Fors Clavigera (Volume 1 of 8) / Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain

by John Ruskin

Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a rudder.

Gero means ‘I carry.’ It is the root of our word ‘gesture’ (the way you carry yourself); and, in a curious bye-way, of ‘jest.’

Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer, Key-bearer, or Nail-bearer.

Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera corresponds to one of the three meanings of Fors.

Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of Deed.

Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience.

Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law.

I will tell you what you may usefully know of those three Greek persons in a little time. At present, note only of the three powers: 1. That the strength of Hercules is for deed, not misdeed; and that his club—the favourite weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form is the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek sculptors, (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum, and I shall have much to tell you of him—especially how he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented mixed vegetable soup)—was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. 2. That the Second Fors Clavigera is portress at a gate which she cannot open till you have waited long; and that her robe is of the colour of ashes, or dry earth.[1] 3. That the third Fors Clavigera, the power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal; and that the notablest crown yet existing in Europe of any that have been worn by Christian kings, was—people say—made of a Nail.

That is enough about my title, for this time; now to our work. I told you, and you will find it true, that, practically, all wages mean the food and lodging given you by the possessors of the land.

It begins to be asked on many sides how the possessors of the land became possessed of it, and why they should still possess it, more than you or I; and Ricardo’s ‘Theory’ of Rent, though, for an economist, a very creditably ingenious work of fiction, will not much longer be imagined to explain the ‘Practice’ of Rent.