“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough, Feb. 12th, 1875.
“My dear Sir,—In your ‘Fors’ published last month you have charged the
Pastors, and especially the Chief Pastors of our Church, with
‘preaching a false gospel for hire,’ and thus becoming responsible for
the hideous immorality which prevails.
It is very painful to be told this by you, of whom some of us have
learned so much.
I have been reading your words to my conscience, but—is it my
unconscious hypocrisy, my self-conceit, or my sentiment overpowering
intellect which hinders me from hearing the word ‘Guilty’?
The gospel I endeavour with all my might to preach and embody is
this—Believe on, be persuaded by, the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life
rule your lives, and you shall be ‘safe and sound’ now and
everlastingly.
Is this ‘a false gospel preached for hire’? If not, what other gospel
do you refer to?
“I am very faithfully yours,
“John Ruskin, Esq. Edward Z. Lyttel.”
The gospel which my correspondent preaches (or, at the least, desires
to preach)—namely, “Let His life rule your lives,” is eternally true
and salutary. The “other gospel which I refer to” is the far more
widely preached one, “Let His life be in the stead of your lives,”
which is eternally false and damnatory.
The rest of my correspondent’s letter needs, I think, no other reply
than the expression of my regret that a man of his amiable character
should be entangled in a profession, respecting which the subtle
questions of conscience which he proposes can be answered by none but
himself; nor by himself with security.
I do not know if, in modern schools of literature, the name of Henry
Fielding is ever mentioned; but it was of repute in my early days, and
I think it right, during the discussion of the subjects to which Fors
is now approaching, to refer my readers to a work of his which gives
one of the most beautiful types I know of the character of English
clergymen, (the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ not excepted). His hero is thus
introduced: “He was a perfect master of the Greek and Latin languages,
to which he added a great share of knowledge in the Oriental tongues,
and could read and translate French, Italian, and Spanish. He had
applied many years to the most severe study, and had treasured up a
fund of learning rarely to be met with in a university. [12] He was
besides a man of good sense, good parts, and good-nature;—his virtue,
and his other qualifications, as they rendered him equal to his office,
so they made him an agreeable and valuable companion, and had so much
endeared and well recommended him to a Bishop, that, at the age of
fifty, he was provided with a handsome income of twenty-three pounds a
year, which, however, he could not make any great figure with; because
he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a wife and
six children.”
Of course, in our present estimate of the good Bishop’s benevolence, we
must allow for the greater value of money in those times:—nevertheless,
it was even then to be obtained in considerable sums, as it is now, by
persons who knew the right channels and proper methods of its
accumulation, as our author immediately afterwards shows us by the
following account of part of the economy of an English gentleman’s
estate:—
“Joseph had not quite finished his letter when he was summoned
downstairs by Mr. Peter Pounce to receive his wages; for, besides that
out of eight pounds a year, he allowed his father and mother four, he
had been obliged, in order to furnish himself with musical
instruments,” (Mr. Fielding countenances my own romantic views
respecting the propriety of the study of music even by the lower
classes, and entirely approves of these apparently extravagant
purchases,) “to apply to the generosity of the aforesaid Peter, who on
urgent occasions used to advance the servants their wages, not before
they were due, but before they were payable,—that is, perhaps half a
year after they were due; and this at the moderate premium of fifty per
cent., or a little more; by which charitable methods, together with
lending money to other people, and even to his own master and mistress,
the honest man had, from nothing, in a few years amassed a small sum of
twenty thousand pounds or thereabouts.”
Of the character of the modern English country clergyman, from my own
personal knowledge, I could give some examples quite deserving place
with the Fielding and Goldsmith type;—but these have influence only in
their own villages, and are daily diminishing in number; while another
type, entirely modern, is taking their place, of which some curious
illustration has been furnished me by the third Fors as I was looking
over the Christmas books of last year to see if I could find a prize or
two for Agnes and some other of my younger cottage friends. Among them,
I get two books on natural history, by a country clergyman, who takes
his children out on beach and moorland expeditions, and puts a charming
portrait of himself, in his best coat, and most elegant attitude of
instruction, for the frontispiece. His little daughter has been taught
to express herself in such terms as the following:—
(Of a jelly-fish.) “Let me look. If you hold it up to the light, you
see it is nearly transparent, and the surface is marked with numerous
angular spaces.”
(Of a sand-worm.) “Oh—in this respect the little Pectinaria resembles
the fresh-water Melicerta we find abundantly on the weeds in the canal
at home.”
(Of a sea-mouse.) “Oh, papa, I do think here is a sea-mouse lying on
the shore. Bah! I don’t much like to touch it.”
The childish simplicity and ladylike grace of these expressions need no
comment; but the clergyman’s education of his children in gentleness is
the point peculiarly striking to me in the books, collated with my own
experience in the case of the boy and the squirrel. The following two
extracts are sufficiently illustrative:—
“‘Well, papa,’ said Jack, ‘I am tired of sitting here; let us now go
and hunt for peewits’ eggs.’ ‘All right, Jack, and if you find any you
shall each have one for your breakfast in the morning. When hard-boiled
and cold, a peewit’s egg is a very delicious thing, though I think the
peewits are such valuable birds, and do so much good, that I should not
like to take many of their eggs. We had better separate from each
other, so as to have a better chance of finding a nest.’ Soon we hear a
shout from Willy, whose sharp eyes had discovered a nest with four eggs
in it; so off we all scamper to him. See how the old bird screams and
flaps, and how near she comes to us; she knows we have found her eggs,
and wishes to lure us away from the spot; so she pretends she has been
wounded, and tries to make us follow after her. ‘Now, Jack, run and
catch her. Hah! hah! There they go. I will back the peewit against the
boy. So you have given up the chase, have you? Well, rest again, and
take breath.’”
“‘Well, Mr. Parry Evans, how many salmon have you counted in the pool?’
‘There are seven or eight good fish in, sir, this time; and one or two
will be ten or eleven pounds each.’ Look at the dog ‘Jack’; he is
evidently getting a little impatient, as he sees in the retiring water
of the pool every now and then a salmon darting along. And now Mr.
Evans takes the silver collar off, and sets ‘Jack’ free; and in a
second he is in the middle of the pool. Now for the fun! Willy and Jack
[13] tuck up their trousers, take off their shoes and stockings, and
with nets in their hands enter the water. Bah! it is rather cold at
first, but the excitement soon warms them. There goes a salmon, full
tilt, and ‘Jack’ after him. What a splashing in the water, to be sure!
There is another dog learning the trade, and ‘Jack’ is his tutor in the
art; he is a brown retriever, and dashes about the water after the
salmon as if he enjoyed the fun immensely, but he has not yet learned
how to catch a slippery fish. There! there! see! see! good dog; now you
have him! No! off again; well done, salmon! Now dog! have at him!
“How immensely rapid is the motion of a frightened salmon ‘Quick as an
arrow’ is hardly a figure of speech. Bravo, ‘Jack,’ bravo! Do you see?
He has caught the salmon firmly by the head. Good dog! Mr. Parry Evans
is immediately on the spot, and takes the fish from old ‘Jack,’ whom he
kindly pats on the back, holds the salmon aloft for us all to see, and,
consigns him to the basket which his man is guarding on the shore. See,
see, again! off they go, dogs and men, and soon another salmon is
captured; and there is lots of fun, meanwhile, in catching the mackerel
and garfish. Well, the sport of catching the various fish in the
pool—there were nine salmon, averaging about five pounds each—lasted
about half an hour. ‘Jack’ behaved admirably; it was wonderful to see
his skill in the pursuit; he generally caught hold of the salmon by the
head, on which he gave one strong bite, and the fish was rendered
helpless almost instantaneously. Sometimes he would catch hold of the
back fin. When the sport was finished, we went to survey the spoils;
and a nice ‘kettle of fish’ there was. I bought one salmon and the
gurnard; the rest were soon disposed of by Mr. Evans to his numerous
visitors, all of whom were much pleased with the sport. But wait a
little; some of the fish lie on the sand. I will look for parasites.
Here, on this salmon, is a curious parasite, with a body an inch long,
and with two long tail-like projections three times the length of the
creature itself. It is a crustacean, and related to the Argulus
foliaceus.”
The reverend and learned author will perhaps be surprised to hear that
the principal effect of these lively passages on me has been slightly
to diminish my appetite for salmon, no less than for sea-side
recreations. I think I would rather attend my pious instructor, in
discourse on the natural history of the Land. I get his ‘Country Walks
of a Naturalist,’ therefore, in which I find a graceful preface,
thanking Mr. Gould for permission to copy his Birds of England; and two
very gummy and shiny copies (so-called) adorning the volume.
Now there was boundless choice for the pleasing of children in Gould’s
marvellous plates. To begin with, the common sparrow’s nest, in the
ivy, with the hen sitting:
The sparrow’s dwelling, which, hard by,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together visited.
She looked at it as if she feared it,—
Still wishing, dreading to be near it,
Such heart was in her.
But the reverend naturalist will none of this. Sparrows indeed! are not
five sold for two farthings? Shall any note be taken of them in our
modern enlightened science? No; nor yet of the dainty little Bramble
Finch, couched in her knotty hollow of birch trunk; though England, and
mainland Europe, and Asia Minor, Persia, China, and Japan, all know the
little Brambling;—and though in the desolate region of the Dovrefeldt,
[14] too high for the Chaffinch, she decorates the outer walls of her
nest with flat pieces of lichen and other materials,—though she is
attractive in her winter dress; and in her summer costume, “no pencil
can do her justice,” clerical taste and propriety will none of her;—no,
nor even of the dear little fellow who looks so much like the properest
of clergymen himself, in the sprucest of white ties—the
Stone-Chat,—preaching, or chattering, or chatting, from the highest
twig of his furze-bush;—no, nor of the Fire-crested Wren, poised on
long spray of larch with purple buds; nor even, though she, at least
might, one would have thought, have provided some ‘fun’ for the
ecclesiastical family, the long-tailed Tit, or Bottle-tit, with her own
impatient family of six Bottle tits, every one with a black eye, as if
to illustrate the sympathy of their nature with bottle-tits of the
human species, and every one with its mouth open; and the nest, of
their mother’s exquisite building, with the pale sides of the lichens
always turned to the light, and 2,000 feathers used in its lining, and
these, nothing to the amount of “invisible cobwebs” taken to attach the
decorative pieces of lichen to the outside. All this is contemptible to
my religious author; but he hunts Mr. Gould’s whole book through, to
find the horriblest creature in it—the Butcher-bird! transfixing mice
on the spines of the blackthorn, and tearing their flesh from them as
they hang, ‘invariably breaking the skull,’ with farther parental
direction of the youthful mind. “Do you see that great tit on a branch
of this poplar? He is actually at work doing a bit of butchering on a
small warbler. See how he is beating the poor little fellow about the
head; he wants to get at his brains.” This—for one of his two plates,
besides the frontispiece, of the back of his own head and its hat; with
his two children ‘wanting to get at’—something in his hand—and his only
remaining plate is of the heron, merely because it is big; for his
miserable copyist has taken care to change every curve of the bird’s
neck and body, so as to destroy every gracious character it has in Mr.
Gould’s plate, to an extent so wonderful that I mean to impale the two
together—on the stem of a blackthorn—in my Oxford schools.
I have much to say, eventually, about this extraordinary instinct for
the horrible, developing itself at present in the English mind. The
deep root of it is cruelty, indulged habitually by the upper classes in
their sports, till it has got into the blood of the whole nation; then,
the destruction of beautiful things, taking place ever since the
sixteenth century, and of late ending in utter blackness of
catastrophe, and ruin of all grace and glory in the land; so that
sensation must be got out of death, or darkness, or frightfulness; else
it cannot be had at all—while it is daily more and more demanded by the
impatient cretinism of national dotage.
And the culmination of the black business is, that the visible misery
drags and beguiles, to its help, all the enthusiastic simplicity of the
religious young, and the honest strength of the really noble type of
English clergymen; and swallows them as Charybdis would lifeboats.
Courageous and impulsive men, with just sense enough to make them
soundly practical, and therefore complacent in immediate business; but
not enough to enable them to see what the whole business comes to, when
done, are sure to throw themselves desperately into the dirty work, and
die like lively moths in candle-grease. Here is one of them at this
instant—“dangerously ill of scarlet fever,”—alas! his whole generous
life having been but one fit of scarlet fever;—and all aglow in vain.
The London correspondent of the Brighton Daily News writes:—“On Sunday
morning Mr. Moncure Conway, preaching his usual sermon in his chapel in
Finsbury, made a strong attack upon the National Church, but
subsequently modified it so far as to admit that it was possible for
some clergymen of the Church to be of use in their day and generation;
and he referred especially to the rector of a neighbouring parish, whom
he did not name, but who was evidently Mr. Septimus Hansard, rector of
Bethnal-green, who is now lying dangerously ill of scarlet fever. This
is the third perilous illness he has had since he has been in this
parish; each time it was caught while visiting the sick poor. On one
occasion he fell down suddenly ill in his pulpit. It was found that he
was suffering from smallpox, and he at once said that he would go to an
hospital. A cab was brought to take him there, but he refused to enter
it, lest he should be the means of infecting other persons; and, a
hearse happening to pass, he declared that he would go in that, and in
it he went to the hospital—a rare instance this of pluck and
self-devotion. His next illness was typhus fever; and now, as I have
said, he is suffering from a disease more terrible still. Five hundred
a year (and two curates to pay out of it) is scarcely excessive payment
for such a life as that.”
For such a life—perhaps not. But such a death, or even perpetual risk
of it, it appears to me, is dear at the money.
“But have I counted the value of the poor souls he has saved in
Bethnal?”
No—but I am very sure that while he was saving one poor soul in
Bethnal, he was leaving ten rich souls to be damned, at Tyburn,—each of
which would damn a thousand or two more by their example—or neglect.
The above paragraph was sent me by a friend, of whose accompanying
letter I venture to print a part together with it.
“I send you a cutting from a recent Times, to show you there are some
faithful men left. I have heard of this Mr. Hansard before, and how
well he works. I want to tell you, too, that I am afraid the coarseness
and shamelessness you write about, in Fors, is not wholly caused by the
neighbourhood of large manufacturing towns, for in the lonely villages
I used to know long ago, it was exactly the same. I don’t mean that
brutal crimes, such as you speak of, were heard of or even possible;
but the conversation of men and women, working in the fields together,
was frequently such that no young girl working with them could keep
modesty. Nor if a girl had what they termed a “misfortune,” was she one
bit worse off for it. She was just as certain to be married as before.
Reform in all these things—i.e., immodest conversation—ought to begin
with women. If women in cottages, and indeed elsewhere, were what they
ought to be, and kept up a high tone in their households, their sons
would not dare to speak in their presence as I know they often do, and
their daughters would feel they fell away from much more than they do
now, when they go wrong. Men are, I fancy, very much what women make
them, and seem to like them to be; and if women withdrew from those who
hurt their sense of what is right, I do believe they would try to be
different; but it seems very difficult to preserve a high tone of
maidenly dignity in poor girls, who, from youth up, hear every possible
thing usually left unspoken of freely discussed by fathers and mothers
and brothers, and sometimes very evil deeds treated as jests. This is
the case painfully often.”
Though my notes, for this month, far exceed their usual limits, I
cannot close them without asking my readers to look back, for some
relief of heart, to happier times. The following piece of biography,
printed only for private circulation, is so instructive that I trust
the friend who sent it me will forgive my placing it in broader view;
and the more because in the last section of the ‘Queen of the Air,’ my
readers will find notice of this neglected power of the tide. I had
imagined this an idea of my own, and did not press it,—being content to
press what is already known and practically proved to be useful; but
the following portion of a very interesting letter, and the piece of
biography it introduces, show the tide-mill to be in this category:
“My father, who began life humbly, dates the prosperity of his family
to the time when—being the tenant of a small tide-mill—he laboured with
spade and barrow (by consent of the Earl of Sheffield) to enclose an
increased area—overflowed by the tide—in order to lay under
contribution as motive power this wasted energy of rising and falling
waters. He thereby nearly quadrupled the power of the mill, and finally
became its possessor.”
“William Catt was the son of Mr. John Catt, a Sussex farmer, who
married the daughter of a yeoman named Willett, living on a small
estate at Buxted. He was born in the year 1780, and soon after that
date his parents removed to the Abbey Farm at Robertsbridge. There he
passed his early years, and there obtained such education as a dame’s
school could afford. This of course was limited to very rudimentary
English. He was not a particularly apt scholar: he hated his books—but
liked cricket.
“When little more than nineteen, he married a daughter of Mr. Dawes, of
Ewhurst. Farming in the Weald of Sussex was then, as now, a laborious
and unremunerative occupation; and as an interesting record of the
habits of his class at that period, it may be stated, that [15] on the
morning of his wedding-day he went into a wood with his father’s team
for a load of hop-poles, was afterwards married in a white
‘round-frock,’ and returned to his usual work the next morning. He
commenced business at Stonehouse, in Buxted, a farm of between 100 and
200 acres. Banking was in those days in its infancy, and travelling
notoriously unsafe; [16] so his good and prudent mother sewed up
beneath the lining of his waistcoat the one-pound notes which he
carried from Robertsbridge to Buxted to meet the valuation of his farm.
When settled in his little homestead, his household arrangements were
of the simplest kind. One boy, one girl, and one horse, formed his
staff; yet he throve and prospered. And no wonder: for both himself and
his young wife often rose at three in the morning; he to thrash by
candlelight in his barn, she to feed or prepare her poultry for the
market. His principle was—‘earn a shilling, and spend elevenpence;’ and
hence, no doubt, his subsequent success.
“After two years’ farming he took a small mill at Lamberhurst, where a
journeyman miller, Saunders Ditton, gave him all the instruction that
he ever received in the manufacture and business in which he was
afterwards so extensively engaged. Hard work was still a necessity; the
mill by night, the market and his customers by day, demanded all his
time; and on one occasion, overcome by cold and fatigue, he crept for
warmth into his meal-bin, where he fell asleep, and would certainly
have been suffocated but for the timely arrival of Ditton. This worthy
man afterwards followed his master to Bishopston, and survived him—a
pensioner in his old age.
“At this time the Bishopston Tide-mills were in the occupation of
Messrs. Barton and Catt. The former exchanged with Mr. Catt, of
Lamberhurst, who went into partnership with his cousin Edmund. The
power of the mill was then only five pair of stones, though he
ultimately increased it to sixteen. [17] In this much more important
sphere the same habits of industry still marked his character, amidst
all disadvantages. It was war-time; corn was of inferior quality and
high price; and privateering prevented trading by water. His cousin and
he were not suited to each other, and dissolved partnership; but, by
the aid of a loan from his worthy friends and neighbours, Mr. Cooper,
of Norton, and Mr. Farncombe, of Bishopston, he was enabled to secure
the whole of the business to himself. Subsequently Mr. Edmund Cooper,
the son of his friend, became his partner in the mills, and the
business was for many years carried on under the title of Catt and
Cooper.
“During this partnership a lease was obtained, from the Earl of
Sheffield, of the waste lands between the Mills and Newhaven harbour.
This was embanked and reclaimed as arable land at first, and
subsequently partly used as a reservoir of additional water power. Mr.
Catt took great interest in the work; laboured at it himself with spade
and barrow; and to it he always referred as the main cause of his
success in life. In the third year a crop of oats was grown on the
arable portion, which repaid the expenses of reclamation and induced
him to increase the power of the mill as mentioned above. Mr. Cooper
retired from the concern by agreement, and afterwards, under the firm
of William Catt and Sons, in conjunction with his children, Mr. Catt
completed fifty years of business at Bishopston. During a considerable
portion of those years he had also a large stake with other sons in
West Street Brewery, Brighton.
“His faithful wife died in 1823, leaving him the responsible legacy of
eleven children—the youngest being not an hour old. This bereavement
seemed to stimulate him to renewed exertion and to extraordinary regard
for little savings. He would always stop to pick up a nail or any scrap
of old iron that lay in the road, and in the repeated enlargements and
construction of his mills he was his own architect and surveyor; he was
always pleased with the acquisition of a bit of wreck timber, any old
materials from Blatchington barracks, or from the dismantled mansion of
Bishopston Place, formerly the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. Yet he
was ever bountiful as a host, liberal to his neighbours, and charitable
to his dependants and the deserving poor.
“To a man of Mr. Catt’s experience in life, ordinary amusements would
have few charms. His business was his pleasure, yet he delighted in his
garden, and the culture of pears afforded him much recreation. A more
bleak and unpromising place for horticulture than the Bishopston Mills
could hardly exist; but by the aid of good walls, and the observation
of wind effects, he was eminently successful, and no garden in Sussex
produced a greater variety, or finer specimens, of that pleasant fruit.
His maxim on this subject was, ‘Aim to get a good pear all the year
round.’
“In the latter years of his life, Mr. Catt retired from active business
and resided at Newhaven, where he died in 1853, in the seventy-third
year of his age, leaving behind him not only the good name which an
honourable life deserves, but a substantial fortune for his somewhat
numerous descendants.”