I believe my readers will scarcely thank me for printing, this month,
instead of the continuation of the letter from Wakefield, a theological
essay by Mr. Lyttel. But it is my first business, in Fors, to be
just,—and only my second or third to be entertaining; so that any
person who conceives himself to have been misrepresented must always
have my types at his command. On the other side, I must point out,
before entering further into controversy of any kind, the constant
habit in my antagonists of misrepresenting me. For instance; in an
article forwarded to me from a local paper, urging what it can in
defence of the arrangements noticed by me as offensive, at Kirby
Lonsdale and Clapham, I find this sentence:
“The squire’s house does not escape, though one can see no reason for
the remark unless it be that Mr. Ruskin dislikes lords, squires, and
clergymen.”
Now I have good reason for supposing this article to have been written
by a gentleman;—and even an amiable gentleman,—who, feeling himself
hurt, and not at all wishing to hurt anybody, very naturally cries out:
and thinks it monstrous in me to hurt him; or his own pet lord, or
squire. But he never thinks what wrong there may be in printing his own
momentary impression of the character of a man who has been thirty
years before the public, without taking the smallest pains to ascertain
whether his notion be true or false.
It happens, by Fors’ appointment, that the piece of my early life which
I have already written for this month’s letter, sufficiently answers
the imputation of my dislike to lords and squires. But I will preface
it, in order to illustrate my dislike of clergymen, by a later bit of
biography; which, at the rate of my present progress in giving account
of myself, I should otherwise, as nearly as I can calculate, reach only
about the year 1975.
Last summer, in Rome, I lodged at the Hotel de Russie; and, in the
archway of the courtyard of that mansion, waited usually, in the
mornings, a Capuchin friar, begging for his monastery.
Now, though I greatly object to any clergyman’s coming and taking me by
the throat, and saying ‘Pay me that thou owest,’ I never pass a begging
friar without giving him sixpence, or the equivalent fivepence of
foreign coin;—extending the charity even occasionally as far as
tenpence, if no fivepenny-bit chance to be in my purse. And this
particular begging friar having a gentle face, and a long white beard,
and a beautiful cloak, like a blanket; and being altogether the
pleasantest sight, next to Sandro Botticelli’s Zipporah, I was like to
see in Rome in the course of the day, I always gave him the extra
fivepence for looking so nice; which generosity so worked on his
mind,—(the more usual English religious sentiment in Rome expending
itself rather in buying poetical pictures of monks than in filling
their bellies),—that, after some six or seven doles of tenpences, he
must needs take my hand one day, and try to kiss it. Which being only
just able to prevent, I took him round the neck and kissed his lips
instead: and this, it seems, was more to him than the tenpences, for,
next day, he brought me a little reliquary, with a certificated fibre
in it of St. Francis’ cloak, (the hair one, now preserved at Assisi);
and when afterwards I showed my friend Fra Antonio, the Assisi
sacristan, what I had got, it was a pleasure to see him open his eyes,
wider than Monsieur the Syndic at Hansli’s fifty thousand crowns. He
thought I must have come by it dishonestly; but not I, a whit,—for I
most carefully explained to the Capuchin, when he brought it me, that I
was more a Turk than a Catholic;—but he said I might keep the
reliquary, for all that.
Contenting myself, for the moment, with this illustration of my present
dislike of clergymen, I return to earlier days.
But for the reader’s better understanding of such further progress of
my poor little life as I may trespass on his patience in describing, it
is now needful that I give some account of my father’s mercantile
position in London.
The firm of which he was head partner may be yet remembered by some of
the older city houses, as carrying on their business in a small
counting-house on the first floor of narrow premises, in as narrow a
thoroughfare of East London,—Billiter Street, the principal traverse
from Leadenhall Street into Fenchurch Street.
The names of the three partners were given in full on their brass plate
under the counting-house bell,—Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq.
Mr. Domecq’s name should have been the first, by rights, for my father
and Mr. Telford were only his agents. He was the sole proprietor of the
estate which was the main capital of the firm,—the vineyard of
Macharnudo, the most precious hillside, for growth of white wine, in
the Spanish peninsula. The quality of the Macharnudo vintage
essentially fixed the standard of Xeres ‘sack’ or ‘dry’—secco—sherris,
or sherry, from the days of Henry the Fifth to our own;—the unalterable
and unrivalled chalk-marl of it putting a strength into the grape which
age can only enrich and darken,—never impair.
Mr. Peter Domecq was, I believe, Spanish born; and partly French,
partly English bred: a man of strictest honour, and kindly disposition;
how descended, I do not know; how he became possessor of his vineyard,
I do not know; what position he held, when young, in the firm of
Gordon, Murphy, and Company, I do not know; but in their house he
watched their head-clerk, my father, during his nine years of duty, and
when the house broke up, asked him to be his own agent in England. My
father saw that he could fully trust Mr. Domecq’s honour, and
feeling;—but not so fully either his sense, or his industry: and
insisted, though taking only his agent’s commission, on being both
nominally, and practically, the head-partner of the firm.
Mr. Domecq lived chiefly in Paris; rarely visiting his Spanish estate,
but having perfect knowledge of the proper processes of its
cultivation, and authority over its labourers almost like a chief’s
over his clan. He kept the wines at the highest possible standard; and
allowed my father to manage all matters concerning their sale, as he
thought best. The second partner, Mr. Henry Telford, brought into the
business what capital was necessary for its London branch. The premises
in Billiter Street belonged to him; and he had a pleasant country house
at Widmore, near Bromley; a quite far-away Kentish village in those
days.
He was a perfect type of an English country gentleman of moderate
fortune;—unmarried, living with three unmarried sisters—who, in the
refinement of their highly educated, unpretending, benevolent, and
felicitous lives, remain in my memory more like the figures in a
beautiful story than realities. Neither in story, nor in reality, have
I ever again heard of, or seen, anything like Mr. Henry Telford;—so
gentle, so humble, so affectionate, so clear in common sense, so fond
of horses,—and so entirely incapable of doing, thinking, or saying,
anything that had the slightest taint in it of the racecourse or the
stable.
Yet I believe he never missed any great race; passed the greater part
of his life on horseback; and hunted during the whole Leicestershire
season;—but never made a bet, never had a serious fall, and never hurt
a horse. Between him and my father there was absolute confidence, and
the utmost friendship that could exist without community of pursuit. My
father was greatly proud of Mr. Telford’s standing among the country
gentlemen; and Mr. Telford was affectionately respectful to my father’s
steady industry and infallible commercial instinct. Mr. Telford’s
actual part in the conduct of the business was limited to attendance in
the counting-house during two months at Midsummer, when my father took
his holiday, and sometimes for a month at the beginning of the year,
when he travelled for orders. At these times Mr. Telford rode into
London daily from Widmore, signed what letters and bills needed
signature, read the papers, and rode home again: any matters needing
deliberation were referred to my father, or awaited his return. All the
family at Widmore would have been limitlessly kind to my mother and me,
if they had been permitted any opportunity; but my mother always felt,
in cultivated society,—and was too proud to feel with patience,—the
defects of her own early education, and therefore (which was the true
and fatal sign of such defect) never familiarly visited any one whom
she did not feel to be, in some sort, her inferior.
Nevertheless, Mr. Telford had a singularly important influence in my
education. By, I believe, his sister’s advice, he gave me, as soon as
it was published, the illustrated edition of Rogers’ ‘Italy.’ This book
was the first means I had of looking carefully at Turner’s work: and I
might, not without some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the
entire direction of my life’s energies. But it is the great error of
thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which introduces
some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which
gave the accident importance. The essential point to be noted, and
accounted for, was that I could understand Turner’s work when I saw it;
not by what chance or in what year it was first seen.
Poor Mr. Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma
primarily responsible for my Turner insanities.
In a more direct, though less intended way, his help to me was
important. For, before my father thought it right to hire a carriage
for the above mentioned Midsummer holiday, Mr. Telford always lent us
his own travelling chariot.
Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious of travelling
carriages, for two persons, or even for two persons and so much of
third personage as I possessed at three years old. The one in question
was hung high, so that we could see well over stone dykes and average
hedges out of it; such elevation being attained by the old-fashioned
folding-steps, with a lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of
the door,—steps which it was one of my chief travelling delights to see
the hostlers fold up and down; though my delight was painfully alloyed
by envious ambition to be allowed to do it myself:—but I never
was,—lest I should pinch my fingers.
The ‘dickey,’—(to think that I should never till this moment have asked
myself the derivation of that word, and now be unable to get at
it!)—being, typically, that commanding seat in her Majesty’s mail,
occupied by the Guard; and classical, even in modern literature, as the
scene of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s arrangements with Sam,—was thrown far back in
Mr. Telford’s chariot, so as to give perfectly comfortable room for the
legs (if one chose to travel outside on fine days), and to afford
beneath it spacious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward
miscellaneous luggage. Over which—with all the rest of forward and
superficial luggage—my nurse Anne presided, both as guard and packer;
unrivalled, she, in the flatness and precision of her in-laying of
dresses, as in turning of pancakes; the fine precision, observe,
meaning also the easy wit and invention of her art; for, no more in
packing a trunk than commanding a campaign, is precision possible
without foresight.
Posting, in those days, being universal, so that at the leading inns in
every country town, the cry “Horses out!” down the yard, as one drove
up, was answered, often instantly, always within five minutes, by the
merry trot through the archway of the booted and bright-jacketed rider,
with his caparisoned pair,—there was no driver’s seat in front: and the
four large, admirably fitting and sliding windows, admitting no drop of
rain when they were up, and never sticking as they were let down,
formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw the country round,
to the full half of the horizon. My own prospect was more extended
still, for my seat was the little box containing my clothes, strongly
made, with a cushion on one end of it; set upright in front (and well
forward), between my father and mother. I was thus not the least in
their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. When no object
of particular interest presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with
the postboy—on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my father’s
legs for horses; at first theoretically only, with dexterous motion of
wrist; but ultimately in a quite practical and efficient manner, my
father having presented me with a silver-mounted postillion’s whip.
The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. Telford
provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the fifteenth of May,
or thereabouts;—my father’s birthday was the tenth; on that day I was
always allowed to gather the gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie
of the year, from the tree between the buttresses on the north wall of
the Herne Hill garden; so that we could not leave before that festa.
The holiday itself consisted in a tour for orders through half the
English counties; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my
aunt in Scotland.
The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of our home life. We went
from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always early enough in the
morning to arrive comfortably to four-o’clock dinner. Generally,
therefore, getting off at six o’clock, a stage or two were done before
breakfast, with the dew on the grass, and first scent from the
hawthorns: if in the course of the midday drive there were any
gentleman’s house to be seen,—or, better still, a lord’s—or, best of
all, a duke’s,—my father baited the horses, and took my mother and me
reverently through the state rooms; always speaking a little under our
breath to the housekeeper, major domo, or other authority in charge;
and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary illustrations of the history
and domestic ways of the family might fall from their lips. My father
had a quite infallible natural judgment in painting; and though it had
never been cultivated so as to enable him to understand the Italian
schools, his sense of the power of the nobler masters in northern work
was as true and passionate as the most accomplished artist’s. He never,
when I was old enough to care for what he himself delighted in, allowed
me to look for an instant at a bad picture; and if there were a
Reynolds, Velasquez, Vandyck, or Rembrandt in the rooms, he would pay
the surliest housekeepers into patience until we had seen it to heart’s
content; if none of these, I was allowed to look at Guido, Carlo
Dolce—or the more skilful masters of the Dutch school—Cuyp, Teniers,
Hobbema, Wouwermans; but never at any second-rate or doubtful examples.
I wonder how many of the lower middle class are now capable of going
through a nobleman’s house, with judgment of this kind; and yet with
entirely unenvious and reverent delight in the splendour of the abode
of the supreme and beneficent being who allows them thus to enter his
paradise?
If there were no nobleman’s house to be seen, there was certainly, in
the course of the day’s journey, some ruined castle or abbey; some
celebrated village church, or stately cathedral. We had always
unstinted time for these; and if I was at disadvantage because neither
my father nor mother could tell me enough history to make the buildings
authoritatively interesting, I had at least leisure and liberty to
animate them with romance in my own fashion.
I am speaking, however, now, of matters relating to a more advanced age
than that to which I have yet brought myself:—age in which all these
sights were only a pleasant amazement to me, and panoramic apocalypse
of a lovely world.
Up to that age, at least, I cannot but hope that my readers will agree
with me in thinking the tenour of my life happy, and the modes of my
education, on the whole, salutary.
Admitting them to have been so, I would now question farther; and, I
imagine, such question cannot but occur to my readers’ minds, also,—how
far education, and felicities, of the same kind, may be attainable for
young people in general.
Let us consider, then, how many conditions must meet; and how much
labour must have been gone through, both by servile and noble persons,
before this little jaunty figure, seated on its box of clothes, can
trot through its peaceful day of mental development.
I. A certain number of labourers in Spain, living on dry bread and
onions, must have pruned and trodden grapes;—cask-makers, cellarmen,
and other functionaries attending on them.