£ s. d.
Balance, May 16th. 1225 19 1
460 0 0
----------
£765 19 1
Spent. £ s. d.
May 17. a. Messrs. Weldon and Inglis 23 0 0
b. Mr. Stowe, Camberwell Green 11 0 0
Warren and Jones 21 19 3
June 1. c. Annie Brickland 10 0 0
8. d. Furniture of new Lodge 300 0 0
Downs 44 0 9
3. Kate 50 0 0
----------
£460 0 0
a and b. The first of these bills is for a sealskin jacket; the second
for a gold and pearl frame to a miniature. Respecting my need for these
articles, I have more to say when my lecture on Jewels can be got
published: it is fine weather just now, and I can’t see to it.
c. In 1871, in one of my walks at Abingdon, (see Fors, Letters IV. and
VI.,) I saw some ragged children playing by the roadside on the bank of
a ditch, and gathering what buttercups they could find. Watching them a
little while, I at last asked what they were doing. ‘This is my
garden,’ answered a little girl about nine years old. ‘Well, but
gardens ought to be of use; this is only full of buttercups. Why don’t
you plant some strawberries in it?’ ‘I have none to plant.’ ‘If you had
a little garden of your own, and some to plant, would you take care of
them?’ ‘That I would.’ Thereupon I told her to come and ask for me at
the Crown and Thistle, and with my good landlady Mrs. Wonnacott’s help,
rented a tiny piece of ground for her. Her father and mother have since
died; and her brothers and sisters (four, in all,) are in the Union, at
Abingdon. I did not like to let this child go there too; so I’ve sent
her to learn shepherding at a kindly shepherd’s; close to Arundel, on
the farm of the friend whose son (with perhaps a little help from his
sister) took me out foxhunting; and examined the snail-shells for me.
This ten pounds is for her board, etc., till she can be made useful.
d. I had settled my servant Crawley, with his wife and his three
children, in a good house here at my gate. He spent his savings in
furnishing it, in a much more costly manner than I thought quite
proper; but that, (as I then supposed,) was his affair, more than mine.
His wife died last year: and now both he and I think he will be more
useful to me at Oxford than Coniston. So I send him to Oxford,—but have
to pay him for his house-furniture, which is very provoking and
tiresome, and the kind of expense one does not calculate on. The
curious troublesomeness of Fors to me in all business matters has
always been one of the most grotesque conditions of my life. The names
of Warren and Jones appear for the last time in my accounts, for I have
had to give up my tea-shop, owing to the (too surely mortal) illness of
my active old servant, Harriet Tovey,—a great grief to me, no less than
an utter stop to my plans in London.
III. I somewhat regret, for my friend’s sake, that he desires me to
print the subjoined letter in its entirety, if at all. I must print his
answer to my question about Usury, for which I am heartily grateful to
him, for reference in next Fors; and can only therefore do as he bids
me with the rest, which he has written more hastily than is his habit.
What answer it seems to me to need will be found in the attached notes.
“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—It did not need your kind letters by the post to
assure me that the rebuke pronounced on me by Fors in June was meant in
the most friendly spirit—for my good and that of all men. Fors set me
thinking, and, as you urged me to say what I thought, I began to write
you a letter, partly to show that I am not such so repulsive a person
as you paint, (a) or at least that it is not the fault of Comte if I
am; partly to show that, whilst agreeing with you very much about
modern life, I find other reasons for trusting that the world as a
whole improves. I owe you, and the age owes you, profound gratitude for
much noble teaching; and it is very sad to me to find you reviling (b)
other teachers to whom we owe much, and who know a thousand things
about which you have told us nothing. And indiscriminate abuse of all
that the human race has now become, wounds my ear as if I heard one
cursing our own fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. If you
believe that ‘the entire system of modern life is corrupted with the
ghastliest forms of injustice and untruth,’ I wonder that you believe
in God, or any future, in effort at all, or in anything but despair.
(c)
“But my letter to you grew at last to such a length that I must find
for it another place, and you or any reader of Fors who may take the
trouble to look, may see what I wish to put to you in the ‘Fortnightly
Review.’ I wanted especially to point out that the impression you have
conveyed about Comte and his teaching is almost exactly the contrary of
the truth. You speak as if Comte were a physiologist, (d) mostly
occupied with frogs and lice, whereas he is mostly occupied with
history, morality, and religion; as if he insisted on the origin of man
from the protozoa, whereas no one has more earnestly repudiated such
speculations; as if he claimed political and public careers for women,
whereas no one has said more against everything of the kind; as if he
looked on modern industrial and social life with admiration, whereas he
preaches a regeneration of our lives far more searching than any which
you even contemplate; lastly, you speak of him and his students as if
they were forbidden all sympathy with the spirit of ages past, whereas
the reverence which Comte has expressed for the Middle Age at its best,
its religion, its chivalry, its poetry, and its art, far exceeds in
depth and completeness of spiritual insight even all the fine things
which you yourself have taught us.
“Now I ask you, who love the very soul of truth, to repair an injustice
which you have done in representing Comte (e) to teach quite the
contrary of what you will find, if you turn to his books, that he does
teach. I give a trifling instance. You write as if it were sheer
impertinence in me, a student of positivism, (f) to allude to a
mediæval building or speak of a tracery. Now the truth is that some of
Comte’s profoundest thoughts relate to the moral and spiritual meaning
of these sacred relics; and for my own part, though I know nothing of
the matter, some of the best seasons of my life have been given to
companionship with these most sublime monuments, and study of the
‘writing on the wall,’—or all that men have spared.
“I say nothing about others whose views you may wish to class under the
general title ‘Evolution,’ or of a lady whom I am sorry to see you
speak of as ‘Cobbe.’ I have never shared all the opinions of those to
whom you allude, and they are not followers of Comte. I shall say
nothing about them; though I should like to know on what grounds you
think yourself entitled to call Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. John Stuart
Mill—geese. (g) The letter addressed to me in Fors has reference to
Positivism, or it should have been addressed to some one else; and I
assure you that every one of the doctrines which you ascribe to
Positivists are not held by them at all, but quite the contrary are
held.
“Whether the world is wholly worse than it was of old, is a very big
matter on which I cannot now enter. I do not think it can be settled by
statutes, old MSS., or bits from the poets. Thought and life are very
wide; and I will listen to the judgment only of those who have
patiently weighed the whole of both. (h) The grandest times of art are
often those of especial vileness in life and society; and the grandest
times of one art are sometimes those of utter decadence in another art,
even in the same people and place. When the Theseus was carved,
Aristophanes gives us the domestic and public life of the Athenians,
and it has its dark side. Titian was the contemporary of Palladio, and
also of Philip II.; Milton of Sir Peter Lely and Louis XIV.; so too
were Bach and Mozart contemporaries of Greuze and Louis XV. I don’t
quite see what is to be made of these violent contrasts. And by the
way, I wish you would work out for us the bearing of musical art on the
social and moral life of various ages. It always seemed to me you
omitted music.
“Now I will try to answer your questions of law about Usury. There is
no such thing as usury in law at all,—that is to say, there is no rate
of interest above which the lending of money is criminal or unlawful.
By the 17 and 18 Vict., c. 90, (passed in 1854,) “all existing laws
against usury shall be repealed.” (Caps. mine.) There are a great many
cases where courts of law interfere in bargains which seem to them
unfair or unreasonable. But they all arise out of the special relations
of the parties, and it would take a volume to tell you what these may
be. For more than twenty years, as I suppose every one knows who reads
a newspaper, there has been known to the law no lawful rate of interest
which it is punishable to exceed. I cannot imagine for what end you ask
me the question. Lawyers do not make the law, be it good or bad; they
follow it like policemen or soldiers who obey orders.
“I reserve what else I have to say. I am sure all that you write to me
comes from you in the most friendly feeling, as believe me does from me
all that I write to you. Your Fors fills me with melancholy each time I
read it. For it reminds me how many of those to whom we might look to
bring more order, patience, and faith into the world, are occupied in
setting us against one another, in making us rebels against our
fathers, and all that they have done for us and taught us.
“Ever gratefully and most sincerely yours,
“Frederic Harrison.”
a. I believe there is no other friend, with whom I have had so brief
opportunity of intercourse, whom I like so much as I do Mr. Harrison.
What reproach this sentence is to me as an artist, I must submit to
silently.
b. To ‘revile’ means, in accurate English, to vilify under the
influence of passion. It is not an expression which my friend could
have used, except thoughtlessly, of any words of mine, uttered of any
person living.
c. I do not ‘believe,’—I know, that the entire system of modern life is
thus corrupted. But I have long learned to believe in God, without
expecting Him to manage everything as I think proper; and I have no
occasion for belief in effort, so long as I know the duty of it.
d. Where, and when?
e. The only word I have applied to Comte, in my whole letter, is
“unique.” For the justice of which epithet I trusted my friend’s report
of him. I have never read a word he has written,—never heard anything
about him that interested me,—and never represented, or misrepresented,
him, in any manner whatsoever. When I said ‘physiologists,’ I meant
physiologists; and no more thought of Comte than of Adam.
f. I did not write to my friend as a ‘student of Positivism,’ for I
have no idea what positivism means. I wrote to him as an assertor, in
the paper I was reading, of the splendours of Evolution; and therefore
ventured to imply, not that it was an impertinence, but an absurdity,
in him to linger under the scholastic architecture dimly evolved from
the superstition of Magdalen, when he might have disported himself
under the commercial architecture more brightly evolved from the moral
consciousness of Oriel.
g. Simply because I know a goose when I see one,—and when my friend has
himself learned to know geese from swans, he will not think himself
‘entitled’ to call either anything else.
h. Mr. Harrison underlines the word ‘whole.’ I am bound, therefore, to
italicize it. Whether my friend will, hereafter, thank me for so
faithfully echoing his emphasis on this sentence, my respect for his
general common sense makes very doubtful to me. I do not see anything
requiring notice in the rest of the letter so far as it regards myself.
I seldom flaunt my poor little ragged feathers in my friends’ faces;
but must in simplicity confess to my feeling that it is not necessary
for the author of ‘Modern Painters’ to defend himself against the
charge of uttering “indiscriminate abuse of all that the human race has
now become;” nor for the author of ‘Sesame and Lilies,’ to receive
lessons in courtesy to women, from modern Anglo-French chivalry,
because he chooses to call a Cobbe, a Cobbe, no less plainly than a
Plantagenet, a Plantagenet.
IV. “Pious Sentiment.—‘I wish to God we could get a good bloody war
somewhere.’ It is not without reluctance that we reproduce these awful
words, but they were literally spoken in our hearing in that most sober
place of business, Mincing Lane, only a few hours ago. They were spoken
by a merchant or broker of gentlemanly appearance and apparent
respectability, in a public room, and the most melancholy incident in
connection with the utterance is that the atrocious sentiment
apparently created no surprise, and was met with no outburst of
indignation. We say apparently, for we ourselves were greatly
surprised,” (There is nothing whatever to be surprised at, except the
frankness of the expression. Modern Liberal Protestantism has always
held that you must not kill a man for his creed; but you may, for his
money,) “and we felt burning indignation, but we controlled our
feelings, and we hope others may have felt as we did, and had equally
good reasons for silence. We are accused of taking a pessimist view of
mercantile morality and mercantile activity. We commend the expressed
wish of an English merchant, publicly expressed, in a public place,
where merchants most do congregate, to consideration of those who
differ from us in opinion, and we merely place the fact on record
without further comment.”—Monetary Gazette, June 14th.
I reprint the paragraph for final illustration to Mr. Harrison of the
‘evolution’ of British character. I wish I had space for some others
which the courage of the editor of this excellent journal has exposed;
or for the leading article in the same number, which is an admirably
temperate and clear estimate of the real value of the work of Adam
Smith.
V. Lastly, here is some most valuable evidence from the faithful old
friend to whom I wrote, in ‘Time and Tide,’ of the increasing ‘wealth’
of England, which with the example given in the last extract of her
increasing morality, may symmetrically close the summary of St.
George’s designs, and their cause.
“15, Sunderland Street, Sunderland,
20th June, 1876.
“Dear Sir,—I have read with deep and earnest attention the last small
tract of Girdlestone. I feel its tremendous truth, and have long done
so too; but there is now a very pressing matter I would like to see
gone into, and if possible some remedy proposed for it. It is one I
have written many times to you about: I mean the rent question for the
poor, the working people. At the present there is a sad depressing
trade all over our country, and even in Europe. Yet, despite this awful
depression, I note what is termed real estate is now going up gradually
in value. I mean property and land. And that in the midst of this very
depression and want of all kinds of labour by our workpeople and
manufacturers, and in the midst of a tremendous opposition from our
foreign competitors; yet nowhere do I see it named in any of our papers
in the way I expected to see it treated of: they all seem quite elated
with the great advance that has taken place, and the continued activity
of all our building trades. Now, it seems to me, here is a question of
vital importance that needs some sound information given on it, and
some reasons assigned for this strange change in the value of all such
property, in a time of such widespread depression of all trade. How are
our people and our manufacturers to pay increased rents when there is a
depressed trade, and no work for our workmen to do? Our town is now in
a sad depressed state—work of all kinds very scarce; yet on all sides I
learn the rents are being increased to workmen, manufacturers, and
shopkeepers; and I note it also the case in other towns. I would like
to see some good report as to the real extent of such advance of
property in England. I find the advance in price of hotel,
public-house, and such-like property has been something tremendous
within these few years, since I wrote you my letters in ‘Time and
Tide.’ To me it is something very sad to reflect upon this great change
in the value or cost of a house to our workpeople. I find their food,
such as butcher’s meat, potatoes, and vegetables, milk, and some other
kinds of necessaries, are also increased in price, owing to this
advance in rent. So that the outlook for our workpeople, despite all
our wealth, is indeed not a very pleasant one, for how are they to tide
over this storm with all these necessaries at such prices? I note in
the papers the miners of the Forest of Dean in some places are
starving. I send you a book: [60] you can make any use of it you like.
I have here and there marked its pages that I thought might serve in
some measure to awaken an interest in this question of the workpeople,
versus the rise in the value of their necessaries in dull times.
“Yours respectfully,
“Thomas Dixon.”