(185—)
“My dear Sir,
“I am much vexed with myself for not having written this letter sooner. There were several things I wanted to say respecting the need of perseverance in painting as well as in other businesses, which it would take me too long to say in the time I have at command—so I must just answer the main question. Your son has very singular gifts for painting. I think the work he has done at the College nearly the most promising of any that has yet been done there, and I sincerely trust the apparent want of perseverance has hitherto been only the disgust of a creature of strong instincts who has not got into its own element—he seems to me a fine fellow—and I hope you will be very proud of him some day—but I very seriously think you must let him have his bent in this matter—and then—if he does not work steadily—take him to task to purpose. I think the whole gist of education is to let the boy take his own shape and element—and then to help—discipline and urge him in that, but not to force him on work entirely painful to him.
“Very truly yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.”
“National Gallery, 3rd April.
(185—)
“My dear Sir,
“Do not send your son to Mr. Leigh: his school is wholly inefficient. Your son should go through the usual course of instruction given at the Royal Academy, which, with a good deal that is wrong, gives something that is necessary and right, and which cannot be otherwise obtained. Mr. Rossetti and I will take care—(in fact your son’s judgement is I believe formed enough to enable him to take care himself) that he gets no mistaken bias in those schools. A ‘studio’ is not necessary for him—but a little room with a cupboard in it, and a chair—and nothing else—is. I am very sanguine respecting him, I like both his face and his work.
“Thank you for telling me that about my books. I am happy in seeing much more of the springing of the green than most sowers of seed are allowed to see, until very late in their lives—but it is always a great help to me to hear of any, for I never write with pleasure to myself, nor with purpose of getting praise to myself. I hate writing, and know that what I do does not deserve high praise, as literature; but I write to tell truths which I can’t help crying out about, and I do enjoy being believed and being of use.
“Very faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.
W. White, Esq.”
My mother, whose maiden name was Chignell, came from Colchester. What her father and mother were I never heard. I will say all I have to say about Colchester, and then go back to my native town. My maternal grandmother was a little, round, old lady, with a ruddy, healthy tinge on her face. She lived in Queen Street in a house dated 1619 over the doorway. There was a pleasant garden at the back, and the scent of a privet hedge in it has never to this day left me. In one of the rooms was a spinet. The strings were struck with quills, and gave a thin, twangling, or rather twingling sound. In that house I was taught by a stupid servant to be frightened at gipsies. She threatened me with them after I was in bed. My grandmother was a most pious woman. Every morning and night we had family prayer. It was difficult for her to stoop, but she always took the great quarto book of Devotions off the table and laid it on a chair, put on her spectacles, and went through the portion for the day. I had an uncle who was also pious, but sleepy. One night he stopped dead in the middle of his prayer. I was present and awake. I was much frightened, but my aunt, who was praying by his side, poked him, and he went on all right.
We children were taken to Colchester every summer by my mother, and we generally spent half our holiday at Walton-on-the-Naze, then a fishing village with only four or five houses in it besides a few cottages. No living creature could be more excitedly joyous than I was when I journeyed to Walton in the tilted carrier’s cart. How I envied the carrier! Happy man! All the year round he went to the seaside three times a week!
I had an aunt in Colchester, a woman of singular originality, which none of her neighbours could interpret, and consequently they misliked it, and ventured upon distant insinuations against her. She had married a baker, a good kind of man, but tame. In summer-time she not infrequently walked at five o’clock in the morning to a pretty church about a mile and a half away, and read George Herbert in the porch. She was no relation of mine, except by marriage to my uncle, but she was most affectionate to me, and always loaded me with nice things whenever I went to see her. The survival in my memory of her cakes, gingerbread, and kisses; has done me more good, moral good—if you have a fancy for this word—than sermons or punishment.
My christian name of “Hale” comes from my grandmother, whose maiden name was Hale. At the beginning of last century she and her two brothers, William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester. William Hale moved to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. Homerton was then a favourite suburb for rich City people. My great-uncle’s beautiful Georgian house had a marble bath and a Grecian temple in the big garden. Of Robert Hale and my grandfather I know nothing. The supposed connexion with the Carolean Chief Justice is more than doubtful.
To return to Bedford. In my boyhood it differed, excepting an addition northwards a few years before, much less from Speed’s map of 1609 than the Bedford of 1910 differs from the Bedford of 1831. There was but one bridge, but it was not Bunyan’s bridge, and many of the gabled houses still remained. To our house, much like the others in the High Street, there was no real drainage, and our drinking-water came from a shallow well sunk in the gravelly soil of the back yard. A sewer, it is true, ran down the High Street, but it discharged itself at the bridge-foot, in the middle of the town, which was full of cesspools. Every now and then the river was drawn off and the thick masses of poisonous filth which formed its bed were dug out and carted away. In consequence of the imperfect outfall we were liable to tremendous floods. At such times a torrent roared under the bridge, bringing down haystacks, dead bullocks, cows, and sheep. Men with long poles were employed to fend the abutments from the heavy blows by which they were struck. A flood in 1823 was not forgotten for many years. One Saturday night in November a man rode into the town, post-haste from Olney, warning all inhabitants of the valley of the Ouse that the “Buckinghamshire water” was coming down with alarming force, and would soon be upon them. It arrived almost as soon as the messenger, and invaded my uncle Lovell’s dining-room, reaching nearly as high as the top of the table.
The goods traffic to and from London was carried on by an enormous waggon, which made the journey once or twice a week. Passengers generally travelled by the Times coach, a hobby of Mr. Whitbread’s. It was horsed with four magnificent cream-coloured horses, and did the fifty miles from Bedford to London at very nearly ten miles an hour, or twelve miles actual speed, excluding stoppages for change. Barring accidents, it was always punctual to a minute, and every evening, excepting Sundays, exactly as the clock of St. Paul’s struck eight, it crossed the bridge. I have known it wait before entering the town if it was five or six minutes too soon, a kind of polish or artistic completeness being thereby given to a performance in which much pride was taken.
The Bedford Charity was as yet hardly awake. No part of the funds was devoted to the education of girls, but a very large part went in almsgiving. The education of boys was almost worthless. The head-mastership of the Grammar School was in the gift of New College, Oxford, who of course always appointed one of their Fellows. Including the income from boarders, it was worth about £3,000 a year.