To-day, you cannot afford beef—to-morrow, are you sure that you will be still able to afford bones? If things are to go on thus, and you are to study economy to the utmost, I can beat the author of the penny cookery book even on that ground. What say you to this diet of the Otomac Indians; persons quite of our present English character? “They have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing. They are men of a very robust constitution, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. While the waters of the Orinoco are low, they subsist on fish and turtles, but at the period of its inundations, (when the fishing ceases) they eat daily, during some months, three quarters of a pound of clay, slightly hardened by fire”[2]—(probably stewable in your modern stoves with better effect).—“Half, at least” (this is Father Gumilla’s statement, quoted by Humboldt) “of the bread of the Otomacs and the Guamoes is clay—and those who feel a weight on their stomach, purge themselves with the fat of the crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to continue to eat pure earth.” “I doubt”—Humboldt himself goes on, “the manteca de caiman being a purgative. But it is certain that the Guamoes are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh, of the crocodile.”
We have surely brickfields enough to keep our clay from ever rising to famine prices, in any fresh accession of prosperity;—and though fish can’t live in our rivers, the muddy waters are just of the consistence crocodiles like: and, at Manchester and Rochdale, I have observed the surfaces of the streams smoking, so that we need be under no concern as to temperature. I should think you might produce in them quite ‘streaky’ crocodile,—fat and flesh concordant,—St. George becoming a bacon purveyor, as well as seller, and laying down his dragon in salt; (indeed it appears, by an experiment made in Egypt itself, that the oldest of human words is Bacon;) potted crocodile will doubtless, also, from countries unrestrained by religious prejudices, be imported, as the English demand increases, at lower quotations; and for what you are going to receive, the Lord make you truly thankful.
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
☞ I hope, in future, to arrange the publishing and editing of ‘Fors,’ so that the current number may always be in my readers’ hands on the first of the month: but I do not pledge myself for its being so. In case of delay, however, subscribers may always be secure of its ultimate delivery, as they would at once receive notice in the event of the non-continuance of the work. I find index-making more difficult and tedious than I expected, and am besides bent at present on some Robinson Crusoe operations of harbour-digging, which greatly interfere with literary work of every kind; but the thing is in progress.
I cannot, myself, vouch for the facts stated in the following letter, but am secure of the writer’s purpose to state them fairly, and grateful for his permission to print his letter:—
1, St. Swithin’s Lane,
London, E. C., 4th February, 1873.My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have just finished reading your ‘Munera Pulveris,’ and your paragraph No. 160 is such a reflex of the experience I have of City business that I must call your attention to it.
I told you that I was endeavouring to put into practice what you are teaching, and thus our work should be good work, whether we live or die.
I read in the ‘Quarterly Journal of Science’ that the waste of the Metropolitan sewage is equivalent to three million quartern loaves floating down the Thames every day. I read in the papers that famine fever has broken out in the Metropolis.
I have proved that this bread can be saved, by purifying sewage, and growing such corn with the produce as amazes those that have seen it. I have proved this so completely to capitalists that they have spent £25,000 in demonstrating it to the Metropolitan Board of Works.
‘But nothing of this work will pay.’[3]
We have never puffed, we have never advertised, and hard work I have had to get the Board of Directors to agree to this modest procedure—nevertheless they have done so.
Now, there is a band of conspirators on the Stock Exchange bound to destroy the Company, because, like Jezebel, they have sold a vineyard that does not belong to them—in other words, they have sold ‘bears,’ and they cannot fulfil their contract without killing the Company, or terrifying the shareholders into parting with their property.
No stone is left unturned to thwart our work, and if you can take the trouble to look at the papers I send you, you will see what our work would be for the country, and how it is received.
We are now to be turned out of Crossness, and every conceivable mischief will be made of the fact.
I have fought the fight almost single-handed. I might have sold out and retired from the strife long ago, for our shares were 800 per cent. premium, but I prefer completing the work I have begun, if I am allowed.
From very few human beings have I ever received, nor did I expect, anything but disapproval; for this effort to discountenance the City’s business way of doing things, except Alfred Borwick, and my Brother, R. G. Sillar; but we have been repeatedly told that we must abandon these absurd principles.…
However, with or without encouragement, I shall work on, though I have to do it through a mass of moral filth and corruption, compared with which a genuine cesspit is good company.
Believe me sincerely yours,
W. C. Sillar.
The Third Fors puts into my hand, as I correct the press, a cutting from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of September 13th, 1869, which aptly illustrates the former ‘waste’ of sewage referred to by Mr. Sillar:—
“We suffer much from boards of guardians and vestries in and about London, but what they must suffer in remote parts of the country may be imagined rather than described. At a late meeting of the Lincoln board of guardians Mr. Mantle gave a description of a visit he paid with other gentlemen to the village of Scotherne. What they saw he said he should never forget. The village was full of fever cases, and no wonder. The beck was dried up and the wells were filled with sewage matter. They went to one pump, and found the water emitted an unbearable stench. He (Mr. Mantle) asked a woman if she drank the water from the well, and she replied that she did, but that it stank a bit; and there could be no doubt about that, for the well was full of ‘pure’ sewage matter. They went to another house, occupied by a widow with five children, the head of the family having died of fever last year. This family was now on the books of the union. The house was built on a declivity; the pigsty, privy, vault, and cesspool were quite full, and after a shower of rain the contents were washed up to and past the door. The family was in an emaciated state, and one of the children was suffering from fever. After inspecting that part of the village, they proceeded to the house of a man named Harrison, who, with his wife, was laid up with fever; both man and wife were buried in one grave yesterday week, leaving five children to be supported by the union. When visited, the unfortunate couple were in the last stage of fever, and the villagers had such a dread of the disease that none of them would enter the house, and the clergyman and relieving officer had to administer the medicine themselves. Harrison was the best workman in the parish. The cost to the union has already been £12, and at the lowest computation a cost of £600 would fall upon the union for maintaining the children, and probably they might remain paupers for life. This amount would have been sufficient to drain the parish.”