perhaps will be more painful to you than any other, namely, the care of
your servants when they are ill." "Nay," answered my wife, "that will
be the most pleasing of all my duties to me, if only my servants will
be grateful when I minister rightly to them, and will love me better."
And I, pleased with her answer, said, "Indeed, lady, it is in some such
way as this that the queen of the hive is so regarded by her bees,
that, if she leave the hive, none will quit her, but all will follow
her." Then she answered, "I should wonder if this office of leader
were not yours rather than mine, for truly my care and distribution of
things would be but a jest were it not for your inbringing." "Yes," I
said, "but what a jest would my inbringing be if there were no one to
take care of what I brought. Do not you know how those are pitied of
whom it is fabled that they have always to pour water into a pierced
vessel?" "Yes; and they _are_ unhappy, if in truth they do it," said
she. "Then also," I said, "remember your other personal cares. Will
all be sweet to you when, taking one of your maidens who knows not
how to spin, you teach her, and make her twice the girl she was; or
one who has no method nor habit of direction, and you teach her how
to manage a house, and make her faithful and mistress-like and every
way worthy, and when you have the power of benefiting those who are
orderly and useful in the house, and of punishing any one who is
manifestly disposed to evil? But what will be sweetest of all, if it
may come to pass, will be that you should show yourself better even
than _me_, and so make me your servant also: so that you need not
fear in advancing age to be less honored in my house; but may have
sure hope that in becoming old, by how much more you have become also
a noble fellow-worker with me, and joint guardian of our children's
possessions, by so much shall you be more honored in my household. For
what is lovely and good increases for all men--not through fairness
of the body, but through strength and virtue in things pertaining to
life." And this is what I remember chiefly of what we said in our first
talk together.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 16.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] In the "admirable article" of September 15, in which the main
features of the voluminous correspondence received by the _Daily
Telegraph_ on the subject were shortly summed up.
[90] A: Fairservice is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin's discussion of parts
of the "Antiquary" in "Fiction, Fair and Foul" (_Nineteenth Century_,
June, 1880) as an "example of innate evil unaffected by external
influences."
[91] This refers to a letter in which the writer gave an account of a
robbery by a housemaid, and, drawing from her conduct the moral "put
not your trust in London servants," concluded by signing his letter,
"Ab _hoc_ disce omnes."
[92] The last volume of Bishop Colenso's work on "The Pentateuch and
Book of Joshua critically examined" was published in the April of the
year in which these letters were written, and his deposition by the
Bishop of Capetown had but recently been reversed by the Privy Council.
It is to the discussion aroused by his book that Mr. Ruskin indirectly
refers.
[93] The leader in the _Art-Journal_ is Chapter vi. of "The Cestus of
Aglaia," where "the infinite follies of modern thought, centred in the
notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he
is likely to make of it," are discussed at some length. The epitaphs
quoted are not in the _Idler_ itself, but in the "Essay on Epitaphs"
printed at the end of some editions of it.
[94] This refers to a letter signed "W. B." in the _Daily Telegraph_ of
September 12.
[95] Charlotte Winsor was at this time under sentence of death for the
murder of a child, which had been entrusted to her charge. I have been
unable to verify the anecdote of her heroic anti-type.
[96] The "admirable article" which had closed the discussion advised
mistresses to resemble those of the good old days, and to deserve good
servants, if they wished to secure them. It, somewhat inconsistently
with the previous articles, declared that the days of good service
would not be found altogether past, if it was remembered that by
derivation "domestic" meant "homelike," and "family" one's servants,
not one's children.
[97] See "The Economist of Xenophon," since (1875) translated and
published in the "Bibliotheca Pastorum," edited by Mr. Ruskin (vol. i.
p. 50, chap. vii. §§ 37-43). Mr. Ruskin in his preface to the volume
speaks of the book as containing "first, a faultless definition of
wealth" ... "secondly, the most perfect ideal of kingly character
and kingly government given in literature" ... and "thirdly, the
ideal of domestic life." It may be interesting to note an earlier
and quaint estimate of the work, given in "Xenophon's Treatise of
Housholde--imprinted at London, in Fleet Street, by T. Berthelet,
1534," where the dialogue is described as "ryght counnyngly translated
out of the Greke tongue into Englysshe by Gentian Hervet at the desyre
of Mayster Geffrey Pole, whiche boke for the welthe of this realme I
deme very profitable to be red."
[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 17, 1865.]
_MODERN HOUSES._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I trust you will hold the very able and interesting letter from
"W. H. W.,"[98] which you publish to-day, excuse enough for my briefly
trespassing on your space once more. Indeed, it has been a discomfort
to me that I have not yet asked the pardon of your correspondent, "A
Tenant, not at will" (Sept. 21),[99] for the apparent discourtesy of
thought of which he accused me. He need not have done so: for although
I said "a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" rather than live
in modern houses, I never said he would rather abandon his family
and his business than live in them; and your correspondent himself,
in his previously written letter, had used precisely the same words.
And he must not suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that
the prolonged coincidence of thought and word in the two letters
well deserves the notice of your readers, in the proof it gives of
the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. "W. H. W.'s"
graphic description of his house is also sorrowfully faithful to the
facts of daily experience; and I doubt not that you will soon have
other communications of the same tenor, and all too true.
I made no attempt to answer "A Tenant, not at will," because the
subject is much too wide for any detailed treatment in a letter; and
you do not care for generalizations of mine. But I am sure your two
correspondents, and the large class of sufferers which they represent,
would be very sincerely grateful for some generalizations of yours
on this matter. For, Sir, surely of all questions for the political
economist, this of putting good houses over people's heads is the
closest and simplest. The first question in all economy, practically as
well as etymologically, must be this, of lodging. The "Eco" must come
before the "Nomy." You must have a house before you can put anything
into it; and preparatorily to laying up treasure, at the least dig a
hole for it. Well, Sir, here, as it seems to my poor thinking, is a
beautiful and simple problem for you to illustrate the law of demand
and supply upon. Here you have a considerable body of very deserving
persons "demanding" a good and cheap article in the way of a house.
Will you or any of your politico-economic correspondents explain to
them and to me the Divinely Providential law by which, in due course,
the supply of such cannot but be brought about for them?
There is another column in your impression of to-day to which, also, I
would ask leave to direct your readers' attention--the 4th of the 3d
page; and especially, at the bottom of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of
Crawford Place,[100] and his following statement that it is "a kind
of property constituting a most profitable investment;" and I do so
in the hope that you will expand your interpretation of the laws of
political economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and
inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for the
classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places; and, without
necessity of eviction, also for the colliers of Cramlington (_vide_ 2d
column of the same 3d page).[101] I have, indeed, my own notions on the
subject, but I do not trouble you with them, for they are unfortunately
based an that wild notion of there being a "just" price for all things,
which you say in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes,
"has no existence but in the minds of theorists."[102] The _Pall Mall
Gazette_, with which journal I have already held some discussion on the
subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, in its impression
of the same evening; nor do I care to pursue the debate until I can
inform you of the continuous result of some direct results which I am
making on my Utopian principles. I have bought a little bit of property
of the Crawford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to
my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a "just" price
for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly look after, partly
teach the tenants to look after for themselves; and I look a little
after them, as well as after the rents. I do not mean to make a highly
profitable investment of their poor little rooms; but I do mean to sell
a good article, in the way of house room, at a fair price; and hitherto
my customers are satisfied, and so am I.[103]
In the mean time, being entirely busy in other directions, I must
leave the discussion, if it is to proceed at all, wholly between you
and your readers. I will write no word more till I see what they all
have got to say, and until you yourself have explained to me, in its
anticipated results, the working--as regards the keeping out of winter
and rough weather--of the principles of Non-iquity (I presume that
is the proper politico-economic form for the old and exploded word
Iniquity); and so I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Oct._ 16.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] The letter of "W. H. W." commenced by stating that the writer had
"waited till the discussion ... about domestic servants was brought
to a close to make a few remarks on a subject touched on in Mr.
Ruskin's last letter--domestic architecture." It then gave a "graphic
description" of "W. H. W.'s" own modern villa and its miseries, and
concluded by asking Mr. Ruskin if nothing could be done!
[99] "A Tenant, not at will" had written to point out the coincidence
that he had, before the publication of Mr. Ruskin's third letter,
himself begun a letter to the _Daily Telegraph_ on the subject of
houses, in parts of which, strangely enough, he had used expressions
very similar to those of Mr. Ruskin (see _ante_, pp. 147-8). He
had described his modern suburban villa as "one of an ugly mass of
blossoms lately burst forth from the parent trunk--a brickfield;" and
declared that if it were not that people would think him mad, he "would
infinitely rather live in a log hut of his own building" than in a
builder's villa. He concluded by saying that all the houses were the
same, and that therefore, until Mr. Ruskin could point out honest-built
dwellings neglected while the "villas" were all let, it was not quite
fair of him to assume that "suburban villains" utterly wanted the true
instinct of gentlemen which would lead to the preference of log huts to
plaster palaces.
[100] The account consisted of a report presented by Dr. Whitmore,
as Metropolitan Officer of Health to the district, to the Marylebone
Representative Council. Describing the miseries of Crawford Place,
which was left in an untenantable condition, while the landlords still
got high rents for it, he added that "property of this description, let
out in separate rooms to weekly tenants, constitutes a most profitable
investment," according to the degree of flinty determination exercised
in collecting the rents.
[101] This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington
colliers after seventeen days of strike. The masters attempted to evict
the pitmen from their houses, an attempt which the pitmen met partly by
serious riot and resistance, and partly by destroying the houses they
were forced to leave.
[102] "Such a thing as a 'just price,' either for labor or for any
other commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Ruskin, no existence
save in the minds of theorists." (_Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 10, quoted
by the _Pall Mall_ in its "Epitome of the Morning Papers" on the same
day.) The discussion with the _Gazette_ consisted of the "Work and
Wages" letters (see _ante_, pp. 72 _seqq._).
[103] See "Fors Clavigera," 1877, Letter 78, Notes and Correspondence,
p. 170.
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.
III.
ROMAN INUNDATIONS.
A KING'S FIRST DUTY. 1871.
A NATION'S DEFENCES. 1871.
THE WATERS OF COMFORT. 1871.
THE STREAMS OF ITALY. 1871.
THE STREETS OF LONDON. 1871.
III.
ROMAN INUNDATIONS.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in "Fors
Clavigera," 1873, Letter 33, p. 23.]
_A KING'S FIRST DUTY._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the
Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace
rather than to smile with him?
In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself he thought of
his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent
and scanty waters:
"Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus,
Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium
Regnavit populorum."[104]
Now the anger and power of that "tauriformis Aufidus" is precisely
because "regna Dauni præfluit"--because it flows past the poor kingdoms
which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of
ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold,
at their sources--they are so much death, if they once break down
unbridled into the plains.
At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said
that the King of Italy expressed "an earnest desire to do something,
as far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate
inundations for the future."
Now science and industry can do, not "something," but everything, and
not merely to mitigate inundations--and, deadliest of inundations,
because perpetual, maremmas--but to change them into national banks
instead of debts.
The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the
streams of it.
If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the people
also form alternately torrent and maremma, in pestilential fury or
pestilential idleness. They also will change into living streams of
men, if their Kings literally "lead them forth beside the waters of
comfort." Half the money lost by this inundation of Tiber, spent
rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave
of it into so much fruit and foliage in spring where now there will be
only burning rock. And the men who have been killed within the last two
months, and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled
Europe with misery which fifty years will not efface,[105] they had
been set at the same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life
instead of destroying it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have
embanked every dangerous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone,
and the Po, and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance
of blessing for centuries to come--they and their families living all
the while in brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the Red Prince
look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
_Jan._ 10.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] On December 27 there was a disastrous inundation of the Tiber,
and a great part of Rome was flooded. The _Daily Telegraph_ in its
leading article of Jan. 10, 1871, on the subject, began by quoting from
the "very neatest," "sparkling," "light-hearted" ode of Horace, "Jam
satis terris nivis" (Horace, Odes, i. 2). The quotations in the letter
are from Odes iv. 14, 25, and from the celebrated ode beginning "Exegi
monumentum œre perennius" (Odes, iii. 30).
[105] This letter, it will be noticed, was written during the
bombardment of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1871.]
_A NATION'S DEFENCES._
_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_
SIR: The letter to which you do me the honor to refer, in your
yesterday's article on the Tiber, entered into no detail,[106] because
I had already laid the plans spoken of before the Royal Institution
in my lecture there last February;[107] in which my principal object
was to state the causes of the incalculably destructive inundations
of the Rhone, Toccia, and Ticino, in 1868; and to point out that no
mountain river ever was or can be successfully embanked in the valleys;
but that the rainfall must be arrested on the high and softly rounded
hill surfaces, before it reaches any ravine in which its force can be
concentrated. Every mountain farm ought to have a dike about two feet
high--with a small ditch within it--carried at intervals in regular,
scarcely perceptible incline across its fields; with discharge into
a reservoir large enough to contain a week's maximum rainfall on the
area of that farm in the stormiest weather-the higher uncultivated
land being guarded over larger spaces with bolder embankments. No
drop of water that had once touched hill ground ought ever to reach
the plains till it was wanted there: and the maintenance of the bank
and reservoir, once built, on any farm, would not cost more than the
keeping up of its cattle-sheds against chance of whirlwind and snow.
The first construction of the work would be costly enough; and, say the
Economists, "would not pay." I never heard of any National Defences
that did! Presumably, we shall have to pay more income-tax next year,
without hope of any dividend on the disbursement. Nay--you must usually
wait a year or two before you get paid for any great work, even when
the gain is secure. The fortifications of Paris did not pay, till very
lately; they are doubtless returning cent. per cent. now, since the
kind of rain falls heavy within them which they were meant to catch.
Our experimental embankments against (perhaps too economically cheap)
shot at Shoeburyness are property which we can only safely "realize"
under similarly favorable conditions. But my low embankments would not
depend for their utility on the advent of a hypothetical foe, but would
have to contend with an instant and inevitable one; yet with one who
is only an adversary if unresisted; who, resisted, becomes a faithful
friend--a lavish benefactor.
Give me the old bayonets in the Tower, if I can't have anything so
good as spades; and a few regiments of "volunteers" with good Engineer
officers over them, and, in three years' time, an Inundation of Tiber,
at least, shall be Impossible.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 19, 1871.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had quoted part of the preceding letter,
and had spoken of "a remedy which Mr. Ruskin himself appears to
contemplate, though he describes it in rather a nebulous manner."
[107] "A Talk respecting Verona and its Rivers," February 4, 1870. (See
Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. vi. p. 55. The report of the
lecture was also printed by the Institution in a separate form; pp.
7.) The lecture concluded thus: "Further, without in the least urging
my plans impatiently on any one else, I know thoroughly that this [the
protection against inundations] which I have said _should_ be done,
_can_ be done, for the Italian rivers, and that no method of employment
of our idle able-bodied laborers would be in the end more remunerative,
or in the beginnings of it more healthful and every way beneficial
than, with the concurrence of the Italian and Swiss governments,
setting them to redeem the valleys of the Ticino and the Rhone. And
I pray you to think of this; for I tell you truly--you who care for
Italy--that both her passions and her mountain streams are noble; but
that her happiness depends not on the liberty, but the right government
of both."
[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 4, 1871.]
_THE WATERS OF COMFORT._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I did not see your impression of yesterday until too late to reply
to the question of your correspondent in Rome;[108] and I am hurried
to-day; but will send you to-morrow a precise statement of what I
believe can be done in the Italian uplands. The simplest and surest
beginning would be the purchase, either by the Government or by a small
company formed in Rome, of a few plots of highland in the Apennines,
now barren for want of water, and valueless; and the showing what
could be made of them by terraced irrigation such as English officers
have already introduced in many parts of India. The Agricultural
College at Cirencester ought, I think, to be able to send out two or
three superintendents, who would direct rightly the first processes
of cultivation, choosing for purchase good soil in good exposures,
and which would need only irrigation to become fruitful; and by next
summer, if not by the end of this, there would be growing food for men
and cattle where now there is only hot dust; and I do not think there
would be much further question "where the money was to come from." The
real question is only, "Will you _pay_ your money in advance for what
is actually new land added to the kingdom of living Italy?" or "Will
you pay it under call from the Tiber every ten or twenty years as the
price of the work done by the river for your destruction?"
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
OXFORD, _Feb._ 3.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] The correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ had written that Mr.
Ruskin's letter of January 10 had been translated into Italian and had
set people thinking, and he asked Mr. Ruskin to write and state the
case once more.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 7, 1871.]
_THE STREAMS OF ITALY._[109]
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: In this month, just thirty years ago, I was at Naples, and the
days were nearly as dark as these, but with clouds and rain, not fog.
The streets leading down from St. Elmo became beds of torrents. A
story went about--true or not I do not know, but credible enough--of
a child's having been carried off by the gutter and drowned at the
bottom of the hill. At last came indeed what, in those simple times,
people thought a serious loss of life. A heavy storm burst one night
above a village on the flank of the Monte St. Angelo, a mile or two
south of Pompeii. The limestones slope steeply there under about three
feet of block earth. The water peeled a piece of the rock of its earth,
as one would peel an orange, and brought down three or four acres of
the good soil in a heap on the village at midnight, driving in the
upper walls, and briefly burying some fourteen or fifteen people in
their sleep--and, as I say, in those times there was some talk even
about fourteen or fifteen. But the same kind of thing takes place, of
course, more or less, among the hills in almost every violent storm,
generally with the double result of ruining more ground below than is
removed from the rocks above; for the frantic streams mostly finish
their work with a heap of gravel and blocks of stone like that which
came down the ravine below the glacier of Greppond about ten years ago,
and destroyed, for at least fifty years to come, some of quite the best
land in Chamouni.
In slower, but ceaseless process of ruin, the Po, Arno, and Tiber
steadily remove the soil from the hills, and carry it down to their
deltas. The Venetians have contended now for a thousand years in vain
even with the Brenta and the minor streams that enter their lagoons,
and have only kept their canals clear by turning the river south to
Malamocco with embankments which have unhealthily checked the drainage
of all the flat country about Padua.
And this constant mischief takes place, be it observed, irrespective
of inundation. All that Florence, Pisa, and Rome have suffered and
suffer periodically from floods is so much mischief added to that of
increasing maremmas, spoiled harborages, and lost mountain-ground.
There is yet one further evil. The snow on the bared rock slips lower
and melts faster; snow, which in mossy or grass ground would have
lain long, and furnished steadily flowing streams far on into summer,
fall or melt from the bare rock in avalanche and flood, and spend in
desolation in a few days what would have been nourishment for half the
year. And against all this there are no remedies possible in any sudden
or external action. It is the law of the Heaven which sends flood
and food, that national prosperity can only be achieved by national
forethought and unity of purpose.