“I heard such a pretty story last night of something that happened at a
school in Germany, not long since. It was the custom of one of the
masters to go round every night to the dormitories to see that the boys
were asleep, all right. One night he was astonished to see a lady go up
to one of the boys, stoop over him and kiss him, and then vanish. Next
morning, news came that the mother of that particular boy had died at
the time. Isn’t it lovely? Even A. believes that.”
Yes; and A. does wisely; and so may B., and C.: but yet I should much
like to know what particular boy, in what particular school in Germany.
Nevertheless, the story has more value for me because it is written to
me by a person who herself saw the shade—or rather light—of her sister,
at the time of that sister’s death on the other side of the world;
being a member of that branch of my family in which some gift of the
Scottish second sight remains, inherited by my maternal grandmother,
who ran away with my paternal grandfather when she was not quite
sixteen; and my aunt Jessie, (my father’s only sister,) was born a year
afterwards; a few weeks after which event, my grandmother, not yet
seventeen, was surprised, (by a friend who came into her room
unannounced,) dancing a threesome reel, with two chairs for her
partners, she having found at the moment no other way of adequately
expressing the pleasure she took in this mortal life, and its gifts,
and promises.
The latter failed somewhat afterwards; and my aunt Jessie, a very
precious and perfect creature, beautiful in her dark-eyed, Highland
way; utterly religious, in her quiet Puritan way, and very submissive
to Fates mostly unkind, married, or was married to—I never could make
out exactly which, or why,—a somewhat rough tanner, with a fairly good
business, in the good town of Perth; and, when I was old enough to be
taken first to visit them, as aforesaid, my aunt and my uncle the
tanner lived in a good square-built gray stone house at the
‘Bridge-End’ of Perth, some fifty yards north of the bridge; their
garden sloping steeply to the Tay, which eddied, three or four feet
deep of sombre crystal, round the steps where the servants dipped their
pails.
My aggrieved correspondent of Wakefield thought to cure me with her
delicate ‘Fie,’ of what she supposed my coarse habit of sneering at
people of no ancestry. I have it not; yet might have fallen into it in
my youth, for I remember now, with more grief and shame than I can
speak, being once ashamed of my own father and mother in Mr. Ryman’s
shop here in Oxford; nor am I entirely at ease, at this moment, in
writing of my uncles the baker and the tanner; yet my readers may trust
me when I tell them, that in now remembering my dreams in the house of
the entirely honest chief baker of Market Street, Croydon; and of
Peter—not Simon—the tanner, whose house was by the riverside of Perth,
I would not change the dreams, far less the tender realities, of those
early days, for anything I hear now remembered by lords or dames, of
their days of childhood in castle halls, and by sweet lawns and lakes
in park-walled forest.
I do not mean this for a republican sentiment; quite the opposite. I
hate republicans, as I do all other manner of fools. I love Lords and
Ladies, (especially unmarried ones, with beautiful three-syllabled
Christian-names. I know a simple two-syllabled one, also, very
charming); and Earls, and Countesses, and Marquises and Marchionesses,
and Honourables, and Sirs; and I bow down before them and worship them,
in the way that Mr. Thackeray thought ‘snobs’ did; he never perceiving
with all the wit of him, (being mostly spent in mean smell-fungus work
which spoiled its scent,) that it is himself the snob truly worships,
all the time, and not the Lord he looks at. But my way of worship was
Walter Scott’s, which my father taught me (always excepting such
recreance as that in Mr. Ryman’s shop). And therefore, when I say I
would not change my dreams of Market Street, and Bridge End, and Rose
Terrace, (where we used to live after my uncle died, briefly
apoplectic, at Bridge End,) for anything that the Palatial and
Maxime-Pontifical abodes of Nobles and Bishops give them—I mean simply
that I had a home, being a child, and loved it, and did not then, and
do not now, covet my neighbour’s house; [21] but cling to every
likeness findable in these ruinous days to the places of peace given me
in that lowly time.
Peace, and the knowledge of God it gave me. For, by the way, observe in
that sacredest of benedictions, which my Dean gave me in my own
cathedral last Sunday, (I being an honorary student of Christ
Church;—and there are only eight, if you please to look in the Oxford
Calendar,) “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God;”—observe, I
say, for we do not always think of this, it is not the knowledge that
is to give peace; but the peace which is to give knowledge; so that as
long as we fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of
wickedness, and bite and devour one another, and are consumed one of
another—every traveller paying an eight per cent. tax in his fare, for
dividend to a consuming railroad company—we can’t know anything about
God at all. And compare again ‘Eagle’s Nest,’ p. 194.
There, then, at Rose Terrace, I lived in peace in the fair Scotch
summer days, with my widowed aunt, and my little cousin Jessie, then
traversing a bright space between her sixth and ninth year; dark-eyed
deeply, like her mother, and similarly pious; and she and I used to
compete in the Sunday evening Scriptural examinations; and be as proud
as two little peacocks because Jessie’s elder brothers, and sister
Mary, used to get ‘put down,’ and either Jessie or I was always ‘Dux.’
We agreed upon this that we would be married, when we were a little
older; not considering it preparatorily necessary to be in any degree
wiser.
9th February.
I couldn’t go on about my cousin Jessie, for I was interrupted by the
second post with more birthday compliments, from young ladies now about
Jessie’s age—letters which of course required immediate answer,—some
also with flowers, which required to be immediately put into water, and
greatly worried me by upsetting themselves among my books all day
afterwards; but I let myself be worried, for love;—and, from a
well-meaning and kindly feeling friend, some very respectful and
respectable poetry, beautifully written, (and I read part of it, for
love, but I had much rather he had sent me sixpence, for I hate poetry,
mostly, and love pence, always); and to-day, half-past seven before
chapel, my mind is otherwise set altogether, for I am reading Leviticus
carefully now, for my life of Moses; and, in working out the law of the
feast of harvest, chanced on the notable verse, xxiii. 24: “In the
seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath,
a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation;” and then
flashed on me, all in a minute, the real meaning of Holbein’s
introduction to the Dance of Death, (the third woodcut in the first
edition), which till this moment I only took for his own symbol of the
Triumph of Death, adopted from Orcagna and others, but which I see now,
in an instant, to be the un-Holy Convocation; the gathering together to
their temple of the Tribes of Death, and the blowing of trumpets on
their solemn feast day, and sabbath of rest to the weary in evil doing.
And, busy friends, in the midst of all your charming preparations for
the Spring season, you will do well to take some method of seeing that
design, and meditating, with its help, upon the grave question, what
kind of weariness you will have to rest from. My own thoughts of it are
disturbed, as I look, by that drummer-death, in front, [22] with his
rattling and ringing kettledrums (he the chief Musician in the Psalm
for the sons of Korah—Dathan and Abiram, because his sounding is on
Skin, with sticks of Bone,) not only because of my general interest in
drummers, but because, after being much impressed, when I was a child,
by the verses I had to learn about the last trump, out of the 15th of
1st Corinthians,—when I became a man, and put away childish things, I
used often to wonder what we should all say of any sacred Saga among
poor Indians whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, if it told them
that they were all to rise from the dead at the sound of the last drum.
And here I’m interrupted again by a delightful letter about the
resurrection of snails, Atropos really managing matters, at present,
like the daintiest and watchfullest housewife for me,—everything in its
place, and under my hand.
“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—As I have just read the last part of February ‘Fors,’
I want to say what I know about the little shells—(Helix virgata—I
suppose). I think—indeed, am pretty sure, nearly, if not quite—all
those shells had little live snails in them. I have found them in
quantities on the South Downs near Lewes, on Roundway Hill near
Devizes, near Lyme Regis, in North Wales; and before any of those
places, on our own Hampton Common in Gloucestershire, where my sisters
and myself used to gather those and other pretty ones when we were
children. If you have any stored by, in a few months I think you will
find them (if not shut up) walk away.
“When I was a girl I once had to choose a birthday present from one of
my aunts, and asked for ‘Turton’s British Shells,’ for I always wanted
to know the name and history of everything I found; then I collected
all the land and freshwater shells I could find, as I could not get sea
shells—one of my longings—for I never saw the sea till after I was
twenty, except for a few hours at Munsley in Norfolk, when I was eight
years old. I have my little shells still; and have four or five
varieties of Helix virgata: I think the number of rings increases as
the shell goes on growing.
‘In the autumn these shells are often suddenly observed in such great
numbers as to give rise to the popular notion of their having fallen
from the clouds. This shell is very hardy, and appears nearly
insensible to cold, as it does not hybernate even when the ground is
covered with snow.’
“I always fancied the Lord let them lie about in such numbers to be
food for some little birds, or may be rooks and starlings, robins,
etc., in cold weather when there was so little to eat.
“I dare say you know how the blackbirds and thrushes eat the larger
snails. I have often seen in the woods a very pretty coloured shell
lying on a white stone,—the birds had put it there to crack a hole in
it and to take out the snail. The shell looked such a pretty clear
colour because it was alive, and yet empty.”
Yes; the Holy Ghost of Life, not yet finally departed, can still give
fair colours even to an empty shell. Evangelical friends,—worms, as you
have long called yourselves, here is a deeper expression of humility
suggested possible: may not some of you be only painted shells of
worms,—alive, yet empty?
Assuming my shell to be Helix virgata, I take down my magnificent
French—(let me see if I can write its title without a mistake)—“Manuel
de Conchyliologie et de Paléontologie Conchyliologique,” or, in
English, “Manual of Shell-talking and Old-body-talking in a
Shell-talking manner.” Eight hundred largest octavo—more like
folio—pages of close print, with four thousand and odd (nearly five
thousand) exquisite engravings of shells; and among them I look for the
creatures elegantly, but inaccurately, called by modern naturalists
Gasteropods; in English, Belly-feet, (meaning, of course, to say
Belly-walkers, for they haven’t got any feet); and among these I find,
with much pains, one that is rather like mine, of which I am told that
it belongs to the sixteenth sort in the second tribe of the second
family of the first sub-order of the second order of the Belly-walkers,
and that it is called ‘Adeorbis subcarinatus,’—Adeorbis by Mr. Wood,
and subcarinatus by Mr. Montagu; but I am not told where it is found,
nor what sort of creature lives in it, nor any single thing whatever
about it, except that it is “sufficiently depressed” (“assez
déprimée”), and “deeply enough navelled” (assez profondement
ombiliquée,—but how on earth can I tell when a shell is navelled to a
depth, in the author’s opinion, satisfactory?) and that the turns
(taken by the family), are ‘little numerous’ (peu nombreux). On the
whole, I am not disposed to think my shell is here described, and put
my splendid book in its place again.
I next try my English Cuvier, in sixteen octavo volumes; in which I
find no notice whatever taken of these minor snails, except a list of
thirty-three species, finishing with an etc.; out of which I mark
‘Cretacea,’ ‘Terrestris,’ and ‘Nivea,’ as perhaps likely to fit mine;
and then I come, by order of Atropos, on this amazing account of the
domestic arrangements of a little French snail, “Helix decollata”
(Guillotined snail?) with references to “Cm. Chemn. cxxxvi. 1254–1257,”
a species which “has the singular habit of successively fracturing the
whorls at the top, (origin, that is,—snails building their houses from
heaven towards earth,) of the spire, so that at a particular epoch, of
all the whorls of the spire originally possessed by this bulimus, not a
single one remains.” Bulimus,—what’s a bulimus? Helix is certainly a
screw, and bulimus—in my Riddle’s dictionary—is said to be
“empty-bellied.” Then this French snail, revolutionary in the manner of
a screw, appears to be a belly-walker with an empty belly, and no
neck,—who literally “breaks up” his establishment every year!
Query—breaks? or melts? Contraction or confusion?
I must put my fine English book back in its place, too;—but here, at
last, comes a ‘work of light’ to help us, from my favourite pupil, who
was out with me that day on the Downs, and nearly killed himself with
keeping a fox in sight on foot, up and down them;—happily surviving, he
has pursued the slower creature for me to its cave of silver earth; and
writes thus.
“I have sent you two little boxes—one containing common garden snail
shells of various ages, and the other black striped Down shells; and
you will see that in Box 1 the full-grown ones, with the strong
finished lip, have four whorls each, and all the full-grown garden
shells I have noticed had the same number, though they varied a little
in size. The next largest in the box have only three and a half turns,
but if they had lived longer they would have added on another half
turn, bigger than all the rest of the shell put together. In fact, if
one looks at this shell, one sees that any half whorl is half as large
again as all the rest of the shell before it. Then, besides these,
there are four or five younger shells, the smallest of which has only
two and a half whorls, which exactly correspond to two and a half
whorls taken from any of the larger shells; so I think we may conclude
that a shell grows by adding on length only to the large end of a
tapering tube, like a dunce’s cap, which, however, is curled up like a
ram’s horn, to look prettier, take up less room, and allow the occupant
to beat a retreat round the corner when a robin comes. By-the-bye, I
wonder some birds don’t grow bills like corkscrews, to get at the
snails with.
“Then in box No. 2 there are several black striped Down shells, and the
full-grown ones have six whorls, and the smallest ones, which died
young, some four and some five, according to age; but the dunce’s cap
is longer, and so there are more whorls.
“I couldn’t get these facts clearly stated in two handbooks which I
read. I suppose they took it for granted that one knew; but I found,
what after all would lead one to infer the rest, that the young snail
at birth corresponds to the colourless APEX of the shell, and that the
colour only comes in that part which grows under the influence of light
and air.”
“Wednesday, Feb. 9.
“Another fact is, that all the shells I ever remember looking
at grow in the direction of the sun.
“Another fact. Since the shells have been in this room, my chimneypiece
has been full of sleepy, small, long-bodied spiders, which had gone to
sleep for the winter in these black and white caverns, out of the reach
of flocks of half-starved larks and starlings.”
I drew the three advancing stages of the common snail’s houses, thus
sent me, forthwith; and Mr. Burgess swiftly and rightly engraves them.
Note that the apparent irregularities in the spirals are conditions of
perspective, necessarily affecting the deeply projecting forms; note
also that each whorl is partly hidden by the subsequent one, built with
its edge lapping over it; and finally, that there is really, I believe,
a modification, to some extent, and enlargement, of the inner whorls;
until the domestic creature is satisfied with its length of cave, and
expresses its rest in accomplished labour and full age, by putting that
binding lip round its border, and term to its hope.
Wherein, building for the earth, we may wisely imitate it. Of other
building, not with slime for mortar, yet heavenward, we may perhaps
conceive in due time.
I beg all my readers, but especially my Companions, to read with their
best care the paper by Mr. Girdlestone, which, by the author’s kindly
gift, I am enabled to send them with this Fors. It is the most complete
and logical statement of Economic truth, in the points it touches, that
I have ever seen in the English language: and to master it will be the
best possible preparation for the study of personal duties to which I
shall invite my Companions in my next letter.