NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. Affairs of the Company.
The new purchases of land round our little museum at Sheffield have been made at rather under than over the market price of land in the district; and they will enable me, as I get more funds, to extend the rooms of the museum under skylight as far as I wish. I did not want to buy so soon; but Fors giving me the opportunity, I must take it at her hand. Our cash accounts will in future be drawn up, as below, by our Companion, Mr. Rydings, to whom all questions, corrections, etc., are to be sent, and all subscriptions under fifty pounds.
[For Cash Account, see next page (230).]
The following letter from Messrs. Tarrant will be seen to be in reply to mine of the 6th June, printed in last Fors. From the tone of it, as well as from careful examination of my legal friends, I perceive that it is out of my power to give the Company a legal status, according to the present law of England, unless it be permitted to gather dividends for itself, instead of store for the nation, and to put its affairs in the hands of a number of persons who know nothing about them, instead of in the hands of one person who is acquainted with them.
Under these circumstances, I consider it to be best that the Companions should settle their own legal status with the lawyers; and this the more, as I do not choose to run the Society into farther expense by the continuance of correspondence between these legal gentlemen and me, without the slightest chance of [[231]]either party ever understanding the other. Accordingly, I hereby authorize Mr. Robert Somervell, of Hazelthwaite, Windermere, to collect the opinions of the other Companions, (a list of whom I have put in his hands,) and to act in their name, as they shall direct him, respecting the tenure of the Company’s lands and property, now and in future. And I hereby hold myself quit of all responsibility touching such tenure, maintaining simply the right of the Master of the Company to direct their current expenditures. [[230]]
CASH ACCOUNT OF ST. GEORGE’S COMPANY (From March 15th to June 15th, 1876).
| Dr. | Cr. | ||||||||
| 1876. | £ | s. | d. | 1876. | £ | s. | d. | ||
| March 15. | To Balance at Union Bank, London (see April Fors, p. 128) | 157 | 11 | 10 | April 17. | By Benjamin Bradshawe (advance on new purchase of land at Sheffield) | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| To,, Balance in Mr. Ruskin’s hand (see May Fors, p. 169) | 107 | 16 | 5 | 23. | By,, Theodore D. Acland (expenses of chemicals for Sheffield Museum) | 5 | 0 | 0 | |
| March | To,, F. D. Drewitt (tithe of first earning) | 1 | 4 | 1 | May 7. | By,, Henry Swan (Salary and Expenses at Museum) | 55 | 15 | 3 |
| To,, Miss M. Guest | 2 | 2 | 0 | 23. | By,, Mrs. Talbot (repairing expenses on our cottages at Barmouth, with other expensesfor educational purposes, afterwards to be explained) | ||||
| April | To,, James Burdon (tithe of wage) | 2 | 10 | 0 | 27 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To,, Wm. B. Graham (gift) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 26. | By,, Benjamin Bagshawe (on completion of purchase at Sheffield) | 300 | 0 | 0 | |
| To,, Anon., post stamp, Birkenhead | 1 | 10 | 0 | ||||||
| April 16 | To,, Egbert Rydings | 25 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| To,, Miss S. Beever | 7 | 0 | 6 | ||||||
| To,, Anon. (tithe gift for half-year 1876) | 50 | 0 | 0 | ||||||
| To,, Rev. R. St. J. Tyrwhitt | 20 | 0 | 0 | ||||||
| To,, No. 50, G. | 10 | 10 | 0 | ||||||
| June 16 | To,, Balance due to Mr. Ruskin | 31 | 10 | 5 | |||||
| £417 | 15 | 3 | £417 | 15 | 3 | ||||
[[231]]
“Re ST. GEORGE’S COMPANY.
“2, Bond Court, Walbrook, London,
“31st May, 1876.“Dear Sir,—We have carefully considered the points raised in your letter to us of the 6th inst., and have also consulted Mr. Barber upon them, and with reference thereto we advise you that the law stands shortly thus:—by the 13th Eliz., c. 5, a voluntary settlement of real or personal estate will be void and may be set aside by a creditor of the settlor, upon his showing an intent on the part of the settlor to defraud his creditors; and such an intent may be inferred from the circumstances. The Bankruptcy Act 1869 (32 and 33 Vict., c. 71) contains a still more stringent provision where the voluntary settlor is a trader. These are liabilities and risks which your association cannot avoid; but they are more imaginary than real, as the donors of land to the Company are not likely to make a voluntary gift for the purpose of defeating their creditors. By the 27th Eliz., c. 4, a voluntary gift or settlement of real estate, unless it be in favour of a charity, will be avoided by a subsequent bonâ fide sale for value, even though the purchaser have notice of the voluntary settlement. This, too, is an ordinary risk from which you cannot escape, unless you are willing to submit to the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners. It does not often happen that a person who has made a voluntary [[232]]settlement of real estate seeks to stultify his own act by a subsequent sale of the same estate, but the payment of a small consideration, or even matter ex post facto, would prevent the deed being voluntary, and the risk is not a very serious one.
“We do not recollect Mr. Baker’s name, and we find no mention of it in any of your letters to us: we think you must have meant Mr. Talbot, with whose solicitors we were in communication as to some cottages and land, and it was arranged that that matter should stand over until the St. George’s Company was constituted.
“As to the writing out of the memorandum and rules for signature of the Companions—the case is this: you receive donations from people who give them to you on the faith of a certain scheme of yours being duly carried out; it is therefore necessary that the leading features of that scheme should be reduced to writing, in order that there may be no misunderstanding between the givers and receivers of these donations as to the objects to which they are devoted. The signatures of the Companions are a feature of your published scheme, and in addition will be useful to show who are the acknowledged Companions having a direct interest in it—the right to elect and control the action of the Master, elect Trustees, etc., etc.; and the signatures will be the evidence of the deliberate submission of the Companions to be bound by the rules to which they subscribe their names.
“But all this will not make the St. George’s Company other than a voluntary association of persons which the law will not recognize as a corporation.
“The Companions of St. George will be capable of holding land, but not as the St. George’s Company,—that is, not as a corporation. Land must be held by or for them as individuals. You may have a piece of land conveyed to, say two hundred Companions; naming each of them; but for the sake of convenience [[233]]you would have it conveyed to two or three who should hold it upon trust for the Companions generally.
“You can only obtain the countenance and supervision of the law for your Company on certain conditions, and when you came to us we were careful to explain this to you. You at once told us the conditions would not do for your Company, therefore we have had to do the best we could for you, treating your Company as an association without the countenance and supervision of the law.
“Forgive us for quoting from a letter of yours to us of the 27th May, 1875. ‘Mr. Barber’s notion is the popular one of a Mob of Directors. But St. George’s Company must have only one Master. They may dismiss him at their pleasure, but they must not bother him. I am going to draw up a form myself, and submit it to Mr. Barber for criticism and completion.’ We think you may rest satisfied with matters as they are.
“We remain, dear Sir,
“Yours very truly,
“Tarrant & Mackrell.“John Ruskin, Esq.
“Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.”
II. Affairs of the Master.
| £ | s. | d. | |
| Balance, May 16th. | 1225 | 19 | 1 |
| 460 | 0 | 0 | |
| £765 | 19 | 1 |
| Spent. | £ | s. | d. | ||
| May 17. | [a.] Messrs. Weldon and Inglis | 23 | 0 | 0 | |
| [b.] Mr. Stowe, Camberwell Green | 11 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Warren and Jones | 21 | 19 | 3 | ||
| June 1. | [c.] Annie Brickland | 10 | 0 | 0 | |
| 8. | [d.] Furniture of new Lodge | 300 | 0 | 0 | |
| Downs | 44 | 0 | 9 | ||
| 3. | Kate | 50 | 0 | 0 | |
| £460 | 0 | 0 |
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[a] and [b]. The first of these bills is for a sealskin jacket; the second for a gold and pearl frame to a miniature. Respecting my need for these articles, I have more to say when my lecture on Jewels can be got published: it is fine weather just now, and I can’t see to it.
[c.] In 1871, in one of my walks at Abingdon, (see Fors, Letters IV. and VI.,) I saw some ragged children playing by the roadside on the bank of a ditch, and gathering what buttercups they could find. Watching them a little while, I at last asked what they were doing. ‘This is my garden,’ answered a little girl about nine years old. ‘Well, but gardens ought to be of use; this is only full of buttercups. Why don’t you plant some strawberries in it?’ ‘I have none to plant.’ ‘If you had a little garden of your own, and some to plant, would you take care of them?’ ‘That I would.’ Thereupon I told her to come and ask for me at the Crown and Thistle, and with my good landlady Mrs. Wonnacott’s help, rented a tiny piece of ground for her. Her father and mother have since died; and her brothers and sisters (four, in all,) are in the Union, at Abingdon. I did not like to let this child go there too; so I’ve sent her to learn shepherding at a kindly shepherd’s; close to Arundel, on the farm of the friend whose son (with perhaps a little help from his sister) took me out foxhunting; and examined the snail-shells for me. This ten pounds is for her board, etc., till she can be made useful.
[d.] I had settled my servant Crawley, with his wife and his three children, in a good house here at my gate. He spent his savings in furnishing it, in a much more costly manner than I thought quite proper; but that, (as I then supposed,) was his affair, more than mine. His wife died last year: and now both he and I think he will be more useful to me at Oxford than Coniston. So I send him to Oxford,—but have to pay him for his house-furniture, which is very provoking and tiresome, and the kind of expense one does not calculate on. The curious troublesomeness [[235]]of Fors to me in all business matters has always been one of the most grotesque conditions of my life. The names of Warren and Jones appear for the last time in my accounts, for I have had to give up my tea-shop, owing to the (too surely mortal) illness of my active old servant, Harriet Tovey,—a great grief to me, no less than an utter stop to my plans in London.
III. I somewhat regret, for my friend’s sake, that he desires me to print the subjoined letter in its entirety, if at all. I must print his answer to my question about Usury, for which I am heartily grateful to him, for reference in next Fors; and can only therefore do as he bids me with the rest, which he has written more hastily than is his habit. What answer it seems to me to need will be found in the attached notes.
“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—It did not need your kind letters by the post to assure me that the rebuke pronounced on me by Fors in June was meant in the most friendly spirit—for my good and that of all men. Fors set me thinking, and, as you urged me to say what I thought, I began to write you a letter, partly to show that I am not such so repulsive a person as you paint, ([a]) or at least that it is not the fault of Comte if I am; partly to show that, whilst agreeing with you very much about modern life, I find other reasons for trusting that the world as a whole improves. I owe you, and the age owes you, profound gratitude for much noble teaching; and it is very sad to me to find you reviling ([b]) other teachers to whom we owe much, and who know a thousand things about which you have told us nothing. And indiscriminate abuse of all that the human race has now become, wounds my ear as if I heard one cursing our own fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. If you believe that ‘the entire system of modern life is corrupted [[236]]with the ghastliest forms of injustice and untruth,’ I wonder that you believe in God, or any future, in effort at all, or in anything but despair. ([c])
“But my letter to you grew at last to such a length that I must find for it another place, and you or any reader of Fors who may take the trouble to look, may see what I wish to put to you in the ‘Fortnightly Review.’ I wanted especially to point out that the impression you have conveyed about Comte and his teaching is almost exactly the contrary of the truth. You speak as if Comte were a physiologist, ([d]) mostly occupied with frogs and lice, whereas he is mostly occupied with history, morality, and religion; as if he insisted on the origin of man from the protozoa, whereas no one has more earnestly repudiated such speculations; as if he claimed political and public careers for women, whereas no one has said more against everything of the kind; as if he looked on modern industrial and social life with admiration, whereas he preaches a regeneration of our lives far more searching than any which you even contemplate; lastly, you speak of him and his students as if they were forbidden all sympathy with the spirit of ages past, whereas the reverence which Comte has expressed for the Middle Age at its best, its religion, its chivalry, its poetry, and its art, far exceeds in depth and completeness of spiritual insight even all the fine things which you yourself have taught us.
“Now I ask you, who love the very soul of truth, to repair an injustice which you have done in representing Comte ([e]) to teach quite the contrary of what you will find, if you turn to his books, that he does teach. I give a trifling instance. You write as if it were sheer impertinence in me, a student of positivism, ([f]) to allude to a mediæval building or speak of a tracery. Now the truth is that some of Comte’s profoundest thoughts relate to the moral and spiritual meaning of these sacred relics; and for my own part, though I know nothing of [[237]]the matter, some of the best seasons of my life have been given to companionship with these most sublime monuments, and study of the ‘writing on the wall,’—or all that men have spared.
“I say nothing about others whose views you may wish to class under the general title ‘Evolution,’ or of a lady whom I am sorry to see you speak of as ‘Cobbe.’ I have never shared all the opinions of those to whom you allude, and they are not followers of Comte. I shall say nothing about them; though I should like to know on what grounds you think yourself entitled to call Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. John Stuart Mill—geese. ([g]) The letter addressed to me in Fors has reference to Positivism, or it should have been addressed to some one else; and I assure you that every one of the doctrines which you ascribe to Positivists are not held by them at all, but quite the contrary are held.
“Whether the world is wholly worse than it was of old, is a very big matter on which I cannot now enter. I do not think it can be settled by statutes, old MSS., or bits from the poets. Thought and life are very wide; and I will listen to the judgment only of those who have patiently weighed the whole of both. ([h]) The grandest times of art are often those of especial vileness in life and society; and the grandest times of one art are sometimes those of utter decadence in another art, even in the same people and place. When the Theseus was carved, Aristophanes gives us the domestic and public life of the Athenians, and it has its dark side. Titian was the contemporary of Palladio, and also of Philip II.; Milton of Sir Peter Lely and Louis XIV.; so too were Bach and Mozart contemporaries of Greuze and Louis XV. I don’t quite see what is to be made of these violent contrasts. And by the way, I wish you would work out for us the bearing of musical art on the social and moral life of various ages. It always seemed to me you omitted music. [[238]]
“Now I will try to answer your questions of law about Usury. There is no such thing as usury in law at all,—that is to say, there is no rate of interest above which the lending of money is criminal or unlawful. By the 17 and 18 Vict., c. 90, (passed in 1854,) “all existing laws against usury shall be repealed.” (Caps. mine.) There are a great many cases where courts of law interfere in bargains which seem to them unfair or unreasonable. But they all arise out of the special relations of the parties, and it would take a volume to tell you what these may be. For more than twenty years, as I suppose every one knows who reads a newspaper, there has been known to the law no lawful rate of interest which it is punishable to exceed. I cannot imagine for what end you ask me the question. Lawyers do not make the law, be it good or bad; they follow it like policemen or soldiers who obey orders.
“I reserve what else I have to say. I am sure all that you write to me comes from you in the most friendly feeling, as believe me does from me all that I write to you. Your Fors fills me with melancholy each time I read it. For it reminds me how many of those to whom we might look to bring more order, patience, and faith into the world, are occupied in setting us against one another, in making us rebels against our fathers, and all that they have done for us and taught us.
“Ever gratefully and most sincerely yours,
“Frederic Harrison.”
[a.] I believe there is no other friend, with whom I have had so brief opportunity of intercourse, whom I like so much as I do Mr. Harrison. What reproach this sentence is to me as an artist, I must submit to silently.
[b.] To ‘revile’ means, in accurate English, to vilify under the influence of passion. It is not an expression which my friend could have used, except thoughtlessly, of any words of mine, uttered of any person living. [[239]]
[c.] I do not ‘believe,’—I know, that the entire system of modern life is thus corrupted. But I have long learned to believe in God, without expecting Him to manage everything as I think proper; and I have no occasion for belief in effort, so long as I know the duty of it.
[d.] Where, and when?
[e.] The only word I have applied to Comte, in my whole letter, is “unique.” For the justice of which epithet I trusted my friend’s report of him. I have never read a word he has written,—never heard anything about him that interested me,—and never represented, or misrepresented, him, in any manner whatsoever. When I said ‘physiologists,’ I meant physiologists; and no more thought of Comte than of Adam.
[f.] I did not write to my friend as a ‘student of Positivism,’ for I have no idea what positivism means. I wrote to him as an assertor, in the paper I was reading, of the splendours of Evolution; and therefore ventured to imply, not that it was an impertinence, but an absurdity, in him to linger under the scholastic architecture dimly evolved from the superstition of Magdalen, when he might have disported himself under the commercial architecture more brightly evolved from the moral consciousness of Oriel.
[g.] Simply because I know a goose when I see one,—and when my friend has himself learned to know geese from swans, he will not think himself ‘entitled’ to call either anything else.
[h.] Mr. Harrison underlines the word ‘whole.’ I am bound, therefore, to italicize it. Whether my friend will, hereafter, thank me for so faithfully echoing his emphasis on this sentence, my respect for his general common sense makes very doubtful to me. I do not see anything requiring notice in the rest of the letter so far as it regards myself. I seldom flaunt my poor little ragged feathers in my friends’ faces; but must in simplicity [[240]]confess to my feeling that it is not necessary for the author of ‘Modern Painters’ to defend himself against the charge of uttering “indiscriminate abuse of all that the human race has now become;” nor for the author of ‘Sesame and Lilies,’ to receive lessons in courtesy to women, from modern Anglo-French chivalry, because he chooses to call a Cobbe, a Cobbe, no less plainly than a Plantagenet, a Plantagenet.
IV. “Pious Sentiment.—‘I wish to God we could get a good bloody war somewhere.’ It is not without reluctance that we reproduce these awful words, but they were literally spoken in our hearing in that most sober place of business, Mincing Lane, only a few hours ago. They were spoken by a merchant or broker of gentlemanly appearance and apparent respectability, in a public room, and the most melancholy incident in connection with the utterance is that the atrocious sentiment apparently created no surprise, and was met with no outburst of indignation. We say apparently, for we ourselves were greatly surprised,” (There is nothing whatever to be surprised at, except the frankness of the expression. Modern Liberal Protestantism has always held that you must not kill a man for his creed; but you may, for his money,) “and we felt burning indignation, but we controlled our feelings, and we hope others may have felt as we did, and had equally good reasons for silence. We are accused of taking a pessimist view of mercantile morality and mercantile activity. We commend the expressed wish of an English merchant, publicly expressed, in a public place, where merchants most do congregate, to consideration of those who differ from us in opinion, and we merely place the fact on record without further comment.”—Monetary Gazette, June 14th.
I reprint the paragraph for final illustration to Mr. Harrison of the ‘evolution’ of British character. I wish I had space for [[241]]some others which the courage of the editor of this excellent journal has exposed; or for the leading article in the same number, which is an admirably temperate and clear estimate of the real value of the work of Adam Smith.
V. Lastly, here is some most valuable evidence from the faithful old friend to whom I wrote, in ‘Time and Tide,’ of the increasing ‘wealth’ of England, which with the example given in the last extract of her increasing morality, may symmetrically close the summary of St. George’s designs, and their cause.
“15, Sunderland Street, Sunderland,
20th June, 1876.“Dear Sir,—I have read with deep and earnest attention the last small tract of Girdlestone. I feel its tremendous truth, and have long done so too; but there is now a very pressing matter I would like to see gone into, and if possible some remedy proposed for it. It is one I have written many times to you about: I mean the rent question for the poor, the working people. At the present there is a sad depressing trade all over our country, and even in Europe. Yet, despite this awful depression, I note what is termed real estate is now going up gradually in value. I mean property and land. And that in the midst of this very depression and want of all kinds of labour by our workpeople and manufacturers, and in the midst of a tremendous opposition from our foreign competitors; yet nowhere do I see it named in any of our papers in the way I expected to see it treated of: they all seem quite elated with the great advance that has taken place, and the continued activity of all our building trades. Now, it seems to me, here is a question of vital importance that needs some sound information given on it, and some reasons assigned for this strange change in the value of all such property, in a time of such widespread depression of all trade. How are our people and our manufacturers to pay increased rents when there is a depressed trade, [[242]]and no work for our workmen to do? Our town is now in a sad depressed state—work of all kinds very scarce; yet on all sides I learn the rents are being increased to workmen, manufacturers, and shopkeepers; and I note it also the case in other towns. I would like to see some good report as to the real extent of such advance of property in England. I find the advance in price of hotel, public-house, and such-like property has been something tremendous within these few years, since I wrote you my letters in ‘Time and Tide.’ To me it is something very sad to reflect upon this great change in the value or cost of a house to our workpeople. I find their food, such as butcher’s meat, potatoes, and vegetables, milk, and some other kinds of necessaries, are also increased in price, owing to this advance in rent. So that the outlook for our workpeople, despite all our wealth, is indeed not a very pleasant one, for how are they to tide over this storm with all these necessaries at such prices? I note in the papers the miners of the Forest of Dean in some places are starving. I send you a book:[1] you can make any use of it you like. I have here and there marked its pages that I thought might serve in some measure to awaken an interest in this question of the workpeople, versus the rise in the value of their necessaries in dull times.
“Yours respectfully,
“Thomas Dixon.”
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