FORS CLAVIGERA.

[Contents]FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIX.Herne Hill,3rd October, 1875.The day before yesterday I went with a young English girl to see her nurse; who was sick of a lingering illness during which, with kindliest intent, and sufficient success, (as she told me,) in pleasing her, books had been chosen for her from the circulating library, by those of her pious friends whose age and experience qualified them for such task.One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end of an advanced chapter:[300]“I am resolved never to read worldly books any more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”1The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology; and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song, which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply, with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from darkness to light.My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this celestially Utopian[301]strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more, andmymusic and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”“Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—andyourmusic and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS GRACIOUS TO BESTOW.2[302]“A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture, but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be, sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive pant.This, so far as the Arts are concerned, is ‘entering in at the Strait gate,’ of which entrance, and its porter’s lodge, you will find farther account given in my fourth morning in Florence, which I should like you to read, as a preparation for the work more explicitly now to be directed under St. George. The immediate gist of it, for those who do not care to read of Florence, I must be irksome enough again to give here; namely, that the word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life, and the word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish, (like the entrance to the pit of a theatre,)3but that, for each person, it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being between close hedges, that fewwillenter it, though allmay. In a second sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait, or narrow, but a straight, or right road; only, in this rightness of it, not at all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even marked by posts higher[303]than winter’s snow; but, on the contrary, often difficult to trace among morasses and mounds of desert, even by skilful sight; and by blind persons, entirely untenable, unless by help of a guide, director, rector, or rex: which you may conjecture to be the reason why, when St Paul’s eyes were to be opened, out of the darkness which meant only the consciousness of utter mistake, to seeing what way he should go, his director was ordered to come to him in the “street which is called Straight.”Now, bringing these universal and eternal facts down to this narrow, straight, and present piece of business we have in hand, the first thing we have to learn to draw is an extremely narrow, and an extremely direct, line. Only, observe, true and vital direction does not mean that, without any deflection or warp by antagonist force, we can fly, or walk, or creep at once to our mark; but that, whatever the antagonist force may be, we so know and mean our mark, that we shall at last precisely arrive at it, just as surely, and it may be in some cases more quickly, than if we had been unaffected by lateral or opposing force. And this higher order of contending and victorious rightness, which in our present business is best represented by the track of an arrow, or rifle-shot, affected in its course both by gravity and the wind, is the more beautiful rightness or directness of the two, and the one which all fine art sets itself principally to achieve. But its quite first[304]step must nevertheless be in the simple production of the mathematical Right line, as far as the hand can draw it; joining two points, that is to say, with a straight visible track, which shall as nearly as possible fulfil the mathematical definition of a line, “length without breadth.”And the two points had better at first be placed at the small distance of an inch from each other, both because it is easy to draw so short a line, and because it is well for us to know, early in life, the look of the length of an inch. And when we have learned the look of our own English inch, we will proceed to learn the look of that which will probably be our currency measure of length, the French inch, for that is a better standard than ours, for European acceptance.Here, I had made arrangements for the production of a plate, and woodcut, to illustrate the first steps of elementary design; but the black-plague of cloud already more than once spoken of (as connected probably with the diminution of snow on the Alps), has rendered it impossible for my assistants to finish their work in time. This disappointment I accept thankfully as the ordinance of my careful and prudent mistress, Atropos,—the third Fors; and am indeed quickly enough apprehensive of her lesson in it. She wishes me, I doubt not, to recognize that I was foolish in designing the intrusion of technical advice[305]into my political letters; and to understand that the giving of clear and separate directions for elementary art-practice is now an imperative duty for me, and that these art-lessons must be in companionship with my other school books on the Earth and its Flowers.I must needs do her bidding; and as I gather my past work on rocks and plants together, so I must, day by day, gather what I now know to be right of my past work on art together; and, not in sudden thought, but in the resumption of purpose which I humbly and sincerely entreat my mistress to pardon me for having abandoned under pressure of extreme fatigue, I will publish, in the same form as the geology and botany, what I desire to ratify, and fasten with nails in a sure place, with instant applicability to school and university exercises, of my former writings on art.4But this, I beg my readers to observe, will be the seventh large book I have actually at this time passing through the press;5besides having written and published four volumes of university lectures6in the[306]last six years; every word of them weighed with care. This is what I observe the ‘Daily Telegraph’ calls giving ‘utterances few and far between.’ But it is as much certainly as I am able at present to manage; and I must beg my correspondents, therefore, to have generally patience with me when I don’t answer their letters by return of post; and above all things, to write them clear, and in a round hand, with all the ms and ns well distinguished fromus.The woodcut, indeed, prepared for this Fors was to have been a lesson in writing; but that must wait till next year, now; meantime you may best prepare yourself for that, and all other lessons to be given in my new edition of the Elements of Drawing, by beginning to form your own cherished and orderly treasures of beautiful art. For although the greatest treasury in that kind, belonging to St. George’s Company, will be as often aforesaid public property, in our museums, every householder of any standing whatever among us will also have his own domestic treasury, becoming hereditary as accumulative; and accurately catalogued, so that others may know what peculiar or separate good things are to be found in his house, and have graciously permitted use of them if true necessity be.The basis, however, of such domestic treasury will of course be common to all; every household having its[307]proper books for religious and economic service, and its classic authors, and engravings.With the last we must at present class, and largely use, the more perishable treasure of good photographs; these, however, I do not doubt but that modern science will succeed, (if it has not already done so,) in rendering permanent; and, at all events, permanent copies of many may soon be placed in all our schools. Of such domestic treasure we will begin with a photograph of the picture by Fra Filippo Lippi, representing the Madonna; which picture last year had its place over the door of the inner room of the Uffizii of Florence, beyond the Tribune. This photograph can of course eventually be procured in any numbers; and, assuming that my readers will get one, I shall endeavour in this and future numbers of Fors, to make it useful to them, and therefore a treasure.7The first thing you are to observe in it is that the figures are represented as projecting in front of a frame or window-sill. The picture belongs, therefore, to the class meant to be, as far as possible, deceptively like reality; and is in this respect entirely companionable with one long known in our picture-shops, and greatly popular with the British innkeeper, of a smuggler on the look-out, with his hand and pistol projecting[308]over the window-sill. The only differences in purpose between the painter of this Anglican subject and the Florentine’s, are, first, that the Florentine wishes to give the impression, not of a smuggler’s being in the same room with you, but of the Virgin and Child’s being so; and, secondly, that in this representation he wishes notmerelyto attain deceptive reality; but to concentrate all the skill and thought that his hand and mind possess, in making that reality noble.Next, you are to observe that with this unusually positive realism of representation, there is also an unusually mystic spiritualism of conception. Nearly all the Madonnas, even of the most strictly devotional schools, themselves support the child, either on their knees or in their arms. But here, the Christ is miraculously borne by angels;—the Madonna, though seated on her throne, worships with both hands lifted.Thirdly, you will at first be pained by the decision of line, and, in the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which are characteristic, the first, of purely-descended Etruscan work; the second, of the Florentine school headed afterwards by Donatello. But it is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature. Remember also that a photograph necessarily loses the most subtle beauty[309]of all things, because it cannot represent blue or grey colours,8and darkens red ones; so that all glowing and warm shadows become too dark. Be assured, nevertheless, that you have in this photograph, imperfect as it is, a most precious shadow and image of one of the greatest works ever produced by hand of man: and begin the study of it piece by piece. If you fancy yourself able to draw at all, you may begin by practice over and over again the little angular band on the forehead, with its studs, and the connected chain of pearls. There are seven pearls and fourteen studs; the fifteenth, a little larger, at the angle of the transparent cap; and four more, retiring. They are to be drawn with a fine brush and sepia, measuring the exact length of the band first; then marking its double curve, depressed in the centre, and rising over the hair, and then the studs and pearls in their various magnitudes. If you can’t manage these, try the spiral of the chair; if not that, buy a penny’s worth of marbles and draw them in a row, and pick up a snail shell, and meditate upon it, if you have any time for meditation. And in my Christmas Fors I will tell you something about marbles, and beads, and coral, and pearls, and shells; and in time—it is quite possible—you may be able to draw a boy’s marble and a snail’s shell; and a sea urchin; and a Doric capital; and an Ionic capital; and a Parthenon, and a Virgin in[310]it; and a Solomon’s Temple, and a Spirit of Wisdom in it; and a Nehemiah’s Temple, and a Madonna in it.This photograph, then, is to be our first domestic possession in works of art; if any difficulty or improper cost occur in attaining it, I will name another to answer its purpose; but this will be No. 1 in our household catalogue of reference: which will never be altered, so that the pieces may always be referred to merely by their numbers.Of public, or museum property in art, I have this month laid also the minute foundation, by the purchase, for our schools, of the engravings named in the annexed printseller’s account.9And respecting the general operation of these schools and of the museums connected with them, the conclusion, which I am happy to announce, of the purchase of a piece of ground for the first of them, for six hundred pounds, requires some small special commentary.Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with husbandry, (see Notea, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and armour.Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I suppose, originally Sheaf-field;[311]but do not at all rest on that etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he knows, by that of any living nation.For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at Sheffield.Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr. Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private) communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my health.Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad this letterwasread[312]aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr. Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press, since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as “setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking shillings at the doors.Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a place of entertainment, but a[313]place of Education. And a museum is, be it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even—the Brighton Aquarium.Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means ‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’ and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom, which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule, when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short, that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an[314]equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall, rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically instructive, and practically sanitary.[315][Contents]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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322](“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]London, October 5, 1875.John Ruskin, Esq.£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and amYours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑9Last but one article in the Notes.↑10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

[Contents]FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIX.Herne Hill,3rd October, 1875.The day before yesterday I went with a young English girl to see her nurse; who was sick of a lingering illness during which, with kindliest intent, and sufficient success, (as she told me,) in pleasing her, books had been chosen for her from the circulating library, by those of her pious friends whose age and experience qualified them for such task.One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end of an advanced chapter:[300]“I am resolved never to read worldly books any more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”1The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology; and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song, which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply, with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from darkness to light.My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this celestially Utopian[301]strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more, andmymusic and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”“Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—andyourmusic and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS GRACIOUS TO BESTOW.2[302]“A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture, but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be, sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive pant.This, so far as the Arts are concerned, is ‘entering in at the Strait gate,’ of which entrance, and its porter’s lodge, you will find farther account given in my fourth morning in Florence, which I should like you to read, as a preparation for the work more explicitly now to be directed under St. George. The immediate gist of it, for those who do not care to read of Florence, I must be irksome enough again to give here; namely, that the word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life, and the word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish, (like the entrance to the pit of a theatre,)3but that, for each person, it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being between close hedges, that fewwillenter it, though allmay. In a second sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait, or narrow, but a straight, or right road; only, in this rightness of it, not at all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even marked by posts higher[303]than winter’s snow; but, on the contrary, often difficult to trace among morasses and mounds of desert, even by skilful sight; and by blind persons, entirely untenable, unless by help of a guide, director, rector, or rex: which you may conjecture to be the reason why, when St Paul’s eyes were to be opened, out of the darkness which meant only the consciousness of utter mistake, to seeing what way he should go, his director was ordered to come to him in the “street which is called Straight.”Now, bringing these universal and eternal facts down to this narrow, straight, and present piece of business we have in hand, the first thing we have to learn to draw is an extremely narrow, and an extremely direct, line. Only, observe, true and vital direction does not mean that, without any deflection or warp by antagonist force, we can fly, or walk, or creep at once to our mark; but that, whatever the antagonist force may be, we so know and mean our mark, that we shall at last precisely arrive at it, just as surely, and it may be in some cases more quickly, than if we had been unaffected by lateral or opposing force. And this higher order of contending and victorious rightness, which in our present business is best represented by the track of an arrow, or rifle-shot, affected in its course both by gravity and the wind, is the more beautiful rightness or directness of the two, and the one which all fine art sets itself principally to achieve. But its quite first[304]step must nevertheless be in the simple production of the mathematical Right line, as far as the hand can draw it; joining two points, that is to say, with a straight visible track, which shall as nearly as possible fulfil the mathematical definition of a line, “length without breadth.”And the two points had better at first be placed at the small distance of an inch from each other, both because it is easy to draw so short a line, and because it is well for us to know, early in life, the look of the length of an inch. And when we have learned the look of our own English inch, we will proceed to learn the look of that which will probably be our currency measure of length, the French inch, for that is a better standard than ours, for European acceptance.Here, I had made arrangements for the production of a plate, and woodcut, to illustrate the first steps of elementary design; but the black-plague of cloud already more than once spoken of (as connected probably with the diminution of snow on the Alps), has rendered it impossible for my assistants to finish their work in time. This disappointment I accept thankfully as the ordinance of my careful and prudent mistress, Atropos,—the third Fors; and am indeed quickly enough apprehensive of her lesson in it. She wishes me, I doubt not, to recognize that I was foolish in designing the intrusion of technical advice[305]into my political letters; and to understand that the giving of clear and separate directions for elementary art-practice is now an imperative duty for me, and that these art-lessons must be in companionship with my other school books on the Earth and its Flowers.I must needs do her bidding; and as I gather my past work on rocks and plants together, so I must, day by day, gather what I now know to be right of my past work on art together; and, not in sudden thought, but in the resumption of purpose which I humbly and sincerely entreat my mistress to pardon me for having abandoned under pressure of extreme fatigue, I will publish, in the same form as the geology and botany, what I desire to ratify, and fasten with nails in a sure place, with instant applicability to school and university exercises, of my former writings on art.4But this, I beg my readers to observe, will be the seventh large book I have actually at this time passing through the press;5besides having written and published four volumes of university lectures6in the[306]last six years; every word of them weighed with care. This is what I observe the ‘Daily Telegraph’ calls giving ‘utterances few and far between.’ But it is as much certainly as I am able at present to manage; and I must beg my correspondents, therefore, to have generally patience with me when I don’t answer their letters by return of post; and above all things, to write them clear, and in a round hand, with all the ms and ns well distinguished fromus.The woodcut, indeed, prepared for this Fors was to have been a lesson in writing; but that must wait till next year, now; meantime you may best prepare yourself for that, and all other lessons to be given in my new edition of the Elements of Drawing, by beginning to form your own cherished and orderly treasures of beautiful art. For although the greatest treasury in that kind, belonging to St. George’s Company, will be as often aforesaid public property, in our museums, every householder of any standing whatever among us will also have his own domestic treasury, becoming hereditary as accumulative; and accurately catalogued, so that others may know what peculiar or separate good things are to be found in his house, and have graciously permitted use of them if true necessity be.The basis, however, of such domestic treasury will of course be common to all; every household having its[307]proper books for religious and economic service, and its classic authors, and engravings.With the last we must at present class, and largely use, the more perishable treasure of good photographs; these, however, I do not doubt but that modern science will succeed, (if it has not already done so,) in rendering permanent; and, at all events, permanent copies of many may soon be placed in all our schools. Of such domestic treasure we will begin with a photograph of the picture by Fra Filippo Lippi, representing the Madonna; which picture last year had its place over the door of the inner room of the Uffizii of Florence, beyond the Tribune. This photograph can of course eventually be procured in any numbers; and, assuming that my readers will get one, I shall endeavour in this and future numbers of Fors, to make it useful to them, and therefore a treasure.7The first thing you are to observe in it is that the figures are represented as projecting in front of a frame or window-sill. The picture belongs, therefore, to the class meant to be, as far as possible, deceptively like reality; and is in this respect entirely companionable with one long known in our picture-shops, and greatly popular with the British innkeeper, of a smuggler on the look-out, with his hand and pistol projecting[308]over the window-sill. The only differences in purpose between the painter of this Anglican subject and the Florentine’s, are, first, that the Florentine wishes to give the impression, not of a smuggler’s being in the same room with you, but of the Virgin and Child’s being so; and, secondly, that in this representation he wishes notmerelyto attain deceptive reality; but to concentrate all the skill and thought that his hand and mind possess, in making that reality noble.Next, you are to observe that with this unusually positive realism of representation, there is also an unusually mystic spiritualism of conception. Nearly all the Madonnas, even of the most strictly devotional schools, themselves support the child, either on their knees or in their arms. But here, the Christ is miraculously borne by angels;—the Madonna, though seated on her throne, worships with both hands lifted.Thirdly, you will at first be pained by the decision of line, and, in the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which are characteristic, the first, of purely-descended Etruscan work; the second, of the Florentine school headed afterwards by Donatello. But it is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature. Remember also that a photograph necessarily loses the most subtle beauty[309]of all things, because it cannot represent blue or grey colours,8and darkens red ones; so that all glowing and warm shadows become too dark. Be assured, nevertheless, that you have in this photograph, imperfect as it is, a most precious shadow and image of one of the greatest works ever produced by hand of man: and begin the study of it piece by piece. If you fancy yourself able to draw at all, you may begin by practice over and over again the little angular band on the forehead, with its studs, and the connected chain of pearls. There are seven pearls and fourteen studs; the fifteenth, a little larger, at the angle of the transparent cap; and four more, retiring. They are to be drawn with a fine brush and sepia, measuring the exact length of the band first; then marking its double curve, depressed in the centre, and rising over the hair, and then the studs and pearls in their various magnitudes. If you can’t manage these, try the spiral of the chair; if not that, buy a penny’s worth of marbles and draw them in a row, and pick up a snail shell, and meditate upon it, if you have any time for meditation. And in my Christmas Fors I will tell you something about marbles, and beads, and coral, and pearls, and shells; and in time—it is quite possible—you may be able to draw a boy’s marble and a snail’s shell; and a sea urchin; and a Doric capital; and an Ionic capital; and a Parthenon, and a Virgin in[310]it; and a Solomon’s Temple, and a Spirit of Wisdom in it; and a Nehemiah’s Temple, and a Madonna in it.This photograph, then, is to be our first domestic possession in works of art; if any difficulty or improper cost occur in attaining it, I will name another to answer its purpose; but this will be No. 1 in our household catalogue of reference: which will never be altered, so that the pieces may always be referred to merely by their numbers.Of public, or museum property in art, I have this month laid also the minute foundation, by the purchase, for our schools, of the engravings named in the annexed printseller’s account.9And respecting the general operation of these schools and of the museums connected with them, the conclusion, which I am happy to announce, of the purchase of a piece of ground for the first of them, for six hundred pounds, requires some small special commentary.Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with husbandry, (see Notea, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and armour.Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I suppose, originally Sheaf-field;[311]but do not at all rest on that etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he knows, by that of any living nation.For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at Sheffield.Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr. Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private) communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my health.Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad this letterwasread[312]aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr. Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press, since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as “setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking shillings at the doors.Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a place of entertainment, but a[313]place of Education. And a museum is, be it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even—the Brighton Aquarium.Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means ‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’ and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom, which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule, when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short, that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an[314]equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall, rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically instructive, and practically sanitary.[315][Contents]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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322](“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]London, October 5, 1875.John Ruskin, Esq.£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and amYours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑9Last but one article in the Notes.↑10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIX.

Herne Hill,3rd October, 1875.The day before yesterday I went with a young English girl to see her nurse; who was sick of a lingering illness during which, with kindliest intent, and sufficient success, (as she told me,) in pleasing her, books had been chosen for her from the circulating library, by those of her pious friends whose age and experience qualified them for such task.One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end of an advanced chapter:[300]“I am resolved never to read worldly books any more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”1The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology; and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song, which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply, with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from darkness to light.My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this celestially Utopian[301]strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more, andmymusic and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”“Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—andyourmusic and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS GRACIOUS TO BESTOW.2[302]“A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture, but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be, sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive pant.This, so far as the Arts are concerned, is ‘entering in at the Strait gate,’ of which entrance, and its porter’s lodge, you will find farther account given in my fourth morning in Florence, which I should like you to read, as a preparation for the work more explicitly now to be directed under St. George. The immediate gist of it, for those who do not care to read of Florence, I must be irksome enough again to give here; namely, that the word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life, and the word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish, (like the entrance to the pit of a theatre,)3but that, for each person, it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being between close hedges, that fewwillenter it, though allmay. In a second sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait, or narrow, but a straight, or right road; only, in this rightness of it, not at all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even marked by posts higher[303]than winter’s snow; but, on the contrary, often difficult to trace among morasses and mounds of desert, even by skilful sight; and by blind persons, entirely untenable, unless by help of a guide, director, rector, or rex: which you may conjecture to be the reason why, when St Paul’s eyes were to be opened, out of the darkness which meant only the consciousness of utter mistake, to seeing what way he should go, his director was ordered to come to him in the “street which is called Straight.”Now, bringing these universal and eternal facts down to this narrow, straight, and present piece of business we have in hand, the first thing we have to learn to draw is an extremely narrow, and an extremely direct, line. Only, observe, true and vital direction does not mean that, without any deflection or warp by antagonist force, we can fly, or walk, or creep at once to our mark; but that, whatever the antagonist force may be, we so know and mean our mark, that we shall at last precisely arrive at it, just as surely, and it may be in some cases more quickly, than if we had been unaffected by lateral or opposing force. And this higher order of contending and victorious rightness, which in our present business is best represented by the track of an arrow, or rifle-shot, affected in its course both by gravity and the wind, is the more beautiful rightness or directness of the two, and the one which all fine art sets itself principally to achieve. But its quite first[304]step must nevertheless be in the simple production of the mathematical Right line, as far as the hand can draw it; joining two points, that is to say, with a straight visible track, which shall as nearly as possible fulfil the mathematical definition of a line, “length without breadth.”And the two points had better at first be placed at the small distance of an inch from each other, both because it is easy to draw so short a line, and because it is well for us to know, early in life, the look of the length of an inch. And when we have learned the look of our own English inch, we will proceed to learn the look of that which will probably be our currency measure of length, the French inch, for that is a better standard than ours, for European acceptance.Here, I had made arrangements for the production of a plate, and woodcut, to illustrate the first steps of elementary design; but the black-plague of cloud already more than once spoken of (as connected probably with the diminution of snow on the Alps), has rendered it impossible for my assistants to finish their work in time. This disappointment I accept thankfully as the ordinance of my careful and prudent mistress, Atropos,—the third Fors; and am indeed quickly enough apprehensive of her lesson in it. She wishes me, I doubt not, to recognize that I was foolish in designing the intrusion of technical advice[305]into my political letters; and to understand that the giving of clear and separate directions for elementary art-practice is now an imperative duty for me, and that these art-lessons must be in companionship with my other school books on the Earth and its Flowers.I must needs do her bidding; and as I gather my past work on rocks and plants together, so I must, day by day, gather what I now know to be right of my past work on art together; and, not in sudden thought, but in the resumption of purpose which I humbly and sincerely entreat my mistress to pardon me for having abandoned under pressure of extreme fatigue, I will publish, in the same form as the geology and botany, what I desire to ratify, and fasten with nails in a sure place, with instant applicability to school and university exercises, of my former writings on art.4But this, I beg my readers to observe, will be the seventh large book I have actually at this time passing through the press;5besides having written and published four volumes of university lectures6in the[306]last six years; every word of them weighed with care. This is what I observe the ‘Daily Telegraph’ calls giving ‘utterances few and far between.’ But it is as much certainly as I am able at present to manage; and I must beg my correspondents, therefore, to have generally patience with me when I don’t answer their letters by return of post; and above all things, to write them clear, and in a round hand, with all the ms and ns well distinguished fromus.The woodcut, indeed, prepared for this Fors was to have been a lesson in writing; but that must wait till next year, now; meantime you may best prepare yourself for that, and all other lessons to be given in my new edition of the Elements of Drawing, by beginning to form your own cherished and orderly treasures of beautiful art. For although the greatest treasury in that kind, belonging to St. George’s Company, will be as often aforesaid public property, in our museums, every householder of any standing whatever among us will also have his own domestic treasury, becoming hereditary as accumulative; and accurately catalogued, so that others may know what peculiar or separate good things are to be found in his house, and have graciously permitted use of them if true necessity be.The basis, however, of such domestic treasury will of course be common to all; every household having its[307]proper books for religious and economic service, and its classic authors, and engravings.With the last we must at present class, and largely use, the more perishable treasure of good photographs; these, however, I do not doubt but that modern science will succeed, (if it has not already done so,) in rendering permanent; and, at all events, permanent copies of many may soon be placed in all our schools. Of such domestic treasure we will begin with a photograph of the picture by Fra Filippo Lippi, representing the Madonna; which picture last year had its place over the door of the inner room of the Uffizii of Florence, beyond the Tribune. This photograph can of course eventually be procured in any numbers; and, assuming that my readers will get one, I shall endeavour in this and future numbers of Fors, to make it useful to them, and therefore a treasure.7The first thing you are to observe in it is that the figures are represented as projecting in front of a frame or window-sill. The picture belongs, therefore, to the class meant to be, as far as possible, deceptively like reality; and is in this respect entirely companionable with one long known in our picture-shops, and greatly popular with the British innkeeper, of a smuggler on the look-out, with his hand and pistol projecting[308]over the window-sill. The only differences in purpose between the painter of this Anglican subject and the Florentine’s, are, first, that the Florentine wishes to give the impression, not of a smuggler’s being in the same room with you, but of the Virgin and Child’s being so; and, secondly, that in this representation he wishes notmerelyto attain deceptive reality; but to concentrate all the skill and thought that his hand and mind possess, in making that reality noble.Next, you are to observe that with this unusually positive realism of representation, there is also an unusually mystic spiritualism of conception. Nearly all the Madonnas, even of the most strictly devotional schools, themselves support the child, either on their knees or in their arms. But here, the Christ is miraculously borne by angels;—the Madonna, though seated on her throne, worships with both hands lifted.Thirdly, you will at first be pained by the decision of line, and, in the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which are characteristic, the first, of purely-descended Etruscan work; the second, of the Florentine school headed afterwards by Donatello. But it is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature. Remember also that a photograph necessarily loses the most subtle beauty[309]of all things, because it cannot represent blue or grey colours,8and darkens red ones; so that all glowing and warm shadows become too dark. Be assured, nevertheless, that you have in this photograph, imperfect as it is, a most precious shadow and image of one of the greatest works ever produced by hand of man: and begin the study of it piece by piece. If you fancy yourself able to draw at all, you may begin by practice over and over again the little angular band on the forehead, with its studs, and the connected chain of pearls. There are seven pearls and fourteen studs; the fifteenth, a little larger, at the angle of the transparent cap; and four more, retiring. They are to be drawn with a fine brush and sepia, measuring the exact length of the band first; then marking its double curve, depressed in the centre, and rising over the hair, and then the studs and pearls in their various magnitudes. If you can’t manage these, try the spiral of the chair; if not that, buy a penny’s worth of marbles and draw them in a row, and pick up a snail shell, and meditate upon it, if you have any time for meditation. And in my Christmas Fors I will tell you something about marbles, and beads, and coral, and pearls, and shells; and in time—it is quite possible—you may be able to draw a boy’s marble and a snail’s shell; and a sea urchin; and a Doric capital; and an Ionic capital; and a Parthenon, and a Virgin in[310]it; and a Solomon’s Temple, and a Spirit of Wisdom in it; and a Nehemiah’s Temple, and a Madonna in it.This photograph, then, is to be our first domestic possession in works of art; if any difficulty or improper cost occur in attaining it, I will name another to answer its purpose; but this will be No. 1 in our household catalogue of reference: which will never be altered, so that the pieces may always be referred to merely by their numbers.Of public, or museum property in art, I have this month laid also the minute foundation, by the purchase, for our schools, of the engravings named in the annexed printseller’s account.9And respecting the general operation of these schools and of the museums connected with them, the conclusion, which I am happy to announce, of the purchase of a piece of ground for the first of them, for six hundred pounds, requires some small special commentary.Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with husbandry, (see Notea, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and armour.Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I suppose, originally Sheaf-field;[311]but do not at all rest on that etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he knows, by that of any living nation.For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at Sheffield.Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr. Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private) communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my health.Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad this letterwasread[312]aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr. Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press, since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as “setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking shillings at the doors.Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a place of entertainment, but a[313]place of Education. And a museum is, be it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even—the Brighton Aquarium.Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means ‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’ and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom, which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule, when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short, that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an[314]equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall, rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically instructive, and practically sanitary.[315][Contents]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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322](“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]London, October 5, 1875.John Ruskin, Esq.£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and amYours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]

Herne Hill,3rd October, 1875.

The day before yesterday I went with a young English girl to see her nurse; who was sick of a lingering illness during which, with kindliest intent, and sufficient success, (as she told me,) in pleasing her, books had been chosen for her from the circulating library, by those of her pious friends whose age and experience qualified them for such task.

One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end of an advanced chapter:[300]“I am resolved never to read worldly books any more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”1

The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology; and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song, which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply, with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from darkness to light.

My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this celestially Utopian[301]strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more, andmymusic and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”

“Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—andyourmusic and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.

For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS GRACIOUS TO BESTOW.2[302]

“A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture, but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be, sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive pant.

This, so far as the Arts are concerned, is ‘entering in at the Strait gate,’ of which entrance, and its porter’s lodge, you will find farther account given in my fourth morning in Florence, which I should like you to read, as a preparation for the work more explicitly now to be directed under St. George. The immediate gist of it, for those who do not care to read of Florence, I must be irksome enough again to give here; namely, that the word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life, and the word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish, (like the entrance to the pit of a theatre,)3but that, for each person, it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being between close hedges, that fewwillenter it, though allmay. In a second sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait, or narrow, but a straight, or right road; only, in this rightness of it, not at all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even marked by posts higher[303]than winter’s snow; but, on the contrary, often difficult to trace among morasses and mounds of desert, even by skilful sight; and by blind persons, entirely untenable, unless by help of a guide, director, rector, or rex: which you may conjecture to be the reason why, when St Paul’s eyes were to be opened, out of the darkness which meant only the consciousness of utter mistake, to seeing what way he should go, his director was ordered to come to him in the “street which is called Straight.”

Now, bringing these universal and eternal facts down to this narrow, straight, and present piece of business we have in hand, the first thing we have to learn to draw is an extremely narrow, and an extremely direct, line. Only, observe, true and vital direction does not mean that, without any deflection or warp by antagonist force, we can fly, or walk, or creep at once to our mark; but that, whatever the antagonist force may be, we so know and mean our mark, that we shall at last precisely arrive at it, just as surely, and it may be in some cases more quickly, than if we had been unaffected by lateral or opposing force. And this higher order of contending and victorious rightness, which in our present business is best represented by the track of an arrow, or rifle-shot, affected in its course both by gravity and the wind, is the more beautiful rightness or directness of the two, and the one which all fine art sets itself principally to achieve. But its quite first[304]step must nevertheless be in the simple production of the mathematical Right line, as far as the hand can draw it; joining two points, that is to say, with a straight visible track, which shall as nearly as possible fulfil the mathematical definition of a line, “length without breadth.”

And the two points had better at first be placed at the small distance of an inch from each other, both because it is easy to draw so short a line, and because it is well for us to know, early in life, the look of the length of an inch. And when we have learned the look of our own English inch, we will proceed to learn the look of that which will probably be our currency measure of length, the French inch, for that is a better standard than ours, for European acceptance.

Here, I had made arrangements for the production of a plate, and woodcut, to illustrate the first steps of elementary design; but the black-plague of cloud already more than once spoken of (as connected probably with the diminution of snow on the Alps), has rendered it impossible for my assistants to finish their work in time. This disappointment I accept thankfully as the ordinance of my careful and prudent mistress, Atropos,—the third Fors; and am indeed quickly enough apprehensive of her lesson in it. She wishes me, I doubt not, to recognize that I was foolish in designing the intrusion of technical advice[305]into my political letters; and to understand that the giving of clear and separate directions for elementary art-practice is now an imperative duty for me, and that these art-lessons must be in companionship with my other school books on the Earth and its Flowers.

I must needs do her bidding; and as I gather my past work on rocks and plants together, so I must, day by day, gather what I now know to be right of my past work on art together; and, not in sudden thought, but in the resumption of purpose which I humbly and sincerely entreat my mistress to pardon me for having abandoned under pressure of extreme fatigue, I will publish, in the same form as the geology and botany, what I desire to ratify, and fasten with nails in a sure place, with instant applicability to school and university exercises, of my former writings on art.4

But this, I beg my readers to observe, will be the seventh large book I have actually at this time passing through the press;5besides having written and published four volumes of university lectures6in the[306]last six years; every word of them weighed with care. This is what I observe the ‘Daily Telegraph’ calls giving ‘utterances few and far between.’ But it is as much certainly as I am able at present to manage; and I must beg my correspondents, therefore, to have generally patience with me when I don’t answer their letters by return of post; and above all things, to write them clear, and in a round hand, with all the ms and ns well distinguished fromus.

The woodcut, indeed, prepared for this Fors was to have been a lesson in writing; but that must wait till next year, now; meantime you may best prepare yourself for that, and all other lessons to be given in my new edition of the Elements of Drawing, by beginning to form your own cherished and orderly treasures of beautiful art. For although the greatest treasury in that kind, belonging to St. George’s Company, will be as often aforesaid public property, in our museums, every householder of any standing whatever among us will also have his own domestic treasury, becoming hereditary as accumulative; and accurately catalogued, so that others may know what peculiar or separate good things are to be found in his house, and have graciously permitted use of them if true necessity be.

The basis, however, of such domestic treasury will of course be common to all; every household having its[307]proper books for religious and economic service, and its classic authors, and engravings.

With the last we must at present class, and largely use, the more perishable treasure of good photographs; these, however, I do not doubt but that modern science will succeed, (if it has not already done so,) in rendering permanent; and, at all events, permanent copies of many may soon be placed in all our schools. Of such domestic treasure we will begin with a photograph of the picture by Fra Filippo Lippi, representing the Madonna; which picture last year had its place over the door of the inner room of the Uffizii of Florence, beyond the Tribune. This photograph can of course eventually be procured in any numbers; and, assuming that my readers will get one, I shall endeavour in this and future numbers of Fors, to make it useful to them, and therefore a treasure.7

The first thing you are to observe in it is that the figures are represented as projecting in front of a frame or window-sill. The picture belongs, therefore, to the class meant to be, as far as possible, deceptively like reality; and is in this respect entirely companionable with one long known in our picture-shops, and greatly popular with the British innkeeper, of a smuggler on the look-out, with his hand and pistol projecting[308]over the window-sill. The only differences in purpose between the painter of this Anglican subject and the Florentine’s, are, first, that the Florentine wishes to give the impression, not of a smuggler’s being in the same room with you, but of the Virgin and Child’s being so; and, secondly, that in this representation he wishes notmerelyto attain deceptive reality; but to concentrate all the skill and thought that his hand and mind possess, in making that reality noble.

Next, you are to observe that with this unusually positive realism of representation, there is also an unusually mystic spiritualism of conception. Nearly all the Madonnas, even of the most strictly devotional schools, themselves support the child, either on their knees or in their arms. But here, the Christ is miraculously borne by angels;—the Madonna, though seated on her throne, worships with both hands lifted.

Thirdly, you will at first be pained by the decision of line, and, in the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which are characteristic, the first, of purely-descended Etruscan work; the second, of the Florentine school headed afterwards by Donatello. But it is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature. Remember also that a photograph necessarily loses the most subtle beauty[309]of all things, because it cannot represent blue or grey colours,8and darkens red ones; so that all glowing and warm shadows become too dark. Be assured, nevertheless, that you have in this photograph, imperfect as it is, a most precious shadow and image of one of the greatest works ever produced by hand of man: and begin the study of it piece by piece. If you fancy yourself able to draw at all, you may begin by practice over and over again the little angular band on the forehead, with its studs, and the connected chain of pearls. There are seven pearls and fourteen studs; the fifteenth, a little larger, at the angle of the transparent cap; and four more, retiring. They are to be drawn with a fine brush and sepia, measuring the exact length of the band first; then marking its double curve, depressed in the centre, and rising over the hair, and then the studs and pearls in their various magnitudes. If you can’t manage these, try the spiral of the chair; if not that, buy a penny’s worth of marbles and draw them in a row, and pick up a snail shell, and meditate upon it, if you have any time for meditation. And in my Christmas Fors I will tell you something about marbles, and beads, and coral, and pearls, and shells; and in time—it is quite possible—you may be able to draw a boy’s marble and a snail’s shell; and a sea urchin; and a Doric capital; and an Ionic capital; and a Parthenon, and a Virgin in[310]it; and a Solomon’s Temple, and a Spirit of Wisdom in it; and a Nehemiah’s Temple, and a Madonna in it.

This photograph, then, is to be our first domestic possession in works of art; if any difficulty or improper cost occur in attaining it, I will name another to answer its purpose; but this will be No. 1 in our household catalogue of reference: which will never be altered, so that the pieces may always be referred to merely by their numbers.

Of public, or museum property in art, I have this month laid also the minute foundation, by the purchase, for our schools, of the engravings named in the annexed printseller’s account.9

And respecting the general operation of these schools and of the museums connected with them, the conclusion, which I am happy to announce, of the purchase of a piece of ground for the first of them, for six hundred pounds, requires some small special commentary.

Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with husbandry, (see Notea, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and armour.

Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I suppose, originally Sheaf-field;[311]but do not at all rest on that etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)

Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he knows, by that of any living nation.

For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at Sheffield.

Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr. Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private) communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my health.

Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad this letterwasread[312]aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr. Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press, since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as “setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”

I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking shillings at the doors.

Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a place of entertainment, but a[313]place of Education. And a museum is, be it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even—the Brighton Aquarium.

Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means ‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’ and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom, which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule, when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short, that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an[314]equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall, rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.

The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically instructive, and practically sanitary.[315]

[Contents]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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322](“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]London, October 5, 1875.John Ruskin, Esq.£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and amYours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]

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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322](“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]London, October 5, 1875.John Ruskin, Esq.£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and amYours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]

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 tuisdedita.’ 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 inPsalm lxxviii. ver. 9(sic: the writer meansver. 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; preciselybecause, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’hasthe same meaning as inPsalm 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.10I 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 apracticalwork.

“I am trying to carry out what you have taught me in business, where Icando 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 thebest thing for wearthat 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.

“And this brings me to the point I want to put to you about the permitted use of the sewing machine (seeFors XXXIV., p. 30).11It may seem unreasonable, when our firm employs so many. But it seems to me that theadmissionof machinery at all is unwise in principle. Machinery, especially the sewing machine, has demoralized the shoe trade,—the same I think you would find in all other trades,—notably in piece-goods for ladies’ dresses—which, owing to the cheapness with which they can be made up, are far more in number than theycouldhave been if no sewing machine had been used. And a manufacturer told me, only the other day, that common piece-goods, both woollen and others, takeas muchand generallymorelabour in making than the best. If all work required to supply clothing to the race were to be done byhand, it would be worth no one’s while to make rubbish of any kind,—the work would be done by fewer people, and all raw material would be cheapened.

“In your advice to a young lady, printed atpage 29, Letter XXXIV., in the third volume of Fors Clavigera, you give her permission to use a sewing machine. I hope that, on fuller consideration of the subject, you will advise all who set the weal of their country above their own convenience, to discontinue its use wherever it can possibly be dispensed with.[319]

“For the effect of the sewing machine upon the great industries connected with clothing has been most disastrous.

“Given a certain quantity of cloth, or calico, or leather; and, before it can be made available as clothing, it must be joined or stitched together in certain shapes.

“Now so long as this stitching was, of necessity, all done by hand, it was never worth while, supposing the labour to be paid for at a just rate, to use any but good materials. A print dress at three-halfpence per yard, which might wear a week, would cost as much to make as a dress that would wear a year; and, except for the rich and luxurious, all extravagance of trimming, and all sewing useless for wear, were unattainable.

“But with the introduction of the sewing machine a great change took place. It would be impossible within the limits of a letter to follow it out in every trade which has felt its influence. But briefly,—when it was found that the stitching process could be got through, though less solidly, at a very much reduced cost, it became possible for all classes to have dresses, clothes, and shoes in far greater number, and to embody in all kinds of clothing a larger amount of useless and elaborate work.

“And then arose among manufacturers generally a vigorous competition,—each one striving, not to make the most enduring and sound fabric (the best value), but that which, retaining some appearance of goodness, should be saleable at the lowest price and at the largest apparent profit.

“The Statutes of the old Trade Guilds of England constantly provide for the purity of their several manufactures; as did Richard Cœur de Lion, in his law for the cloth makers, (Fors, Letter III., p. 15,)—on this thoroughly wise and just ground: namely, that the best cloth, leather, etc., producible, being accurately the cheapest to the consumer,—the man who used[320]his knowledge of his trade to make other than the best, was guilty of fraud. Compare this view of the duty of a manufacturer with modern practice!

“It may be said that the customer is not cheated; since he knows, when he buys what is called a cheap thing, that it is not the best. I reply that the consumer never knows to the full what bad value, or unvalue, the common article is. And whose fault is it that he buys any but the best value?

“The answer involves a consideration of the duty and position of the retailer or middleman, and must be given, if at all, hereafter.

“One might multiply instances to show how this kind of competition has lowered the standard of our manufactures; but here most readers will be able to fall back upon their own experience.

“Then these common fabrics require for their production always a larger amount of labour in proportion to their value,—often actually as much and sometimes more, than would suffice to make an equal quantity of material of the best value. So that, roughly, when we demand two common coats where one good one would serve, we simply require certain of our fellow-creatures to spend double the necessary time working for us in a mill. That is, supposing we get the full value out of our two common coats when we have them: the evil is greater if we fail to do so, and, to gratify our selfishness or caprice, require three instead of two. And the question arises,—Is itkindorjustto require from others double the needful quantity of such labour as we would not choose to undergo ourselves? That it is notChristianso to do, may be learned by any one who will think out to their far-reaching consequences the words of our Lord: ‘ThereforeALL THINGS WHATSOEVERye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’[321]

“Now the use of the sewing machine has been all in favour of the ‘three-coat’ system, indefinitely multiplied and variously recommended; and the consequent absorption, year by year, of larger numbers of persons in mechanical toil; toil of the hands only—numbing to the brain, and blighting to the heart, or maddening to both.

“So far as the question of clothing is concerned, I would venture to sum up our duty under present circumstances, broadly, as follows.” [It can’t possibly be done better.—J. R.]

“Always demand the best materials, and use no more of them than is necessary to dress yourselves neatly or handsomely, according to your station in society. Then have these materials made up by hand, if possible under your own supervision, paying a just price for the labour. For such ornament as you need to add, remember that it must be the expression, first of your delight in some work of God’s, and then, of the human skill that wrought it. This will save you from ever tampering with the lifeless machine-work; and though you have little ornament, it will soon be lovely and right.

“Above all, never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever; it is most of it stained with blood, if you could see it aright. It is true you may now buy a ‘lady’s costume,’ made up and trimmed by the sewing machine (guided by a human one), for the sum of two shillings and fourpence (wholesale),but you had a great deal better wear a sack with a hole in it.” [Italics mine.—J. R.] “It may be worth while hereafter to define with some precision what is the best value in various kinds of goods; Meantime, should it be suggested that machine sewing is good enough for common materials, or for clothes that you intend to wear only a few times, and then throw aside, remember you have no business to buy any but good materials, nor to waste when you have bought them; and that it is worth while to put solid hand-work into such.”[322]

(“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”)

IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily,illacquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity.

Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer.[323]

And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.

“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”

“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—We have only just read the September number of Fors Clavigera. My husband is the Ned G—— referred to in the letter you quote from E. L. Said he, ‘It (i.e., the letter) is not worth notice.’ I replied, ‘In itself perhaps not; but I have known Mr. Ruskin in his writings many years, and I shall write him to put before him the actual facts, and request him to withdraw these misstatements.’ The whole letter is written on the supposition that Mr. Green is aniron king, oriron lord. No such thing: he is anengineer—quite a different affair; the maker of a patent which is known all over the world as the ‘Fuel Economiser.’ He consequently never had a forge, and is indebted to the use of his intellect and the very clever mechanical genius of his father for their rise in life, and not merely totoiling half-naked Britons, as stated. The picture of the forge, with itsfoul smoke and sweltering heat and din, is drawn from some other place, and is utterly unlike the real workshops of E. Green and Son—costly, airy, convenient, and erected to ensure the comfort of the workpeople, having a handsome front and lofty interior.

“As to smoke, the whole concern makes no more than, if as much as, an ordinary dwelling-house; while we suffer too much at Heath from the town smoke to add to the dense volumes. We have no whistle—some other place is meant; we were never possessed of a ‘devil,’ American or English, of any sort. Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, and but for the attachment of his father and himself to their birthplace,[324]would long ago have conducted his operations in a more central spot.

“Several other grave charges are brought against Mr. Green—one so serious that I am surprised to see it printed: viz.,that he rules his people with an iron hand. That may go with the rest of the ‘iron tale.’ Your correspondent is either very ignorant or wilfully false. No such assertion can be for a moment sustained, after inquiry is made among our people; nor by any one in the town could an instance of such be proved.

“As to the Scotch estate, Mr. Green does not possess one.

“The history ofRobin the Pedlaris equally a work of E. L.’s imagination, although no false shame as to a humble descent has ever been shown or felt. What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate thatone sprung from the peoplehas no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is nogentleman, noscholar, andhas nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G—— is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.

“As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house, of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth’s time, which you only enjoy during a few years’ lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guest-chambers.

“Nosquirehas lived here for a century and a quarter; and the[325]last descendant of thevenerated Lady B——, (Dame Mary Bolles, that is,) utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield—preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash’s; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin—who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.’s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!

“Yours very truly,“Mary Green.”

(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.)

V. The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George’s monies made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings12now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings—all by Durer—are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examples—retaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.[326]

London, October 5, 1875.

John Ruskin, Esq.

£s.d.St. G.1.Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die100St.,,G.,,2.Raglan Castle3100St.,,G.,,3.Solway Moss400St.,,G.,,4.Hind Head Hill1100St.,,G.,,5,a, b, c.Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)600St.,,G.,,6.Hindoo Worship200St.,,G.,,7.Dumblane Abbey3100St.,,G.,,8.Pembury MillSt.,,G.,,9.Etching of the Severn and Wye2100St.,,G.,,10.Tenth Plague (of Egypt)200St.,,G.,,11.Æsacus and Hesperie310029100(The above Prints sold at an unusually low price, for Mr. Ruskin’s school.)J. R.1.Sir John Cust0100J.,,R.,,2.Lady Derby500J.,,R.,,3, 4.Two Etchings of Æsacus and Hesperie (£4 each)800J.,,R.,,5, 6.Two Holy Islands (£2 6s.each)4120J.,,R.,,7.Etching of Procris440J.,,R.,,8.Holy Island260J.,,R.,,9.The Crypt440J.,,R.,,10.The Arvernon880J.,,R.,,11.Raglan Castle700J.,,R.,,12.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,13.Raglan,,Castle,,600J.,,R.,,14.Woman at the Tank7176J.,,R.,,15.Grande Chartreuse880101196Discount (15 per cent.)1010[327]St. G.16.Knight and Death1800St.,,G.,,17.St. George onHorseback3100St.,,G.,,18.St.,,George,,on,,Foot700St.,,G.,,19.Pilate200St.,,G.,,20.Caiaphas300£12586

My dear Sir,—It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and am

Yours very sincerely and obliged.John Ruskin, Esq.

Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company’s registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.

Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi, I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don’t promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request,[328]made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.

At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence13than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.[329]

1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑9Last but one article in the Notes.↑10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑9Last but one article in the Notes.↑10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑

1I quote from memory, and may be out in a word or two; not in the sense: but I don’t know if the young lady is really approved by the author, and held up as an example to others; or meant, as I have taken her, for a warning. The method of error, at all events, is accurately and clearly shown.↑

2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑

2To make the definition by itself complete, the words ‘in his work’ should be added after ‘submitted’ and ‘by his work’ after ‘bestow’; but it is easier to learn without these phrases, which are of course to be understood.↑

3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑

3The ‘few there be that find it’ is added, as an actual fact; a fact consequent not on the way’s being narrow, but on its being disagreeable.↑

4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑

4Namely, Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps, and Elements of Drawing. I cut these books to pieces, because in the three first, all the religious notions are narrow, and many false; and in the fourth, there is a vital mistake about outline, doing great damage to all the rest.↑

5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑

5Fors, Ariadne, Love’s Meinie, Proserpina, Deucalion, Mornings in Florence,—and this: and four of these require the careful preparation of drawings for them by my own hand, and one of these drawings alone, for Proserpina, this last June, took me a good ten days’ work, and that hard.↑

6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑

6Inaugural Lectures, AratraPentelici, Val d’Arno, and Eagle’s Nest;[306]besides a course on Florentine Sculpture, given last year, and not yet printed, the substance of it being in re-modification for Mornings in Florence.↑

7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑

7Mr. W. Ward, 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, will give any necessary information about this or other photographs referred to in Fors; and generally have them on sale; but see terminal Note.↑

8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑

8The transparent part of the veil which descends from the point of the cap is entirely lost, for instance, in this Madonna.↑

9Last but one article in the Notes.↑

9Last but one article in the Notes.↑

10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑

10The writer is now an accepted Companion.↑

11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑

11I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave thereforepermissiononly to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter.↑

12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑

12The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill.↑

13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

13Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company.↑

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