Read Ebook: Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8) Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain by Ruskin John

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LETTER L.

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 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 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 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, 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 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, I choose, for my own reading, a pamphlet 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, 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,

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.

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.

The sure retribution is at hand already."

'What does all this mean?' my correspondent asks, in wise anxiety.

National prosperity, my dear Madam, according to Mr. Goschen, the 'Times,' and 'Morning Post';--national prosperity carried to the point of not knowing what to do with our money. Enlightenment, and Freedom, and orthodox Religion, and Science of the superbest and trustworthiest character, and generally the Reign of Law, answer the Duke of Argyll and Professor Huxley. Ruin--inevitable and terrible, such as no nation has yet suffered,--answer God and the Fates.

Yes--inevitable. England has to drink a cup which cannot pass from her--at the hands of the Lord, the cup of His fury;--surely the dregs of it, the wicked of the earth shall wring them and drink them out.

For let none of my readers think me mad enough or wild enough to hope that any effort, or repentance, or change of conduct, could now save the country from the consequences of her follies, or the Church from the punishment of her crimes. This St. George's Company of ours is mere raft-making amidst irrevocable wreck--the best we can do, to be done bravely and cheerfully, come of it what may.

Let me keep, therefore, to-day wholly to definite matters, and to little ones. What the education we now give our children leads to, my correspondent's letter shows. What education they should have, instead, I may suggest perhaps in some particulars.

What should be done, for instance, in the way of gift-giving, or instruction-giving, for our little Agnes of the hill-side? Would the St. George's Company, if she were their tenant, only leave her alone,--teach her nothing?

Not so; very much otherwise than so. This is some part of what should be done for her, were she indeed under St. George's rule.

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