promote honest dealing. The result of this experiment has been my ascertaining that the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly lighted and eloquently ticketed; and as I resolutely refuse to compete with my neighbouring tradesmen either in gas or rhetoric, the patient subdivision of my parcels by the two old servants of my mother's, who manage the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized as an advantage by my uncalculating public. Also, steady increase in the consumption of spirits throughout the neighbourhood faster and faster slackens the demand for tea; but I believe none of these circumstances have checked my trade so much as my own procrastination in painting my sign. Owing to that total want of imagination and invention which makes me so impartial and so accurate a writer on subjects of political economy, I could not for months determine whether the said sign should be of a Chinese character, black upon gold; or of a Japanese, blue upon white; or of pleasant English, rose colour on green ; and still less how far legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a board only a foot broad, with lengthy enough elucidation of the peculiar offices of "Mr. Ruskin's tea-shop." Meanwhile the business languishes, and the rent and taxes absorb the profits, and something more, after the salary of my good servants has been paid.' 1 In all these cases, however, I can see that I am defeated only because I have too many things on hand: and that neither rabbits at Coniston, road-surveyors at Croydon, or mud in St. Giles's would get the better of me, if I could give exclusive attention to any one business: meantime, I learn the difficulties which are to be met, and shall make the fewer mistakes when I venture on any work with other people's money. 5. I may as well, together with these confessions, print a piece written for the end of a Fors letter at Assisi, a month or two back, but for which I had then no room, 1 [For the history of Ruskin's tea-shop, see, again, the Introduction (above, p. xviii.). For later references to it, see Letter 67, § 23 (p. 661), and 78, § 18 (Vol. XXIX. p. 141).] referring to the increase of commercial, religious, and egotistic insanity,* in modern society, and delicacy of the distinction implied by that long wall at Hanwell, between the persons inside it, and out. "Does it never occur to me" (thus the letter went on) "that I may be mad myself?" Well, I am so alone now in my thoughts and ways, that if I am not mad, I should soon become so, from mere solitude, but for my work. But it must be manual work. Whenever I succeed in a drawing, I am happy, in spite of all that surrounds me of sorrow. It is a strange feeling;not gratified vanity: I can have any quantity of praise I like from some sorts of people; but that does me no vital good (though dispraise does me mortal harm); whereas to succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual piece of work, is life, to me, as to all men; and it is only the peace which comes necessarily from manual labour which in all time has kept the honest country people patient in their task of maintaining the rascals who live in towns. But we are in hard times, now, for all men's wits; for men who know the truth are like to go mad from isolation; and the fools are all going mad in "Schwärmerei,"-only that is much the pleasanter way. Mr. Lecky, for instance, quoted in last Fors;1 how pleasant for him to think he is ever so much wiser than Aristotle; and that, as a body, the men of his generation are the wisest that ever were born-giants of intellect, according to Lord Macaulay, compared to the pigmies of Bacon's time, and the minor pigmies of Christ's time, and the minutest of all, the microscopic pigmies of Solomon's time, and, finally, the vermicular and infusorial pigmies-twenty-three millions to the cube inch-of Mr. Darwin's time, whatever that may be! How pleasant for * See second letter in Notes and Correspondence [p. 219]. 1 [Not last Fors, but Letter 43, § 14 (p. 121). The present passage was, however, written for an earlier letter (see beginning of this section).] 2 [Compare A Joy for Ever, § 168 (Vol. XVI. p. 154, and see note there).] "his Mr. Lecky to live in these days of the Anakim, spear, to equal which, the tallest pine," etc., etc., which no man Stratford-born could have lifted, much less shaken! 6. But for us of the old race-few of us now left,— children who reverence our fathers, and are ashamed of ourselves; comfortless enough in that shame, and yearning for one word or glance from the graves of old, yet knowing ourselves to be of the same blood, and recognizing in our hearts the same passions, with the ancient masters of humanity;-we, who feel as men, and not as carnivorous worms; we, who are every day recognizing some inaccessible height of thought and power, and are miserable in our shortcomings, the few of us now standing here and there, alone, in the midst of this yelping, carnivorous crowd,2 mad for money and lust, tearing each other to pieces, and starving each other to death, and leaving heaps of their dung and ponds of their spittle on every palace floor and altar stone, it is impossible for us, except in the labour of our hands, not to go mad. 3 7. And the danger is tenfold greater for a man in my own position, concerned with the arts which develop the more subtle brain sensations; and, through them, tormented all day long. Mr. Leslie Stephen rightly says how much better it is to have a thick skin and a good digestion. Yes, assuredly; but what is the use of knowing that, if one hasn't? In one of my saddest moods, only a week or two ago, because I had failed twice over in drawing the lifted hand of Giotto's "Poverty"; utterly beaten and comfortless, "Cf. below, § 12."--Author's MS. note.] 3 [Compare Letter 44, § 1 (p. 125).] 4 [In Fraser's Magazine, June 1874 (vol. 9, N.S., pp. 688-701), Mr. Leslie Stephen wrote a review of Fors Clavigera, entitled "Mr. Ruskin's Recent Writings." The concluding words are: "A sensitive nature, tortured and thrust aside by pachydermatous and apathetic persons, may well be driven to rash revolt and hasty denunciations of society in general. At worst, and granting him to be entirely wrong, he has certainly more claim on our pity than on our contempt. And for a moral, if we must have a moral, we can only remark, that on the whole Mr. Ruskin supplies a fresh illustration of the truth, which has both a cynical and an elevating side to it, that it is amongst the greatest of all blessings to have a thick skin and a sound digestion."] at Assisi, I got some wholesome peace and refreshment by mere sympathy with a Bewickian little pig in the roundest and conceitedest burst of pig-blossom.1 His servant,-a grave old woman, with much sorrow and toil in the wrinkles of her skin, while his was only dimpled in its divine thickness, was leading him, with magnanimous length of rope, down a grassy path behind the convent; stopping, of course, where he chose. Stray stalks and leaves of eatable things, in various stages of ambrosial rottenness, lay here and there; the convent walls made more savoury by their fumigation, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says the Alpine pines are by his cigar. And the little joyful darling of Demeter shook his curly tail, and munched; and grunted the goodnaturedest of grunts, and snuffled the approvingest of snuffles, and was a balm and beatification to behold; and I would fain have changed places with him for a little while, or with Mr. Leslie Stephen for a little while, at luncheon, suppose, -anywhere but among the Alps. But it can't be. 2 HOTEL MEURICE, PARIS, 8. I interrupt myself, for an instant or two, to take notice of two little things that happen to me here-arriving to breakfast by night train from Geneva. Expecting to be cold, I had ordered fire, and sat down by it to read my letters as soon as I arrived, not noticing that the little parlour was getting much too hot. Presently, in comes the chambermaid, to put the bedroom in order, which one enters through the parlour. Perceiving that I am mismanaging myself, in the way of fresh air, as she 1 [See Præterita, ii. § 163 n., where Ruskin quotes this passage.] 2 [In a paper on his ascent (in 1873) of "The Col des Hirondelles," first published in the Alpine Journal for February 1874, and now included in his The Play-ground of Europe, new edition, 1894, p. 188: "Delicious, too, was the rest under a clump of fragrant pines, rendered still more fragrant by our fumigation." Stephen, on seeing this allusion to him by Ruskin, wrote to C. E. Norton: "Next time you write to him say that I (and you) forgive and pity him for raging against the blessed weed, which certainly improves the best of scenery-to the smoker; and assure him that if he would take to it himself, he would find the world look less detestable" (Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, by F. W. Maitland, 1906, p. 247).] 3 [On the association of the pig with Demeter, see Frazer's Golden Bough, vol. ii.] passes through, "Il fait bien chaud, monsieur, ici," says she, reprovingly, and with entire self-possession. Now that is French servant-character of the right old school. She knows her own position perfectly, and means to stay in it, and wear her little white radiant frill of a cap all her days. She knows my position also; and has not the least fear of my thinking her impertinent because she tells me what it is right that I should know. Presently afterwards, an evidently German-importation of waiter brings me up my breakfast, which has been longer in appearing than it would have been in old times. It looks all right at first,-the napkin, china, and solid silver sugar basin, all of the old régime. Bread, butter,—yes, of the best, still. Coffee, milk, -all right too. But, at last here is a bit régime. There are no sugar-tongs; and the sugar is of beetroot, and in methodically similar cakes, which I must break with my finger and thumb if I want a small piece, and put back what I don't want, for my neighbour, to-morrow. 1 of the new "Civilization," this, you observe, according to Professor Liebig and Mr. John Stuart Mill. Not according to old French manners, however. 9. Now, my readers are continually complaining that I don't go on telling them my plan of life, under the rule of St. George's Company. I have told it them, again and again, in broad terms; agricultural life, with as much refinement as I can enforce in it. But it is impossible to describe what I mean by "refinement," except in details which can only be suggested by practical need; and which cannot at all be set down at once. Here, however, to-day, is one instance. At the best hotel in what has been supposed the most luxurious city of modern Europe,-because people are now always in a hurry to catch the train, they haven't time to use the sugar-tongs, or look for a little piece among differently sized lumps, and therefore they use their fingers; have bad sugar instead of 1 [See Vol. XXVII. p. 204.] XXVIII. |