July 6th, 1889.
To Mr. Sydney Cockerell.
You have chosen work which is not after your own heart, rightly, I think; and I believe a great blessing will be on it. I think it will give continuity and reality to a life that might else have gone like so many artists’ lives into freaks and fancies, instead of into practicable, serviceable work, glorified by imaginative thought, high ideals, and artistic joy; but having chosen it, and the days in the main being not what call out your full power, I hope you may have many opportunities of real enjoyment; and for this you will need all spare power, seeing that you will, I know, always be helping those nearest you very abundantly....
I quite feel what you say as to the duty of seeing first to whatever grows naturally out of your own work. It is certainly a first duty, and I should be very wrong if, for the sake of retaining your help, I said a word on the other side. You must discount anything I say with the thought that I may be unconsciously biassed. In fact I hesitate to give advice. For I think you will probably feel your way to what is right for you to do, with a true instinct. But as you ask me, I will tell you one or two things that strike me about it. I understand your letter to mean that there are two kinds of work which might lead you to give up Southwark. One is required for the conduct and development of the business. On this clearly I can give no opinion at all. So far as the Southwark work interferes with due performance of this, clearly it must be given up; and all one would want you to remember is the importance of rightly estimating the “due”; for, first, it must be generously and liberally estimated; secondly it must be estimated with full care of health; and thirdly there is a something, small it may be when one is young, but still a something, which in every life may and should be given to the help of the desolate people and districts out of one’s beat or outside one’s work, which, rightly estimated, and deliberately restricted, may be continued for years, and tell by its continuity, and by the fact that the donor has gained weight and power in other fields.
Then, secondly, I read your letter to mean that you think such gift should be to your own employés, and those nearer you. There I am heartily with you; manifestly that is every man’s first duty, and all the more so, because the coming in contact with them in business also tests the wisdom and truth of the work and its spirit. So that I should naturally have looked forward to that sphere, when the time comes....
I purposely say nothing of how very much I should miss you. I do not like to think of it.
THE “BALLAD-MONGER”
14, Nottingham Place.
July 20th, 1889.
To Mr. Sydney Cockerell.