May; though I feel the more embarrassed in the thought of doing so,
because, in this present April, I am so much a fool as not even to
know clearly whether I have got any money or not. I know, indeed,
that things go on at present as if I had; but it seems to me that
there must be a mistake somewhere, and that some day it will be found
out. For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the
Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the Founding
of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with
some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit
of paper gives me a right to tax you every year, and make you pay me
two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me:
but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to
you, any summer's day, that you had better not? Where would my seven
thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves
a rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no
real existence;--it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two
hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn't got it. And this
is surely a very odd kind of money for a country to boast of. Well,
then, besides this, I have a bit of low land at Greenwich, which,
as far as I see anything of it, is not money at all, but only mud;
and would be of as little use to me as my handful of gravel in the
drawer, if it were not that an ingenious person has found out that
he can make chimney-pots of it; and, every quarter, he brings me
fifteen pounds off the price of his chimney-pots, so that I am always
sympathetically glad when there's a high wind, because then I know my
ingenious friend's business is thriving. But suppose it should come
into his head, in any less windy month than this April, that he had
better bring me none of the price of his chimneys? And even though he
should go on, as I hope he will, patiently,--(and I always give him a
glass of wine when he brings me the fifteen pounds),--is this really
to be called money of mine? And is the country any richer because,
when anybody's chimney-pot is blown down in Greenwich, he must pay
something extra, to me, before he can put it on again?
Then, also, I have some houses in Marylebone, which though indeed very
ugly and miserable, yet, so far as they are actual beams and brick-bats
put into shape, I might have imagined to be real property; only,
you know, Mr. Mill says that people who build houses don't produce
a commodity, but only do us a service. So I suppose my houses are
not "utilities embodied in material objects" (and indeed they don't
look much like it); but I know I have the right to keep anybody from
living in them unless they pay me; only suppose some day the Irish
faith, that people ought to be lodged for nothing, should become an
English one also--where would my money be? Where is it now, except
as a chronic abstraction from other people's earnings?
So again, I have some land in Yorkshire--some Bank "Stock" (I don't
in the least know what that is)--and the like; but whenever I examine
into these possessions, I find they melt into one or another form of
future taxation, and that I am always sitting (if I were working I
shouldn't mind, but I am only sitting) at the receipt of Custom, and
a Publican as well as a sinner. And then, to embarrass the business
further yet, I am quite at variance with other people about the place
where this money, whatever it is, comes from. The Spectator, for
instance, in its article of 25th June of last year, on Mr. Goschen's
"lucid and forcible speech of Friday-week," says that "the country
is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to
the actual workers." But whence, then, did it filter down to us,
the actual idlers? This is really a question very appropriate
for April. For such golden rain raineth not every day, but in a
showery and capricious manner, out of heaven, upon us; mostly, as
far as I can judge, rather pouring down than filtering upon idle
persons, and running in thinner driblets, but I hope purer for the
filtering process, to the "actual workers." But where does it come
from? and in the times of drought between the showers, where does
it go to? "The country is getting rich again," says the Spectator;
but then, if the April clouds fail, may it get poor again? And when
it again becomes poor,--when, last 25th of June, it was poor,--what
becomes, or had become, of the money? Was it verily lost, or only
torpid in the winter of our discontent? or was it sown and buried in
corruption, to be raised in a multifold power? When we are in a panic
about our money, what do we think is going to happen to it? Can no
economist teach us to keep it safe after we have once got it? nor any
"beloved physician"--as I read the late Sir James Simpson is called
in Edinburgh--guard even our solid gold against death, or at least,
fits of an apoplectic character, alarming to the family?
All these questions trouble me greatly; but still to me the strangest
point in the whole matter is, that though we idlers always speak as if
we were enriched by Heaven, and became ministers of its bounty to you;
if ever you think the ministry slack, and take to definite pillage
of us, no good ever comes of it to you; but the sources of wealth
seem to be stopped instantly, and you are reduced to the small gain
of making gloves of our skins; while, on the contrary, as long as we
continue pillaging you, there seems no end to the profitableness of the
business; but always, however bare we strip you, presently, more, to
be had. For instance--just read this little bit out of Froissart--about
the English army in France before the battle of Crecy:--
"We will now return to the expedition of the King of England. Sir
Godfrey de Harcourt, as marshal, advanced before the King, with
the vanguard of five hundred armed men and two thousand archers,
and rode on for six or seven leagues' distance from the main
army, burning and destroying the country. They found it rich and
plentiful, abounding in all things; the barns full of every sort
of corn, and the houses with riches: the inhabitants at their
ease, having cars, carts, horses, swine, sheep, and everything in
abundance which the country afforded. They seized whatever they
chose of all these good things, and brought them to the King's
army; but the soldiers did not give any account to their officers,
or to those appointed by the King, of the gold and silver they
took, which they kept to themselves. When they were come back,
with all their booty safely packed in waggons, the Earl of
Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Thomas Holland, and the
Lord Reginald Cobham, took their march, with their battalion on
the right, burning and destroying the country in the same way
that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt was doing. The King marched, with
the main body, between these two battalions; and every night they
all encamped together. The King of England and Prince of Wales
had, in their battalion, about three thousand men-at-arms, six
thousand archers, ten thousand infantry, without counting those
that were under the marshals; and they marched on in the manner
I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but
without breaking their line of battle. They did not turn towards
Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which in those
days was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such
towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and
many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count eight or nine
score that were engaged in commerce. When the King of England was
come near to the town, he encamped; he would not lodge in it for
fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who
soon conquered it, at a trifling loss, and completely plundered
it. No one can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it,
nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers,
they might have bought enough at a very cheap rate.
"The English then advanced towards Caen, which is a much larger
town, stronger, and fuller of draperies and all other sorts of
merchandize, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine
churches.
"On this day (Froissart does not say what day) the English rose
very early, and made themselves ready to march to Caen: the King
heard mass before sunrise, and afterwards mounting his horse,
with the Prince of Wales, and Sir Godfrey de Harcourt (who was
marshal and director of the army), marched forward in order of
battle. The battalion of the marshals led the van, and came near
to the handsome town of Caen.
"When the townsmen, who had taken the field, perceived the English
advancing, with banners and pennons flying in abundance, and saw
those archers whom they had not been accustomed to, they were
so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and ran for
the town in great disorder.
"The English, who were after the runaways, made great havoc;
for they spared none.
"Those inhabitants who had taken refuge in the garrets, flung
down from them, in these narrow streets, stones, benches, and
whatever they could lay hands on; so that they killed and wounded
upwards of five hundred of the English, which so enraged the King
of England, when he received the reports in the evening, that he
ordered the remainder of the inhabitants to be put to the sword,
and the town burnt. But Sir Godfrey de Harcourt said to him:
'Dear sir, assuage somewhat of your anger, and be satisfied with
what has already been done. You have a long journey yet to make
before you arrive at Calais, whither it is your intention to go:
and there are in this town a great number of inhabitants, who will
defend themselves obstinately in their houses, if you force them
to it: besides, it will cost you many lives before the town can
be destroyed, which may put a stop to your expedition to Calais,
and it will not redound to your honour: therefore be sparing of
your men, for in a month's time you will have call for them.' The
King replied: 'Sir Godfrey, you are our marshal; therefore order
as you please; for this time we wish not to interfere.'
"Sir Godfrey then rode through the streets, his banner displayed
before him, and ordered, in the King's name, that no one should
dare, under pain of immediate death, to insult or hurt man or woman
of the town, or attempt to set fire to any part of it. Several of
the inhabitants, on hearing this proclamation, received the English
into their houses; and others opened their coffers to them, giving
up their all, since they were assured of their lives. However,
there were, in spite of these orders, many atrocious thefts and
murders committed. The English continued masters of the town for
three days; in this time, they amassed great wealth, which they
sent in barges down the river of Estreham, to St. Sauveur, two
leagues off, where their fleet was. The Earl of Huntingdon made
preparations therefore, with the two hundred men-at-arms and his
four hundred archers, to carry over to England their riches and
prisoners. The King purchased, from Sir Thomas Holland and his
companions, the constable of France and the Earl of Tancarville,
and paid down twenty thousand nobles for them.
"When the King had finished his business in Caen, and sent
his fleet to England, loaded with cloths, jewels, gold and
silver plate, and a quantity of other riches, and upwards of
sixty knights, with three hundred able citizens, prisoners;
he then left his quarters and continued his march as before,
his two marshals on his right and left, burning and destroying
all the flat country. He took the road to Evreux, but found he
could not gain anything there, as it was well fortified. He went
on towards another town called Louviers, which was in Normandy,
and where there were many manufactories of cloth: it was rich and
commercial. The English won it easily, as it was not inclosed; and
having entered the town, it was plundered without opposition. They
collected much wealth there; and, after they had done what they
pleased, they marched on into the county of Evreux, where they
burnt everything except the fortified towns and castles, which
the King left unattacked, as he was desirous of sparing his men
and artillery. He therefore made for the banks of the Seine,
in his approach to Rouen, where there were plenty of men-at-arms
from Normandy, under the command of the Earl of Harcourt, brother
to Sir Godfrey, and the Earl of Dreux.
"The English did not march direct towards Rouen, but went to
Gisors, which has a strong castle, and burnt the town. After
this, they destroyed Vernon, and all the country between Rouen
and Pont-de-l'Arche: they then came to Mantes and Meulan, which
they treated in the same manner, and ravaged all the country
round about.
"They passed by the strong castle of Roulleboise, and everywhere
found the bridges on the Seine broken down. They pushed forward
until they came to Poissy, where the bridge was also destroyed;
but the beams and other parts of it were lying in the river.
"The King of England remained at the nunnery of Poissy to the
middle in August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin
Mary."
It all reads at first, you see, just like a piece out of the newspapers
of last month; but there are material differences, notwithstanding. We
fight inelegantly as well as expensively, with machines instead of bow
and spear; we kill about a thousand now to the score then, in settling
any quarrel--(Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a hundred
men; only 25,000 English altogether were engaged at Crecy; and 12,000,
some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); we kill with far ghastlier wounds,
crashing bones and flesh together; we leave our wounded necessarily
for days and nights in heaps on the fields of battle; we pillage
districts twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of
more valuable property; and with a destruction as irreparable as it
is complete; for if the French or English burnt a church one day,
they could build a prettier one the next; but the modern Prussians
couldn't even build so much as an imitation of one; we rob on credit,
by requisition, with ingenious mercantile prolongations of claim;
and we improve contention of arms with contention of tongues, and
are able to multiply the rancour of cowardice, and mischief of lying,
in universal and permanent print; and so we lose our tempers as well
as our money, and become indecent in behaviour as in raggedness; for,
whereas, in old times, two nations separated by a little pebbly stream
like the Tweed, or even the two halves of one nation, separated by
thirty fathoms' depth of salt water (for most of the English knights
and all the English kings were French by race, and the best of them
by birth also)--would go on pillaging and killing each other century
after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards, or disrespect
for, one another,--we can neither give anybody a beating courteously,
nor take one in good part, or without screaming and lying about it:
and finally, we add to these perfected Follies of Action more finely
perfected Follies of Inaction; and contrive hitherto unheard-of ways
of being wretched through the very abundance of peace; our workmen,
here, vowing themselves to idleness, lest they should lower Wages,
and there, being condemned by their parishes to idleness lest they
should lower Prices; while outside the workhouse all the parishioners
are buying anything nasty, so that it be cheap; and, in a word, under
the seraphic teaching of Mr. Mill, we have determined at last that
it is not Destruction, but Production, that is the cause of human
distress; and the "Mutual and Co-operative Colonization Company"
declares, ungrammatically, but distinctly, in its circular sent to
me on the 13th of last month, as a matter universally admitted, even
among Cabinet Ministers--"that it is in the greater increasing power
of production and distribution as compared with demand, enabling the
few to do the work of many, that the active cause of the wide-spread
poverty among the producing and lower-middle classes lay, which entails
such enormous burdens on the Nation, and exhibits our boasted progress
in the light of a monstrous Sham."
Nevertheless, however much we have magnified and multiplied the
follies of the past, the primal and essential principles of pillage
have always been accepted; and from the days when England lay so waste
under that worthy and economical King who "called his tailor lown,"
that "whole families, after sustaining life as long as they could
by eating roots, and the flesh of dogs and horses, at last died of
hunger, and you might see many pleasant villages without a single
inhabitant of either sex," while little Harry Switch-of-Broom sate
learning to spell in Bristol Castle, (taught, I think, properly by
his good uncle the preceptorial use of his name-plant, though they
say the first Harry was the finer clerk,) and his mother, dressed all
in white, escaped from Oxford over the snow in the moonlight, through
Bagley Wood here to Abingdon; and under the snows, by Woodstock, the
buds were growing for the bower of his Rose,--from that day to this,
when the villages round Paris, and food-supply, are, by the blessing
of God, as they then were round London--Kings have for the most part
desired to win that pretty name of "Switch-of-Broom" rather by habit
of growing in waste places; or even emulating the Vision of Dion in
"sweeping--diligently sweeping," than by attaining the other virtue of
the Planta Genista, set forth by Virgil and Pliny, that it is pliant,
and rich in honey; the Lion-hearts of them seldom proving profitable
to you, even so much as the stomach of Samson's Lion, or rendering it a
soluble enigma in our Israel, that "out of the eater came forth meat;"
nor has it been only your Kings who have thus made you pay for their
guidance through the world, but your ecclesiastics have also made you
pay for guidance out of it--particularly when it grew dark, and the
signpost was illegible where the upper and lower roads divided;--so
that, as far as I can read or calculate, dying has been even more
expensive to you than living; and then, to finish the business, as
your virtues have been made costly to you by the clergyman, so your
vices have been made costly to you by the lawyers; and you have one
entire learned profession living on your sins, and the other on your
repentance. So that it is no wonder that, things having gone on thus
for a long time, you begin to think that you would rather live as
sheep without any shepherd, and that having paid so dearly for your
instruction in religion and law, you should now set your hope on a
state of instruction in Irreligion and Liberty, which is, indeed,
a form of education to be had for nothing, alike by the children of
the Rich and Poor; the saplings of the tree that was to be desired to
make us wise, growing now in copsewood on the hills, or even by the
roadsides, in a Republican-Plantagenet manner, blossoming into cheapest
gold, either for coins, which of course you Republicans will call,
not Nobles, but Ignobles; or crowns, second and third hand--(head,
I should say)--supplied punctually on demand, with liberal reduction
on quantity; the roads themselves beautifully public--tramwayed,
perhaps--and with gates set open enough for all men to the free,
outer, better world, your chosen guide preceding you merrily, thus--
[Illustration]
with music and dancing.
You have always danced too willingly, poor friends, to that player
on the viol. We will try to hear, far away, a faint note or two from
a more chief musician on stringed instruments, in May, when the time
of the Singing of Birds is come.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER V.
"For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
Arise, O my fair one, my dove,
And come." [9]
Denmark Hill,
1st May, 1871.
My Friends,
It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to
you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it
was difficult for you to understand.
I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor
words,--the saddest of them perhaps too well. But I have great fear
that you may never come to understand these written above, which are
part of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone.
I fear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass,--the flowers
never appear on the earth;--that for you no bird may ever sing;--for
you no perfect Love arise, and fulfil your life in peace.
"And why not for us, as for others?" will you answer me so, and take
my fear for you as an insult?
Nay, it is no insult;--nor am I happier than you. For me, the birds
do not sing, nor ever will. But they would, for you, if you cared
to have it so. When I told you that you would never understand that
love-song, I meant only that you would not desire to understand it.
Are you again indignant with me? Do you think, though you should
labour, and grieve, and be trodden down in dishonour all your days,
at least you can keep that one joy of Love, and that one honour of
Home? Had you, indeed, kept that, you had kept all. But no men yet,
in the history of the race, have lost it so piteously. In many a
country, and many an age, women have been compelled to labour for their
husband's wealth, or bread; but never until now were they so homeless
as to say, like the poor Samaritan, "I have no husband." Women of
every country and people have sustained without complaint the labour
of fellowship: for the women of the latter days in England it has
been reserved to claim the privilege of isolation.
This, then, is the end of your universal education and civilization,
and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle Ages, and of their
chivalry. Not only do you declare yourselves too indolent to labour
for daughters and wives, and too poor to support them; but you have
made the neglected and distracted creatures hold it for an honour to
be independent of you, and shriek for some hold of the mattock for
themselves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been so low
a level of thought reached by any race, since they grew to be male
and female out of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else they have
been made from, by natural selection,--according to modern science.
That modern science also, Economic and of other kinds, has reached
its climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed function of
the nineteenth century to exhibit in all things the elect pattern
of perfect Folly, for a warning to the farthest future. Thus the
statement of principle which I quoted to you in my last letter, from
the circular of the Emigration Society, that it is over-production
which is the cause of distress, is accurately the most foolish thing,
not only hitherto ever said by men, but which it is possible for men
ever to say, respecting their own business. It is a kind of opposite
pole (or negative acme of mortal stupidity) to Newton's discovery of
gravitation as an acme of mortal wisdom:--as no wise being on earth
will ever be able to make such another wise discovery, so no foolish
being on earth will ever be capable of saying such another foolish
thing, through all the ages.
And the same crisis has been exactly reached by our natural science
and by our art. It has several times chanced to me, since I began
these papers, to have the exact thing shown or brought to me that I
wanted for illustration, just in time [10]--and it happened that on
the very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go to the
Kensington Museum; and there I saw the most perfectly and roundly
ill-done thing which, as yet, in my whole life I ever saw produced
by art. It had a tablet In front of it, bearing this inscription,--
"Statue in black and white marble, a Newfoundland Dog standing
on a Serpent, which rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal
ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief.--English. Present
Century. No. I."
It was so very right for me, the Kensington people having been good
enough to number it "I.," the thing itself being almost incredible
in its one-ness; and, indeed, such a punctual accent over the iota of
Miscreation,--so absolutely and exquisitely miscreant, that I am not
myself capable of conceiving a Number two, or three, or any rivalship
or association with it whatsoever. The extremity of its unvirtue
consisted, observe, mainly in the quantity of instruction which was
abused in it. It showed that the persons who produced it had seen
everything, and practised everything; and misunderstood everything
they saw, and misapplied everything they did. They had seen Roman
work, and Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work;
and misunderstanding of everything had passed through them as the
mud does through earthworms, and here at last was their worm-cast of
a Production.