Brantwood, 20th Feb., 1873.
I was again stopped by a verse in St. John's gospel this morning: not
because I have not thought of it before, often enough; but because it
bears much on our immediate business in one of its expressions,--"Ye
shall be scattered, every man to his own."
His own what?
His own property, his own rights, his own opinions, his own place,
I suppose one must answer? Every man in his own place; and every man
acting on his own opinions; and every man having his own way. Those
are somewhat your own notions of the rightest possible state of things,
are they not?
And you do not think it of any consequence to ask what sort of a
place your own is?
As for instance, taking the reference farther on, to the one of
Christ's followers who that night, most distinctly of all that were
scattered, found his place, and stayed in it,--"This ministry and
Apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might
go to his own place." What sort of a place?
It should interest you, surely, to ask of such things, since you all,
whether you like them or not, have your own places; and whether you
know them or not, your own opinions. It is too true that very often
you fancy you think one thing, when, in reality, you think quite
another. Most Christian persons, for instance, fancy they would like
to be in heaven. But that is not their real opinion of the place at
all. See how grave they will look, if their doctor hints to them that
there is the least probability of their soon going there.
And the ascertaining what you really do think yourself, and do not
merely fancy you think, because other people have said so; as also
the ascertaining, if every man had indeed to go to his own place,
what place he would verily have to go to, are most wholesome mental
exercises; and there is no objection whatever to your giving weight
to that really 'private opinion,' and that really 'individual right.'
But if you ever come really to know either what you think, or what
you deserve, it is ten to one but you find it as much the character
of Prudence as of Charity, that she "seeketh not her own." For indeed
that same apostle, who so accurately sought his own, and found it,
is, in another verse, called the "Son of Loss." "Of them whom Thou
gavest me, have I lost none, but the Son of Loss," says Christ (your
unlucky translation, again, quenches the whole text by its poor
Latinism--"perdition"). Might it not be better to lose your place
than to find it, on such terms?
But, lost or found, what do you think is your place at this moment? Are
you minded to stay in it, if you are in it? Do you mind where it is, if
you are out of it? What sort of creatures do you think yourselves? How
do those you call your best friends think of you, when they advise
you to claim your just place in the world?
I said, two letters back, that we would especially reverence eight
saints, and among them St. Paul. I was startled to hear, only a few
days afterwards, that the German critics have at last positively
ascertained that St. Paul was Simon Magus;--but I don't mind whether
he was or not;--if he was, we have got seven saints, and one of the
Magi, to reverence, instead of eight saints;--plainly and practically,
whoever wrote the 13th of 1st Corinthians is to be much respected
and attended to; not as the teacher of salvation by faith, still
less of salvation by talking, nor even of salvation by almsgiving or
martyrdom, but as the bold despiser of faith, talk-gift, and burning,
if one has not love. Whereas this age of ours is so far contrary to
any such Pauline doctrine that, without especial talent either for
faith or martyrdom, and loquacious usually rather with the tongues
of men than of angels, it nevertheless thinks to get on, not merely
without love of its neighbour, but founding all its proceedings on the
precise contrary of that,--love of itself, and the seeking of every
man for his own,--I should say of every beast for its own; for your
modern social science openly confesses that it no longer considers you
as men, but as having the nature of Beasts of Prey; [15] which made
me more solicitous to explain to you the significance of that word
'Park' in my last letter; for indeed you have already pulled down
the railings of those small green spots of park to purpose--and in a
very solemn sense, turned all England into a Park. Alas!--if it were
but even so much. Parks are for beasts of the field, which can dwell
together in peace: but you have made yourselves beasts of the Desert,
doleful creatures, for whom the grass is green no more, nor dew falls
on lawn or bank; no flowers for you--not even the bare and quiet earth
to lie down on, but only the sand-drift, and the dry places which the
very Devils cannot rest in. Here and there, beside our sweet English
waters, the sower may still send forth the feet of the ox and the ass;
but for men with ox's heads, and ass's heads,--not the park, for these;
by no manner of means the Park; but the everlasting Pound. Every man
and beast being in their own place, that you choose for yours.
I have given you therefore, this month, for frontispiece, the
completest picture I can find of that pound or labyrinth which the
Greeks supposed to have been built by Daedalus, to enclose the bestial
nature, engrafted on humanity. The Man with the Bull's head. The Greek
Daedalus is the power of mechanical as opposed to imaginative art;
[16] and this is the kind of architecture which Greeks and Florentines
alike represent him as providing for human beasts. Could anything more
precisely represent the general look of your architecture now? When I
come down here; to Coniston, through Preston and Wigan, it seems to
me that I have seen that thing itself, only built a little higher,
and smoking, or else set on its side, and spinning round, a thousand
times over in the course of the day.
Then the very writing of the name of it is so like your modern
education! You miss the first letter of your lives; and begin with
A for apple-pie, instead of L for love; and the rest of the writing
is--some little--some big--some turned the wrong way; and the sum of
it all to you Perplexity. "Abberinto."
For the rest, the old Florentine engraver took the story as it ran
currently, that Theseus deserted Ariadne (but, indeed, she was the
letter L lost out of his life), and besides, you know if he ever did
do anything wrong, it was all Titania's fault,--
"Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night,
And make him with fair Ægle break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?"
If you have young eyes, or will help old ones with a magnifying glass,
you will find all her story told. In the front, Theseus is giving her
his faith; their names, TESEO . ADRIANNA, are written beneath them. He
leans on his club reversed. She brings him three balls of thread,
in case one, or even two, should not be long enough. His plumed cap
means earthly victory; her winged one heavenly power and hope. Then,
at the side of the arched gate of the labyrinth, Theseus has tied
one end of the clue to a ring, and you see his back and left leg
as he goes in. And just above, as the end of the adventure, he is
sailing away from Naxos, with his black sail. On the left is the isle
of Naxos, and deserted Adriane waving Theseus back, with her scarf
tied to a stick. Theseus not returning, she throws herself into the
sea; you can see her feet, and her hand, still with the staff in it,
as she plunges in backwards. Whereupon, winged Jupiter, GIOVE, comes
down and lifts her out of the sea; you see her winged head raised to
him. Then he carries her up to heaven. He holds her round the waist,
but, strangely, she is not thinking of Jupiter at all, but of something
above and more than Jupiter; her hands and head raised, as in some
strong desire. But on the right, there is another fall, without such
rising. Theseus' father throws himself into the sea from the wall of
Athens, and you see his feet as he goes in; but there is no God to
lift him out of the waves. He stays, in his place, as Adriane in hers.
"Such an absurd old picture, or old story, you never saw or heard
of? The very blaze of fireworks, in which Jupiter descends, drawn
with black sparks instead of white! the whole point of the thing, the
'terrific combat,' missed out of the play! and nothing, on the whole,
seen, except people's legs, as in a modern pantomime, only not to so
much advantage."
That is what you think of it? Well, such as it is, that is 'fine art'
(if you will take my opinion in my own business); and even this
poor photograph of it is simply worth all the illustrations in your
'Illustrated News' or 'Illustrated Times' from one year's end to
another. Worth them all--nay, there is no comparison, for these
illustrated papers do you definite mischief, and the more you look
at them, the worse for you. Whereas, the longer you look at this,
and think of it, the more good you will get.
Examine, for instance, that absurdly tall crest of Theseus. Behind
it, if you look closely, you will see that he also has the wings of
hope on his helmet; but the upright plumes nearly hide them. Have
you never seen anything like them before? They are five here, indeed;
but you have surely met with them elsewhere,--in number, Three--those
curling, upright plumes?
For that Prince who waited on his father and the French Knights in
the castle of Calais, bears them in memory of the good knight and
king who fought sightless at Cressy; whose bearings they were, with
the motto which you know so well, yet are so little minded to take
for your own,--"I serve." Also the cap of the Knights of St. George
has these white plumes 'of three falls,' but the Prince of Wales more
fitly, because the meaning of the ostrich feather is order and rule;
for it was seen that, long and loose though the filaments seemed, no
wind could entangle or make them disorderly. "So this plume betokeneth
such an one as nothing can disturb his mind or disquiet his spirits,
but is ever one and the same." Do you see how one thing bears out
and fulfils another, in these thoughts and symbols of the despised
people of old time? Do you recollect Froissart's words of the New
Year's Feast at Calais?
"So they were served in peace, and in great leisure."
You have improved that state of things, at any rate. I must say
so much for you, at Wolverton, and Rugby, and such other places of
travellers' repose.
Theseus then, to finish with him for this time, bears these plumes
specially as the Institutor of Order and Law at Athens; the Prince
or beginner of the State there; and your own Prince of Wales bears
them in like manner as the beginner of State with us, (the mocking
and purposeful lawlessness, of Henry the Fifth when Prince, yet
never indeed violating law, or losing self-command, is one of the
notablest signs, rightly read, in the world's history). And now I
want you to consider with me very carefully the true meaning of the
words he begins his State with:--
"I serve."
You have, I hope, noticed that throughout these letters addressed
to you as workmen and labourers,--though I have once or twice
ventured to call myself your fellow-workman, I have oftener spoken
as belonging to, and sharing main modes of thought with, those who
are not labourers, but either live in various ways by their wits--as
lawyers, authors, reviewers, clergymen, parliamentary orators, and
the like--or absolutely in idleness on the labour of others,--as the
representative Squire. And, broadly speaking, I address you as workers,
and speak in the name of the rest as idlers, thus not estimating the
mere wit-work as work at all: it is always play, when it is good.
Speaking to you, then, as workers, and of myself as an idler, tell
me honestly whether you consider me as addressing my betters or my
worses? Let us give ourselves no airs on either side. Which of us,
do you seriously think, you or I, are leading the more honourable
life? Would you like to lead my life rather than your own; or,
if you couldn't help finding it pleasanter, would you be ashamed of
yourselves for leading it? Is your place, or mine, considered as cure
and sinecure, the better? And are either of us legitimately in it? I
would fain know your own real opinion on these things.
But note further: there is another relation between us than that of
idler and labourer; the much more direct one of Master and Servant. I
can set you to any kind of work I like, whether it be good for you
or bad, pleasant to you or painful. Consider, for instance, what I am
doing at this very instant--half-past seven, morning, 25th February,
1873. It is a bitter black frost, the ground deep in snow, and more
falling. I am writing comfortably in a perfectly warm room; some of my
servants were up in the cold at half-past five to get it ready for me;
others, a few days ago, were digging my coals near Durham, at the risk
of their lives; an old woman brought me my watercresses through the
snow for breakfast yesterday; another old woman is going two miles
through it to-day to fetch me my letters at ten o'clock. Half a dozen
men are building a wall for me to keep the sheep out of my garden,
and a railroad stoker is holding his own against the north wind, to
fetch me some Brobdignag raspberry plants [17] to put in it. Somebody
in the east end of London is making boots for me, for I can't wear
those I have much longer; a washerwoman is in suds, somewhere,
to get me a clean shirt for to-morrow; a fisherman is in dangerous
weather somewhere, catching me some fish for Lent; and my cook will
soon be making me pancakes, for it is Shrove Tuesday. Having written
this sentence, I go to the fire, warm my fingers, saunter a little,
listlessly, about the room, and grumble because I can't see to the
other side of the lake.
And all these people, my serfs or menials, who are undergoing any
quantity or kind of hardship I choose to put on them,--all these
people, nevertheless, are more contented than I am: I can't be happy,
not I,--for one thing, because I haven't got the MS. Additional,
(never mind what number,) in the British Museum, which they bought
in 1848, for two hundred pounds, and I never saw it! And have never
been easy in my mind, since.
But perhaps it is not the purpose of Heaven to make refined personages,
like me, easy in our minds; we are supposed to be too grand for
that. Happy, or easy, or otherwise, am I in my place, think you;
and you, my serfs, in yours?
'You are not serfs,' say you, 'but free-born Britons'? Much good
may your birth do you. What does your birth matter to me, since,
now that you are grown men, you must do whatever I like, or die by
starvation? 'Strike!'--will you? Can you live by striking? And when
you are forced to work again, will not your masters choose again, as
they have chosen hitherto, what work you are to do? Not serfs!--it
is well if you are so much as that; a serf would know what o'clock
he had to go to his work at; but I find that clocks are now no more
comprehensible in England than in Italy, and you also have to be
"whistled for like dogs," all over Yorkshire--or rather buzzed for,
that being the appropriate call to business, of due honey-making
kind. "Hark," says an old Athenian, according to Aristophanes,
"how the nightingale has filled the thickets with honey" (meaning,
with music as sweet). In Yorkshire, your steam-nightingales fill the
woods with--Buzz; and for four miles round are audible, summoning
you--to your pleasure, I suppose, my free-born?
It is well, I repeat, if you are so much as serfs. A serf means a
'saved person'--the word comes first from a Greek one, meaning to drag,
or drag away into safety, (though captive safety), out of the slaughter
of war. But alas, the trades most of you are set to now-a-days have no
element of safety in them, either for body or soul. They take thirty
years from your lives here;--what they take from your lives hereafter,
ask your clergy. I have no opinion on that matter.
But I used another terrible word just now--'menial.' The modern English
vulgar mind has a wonderful dread of doing anything of that sort!
I suppose there is scarcely another word in the language which
people more dislike having applied to them, or of which they less
understand the application. It comes from a beautiful old Chaucerian
word, 'meinie,' or many, signifying the attendant company of any one
worth attending to; the disciples of a master, scholars of a teacher,
soldiers of a leader, lords of a King. Chaucer says the God of Love
came, in the garden of the Rose with 'his many';--in the court
of the King of Persia spoke a Lord, one 'of his many.' Therefore
there is nothing in itself dishonourable in being menial: the only
question is--whose many you belong to, and whether he is a person
worth belonging to, or even safe to be belonged to; also, there is
somewhat in the cause of your following: if you follow for love,
it is good to be menial--if for honour, good also;--if for ten per
cent.--as a railroad company follows its Director, it is not good
to be menial. Also there is somewhat in the manner of following:
if you obey your Taskmaster's eye, it is well;--if only his whip,
still, well; but not so well:--but, above all, or below all, if you
have to obey the whip as a bad hound, because you have no nose, like
the members of the present House of Commons, it is a very humble form
of menial service indeed.
But even as to the quite literal form of it, in house or domestic
service, are you sure it is so very disgraceful a state to live in?
Among the people whom one must miss out of one's life, dead, or
worse than dead, by the time one is fifty-four, I can only say,
for my own part, that the one I practically and truly miss most,
next to father and mother, (and putting losses of imaginary good out
of the question,) was a 'menial,' my father's nurse, and mine. She
was one of our many--(our many being always but few), and, from
her girlhood to her old age, the entire ability of her life was
given to serving us. She had a natural gift and specialty for doing
disagreeable things; above all, the service of a sick room; so that
she was never quite in her glory unless some of us were ill. She
had also some parallel specialty for saying disagreeable things;
and might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest view of any
subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And she
had a very creditable and republican aversion to doing immediately,
or in set terms, as she was bid; so that when my mother and she got
old together, and my mother became very imperative and particular
about having her teacup set on one side of her little round table,
Anne would observantly and punctiliously put it always on the other;
which caused my mother to state to me, every morning after breakfast,
gravely, that, if ever a woman in this world was possessed by the
Devil, Anne was that woman. But in spite of these momentary and
petulant aspirations to liberality and independence of character,
poor Anne remained verily servile in soul all her days; and was
altogether occupied from the age of fifteen to seventy-two, in doing
other people's wills instead of her own, and seeking other people's
good instead of her own: nor did I ever hear on any occasion of her
doing harm to a human being, except by saving two hundred and some
odd pounds for her relations; in consequence of which some of them,
after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for several months.
Two hundred and odd pounds;--it might have been more; but I used to
hear of little loans to the relations occasionally; and besides,
Anne would sometimes buy a quite unjustifiably expensive silk
gown. People in her station of life are always so improvident. Two
hundred odd pounds at all events she had laid by, in her fifty-seven
years of unselfish labour. Actually twenty ten-pound notes. I heard
the other day, to my great satisfaction, of the approaching marriage
of a charming girl;--but to my dissatisfaction, that the approach was
slow. "We can't marry yet"--said she;--"you know, we can't possibly
marry on five hundred a year." People in that station of life are
always so provident.
Two hundred odd pounds,--that was what the third Fors, in due alliance
with her sisters, thought fit to reward our Annie with, for fifty years
of days' work and nights' watching; and what will not a dash of a pen
win, sometimes in the hands of superior persons! Surely the condition
must be a degraded one which can do no better for itself than this?
And yet, have you ever taken a wise man's real opinion on this
matter? You are not fond of hearing opinions of wise men; you like
your anonymous penny-a-liners' opinions better. But do you think you
could tolerantly receive that of a moderately and popularly wise
man--such an one as Charles Dickens, for example? Have you ever
considered seriously what his opinion was, about 'Dependants' and
'Menials'? He did not perhaps quite know what it was himself;--it
needs wisdom of stronger make than his to be sure of what it does
think. He would talk, in his moral passages, about Independence,
and Self-dependence, and making one's way in the world, just like any
hack of the 'Eatanswill Independent.' But which of the people of his
imagination, of his own true children, did he love and honour most? Who
are your favourites in his books--as they have been his? Menials, it
strikes me, many of them. Sam, Mark, Kit, Peggoty, Mary-my-dear,--even
the poor little Marchioness! I don't think Dickens intended you to
look upon any of them disrespectfully. Or going one grade higher
in his society, Tom Pinch, Newman Noggs, Tim Linkinwater, Oliver
Twist--how independent, all of them! Very nearly menial, in soul,
if they chance on a good master; none of them brilliant in fortune,
nor vigorous in action. Is not the entire testimony of Dickens, traced
in its true force, that no position is so good for men and women,
none so likely to bring out their best human character, as that of a
dependent, or menial? And yet with your supreme modern logic, instead
of enthusiastically concluding from his works "let us all be servants,"
one would think the notion he put in your heads was quite the other,
"let us all be masters," and that you understood his ideal of heroic
English character to be given in Mr. Pecksniff or Sir Mulberry Hawk!
Alas! more's the pity, you cannot all be dependants and menials,
even if you were wise enough to wish it. Somebody there must be to
be served, else there could be no service. And for the beatitudes and
virtues of Masterhood, I must appeal to a wiser man than Dickens--but
it is no use entering on that part of the question to-day; in the
meantime, here is another letter of his, (you have had one letter
already in last Fors,) just come under my hand, which gives you a
sketch of a practical landlord, and true Master, on which you may
meditate with advantage:
"Here, above all, we had the opportunity of seeing in what universal
respect and comfort a gentleman's family may live in that country,
and in far from its most favoured district; provided only they live
there habitually and do their duty as the friends and guardians of
those among whom Providence has appointed their proper place. Here
we found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages
and smiling faces all about. Here there was a very large school
in the village, of which masters and pupils were, in nearly
equal proportion, Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestant
Squire himself making it a regular part of his daily business to
visit the scene of their operations, and strengthen authority and
enforce discipline by personal superintendence. Here, too, we pleased
ourselves with recognising some of the sweetest features in Goldsmith's
picture of 'Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;' and, in
particular, we had 'the playful children just let loose from school'
in perfection. Mr. Edgeworth's paternal heart delighted in letting
them make a playground of his lawn; and every evening, after dinner,
we saw leap-frog going on with the highest spirit within fifty yards
of the drawing-room windows, while fathers and mothers, and their
aged parents also, were grouped about among the trees watching the
sport. It is a curious enough coincidence that Oliver Goldsmith
and Maria Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and
knowledge of Irish character and manners from the same identical
district. He received part of his education at this very school of
Edgeworthstown; and Pallasmore (the 'locus cui nomen est Pallas' of
Johnson's epitaph), the little hamlet where the author of the 'Vicar
of Wakefield' first saw the light, is still, as it was in his time,
the property of the Edgeworths."
"Strengthen authority," "enforce discipline"! What ugly expressions
these! and a "whole hamlet," though it be a little one, "the property
of the Edgeworths"! How long are such things yet to be? thinks
my Republican correspondent, I suppose--from whom, to my regret,
I have had no further dispatch since I endeavoured to answer
his interrogations. [18] Only, note further respecting this chief
question of the right of private property, that there are two kinds of
ownership, which the Greeks wisely expressed in two different ways:
the first, with the word which brought me to a pause in St. John's
Gospel, 'idios,' signifying the way, for instance, in which a man's
opinions and interests are his own; 'idia,' so that by persisting
in them, independently of the truth, which is above opinion, and of
the public interest, which is above private, he becomes what we very
properly, borrowing the Greek word, call an 'idiot.' But their other
phrase expresses the kind of belonging which is nobly won, and is
truly and inviolably ours, in which sense a man may learn the full
meaning of the word 'Mine' only once in his life,--happy he who has
ever so learnt it. I was thinking over the prettiness of the word
in that sense, a day or two ago, and opening a letter, mechanically,
when a newspaper clipping dropped out of it (I don't know from what
paper), containing a quotation from the 'Cornhill Magazine' setting
forth the present privileges of the agricultural labourer attained
for him by modern improvements in machinery, in the following terms:--
"An agricultural labourer, from forty to forty-five years of age,
of tried skill, of probity, and sobriety, with £200 in his pocket,
is a made man. True, he has had to forego the luxury of marriage;
but so have his betters."
And I think you may be grateful to the Third Fors for this clipping;
which you see settles, in the region of Cornhill, at least,
the question whether you are the betters or the worses of your
masters. Decidedly the worses, according to the 'Cornhill.' Also,
exactly the sum which my old nurse had for her reward at the end of
her life, is, you see, to be the agricultural labourer's reward in
the crowning triumph of his;--provided always that he has followed
the example of his betters on the stock exchange and in trade,
in the observance of the strictest probity;--that he be entirely
skilful;--not given to purchasing two shillings' worth of liquor for
twenty-seven and sixpence,--and finally, until the age of forty-five,
has dispensed with the luxury of marriage.
I have just said I didn't want to make Catholics of you; but truly
I think your Protestantism is becoming too fierce in its opposition
to the Popedom. Cannot it be content with preaching the marriage of
the clergy, but it must preach also the celibacy of the laity?
And the moral and anti-Byronic Mrs. B. Stowe, who so charmingly and
pathetically describes the terrors of slavery, as an institution which
separates men from their wives, and mothers from their children! Did
she really contemplate, among the results contributed to by her
interesting volumes, these ultimate privileges of Liberty,--that
the men, at least under the age of forty-five, are not to have any
wives to be separated from; and that the women, who under these
circumstances have the misfortune to become mothers, are to feel it
a hardship, not to be parted from their children, but to be prevented
from accelerating the parting with a little soothing syrup?