(a) This sentence must be changed into: “such science art and
literature as are properly connected with husbandry.”
(b) In my sketch, I wrote Companions of St. George. But as the
existence of St. George cannot be legally proved or assumed, the
tautologically legal phrase must be permitted.
(c) This clause cannot stand. The admission into the Company must not
be purchaseable; also many persons capable of giving enthusiastic and
wise help as Companions, may be unable to subscribe money. Nothing can
be required as a condition of entrance, except the consent of the
Master, and signature promising obedience to the laws.
(d) This clause needs much development. For though the Master must be
entirely unrestrained in action within the limits of the Laws of the
Company, he must not change or add to them without some manner of
consultation with the Companions. Even in now founding the Society, I
do not venture to write a constitution for it without inviting the help
of its existing members; and when once its main laws are agreed upon,
they must be inabrogable without the same concurrence of the members
which would be necessary to dissolve the Society altogether.
(e) To the development, and enlargement, of the Society’s operations,
also.
(f) I do not think the Master should have the power of choosing the
Trustees. I was obliged to do so, before any Society was in existence;
but the Trustees have to verify the Master’s accounts, and otherwise
act as a check upon him. They must not, therefore, be chosen by him.
(g) A questionable clause, which I have not at present time to discuss.
(h) Partly the corollary of (g). The word ‘forfeited’ is morally, if
not legally, objectionable. No idea of forfeiture ought to attach to
the resolved surrender of transferable claim; or to the accidental
inability to discover a fitting successor.
Reserving, therefore, the above clauses for future modification, the
rest of the Memorandum fully expresses what seems to me desirable for
the first basis of our constitution; and I shall be glad to hear
whether any of the present subscribers to St. George’s Fund will join
me on these conditions.
II.—I should willingly have printed the letter from which the following
extracts are taken, (with comments,) as a ‘Fors’ by itself; but having
other matters pressing, must content myself to leave it in the smaller
print. The more interesting half of it is still reserved for next
month.
“What long years have passed since my eyes first saw the calm sweet
scene beyond Wakefield Bridge! I was but a small creature then, and had
never been far from my mother’s door. It was a memorable day for me
when I toddled a full mile from the shady up-town street where we
lived, past strange windows, over unfamiliar flags, to see the big weir
and the chapel on the Bridge. Standing on tiptoe, I could just see over
the parapet and look down-stream.
“That was my first peep into fair, green England, and destined never to
be forgotten. The gray old chapel, the shining water below, the
far-winding green banks spangled with buttercups, the grove-clad hills
of Heath and Kirkthorpe,—all seemed to pass into my heart for ever.
“There was no railway then, only the Doncaster coach careering over the
Bridge with a brave sound of horn; fields and farmsteads stood where
the Kirkgate station is; where the twenty black throats of the foundry
belch out flame and soot, there were only strawberry grounds and
blossoming pear-orchards, among which the throstles and blackbirds were
shouting for gladness.
“The chapel lay neglected in a nest of wild willows, and a peaceful
cobbler dwelt in it. As I looked at it, Duke Richard and King Edward
became living realities to me; the dry bones of Pinnock’s Catechism
started suddenly into life. That was the real old chapel of the
fifteenth century. Some years after, they ousted the cobbler, pulled
down the old stones, restored it, and opened it for ritualistic
worship; but the cheap stonework has crumbled away again, and it now
looks as ancient as in days of yore. Only, as I remember it, it had a
white hoariness: the foundry smoke has made it black at the present
day.
“Some of my companions had been farther out in the world than myself.
They pointed out the dusky shape of Heath Hall, seen through the
thinly-clad elm-trees, and told me how old Lady ——‘s ghost still walked
there on stormy nights. Beyond was Kirkthorpe, where the forlorn shapes
of the exiled Spanish nuns had been seen flitting about their graves in
the churchyard.
“There on the right was the tree-crowned mound of Sandal Castle, which
Cromwell had blown down; the dry ditch was full of primroses, they told
me; those woods bounded Crofton, famous for its cowslip fields; and in
Heath wood you would see the ground white with snowdrops in March.
“I do not think that it is the partiality of a native that makes me
think you could hardly find a fairer inland pastoral scene than the one
I beheld from Wakefield Bridge the first time I stood there. On the
chapel side there was the soft green English landscape, with woods and
spires and halls, and the brown sails of boats silently moving among
the flowery banks; on the town side there were picturesque traffic and
life; the thundering weir, the wide still water beyond, the big
dark-red granaries, with balconies and archways to the water, and the
lofty white mills grinding out their cheering music.
“But there were no worse shapes than honest, dusty millers’ men, and
browned boatmen, decent people; no open vileness and foul language were
rampant in our quiet clean town in those days. I can remember how clean
the pavement used to look there, and at Doncaster. Both towns are
incredibly dirty now. I cannot bear to look at the filthy beslavered
causeway, in places where I remember to have never seen anything worse
than the big round thunder-drops I used to watch with gleeful interest.
“In those days we were proud of the cleanness and sweet air and
gentility of Wakefield. Leeds was then considered rather vulgar, as a
factory town, and Bradford was obscure, rough, and wild; but Wakefield
prided itself in refined living on moderate means, and cultured people
of small income were fond of settling there.
“Market day used to be a great event for us all.
“I wish that you could have seen the handsome farmers’ wives ranged
round the church walls, with their baskets of apricots and cream
cheese, before reform came, and they swept away my dear old
school-house of the seventeenth century, to make an ugly barren desert
of a market ground. You might have seen, too, the pretty cottagers’
daughters, with their bunches of lavender and baskets of fruit, or
heaps of cowslips and primroses for the wine and vinegar Wakefield
housewives prided themselves upon. On certain days they stood to be
hired as maid-servants, and were prized in the country round as neat,
clean, modest-spoken girls.
“I do not know where they are gone to now,—I suppose to the factories.
Anyhow, Wakefield ladies cry out that they must get servants from
London, and Stafford, and Wales. So class gets parted from class.
“Things were different then. Well-to-do ladies prided themselves on
doing their marketing in person, and kindly feeling and
acquaintanceship sprang up between town and country folk. My Wakefield
friends nowadays laugh at the idea of going to market. They order
everything through the cook, and hardly know their own tradespeople by
sight. We used to get delicious butter at tenpence a pound, and such
curds and cream-cheese as I never taste now. ‘Cook’ brings in
indifferent butter mostly, at near two shillings.
“As for the farmers’ wives, they would not like to be seen with a
butter-basket. They mostly send the dairy produce off by rail to people
whom they never see, and thus class is more sundered from class every
day, even by the very facilities that railways afford. I can remember
that the townspeople had simple merry-makings and neighbourly ways that
this generation would scorn. Many a pleasant walk we had to the farms
and halls that belted the old town; and boating parties on the Calder,
and tea-drinkings and dances—mostly extempore,—in the easy fashion of
Vicar Primrose’s days.
“But pleasure must be sought farther off now. Our young folks go to
London or Paris for their recreation. People seem to have no leisure
for being neighbourly, or to get settled in their houses. They seem to
be all expecting to make a heap of money, and to be much grander
presently, and finally to live in halls and villas, and look down on
their early friends.
“But I am sorry for the young people. They run through everything so
soon, and have nothing left to hope for or dream of in a few years.
They are better dressed than we were, and have more accomplishments;
but I cannot help thinking that we young folks were happier in the old
times, though shillings were not half so plentiful, and we had only two
frocks a year.
“Tradespeople were different, too, in old Wakefield.
“They expected to live with us all their lives; they had high notions
of honour as tradesmen, and they and their customers respected each
other.
“They prided themselves on the ‘wear’ of their goods. If they had
passed upon the housewives a piece of sized calico or shoddy flannel,
they would have heard of it for years after.
“Now the richer ladies go to Leeds or Manchester to make purchases; the
town tradesmen are soured and jealous. They put up big plate-glass
fronts, and send out flaming bills; but one does not know where to get
a piece of sound calico or stout linen, well spun and well woven.
“Give me back our dingy old shops where everything was genuine, instead
of these glass palaces where we often get pins without points, needles
without eyes, and sewing thread sixty yards to the hundred—which I
actually heard a young Quaker defend the other day as an allowable
trade practice.”
III.—I venture to print the following sentences from “a poor mother’s”
letter, that my reply may be more generally intelligible. I wish I
could say, useful; but the want of an art-grammar is every day becoming
more felt:—
“I am rather ashamed to tell you how young he is (not quite eleven),
fearing you will say I have troubled you idly; but I was sincerely
anxious to know your views on the training of a boy for some definite
sort of art-work, and I have always fancied such training ought to
begin very early,—[yes, assuredly,]—also, there are reasons why we must
decide early in what direction we shall look out for employment for
him.”
(I never would advise any parents to look for employment in art as a
means of their children’s support. It is only when the natural bias is
quite uncontrollable, that future eminence, and comfort of material
circumstances, can be looked for. And when it is uncontrollable, it
ceases to be a question whether we should control it. We have only to
guide it.)
“But I seem to dread the results of letting him run idle until he is
fourteen or fifteen years old—[most wisely]—and a poor and busy mother
like me has not time to superintend the employment of a boy as a richer
one might. This makes me long to put him to work under a master early.
As he does so little at book-learning, would the practical learning of
stone-cutting under the village stonemason (a good man) be likely to
lead to anything further?”
I do not know, but it would be of the greatest service to the boy
meanwhile. Let him learn good joiners’ work also, and to plough, with
time allowed him for drawing. I feel more and more the need of a useful
grammar of art for young people, and simple elementary teaching in
public schools. I have always hoped to remedy this want, but have been
hindered hitherto.