My friends, I tell you solemnly, the sin of it all, down to this last night’s doing, or undoing, (for it is Monday now, I waited before finishing my letter, to see if the Sainte Chapelle would follow the Vendôme Column;) the sin of it, I tell you, is not that poor rabble’s, spade and pickaxe in hand among the dead; nor yet the blasphemer’s, making noise like a dog by the defiled altars of our Lady of Victories; and round the barricades, and the ruins, of the Street of Peace.
This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the most honourable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nurtured men, who through their happy and, as they thought, holy lives, have sought, and still seek, only “the entertainment of the hour.” And this robbery has been taught to the hands,—this blasphemy to the lips,—of the lost poor, by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ in vain, and leagued themselves with his chief enemy, “Covetousness, which is idolatry.”
Covetousness, lady of Competition and of deadly Care; idol above the altars of Ignoble Victory; builder of streets, in cities of Ignoble Peace. I have given you the picture of her—your goddess and only Hope—as Giotto saw her; dominant in prosperous Italy as in prosperous England, and having her hands clawed then, as now, so that she can only clutch, not work; also you shall read next month with me what one of Giotto’s friends says of her—a rude versifier, one of the twangling harpers; as Giotto was a poor painter for low price, and with colours ground by hand; but such cheap work must serve our turn for this time; also, here, is portrayed for you[4] one of the ministering angels of the goddess; for she herself, having ears set wide to the wind, is careful to have wind-instruments provided by her servants for other people’s ears.
This servant of hers was drawn by the court portrait-painter, Holbein; and was a councillor at poor-law boards, in his day; counselling then, as some of us have, since, “Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction” for the vagrant as such,—which is, indeed, good advice, if you are quite sure the vagrant has, or may have, a home; not otherwise. But we will talk further of this next month, taking into council one of Holbein’s prosaic friends, as well as that singing friend of Giotto’s—an English lawyer and country gentleman, living on his farm, at Chelsea (somewhere near Cheyne Row, I believe)—and not unfrequently visited there by the King of England, who would ask himself unexpectedly to dinner at the little Thames-side farm, though the floor of it was only strewn with green rushes. It was burnt at last, rushes, ricks, and all; some said because bread of affliction and water of affliction had been served to heretics there, its master being a stout Catholic; and, singularly enough, also a Communist; so that because of the fire, and other matters, the King at last ceased to dine at Chelsea. We will have some talk, however, with the farmer, ourselves, some day soon; meantime and always, believe me,
Faithfully yours,
POSTSCRIPT.
25th May (early morning).—Reuter’s final telegram, in the Echo of last night, being “The Louvre and the Tuileries are in flames, the Federals having set fire to them with petroleum,” it is interesting to observe how, in fulfilment of the Mechanical Glories of our age, its ingenious Gomorrah manufactures, and supplies to demand, her own brimstone; achieving also a quite scientific, instead of miraculous, descent of it from Heaven; and ascent of it, where required, without any need of cleaving or quaking of earth, except in a superficially ‘vibratory’ manner.