Lastly, my correspondent feels it unjust to be required to make clothes, while she is occupied in the rearing of those who will require them.
Admitting (though the admission is one for which I do not say that I am prepared) that it is the patriotic [[17]]duty of every married couple to have as large a family as possible, it is not from the happy Penelopes of such households that I ask—or should think of asking—the labour of the loom. I simply require that when women belong to the St. George’s Company they should do a certain portion of useful work with their hands, if otherwise their said fair hands would be idle; and if on those terms I find sufficient clothing cannot be produced, I will use factories for them,—only moved by water, not steam.
My answer, as thus given, is, it seems to me, sufficient; and I can farther add to its force by assuring my correspondent that I shall never ask any member of St. George’s Company to do more, in relation to his fortune and condition, than I have already done myself. Nevertheless, it will be found by any reader who will take the trouble of reference, that in recent letters I have again and again intimated the probable necessity, before the movement could be fairly set on foot, of more energetic action and example, towards which both my thoughts and circumstances seem gradually leading me; and, in that case, I shall trustfully look to the friends who accuse me of cowardice in doing too little, for defence against the, I believe, too probable imputations impending from others, of folly in doing too much. [[19]]
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. I hope my kind correspondent will pardon my publication of the following letter, which gives account of an exemplary life, and puts questions which many desire to have answered.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I do not know if you have forgotten me, for it is a long time since I wrote to you; but you wrote so kindly to me before, that I venture to bring myself before you again, more especially as you write to me (among others) every month, and I want to answer something in these letters.
“I do answer your letters (somewhat combatively) every month in my mind, but all these months I have been waiting for an hour of sufficient strength and leisure, and have found it now for the first time. A family of eleven children, through a year of much illness, and the birth of another child in May, have not left me much strength for pleasure, such as this is.
“Now a little while ago, you asked reproachfully of Englishwomen in general, why none of them had joined St. George’s Company. I can only answer for myself, and I have these reasons.
“First. Being situated as I am, and as doubtless many others are more or less, I cannot join it. In my actions I am subject first to my husband, and then to my family. Any one who is entirely free cannot judge how impossible it is to make inelastic and remote rules apply to all the ever-varying and incalculable changes and accidents and personalities of life. They are a [[20]]disturbing element to us visionaries, which I have been forced to acknowledge and submit to, but which you have not. Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to get through the day’s work; I am obliged to take things as I find them, and do the best I can, in haste; and I might constantly be breaking rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am not straitened for money; but most people with families are so more or less, and this is another element of difficulty.
“Secondly. Although I do not want to be further bound by rules, I believe that as regards principles I am a member of St. George’s Company already; and I do not like to make any further profession which would seem to imply a renunciation of the former errors of my way, and the beginning of a new life. I have never been conscious of any other motives or course of life than those which you advocate; and my children and all around me do not know me in any other light; and I find a gradual and unconscious conformation to them growing up round me, though I have no sort of teaching faculty. I cannot tell how much of them I owe to you, for some of your writings which fell in my way when I was very young made a deep impression on me, and I grew up embued with their spirit; but certainly I cannot now profess it for the first time.
“Thirdly (and this is wherein I fear to offend you), I will join St. George’s Company whenever you join it yourself. Please pardon me for saying that I appear to be more a member of it than you are. My life is strictly bound and ruled, and within those lines I live. Above all things, you urge our duties to the land, the common earth of our country. It seems to me that the first duty any one owes to his country is to live in it. I go further, and maintain that every one is bound to have a home, and live in that. You speak of the duty of acquiring, if possible, [[21]]and cultivating, the smallest piece of ground. But, (forgive the question,) where is your house and your garden? I know you have got places, but you do not stay there. Almost every month you date from some new place, a dream of delight to me; and all the time I am stopping at home, labouring to improve the place I live at, to keep the lives entrusted to me, and to bring forth other lives in the agony and peril of my own. And when I read your reproaches, and see where they date from, I feel as a soldier freezing in the trenches before Sebastopol might feel at receiving orders from a General who was dining at his club in London. If you would come and see me in May, I could show you as pretty a little garden of the spade as any you ever saw, made on the site of an old rubbish heap, where seven tiny pairs of hands and feet have worked like fairies. Have you got a better one to show me? For the rest of my garden I cannot boast; because out-of-door work or pleasure is entirely forbidden me by the state of my health.
“Again, I agree with you in your dislike of railroads, but I suspect you use them, and sometimes go on them. I never do. I obey these laws and others, with whatever inconvenience or privation they may involve; but you do not; and that makes me revolt when you scold us.
“Again, I cannot, as you suggest, grow, spin, and weave the linen for myself and family. I have enough to do to get the clothes made. If you would establish factories where we could get pure woven cotton, linen, and woollen, I would gladly buy them there; and that would be a fair division of labour. It is not fair that the more one does, the more should be required of one.
“You see you are like a clergyman in the pulpit in your books: you can scold the congregation, and they cannot answer; behold the congregation begins to reply; and I only hope you will forgive me.
“Believe me,
“Yours very truly.”
[[22]]
II. It chances, I see, while I print my challenge to the Bishop of my University, that its neighbouring clergymen are busy in expressing to him their thanks and compliments. The following address is worth preserving. I take it from the ‘Morning Post’ of December 16, and beneath it have placed an article from the ‘Telegraph’ of the following day, describing the results of clerical and episcopal teaching of an orthodox nature in Liverpool, as distinguished from ‘Doctor’ Colenso’s teaching in Africa.
“The Inhibition of Bishop Colenso.—The clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, Oxford, numbering thirty-four, together with the rural dean (the Rev. F. M. Cunningham), have subscribed their names to the following circular, which has been forwarded to the Bishop of Oxford:—‘To the Right Rev. Father in God, John Fielder, by Divine permission Lord Bishop of Oxford.—We, the undersigned clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, in your Lordship’s diocese, beg respectfully to offer to your Lordship our cordial sympathy under the painful circumstances in which you have been placed by the invitation to the Right Rev. Dr. Colenso to preach in one of the churches in your diocese. Your firm and spontaneous refusal to permit Dr. Colenso to preach will be thankfully accepted by all consistent members of our Church as a protest much needed in these times against the teaching of one who has grievously offended many consciences, and has attempted as far as in him lay to injure the “faith which was delivered to the saints.”[4] That your Lordship may long be spared to defend the truth, is the prayer of your Lordship’s obedient and attached clergy.’ ”