“Kingswood Lodge, Lee Green, S.E., 13th January, 1875.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have great sympathy with your lady correspondent, and, for the life of me, I cannot tell what you would have me to do. I am not a landed proprietor, nor a country gentleman, though I am the son of one, a retired physician, and brought up in the blessed green fields, and among streams that were as clear as crystal, and full of trout; but coal-pits appeared on the horizon, and gradually drove us out. I well remember the first vile red shaft that appeared within about a mile of our windows, and how the beastly smoke reconciled my mother to leave one of the loveliest country seats in Lancashire, which she had [[240]]adorned with roses and laurels, I was going to say with her own hands, and I am not sure that it would be wrong to say so, for she saw every one (and the grounds were seven or eight acres in extent) planted with her own eyes, and superintended the doing of it.
“Living there in the country, and under a tutor, my education has not been that of an ordinary country gentleman; I early learned to work with my hands as well as with my head, and though I must confess that personally I never had much taste for gardening, I had plenty of work to do in the open air. You tell me our education has to begin—yours as well as mine; and expect me to say that I cannot make a brick or a tile, or build a rude dwelling. Singularly enough, I helped to do so when a boy, and it will be long before any of us forget the miniature cottage we built, and thatched, complete, with window, door, and fireplace, and with a cellar moreover, with wine of our own making, and beer of our own brewing made from treacle; for we did everything ourselves, even to grooming our own ponies.
“In later life, my lot was cast in Liverpool, and after six or seven years spent in China, where I have seen the horrors of war, and where a cannon shot came through our roof, as we sat at tiffin, I found myself in London.
“My old business of a merchant I cannot carry on; though I have capital sufficient for fair trade, I cannot carry it on in the face of the fierce competition by unprincipled men on borrowed money:
‘Where man competes with man like foe with foe,
Till death that thins them scarce seem public woe’—
my business as a banker and bullion broker is sealed to me as iniquitous.
“At present, therefore, I am free to act; I fret because I [[241]]am in a state of inactivity. I feel that I have health and strength, and that in a thousand ways I could be useful, but wherever I turn I am stopped. I am a good rough joiner; I can do small work in iron and brass; and I am a good practical chemist: my laboratory was recommended as an example of how a laboratory should be kept, by the editor of the ‘Chemical News’ and an F.R.S.
“Now allow me to ask you seriously, would you have me to go out alone into the wilderness, and live like a Robinson Crusoe till I see an opening? The point is, the opening might come directly, or it might not come for years, and meantime I am standing in the market-place, such as it is (why is there not a real one?). It is this uncertainty that distresses me, for I must work for my living, and my substance is gradually melting away.
“Believe me, my dear Mr. Ruskin, ever yours affectionately,
“Rob. G. Sillar.
“P.S.—I am glad to see you have challenged Dr. Fraser. I had a correspondence with him some years ago. I saw in one of Carlyle’s works, that I might do some good, if I had two fingers and a pen; so, after getting no answer from my own clergyman, and the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, relative to the leaving out of a verse in the fifteenth Psalm in our collection, I appealed to the bishop. He was very polite, and corresponded with me till he felt it dangerous to go on, and then informed me that he really had no time to examine into the lawfulness of interest.
“I confess I don’t like an officer who has no time to read and examine his standing orders, but who yet retains the command of the regiment; so as you told me in ‘Sheepfolds’[1] [[242]]that in our army the King was beside every one of us to appeal to in case of doubt, I ended by telling his lordship, as he had no time to hear me, I must leave it in other hands, videat Altissimus, and our correspondence closed.”
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[1] I am reprinting this pamphlet word for word as it was first issued from the press. Mr. Allen will have it ready for distribution by the first of September. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
[I am honoured in the charge given me, without dissent, by the present members of the St. George’s Company, to convey their thanks to Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, in the terms stated at the close of my last letter.]
LETTER LVII.
I have received, from the author, M. Émile de Lavelaye, his pamphlet,—“Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations, with an introductory Letter by Mr. Gladstone.” I do not know why M. de Lavelaye sent me this pamphlet. I thank him for the courtesy; but he has evidently read none of my books, or must have been aware that he could not have written anything more contrary to the positions which I am politically maintaining. On the other hand, I have read none of his books, and I gather from passages in his pamphlet that there may be much in them to which I should be able to express entire adhesion.