August 8) began by asking "what the capitalist is to do with his money,
if the Government works the railways on the principle of the Post
Office."
[75] Several of the letters had been written by residents in the
neighborhood of Sydenham.
[76] B "Essays on Political Economy" (_Fraser's Magazine_, June, 1862,
p. 784), now reprinted in "Munera Pulveris," p. 1, § 1.
[77] "Fair Play's" letter noted the result of investments made in
bubble railways, generally by "honest country folks" or "poor clergymen
and widows."
[78] A Alluding to an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ of August 8,
headed "East-End Emigrants," which, after remarking that "Mr. Ruskin's
question, Is England big enough?" had been just answered rather sadly
by a number of Poplar artisans, described the emigration to Quebec on
board the St. Lawrence of these inhabitants of the Isle of Dogs, and
how, as the ship left the dock, "there were many tears shed, as old,
familiar faces looked on each other for the last time."
[79] Never, it seems, written.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 8, 1865.]
_OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent
article of to-day on railroads.[80] All you say is true. But of what
use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of
the public--and they are many--the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying
their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their
lines in the hands of companies--that is to say, practically, of
engineers and lawyers--the money they pay for fares will always go,
most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent
in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks, and in
fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new
lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session.
But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the
engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get
as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public)
by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for
ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders
that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents
attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on
opposition branches. It is little business of mine--for I am not a
railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't
like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their
fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article
on Political Economy in _Fraser's Magazine_ for April, 1863, and so
leave the matter to your handling:
"Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigation
on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper
Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd
expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have
had--what ultimately it will be found we must have--quadruple rails,
two for passengers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we
might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by
well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares."[81]
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 7.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] An article which, dealing directly with some recent railway
accidents, commented especially on the overcrowding of the lines.
[81] "Essays on Political Economy" (_Fraser's Magazine_, April, 1863,
p. 449); "Munera Pulveris," p. 137, § 128.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," November 30, 1870.]
_RAILWAY SAFETY._[82]
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I am very busy, and have not time to write new phrases. Would
you mind again reprinting (as you were good enough to do a few days
ago[83]) a sentence from one of the books of mine which everybody said
were frantic when I wrote them? You see the date--1863.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Nov._ 29, 1870.
I have underlined the words I want to be noticed, but, as you see, made
no change in a syllable.
Already the Government, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels
for us. Larger packages may in time follow--even general merchandise;
why not, at last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and
vain private litigations on the railroads of England been laid out,
instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad
work, _and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting
stations_, we might already have had--what ultimately it will be found
we MUST have--_quadruple rails, two for passengers, and two for
traffic, on every great line_; and we might have been carried in
swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half
the present fares.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] This letter was elicited by a leading article in the _Daily
Telegraph_ of November 29, 1870, upon railway accidents, and the means
of their prevention, _à propos_ of two recent accidents which had
occurred, both on the same day (November 26, 1870) on the London and
North-Western Railway.
[83] In the first letter on the Franco-Prussian War, _ante_, p. 34.
(_Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 7, 1870.)
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.
II.
SERVANTS AND HOUSES.
MASTERSHIP. 1865.
EXPERIENCE. 1865.
SONSHIP AND SLAVERY. 1865.
MODERN HOUSES. 1865.
II.
SERVANTS AND HOUSES.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 5, 1865.]
_DOMESTIC SERVANTS--MASTERSHIP._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: You so seldom write nonsense, that you will, I am sure, pardon
your friends for telling you when you do. Your article on servants
to-day is nonsense. It is just as easy and as difficult now to get good
servants as it ever was.[84] You may have them, as you may have pines
and peaches, for the growing, or you may even buy them good, if you can
persuade the good growers to spare you them off their walls; but you
cannot get them by political economy and the law of supply and demand.
There are broadly two ways of making good servants; the first, a sound,
wholesome, thoroughgoing slavery--which was the heathen way, and no
bad one neither, provided you understand that to make real "slaves"
you must make yourself a real "master" (which is not easy). The second
is the Christian's way: "whoso delicately bringeth up his servant from
a child, shall have him become his son at the last."[85] And as few
people want their servants to become their sons, this is not a way
to their liking. So that, neither having courage or self-discipline
enough on the one hand to make themselves nobly dominant after the
heathen fashion, nor tenderness or justice enough to make themselves
nobly protective after the Christian, the present public thinks to
manufacture servants bodily out of powder and hay-stuffing--mentally
by early instillation of Catechism and other mechanico-religious
appliances--and economically, as you helplessly suggest, by the law of
supply and demand,[86] with such results as we all see, and most of us
more or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to our cost and
selfish sorrow.
Sir, there is only one way to have good servants; that is, to be worthy
of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good
master, and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test
of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they
are their masters' shadows, and distort their faults in a flattened
mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants' hall; a
knavish nation will have knaves there; and a kindly nation will have
friends there. Only let it be remembered that "kindness" means, as with
your child, so with your servant, not indulgence, but care.--I am, Sir,
seeing that you usually write good sense, and "serve" good causes, your
servant to command.
J. RUSKIN.[87]
DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 2.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] The article, after commenting on "the good old times," remarked
that it is now "a social fact, that the hardest thing in the world to
find is a good servant."
[85] "He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child, shall
have him become his son at the length."--Proverbs xxix. 21.
[86] "We have really," ran the article, "no remedy to suggest: the evil
seems to be curable only by some general distress which will drive more
people into seeking service, and so give employers a greater choice.
At present the demand appears to exceed the supply, and servants are
careless about losing their places through bad behavior."
[87] To this letter the _Daily Telegraph_ of September 6 replied by a
leader, in which, whilst expressing itself alive to "the sympathy for
humanity and appreciation of the dignity which may be made to underlie
all human relations," displayed by Mr. Ruskin, it complained that he
had only shown "how to cook the cook when we catch her," and not how
to catch her. After some detailed remarks on the servants of the day,
which seemed "to be more _ad rem_ than Mr. Ruskin's eloquent axioms,"
it concluded by expressing a hope "that he would come down from the
clouds of theory, and give to a perplexed public a few plain, workable
instructions how to get hold of good cooks and maids, coachmen and
footmen."--Mr. Ruskin replies to it, and to a large amount of further
correspondence on the subject, in the next two letters in the _Daily
Telegraph_.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1865.]
_DOMESTIC SERVANTS--EXPERIENCE._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I thank you much for your kind insertion of my letter, and your
courteous and graceful answer to it. Others will thank you also; for
your suggestions are indeed much more _ad rem_ than my mere assertions
of principle; but both are necessary. Statements of practical
difficulty, and the immediate means of conquering it, are precisely
what the editor of a powerful daily journal is able to give; but he
cannot give them justly if he ever allow himself to lose sight of the
eternal laws which in their imperative bearings manifest themselves
more clearly to the retired student of human life in the phases of
its history. My own personal experience--if worth anything--has
been simply that wherever I myself knew how a thing should be done,
and was resolved to have it done, I could always get subordinates,
if made of average good human material, to do it, and that, on the
whole, cheerfully, thoroughly, and even affectionately; and my wonder
is usually rather at the quantity of service they are willing to do
for me, than at their occasional indolences, or fallings below the
standard of seraphic wisdom and conscientiousness. That they _shall_
be of average human material, it is, as you wisely point out, every
householder's business to make sure. We cannot choose our relations,
but we can our servants; and what sagacity we have and knowledge
of human nature cannot be better employed. If your house is to be
comfortable, your servants' hearts must be sound, as the timber and
stones of its walls; and there must be discretion in the choice,
and time allowed for the "settling" of both. The luxury of having
pretty servants must be paid for, like all luxuries, in the penalty
of their occasional loss; but I fancy the best sort of female servant
is generally in aspect and general qualities like Sydney Smith's
"Bunch,"[88] and a very retainable creature. And for the rest, the
dearth of good service, if such there be, may perhaps wholesomely teach
us that, if we were all a little more in the habit of serving ourselves
in many matters, we should be none the worse or the less happy.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 6.
FOOTNOTES:
[88] "A man-servant was too expensive; so I caught up a little
garden-girl, made like a milestone, put a napkin in her hand,
christened her Bunch, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to
read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals; Bunch became the
best butler in the county."--Sydney Smith's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 207),
where several other anecdotes of Bunch are given.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 18, 1865.]
_DOMESTIC SERVANTS: SONSHIP AND SLAVERY._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I have been watching the domestic correspondence in your columns
with much interest, and thought of offering you a short analysis of
it when you saw good to bring it to a close,[89] and perhaps a note
or two of my own experience, being somewhat conceited on the subject
just now, because I have a gardener who lets me keep old-fashioned
plants in the greenhouse, understands that my cherries are grown for
the blackbirds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own grapes without
making a wry face. But your admirable article of yesterday causes
me to abandon my purpose; the more willingly, because among all the
letters you have hitherto published there is not one from any head of
a household which contains a complaint worth notice. All the masters
or mistresses whose letters are thoughtful or well written say they
get on well enough with their servants; no part has yet been taken in
the discussion by the heads of old families. The servants' letters,
hitherto, furnish the best data; but the better class of servants are
also silent, and must remain so. Launce, Grumio, or Fairservice[90] may
have something to say for themselves; but you will hear nothing from
Old Adam nor from carefu' Mattie. One proverb from Sancho, if we could
get it, would settle the whole business for us; but his master and he
are indeed "no more." I would have walked down to Dulwich to hear what
Sam Weller had to say; but the high-level railway went through Mr.
Pickwick's parlor two months ago, and it is of no use writing to Sam,
for, as you are well aware, he is no penman. And, indeed, Sir, little
good will come of any writing on the matter. "The cat will mew, the dog
will have his day." You yourself, excellent as is the greater part of
what you have said, and to the point, speak but vainly when you talk of
"probing the evil to the bottom." This is no sore that can be probed,
no sword nor bullet wound. This is a plague spot. Small or great, it is
in the significance of it, not in the depth, that you have to measure
it. It is essentially bottomless, cancerous; a putrescence through
the constitution of the people is indicated by this galled place.
Because I know this thoroughly, I say so little, and that little, as
your correspondents think, who know nothing of me, and as you say,
who might have known more of me, unpractically. Pardon me, I am no
seller of plasters, nor of ounces of civet. The patient's sickness is
his own fault, and only years of discipline will work it out of him.
That is the only really "practical" saying that can be uttered to
him. The relation of master and servant involves every other--touches
every condition of moral health through the State. Put that right,
and you put all right; but you will find it can only come ultimately,
not primarily, right; you cannot begin with it. Some of the evidence
you have got together is valuable, many pieces of partial advice very
good. You need hardly, I think, unless you wanted a type of British
logic, have printed a letter in which the writer accused (or would have
accused, if he had possessed Latinity enough) all London servants of
being thieves because he had known one robbery to have been committed
by a nice-looking girl.[91] But on the whole there is much common-sense
in the letters; the singular point in them all, to my mind, being the
in-apprehension of the breadth and connection of the question, and the
general resistance to, and stubborn rejection of, the abstract ideas
of sonship and slavery, which include whatever is possible in wise
treatment of servants. It is very strange to see that, while everybody
shrinks at abstract suggestions of there being possible error in a
book of Scripture,[92] your sensible English housewife fearlessly
rejects Solomon's opinion when it runs slightly counter to her own,
and that not one of your many correspondents seems ever to have read
the Epistle to Philemon. It is no less strange that while most English
boys of ordinary position hammer through their Horace at one or other
time of their school life, no word of his wit or his teaching seems
to remain by them: for all the good they get out of them, the Satires
need never have been written. The Roman gentleman's account of his
childhood and of his domestic life possesses no charm for them: and
even men of education would sometimes start to be reminded that his
"_noctes cænæque Deum_!" meant supping with his merry slaves on beans
and bacon. Will you allow me, on this general question of liberty and
slavery, to refer your correspondents to a paper of mine touching
closely upon it, the leader in the _Art-Journal_ for July last? and to
ask them also to meditate a little over the two beautiful epitaphs on
Epictetus and Zosima, quoted in the last paper of the _Idler_?[93]
"I, Epictetus, was a slave; and sick in body, and wretched in
poverty; and beloved by the gods."
"Zosima, who while she lived was a slave only in her body, has
now found deliverance for that also."
How might we, over many an "independent" Englishman, reverse this last
legend, and write--
"This man, who while he lived was free only in his body, has
now found captivity for that also."
I will not pass without notice--for it bears also on wide
interests--your correspondent's question, how my principles differ from
the ordinary economist's view of supply and demand.[94] Simply in that
the economy I have taught, in opposition to the popular view, is the
science which not merely ascertains the relations of existing demand
and supply, but determines what _ought_ to be demanded and what _can_
be supplied. A child demands the moon, and, the supply not being in
this case equal to the demand, is wisely accommodated with a rattle; a
footpad demands your purse, and is supplied according to the less or
more rational economy of the State, with that or a halter; a foolish
nation, not able to get into its head that free trade does indeed
mean the removal of taxation from its imports, but not of supervision
from them, demands unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the
cattle murrain and the like. There may be all manner of demands, all
manner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these; the
false political economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine)
Providence. For, indeed, the largest final demand anywhere reported of,
is that of hell; and the supply of it (by the broad-gauge line) would
be very nearly equal to the demand at this day, unless there were here
and there a swineherd or two who could keep his pigs out of sight of
the lake.
Thus in this business of servants everything depends on what sort of
servant you at heart wish for or "demand." If for nurses you want
Charlotte Winsors, they are to be had for money; but by no means
for money, such as that German girl who, the other day, on her own
scarce-floating fragment of wreck, saved the abandoned child of another
woman, keeping it alive by the moisture from her lips.[95] What kind of
servant do you want? It is a momentous question for you yourself--for
the nation itself. Are we to be a nation of shopkeepers, wanting only
shop-boys; or of manufacturers, wanting only hands; or are there to be
knights among us, who will need squires--captains among us, needing
crews? Will you have clansmen for your candlesticks, or silver plate?
Myrmidons at your tents, ant-born, or only a mob on the Gillies Hill?
Are you resolved that you will never have any but your inferiors to
serve you, or shall Enid ever lay your trencher with tender little
thumb, and Cinderella sweep your hearth, and be cherished there? It
_might_ come to that in time, and plate and hearth be the brighter;
but if your servants are to be held your inferiors, at least be sure
they _are_ so, and that you are indeed wiser, and better-tempered,
and more useful than they. Determine what their education ought to
be, and organize proper servants' schools, and there give it them. So
they will be fit for their position, and will do honor to it, and stay
in it: let the masters be as sure they do honor to theirs, and are as
willing to stay in that. Remember that every people which gives itself
to the pursuit of riches, invariably, and of necessity, gets the scum
uppermost in time, and is set by the genii, like the ugly bridegroom in
the Arabian Nights, at its own door with its heels in the air, showing
its shoe-soles instead of a Face. And the reversal is a serious matter,
if reversal be even possible, and it comes right end uppermost again,
instead of to conclusive Wrong end.
I suppose I am getting unpractical again. Well, here is one practical
morsel, and I have done. One or two of your correspondents have spoken
of the facilities of servants for leaving their places. Drive that
nail home, Sir. A large stray branch of the difficulty lies there.
Many and many a time I have heard Mr. Carlyle speak of this, and too
often I have felt it myself as one of the evils closely accompanying
the fever of modern change in the habits and hopes of life. My own
architectural work drives me to think of it continually. Round every
railroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts up first
a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, washed over with
slime into miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman would
hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for himself a straw bed, before
he would live in such; but the builders count safely on tenants--people
who know no quietness nor simplicity of pleasure, who care only for the
stucco, and lodge only in the portico, of human life--understanding not
so much as the name of House or House-_Hold_. They and their servants
are always "bettering themselves" divergently.
You will do good service at least in teaching any of these who will
listen to you, that if they can once make up their minds to a fixed
state of life, and a fixed income, and a fixed expenditure--if they can
by any means get their servants to stay long enough with them to fit
into their places and know the run of the furrows--then something like
service and mastership, and fulfilment of understood and reciprocal
duty, may become possible; no otherwise. I leave this matter to your
better handling, and will trespass on your patience no more. Only, as
I think you will get into some disgrace with your lady correspondents
for your ungallant conclusions respecting them[96]--which I confess
surprised me a little, though I might have been prepared for it if I
had remembered what order the husband even of so good a housewife as
Penelope was obliged to take with some of her female servants after
prolonged absence,--I have translated a short passage of Xenophon's
Economics[97] for you, which may make your peace if you will print it.
I wish the whole book were well translated; meantime, your lady readers
must be told that this is part of a Greek country gentleman's account
of the conversation he had with his young wife (a girl of fifteen
only), a little while after their marriage, when "she had got used to
him," and was not frightened at being spoken gravely to. First they
pray together; and then they have a long happy talk, of which this is
the close: