First, then, for the account of my proceedings in the Company’s affairs. Our eight thousand Consols giving us £240 a year, I [[63]]have appointed a Curator to the Sheffield Museum, namely, Mr. Henry Swan, an old pupil of mine in the Working Men’s College in London; and known to me since as an estimable and trustworthy person, with a salary of forty pounds a year, and residence. He is obliged at present to live in the lower rooms of the little house which is to be the nucleus of the museum:—as soon as we can afford it, a curator’s house must be built outside of it.
I have advanced, as aforesaid, a hundred pounds of purchase-money, and fifty for current expenses; and paid, besides, the lawyers’ bills for the transfer, amounting to £48 16s. 7d.; these, with some needful comments on them, will be published in next Fors; I have not room for them in this.
I have been advised of several mistakes in my subscribers’ list, so I reprint it below, with the initials attached to the numbers, and the entire sum, (as far as I can find out,) hitherto subscribed by each; and I beg of my subscribers at once to correct me in all errors.
The names marked with stars are those of Companions. The numbers 10, 17, 36, 43, and 48 I find have been inaccurately initialled, and are left blank for correction.
List of Subscriptions
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| 1. | D. L.* | 24 | 0 | 0 |
| 2. | R. T.* | 80 | 0 | 0 |
| 3. | T. K. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 4. | C. S. | 75 | 0 | 0 |
| 5. | A. R. | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| 6. | J. M.* | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| 7. | P. S. | 45 | 0 | 0 |
| 8. | D. A. | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| 9. | A. B. | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| 10. | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 11. | G. S.* | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 12. | J. S. | 4 | 0 | 0 [[64]] |
| 13. | B. A. | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| 14. | A. P. | 13 | 10 | 0 |
| 15. | W. P. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 16. | A. H.*. | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| 17. | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 18. | F. E. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 19. | J. S. | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| 20. | — D. | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 21. | C. W. | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| 22. | S. B.*. | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 23. | E. G. | 6 | 1 | 0 |
| 24. | — L. | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 25. | S. W. | 55 | 0 | 0 |
| 26. | B. B.*. | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 27. | J. W. | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 28. | E. F. | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 29. | L. L. | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| 30. | A. A. | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| 31. | T. D. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 32. | M. G. | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| 33. | J. F. | 40 | 0 | 0 |
| 34. | W. S. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 35. | H. S. | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| 36. | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 37. | A. H. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 38. | S. S. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 39. | H. W. | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 40. | J. F. | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| 41. | J. T. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 42. | J. O. | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| 43. | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 44. | A. C. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 45. | J. G. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 46. | T. M. | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| 47. | J. B.*. | 2 | 11 | 0 |
| 48. | 1 | 1 | 0 [[65]] | |
| 49. | J. D. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| 50. | G. | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| 51. | F. B. | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 52. | C. B. | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| 53. | H. L. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 54. | A. G. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| £741 | 14 | 10 |
II. Affairs of the Master.
When I instituted the Company by giving the tenth of my available property to it, I had, roughly, seventy thousand pounds in money or land, and thirty thousand[3] in pictures and books. The pictures and books I do not consider mine, but merely in my present keeping, for the country, or the persons I may leave them to. Of the seventy thousand in substance, I gave away fourteen thousand in that year of the Company’s establishment, (see above, Letter XLIX., p. 2,) and have since lost fifteen thousand by a relation whom I tried to support in business. As also, during my battle with the booksellers, I have been hitherto losing considerably by my books, (last year, for instance, paying three hundred and ninety-eight pounds to my assistant, Mr. Burgess, alone, for plates and woodcutting, and making a profit, on the whole year’s sales, of fifty pounds), and have been living much beyond my income besides, my seventy thousand is reduced to certainly not more than thirty; and it is very clear that I am too enthusiastically carrying out my own principles, and making more haste to be poor than is prudent, at my present date of possible life, for, at my current rate of expenditure, the cell at Assisi, above contemplated as advisably a pious mortification of my luxury, would soon [[66]]become a necessary refuge for my ‘holy poverty.’ The battle with the booksellers, however, is now nearly won; and the publishing accounts will soon show better balance: what changes in my mode of living may, nevertheless, be soon either exemplary or necessary will be better understood after I have given account of it for a year.
Here are my opening expenses, then, from 1st January to 20th, and in each following Fors they will be given from 20th to 20th of the month. I content myself, being pressed for space in this number, with giving merely the sums of cheques drawn; somewhat lengthy gossiping explanation of items being also needed, which will come in due place. The four first large sums are, of course, payments of Christmas accounts.
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||
| Balance in Bank, 1st Jan. 1876 | 1344 | 17 | 9 | ||||
| Paid by cheque: | |||||||
| Jan. 1. | Jackson, (outdoor Steward, Brantwood) | 50 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 1. | Kate Smith, (indoor Stewardess, Brantwood) | 160 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 1. | David Downes, (Steward in London) | 115 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 1. | David Fudge, (Coachman in London) | 60 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 1. | Secretary, 1st quarter, 1876 | 25 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 4. | Frederick Crawley, in charge of school-rooms at Oxford | 10 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 6. | Self, pocket-money | 20 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 17. | Arthur Burgess, assistant engraver | 27 | 10 | 0 | |||
| 20. | New carriage | 190 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 20. | Gift to Carshalton, for care of spring | 110 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 20. | Madame Nozzoli, charities at Florence | 10 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 20. | Mrs. Wonnacott, charities at Abingdon | 3 | 10 | 0 | |||
| 20. | William Ward, for two copies of Turner | 21 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 20. | Charles Murray, for rubbings of brasses, and copy of Filippo Lippi | 15 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ——— | 817 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Balance Jan. 20 | 527 | 17 | 9 | ||||