The following bit of a private letter to a good girl belonging to the
upper classes may be generally useful; so I asked her to copy it for
Fors.
“January, 1874.
“Now mind you dress always charmingly; it is the first duty of a
girl to be charming, and she cannot be charming if she is not
charmingly dressed.
“And it is quite the first of firsts in the duties of girls in high
position, nowadays, to set an example of beautiful dress without
extravagance,—that is to say, without waste, or unnecessary
splendour.
“On great occasions they may be a blaze of jewels, if they like,
and can; but only when they are part of a great show or ceremony.
In their daily life, and ordinary social relations, they ought at
present to dress with marked simplicity, to put down the curses of
luxury and waste which are consuming England.
“Women usually apologize to themselves for their pride and vanity,
by saying, ‘It is good for trade.’
“Now you may soon convince yourself, and everybody about you, of
the monstrous folly of this, by a very simple piece of definite
action.
“Wear, yourself, becoming, pleasantly varied, but simple dress, of
the best possible material.
“What you think necessary to buy (beyond this) ‘for the good of
trade,’ buy, and immediately burn.
“Even your dullest friends will see the folly of that proceeding.
You can then explain to them that by wearing what they don’t want
(instead of burning it) for the good of trade, they are merely
adding insolence and vulgarity to absurdity.”
I am very grateful to the writer of the following letters for his
permission to print the portions of them bearing on our work. The first
was written several years ago.
“Now, my dear friend, I don’t know why I should intrude what I now
want to say about my little farm, which you disloyally dare to call
a kingdom, but that I know you do feel an interest in such things;
whereas I find not one in a hundred does care a jot for the moral
influence and responsibilities of landowners, or for those who live
out of it, and by the sweat of the brow for them and their own
luxuries which pamper them, whilst too often their tenants starve,
and the children die of want and fever.
“One of the most awful things I almost ever heard was from the lips
of a clergyman, near B——, when asked what became of the children,
by day, of those mothers employed in mills. He said, ‘Oh, I take
care of them; they are brought to me, and I lay them in the
churchyard.’ Poor lambs! What a flock!
“But now for my little kingdom,—the royalties of which, by the way,
still go to the Duke of Devonshire, as lord of the minerals under
the earth.
“It had for many years been a growing dream and desire of mine
(whether right or wrong I do not say) to possess a piece of God’s
earth, be it only a rock or a few acres of land, with a few people
to live out of and upon it. Well, my good father had an estate
about four miles across, embracing the whole upper streams and head
of ——dale, some twelve hundred feet above the sea, and lifted thus
far away above the din and smoke of men, surrounded by higher
hills, the grassy slopes of Ingleborough and Carn Fell. It was a
waste moorland, with a few sheep farms on it, undivided, held in
common,—a few small enclosures of grass and flowers, taken off at
the time of the Danes, retaining Danish names and farm usages,—a
few tenements, built by that great and noble Lady Anne Clifford,
two hundred years ago; in which dwelt honest, sturdy, great-hearted
English men and women, as I think this land knows.
“Well, this land my father made over by deed of gift to me,
reserving to himself the rents for life, but granting to me full
liberty to ‘improve’ and lay out what I pleased; charged also with
the maintenance of a schoolmaster for the little school-house I
built in memory of my late wife, who loved the place and people.
With this arrangement I was well pleased, and at once began to
enclose and drain, and, on Adam Smith principle, make two blades of
grass grow where one grew before. This has gone on for some years,
affording labour to the few folks there, and some of their
neighbours. Of the prejudices of the old farmers, the less said the
better; and as to the prospective increased value of rental, I may
look, at least, for my five per cent., may I not? I am well repaid,
at present, by the delight gained to me in wandering over this
little Arcady, where I fancy at times I still hear the strains of
the pipe of the shepherd Lord Clifford of Cumberland, blending with
the crow of the moor-fowl, the song of the lark, and cry of the
curlew, the bleating of sheep, and heaving and dying fall of the
many waters. To think of all this, and yet men prefer the din of
war or commercial strife! It is so pleasant a thing to know all the
inhabitants, and all their little joys and woes,—like one of your
bishops; and to be able to apportion them their work. Labour,
there, is not accounted degrading work; even stone-breaking for the
roads is not pauper’s work, and a test of starvation, but taken
gladly by tenant farmers to occupy spare time; for I at once set to
work to make roads, rude bridges, plantations of fir-trees, and of
oak and birch, which once flourished there, as the name signifies.
“I am now laying out some thousands of pounds in draining and
liming, and killing out the Alpine flowers, which you tell me [7]
is not wrong to do, as God has reserved other gardens for them,
though I must say not one dies without a pang to me; yet I see
there springs up the fresh grass, the daisy, the primrose—the life
of growing men and women, the source of labour and of happiness;
God be thanked if one does even a little to attain that for one’s
fellows, either for this world or the next!
“How I wish you could see them on our one day’s feast and holiday,
when all—as many as will come from all the country round—are
regaled with a hearty Yorkshire tea at the Hall, as they will call
a rough mullioned-windowed house I built upon a rock rising from
the river’s edge. The children have their games, and then all join
in a missionary meeting, to hear something of their
fellow-creatures who live in other lands; the little ones gather
their pennies to support and educate a little Indian school child;
[8] this not only for sentiment, but to teach a care for others
near home and far off.
“The place is five miles from church, and, happily, as far from a
public-house, though still, I grieve to say, drink is the one
failing of these good people, mostly arising from the want of full
occupation.
“You speak of mining as servile work: why so? Hugh Miller was a
quarryman, and I know an old man who has wrought coal for me in a
narrow seam, lying on his side to work, who has told me that in
winter time he had rather work thus than sit over his fireside; [9]
he is quiet and undisturbed, earns his bread, and is a man not
without reflection. Then there is the smith, an artist in his way,
and loves his work too; and as to the quarrymen and masons, they
are some of the merriest fellows I know: they come five or six
miles to work, knitting stockings as they walk along.
“I must just allude to one social feature which is pleasant,—that
is, the free intercourse, without familiarity, or loss of respect
for master and man. The farmer or small landowner sits at the same
table at meals with the servants, yet the class position of yeoman
or labourer is fully maintained, and due respect shown to the
superior, and almost royal worship to the lord of the soil, if he
is in anywise a good landlord. Now, is England quite beyond all
hope, when such things exist here, in this nineteenth century of
machine-made life? I know not why, I say again, I should inflict
all this about self upon you, except that I have a hobby, and I
love it, and so fancy others must do so too.
“Forgive me this, and believe me always,
“Yours affectionately.”
“5th January, 1874.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have just come from an old Tudor house in
Leicestershire, which tells of happier days in some ways than our
own. It was once the Grange of St. Mary’s Abbey; where rent and
service were paid and done in kind. When there, I wished I could
have gone a few miles with you to St. Bernard’s Monastery in
Charnwood Forest; there you would see what somewhat resembles your
St. George’s land, only without the family and domestic
features—certainly most essential to the happiness of a people.
[10] But there you may see rich well-kept fields and gardens, where
thirty years ago was nothing but wild moorland and granite tors on
the hill ridges.
“The Cross of Calvary rises now on the highest rock; below are
gardens and fields, all under the care and labour (happy labour it
seems) of the Silent Brothers, [11] and a reformatory for boys.
There is still much waste land adjoining. The spot is central,
healthy, and as yet unoccupied: it really seems to offer itself to
you. There, too, is space, pure air and water, and quarries of
slate and granite, etc., for the less skilled labour.
“Well, you ask if the dalesmen of Yorkshire rise to a vivid state
of contented life and love of the pretty things of heaven and
earth. They have a rough outside, at times hard to penetrate; but
when you do, there is a warm heart, but not much culture, although
a keen value of manly education, and their duty to God and man.
Apart from the vanities of the so-called ‘higher education,’ their
calling is mostly out of doors, in company with sheep and cattle;
the philosophy of their minds often worthy of the Shepherd
Lord,—not much sight for the beauties of Nature beyond its uses. I
CAN say their tastes are not low nor degraded by literature of the
daily press, etc. I have known them for twenty years, have stood
for hours beside them at work, building or draining, and I never
heard one foul or coarse word. In sickness, both man and woman are
devoted. They have, too, a reverence for social order and ‘Divine
Law,’—familiar without familiarity. This even pervades their own
class or sub-classes;—for instance, although farmers and their
families, and workpeople and servants, all sit at the same table,
it is a rare thing for a labourer to presume to ask in marriage a
farmer’s daughter. Their respect to landlords is equally shown. As
a specimen of their politics, I may instance this;—to a man at the
county election they voted for Stuart Wortley, ‘because he bore a
well-known Yorkshire name, and had the blood of a gentleman.’
“As to hardships, I see none beyond those incident to their
calling, in snow-storms, etc. You never see a child unshod or
ill-clad. Very rarely do they allow a relative to receive aid from
the parish.
“I tried a reading club for winter evenings, but found they liked
their own fireside better. Happily, there is, in my part, no
public-house within six miles; still I must say drink is the vice
of some. In winter they have much leisure time, in which there is a
good deal of card-playing. Still some like reading; and we have
among them now a fair lot of books, mostly from the Pure Literature
Society. They are proud and independent, and, as you say, must be
dealt with cautiously. Everywhere I see much might be done. Yet on
the whole, when compared with the town life of men, one sees little
to amend. There is a pleasant and curious combination of work.
Mostly all workmen,—builders (i.e. wallers), carpenters, smiths,
etc.,—work a little farm as well as follow their own craft; this
gives wholesome occupation as well as independence, and almost
realizes Sir T. More’s Utopian plan. There is contented life of
men, women, and children,—happy in their work and joyful in
prospect: what could one desire further, if each be full according
to his capacity and refinement?
“You ask what I purpose to do further, or leave untouched. I desire
to leave untouched some 3,000 acres of moor-land needed for their
sheep, serviceable for peat fuel, freedom of air and mind and body,
and the growth of all the lovely things of moss and heather.
Wherever land is capable of improvement, I hold it is a grave
responsibility until it is done. You must come and look for
yourself some day.
“I enclose a cheque for ten guineas for St. George’s Fund, with my
best wishes for this new year.
“Ever yours affectionately.”
I have questioned one or two minor points in my friend’s letters; but
on the whole, they simply describe a piece of St. George’s old England,
still mercifully left,—and such as I hope to make even a few pieces
more, again; conquering them out of the Devil’s new England.