and earnestly formed, but I could not easily or decorously promote
it myself, could I? But I fully proposed to write you a letter to be
read at the first meeting, guarding you especially against an 'ism,'
or a possibility of giving occasion for one; and I am exceedingly glad
to receive your present letter. Mine was not written because it gave
me trouble to think of it, and I can't take trouble now. But without
thinking, I can at once assure you that the taking of the name of
St. George _would_ give me endless trouble, and cause all manner of
mistakes, and perhaps even legal difficulties. We must not have that,
please.
"But I think you might with grace and truth take the name of the
Society of the Rose--meaning the English wild rose--and that the object
of the society would be to promote such English learning and life as
can abide where it grows. You see it is the heraldic sign on my books,
so that you might still keep pretty close to me.
"Supposing this were thought too far-fetched or sentimental by the
promoters of the society, I think the 'More' Society would be a good
name, following out the teaching of the Utopia as it is taken up in
'Fors.' I can't write more to-day, but I dare say something else may
come into my head, and I'll write again, or you can send me more names
for choice."
FOOTNOTES:
[175] This letter was written early in 1879 to the Secretary _pro tem_
of the Ruskin Society of Manchester, in reply to a request for Mr.
Ruskin's views upon the formation of such a Society.
[From "The Autographic Mirror," December 23 and 30, 1865.]
_LETTER TO MR. W. H. HARRISON._[176]
DEAR MR. HARRISON: The plate I send is unluckily merely outlined in its
principal griffin (it is just being finished), but it may render your
six nights' work a little more amusing. I don't want it back.
Never mind putting "see to quotations," as I always do. And, in the
second revise, don't look to all my alterations to tick them off,
but merely read straight through the new proof to see if any mistake
strikes you. This will be more useful to me than the other.
Most truly yours, with a thousand thanks,
J. RUSKIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] A facsimile of this letter, from a collection of autographs in
the possession of Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, appeared in the above-named
issue of the _Autographic Mirror_. The subject of the letter will be
made clearer by the following passages from Mr. Ruskin's reminiscence
of Mr. William Henry Harrison, published in the _University Magazine_
of April, 1878, under the title of "My First Editor."--"_1st
February_, 1878. In seven days more I shall be fifty-nine; which
(practically) is all the same as sixty; but being asked by the wife
of my dear old friend, W. H. Harrison, to say a few words of our old
relations together, I find myself, in spite of all these years, a boy
again--partly in the mere thought of, and renewed sympathy with, the
cheerful heart of my old literary master, and partly in instinctive
terror lest, wherever he is in celestial circles, he should catch me
writing bad grammar, or putting wrong stops, and should set the table
turning, or the like.... Not a book of mine, for good thirty years, but
went, every word of it, under his careful eyes twice over--often also
the last revises left to his tender mercy altogether on condition he
wouldn't bother me any more."--The book to which the letter refers may
be the "Stones of Venice," and the plate sent the third ("Noble and
Ignoble Grotesque"), in the last volume of that work; and if this be
so, the letter was probably written from Herne Hill about 1852-3.
[From the "Journal of Dramatic Reform," November, 1880.]
DRAMATIC REFORM.[177]
I.
MY DEAR SIR: Yes, I began writing something--a year ago, is it?--on
your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch
so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day,
necessarily.
Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making
money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is
_utterly_ to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of
a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out
of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre.
Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors,
and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there
be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the
_Broadside_ well delivered.
And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what _he_ has got
to teach the people: perhaps then, he may tell the English Actor what
_he_ has to teach them.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
BRANTWOOD, _July 30th_, 1880.
II.
MY DEAR SIR: I am heartily glad you think my letter may be of some use.
I wish it had contained the tenth part of what I wanted to say.
May I ask you at least to add this note to it, to tell how indignant
I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-_scene_(!) of the _Folies_ at
Paris composed of huge advertisements! The ghastly want of sense of
beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gaining hourly on the people!
They were playing the _Fille du Tambour Major_ superbly, for the
most part; they gave the introductory convent scene without the
least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very beautiful and
gracefully-mannered actress, and the whole thing would have been
delightful had the mere decorations of the theatre been clean and
pretty. To think that all the strength of the world combining in Paris
to amuse itself can't have clean box-curtains! or a pretty landscape
sketch for a drop scene!--but sits in squalor and dismalness, with
bills stuck all over its _rideau_!
I saw _Le Chalet_ here last night, in many respects well played and
sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, only it
requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main part, and
everybody last night sang too loud. There is no music of any high
quality in it, but the piece is one which, played with such delicacy as
almost any clever, _well-bred_ girl could put into the heroine's part
(if the audiences would look for acting more than voice), _ought_ to be
extremely delightful to simple persons.
On the other hand, I heard _William Tell_ entirely massacred at the
great opera-house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely sang a piece
of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in modern skimble-skamble
tunes, and quite unspeakably clumsy and common _ballet_. I scarcely
came away in better humor from the mouthed tediousness of _Gerin_ at
the _Français_, but they took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased
a certain class of audience. The _William Tell_ could please nobody at
heart.
The libretto of _Jean de Nivelle_ is very beautiful, and ought to
have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tuneless as its
present music I never heard, except mosquitoes and cicadas.
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
AMIENS, _October 12th_, 1880.
FOOTNOTES:
[177] This and the following letter were both addressed to Mr. John
Stuart Bogg, the Secretary of the Dramatic Reform Association of
Manchester. The first was a reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would,
in accordance with an old promise, write something on the subject of
the Drama for the Society's journal; and the second was added by its
author on hearing that it was the wish of the Society to publish the
first.
[From the "Glasgow Herald," October 7, 1880.]
_THE LORD RECTORSHIP OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY._[178]
I.
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, _10th June_, 1880.
MY DEAR SIR: I am greatly flattered by your letter, but there are two
reasons why I can't stand--the first, that though I believe myself the
stanchest Conservative in the British Islands, I hold some opinions,
and must soon clearly utter them, concerning both lands and rents,
which I fear the Conservative Club would be very far from sanctioning,
and think Mr. Bright himself had been their safer choice. The second,
that I am not in the least disposed myself to stand in any contest
where it is possible that Mr. Bright might beat me.
Are there really no Scottish gentlemen of birth and learning from whom
you could choose a Rector worthier than Mr. Bright? and better able
than any Southron to rectify what might be oblique, or hold straight
what wasn't yet so, in a Scottish University?
Might I ask the favor of the transmission of a copy of this letter to
the Independent Club? It will save me the difficulty of repetition in
other terms.--And believe me, my dear sir, always the club's and your
faithful servant,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
MATT. P. FRASER, ESQ.
II.
_13th June_, 1880.
MY DEAR SIR: I am too tired at this moment (I mean this day or two
back) to be able to think. My health may break down any day, and I
cannot bear a sense of having to do anything. If you would take me
on condition of my residence for a little while with you, and giving
a little address to the students after I had seen something of them,
I think I could come, but I won't stand ceremonies nor make long
speeches, and you really should try to get somebody else.
Ever respectfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
MATT. P. FRASER. ESQ.
III.
_24th June_, 1880.
MY DEAR SIR: I am grieved at my own vacillation, and fear it is more
vanity than sense of duty in which I leave this matter of nomination
to your own pleasure. But I had rather err in vanity than in
heartlessness, and so will do my best for you if you want me.
Ever respectfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
IV.
ROUEN, _28th September_, 1880.
Sir: I am obliged by your letter, but can absolutely pay no regard to
anything said or done by Mr. Bright's Committee beyond requesting my
own committees to print for their inspection--or their use--in any way
they like, every word of every letter I have written to my supporters,
or non-supporters, or any other person in Glasgow, so far as such
letters may be recoverable.
Faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
MATT. P. FRASER, ESQ.
V.[179]
[From "The Glasgow Herald," October 12, 1880.]
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE.
MY DEAR SIR: What in the devil's name have _you_ to do with either Mr.
D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the University, and
have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching.
Had you ever read ten words of mine [with understanding] you would have
known that I care no more [either] for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone
than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but that I
hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand,
we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen.
Ever faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
ALEX. MITCHELL, ESQ., Avoch, by Inverness.
P.S.--You had better, however, ask the Conservatives for a copy of my
_entire_ letters to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Of these letters it should be noted that the first was written to
the President of the Conservative Club upon his requesting Mr. Ruskin
to stand for the Lord Rectorship; the second in answer to a hope that
Mr. Ruskin would reconsider the decision he had expressed in his reply;
and the third upon the receipt of a letter explaining what the duties
of the office were. The fourth letter refers to one which dealt with
some reflections made by the Liberal Club upon the former conduct of
their opponents.
[179] Upon the terms of this letter, which was written in answer to a
question whether Mr. Ruskin sympathized with Lord Beaconsfield or with
Mr. Gladstone, the reader is referred to the Epilogue. The bracketed
words were omitted in the _Glasgow Herald_.
EPILOGUE.
EPILOGUE.
I find my immitigable Editor insists on epilogue as well as prologue
from his submissive Author; which would have fretted me a little,
since the last letter of the series appears to me a very pretty and
comprehensive sum of the matters in the book, had not the day on which,
as Fors would have it, I am to write its last line, brought to my mind
something of importance which I forgot to say in the preface; nor will
it perhaps be right to leave wholly without explanation the short
closing letter to which I have just referred.
It should be observed that it was written to the President of the
_Liberal_ party of the Glasgow students, in answer to the question
which I felt to be wholly irrelevant to the business in hand, and which
could not have been answered in anything like official terms with
anything short of a forenoon's work. I gave the answer, therefore,
in my own terms, not in the least petulant, but chosen to convey as
much information as I could in the smallest compass; and carrying it
accurately faceted and polished on the angles.
For instance, I never, under any conditions of provocation or haste,
would have said that I hated Liberalism as I did _Mammon_, or Belial,
or Moloch. I chose the milder fiend of Ekron, as the true exponent
and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies; and if my Editor, in final
kindness, can refer the reader to the comparison of the House-fly and
House-dog, in (he, and not I, must say where)[180] the letter will have
received all the illustration which I am minded to give it. I was only
surprised that after its publication, of course never intended, though
never forbidden by me, it passed with so little challenge, and was, on
the whole, understood as it was meant.
The more important matter I have to note in closing, is the security
given to the conclusions arrived at in many subjects treated of in
these letters, in consequence of the breadth of the basis on which
the reasoning is founded. The multiplicity of subject, and opposite
directions of investigation, which have so often been alleged against
me, as if sources of weakness, are in reality, as the multiplied
buttresses of the apse of Amiens, as secure in allied result as they
are opposed in direction. Whatever (for instance) I have urged in
economy has ten times the force when it is remembered to have been
pleaded for by a man loving the splendor, and advising the luxury of
ages which overlaid their towers with gold, and their walls with ivory.
No man, oftener than I, has had cast in his teeth the favorite adage
of the insolent and the feeble--"ne sutor." But it has always been
forgotten by the speakers that, although the proverb might on some
occasions be wisely spoken by an artist to a cobbler, it could never be
wisely spoken by a cobbler to an artist.
J. RUSKIN.
AMIENS, _St. Crispin's Day_, 1880.
FOOTNOTES:
[180] See "The Queen of the Air," §§ 148-152 (1874 Ed.).
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES.
NOTE.--_In the second and third columns the bracketed words and
figures are more or less certainly conjectured; whilst those
unbracketed give the actual dating of the letter._