who covet their neighbours’ goods and take them in any way they think safe, by high finance, sham companies, cheap goods, or any other of our popular modern ways.
Now there is not in all the Inferno quite so studied [[387]]a piece of descriptive work as Dante’s relation of the infection of one cursed soul of this crew by another. They change alternately into the forms of men and serpents, each biting the other into this change—
“Ivy ne’er clasped
A doddered oak, as round the other’s limbs
The hideous monster intertwined his own;
Then, as they both had been of burning wax,
Each melted into other.”
Read the story of the three transformations for yourself (Cantos xxiv., xxv.), and then note the main point of all, that the spirit of such theft is especially indicated by its intense and direct manner of blasphemy:—
“I did not mark,
Through all the gloomy circle of the abyss,
Spirit that swelled so proudly ’gainst its God,
Not him who headlong fell from Thebes.”
The soul is Vanni Fucci’s, who rifled the sacristy of St. James of Pistoja, and charged Vanni della Nona with the sacrilege, whereupon the latter suffered death. For in those days, death was still the reward of sacrilege by the Law of State; whereas, while I write this Fors, I receive notice of the conjunction of the sacred and profane civic powers of London to de-consecrate, and restore to the definitely pronounced ‘unholy’ spaces [[388]]of this world, the church of All-Hallows, wherein Milton was christened.
A Bishop was there to read, as it were, the Lord’s Prayer backwards, or at least address it to the Devil instead of to God, to pray that over this portion of British Metropolitan territory His Kingdom might again come.
A notable sign of the times,—completed, in the mythical detail of it, by the defiance of the sacred name of the Church, and the desecration of good men’s graves,[6] lest, perchance, the St. Ursulas of other lands should ever come on pilgrimage, rejoicing, over the sea, hopeful to see such holy graves among the sights of London.
Infinitely ridiculous, such travelling as St. Ursula’s, you think,—to see dead bodies, forsooth, and ask, with every poor, bewildered, Campagna peasant, “Dov’ è San Paolo?” Not at all such the object of modern English and American tourists!—nay, sagacious Mr. Spurgeon came home from his foreign tour, and who more proud than he to have scorned, in a rational manner, all relics and old bones? I have some notes by me, ready for February, concerning the unrejoicing manner of travel adopted by the sagacious modern tourist, and his objects of contemplation, for due comparison with St. Ursula’s; [[389]]but must to-day bring her lesson close home to your own thoughts.
Look back to the seventh page, and the twenty-fourth, of the Fors of January, for this year. The first tells you, what this last sign of Church desecration now confirms, that you are in the midst of men who, if there be truth in Christianity at all, must be punished for their open defiance of Heaven by the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit, and the triumph of the Evil One. And you are told in the last page that by the service of God only you can recover the presence of the Holy Ghost of Life and Health—the Comforter.
This—vaguely and imperfectly, during the last six years, proclaimed to you, as it was granted me—in this coming seventh year I trust to make more simply manifest; and to show you how every earthly good and possession will be given you, if you seek first the Kingdom of God and His Justice. If, in the assurance of Faith, you can ask and strive that such kingdom may be with you, though it is not meat and drink, but Justice, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost,—if, in the first terms I put to you for oath,[7] you will do good work, whether you live or die, and so lie down at night, whether hungry or weary, at least in peace of heart and surety of honour;—then, you shall rejoice, in your [[390]]native land, and on your nursing sea, in all fulness of temporal possession;—then, for you the earth shall bring forth her increase, and for you the floods clap their hands;—throughout your sacred pilgrimage, strangers here and sojourners with God, yet His word shall be with you,—“the land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine,” and after your numbered days of happy loyalty, you shall go to rejoice in His Fatherland, and with His people. [[391]]