Sir: I was astonished the other day by your article on taverns, but never yet in my life was so much astonished by anything in print as by your to-day’s article on castles.[135]
I am a castle-lover of the truest sort. I do not suppose any man alive has felt anything like the sorrow or anger with which I have watched the modern destruction by railroad and manufacture, helped by the wicked improvidence of our great families, of half the national memorials of England, either actually or in effect and power of association—as Conway, for instance, now vibrating to ruin over a railroad station. For Warwick Castle, I named it in my letter of last October, in “Fors Clavigera,”[136] as a type of the architectural treasures of this England of ours known to me and beloved from childhood to this hour.
But, Sir, I am at this hour endeavoring to find work and food for a boy of seventeen, one of eight people—two married couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy and his sister—who all sleep together in one room, some 18 ft. square, in the heart of London; and you call upon me for a subscription to help to rebuild Warwick Castle.
Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as such I say, “If a noble family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God’s name let them live in the nearest ditch till they can.”
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin
Denmark Hill, Dec. 20.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” December 25, 1871.]
VERONA v. WARWICK.
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: Of lodging for poor and rich you will perhaps permit a further word or two from me, even in your close columns for Christmas morning. You think me inconsistent because I wanted to buy Verona, and do not want to restore Warwick.[137]
I wanted, and still want, to buy Verona. I would give half my fortune to buy it for England, if any other people would help me. But I would buy it, that what is left of it might not be burned, and what is lost of it not restored. It would indeed be very pleasant—not to me only, but to many other sorrowful persons—if things could be restored when we chose. I would subscribe willingly to restore, for instance, the manger wherein the King of Judah lay cradled this day some years since, and not unwillingly to restore the poorer cradle of our English King-maker, were it possible. But for the making of a new manger, to be exhibited for the edification of the religious British public, I will not subscribe. No; nor for the building of mock castles, or mock cathedrals, or mocks of anything. And the sum of what I have to say in this present matter may be put in few words.