"FORS" BEGUN (1871-1872)
On January 1st, 1871, was issued a small pamphlet, headed "Fors
Clavigera," in the form of a letter to the working men and labourers of
England, dated from Denmark Hill, and signed "John Ruskin." It was not
published in the usual way, but sold by the author's engraver, Mr.
George Allen, at Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent. It was not
advertised; press-copies were sent to the leading papers; and of course
the author's acquaintance knew of its publication. Strangers, who heard
of this curious proceeding, spread the report that in order to get
Ruskin's latest, you had to travel into the country, with your
sevenpence in your hand, and transact your business among Mr. Allen's
beehives. So you had, if you wanted to see what you were buying; for no
arrangements were made for its sale by the booksellers: sevenpence a
copy, carriage paid, no discount, and no abatement on taking a quantity.
By such pilgrimages, but more easily through the post, the new work
filtered out, in monthly instalments, to a limited number of buyers.
After three years the price was raised to tenpence. In 1875 the first
thousands of the earlier numbers were sold: "the public has a very long
nose," Mr. Ruskin once said, "and scents out what it wants, sooner or
later." A second edition was issued, bound up into yearly volumes, of
which eight were ultimately completed. Meanwhile the work went on,
something in the style of the old Addison _Spectator_; each part
containing twenty pages, more or less, by Ruskin, with added
contributions from various correspondents.
The charm of "Fors" is neither in epigram nor in anecdote, but in the
sustained vivacity that runs through the texture of the work; the
reappearance of golden threads of thought, glittering in new figures,
and among new colours; and throughout all the variety of subject a unity
of style unlike the style of his earlier works, where flowery rhetorical
passages are tagged to less interesting chapters, separately studied
sermonettes interposed among the geology, and Johnson, Locke, Hooker,
Carlyle--or whoever happened to be the author he was reading at the
time--frankly imitated. It was always clever, but often artificial; like
the composition of a Renaissance painter who inserts his _bel corpo
ignudo_ to catch the eye. In "Fors," however, the web is of a piece, all
sparkling with the same life; though as it is gradually unwound from the
loom it is hard to judge the design. That can only be done when it is
reviewed as a whole.
At the time, his mingling of jest and earnest was misunderstood even by
friends. The author learnt too painfully the danger of seeming to trifle
with cherished beliefs. He forswore levity, but soon relapsed into the
old style, out of sheer sincerity: for he was too much in earnest not to
be frankly himself in his utterances, without writing up to, or down to,
any other person's standard.
Ruskin did not wish to lead a colony or to head a revolution. He had
been pondering for fifteen years the cause of poverty and crime, and the
conviction had grown upon him that modern commercialism was at the root
of it all. But his attacks on commercialism--his analysis of its bad
influence on all sections of society--were too vigorous and
uncompromising for the newspaper editors who received "Fors," and even
for most of his private friends. There were, however, some who saw what
he was aiming at: and let it be remarked that his first encouragement
came from the highest quarters. Just as Sydney Smith, the chief critic
of earlier days, had been the first to praise "Modern Painters," in the
teeth of vulgar opinion, so now Carlyle spoke for "Fors."
"5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, _April 30th_, 1871.
"Dear Ruskin,
"This 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter 5th, which I have just finished reading,
is incomparable; a quasi-sacred consolation to me, which almost brings
tears into my eyes! Every word of it is as if spoken, not out of my poor
heart only, but out of the eternal skies; words winged with Empyrean
wisdom, piercing as lightning,--and which I really do not remember to
have heard the like of. _Continue_, while you have such utterances in
you, to give them voice. They will find and force entrance into human
hearts, _whatever_ the 'angle of incidence' may be; that is to say,
whether, for the degraded and _in_ human Blockheadism we, so-called
'men,' have mostly now become, you come in upon them at the broadside,
at the top, or even at the bottom. Euge, Euge!--Yours ever,
"T. Carlyle."
Others, like Sir Arthur Helps, joined in this encouragement. But the old
struggle with the newspapers began over again.
They united in considering the whole business insane, though they did
not doubt his sincerity when Ruskin put down his own money, the tenth of
what he had, as he recommended his adherents to do. By the end of the
year he had set aside £7,000 toward establishing a company to be called
of "St. George," as representing at once England and agriculture. Sir
Thomas Dyke Acland and the Right Hon. W. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord
Mount Temple), though not pledging themselves to approval of the scheme,
undertook the trusteeship of the fund. A few friends subscribed; in
June, 1872, after a year and a half of "Fors," the first stranger sent
in his contribution, and at the end of three years £236 13s. were
collected, to add to his £7,000, and a few acres of land were given.
Meanwhile Ruskin practised what he preached. He did not preach
renunciation; he was not a Pessimist any more than an Optimist.
Sometimes he felt he was not doing enough; he knew very well that others
thought so. I remember his saying, in his rooms at Oxford in one of
those years: "Here I am, trying to reform the world, and I suppose I
ought to begin with myself, I am trying to do St. Benedict's work, and I
ought to be a saint. And yet I am living between a Turkey carpet and a
Titian, and drinking as much tea"--taking his second cup--"as I can
_swig_!"
That was the way he put it to an undergraduate; to a lady friend he
wrote later on, "I'm reading history of early saints, too, for my Amiens
book, and feel that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or boiled, or
something unpleasant; and I don't know if I'm a saint or a sinner in the
least, in mediæval language. How did the saints feel themselves, I
wonder, about their saintship!"
If he had forsaken all and followed the vocation of St. Francis,--he has
discussed the question candidly in "Fors" for May, 1874--would not his
work have been more effectual, his example more inspiring? Conceivably:
but that was not his mission. His gospel was not one of asceticism; it
called upon no one for any sort of suicide, or even martyrdom. He
required of his followers that they should live their lives to the full
in "Admiration, Hope and Love": and not that they should sacrifice
themselves in fasting and wearing of camels'-hair coats. He wished them
to work, to be honest, and just, in all things immediately attainable.
He asked the tenth of their living--not the widow's two mites; and it
was deeply painful to him to find, sometimes, that they had so
interpreted his teaching: as when he wrote, later, to Miss Beever:
"One of my poor 'Companions of St. George' who has sent me, not a
widow's but a parlour-maid's (an old schoolmistress) 'all her
living,' and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in
a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't
mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle,--dying,
I say, _slowly_ of consumption, not yet near the end, but
contemplating it with sorrow, mixed partly with fear lest she
should not have done all she could for her children! The sight of
this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing
fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends! Oh me, Susie,
what _is_ to become of me in the next world, who have in this life
all my good things!"
After carrying on "Fors" for some time his attention was drawn by Mr.
W.C. Sillar to the question of "Usury." At first he had seen no crying
sin in Interest. He had held that the "rights of capital" were
visionary, and that the tools should belong to him that can handle them,
in a perfect state of society; but he thought that the existing system
was no worse in this respect than in others, and his expectation of
reform in the plan of investment went hand-in-hand with his hope of a
good time coming in everything else. So he quietly accepted his rents,
as he accepted his Professorship, for example, thinking it his business
to be a good landlord and spend his money generously, just as he thought
it his business to retain the existing South Kensington drawing school,
and the Oxford system of education--not at all his ideal--and to make
the best use of them.
A lady who was his pupil in drawing, and a believer in his ideals of
philanthropy, Miss Octavia Hill, undertook to help him in 1864 in
efforts to reclaim part--though a very small part--of the lower-class
dwellings of London. Half a dozen houses in Marylebone left by Ruskin's
father, to which he added three more in Paradise Place, as it was
euphemistically named, were the subjects of their experiment. They were
ridiculed at first; but by the noblest endeavour they succeeded, and set
an example which has been followed in many of our towns with great
results. They showed what a wise and kind landlord could do by caring
for tenants, by giving them habitable dwellings, recreation ground and
fixity of tenure, and requiring in return a reasonable and moderate
rent. He got five per cent. for his capital, instead of twelve or more,
which such property generally returns, or at that time returned.
But when he began to write against rent and interest there were plenty
of critics ready to cite this and other investments as a damning
inconsistency. He was not the man to offer explanations at any time. It
was no defence to say that he took less and did more than other
landlords. And so he was glad to part with the whole to Miss Hill; nor
did he care to spend upon himself the £3,500, which I believe was the
price. It went right and left in gifts; till one day he cheerfully
remarked:
"It's a' gane awa'
Like snaw aff a wa'."
"Is there really nothing to show for it?" he was asked. "Nothing," he
said, "except this new silk umbrella."
He had talked so much of the possibility of carrying on honest and
honourable retail trade, that he felt bound to exemplify his principles.
He took a house No. 19, Paddington Street, with a corner shop, near his
Marylebone property, and set himself up in business as a teaman. Mr.
Arthur Severn painted the sign, in neat blue letters; the window was
decked with fine old china, bought from a Cavaliere near Siena, whose
unique collection had been introduced to notice by Professor Norton; and
Miss Harrie Tovey, an old servant of Denmark Hill, was established
there, like Miss Mattie in "Cranford," or rather like one of the
salaried officials of "Time and Tide," to dispense the unadulterated
leaf to all comers. No advertisements, no self-recommendation, no
catchpenny tricks of trade were allowed; and yet the business went on,
and, I am assured, prospered with legitimate profits. At first, various
kinds of the best tea only were sold; but it seemed to the tenant of the
shop that coffee and sugar ought to be included in the list. This was
not at all in Ruskin's programme, and there were great debates at home
about it. At last he gave way, on the understanding that the shop was to
be responsible for the proper roasting of the coffee according to the
best recipe. After some time Miss Tovey died. And when, in the autumn of
1876, Miss Octavia Hill proposed to take the house and business over and
work it with the rest of the Marylebone property, the offer was
thankfully accepted.
Another of his principles was cleanliness; "the speedy abolition of all
abolishable filth is the first process of education." He undertook to
keep certain streets, not crossings only, cleaner than the public seemed
to care for, between the British Museum and St. Giles'. He took the
broom himself, for a start, put on his gardener, Downes, as foreman of
the job, and engaged a small staff of helpers. The work began, as he
promised, in a humorous letter to the _Pall Matt Gazette_ upon New
Year's Day, 1872, and he kept his three sweepers at work for eight hours
daily "to show a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of
a ship of the line."
There were some difficulties, too. One of the staff was an extremely
handsome and lively shoeblack, picked up in St. Giles'. It turned out
that he was not unknown to the world: he had sat to artists--to Mr.
Edward Clifford, to Mr. Severn; and went by the name of "Cheeky." Every
now and then Ruskin "and party" drove round to inspect the works.
Downes could not be everywhere at once: and Cheeky used to be caught at
pitch and toss or marbles in unswept Museum Street. Ruskin rarely, if
ever, dismissed a servant; but street sweeping was not good enough for
Cheeky, and so he enlisted. The army was not good enough, and so he
deserted; and was last seen disappearing into the darkness, after
calling a cab for his old friends one night at the Albert Hall.
One more escapade of this most unpractical man, as they called him.
Since his fortune was rapidly melting away, he had to look to his works
as an ultimate resource: they eventually became his only means of
livelihood. One might suppose that he would be anxious to put his
publishing business on the most secure and satisfactory footing; to
facilitate sale, and to ensure profit. But he had views. He objected to
advertising; though he thought that in his St. George's Scheme he would
have a yearly Book Gazette drawn up by responsible authorities,
indicating the best works. He distrusted the system of _unacknowledged_
profits and percentages, though he fully agreed that the retailer should
be paid for his work, and wished, in an ideal state, to see the
shopkeeper a salaried official. He disliked the bad print and paper of
the cheap literature of that day, and knew that people valued more
highly what they did not get so easily. He had changed his mind with
regard to one or two things--religion and glaciers chiefly--about which
he had written at length in earlier works.
So he withdrew his most popular books--"Modern Painters" and the
rest--from circulation, though he was persuaded by the publisher to
reprint "Modern Painters" and "Stones of Venice" once more--"positively
for the last time," as they said the plates would give no more good
impressions. He had his later writings printed in a rather expensive
style; at first through Smith & Elder, after two years by Messrs. Watson
& Hazell (later Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd.), and the method of
publication is illustrated in the history of "Sesame and Lilies," the
first volume of these "collected works." It was issued by Smith &
Elder, May, 1871, at 7s., to the trade only, leaving the retailer to fix
the price to the public. In September, 1872, the work was also supplied
by Mr. George Allen, and the price raised to 9s.6d., (carriage paid)
to trade and public alike, with the idea that an extra shilling, or
nearly ten per cent., might be added by the bookseller for his trouble
in ordering the work. If he did not add the commission, that was his own
affair; though with postage of order and payment, when only one or two
copies at a time were asked for, this did not leave much margin. So it
was doubled, by the simple expedient of doubling the price!--or, to be
accurate, raising it to 18s. (carriage paid) for 20s. over the counter.
It was freely prophesied by business men that this would not do:
however, at the end of fifteen years the _sixth edition_ of this work in
this form was being sold, in spite of the fact that, five years before,
a smaller reprint of the same book had been brought out at 5s., and was
then in its fourth edition of 3,000 copies each.
Compared with the enormous sale of sensational novels and school books,
this is no great matter; but for a didactic work, offered to the public
without advertisement, and in the face of the almost universal
opposition of the book-selling trade, it means not only that, as an
author, Ruskin had made a secure reputation, but also that he deserved
the curious tribute once paid him by the journal of a big modern shop
(Compton House, Liverpool) as a "great tradesman."