NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. Affairs of the Company.
No. 50. G. £10 10s.
This is a subscription of five guineas for each year: this amount completes that sum (with the £15 15s. which appeared at p. 65, February Fors) for each of the five years.
The publication of the following letter, with its answer, will, I hope, not cause Mr. Tarrant any further displeasure. I have only in the outset to correct his statement that the payment of £10 14s. 11d. was on my behalf. It is simply payment to another lawyer. And my first statement was absolutely accurate; I never said Mr. Tarrant had himself taxed, but that he had been “employed in taxing”; I do not concern myself with more careful analysis, when the accounts are all in print. My accusation is against the ‘legal profession generally,’ not against a firm which I have chosen as an entirely trustworthy one, to be employed both in St. George’s business and my own.
2, Bond Court, Walbrook, 25th April, 1876.
Dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have the April ‘Fors,’ in which I see you have published our account of costs against you, amounting to £47 13s. 4d. The document was yours, and you had a perfect right to lay it before your readers, but you are the first client who has ever thought it necessary to put such a document of mine to such a use. I don’t know, however, that it will do me any injury, although the statement preceding it is somewhat inaccurate, [[190]]because our costs of the transfer of the Sheffield property were £26 15s. 11d., which included a payment of £10 14s. 11d. made on your behalf, leaving our costs at £16 1s., the other portion of the £47 13s. 4d. being costs relating to the constitution of the St. George’s Company, leaving altogether £29 14s. 11d. only payable to us beyond money paid on your account. It is hardly fair, therefore, to say that I employed myself in taxing the transfer of the property to nearly £50.
As to the charge for letters (the writing of which is really not brickmakers’ work), you must bear in mind that the entire of your matters had to be done by correspondence, for which you are fairly chargeable; and I cannot accuse myself of having written a single letter that was unnecessary.
As to the position of the St. George’s Company, it is not a legal company, if by that you mean a company recognized by law: it has neither the advantages nor disadvantages of companies incorporated in accordance with the provisions of the several Acts of Parliament relating to such matters. It is not a legal trust of a charitable nature, if by that term be meant a trust which is liable to the supervision or interference of the Charity Commissioners. It is a number of persons unincorporated, but associated for other purposes than that of gain. It is on a similar footing to such a society as that for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The Master will be personally responsible for the debts of the Company contracted by his order. If you desire to have a legal-Company, or the supervision of the Charity Commissioners, you must give way in many points which you have hitherto considered indispensable to your scheme. On the 29th February last we sent you a specimen of the form in which we proposed to draw up the memorandum for each Companion to subscribe. If you will return us this with any remarks upon it which may occur to you, we will at once have it engrossed, and send it you to be signed by all the Companions. [[191]]
We were expecting a call from you when you were in town some time since, and should have then have discussed this subject with you, and also the subject of the trust deed which will have to be executed by the Master of the Company.
We will act upon your suggestion, and forward the deed of the Sheffield property to Mr. Bagshawe. Shall I also send all the title deeds to him relating to the property? Tell me this.
Faithfully yours,
W. P. Tarrant.Professor Ruskin,
Arthur Severn, Esq., Herne Hill, S.E.
(Answer.)
Patterdale, 6th May, 1876
Dear Mr. Tarrant,—I was surprised and vexed by the opening of your letter of 25th April, showing that you had not in the least hitherto understood the scope or meaning of my present work. There is not the smallest unfriendliness in my publication of your account. No client ever had occasion to do it before, of course;—you never had a client before engaged in steady and lifelong contest with the existing principles of the Law, the Church, and the Army,—had you? The publication of your accounts of course can do you no harm, if they are fair; nor have, or had I, the slightest idea of their being otherwise. All accounts for St. George are to be printed: the senders-in must look to the consequences.
The delay in my returning your draft of the rules of Company is because every lawyer I speak to tells me of a new difficulty. The whole piece of business, you remember, arose from my request to you simply to secure a piece of ground to our trustees, which had been given us by Mr. Baker. Now I find at the last moment that neither Mr. Baker nor anybody else can give us a piece of land at all, but must sell it us.
Next, I want to know if this form, as you have drawn it up, [[192]]is approved by me, what are you going to do with it? What is the good of it? Will the writing of it in black letter make us a legal company, like a railway company, capable of holding land? Do the Charity Commissioners interfere with their business? or must we blow some people to bits or smash them into jelly, to prove our want of charity,—and get leave, therefore, to do what we like with our own?
Fix your minds, and Mr. Barber’s, on this one point—the grip of the land. If you can’t give us that, send us in your accounts, and let us be done with the matter. If you can, on the document as it stands, write it out on the rubbish your modern stationers call parchment, and do what you will with it, so.
I am really ashamed to give any farther account, just now, of the delays in our land work, or of little crosses and worries blocking my first attempt at practice. One of the men whom I thought I had ready for this Worcestershire land, being ordered, for trial, to do a little bit of rough work in Yorkshire that I might not torment Mr. Baker with his freshmanship, threw up the task at once, writing me a long letter of which one sentence was enough for me,—that “he would do his share, but no more.” These infernal notions of Equality and Independence are so rooted, now, even in the best men’s minds, that they don’t so much as know even what Obedience or Fellowship mean! Fancy one of Nelson’s or Lord Cochrane’s men retreating from his gun, with the avowed resolution to ‘do no more than his share’! However, I know there’s good in this man, and I doubt not he will repent, and break down no more; but I shall not try him again for a year. And I must be forgiven my St. George’s accounts this month. I really can’t let the orchises and hyacinths go out of flower while I’m trying to cast sums; and I’ve been two whole days at work on the [[193]]purple marsh orchis alone, which my botanical readers will please observe is in St. George’s schools to be called ‘Porphyria veris,’ ‘Spring Purplet.’ It is, I believe, Ophelia’s “long purple.” There are a quantity of new names to be invented for the whole tribe, their present ones being not by St. George endurable.
The subjoined letter gives me great pleasure: it is from a son of my earliest Oxford friend: who, as his father helped me in educating myself, is now helping me in the education of others. I print it entire; it may give some of my readers an idea of the minor hindrances which meet one at every step, and take as much time to conquer as large ones. The work to be done is to place a series of the simple chemical elements as ‘Imps’ in a pretty row of poetical Bottles at Sheffield.
“Broad Street, Oxford, March 30, 1876.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I knocked in vain at your ‘oak’ last night when I came to Corpus to report progress, and also to ask you two questions, which must be put to you by letter, as there is not much time to lose if you wish to have the alkaline earths ready by the time you go to Sheffield. Firstly, do you wish me to see about getting the metals of the alkalies, and if so which of them do you want? Some of them are extremely expensive,—calcium, for instance, being 2d. a grain; but then, as it is very light a very small quantity would be required as a specimen. The other questions were about the amount of the oxides, and about the shape of the bottles to hold them. I have in your absence chosen some long sample bottles which are very beautiful of their kind, and even if they do not meet your approval they can easily be changed when you return to Oxford. I am progressing fairly well with the earths—Magnesia is ready; Alumina and Baryta partly made, but not yet pure, for it is not more easy in chemistry to get a perfect thing than in any other matter with which man has anything to do, and to-day I have been extremely unfortunate [[194]]with the Baryta, having tried two methods of making it, broken four crucibles, and, worst of all, failed to make it in a state of purity: however I shall have one more try to-morrow, and no doubt shall succeed. If there is any chance of your being in Oxford before Easter, I will not make the Silica, since the process is very beautiful, and one which no doubt you would like to see. Please excuse the length of my letter, and believe me,
“Affectionately yours,
“Theodore D. Acland.”
II. Affairs of the Master.
I am aghast at the columnar aspect of any account given in satisfactory detail; and will only gradually, as I have space, illustrate my own expenditure and its course. That unexplained hundred of last month, diminished itself, I find, thus:
| £ | s. | d. | |
| 10 | 0 | 0 | |
| Klein, (final account on dismissal to Rotterdam, paying his passage, and a shilling or two over) | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| Downs, for my London quarterly pensioners | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| Morley, (Oxford bookbinding) | 3 | 1 | 6 |
| Easter presents | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 73 | 1 | 6 | |
| Leaving a balance of | 26 | 18 | 6 |
to be added to the £200 of personal expenses in this month’s accounts. About a hundred and twenty of this has gone in a fortnight’s posting, with Mr. and Mrs. Severn, from London to Coniston, stopping to see St. Albans, Peterborough, Croyland, Stamford and Burleigh, Grantham, Newark, Lincoln, our new ground at Sheffield, Pomfret, Knaresborough, Ripon, Fountain’s, Richmond, Mortham Tower, and Brougham Castle. A pleasant life, you think? Yes,—if I led an unpleasant one, however dutiful, I could not write any of my books, least of all, Fors. But I am glad, if you honestly think it a pleasant life; why, if [[195]]so, my richer readers, do you drive only round the parks, every day, instead of from place to place through England, learning a thing or two on the road? Of the rest of the ‘self’ money, I leave further account till next month: it is not all gone yet. I give, however, for a typical example, one of Downs’s weekly bills, reaching the symmetrical total of £7 7s. 7d., or a guinea and a penny a day, which I think is about the average. Of the persons named therein as receiving weekly wage, Hersey is our old under-gardener, now rheumatic, and as little able to earn his dinner as I am myself; Rusch, my old lapidary, who cuts in the course of the week what pebbles he can for me; Best, an old coachman, who used to come to us from livery-stable on occasion, and now can’t drive any more; Christy, an old woman who used to work for my mother.
| 1876. | £ | s. | d. | |
| April 22. | Cash in hand | 30 | 12 | 8 |
| 29. | Men’s Wages | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| Coachman’s Book | 1 | 16 | 10 | |
| Charities | 0 | 16 | 0 | |
| Sundries | 0 | 13 | 9 | |
| £7 | 7 | 7 | ||
| April 29. | Balance in hand | £23 | 5 | 1 |
| Men’s Wages. | ||||
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| April 29. | David Downs | 1 | 15 | 0 |
| Thomas Hersey | 1 | 5 | 0 | |
| John Rusch | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| £4 | 1 | 0 | ||
| Coachman’s Book. | ||||
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| April 29. | Plate Powder, 1s.; Oil, 10d. | 0 | 1 | 10 |
| Soap and Sand | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Wages | 1 | 14 | 0 | |
| £1 | 16 | 10[[196]] | ||
| Charities. | ||||
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| William Best | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| Mrs. Christy | 0 | 6 | 0 | |
| £0 | 16 | 0 | ||
| Sundries. | ||||
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| April 22. | Postage | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 24. | Rail and ’Bus, British Museum | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Cord for Boxes, 1s. 6d.; Postage, 1s. 6½d. | 0 | 3 | 0½ | |
| 25. | Horse and Cart, Boxes to Station | 0 | 7 | 6 |
| Carman, 1s.; Booking ditto, 6d. | 0 | 1 | 6 | |
| Postage | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| 26 | and 28. Postage | 0 | 0 | 2½ |
| £0 | 13 | 9 | ||
After thus much of miniature illustration, I have only to explain of the broad effects in the account below, that my Oxford secretary, who has £200 a year, does such work for me connected with my Professorship as only a trained scholar could do, leaving me free here to study hyacinths. I wish I could give him the Professorship itself, but must do as I am bid by Oxford. My younger secretary, who has £100 a year, is this year put into office, for St. George’s correspondence; and I must beg my good friends—now, I am thankful to say, gathering a little to St. George’s work,—not to think themselves slighted in being answered by his hand, for mine is weary.
| 1876. | £ | s. | d. | |
| April 16. | Balance | 1511 | 10 | 1 |
| May 1. | Half-year’s Stipend of Slade Professorship | 179 | 0 | 0 |
| 1690 | 10 | 1 | ||
| 464 | 11 | 0 | ||
| Balance, May 16th | £1225 | 19 | 1 [[197]] | |
| April 20 | and 30. Self | 200 | 0 | 0 |
| 20. | Downs | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 22. | Photographs (Leucothea and Lippi) | 16 | 5 | 0 |
| 25. | Tailor’s Account | 33 | 6 | 0 |
| May 1. | Oxford Secretary | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| 1. | Raffaelle for May and June | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| 15. | Burgess | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| £464 | 11 | 0 |
III.
“Hastings, May 15.
“My dear Ruskin,—I enclose two extracts, cut from the same day’s paper, which contain so grimly humorous a parallel between the ways in which the ‘Protestant Church’ and ‘the world’ are engaged in ‘obliterating all traces of the Virgin Mary,’ that I thought you might possibly use them in ‘Fors’ or elsewhere.
“Yours affectionately,
“C. Patmore.”
(The following are the two extracts. Before giving them, I must reply to my greatly honoured and loved friend, that both the Bristol destroyers of images and New York destroyers of humanity, are simply—Lost Sheep of the great Catholic Church; account of whom will be required at her hand.)
“Iconoclasm at Bristol.—Our Bristol correspondent writes: The removal of the ‘imagery’ from the north porch of Bristol Cathedral has created considerable excitement in the city and in Clifton. As a member of the capitular body who is known to strongly object to the figures was seen near the Cathedral late on Wednesday night, the clerk of the works employed ‘watchers,’ his intention being to refuse admission to other than his own workmen. On Thursday morning he had occasion to leave the works to go to the quarries at Corsham, and while he was absent a gang of men, under the orders of the chapter clerk, entered the gates, and before the clerk of the works, who was telegraphed for, could [[198]]return, hauled down the four statues and obliterated all traces of the Virgin Mary, doing much damage to other carving in the process of removal. The last has by no means been heard of this affair. The statues cost over £100 each, but the money value of the ‘imagery’ is not considered by the Restoration Committee. Their contention is that, until the work was completed and handed over to the Cathedral body, it belonged to the Restoration Committee; and it is believed that the right of the Chapter to act as they have done will be tested in a court of law. Feeling is so strong against the action of the Dean and Chapter that plenty of money would be forthcoming to prosecute such an inquiry.”—Pall Mall Gazette, April 7, 1876.
“One of the latest ‘sensations’ in New York has been a ‘female boxing match,’ aptly described by the New York Times as a ‘novel and nonsensical exhibition.’ The combatants—or ‘lady contestants,’ as they are called in the report of the proceedings—were two ballet-girls, of the kind known as ‘variety dancers.’ One, Miss Saunders, wore a white bodice, purple knee-breeches, which she had borrowed from an Ethiopian serenader, red stockings, and shoes. The other, Miss Harland, was attired in blue trunks and white tights. Both appeared nervous, were very pale, tried to blush, and ‘partially succeeded.’ When the fighting began, Miss Harland ‘did not know what to do with her hands.’ Miss Saunders, however, had her fists more at command, and, after some preliminary sparring, succeeded in striking her opponent ‘square in the face.’ Miss Harland, on her side, ‘by a vicious blow from the shoulder,’ managed to disarrange Miss Saunders’s back hair. Both ladies then smiled. In the end Miss Harland lost the match, ‘owing to her confirmed habit of swinging her hands around in the air.’ Miss Saunders was declared the winner, and carried off a prize of 200 dols. and a piece of silver plate; Miss Harland received [[199]]a ten-dollar bill from an amateur who thought she deserved consolation; and the two ‘lady contestants’ left the stage arm-in-arm.”—Pall Mall Gazette, April 7, 1876.
IV. In last Fors, though I thought I knew my ‘Old Mortality’ well enough, I carelessly wrote ‘Elspeth,’ for ‘Elizabeth,’ (meaning Bessie Maclure); and the misprint ‘Arannah’ for ‘Araunah’ escaped my eyes three times over. The more grotesque one of ‘changes’ for ‘charges,’ in p. 168, line 25, was I suppose appointed by Fors to chastise me for incurable flirtation. I wish I knew who these two schoolgirls are, whom I’ve got to finish my letter to if I can, this time.
My dears, will you please, for I can’t rewrite what I’ve said so often, read, when you have opportunity, the letter to a young lady in Fors 34, pp. 29, 30.[6] Respecting the third article in that letter, I have now a few words to add; (read also, if you can, what is said of the Word of God, in Letters 45 and 46). I told you in last Fors that you would have great difficulty in getting leave from English society to obey Christ. Fors has since sent me, in support of this statement, a paper called ‘The Christian,’—the number for Thursday, May 11,—in the fifteenth page of which is an article on young ladies headed “What can they do?” from which I take the following passage:—
“There have been times of special prayer for young men and women. Could there not be also for the very large class of young ladies who do not go out into society? They have no home duties to detain them, as many in a humbler condition; they have hours and hours of leisure, and know not how to spend them—partly from need of being directed, but more so from the prejudices [[200]]and hindrances in their way. Their hearts are burning to do something for Christ, but they are not allowed, partly because it is considered ‘improper,’ and for a variety of reasons.
“There is a cry on every side for labourers. There are numbers longing to respond; if not wholly to dedicate their lives, at least a portion of their days, to active Christian service, and only a wave of united prayer can throw these objections aside, and free the large band who are so willing.
“A bright young Christian came to me this week. She is tired of meetings to which she is constantly taken, but never allowed to work in the inquiry-room at them,—hindered from taking up the least bit of work, till at last she cannot even ask for it. Almost to ‘kill time,’ she has taken up a secular corresponding agency.”
Now that it is ‘considered improper’ by the world that you should do anything for Christ, is entirely true, and always true; and therefore it was that your Godfathers and Godmothers, in your name, renounced the “vain pomp and glory of the world,” with all covetous desires of the same—see baptismal service—(I wonder if you had pretty names—won’t you tell me?) but I much doubt if you, either privately or from the pulpit of your doubtless charming church, have ever been taught what the “vain pomp and glory of the world” was.
Well, do you want to be better dressed than your schoolfellows? Some of them are probably poor, and cannot afford to dress like you; or, on the other hand, you may be poor yourselves, and may be mortified at their being dressed better than you. Put an end to all that at once, by resolving to go down into the deep of your girl’s heart, where you will find, inlaid by Christ’s own hand, a better thing than vanity; pity. And be sure of this, that, although in a truly Christian land, every young girl would be dressed beautifully and delightfully,—in this entirely heathen and Baal-worshipping land of ours, not one girl in ten has either decent or healthy clothing, and that you have no [[201]]business now to wear anything fine yourself, but are bound to use your full strength and resources to dress as many of your poor neighbours as you can. What of fine dress your people insist upon your wearing, take—and wear proudly and prettily, for their sakes; but, so far as in you lies, be sure that every day you are labouring to clothe some poorer creatures. And if you cannot clothe, at least help, with your hands. You can make your own bed; wash your own plate; brighten your own furniture,—if nothing else.
‘But that’s servant’s work’? Of course it is. What business have you to hope to be better than a servant of servants? ‘God made you a lady’? Yes, he has put you, that is to say, in a position in which you may learn to speak your own language beautifully; to be accurately acquainted with the elements of other languages; to behave with grace, tact, and sympathy to all around you; to know the history of your country, the commands of its religion, and the duties of its race. If you obey His will in learning these things, you will obtain the power of becoming a true ‘lady;’ and you will become one, if while you learn these things you set yourself, with all the strength of your youth and womanhood, to serve His servants, until the day come when He calls you to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
You may thus become a Christ’s lady, or you may, if you will, become a Belial’s lady, taking Belial’s gift of miserable idleness, living on the labour and shame of others, and deceiving them and yourself by lies about Providence, until you perish in hell with the rest of such, shrieking the bitter cry, “When saw we Thee?”
V.
“3, Athole Crescent, Perth, 10th May, 1876.
“Sir,—Thinking that it may interest you, I take the liberty of writing to let you know that the ‘Lead’ is not at all in the state [[202]]you suppose it to be; but still runs down, very clear, by the side of the North Inch and past Rose Terrace, and, judging from the numbers of them at this moment playing by it, affords no small delight to the children.
“I am, yours most respectfully,
“A Reader of ‘Fors.’”
VI.
“Easthampstead Rectory, Bracknell,
“April 20, 1876.“My dear Ruskin,—I have just received this month’s ‘Fors,’ but not read it, (of course not; my friends never do, except to find the mistakes,) as I am off to Dublin, but as regards Psalm lxxxvii., (note, p. 110,) I expounded it in a sermon some time since, and was talking of it to a very learned Hebraist last Monday. Rahab, there, is generally understood to mean ‘the monster,’ and has nothing to do, beyond resemblance of sound, with Rahab the harlot. And the monster is the crocodile, as typical of Egypt. In Psalm lxxxix. 10, (the Bible version, not the Prayer Book,) you will see Rahab explained in the margin, by ‘or Egypt.’
“Perhaps Rahab the harlot was called by the same name from the rapacity of her class, just as in Latin lupa.
“The whole Psalm is badly translated, and, as we have it, unintelligible. But it is really charged with deep prophetical meaning. I cannot write more, so believe me,
“Ever yours affectionately,
“O. Gordon.“I hope you will have had a pleasant journey when you receive this. The Greek Septuagint is much better than the English, but not good. As regards the general meaning, you have divined it very correctly.”
[[203]]
[1] ‘Early History of Mankind,’ (a book of rare value and research, however,) p. 379. [↑]
[2] In the meantime, if any of my readers will look at the leading articles of the ‘Monetary Gazette,’ whose editor I thank with all my heart and soul, for the first honest commercial statements I ever saw in English journals, they will get sufficient light on such matters. [↑]
[4] See, on that subject, the third number of Deucalion. [↑]
[5] Article III. of Correspondence. [↑]
[6] I should like my lady readers in general to have, of back Fors numbers, at least, 30, 34, 36, 45, 46, and 48: those who have the complete book should scratch out the eleventh line in p. 18 of the last Index, and put the 10th line of it thus: “Ladies, and girls, advice to, 30, 2; 34, 29; 45, 212; 48, 271.” [↑]