Paris, 1st April, 1874.
I find there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is possible still
to see blue sky in London in the early morning. It was entirely pure as
I drove down past my old Denmark Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street
Station, on Monday morning last; gate, closed now on me for evermore,
that used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from work in
Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, and the roses of the
spring, prime or late—what are they to me?
But I want to know, rather, what are they to you? What have you,
workers in England, to do with April, or May, or June either; your
mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, do they? and you can’t get
more smoke up the chimneys because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you
so much as know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the
heathen souls, so despised of you Christians? Nevertheless, I have a
word or two to say to you in the light of the hawthorn blossom, only
you must read some rougher ones first. I have printed the June Fors
together with this, because I want you to read the June one first, only
the substance of it is not good for the May-time; but read it, and when
you get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions between
the sins of the hot heart and the cold, come back to this, for I want
you to think in the flush of May what strength is in the flush of the
heart also. You will find that in all my late books (during the last
ten years) I have summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of
gentleness and justice; gentleness being the virtue which distinguishes
gentlemen from churls, and justice that which distinguishes honest men
from rogues. Now gentleness may be defined as the Habit or State of
Love; the Red Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter Seventh);
and ungentleness or clownishness, the opposite State or Habit of Lust.
Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men: the love of
what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely in things, and what
is lovely in report. And these three loves have each their relative
corruption, a lust—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life.
And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished from a churl by
the purity of sentiment he can reach in all these three passions: by
his imaginative love, as opposed to lust; his imaginative possession of
wealth as opposed to avarice; his imaginative desire of honour as
opposed to pride.
And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or labourer for whom
I write to understand what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share
them, if he will; but the crisis and horror of this present time are
that its desire of money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly
attainable by common persons, are gradually making churls of all men;
and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even the
conception of them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl mind; so that,
to take only so poor an instance of them as my own life—because I have
passed it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have
laboured always for the honour of others, not my own, and have chosen
rather to make men look to Turner and Luini, than to form or exhibit
the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured
the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them
all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk
better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than
shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I
never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all women with
solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil;
therefore the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at
me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for
a bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the “effeminate
sentimentality of Ruskin.”
Now of these despised sentiments, which in all ages have distinguished
the gentleman from the churl, the first is that reverence for womanhood
which, even through all the cruelties of the Middle Ages, developed
itself with increasing power until the thirteenth century, and became
consummated in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the
highest arts and purest thoughts of that age.
To the common Protestant mind the dignities ascribed to the Madonna
have been always a violent offence; they are one of the parts of the
Catholic faith which are openest to reasonable dispute, and least
comprehensible by the average realistic and materialist temper of the
Reformation. But after the most careful examination, neither as
adversary nor as friend, of the influences of Catholicism for good and
evil, I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of
its noblest and most vital graces, and has never been otherwise than
productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. I do not
enter into any question as to the truth or fallacy of the idea; I no
more wish to defend the historical or theological position of the
Madonna than that of St. Michael or St. Christopher; but I am certain
that to the habit of reverent belief in, and contemplation of, the
character ascribed to the heavenly hierarchies, we must ascribe the
highest results yet achieved in human nature, and that it is neither
Madonna-worship nor saint-worship, but the evangelical self-worship and
hell-worship—gloating, with an imagination as unfounded as it is foul,
over the torments of the damned, instead of the glories of the
blest,—which have in reality degraded the languid powers of
Christianity to their present state of shame and reproach. There has
probably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the length and
breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity, in
which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to
the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives of
women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and
strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of
the poor Israelite maiden, “He that is mighty hath magnified me, and
Holy is His name.” What we are about to substitute for such magnifying
in our modern wisdom, let the reader judge from two slight things that
chanced to be noticed by me in my walk round Paris. I generally go
first to Our Lady’s Church, for though the towers and most part of the
walls are now merely the modern model of the original building, much of
the portal sculpture is still genuine, and especially the greater part
of the lower arcades of the north-west door, where the common entrance
is. I always held these such valuable pieces of the thirteenth century
work that I had them cast, in mass, some years ago, brought away casts,
eight feet high by twelve wide, and gave them to the Architectural
Museum. So as I was examining these, and laboriously gleaning what was
left of the old work among M. Violet le Duc’s fine fresh heads of
animals and points of leaves, I saw a brass plate in the back of one of
the niches, where the improperly magnified saints used to be. At first
I thought it was over one of the usual almsboxes which have a right to
be at church entrances (if anywhere); but catching sight of an English
word or two on it, I stopped to read, and read to the following
effect:—
“F. du Larin,
office
of the
Victoria Pleasure Trips
And Excursions to Versailles.
Excursions to the Battle-fields round Paris.
“A four-horse coach with an English guide starts daily from Notre
Dame Cathedral, at 10½ a.m. for Versailles, by the Bois de
Boulogne, St. Cloud, Montretout, and Ville d’Avray. Back in Paris
at 5½ p.m. Fares must be secured one day in advance at the entrance
of Notre Dame.
The Manager, H. du Larin.”
“Magnificat anima mea Dominum, quia respexit humilitatem ancillæ Suæ.”
Truly it seems to be time that God should again regard the lowliness of
His handmaiden, now that she has become keeper of the coach office for
excursions to Versailles. The arrangement becomes still more perfect in
the objects of this Christian joyful pilgrimage (from Canterbury, as it
were, instead of to it), the “Battle-fields round Paris!”
From Notre Dame I walked back into the livelier parts of the city,
though in no very lively mood; but recovered some tranquillity in the
Marché aux fleurs, which is a pleasant spectacle in April, and then
made some circuit of the Boulevards, where, as the third Fors would
have it, I suddenly came in view of one of the temples of the modern
superstition, which is to replace Mariolatry. For it seems that human
creatures must imagine something or someone in Apotheosis, and the
Assumption of the Virgin, and Titian’s or Tintoret’s views on that
matter being held reasonable no more, apotheosis of some other power
follows as a matter of course. Here accordingly is one of the modern
hymns on the Advent of Spring, which replace now in France the sweet
Cathedral services of the Mois de Marie. It was printed in vast letters
on a white sheet, dependent at the side of the porch or main entrance
to the fur shop of the “Compagnie Anglo-Russe.”
“Le printemps s’annonce avec son gracieux cortège de rayons et de
fleurs. Adieu, l’hiver! C’en est bien fini! Et cependant il faut que
toutes ces fourrures soient enlevées, vendues, données, dans ces 6
jours. C’est une aubaine inesperée, un placement fabuleux; car, qu’on
ne l’oublie pas, la fourrure vraie, la belle, la riche, a toujours sa
valeur intrinsique. Et, comme couronnement de cette sorte d’Apothéose
la Cie. Anglo-Russe remet gratis à tout acheteur un talisman
merveilleux pour conserver la fourrure pendant 10 saisons.”
“Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins
and clothed them.”
The Anglo-Russian company having now superseded Divine labour in such
matters, you have also, instead of the grand old Dragon-Devil with his
“Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil,” only a little weasel of a
devil with an ermine tip to his tail, advising you, “Ye shall be as
Gods, buying your skins cheap.”
I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Genesis? My
good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book of Genesis as
the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you
know the flaws, and never have known the book, nor can know it. And it
is at present much the worse for you; for indeed the stories of this
book of Genesis have been the nursery tales of men mightiest whom the
world has yet seen in art, and policy, and virtue, and none of you will
write better stories for your children, yet awhile. And your little
Cains will learn quickly enough to ask if they are their brother’s
keepers, and your little Fathers of Canaan merrily enough to show their
own father’s nakedness without dread either of banishment or
malediction; but many a day will pass, and their evil generations
vanish with it, in that sudden nothingness of the wicked, “He passed
away, and lo, he was not,” before one will again rise, of whose death
there may remain the Divine tradition, “He walked with God, and was
not, for God took him.” Apotheosis! How the dim hope of it haunts even
the last degradation of men; and through the six thousand years from
Enoch, and the vague Greek ages which dreamed of their twin-hero stars,
declines, in this final stage of civilization, into dependence on the
sweet promise of the Anglo-Russian tempter, with his ermine tail, “Ye
shall be as Gods, and buy cat-skin cheap.”
So it must be. I know it, my good wiseacres. You can have no more
Queens of Heaven, nor assumptions of triumphing saints. Even your
simple country Queen of May, whom once you worshipped for a goddess—has
not little Mr. Faraday analysed her, and proved her to consist of
charcoal and water, combined under what the Duke of Argyll calls the
“reign of law”? Your once fortune-guiding stars, which used to twinkle
in a mysterious manner, and to make you wonder what they
were,—everybody knows what they are now: only hydrogen gas, and they
stink as they twinkle. My wiseacre acquaintances, it is very fine,
doubtless, for you to know all these things, who have plenty of money
in your pockets, and nothing particular to burden your chemical minds;
but for the poor, who have nothing in their pockets, and the wretched,
who have much on their hearts, what in the world is the good of knowing
that the only heaven they have to go to is a large gasometer?
“Poor and wretched!” you answer. “But when once everybody is convinced
that heaven is a large gasometer, and when we have turned all the world
into a small gasometer, and can drive round it by steam, and in forty
minutes be back again where we were,—nobody will be poor or wretched
any more. Sixty pounds on the square inch,—can anybody be wretched
under that general application of high pressure?”
(Assisi, 15th April.)
Good wiseacres, yes; it seems to me, at least, more than probable: but
if not, and you all find yourselves rich and merry, with steam legs and
steel hearts, I am well assured there will be found yet room, where
your telescopes have not reached, nor can,—grind you their lenses ever
so finely,—room for the quiet souls, who choose for their part,
poverty, with light and peace.
I am writing at a narrow window, which looks out on some broken tiles
and a dead wall. A wall dead in the profoundest sense, you wiseacres
would think it. Six hundred years old, and as strong as when it was
built, and paying nobody any interest, and still less commission, on
the cost of repair. Both sides of the street, or pathway rather,—it is
not nine feet wide,—are similarly built with solid blocks of grey
marble, arched rudely above the windows, with here and there a cross on
the keystones.
If I chose to rise from my work and walk a hundred yards down this
street (if one may so call the narrow path between grey walls, as quiet
and lonely as a sheep-walk on Shap Fells,) I should come to a small
prison-like door; and over the door is a tablet of white marble let
into the grey, and on the tablet is written, in contracted Latin, what
in English signifies:—
“Here, Bernard the Happy [37]
Received St. Francis of Assisi,
And saw him, in ecstacy.”
Good wiseacres, you believe nothing of the sort, do you? Nobody ever
yet was in ecstacy, you think, till now, when they may buy cat-skin
cheap?
Do you believe in Blackfriars Bridge, then; and admit that some day or
other there must have been reason to call it “Black Friar’s”? As surely
as the bridge stands over Thames, and St. Paul’s above it, these two
men, Paul and Francis, had their ecstacies, in bygone days, concerning
other matters than ermine tails; and still the same ecstacies, or
effeminate sentiments, are possible to human creatures, believe it or
not as you will. I am not now, whatever the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ may
think, an ecstatic person myself. But thirty years ago I knew once or
twice what joy meant, and have not forgotten the feeling; nay, even so
little a while as two years ago, I had it back again—for a day. And I
can assure you, good wiseacres, there is such a thing to be had; but
not in cheap shops, nor, I was going to say, for money; yet in a
certain sense it is buyable—by forsaking all that a man hath.
Buyable—literally enough—the freehold Elysian field at that price, but
not a doit cheaper; and I believe, at this moment, the reason my voice
has an uncertain sound, the reason that this design of mine stays
unhelped, and that only a little group of men and women, moved chiefly
by personal regard, stand with me in a course so plain and true, is
that I have not yet given myself to it wholly, but have halted between
good and evil, and sit still at the receipt of custom, and am always
looking back from the plough.
It is not wholly my fault this. There seem to me good reasons why I
should go on with my work in Oxford; good reasons why I should have a
house of my own with pictures and library; good reasons why I should
still take interest from the bank; good reasons why I should make
myself as comfortable as I can, wherever I go; travel with two
servants, and have a dish of game at dinner. It is true, indeed, that I
have given the half of my goods and more to the poor; it is true also
that the work in Oxford is not a matter of pride, but of duty with me;
it is true that I think it wiser to live what seems to other people a
rational and pleasant, not an enthusiastic, life; and that I serve my
servants at least as much as they serve me. But, all this being so, I
find there is yet something wrong; I have no peace, still less ecstacy.
It seems to me as if one had indeed to wear camel’s hair instead of
dress coats before one can get that; and I was looking at St. Francis’s
camel’s-hair coat yesterday (they have it still in the sacristy), and I
don’t like the look of it at all; the Anglo-Russian Company’s wear is
ever so much nicer,—let the devil at least have this due.
And he must have a little more due even than this. It is not at all
clear to me how far the Beggar and Pauper Saint, whose marriage with
the Lady Poverty I have come here to paint from Giotto’s dream of
it,—how far, I say, the mighty work he did in the world was owing to
his vow of poverty, or diminished by it. If he had been content to
preach love alone, whether among poor or rich, and if he had understood
that love, for all God’s creatures, was one and the same blessing; and
that, if he was right to take the doves out of the fowler’s hand, that
they might build their nests, he was himself wrong when he went out in
the winter’s night on the hills, and made for himself dolls of snow,
and said, “Francis, these—behold—these are thy wife and thy children.”
If instead of quitting his father’s trade, that he might nurse lepers,
he had made his father’s trade holy and pure, and honourable more than
beggary, perhaps at this day the Black Friars might yet have had an
unruined house by Thames shore, and the children of his native village
not be standing in the porches of the temple built over his tomb, to
ask alms of the infidel.