NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. Affairs of the Company.
There is no occasion to put our small account again in print till the end of the year: we are not more than ten pounds ahead, since last month.
I certainly would not have believed, six years ago, that I had so few friends who had any trust in me; or that the British public would have entirely declined to promote such an object as the purchase of land for national freehold.
Next year I shall urge the operatives whom any words of mine may reach, to begin some organization with a view to this object among themselves. They have already combined to build co-operative mills; they would find common land a more secure investment.
I am very anxious to support, with a view to the determination of a standard of material in dress, the wool manufacture among the old-fashioned cottagers of the Isle of Man; and I shall be especially grateful to any readers of Fors who will communicate with Mr. Egbert Rydings (Laxey, Isle of Man,) on this subject. In the island itself Mr. Rydings tells me, the stuffs are now little worn by the better classes, because they ‘wear too long,’—a fault which I hope there may be yet found English housewives who will forgive. At all events, I mean the square yard of Laxey homespun of a given weight, to be one of the standards of value in St George’s currency.
The cheque of £25, sent to Mr. Rydings for the encouragement of some of the older and feebler workers, is the only expenditure, beyond those for fittings slowly proceeded with in our museum at Sheffield, to which I shall have to call attention at the year’s end. [[392]]
II. Affairs of the Master.
Though my readers, by this time, will scarcely be disposed to believe it, I really can keep accounts, if I set myself to do so: and even greatly enjoy keeping them, when I do them the first thing after my Exodus or Plato every morning; and keep them to the uttermost farthing. I have examples of such in past diaries; one, in particular, great in its exhibition of the prices of jargonel and Queen Louise pears at Abbeville. And my days always go best when they are thus begun, as far as pleasant feeling and general prosperity of work are concerned. But there is a great deal of work, and especially such as I am now set on, which does not admit of accounts in the morning; but imperatively requires the fastening down forthwith of what first comes into one’s mind after waking. Then the accounts get put off; tangle their thread—(so the Fates always instantly then ordain)—in some eightpenny matter, and without Œdipus to help on the right hand and Ariadne on the left, there’s no bringing them right again. With due invocation to both, I think I have got my own accounts, for the past year, stated clearly below.
| Receipts. | Expenditure. | Balance. | |||||||
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | |
| February | 1344 | 17 | 9 | 817 | 0 | 0 | 527 | 17 | 9 |
| March | 67 | 10 | 0 | 370 | 2 | 3 | 225 | 5 | 6 |
| April | 1522 | 12 | 4 | 276 | 10 | 0 | 1471 | 7 | 10 |
| May | 484 | 18 | 3 | 444 | 16 | 3 | 1511 | 9 | 10 |
| June | 179 | 0 | 0 | 464 | 11 | 0 | 1225 | 18 | 10 |
| July | 0 | 0 | 0 | 460 | 0 | 0 | 765 | 18 | 10 |
| August | 180 | 11 | 8 | 328 | 19 | 6 | 617 | 11 | 0 |
| September | 0 | 0 | 0 | 427 | 5 | 0 | 190 | 6 | 0 |
| October | 1279 | 8 | 0 | 655 | 0 | 0 | 814 | 14 | 0 |
| November | 0 | 0 | 0 | 495 | 0 | 0 | 784 | 8 | 0 |
| December | 592 | 15 | 4 | 242 | 0 | 0 | 1135 | 3 | 4 |
[[393]]
In the first column are the receipts for each month; in the second, the expenditure; in the third, the balance, which is to be tested by adding the previous balance to the receipts in the first column, and deducting the expenditure from the sum.
The months named are those in which the number of Fors was published in which the reader will find the detailed statements: a grotesque double mistake, in March, first in the addition and then in the subtraction, concludes in a total error of threepence; the real balance being £225 5s. 6d. instead of £225 5s. 9d. I find no error in the following accounts beyond the inheritance of this excessive threepence: (in October, p. 334, the entry under September 1 is misprinted 10 for 15; but the sum is right,) until the confusion caused by my having given the banker’s balance in September, which includes several receipts and disbursements not in my own accounts, but to be printed in the find yearly estimate in Fors of next February. My own estimate, happily less than theirs, brings my balance for last month to £784 8s.; taking up which result, the present month’s accounts are as follows:—
| Receipts. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | |
| Oct. 15. | Balance | 784 | 8 | 0 | |||
| Dividend on £6,500 Stock | 292 | 10 | 0 | ||||
| Rents, Marylebone | 90 | 15 | 4 | ||||
| Rents, Herne Hill | 30 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Oxford, Half-year’s Salary | 179 | 10 | 0 | ||||
| ——— | 1377 | 3 | 4 | ||||
| Expenditure. | |||||||
| Oct. 15 | to Nov. 15. Self at Venice | 150 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Oct. 24. | Burgess | 42 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Nov. 1. | Raffaelle | 15 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ” 7. | Downs | 25 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ” 11. | Crawley | 10 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ——— | 242 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Balance, Nov. 15 | £1135 | 3 | 4 | ||||
[[394]]
III. I have lost the reference to a number of the ‘Monetary Gazette,’ of three or four weeks back, containing an excellent article on the Bishop of Peterborough’s declaration, referred to in the text, that the disputes between masters and men respecting wages were a question of Political Economy, in which the clergy must remain ‘strictly neutral.’
Of the Bishop’s Christian spirit, in the adoption of his Master’s “Who made me a divider?” rather than of the earthly wisdom of John the Baptist, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you,” the exacting public will not doubt. I must find out, however, accurately what the Bishop did say; and then we will ask Little Bear’s opinion on the matter. For indeed, in the years to come, I think it will be well that nothing should be done without counsel of Ursula.
IV. The following is, I hope, the true translation of Job xxii. 24, 25. I greatly thank my correspondent for it.
“Cast the brass to the dust, and the gold of Ophir to the rocks of the brooks.
“So, will the Almighty be thy gold and thy shining silver.[8]
“Yes, then wilt thou rejoice in the Almighty and raise thy countenance to God.”
V. The following letter from a Companion may fitly close the correspondence for this year. I print it without suppression of any part, believing it may encourage many of my helpers, as it does myself:—
“My dear Master,—I have learnt a few facts about Humber keels. You know you were interested in my little keel scholars, because their vessels were so fine, and because they themselves were once simple bodies, almost guiltless of reading and writing. [[395]]And it seems as if even the mud gives testimony to your words. So if you don’t mind the bother of one of my tiresome letters, I’ll tell you all I know about them.
“The Humber keels are, in nearly all cases, the property of the men who go in them. They are house and home to the keel family, who never live on shore like other sailors. It is very easy work navigating the rivers. There’s only the worry of loading and unloading,—and then their voyages are full of leisure.
“Keelmen are rural sailors, passing for days and days between cornfields and poppy banks, meadows and orchards, through low moist lands, where skies are grand at sunrise and sunset.
“Now all this evidently makes a happy joyous life, and the smart colours and decoration of the boats are signs of it. Shouldn’t you say so? Well, then, independence, home, leisure and nature are right conditions of life—and that’s a bit of St. George’s doctrine I’ve verified nearly all by myself; and there are things I know about keel folks besides, which quite warrant my conclusions. But to see these very lowly craft stranded low on the mud at low tide, or squeezed in among other ships—big and grimy things—in the docks, you would think they were too low in the scale of shipping to have any pride or pleasure in life; yet I really think they are little arks, dressed in rainbows. Remember, please, Humber keels are quite different things to barges of any kind. And now keels are off my mind—except that if I can ever get anybody to paint me a gorgeous one, I shall send it to you.
“My dear Master, I have thought so often of the things you said about yourself, in relation to St. George’s work; and I feel sure that you are disheartened, and too anxious about it—that you have some sort of feeling about not being sufficient for all of it. Forgive me, but it is so painful to think that the Master is anxious about things which do not need consideration. You said, I think, the good of you was, that you collected teaching and laws for us. But is that just right? Think of your first impulse and [[396]]purpose. Was not that your commission? Be true to it. To me it seems that the good of you (as you say it) is that you have a heart to feel the sorrows of the world—that you have courage and power to speak against injustice and falsehood, and more than all, that you act out what you say. Everybody else seems asleep or dead—wrapped up in their own comfort or satisfaction,—and utterly deaf to any appeal. Do not think your work is less than it is, and let all unworthy anxieties go. The work is God’s, if ever any work was, and He will look after its success. Fitness or unfitness is no question, for you are chosen. Mistakes do not matter. Much work does not matter. It only really matters that the Master stays with us, true to first appointment; that his hand guides all first beginnings of things, sets the patterns for us,—and that we are loyal.
“Your affectionate servant.”
[1] My original sketch is now in the Schools of Oxford. [↑]
[2] See terminal Article of Correspondence. [↑]
[3] Conf. ‘Inferno,’ XXIII. 123. [↑]
[4] Mr. Darwin’s last discoveries of the gestures of honour and courtesy among baboons are a singular completion of the types of this truth in the natural world. [↑]
[5] In old English illuminated Psalters, of which I hope soon to send a perfect example to Sheffield to companion our Bible, the vignette of the Fool saying in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ nearly always represents him in this action. Vanni Fucci makes the Italian sign of the Fig,—‘A fig for you!’ [↑]
[6] My friend Mr. W. C. Sillar rose in the church, and protested, in the name of God, against the proceedings. He was taken into custody as disorderly,—the press charitably suggested, only drunk;—and was I believe discharged without fine or imprisonment, for we live in liberal days. [↑]
[7] Compare Fors of October, 1874, page 224 to end, observing especially the sentence out of 2nd Esdras, “before they were sealed, that have gathered Faith for a Treasure.” [↑]