When I instituted the Company by giving the tenth of my available
property to it, I had, roughly, seventy thousand pounds in money or
land, and thirty thousand [15] in pictures and books. The pictures and
books I do not consider mine, but merely in my present keeping, for the
country, or the persons I may leave them to. Of the seventy thousand in
substance, I gave away fourteen thousand in that year of the Company’s
establishment, (see above, Letter XLIX., p. 2,) and have since lost
fifteen thousand by a relation whom I tried to support in business. As
also, during my battle with the booksellers, I have been hitherto
losing considerably by my books, (last year, for instance, paying three
hundred and ninety-eight pounds to my assistant, Mr. Burgess, alone,
for plates and woodcutting, and making a profit, on the whole year’s
sales, of fifty pounds), and have been living much beyond my income
besides, my seventy thousand is reduced to certainly not more than
thirty; and it is very clear that I am too enthusiastically carrying
out my own principles, and making more haste to be poor than is
prudent, at my present date of possible life, for, at my current rate
of expenditure, the cell at Assisi, above contemplated as advisably a
pious mortification of my luxury, would soon become a necessary refuge
for my ‘holy poverty.’ The battle with the booksellers, however, is now
nearly won; and the publishing accounts will soon show better balance:
what changes in my mode of living may, nevertheless, be soon either
exemplary or necessary will be better understood after I have given
account of it for a year.
Here are my opening expenses, then, from 1st January to 20th, and in
each following Fors they will be given from 20th to 20th of the month.
I content myself, being pressed for space in this number, with giving
merely the sums of cheques drawn; somewhat lengthy gossiping
explanation of items being also needed, which will come in due place.
The four first large sums are, of course, payments of Christmas
accounts.
£ s. d. £ s. d.
Balance in Bank, 1st Jan. 1876 1344 17 9
Paid by cheque:
Jan. 1. Jackson, (outdoor Steward, Brantwood) 50 0 0
1. Kate Smith, (indoor Stewardess, Brantwood) 160 0 0
1. David Downes, (Steward in London) 115 0 0
1. David Fudge, (Coachman in London) 60 0 0
1. Secretary, 1st quarter, 1876 25 0 0
4. Frederick Crawley, in charge of school-rooms
at Oxford 10 0 0
6. Self, pocket-money 20 0 0
17. Arthur Burgess, assistant engraver 27 10 0
20. New carriage 190 0 0
20. Gift to Carshalton, for care of spring 110 0 0
20. Madame Nozzoli, charities at Florence 10 0 0
20. Mrs. Wonnacott, charities at Abingdon 3 10 0
20. William Ward, for two copies of Turner 21 0 0
20. Charles Murray, for rubbings of brasses,
and copy of Filippo Lippi 15 0 0
--------- 817 0 0
----------
Balance Jan. 20 527 17 9
III. I am gradually rising into greater indignation against the
baseness and conceit of the modern scientific mob, than even against
the mere money-seekers. The following fragment of a letter from a
Companion bears notably on this matter:—
“The only earnest folks I know are cold-hearted ‘Freethinkers,’ and not
very earnest either. My church-going friends are not earnest, except
about their form of sound words. But I get on best with them. They are
warmer, and would be what I wish, were circumstances not so dead set
against it. My ‘Freethinking’ acquaintances say that with Carlyle the
last of the great dreamers who have impeded the advance of science will
pass away, and that, in fact, he is dead already, for nobody minds him.
I don’t heed such words now as I used to do. Had I lived when Socrates
was condemned, I would have felt hope extinguished; yet Jesus came long
after him, and I will not fear that God will fail to send His great and
good men, any more than that the sun will forget to rise.
“My Freethinking friends sneer even at the mention of any God; and
their talk of methods of reformation that infer any wisdom above their
own has long since sickened me. One Sunday evening last year, I
accompanied one of them to what they call the ‘Eclectic Hall’ here, to
hear a Mrs. Law speak. There were from two to three hundred
present,—few women—almost all toil-worn looking men. Mrs. Law, the
lecturess—a stout, coarse-looking lady, or woman who might have been a
lady—based her address on another by Mr. Gladstone, M.P. One thing she
said will give you an idea of the spirit of her lecture, which was full
of sadness to me, because highly appreciated by her audience: ‘Jesus
tells you,’ she shouted, ‘“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the
kingdom of Heaven,” but I tell you, Blessed are the rich, for theirs is
no myth-world, but this substantial one with its tangible, satisfying
joys.’
“I got one of them to read the October Letter—and then Volumes I. and
IV. of Fors. Another young fellow, a Londoner, read them too, and then
at leisure moments there was a talk over them for some days. But, with
the exception of the first referred to, they talked pitifully enough.
Your incidental remark about destroying the new town of Edinburgh, and
other items of dubious sort, blinded them to any good, and it was a
blessing when something else came athwart their vacant minds, and they
ceased to remember you.”