NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. The following communication was sent to me on a post-card, without the writer’s name; but it is worth notice:—
“ ‘Ut et corda nostra mandatis tuis dedita.’ If some manuscript Breviary has omitted ‘dedita,’ it must be by a slip of the pen. The sense surely is this: that while there is either war or only an evil and deceitful peace within, self-surrender to the Divine commandments above and freedom from terror of foes around are alike impossible.
“In the English Prayer-book ‘set’ has the same meaning as in [Psalm lxxviii. ver. 9] (sic: the writer means [ver. 8]); and the context shows the ‘rest and quietness’ desired, to be rest and quietness of spirit.”
The ‘context’ cannot show anything of the sort, for the sentence is an entirely independent one: and the MS. I use is not a Breviary, but the most perfect Psalter and full service, including all the hymns quoted by Dante, that I have seen in English thirteenth-century writing. The omission of the word ‘dedita’ makes not the smallest difference to the point at issue—which is not the mistranslation of a word, but the breaking of a clause. The mistranslation nevertheless exists also; precisely because, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’ has the same meaning as in [Psalm lxxviii].; where the Latin word is ‘direxit,’ not ‘dedit’; and where discipline is meant, not surrender.
I must reserve my comments on the two most important letters next following, for large type and more leisure. [[316]]
II. “I hope that you will live to see Fors and everything printed without steam: it’s the very curse and unmaking of us. I can see it dreadfully in every workman that I come across. Since I have been so happily mixed up with you these eighteen years, great changes have taken place in workmen. It was beginning fearfully when I last worked as a journeyman. One instance among many:—The head foreman came to me at Messrs. Bakers’, and threatened discharge if he caught me using a hand bow-saw to cut a little circular disc, which I could have done in ten minutes. I then had to go and wait my turn at the endless steam saw—or, as commonly called, a band saw. I had to wait an hour and a half to take my turn: the steam saw did it in perhaps three minutes; but the head foreman said, ‘We’ve gone to great expense for steam machinery, and what is the use if we don’t employ it?’ This little occurrence was by no means uncommon. What workpeople have been brought to is beyond conception, in tone of feeling and character. Here, as I have told you, we do all we can ourselves, indoors and out; have no servant, but make the children do: and because we are living in a tidy-sized house, and a good piece of ground, the labouring people make a dead set against us because we are not dependent upon them, and have even combined to defeat us in getting a charwoman now and then. We ought, I suppose, to employ two servants, whether we can pay for them or not, or even obtain them (which we couldn’t). They have been picking hops here next our hedge: this is done by people in the neighbourhood, not imported pickers; and their children called over the hedge to ours, and said, ‘Your mother is not a lady; she don’t keep a servant, but does the work herself.’ I name this little incident because it seems so deep.”
III. “My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I write to ask leave to come and enter my name on the Roll of Companions of the Company of [[317]]St. George.[10] I have seen enough and read enough of the pace at which we are going, more especially in business matters, to make me long to see some effort made to win back some of the honesty and simplicity of our fathers. And although I am afraid I can be but of very little use to the Company, I would gladly do anything that lay within my power; and it would be a great help to feel oneself associated with others, however feebly, in a practical work.
“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where I can do it. Our trade is dressing and buying and selling leather, etc., and making leather belting, hose, and boots. I am trying to the utmost to make everything as good as it can be made, then to ask a fair price for it, and resist all attempts to cheapen or depreciate it in any way. First, because the best thing is, as far as I know, invariably the ‘best value’; secondly, because shoe manufacturing, as now carried on, is, through the division of labour, a largely mechanical work, (though far less so than many trades),—and I believe the surest way of diminishing, as it is surely our duty to do, the amount of all such work, is to spend no labour, nor allow of its being spent, on any but the best thing for wear that can be made; and thirdly, because workmen employed even somewhat mechanically are, I think, far less degraded by their employment when their work and materials are good enough to become the subjects of honest pride. You will understand that, being only in the position of manager of the business, I can only carry out these ideas to a certain point. Still I have been able to reduce the amount of what is called ‘fancy stitching’ on parts of boots, on the stated ground of the injury the work ultimately causes to the operator’s eyesight. And in the dressing of some descriptions of leather, where we used to print by machinery an artificial grain on the skin or hide, we have [[318]]dispensed with the process, and work up the natural grain by hand-power.