fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers, it will be i little to their liking to make themselves into tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." And I cannot but agree with you as to the exceeding probability of some such reluctance on their part, which will be a very awkward state of things indeed, (since we can by no i means get on without tailoring and shoemaking,) and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next letter. 102. P.S.-Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave Doré; he is wrong, however, in thinking there is any good in those illustrations of Elaine.1 I had intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my mind quite as significant - almost as awful-a sign of what is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet should have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the lower Evangelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishonoured. Those Elaine illustrations are just as impure as anything else that Doré has done; but they are also vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the Contes Drôlatiques are full of power and invention; but those to Elaine are merely and simply stupid; theatrical bêtises, with the taint of the charnel-house on them besides. 1 [Dore's illustrations to Elaine were published by Moxon in 1866; and to the Idylls of the King (i.e., Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere) in 1868. In 1869 the poet visited Doré in Paris. 66 Although," says Mr. Locker-Lampson, who accompanied him, "Tennyson had not been entirely satisfied with the publication of the folio edition of the Idylls, which Doré illustrated, the two met and parted with perfect cordiality" (Alfred Lord Tennyson: a Memoir by his Son, vol. ii. p. 77).] 2 [See above, § 30, p. 344.] C 2 c XVII. LETTER XVII The Relations of Education to Position in Life April 3, 1867. 103. I AM not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness of the dilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as much as I do myself. You working men have been crowing and peacocking at such a rate lately; and setting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of society, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will not anticipate any of the difficulties which suggest themselves to a thoroughbred Tory and Conservative, like me.1 Perhaps you will expect a youth properly educated-a good rider-musician-and wellgrounded scholar in natural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he has to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver? If you do, I should very willingly admit that you might be right, and go on to the farther development of my notions without pausing at this stumblingblock, were it not that, unluckily, all the wisest men whose sayings I ever heard or read, agree in expressing (one way or another) just such contempt for those useful occupations, as I dread on the part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakespeare and Chaucer,-Dante and Virgil,-Horace and Pindar,-Homer, Æschylus, and Plato,—all the men of any age or country who seem to have had Heaven's music on their lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine that the feeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as well as sensitive Englishwomen, on reading my last letter, would mostly be-"Is the man mad, or laughing at us, to 1 [See Præterita, i. § 1 (reprinting part of Fors Clavigera, Letter 10).] propose educating the working classes this way? He could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better method of making them acutely wretched." 104. It may be so, my sensible and polite friends; and I am heartily willing, as well as curious, to hear you develop your own scheme of operative education, so only that it be universal, orderly, and careful. I do not say that I shall be prepared to advocate my athletics and philosophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or imply, in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You imply. that a certain portion of mankind must be employed in degrading work; and that, to fit them for this work, it is necessary to limit their knowledge, their active powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood upwards, so that they may not be able to conceive of any state better than the one they were born in, nor possess any knowledge or acquirements inconsistent with the coarseness, or disturbing the monotony, of their vulgar occupation. And by their labour in this contracted state of mind, we superior beings are to be maintained; and always to be curtseyed to by the properly ignorant little girls, and capped by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by. 105. Mind, I do not say that this is not the right state. of things. Only, if it be, you need not be so over-particular about the slave-trade, it seems to me.1 What is the use of arguing so pertinaciously that a black's skull will hold as much as a white's, when you are declaring in the same breath that a white's skull must not hold as much as it can, or it will be the worse for him? It does not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into doing a piece of low work that I don't like; but it is a very profound state of slavery to be kept, myself, low in the forehead, that I may not dislike low work. 106. You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward one, whichever way you look at it. But, what is 1 [See Munera Pulveris, § 130 (above, p. 254).] still worse, I am not puzzled only, at this part of my scheme, about the boys I shall have to make workmen of; I am just as much puzzled about the boys I shall have to make nothing of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by reason or rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones into some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes made for the rest,-what is the business of "the rest" to be? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentlemanly professions; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers of special skill or pugnacity. All my boys will be soldiers. So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic education fairly established, of what help to them will my respect be? They will all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number of episcopates-one over every hundred families-(and many positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, above them and below), but all these places will involve much hard work, and be anything but covetable; while, of clergymen's usual work, admonition, theological demonstration, and the like, I shall want very little done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously earned his own dinner by more productive work than admonition.1 Well, I wish, my friend, you would write me a word or two in answer to this, telling me your own ideas as to the proper issue out of these difficulties. I should like to know what you think, and what you suppose others will think, before I tell you my own notions about the matter. [See Appendix viii.; below, p. 475.] LETTER XVIII The harmful Effects of Servile Employments. The possible Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by Religious Persons April 7, 1867. 107. I HAVE been waiting these three days to know what you would say to my last questions; and now you send me two pamphlets of Combe's' to read! I never read anything in spring-time (except the Ai, Ai, on the " "sanguine flower inscribed with woe"); and, besides, if, as I gather from your letter, Combe thinks that among well-educated boys there would be a percentage constitutionally inclined to be cobblers, or looking forward with unction to establishment in the oil and tallow line, or fretting themselves for a flunkey's uniform, nothing that he could say would make me agree with him. I know, as well as he does, the unconquerable differences in the clay of the human creature: and I know that, in the outset, whatever system of education you adopted, a large number of children could be made nothing of, and would necessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates enough for degradation to common mechanical business: but this enormous difference in bodily and mental capacity has been mainly brought about by difference in occupation, and by direct maltreatment; and in a few generations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages looked after, and sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type of face and form, and a high intelligence, 1 [George Combe (1788-1858), writer on phrenology, education, and social ethics. One of the pamphlets may have been his Constitution of Man (see below, p. 472); another, his Remarks on National Education, 1847.] 2 [Ruskin quotes from Lycidas, 106, where Milton's reference is to the markings of ai ai (alas! alas!) which the Greeks saw on the petals of the hyacinth, in token of the death of the youth from whose blood the flower had sprung.] |