A friend, in whose judgment I greatly trust, remonstrated sorrowfully
with me, the other day, on the desultory character of Fors; and pleaded
with me for the writing of an arranged book instead.
But he might as well plead with a birch-tree growing out of a crag, to
arrange its boughs beforehand. The winds and floods will arrange them
according to their wild liking; all that the tree has to do, or can do,
is to grow gaily, if it may be; sadly, if gaiety be impossible; and let
the black jags and scars rend the rose-white of its trunk where Fors
shall choose.
But I can well conceive how irritating it must be to any one chancing
to take special interest in any one part of my subject—the life of
Scott for instance,—to find me, or lose me, wandering away from it for
a year or two; and sending roots into new ground in every direction: or
(for my friend taxed me with this graver error also) needlessly
re-rooting myself in the old.
And, all the while, some kindly expectant people are waiting for
‘details of my plan.’ In the presentment of which, this main difficulty
still lets me; that, if I told them, or tried to help them definitely
to conceive, the ultimate things I aim at, they would at once throw the
book down as hopelessly Utopian; but if I tell them the immediate
things I aim at, they will refuse to do those instantly possible
things, because inconsistent with the present vile general system. For
instance—I take (see Letter V.) Wordsworth’s single line,
“We live by admiration, hope, and love,”
for my literal guide, in all education. My final object, with every
child born on St. George’s estates, will be to teach it what to admire,
what to hope for, and what to love: but how far do you suppose the
steps necessary to such an ultimate aim are immediately consistent with
what Messrs. Huxley and Co. call ‘Secular education’? Or with what
either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call ‘Religious
education’?
What to admire, or wonder at! Do you expect a child to wonder at—being
taught that two and two make four—(though if only its masters had the
sense to teach that, honestly, it would be something)—or at the number
of copies of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for
its reading?
What to hope? Yes, my secular friends—What? That it shall be the
richest shopman in the street; and be buried with black feathers enough
over its coffin?
What to love—Yes, my ecclesiastical friends, and who is its neighbour,
think you? Will you meet these three demands of mine with your three
Rs, or your catechism?
And how would I meet them myself? Simply by never, so far as I could
help it, letting a child read what is not worth reading, or see what is
not worth seeing; and by making it live a life which, whether it will
or no, shall enforce honourable hope of continuing long in the
land—whether of men or God.
And who is to say what is worth reading, or worth seeing? sneer the
Republican mob. Yes, gentlemen, you who never knew a good thing from a
bad, in all your lives, may well ask that!
Let us try, however, in such a simple thing as a child’s book.
Yesterday, in the course of my walk, I went into a shepherd-farmer’s
cottage, to wish whoever might be in the house a happy new year. His
wife was at home, of course; and his little daughter, Agnes, nine years
old; both as good as gold, in their way.
The cottage is nearly a model of those which I shall expect the tenants
of St. George’s Company, and its active members, to live in;—the entire
building, parlour, and kitchen, (in this case one, but not necessarily
so,) bedrooms and all, about the size of an average dining-room in
Grosvenor Place or Park Lane. The conversation naturally turning to
Christmas doings and havings,—and I, as an author, of course inquiring
whether Agnes had any new books, Agnes brought me her
library—consisting chiefly in a good pound’s weight of the literature
which cheap printing enables the pious to make Christmas presents of
for a penny. A full pound, or it might be, a pound and a half, of this
instruction, full of beautiful sentiments, woodcuts, and music. More
woodcuts in the first two ounces of it I took up, than I ever had. to
study in the first twelve years of my life. Splendid woodcuts, too, in
the best Kensington style, and rigidly on the principles of high, and
commercially remunerative, art, taught by Messrs. Redgrave, Cole, and
Company.
Somehow, none of these seem to have interested little Agnes, or been of
the least good to her. Her pound and a half of the best of the modern
pious and picturesque is (being of course originally boardless) now a
crumpled and variously doubled-up heap, brought down in a handful, or
lapful, rather; most of the former insides of the pamphlets being now
the outsides; and every form of dog’s ear, puppy’s ear, cat’s ear,
kitten’s ear, rat’s ear, and mouse’s ear, developed by the contortions
of weary fingers at the corners of their didactic and evangelically
sibylline leaves. I ask if I may borrow one to take home and read.
Agnes is delighted; but undergoes no such pang of care as a like
request would have inflicted on my boyish mind, and needed generous
stifling of;—nay, had I asked to borrow the whole heap, I am not sure
whether Agnes’s first tacit sensation would not have been one of
deliverance.
Being very fond of pretty little girls, (not, by any means, excluding
pretty—tall ones,) I choose, for my own reading, a pamphlet [5] which
has a picture of a beautiful little girl with long hair, lying very ill
in bed, with her mother putting up her forefinger at her brother, who
is crying, with a large tear on the side of his nose; and a legend
beneath: ‘Harry told his mother the whole story.’ The pamphlet has been
doubled up by Agnes right through the middle of the beautiful little
girl’s face, and no less remorselessly through the very middle of the
body of the ‘Duckling Astray,’ charmingly drawn by Mr. Harrison Weir on
the opposite leaf. But my little Agnes knows so much more about real
ducklings than the artist does, that her severity in this case is not
to be wondered at.
I carry my Children’s Prize penny’s-worth home to Brantwood, full of
curiosity to know “the whole story.” I find that this religious work is
edited by a Master of Arts—no less—and that two more woodcuts of the
most finished order are given to Harry’s story,—representing Harry and
the pretty little girl, (I suppose so, at least; but, alas, now with
her back turned to me,—the cuts came cheaper so,) dressed in the
extreme of fashion, down to her boots,—first running with Harry, in
snow, after a carriage, and then reclining against Harry’s shoulder in
a snowstorm.
I arrange my candles for small print, and proceed to read this richly
illustrated story.
Harry and his sister were at school together, it appears, at Salisbury;
and their father’s carriage was sent, in a snowy day, to bring them
home for the holidays. They are to be at home by five; and their mother
has invited a children’s party at seven. Harry is enjoined by his
father, in the letter which conveys this information, to remain inside
the carriage, and not to go on the box.
Harry is a good boy, and does as he is bid; but nothing whatever is
said in the letter about not getting out of the carriage to walk up
hills. And at ‘two-mile hill’ Harry thinks it will be clever to get out
and walk up it, without calling to, or stopping, John on the box. Once
out himself, he gets Mary out;—the children begin snowballing each
other; the carriage leaves them so far behind that they can’t catch it;
a snowstorm comes on, etc., etc.; they are pathetically frozen within a
breath of their lives; found by a benevolent carter, just in time;
warmed by a benevolent farmer, the carter’s friend; restored to their
alarmed father and mother; and Mary has a rheumatic fever, “and for a
whole week it was not known whether she would live or die,” which is
the Providential punishment of Harry’s sin in getting out of the
carriage.
Admitting the perfect appositeness and justice of this Providential
punishment; I am, parenthetically, desirous to know of my Evangelical
friends, first, whether from the corruption of Harry’s nature they
could have expected anything better than his stealthily getting out of
the carriage to walk up the hill?—and, secondly, whether the merits of
Christ, which are enough to save any murderer or swindler from all the
disagreeable consequences of murder and swindling, in the next world,
are not enough in this world, if properly relied upon, to save a wicked
little boy’s sister from rheumatic fever? This, I say, I only ask
parenthetically, for my own information; my immediate business being to
ask what effect this story is intended to produce on my shepherd’s
little daughter Agnes?
Intended to produce, I say: what effect it does produce, I can easily
ascertain; but what do the writer and the learned editor expect of it?
Or rather, to touch the very beginning of the inquiry, for what class
of child do they intend it? ‘For all classes,’ the enlightened editor
and liberal publisher doubtless reply. ‘Classes, indeed! In the
glorious liberty of the Future, there shall be none!’
Well, be it so; but in the inglorious slavery of the Past, it has
happened that my little Agnes’s father has not kept a carriage; that
Agnes herself has not often seen one, is not likely often to be in one,
and has seen a great deal too much snow, and had a great deal too much
walking in it, to be tempted out,—if she ever has the chance of being
driven in a carriage to a children’s party at seven,—to walk up a hill
on the road. Such is our benighted life in Westmoreland. In the future,
do my pious and liberal friends suppose that all little Agneses are to
drive in carriages? That is their Utopia. Mine, so much abused for its
impossibility, is only that a good many little Agneses who at present
drive in carriages, shall have none.
Nay, but perhaps, the learned editor did not intend the story for
children ‘quite in Agnes’s position.’ For what sort did he intend it,
then? For the class of children whose fathers keep carriages, and whose
mothers dress their girls by the Paris modes, at three years old? Very
good; then, in families which keep carriages and footmen, the children
are supposed to think a book is a prize, which costs a penny? Be that
also so, in the Republican cheap world; but might not the cheapeners
print, when they are about it, prize poetry for their penny? Here is
the ‘Christmas Carol,’ set to music, accompanying this moral story of
the Snow.
“Hark, hark, the merry pealing,
List to the Christmas chime,
Every breath and every feeling
Hails the good old time;
Brothers, sisters, homeward speed,
All is mirth and play;
Hark, hark, the merry pealing,—
Welcome Christmas Day.
Sing, sing, around we gather,
Each with something new,
Cheering mother, cheering father,
From the Bible true;
Bring the holly, spread the feast,
Every heart to cheer,
Sing, sing, a merry Christmas,
A happy, bright New Year.”
Now, putting aside for the moment all questions touching the grounds of
the conviction of the young people for whom these verses are intended
of the truth of the Bible; or touching the propriety of their cheering
their fathers and mothers by quotations from it; or touching the
difficultly reconcileable merits of old times and new things; I call
these verses bad, primarily, because they are not rhythmical. I
consider good rhythm a moral quality. I consider the rhythm in these
stanzas demoralized, and demoralizing. I quote, in opposition to them,
one of the rhymes by which my own ear and mind were educated in early
youth, as being more distinctly, and literally ‘moral,’ than that
Christmas carol.
“Dame Wiggins of Lee
Was a worthy old soul,
As e’er threaded a nee-
Dle, or washed in a bowl.
She held mice and rats
In such antipa-thy,
That Seven good Cats
Kept Dame Wiggins of Lee.”
Putting aside also, in our criticism of these verses, the very
debateable question, whether Dame Wiggins kept the Seven Cats, or the
Seven Cats Dame Wiggins; and giving no judgment as to the propriety of
the license taken in pronunciation, by the accent on the last syllable
of ‘antipathy,’ or as to the evident plagiarism of the first couplet
from the classical ballad of King Cole, I aver these rhymes to possess
the primary virtue of rhyme,—that is to say, to be rhythmical, in a
pleasant and exemplary degree. And I believe, and will venture also to
assert my belief, that the matter contained in them, though of an
imaginative character, is better food for a child’s mind than either
the subject or sentiment of the above quoted Christmas Carol.
The mind of little Agnes, at all events, receives from story, pictures,
and carol, altogether, no very traceable impression; but, I am happy to
say, certainly no harm. She lives fifteen miles from the nearest
manufacturing district,—sees no vice, except perhaps sometimes in the
village on Sunday afternoons;—hears, from week’s end to week’s end, the
sheep bleat, and the wind whistle,—but neither human blasphemy, nor
human cruelty of command. Her shepherd father, out on the hills all
day, is thankful at evening to return to his fireside, and to have his
little daughter to look at, instead of a lamb. She suffers no more from
schooling than serves to make her enjoy her home;—knows already the
mysteries of butter-making and poultry-keeping;—curtsies to me without
alarm when I pass her door, if she is outside of it;—and, on the whole,
sees no enemy but winter and rough weather.
But what effect this modern Christmas carol would have had on her mind,
if she had had the full advantage of modern education in an advanced
and prosperous town,—the following well written letter,—happily sent me
by Fors at the necessary moment,—enables me at once to exhibit:—
“10th January, 1874.
Dear Mr. Ruskin,
Your appendix to the Fors this month contains a chapter on what some
will assert is very exceptional ——shire brutality. After nine years’
residence in a ——shire village, I am compelled to believe that the
vileness which horrified Judge Mellor is everywhere ingrained where
factory and colliery rule prevails.
Could you but hear the blasphemous and filthy language our rosy village
bairns use as soon as they are out of the parson’s earshot, even when
leaving the Sabbath School!
Yet we have a rural dean as incumbent, an excellent schoolmaster, and
model school. The Government Inspector is highly satisfied, and there
are the usual edifying tea parties, prize-givings, and newspaper puffs,
yearly.
I know that the children are well taught six days a week, yet there is
little fruit of good behaviour among them, and an indecency of speech
which is amazing in rural children. On Christmas morn a party of these
children, boys and girls, singing carols, encountered my young daughter
going alone to the church service. The opportunity was tempting, and as
if moved by one vile spirit, they screamed at her a blast of the most
obscene and profane epithets that vicious malice could devise. She knew
none of them; had never harmed them in her life. She came home with her
kind, tender heart all aghast. ‘Why do they hate me so?’ she asked.
Yet a short time after the same children came into the yard, and began,
with the full shrill powers of their young lungs,
‘Why do I love Jesus?’
the refrain,
‘Because He died for me,’
with especial gusto. My husband, ignorant of their previous conduct,
gave them a bright shilling, which evoked three more hymns of similar
character. What does all this mean?
Our Bishop says that we have a model parish, a model school, and a
model parson—yet we have children like this. Our parson knows it, and
says to me that he can do nothing to prevent it.
More than this. It is almost incredible; but my own horrified ears have
borne witness of it. Young boys will threaten girls of their own age,
in the vilest terms, with outrage like that at Burnley. I have heard it
again and again. Had Judge Mellor had nine years’ experience of ——shire
life, he would not have been surprised at the utter brutality of mind
exhibited.
Yet we are not criminal compared with other districts. Bastardy and
drunkenness are at present the darkest shades we can show; but there is
perhaps some better influence at work from the vicinage of two great
squires which secures us pure air and wide fields.
I am glad to read that you purpose vexing yourself less with the sins
of the times during the coming summer. It is too great a burthen for a
human mind to bear the world’s sins in spirit, as you do. If you mean
to preserve yourself for the many thousands whose inner heart’s
bitterness your voice has relieved, you must vex yourself less about
this age’s madness.