Read Ebook: Aunt Madge's Story by May Sophie

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 549 lines and 30048 words, and 11 pages

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTERS

TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.

GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1873.

FORS CLAVIGERA.

Brantwood, January 4th, 1873.

The Third Fors, having been much adverse to me, and more to many who wish me well, during the whole of last year, has turned my good and helpful printer adrift in the last month of it; and, with that grave inconvenience to him, contrived for me the minor one of being a fortnight late with my New Year's letter. Under which provocation I am somewhat consoled this morning by finding in a cookery book, of date 1791, "written purely from practice, and dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, whom the author lately served as housekeeper," a receipt for Yorkshire Goose Pie, with which I think it will be most proper and delightful to begin my economical instructions to you for the current year. I am, indeed, greatly tempted to give precedence to the receipt for making "Fairy Butter," and further disturbed by an extreme desire to tell you how to construct an "Apple Floating-Island"; but will abide, nevertheless, by my Goose Pie.

"Take a large fat goose, split it down the back, and take all the bones out; bone a turkey and two ducks the same way, season them very well with pepper and salt, with six woodcocks; lay the goose down on a clean dish, with the skin-side down; and lay the turkey into the goose, with the skin down; have ready a large hare, cleaned well, cut in pieces, and stewed in the oven, with a pound of butter, a quarter of an ounce of mace, beat fine, the same of white pepper, and salt to your taste, till the meat will leave the bones, and scum the butter off the gravy, pick the meat clean off, and beat it in a marble mortar very fine, with the butter you took off, and lay it in the turkey; take twenty-four pounds of the finest flour, six pounds of butter, half-a-pound of fresh rendered suet, make the paste pretty thick, and raise the pie oval; roll out a lump of paste, and cut it in vine-leaves or what form you please; rub the pie with the yolks of eggs, and put your ornaments on the walls; then turn the hare, turkey, and goose upside down, and lay them in your pie, with the ducks at each end, and the woodcocks on the sides; make your lid pretty thick, and put it on; you may lay flowers, or the shape of the fowls in paste, on the lid, and make a hole in the middle of your lid; the walls of the pie are to be one inch and a half higher than the lid; then rub it all over with the yolks of eggs, and bind it round with threefold paper, and lay the same over the top; it will take four hours baking in a brown-bread oven; when it comes out, melt two pounds of butter in the gravy that comes from the hare, and pour it hot in the pie through a tun-dish; close it well up, and let it be eight or ten days before you cut it; if you send it any distance, make up the hole in the middle with cold butter, to prevent the air from getting in."

Possessed of these instructions, I immediately went to my cook to ask how far we could faithfully carry them out. But she told me nothing could be done without a "brown-bread oven;" which I shall therefore instantly build under the rocks on my way down to the lake: and, if I live, we will have a Lancashire goose-pie next Michaelmas. You may, perhaps, think this affair irrelevant to the general purposes of 'Fors Clavigera'; but it is not so by any means: on the contrary, it is closely connected with its primary intentions; and, besides, may interest some readers more than weightier, or, I should rather say, lighter and more spiritual matters. For, indeed, during twenty-three months, I had been writing to you, fellow-workmen, of matters affecting your best interests in this world, and all the interests you had anywhere else:--explaining, as I could, what the shrewdest of you, hitherto, have thought, and the best of you have done;--what the most selfish have gained, and the most generous have suffered. Of all this, no notice whatever is taken. In my twenty-fourth letter, incidentally, I mentioned the fact of my being in a bad humour, and forthwith I got quite a little mailcartful of consolation, reproof, and advice. Much of it kind,--nearly all of it helpful, and some of it wise; but very little bearing on matters in hand: an eager Irish correspondent offers immediately to reply to anything, "though he has not been fortunate enough to meet with the book;" one working man's letter, for self and mates, is answered in the terminal notes;--could not be answered before for want of address;--another, from a south-country clergyman, could not be answered any way, for he would not read any more, he said, of such silly stuff as 'Fors';--but would have been glad to hear of any scheme for giving people a sound practical education. I fain would learn, myself, either from this practical Divine, or any of his mates, what the ecclesiastical idea of a sound practical education is;--that is to say, what--in weekday schools --our clergy think that boys and girls should be taught to practise, in order that, when grown up, they may with dexterity perform the same. For indeed, the constant object of these letters of mine, from their beginning, has been to urge you to do vigorously and dextrously what was useful; and nothing but that. And I have told you of Kings and Heroes, and now am about to tell you what I can of a Saint, because I believe such persons to have done, sometimes, more useful things than you or I: begging your pardon always for not addressing you as heroes, which I believe you all think yourselves, or as kings, which I presume you all propose to be, or at least, if you cannot, to let nobody else be. Come what may of such proposal, I wish you would consider with me to-day what form of "sound practical education," if any, would enable you all to be Saints; and whether, such form proving discoverable, you would really like to be put through it, or whether, on the contrary, both the clergy and you mean, verily, and in your hearts, nothing by "practical education" but how to lay one penny upon another. Not but that it does my heart good to hear modern divines exhorting to any kind of practice--for, as far as I can make out, there is nothing they so much dread for their congregations as their getting into their heads that God expects them to do anything, beyond killing rabbits if they are rich, and being content with bad wages, if they are poor. But if any virtue more than these, be indeed necessary to Saint-ship--may we not prudently ask what such virtue is, and, at this Holiday time, make our knowledge of the Hos more precise? Nay, in your pleading for perennial Holiday,--in your ten hours or eight hours bills, might you not urge your point with stouter conscience if you were all Saints, and the hours of rest you demanded became a realization of Baxter's Saints' Rest?

Suppose we do rest, for a few minutes, from that process of laying one penny upon another, and look with some attention at the last penny we laid on the pile--or, if we can do no better, at the first of the pile we mean to lay.

Show me a penny--or, better, show me the three pages of our British Bible--penny, shilling, and pound, and let us try what we can read on them together. You see how rich they are in picture and legend: surely so practical a nation, in its most valued Scriptures, cannot have written or pictured anything but with discretion, and to the benefit of all beholders.

We begin with the penny;--not that, except under protest, I call such a thing as that a Penny! Our farthings, when we were boys, were as big as that; and two-pence filled our waistcoat pockets. Who, then, is this lady, whom it represents, sitting, apparently, on the edge of a dish-cover? Britannia? Yes,--of course. But who is Britannia? and what has she got on her head, in her hand, and on her seat?

"Don't I know who Britannia is?" Not I; and much doubt if you do! Is she Great Britain,--or Little Britain? Is she England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the Indies,--or a small, dishonest, tailoring and engineering firm, with no connection over the way, and publicly fined at the police court for sneakingly supplying customers it had engaged not to? Is she a Queen, or an Actress, or a slave? Is she a Nation, mother of nations; or a slimy polype, multiplying by involuntary vivisection, and dropping half putrid pieces of itself wherever it crawls or contracts? In the world-feasts of the Nativity, can she sit, Madonna-like, saying: "Behold, I, and the children whom the Lord hath given me"? Or are her lips capable of such utterance--of any utterance--no more; the musical Rose of them cleft back into the long dumb trench of the lizard's; her motherhood summed in saying that she makes all the world's ditches dirtier with her spawn?

And what has she on her head, in her hand, or on that,--Shield, I believe it is meant for,--which she sits on the edge of? A most truly symbolic position! For, you know, all those armour-plates and guns you pay for so pleasantly are indeed made, when you look into the matter, not at all to defend you against anybody--; but they are made that the iron masters may get commission on the iron, and the manufacturers commission on the manufacture. And so the Ironmongering and Manufacturing Britannia does very literally sit upon her Shield: the cognizance whereof, or--now too literally--the "Bearing,"--so obscured, becomes of small importance. Probably, in a little while, a convenient cushion--or, what not--may be substituted for St. George's Cross; to the public satisfaction.

I must not question farther what any of these symbols may come to mean; I will tell you, briefly, what they meant once, and are yet, by courtesy, supposed to mean.

They were all invented by the Greeks; and all, except the Cross, some twelve hundred years before the first Christmas; they became intelligible and beautiful first about Theseus' time.

The Helmet crest properly signifies the adoption by man of the passions of pride and anger which enable nearly all the lower creatures to erect some spinous or plumose ridge upon their heads or backs. It is curiously associated with the story of the Spartan Phalanthus, the first colonist of Tarentum, which might have been the port of an Italia ruling the waves, instead of Britannia, had not the crest fallen from the helmet of the Swabian prince, Manfred, in his death-battle with Charles of Anjou. He had fastened it that morning, he said, with his own hand,--you may think, if his armourer had fastened it, it would have stayed on, but kings could do things with their own hands in those days;--howbeit, it fell, and Manfred, that night, put off his armour for evermore, and the evil French King reigned in his stead: and South Italy has lain desert since that day, and so must lie, till the crest of some King rise over it again, who will be content with as much horse-hair as is needful for a crest, and not wear it, as our English Squires have done lately , on their heads, instead of their helmets.

Of the trident in Britannia's hand, and why it must be a trident, that is to say, have three prongs, and no more; and in what use or significance it differs from other forks, --we will enquire at another time. Take up next the shilling, or, more to our purpose, the double shilling,--get a new florin, and examine the sculpture and legend on that.

The Legend, you perceive, is on the one side English,--on the other Latin. The latter, I presume, you are not intended to read, for not only it is in a dead language, but two words are contracted, and four more indicated only by their first letters. This arrangement leaves room for the ten decorative letters, an M, and a D, and three C's, and an L, and the sign of double stout, and two I's; of which ten letters the total function is to inform you that the coin was struck this year, But the poor fifth part of ten letters, preceding--the F and D, namely--have for function to inform you that Queen Victoria is the Defender of our Faith. Which is an all-important fact to you and me, if it be a fact at all;--nay, an all-important brace of facts; each letter vocal, for its part, with one. F, that we have a Faith to defend; D, that our monarch can defend it, if we chance to have too little to say for it ourselves. For both which facts, Heaven be praised, if they be indeed so,--nor dispraised by our shame, if they have ceased to be so: only, if they be so, two letters are not enough to assert them clearly; and if not so, are more than enough to lie with. On the reverse of the coin, however, the legend is full, and clear. "One Florin." "One Tenth of a Pound." Yes; that is all very practical and instructive. But do we know either what a pound is, or what a florin or "Fiorino" was, or why this particular coin should be called a Florin, or whether we have any right to call any coin of England, now, by that name? And, by the way, how is it that I get continually reproved for writing above the level of the learning of my general readers, when here I find the most current of all our books written in three languages, of which one is dead, another foreign, and the third written in defunct letters, so that anybody with two shillings in his pocket is supposed able to accept information conveyed in contracted Latin, Roman numerals, old English, and spoiled Italian?

How practical, and how sentimental, at once! For indeed we have no right, except sentimentally, to call that coin a florin,--that is to say, a "flower piece," or Florence-piece. What have we any more to do with Lilies? Do you ever consider how they grow--or care how they die? Do the very water-lilies, think you, keep white now, for an hour after they open, in any stream in England? And for the heraldry of the coin, neither on that, nor any other, have we courage or grace to bear the Fleur-de-Lys any more, it having been once our first bearing of all. For in the first quarter of our English shield we used to bear three golden lilies on a blue ground, being the regal arms of France; . Also these Fleur-de-Lys were from the beginning the ensigns of a King; but those three Lions which you see are yet retained for the arms of England on two of the shields in your false florin, "are deduced onely from Dukedomes : I say deduced, because the Kings of England after the Conquest did beare two leopards till the time of King Henry the Second, who, according to the received opinion, by marriage of Eleanor, daughter and heire of the duke of Aquitaine and Guyon" "annexed the Lyon, her paternall coate, being of the same Field, Metall, and Forme with the Leopards, and so from thence forward they were jointly marshalled in one Shield and Blazoned three Lyons." Also "at the first quartering of these coats by Edward the Third, question being moved of his title to France, the King had good cause to put that coat in the first ranke, to show his most undoubted Title to that Kingdom, and therefore would have it the most perspicuous place of his Escocheon."

Next to the three Lions, however , there is a shield bearing one Lion, "Rampant"--that is to say, climbing like a vine on a wall. Remember that the proper sense of the word "rampant" is "creeping," as you say it of ground ivy, and such plants: and that a lion rampant--whether British, or as this one Scotch, is not at all, for his part, in what you are so fond of getting into--"an independent position," nor even in a specifically leonine one, but rather generally feline, as of a cat, or other climbing animal, on a tree; whereas the three French Lions, or Lioncels, are "passant-gardant," "passing on the look out," as beasts of chase.

Round the rampant Scottish animal you observe farther, a double line, with--though almost too small to be seen--fleur-de-Lys at the knots and corners of it. This is the tressure, or binding belt, of the great Charles, who has really been to both English and Scottish lions what that absent Charles of the polar skies must, I suppose, have been to their Bear, and who entirely therefore deserves to be stellified by British astronomers.

Such belt of lilies did the French chivalry bind us with; the "tressure" of Charlemagne.

Of the fourth shield, bearing the Irish Harp, and the harmonious psalmody of which that instrument is significant, I have no time to speak to-day; nor of the vegetable heraldry between the shields;--but before you lay the florin down I must advise you that the very practical motto or war-cry which it now bears--"one tenth of a pound," was not anciently the motto round the arms of England, that is to say, of English kings, ; but a quite different one--to wit--"Accursed be He who thinks Evil;" and that this motto ought to be written on another Tressure or band than Charlemagne's, surrounding the entire shield--namely, on a lady's garter; specifically the garter of the most beautiful and virtuous English lady, Alice of Salisbury, ; and that without this tressure and motto, the mere shield of Lions is but a poor defence.

For this is a very great and lordly motto; marking the utmost point and acme of honour, which is not merely in doing no evil, but in thinking none; and teaching that the first--as indeed the last--nobility of Education is in the rule over our Thoughts, on which matter, I must digress for a minute or two.

Among the letters just received by me, as I told you, is one from a working man of considerable experience, which laments that, in his part of the country, "literary institutes are a failure."

Indeed, your literary institutes must everywhere fail, as long as you think that merely to buy a book, and to know your letters, will enable you to read the book. Not one word of any book is readable by you except so far as your mind is one with its author's, and not merely his words like your words, but his thoughts like your thoughts.

For instance, the other day, at a bookstall, I bought a shilling Shakespeare. To such degree of wealth, ingenuity, and literary spirit, has the nineteenth century reached, that it has a shilling to spare for its Shakespeare--can produce its Shakespeare in a pocketable shape for that sum--and is ready to invest its earnings in a literature to that extent. Good. You have now your Shakespeare, complete, in your pocket; you will read the greatest of dramatic authors at your leisure, and form your literary taste on that model.

Suppose we read a line or two together then, you and I;--it may be, that I cannot, unless you help me.

"And there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his Captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long."

What do you suppose Shakespeare means by calling Venice a "pleasant" country? What sort of country was, or would have been, pleasant to him? The same that is pleasant to you, or another kind of country? Was there any coal in that earth of Venice, for instance? Any gas to be made out of it? Any iron?

Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a "pure" soul, or by Purity in general? How does a soul become pure, or clean, and how dirty? Are you sure that your own soul is pure? if not, is its opinion on the subject of purity likely to be the same as Shakespeare's? And might you not just as well read a mure soul, or demure, or a scure soul, or obscure, as a pure soul, if you don't know what Shakespeare means by the word?

Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a captain, or head-person? What were his notions of head-ship, shoulder-ship, or foot-ship, either in human or divine persons? Have you yourselves ever seen a captain, think you--of the true quality; and did you know him when you saw him?

Or again. What does Shakespeare mean by colours? The "gaily decorative bunting" of Howe and Cushing's American Circus? Or the banners with invigorating inscriptions concerning Temperance and Free-trade, under which you walk in procession, sometimes, after a band? Or colours more dim and tattered than these?

"So when the need was past, the King of England drew back into Calais, into the castle; and made be brought all the prisoner-knights thither. And then the French knew that the King of England had been in it, in person, under the banner of Master Walter de Manny. So also the King sent to say to them, as it was the New-year's night, he would give them all supper in his castle of Calais. So when the supper time came," "the King and his knights dressed themselves, and all etty it is."

That was as far as she could get for some time, till mother smiled and kissed her, and asked once or twice, "Well, dear, what is it?"

I ran into the shed and back again, too excited to stand still. Mother was always so tender of Fel, that I did think she couldn't refuse her. I was sure, at any rate, she would say as much as, "We will see about it, dear;" but instead of that she gave her an extra hug, and answered sorrowfully,--

"I wish I could buy Margaret a parasol; but really it is not to be thought of."

I dropped into the chip-basket, and cried.

"If she knew how to take care of her things perhaps I might, but it is wicked to throw away money."

"There, that'll do," said mother, stopping me at full tide. "I would be glad to please my little girl if I thought it would be right; but I have said No once, and after that, Margaret, you know how foolish it is to tease."

Didn't I know, to my sorrow? As foolish as it would be to stand and fire popguns at the rock of Gibraltar.

I rushed out to the barn, and never stopped to look behind me. Fel followed, crying softly; but what had I to say to that dear little friend, who felt my sorrows almost as if they were her own?

"You didn't ask my mamma pretty, and that's why she wouldn't give me no pairsol."

No thanks for the kind office she had performed for me; no apology for calling her a lie-girl. Only,--

"You didn't ask my mamma pretty, Fel Allen."

"Why, Maggie, what ails you? You've fairly cried your eyes out, child!"

I climbed a chair, and looked in the glass, which hung between the kitchen windows, and sure enough I was a sight to behold. My eyes, always very large, were now red and swollen, and seemed bursting from their sockets. I had never thought before that eyes could burst; but now I ran to Ruthie in alarm.

She laughed at my distress, kissed me, and set me at ease about my eyeballs; but the parasol was denied me, and I was sure that, blind or not, I could never be happy without it.

The little bits of girls had afternoon parties that summer; it was quite the fashion; and not long after this Madam Allen made one for Fel. Everybody said it was the nicest party we had had; for Tempy Ann made sailor-boy doughnuts, with sugar sprinkled on, and damson tarts, and lemonade, to say nothing of "sandiges," with chicken in the middle. I loved Fel dearly, I know I did; but by fits and starts I was so full of envy that I had to go off by myself and pout.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet