LETTER XLVIII.
The accounts of the state of St. George’s Fund, given without any inconvenience in crowding type, on the last leaf of this number of Fors, will, I hope, be as satisfactory to my subscribers as they are to me. In these days of financial operation, the subscribers to anything may surely be content when they find that all their talents have been laid up in the softest of napkins; and even farther, that, though they are getting no interest themselves, that lichenous growth of vegetable gold, or mould, is duly developing itself on their capital.
The amount of subscriptions received, during the four years of my mendicancy, might have disappointed me, if, in my own mind, I had made any appointments on the subject, or had benevolence pungent enough to make me fret at the delay in the commencement of the national felicity which I propose to bestow. On the contrary, I am only too happy to continue amusing myself in my study, with stones and pictures; and find, [[264]]as I grow old, that I remain resigned to the consciousness of any quantity of surrounding vice, distress, and disease, provided only the sun shine in at my window over Corpus Garden, and there are no whistles from the luggage trains passing the Waterworks.
I understand this state of even temper to be what most people call ‘rational;’ and, indeed, it has been the result of very steady effort on my own part to keep myself, if it might be, out of Hanwell, or that other Hospital which makes the name of Christ’s native village dreadful in the ear of London. For, having long observed that the most perilous beginning of trustworthy qualification for either of those establishments consisted in an exaggerated sense of self-importance; and being daily compelled, of late, to value my own person and opinions at a higher and higher rate, in proportion to my extending experience of the rarity of any similar creatures or ideas among mankind, it seemed to me expedient to correct this increasing conviction of my superior wisdom, by companionship with pictures I could not copy, and stones I could not understand:—while, that this wholesome seclusion may remain only self-imposed, I think it not a little fortunate for me that the few relations I have left are generally rather fond of me;—don’t know clearly which is the next of kin,—and perceive that the administration of my inconsiderable effects[1] would be rather troublesome than profitable to [[265]]them. Not in the least, therefore, wondering at the shyness of my readers to trust me with money of theirs, I have made, during these four years past, some few experiments with money of my own,—in hopes of being able to give such account of them as might justify a more extended confidence. I am bound to state that the results, for the present, are not altogether encouraging. On my own little piece of mountain ground at Coniston, I grow a large quantity of wood-hyacinths and heather, without any expense worth mentioning; but my only industrious agricultural operations have been the getting three pounds ten worth of hay, off a field for which I pay six pounds rent; and the surrounding, with a costly wall six feet high, to keep out rabbits, a kitchen garden, which, being terraced and trim, my neighbours say is pretty; and which will probably, every third year, when the weather is not wet, supply me with a dish of strawberries.
At Carshalton, in Surrey, I have indeed had the satisfaction of cleaning out one of the springs of the Wandel, and making it pleasantly habitable by trout; but find that the fountain, instead of taking care of itself when once pure, as I expected it to do, requires continual looking after, like a child getting into a mess; and involves me besides in continual debate with the surveyors of the parish, who insist on letting all the roadwashings run into it. For the present, however, I persevere, at Carshalton, against the wilfulness of the [[266]]spring and the carelessness of the parish; and hope to conquer both: but I have been obliged entirely to abandon a notion I had of exhibiting ideally clean street pavement in the centre of London,—in the pleasant environs of Church Lane, St. Giles’s. There I had every help and encouragement from the authorities; and hoped, with the staff of two men and a young rogue of a crossing-sweeper, added to the regular force of the parish, to keep a quarter of a mile square of the narrow streets without leaving so much as a bit of orange-peel on the footway, or an eggshell in the gutters. I failed, partly because I chose too difficult a district to begin with, (the contributions of transitional mud being constant, and the inhabitants passive,) but chiefly because I could no more be on the spot myself, to give spirit to the men, when I left Denmark Hill for Coniston.
I next set up a tea-shop at 29, Paddington Street, W., (an establishment which my Fors readers may as well know of,) to supply the poor in that neighbourhood with pure tea, in packets as small as they chose to buy, without making a profit on the subdivision,—larger orders being of course equally acceptable from anybody who cares to promote honest dealing. The result of this experiment has been my ascertaining that the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly lighted and eloquently ticketed; and as I resolutely refuse to compete with my neighbouring tradesmen either in gas or rhetoric, the patient subdivision of my parcels by [[267]]the two old servants of my mother’s, who manage the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized as an advantage by my uncalculating public. Also, steady increase in the consumption of spirits throughout the neighbourhood faster and faster slackens the demand for tea; but I believe none of these circumstances have checked my trade so much as my own procrastination in painting my sign. Owing to that total want of imagination and invention which makes me so impartial and so accurate a writer on subjects of political economy, I could not for months determine whether the said sign should be of a Chinese character, black upon gold; or of a Japanese, blue upon white; or of pleasant English, rose-colour on green; and still less how far legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a board only a foot broad, with lengthy enough elucidation of the peculiar offices of ‘Mr. Ruskin’s tea-shop.’ Meanwhile the business languishes, and the rent and taxes absorb the profits, and something more, after the salary of my good servants has been paid.
In all these cases, however, I can see that I am defeated only because I have too many things on hand: and that neither rabbits at Coniston, road-surveyors at Croydon, or mud in St. Giles’s would get the better of me, if I could give exclusive attention to any one business: meantime, I learn the difficulties which are to be met, and shall make the fewer mistakes when I venture on any work with other people’s money. [[268]]
I may as well, together with these confessions, print a piece written for the end of a Fors letter at Assisi, a month or two back, but for which I had then no room, referring to the increase of commercial, religious, and egotistic insanity,[2] in modern society, and delicacy of the distinction implied by that long wall at Hanwell, between the persons inside it, and out.
‘Does it never occur to me,’ (thus the letter went on) ‘that I may be mad myself?’
Well, I am so alone now in my thoughts and ways, that if I am not mad, I should soon become so, from mere solitude, but for my work. But it must be manual work. Whenever I succeed in a drawing, I am happy, in spite of all that surrounds me of sorrow. It is a strange feeling;—not gratified vanity: I can have any quantity of praise I like from some sorts of people; but that does me no vital good, (though dispraise does me mortal harm); whereas to succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual piece of work, is life,—to me, as to all men; and it is only the peace which comes necessarily from manual labour which in all time has kept the honest country people patient in their task of maintaining the rascals who live in towns. But we are in hard times, now, for all men’s wits; for men who know the truth are like to go mad from isolation; and the fools are all going mad in ‘Schwärmerei,’—only that is much the pleasanter way. Mr. Lecky, for instance, quoted in [[269]]last Fors; how pleasant for him to think he is ever so much wiser than Aristotle; and that, as a body, the men of his generation are the wisest that ever were born—giants of intellect, according to Lord Macaulay, compared to the pigmies of Bacon’s time, and the minor pigmies of Christ’s time, and the minutest of all, the microscopic pigmies of Solomon’s time, and, finally, the vermicular and infusorial pigmies—twenty-three millions to the cube inch—of Mr. Darwin’s time, whatever that may be. How pleasant for Mr. Lecky to live in these days of the Anakim,—“his spear, to equal which, the tallest pine,” etc., etc., which no man Stratford-born could have lifted, much less shaken.