within the last twenty years!--how much in France and Germany, I will
take some pains to ascertain for you,--and with this initial outlay of
capital, have taught the peasants of Europe--to pull each other's hair.
With this result, 17th January, 1871, at and around the chief palace
of their own pleasures, and the chief city of their delights:
"Each demolished house has its own legend of sorrow, of pain,
and horror; each vacant doorway speaks to the eye, and almost to
the ear, of hasty flight, as armies or fire came--of weeping women
and trembling children running away in awful fear, abandoning the
home that saw their birth, the old house they loved--of startled
men seizing quickly under each arm their most valued goods, and
rushing, heavily laden, after their wives and babes, leaving to
hostile hands the task of burning all the rest. When evening
falls, the wretched outcasts, worn with fatigue and tears,
reach Versailles, St. Germain, or some other place outside
the range of fire, and there they beg for bread and shelter,
homeless, foodless, broken with despair. And this, remember,
has been the fate of something like a hundred thousand people
during the last four months. Versailles alone has about fifteen
thousand such fugitives to keep alive, all ruined, all hopeless,
all vaguely asking the grim future what still worse fate it may
have in store for them."--Daily Telegraph, Jan. 17th, 1871.
That is the result round their pleasant city, and this within their
industrious and practical one: let us keep, for the reference of
future ages, a picture of domestic life, out of the streets of London
in her commercial prosperity, founded on the eternal laws of Supply
and Demand, as applied by the modern Capitalist:
"A father in the last stage of consumption--two daughters nearly
marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting clothing to 'cover
their shame.' The rags that hang around their attenuated frames
flutter in strips against their naked legs. They have no stool or
chair upon which they can sit. Their father occupies the only stool
in the room. They have no employment by which they can earn even a
pittance. They are at home starving on a half-chance meal a day,
and hiding their raggedness from the world. The walls are bare,
there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of dirty rags are upon
it. The dying father will shortly follow the dead mother; and
when the parish coffin encloses his wasted form, and a pauper's
grave closes above him, what shall be his daughters' lot? This is
but a type of many other homes in the district: dirt, misery, and
disease alone flourish in that wretched neighbourhood. 'Fever and
smallpox rage,' as the inhabitants say, 'next door, and next door,
and over the way, and next door to that, and further down.' The
living, dying, and dead are all huddled together. The houses have
no ventilation, the back yards are receptacles for all sorts of
filth and rubbish, the old barrels or vessels that contain the
supply of water are thickly coated on the sides with slime, and
there is an undisturbed deposit of mud at the bottom. There is no
mortuary house--the dead lie in the dogholes where they breathed
their last, and add to the contagion which spreads through the
neighbourhood."--Pall Mall Gazette, January 7th, 1871, quoting
the Builder.
As I was revising this sheet,--on the evening of the 20th of last
month,--two slips of paper were brought to me. One contained, in
consecutive paragraphs, an extract from the speech of one of the
best and kindest of our public men, to the 'Liberal Association'
at Portsmouth; and an account of the performances of the 35-ton
gun called the 'Woolwich infant' which is fed with 700-pound shot,
and 130 pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like the
Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. "The gun was
fired with the most satisfactory result," nobody being hurt, and
nothing damaged but the platform, while the shot passed through the
screens in front at the rate of 1,303 feet per second: and it seems,
also, that the Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For
Mr. Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the Liberals
of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable neutrality "we must
contemplate the contingency of a combined fleet coming from the ports
of Prussia, Russia, and America, and making an attack on England."
Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, Woolwich,
and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind merely like another
case of iron railings--thieves outside, and nothing to steal
within. But the second slip of paper announced approaching help in
a peaceful direction. It was the prospectus of the Boardmen's and
General Advertising Co-operative Society, which invites, from the
"generosity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum," and,
"in addition to the above, a small sum of money by way of capital,"
to set the members of the society up in the profitable business of
walking about London between two boards. Here is at last found for
us, then, it appears, a line of life! At the West End, lounging about
the streets, with a well-made back to one's coat, and front to one's
shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of business; but,
doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie
pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay,
in time, only with proper preliminary expenditure of capital. My
friends, I repeat my question: Do you not think you could contrive
some little method of employing--yourselves? for truly I think the
Seraphic Doctors are nearly at their wits' end (if ever their wits had
a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning to find it difficult to live by
lies of their own; and workmen will not find it much easier to live,
by walking about, flattened between other people's.
Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you to read a
little history with me; perhaps also, because the world's time, seen
truly, is but one long and fitful April, in which every day is All
Fools' day,--we may continue our studies in that month; but on the
first of May, you shall consider with me what you can do, or let me,
if still living, tell you what I know you can do--those of you, at
least, who will promise--(with the help of the three strong Fates),
these three things:
1. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.
2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and seek to avenge
no injury.
3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones.
Believe me,
Your faithful friend,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER III.
Denmark Hill,
1st March, 1871.
My Friends,
We are to read--with your leave--some history to-day; the leave,
however, will perhaps not willingly be given, for you may think that
of late you have read enough history, or too much, in Gazettes of
morning and evening. No; you have read, and can read, no history
in these. Reports of daily events, yes;--and if any journal would
limit itself to statements of well-sifted fact, making itself not a
"news"paper, but an "olds"paper, and giving its statements tested and
true, like old wine, as soon as things could be known accurately;
choosing also, of the many things that might be known, those which
it was most vital to know, and summing them in few words of pure
English,--I cannot say whether it would ever pay well to sell it;
but I am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read no other.
But even so, to know only what was happening day by day, would not
be to read history. What happens now is but the momentary scene
of a great play, of which you can understand nothing without some
knowledge of the former action. And of that, so great a play is it,
you can at best understand little; yet of history, as of science,
a little, well known, will serve you much, and a little, ill known,
will do you fatally the contrary of service.
For instance, all your journals will be full of talk, for months to
come, about whose fault the war was; and you yourselves, as you begin
to feel its deadly recoil on your own interests, or as you comprehend
better the misery it has brought on others, will be looking about
more and more restlessly for some one to accuse of it. That is because
you don't know the law of Fate, nor the course of history. It is the
law of Fate that we shall live, in part, by our own efforts, but in
the greater part, by the help of others; and that we shall also die,
in part, for our own faults; but in the greater part for the faults
of others. Do you suppose (to take the thing on the small scale in
which you can test it) that those seven children torn into pieces
out of their sleep, in the last night of the siege of Paris, [6]
had sinned above all the children in Paris, or above yours? or that
their parents had sinned more than you? Do you think the thousands of
soldiers, German and French, who have died in agony, and of women who
have died of grief, had sinned above all other soldiers, or mothers,
or girls, there and here?
It was not their fault, but their Fate. The thing appointed to them by
the Third Fors. But you think it was at least the Emperor Napoleon's
fault, if not theirs? Or Count Bismarck's? No; not at all. The
Emperor Napoleon had no more to do with it than a cork on the top of
a wave has with the toss of the sea. Count Bismarck had very little
to do with it. When the Count sent for my waiter, last July, in the
village of Lauterbrunnen, among the Alps,--that the waiter then and
there packed his knapsack and departed, to be shot, if need were,
leaving my dinner unserved (as has been the case with many other
people's dinners since)--depended on things much anterior to Count
Bismarck. The two men who had most to answer for in the mischief of
the matter were St. Louis and his brother, who lived in the middle
of the thirteenth century. One, among the very best of men; and the
other, of all that I ever read of, the worst. The good man, living
in mistaken effort, and dying miserably, to the ruin of his country;
the bad man living in triumphant good fortune, and dying peaceably,
to the ruin of many countries. Such were their Fates, and ours. I
am not going to tell you of them, nor anything about the French war
to-day; and you have been told, long ago, (only you would not listen,
nor believe,) the root of the modern German power--in that rough
father of Frederick, who "yearly made his country richer, and this
not in money alone (which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes
has no value at all, and even less), but in frugality, diligence,
punctuality, veracity,--the grand fountains from which money, and
all real values and valours, spring for men. As a Nation's Husband,
he seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy the nation
which gets such a Husband, once in the half thousand years. The Nation,
as foolish wives and Nations do, repines and grudges a good deal,
its weak whims and will being thwarted very often; but it advances
steadily, with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and,
after long times, the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest
to the Nation, and to all Nations." [7]
No such harvest is sowing for you,--Freemen and Independent Electors
of Parliamentary representatives, as you think yourselves.
Freemen, indeed! You are slaves, not to masters of any strength or
honour; but to the idlest talkers at that floral end of Westminster
bridge. Nay, to countless meaner masters than they. For though, indeed,
as early as the year 1102, it was decreed in a council at St. Peter's,
Westminster, "that no man for the future should presume to carry on
the wicked trade of selling men in the markets, like brute beasts,
which hitherto hath been the common custom of England," the no less
wicked trade of under-selling men in markets has lasted to this day;
producing conditions of slavery differing from the ancient ones only
in being starved instead of full-fed: and besides this, a state
of slavery unheard of among the nations till now, has arisen with
us. In all former slaveries, Egyptian, Algerine, Saxon, and American,
the slave's complaint has been of compulsory work. But the modern
Politico-Economic slave is a new and far more injured species,
condemned to Compulsory Idleness, for fear he should spoil other
people's trade; the beautifully logical condition of the national
Theory of Economy in this matter being that, if you are a shoemaker,
it is a law of Heaven that you must sell your goods under their price,
in order to destroy the trade of other shoemakers; but if you are not
a shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame, it is a law of Heaven
that you must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide, to put between your
foot and the stones, because that would interfere with the total
trade of shoemaking.
Which theory, of all the wonderful--!
We will wait till April to consider of it; meantime, here is a note I
have received from Mr. Alsager A. Hill, who having been unfortunately
active in organizing that new effort in the advertising business,
designed, as it seems, on this loveliest principle of doing nothing
that will be perilously productive--was hurt by my manner of mention
of it in the last number of Fors. I offered accordingly to print any
form of remonstrance he would furnish me with, if laconic enough;
and he writes to me, "The intention of the Boardmen's Society is not,
as the writer of Fors Clavigera suggests, to 'find a line of life'
for able-bodied labourers, but simply, by means of co-operation, to
give them the fullest benefit of their labour whilst they continue a
very humble but still remunerative calling. See Rule 12. The capital
asked for to start the organization is essential in all industrial
partnerships, and in so poor a class of labour as that of street
board-carrying could not be supplied by the men themselves. With
respect to the 'lies' alleged to be carried in front and behind, it is
rather hard measure to say that mere announcements of public meetings
or places of entertainments (of which street notices chiefly consist)
are necessarily falsehoods."
To which, I have only to reply that I never said the newly-found line
of life was meant for able-bodied persons. The distinction between
able and unable-bodied men is entirely indefinite. There are all
degrees of ability for all things; and a man who can do anything,
however little, should be made to do that little usefully. If you
can carry about a board with a bill on it, you can carry, not about,
but where it is wanted, a board without a bill on it; which is a much
more useful exercise of your ability. Respecting the general probity,
and historical or descriptive accuracy, of advertisements, and their
function in modern economy, I will inquire in another place. You see
I use none for this book, and shall in future use none for any of
my books; having grave objection even to the very small minority
of advertisements which are approximately true. I am correcting
this sheet in the "Crown and Thistle" inn at Abingdon, and under
my window is a shrill-voiced person, slowly progressive, crying,
"Soles, three pair for a shillin'." In a market regulated by reason
and order, instead of demand and supply, the soles would neither have
been kept long enough to render such advertisement of them necessary,
nor permitted, after their inexpedient preservation, to be advertised.
Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure first to strive for leave
to be useful. Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you
are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of,
who are living round you, but on every past act of what has been dust
for a thousand years. So also, does the course of a thousand years
to come, depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you.
Little enough, and perishing, often without reward, however well
spent. Understand that. Virtue does not consist in doing what will be
presently paid, or even paid at all, to you, the virtuous person. It
may so chance; or may not. It will be paid, some day; but the vital
condition of it, as virtue, is that it shall be content in its own
deed, and desirous rather that the pay of it, if any, should be for
others; just as it is also the vital condition of vice to be content
in its own deed, and desirous that the pay thereof, if any, should
be to others.
You have probably heard of St. Louis before now: and perhaps also
that he built the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, of which you may have
seen that I wrote the other day to the Telegraph, as being the most
precious piece of Gothic in Northern Europe; but you are not likely
to have known that the spire of it was Tenterden steeple over again,
and the cause of fatal sands many, quick, and slow, and above all,
of the running of these in the last hour-glass of France; for that
spire, and others like it, subordinate, have acted ever since as
lightning-rods, in a reverse manner; carrying, not the fire of heaven
innocently to earth, but electric fire of earth innocently to heaven,
leaving us all, down here, cold. The best virtue and heart-fire of
France (not to say of England, who building her towers for the most
part with four pinnacles instead of one, in a somewhat quadrumanous
type, finds them less apt as conductors), have spent themselves for
these past six centuries in running up those steeples and off them,
nobody knows where, leaving a "holy Republic" as residue at the bottom;
helpless, clay-cold, and croaking, a habitation of frogs, which poor
Garibaldi fights for, vainly raging against the ghost of St. Louis.
It is of English ghosts, however, that I would fain tell you somewhat
to-day; of them, and of the land they haunt, and know still for
theirs. For hear this to begin with:--
"While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless
for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region,
a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs
at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William" (the
Conqueror). So says, very truly, Mr. Freeman in his History of the
Conquest. Are there any of you who care for this old England, of which
the map has remained unchanged for so long? I believe you would care
more for her, and less for yourselves, except as her faithful children,
if you knew a little more about her; and especially more of what she
has been. The difficulty, indeed, at any time, is in finding out what
she has been; for that which people usually call her history is not
hers at all; but that of her Kings, or the tax-gatherers employed
by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history,
or Mr. Lowe's, yours and mine.
But the history even of her Kings is worth reading. You remember,
I said, that sometimes in church it might keep you awake to be told
a little of it. For a simple instance, you have heard probably of
Absalom's rebellion against his father, and of David's agony at his
death, until from very weariness you have ceased to feel the power of
the story. You would not feel it less vividly if you knew that a far
more fearful sorrow, of the like kind, had happened to one of your
own Kings, perhaps the best we have had, take him for all in all. Not
one only, but three of his sons, rebelled against him, and were urged
into rebellion by their mother. The Prince, who should have been King
after him, was pardoned, not once, but many times--pardoned wholly,
with rejoicing over him as over the dead alive, and set at his father's
right hand in the kingdom; but all in vain. Hard and treacherous to
the heart's core, nothing wins him, nothing warns, nothing binds. He
flies to France, and wars at last alike against father and brother,
till, falling sick through mingled guilt, and shame, and rage, he
repents idly as the fever-fire withers him. His father sends him the
signet ring from his finger in token of one more forgiveness. The
Prince lies down upon a heap of ashes with a halter round his neck,
and so dies. When his father heard it he fainted away three times, and
then broke out into bitterest crying and tears. This, you would have
thought enough for the Third dark Fate to have appointed for a man's
sorrows. It was little to that which was to come. His second son, who
was now his Prince of England, conspired against him, and pursued his
father from city to city, in Norman France. At last, even his youngest
son, best beloved of all, abandoned him, and went over to his enemies.
This was enough. Between him and his children Heaven commanded its
own peace. He sickened and died of grief on the 6th of July, 1189.
The son who had killed him, "repented" now; but there could be no
signet ring sent to him. Perhaps the dead do not forgive. Men say,
as he stood by his father's corpse, that the blood burst from his
nostrils. One child only had been faithful to him, but he was the son
of a girl whom he had loved much, and as he should not; his Queen,
therefore, being a much older person, and strict upon proprieties,
poisoned her; nevertheless poor Rosamond's son never failed him; won a
battle for him in England, which, in all human probability, saved his
kingdom; and was made a bishop, and turned out a bishop of the best.
You know already a little about the Prince who stood unforgiven (as
it seemed) by his father's body. He, also, had to forgive, in his
time; but only a stranger's arrow shot--not those reversed "arrows
in the hand of the giant," by which his father died. Men called him
"Lion-heart," not untruly; and the English as a people, have prided
themselves somewhat ever since on having, every man of them, the
heart of a lion; without inquiring particularly either what sort of
heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart of a lamb might not
sometimes be more to the purpose. But it so happens that the name
was very justly given to this prince; and I want you to study his
character somewhat, with me, because in all our history there is no
truer representative of one great species of the British squire, under
all the three significances of the name; for this Richard of ours was
beyond most of his fellows, a Rider and a Shieldbearer; and beyond
all men of his day, a Carver; and in disposition and unreasonable
exercise of intellectual power, typically a Squire altogether.
Note of him first, then, that he verily desired the good of his people
(provided it could be contrived without any check of his own humour),
and that he saw his way to it a great deal clearer than any of your
squires do now. Here are some of his laws for you:--