Dear Mr. Tarrant,—I was surprised and vexed by the opening of your
letter of 25th April, showing that you had not in the least hitherto
understood the scope or meaning of my present work. There is not the
smallest unfriendliness in my publication of your account. No client
ever had occasion to do it before, of course;—you never had a client
before engaged in steady and lifelong contest with the existing
principles of the Law, the Church, and the Army,—had you? The
publication of your accounts of course can do you no harm, if they are
fair; nor have, or had I, the slightest idea of their being otherwise.
All accounts for St. George are to be printed: the senders-in must look
to the consequences.
The delay in my returning your draft of the rules of Company is because
every lawyer I speak to tells me of a new difficulty. The whole piece
of business, you remember, arose from my request to you simply to
secure a piece of ground to our trustees, which had been given us by
Mr. Baker. Now I find at the last moment that neither Mr. Baker nor
anybody else can give us a piece of land at all, but must sell it us.
Next, I want to know if this form, as you have drawn it up, is approved
by me, what are you going to do with it? What is the good of it? Will
the writing of it in black letter make us a legal company, like a
railway company, capable of holding land? Do the Charity Commissioners
interfere with their business? or must we blow some people to bits or
smash them into jelly, to prove our want of charity,—and get leave,
therefore, to do what we like with our own?
Fix your minds, and Mr. Barber’s, on this one point—the grip of the
land. If you can’t give us that, send us in your accounts, and let us
be done with the matter. If you can, on the document as it stands,
write it out on the rubbish your modern stationers call parchment, and
do what you will with it, so.
I am really ashamed to give any farther account, just now, of the
delays in our land work, or of little crosses and worries blocking my
first attempt at practice. One of the men whom I thought I had ready
for this Worcestershire land, being ordered, for trial, to do a little
bit of rough work in Yorkshire that I might not torment Mr. Baker with
his freshmanship, threw up the task at once, writing me a long letter
of which one sentence was enough for me,—that “he would do his share,
but no more.” These infernal notions of Equality and Independence are
so rooted, now, even in the best men’s minds, that they don’t so much
as know even what Obedience or Fellowship mean! Fancy one of Nelson’s
or Lord Cochrane’s men retreating from his gun, with the avowed
resolution to ‘do no more than his share’! However, I know there’s good
in this man, and I doubt not he will repent, and break down no more;
but I shall not try him again for a year. And I must be forgiven my St.
George’s accounts this month. I really can’t let the orchises and
hyacinths go out of flower while I’m trying to cast sums; and I’ve been
two whole days at work on the purple marsh orchis alone, which my
botanical readers will please observe is in St. George’s schools to be
called ‘Porphyria veris,’ ‘Spring Purplet.’ It is, I believe, Ophelia’s
“long purple.” There are a quantity of new names to be invented for the
whole tribe, their present ones being not by St. George endurable.
The subjoined letter gives me great pleasure: it is from a son of my
earliest Oxford friend: who, as his father helped me in educating
myself, is now helping me in the education of others. I print it
entire; it may give some of my readers an idea of the minor hindrances
which meet one at every step, and take as much time to conquer as large
ones. The work to be done is to place a series of the simple chemical
elements as ‘Imps’ in a pretty row of poetical Bottles at Sheffield.
“Broad Street, Oxford, March 30, 1876.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I knocked in vain at your ‘oak’ last night when I
came to Corpus to report progress, and also to ask you two questions,
which must be put to you by letter, as there is not much time to lose
if you wish to have the alkaline earths ready by the time you go to
Sheffield. Firstly, do you wish me to see about getting the metals of
the alkalies, and if so which of them do you want? Some of them are
extremely expensive,—calcium, for instance, being 2d. a grain; but
then, as it is very light a very small quantity would be required as a
specimen. The other questions were about the amount of the oxides, and
about the shape of the bottles to hold them. I have in your absence
chosen some long sample bottles which are very beautiful of their kind,
and even if they do not meet your approval they can easily be changed
when you return to Oxford. I am progressing fairly well with the
earths—Magnesia is ready; Alumina and Baryta partly made, but not yet
pure, for it is not more easy in chemistry to get a perfect thing than
in any other matter with which man has anything to do, and to-day I
have been extremely unfortunate with the Baryta, having tried two
methods of making it, broken four crucibles, and, worst of all, failed
to make it in a state of purity: however I shall have one more try
to-morrow, and no doubt shall succeed. If there is any chance of your
being in Oxford before Easter, I will not make the Silica, since the
process is very beautiful, and one which no doubt you would like to
see. Please excuse the length of my letter, and believe me,
“Affectionately yours,
“Theodore D. Acland.”