Chapter 29

"ETHICS OF THE DUST" (1865)

Writing to his father from Manchester about the lecture of February 22, 1859--"The Unity of Art"--Ruskin mentions, among various people of interest whom he was meeting, such as Sir Elkanah Armitage and Mrs. Gaskell, how "Miss Bell and four young ladies came from Chester to hear me, and I promised to pay them a visit on my way home, to their apparent great contentment."

The visit was paid on his way back from Yorkshire. He wrote:

"WINNINGTON, NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE.

"12 _March_, 1859.

"This is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday: an enormous old-fashioned house--full of galleries and up and down stairs--but with magnificently large rooms where wanted: the drawing-room is a huge octagon--I suppose at least forty feet high--like the tower of a castle (hung half way up all round with large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings) and with a baronial fireplace:--and in the evening, brightly lighted, with the groups of girls scattered round it, it is a quite beautiful scene in its way. Their morning chapel, too, is very interesting:--though only a large room, it is nicely fitted with reading desk and seats like a college chapel, and two pretty and rich stained-glass windows--and well-toned organ. They have morning prayers with only one of the lessons--and without the psalms: but singing the Te Deum or the other hymn--and other choral parts: and as out of the thirty-five or forty girls perhaps twenty-five or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service--like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than anything else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched penance of college chapel.

"The house stands in a superb park, full of old trees and sloping down to the river; with a steep bank of trees on the other side; just the kind of thing Mrs. Sherwood likes to describe;--and the girls look all healthy and happy as can be, down to the little six-years-old ones, who I find know me by the fairy tale as the others do by my large books:--so I am quite at home.

"They have my portrait in the library with three others--Maurice, the Bp. of Oxford, and Archdeacon Hare,--so that I can't but stay with them over the Sunday."

The principles of Winnington were advanced; the theology--Bishop Colenso's daughter was among the pupils; the Bishop of Oxford had introduced Ruskin to the managers, who were pleased to invite the celebrated art-critic to visit whenever he travelled that way, whether to lecture at provincial towns, or to see his friends in the north, as he often used. And so between March 1859 and May 1868, after which the school was removed, he was a frequent visitor; and not only he, but other lions whom the ladies entrapped:--mention has been made in print (in "The Queen of the Air") of Charles Halle, whom Ruskin met there in 1863, and greatly admired.

"I like Mr. and Mrs. Halle so very much," he wrote home, "and am entirely glad to know so great a musician and evidently so good and wise a man. He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to--which is, in its way, something like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses. But afterwards he played Home, sweet Home, with three variations--_quite_ the most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music. Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible--a mere _mist_ of rapidity; the _hands_ moving slowly and softly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away. It was beautiful too to see the girls' faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment."

Ruskin could not be idle on his visits; and as he was never so happy as when he was teaching somebody, he improved the opportunity by experiments in education permitted there for his sake. Among other things, he devised singing dances for a select dozen of the girls, with verses of his own writing; one, a maze to the theme of "Twist ye, twine ye," based upon the song in "Guy Mannering," but going far beyond the original motive in its variations weighted with allegoric thought. Deep as the feeling of this little poem is, there is a nobler chord struck in the Song of Peace, the battle-cry of the good time coming; in the faith--who else has found it?--that looks forward to no selfish victory of narrow aims, but to the full reconciliation of hostile interests and the blind internecine struggle of this perverse world, in the clearer light of the millennial morning.

Ruskin's method of teaching, as illustrated in "Ethics of the Dust," has been variously pooh-poohed by his critics. It has seemed to some absurd to mix up Theology, and Crystallography, and Political Economy, and Mythology, and Moral Philosophy, with the chatter of school-girls and the romps of the playground. But it should be understood, before reading this book, which is practically the report of these Wilmington talks, that it is printed as an illustration of a method. It showed that play-lessons need not want either depth or accuracy; and that the requirement was simply capacity on the part of the teacher.

The following letter from Carlyle was written in acknowledgment of an early copy of the book, of which the preface is dated Christmas, 1865.

"CHELSEA,

"_20 Decr, 1865._

"The 'Ethics of the Dust,' wh'h I devoured with't pause, and intend to look at ag'n, is a most shining Performance! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet--and _other_ lightnings) of all commendable kinds! Never was such a lecture on _Crystallography_ before, had there been nothing else in it,--and there are all manner of things. In power of _expression_ I pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who had _such_ things to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunning _Dreams_ ab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from their elucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them a _poetry_ that might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too; nothing wanting in the stage-direct'ns, in the pretty little indicat'ns: a very pretty stage and _dramatis personæ_ altogeth'r. Such is my first feeling ab't y'r Book, dear R.--Come soon, and I will tell you all the _faults_ of it, if I gradually discover a great many. In fact, _come_ at any rate!

"Y'rs ever,

"T. CARLYLE."

The Real Little Housewives, to whom the book was dedicated, were not quite delighted--at least, they said they were not--at the portraits drawn of them, in their pinafores, so to speak, with some little hints at failings and faults which they recognised through the mask of _dramatis personæ._ Miss "Kathleen" disclaimed the singing of "Vilikins and his Dinah," and so on. It is difficult to please everybody. The public did not care about the book; the publisher hoped Mr. Ruskin would write no more dialogues: and so it remained, little noticed, for twelve years. In 1877 it was republished and found to be interesting, and in 1905 the 31st thousand (authorised English edition) had been issued. At that time, however, Sesame and Lilies had run to 160,000 copies.

Winnington Hall, the scene of these pastimes, is now, I understand, used by Messrs. Brunner, Mond & Co. as a commonroom or clubhouse for the staff in their great scientific industry.