INTRODUCTION TO VOL. XXVIII THIS Volume contains Letters 37-72 of Fors Clavigera; that is, volumes iv., v., and vi. of the original issue (1874, 1875, 1876). Full particulars of the original publication, and of subsequent alterations, are given in the Bibliographical Note (p. xxiii.). To the general account of Fors Clavigera, given in the Introduction to Vol. XXVII., it is only necessary to add here a few particulars about Ruskin's movements and enterprises during the years 1874-1876. Two features of the present volume will strike every reader. One is the bulk, in spite of the brevity of its prefatory manner; the other is the more and more distinctively Christian tone of the author's teaching. To this latter point he himself called attention in a subsequent Letter. Both these features of the volume are connected with a phase of Ruskin's history, which has been described in a previous Introduction. The time covered by the present Letters of Fors was the time of his "conclusive" sorrow. The romance of his life came, after much tribulation, to a tragic ending; and, as Carlyle noted, "despair on the personal question" made Ruskin "go ahead all the more with fire and sword upon the universal one."3 Thus Fors Clavigera, and the business of the St. George's Guild which grew out of it, came to occupy more and more of his time and thoughts. The correspondence connected with it greatly increased, and the numbers of Fors itself became longer. At the same time their tone became more definitely religious, and their temper was heightened. The writing of these Letters, with their passionate appeals and note of mystic fervour, greatly excited Ruskin, and this is probably the reason which led Carlyle to regret their continuance. "Ruskin," he wrote to his brother, Dr. John Carlyle (November 6, 1875), "has not sent me the Fors Clavigera this month, hitherto. Does that mean anything? I fear it does not mean that he has given it up altogether!" 1 See Vol. XXIX. p. 86. See Letter 61, § 3 (p. 486). See Vol. XXIV. p. xx. New Letters of Carlyle, edited by Alexander Carlyle, vol. ii. p. 316. Carlyle's pleasure in an earlier number of 1875 is noted below, p. 319 n. Several of the earlier Letters in this volume are written, it will be seen, from Italy, where Ruskin spent several months in 1874. The influence of his sojourn at Assisi was particularly marked, both in causing some revision of his estimate of Italian art, and in quickening his spiritual life. These impressions are noted by him in Fors,1 and have been discussed in an earlier Introduction.2 The sketch of the Sacristan's Cell at Assisi, introduced into the present volume (Plate II.) was made at this time. The development of Ruskin's schemes in connexion with St. George's Guild appears in the Letters themselves, and the subject is further dealt with in Vol. XXX. One or two minor enterprises, to which incidental reference is made in the present volume, may, however, here be noted. One of these, which belongs to an earlier date, was an endeavour to exhibit "an ideally clean street pavement, in the centre of London, in the pleasant environs of Church Lane, St. Giles's.” 3 This modern instance of cleansing Augean stables was to be the first Labour of St. George, as Ruskin explained in the following letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette (December 28, 1871): "SIR,-I have been every day on the point of writing to you since your notice, on the 18th, of the dirty state of the London streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters are managed in my neighbourhood. I was obliged, a few years ago, for the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country towns of Utopia; and though I was at first disappointed in the climate, which indeed is no better than our own (except that there is no foul marsh air), I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the things look all so dead; and find my walk on the whole pleasanter in the streets, these being always perfectly clean, and the wood-carving of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furniture. But it was about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest way of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as they can go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they, like us, had only crossing-sweepers, that they might just as well sweep the whole 1 See Letter 76 (Vol. XXIX. pp. 90-91). 2 Vol. XXIII. pp. xlv., xlvi. 3 Letter 48, § 3 (p. 204). A paragraph complaining of the condition of the streets. of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might cross anywhere. Of course that meant more work for the sweepers; but the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done in the open air;-they appointed a due number of broomsmen to every quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in our little town as in great Rotterdam when Doctor Brown saw it on his journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, the women go about in white slippers,' which is pretty to see. Now, Sir, it would, of course, be more difficult to manage anything like this in London, because, for one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running down every street that slopes to the river;-and besides, because you have coal-dust and smoke and what not to deal with; and the habit of spitting, which is worst of all-in Utopia a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or anywhere else, indeed, if he could help it). But still it is certain we can at least anywhere do as much for the whole street, as we have done for the crossing; and to show that we can, I mean, on 1st January next, to take three street-sweepers into constant service; they will be the first workpeople I employ with the interest of the St. George's fund, of which I shall get my first dividend this January; and, whenever I can get leave from the police and inhabitants, I will keep my three sweepers steadily at work for eight hours a day; and I hope soon to show you a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line. "December 27, 1871." "I am, Sir, your faithful servant, "JOHN RUSKIN. He Ruskin was as good as his word, and in the following January his brigade was at work. He himself was the bishop, or overseer, of this work, and his diary, as has been already noted,2 shows that he carefully numbered and took stock of his labourers. A passage now appended to Fors shows his interest in their domestic economy. took the broom himself, for a start; put on his gardener, Downs, as foreman of the job; and often drove round with his friends to inspect the works. He ascribes the collapse of the experiment to the removal of his personal direction when he left Denmark Hill for Brantwood.* Dr. Edward Browne, the son of the author of the Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne. Writing to his father from Rotterdam, in 1668, he says: "The cleanenesse and neatnesse of this towne is so new unto mee, that it affoordeth great satisfaction, most persons going about the streets in white slippers" (Life and Works of Sir Thomas Browne, 1836, vol. i. p. 154). 2 Vol. XXII. p. xxv. 3 Appendix 3, Vol. XXIX. p. 535. See below, p. 204. XXVIII. b Something must be allowed, also, for "the young rogue of a crossingsweeper " mentioned in Fors. He was "an extremely handsome and lively shoeblack, picked up in St. Giles'. It turned out that he was not unknown in the world; he had sat to artists-to Mr. Edward Clifford, to Mr. Severn; and went by the name of Cheeky.' He used to be caught at pitch and toss or marbles in unswept Museum Street. Ruskin rarely ever dismissed a servant; but street sweeping was not good enough for Cheeky, and so he enlisted. The army was not good enough, and so he deserted; and was last seen disappearing into the darkness, after calling a cab for his old friends one night at the Albert Hall." And so the enterprise was abandoned; but sometimes when I find a piece of London road which is better swept owing to the quickened zeal of our municipal authorities, I seem to see the figure of Ruskin with his broom among the workers. The other experiment, to which Ruskin refers in the same place in Fors, was the starting of a tea-shop. This was opened in 1874 at 29 Paddington Street, near his Marylebone property. The painting of the sign—“Mr. Ruskin's Tea-shop "—which caused him (he tells us) some months of artistic indecision,2 was ultimately undertaken by Mr. Arthur Severn. Ruskin "resolutely refused to compete with neighbouring tradesmen either in gas or rhetoric"; and it is to be doubted whether the absence of these allurements was compensated for by the set of fine old china, bought at Siena, with which he dressed his shopwindow. Two old servants of his mother's, Harriet and Lucy Tovey, were installed as shopwomen, and when, two years later, Harriet died, the shop was abandoned. The experiment had a very useful purpose. Ruskin's object was to sell pure tea only a matter in which, as a confirmed tea-drinker, he was somewhat of a connoisseur; and also to sell it in packets as small as poor customers chose to buy, without making a profit on the subdivision-a very important point in the domestic economy of the poor, especially at times of alteration in the tea-duty. When I hear of larger, and more successful undertakings on the same basis, I seem to see Ruskin behind the counter; and I recall a practice which was to prevail in the Utopia of his master: "For, if I may venture to say a ridiculous thing, if we were to compel the best men everywhere to keep taverns for a time, to carry on retail trade, or do anything of that sort: or if, in consequence of some necessity, the best women were compelled to take to a similar calling, 1 W. G. Collingwood, Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 293. See Letter 67, § 23 (p. 661). then we should know how agreeable and pleasant all these things are. And if they were carried on according to pure reason, all such occupations would be held in honour, and those who practised them would be deemed parents or nurses."1 Ruskin's movements during the years covered by this volume are recounted in earlier Introductions. During the later part of 1873 and the earlier months of 1874 he was much in Oxford, and the volume opens with an incident at his lectures there (p. 14). Then came the foreign tour, already mentioned, during which he wrote Letters 41-47 and part of 48. At the end of 1874 he was again in Oxford, but the years 1875 and 1876 were mostly spent at Brantwood. The death of "the woman whom he hoped would have been his wife" is foreshadowed in Letter 49 (p. 246), and this was the cause of his partial retirement from Oxford. His interest in the peasants around his country home appears in the Letters on cottage libraries (50, 51, 59). The driving tours, which have been described in an earlier volume, appear in Letters 50, 52, and 66. A visit to Arundel is mentioned in Letter 62. In August 1876 Ruskin went to Venice, but before he left he visited the property of the St. George's Guild at Barmouth, as mentioned in Letter 69. His stay at Venice, in connection with Fors Clavigera, may more conveniently be treated in the Introduction to the next volume. With regard to the illustrations in this volume, only two of the plates-namely, the specimen of "Lombardic Writing" (IV.) and the facsimile of "Nelson's Writing" (VI.)-appeared in the Letters as issued by Ruskin; for with Letter 37, the frontispieces to Fors were, as he explains, suspended (p. 25). He issued, however, in another form, several illustrations which were discussed in Fors. One of these was an enlargement from a woodcut in Holbein's "Dance of Death." enlargement was made by Arthur Burgess, and from this autotypes were taken which Ruskin placed on sale to readers of Fors, through his agent, Mr. William Ward. In the present volume the enlargement has been re-cut on wood by Mr. H. S. Uhlrich (Plate III.). The Next, Ruskin selected four photographs of well-known works of art to serve as elementary standards or lessons. He sent copies of the photographs to his Museum at Sheffield, and placed others on sale, 1 Plato, Laws, xi. 918 (Jowett's translation). 2 Vol. XXIII. p. xxx. 3 Vol. XXIV. pp. xx.-xxxiv. Vol. XXIV. p. xxvii. Ibid., p. xxvi. |