About the Work
Fors Clavigera is a series of open letters written by John Ruskin, addressed “to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain.” The work takes the form of a monthly publication, with each letter dated on the first day of the month, beginning in 1871. The letters are written from various locations, including Denmark Hill, Matlock in Derbyshire, and other places Ruskin visited during his travels. The title is deliberately chosen in Latin because, as Ruskin explains, it means many things and no English title could carry the same multiplicity of meanings. The work is personal and direct in tone, with Ruskin frequently addressing his readers as “your faithful friend” and signing his name at the close of each letter. The letters are desultory in style, ranging across topics as varied as political economy, art criticism, history, religion, personal reminiscence, and social reform. Ruskin acknowledges this quality openly, explaining that he writes “of things that you little care for, in words that you cannot easily understand” because what his readers least care for is of greatest moment at the present juncture, and because he has no wish to tell anything understandable without trouble. The work also incorporates substantial quotations from other sources, including Froissart’s chronicles, the Daily Telegraph, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Spectator, the Times, and various other contemporary newspapers and documents, which Ruskin uses as evidence for his arguments about the state of modern society. The book is notable for its mixture of high seriousness and occasional levity, its frequent addresses to specific individuals (both real and imagined), and its recurring promises to explain matters more fully in future letters.
Context
The letters were written during a period of profound social and political upheaval in Europe. The Franco-Prussian War had recently concluded, and the Paris Commune had erupted in violence, with the Louvre and Tuileries set on fire by Federals using petroleum. Ruskin refers repeatedly to these events, noting that the fighting in Paris inaugurated a real war between Capitalists and workmen. He observes that the siege of Paris became “the Entertainment of the Hour” for the English upper classes, who followed the events from Versailles through newspaper reports. The letters also respond to contemporary economic debates, quoting Mr. Goschen’s speech claiming “the country is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to the actual workers,” and the Emigration Society’s circular declaring that over-production causes distress among the producing and lower-middle classes. Ruskin engages with the theories of Ricardo on rent, the writings of John Stuart Mill on the nature of productive labour, and the general assumptions of Victorian political economy. He also addresses specific contemporary phenomena: the building of the 35-ton gun called the “Woolwich infant,” the activities of the Boardmen’s and General Advertising Co-operative Society, the Kensington Museum and its educational programs, the construction of railroads through the English countryside, and the growth of large industrial cities. The letters reflect Ruskin’s position as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a role he mentions in connection with his plans for a Mastership of Drawing. They also draw on his personal circumstances: his inheritance from his father, a wine-merchant who began with no capital and considerable debts bequeathed by Ruskin’s grandfather but paid all debts before saving for himself; his ownership of land at Greenwich, houses in Marylebone, and land in Yorkshire; and his purchase of a picture for a thousand pounds, which drew criticism from the Liverpool Daily Courier. The work is thus deeply embedded in the specific conditions of early 1870s Britain and Europe, responding to immediate events while also articulating a broader critique of modern civilisation.
Structure of the Book
The book consists of a series of monthly letters, each dated on the first day of the month. The letters are numbered and proceed chronologically from February 1871 onward. Each letter is self-contained to a degree, addressing particular topics or responding to correspondence and events, but together they develop a coherent set of arguments and proposals. The early letters establish the foundational concepts: the title and its meanings, the parable of the plane and the plank, and the three promises Ruskin requests from his readers. The middle letters develop these themes through extended discussions of political economy, the nature of work, the condition of modern society, and the specific proposals for reform. The later letters become increasingly personal, drawing on Ruskin’s childhood memories, his father’s character, and his own experiences as a landowner and professor. The work also incorporates substantial quotations from other texts, including Froissart’s account of the English army before the battle of Crecy, the description of Utopia from Sir Thomas More, and various contemporary newspaper articles and letters. The final letters in the sequence move toward concrete action: Ruskin announces the founding of the St. George’s Fund, names its trustees, and describes the principles on which land will be purchased and cultivated. The book closes with Ruskin’s announcement that he has made the promised Christmas gift of £7,000 Consols to begin the fund, and with his reflections on the Nativity story, questioning whether it is “a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning.” The work does not follow a conventional narrative arc but rather accumulates its arguments through repetition, variation, and the gradual unfolding of Ruskin’s proposals across the sequence of letters.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The Parable of the Plane Concluded
James’s refusal of the original bargain is absolute: he made the plane for himself, not for William, and he expected advantage from it. If William merely returns it after a year, William gains the profit during that time. James therefore demands, beyond the restoration already bargained, a new plank as compensation for the advantages he will lose. These terms are agreed to, but at year’s end, when the plane comes into James’s possession, he lends it again; recovers it; lends it a third and fourth time. It passes to his son, who still lends it. Ruskin’s interpretation is stark: the plane symbolizes all capital; the plank symbolizes all interest.
Ruskin abridges further. James makes a plane, lends it to William on 1st January for a year. William gives a plank for the loan, wears the plane out, makes another for James, gives it on 31st December. On 1st January he borrows the new one; the arrangement repeats continuously. William’s position: he makes a plane every 31st December, lends it to James till the next day, and pays James a plank annually for the privilege of lending it to him on that evening. Ruskin names this “the Position of William” for future investigations of capital and interest. The fallacy is exposed: if James did not lend the plane, he could only gain his plank by working with it himself and wearing it out himself, then making another. William, working with it instead, gets the advantage, must pay James the plank, and return what James would then have had—not a new plane but the worn-out one. James must make a new one for himself, as he would have had to do if no William existed. If William borrows it again for another plank, all is fair. Clearing the story of nonsense: James makes a plane annually and sells it to William for its proper price—a new plank. This has nothing to do with principal or interest. Many subtle conditions are involved in any sale, including the value of ideas, which Ruskin promises to explain later, noting modern political economists have no familiarity with dealing in that article. He will also tell of the real nature of interest. The letter closes: “I remain, your faithful friend, JOHN RUSKIN.”
The Meaning of “Fors Clavigera”
Ruskin explains why the title is in Latin—it means many things, and no English title could mean so many. The Romans did more and said less than any other nation; their language is the most heroic ever spoken. He wishes readers to know some words of it. A little Latin, well learnt, serves in a higher way than a little Arithmetic, Geometry, or Chemistry. “Fors” is the best part of three English words: Force, Fortitude, Fortune. Force (in humanity) means power of doing good work. A fool or corpse can do mischief; only a wise and strong man, or a weak one with true vital force, can do good. Fortitude means power of bearing necessary pain or trial of patience, whether by time or temptation. Fortune means the necessary fate of a man—the ordinance of his life that cannot be changed. To “make your Fortune” is to rule that appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable.
“Clavigera” is feminine of “Claviger.” Clava means club; Clavis, key; Clavus, nail or rudder. Gero means “I carry”—root of “gesture” and, in a curious byeway, of “jest.” Clavigera may mean Club-bearer, Key-bearer, or Nail-bearer, each corresponding to one meaning of Fors: Fors, the Club-bearer, is the strength of Hercules, or of Deed; Fors, the Key-bearer, is the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience; Fors, the Nail-bearer, is the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law. Hercules’s club—also the favorite weapon of Theseus, whose form is the best inheritance from the greatest Greek sculptors (in the Elgin room of the British Museum)—was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. Ruskin will tell of Theseus helping Hercules in his utmost need and inventing mixed vegetable soup. The Second Fors is portress at a gate she cannot open till you have waited long; her robe is the colour of ashes or dry earth. The third Fors, power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal; the notablest crown existing in Europe worn by Christian kings was—people say—made of a Nail.
On Land, Squires, and the Failure of the Wealthy
Ruskin repeats: all wages mean food and lodging given by land possessors. It is asked how possessors became possessed, and why they should still possess. Ricardo’s “Theory” of Rent, though a creditably ingenious work of fiction for an economist, will not explain the “Practice” of Rent. The true answer: some land has been bought; some won by cultivation; but the greater part in Europe seized originally by force of hand. If readers think they might seize some themselves, they and their children would hold it by the same title as present holders. If it is a bad title, so be it.
The wealthy might have taught the poor manners and merriment—dancing and singing—at little expense. Young English ladies who pay for instruction in operatic melodies about La Traviata’s consumption and Don Juan’s damnation could instead have taught peasant girls costless choirs of innocent song. Science and art don’t pay but cost little. Tithes from brewers’ incomes—or even the sum England spends on beer adulteration drugs—could have founded museums and libraries in every village. An English churchman like Dean Stanley might have explained cathedral sculpture and black-letter inscriptions to peasants, or told stories about builders and those buried there. This might have made England as religious without needing art school prizes or sentimental lectures on Fra Angelico. The Picnic Party could have taught how daily bread might be earned according to God’s laws—with great gain. Instead they spent four hundred million pounds in twenty years teaching European peasants to “pull each other’s hair.”
The results are quoted: a Daily Telegraph account (Jan. 17, 1871) describes refugees around Versailles—hundred thousand people homeless, fifteen thousand at Versailles. A Pall Mall Gazette passage (Jan. 7, 1871, quoting the Builder) depicts London poverty: a dying consumptive father, two starving daughters, fever and smallpox raging, no ventilation, filth, the dead lying unremoved. Ruskin contrasts the 35-ton gun “Woolwich infant” (700-pound shot, 130 pounds powder, fired at 1,303 feet per second) with starving Wapping infants. Mr. Cowper-Temple warns Liberals at Portsmouth of possible combined fleet from Prussia, Russia, and America attacking England. A prospectus for the Boardmen’s and General Advertising Co-operative Society invites capital for men to walk about London between advertising boards. Ruskin questions whether tradesmen can live by lies and workmen by walking flattened between boards. He requests three promises for May 1: (1) Do your own work well, whether for life or death; (2) Help others at their work and avenge no injury; (3) Be sure you can obey good laws before altering bad ones.
Letter III: On History, Fate, and Modern Slavery
Daily journals give reports, not history. A true “olds”paper with tested facts would be worth reading. Current events are but a scene in a great play requiring knowledge of former action. Ruskin denies the war was Napoleon’s or Bismarck’s fault. The men most responsible were St. Louis and his brother in the thirteenth century—one among the best of men, the other the worst. He quotes Carlyle on Frederick’s father, who yearly made his country richer through frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity. Though selling men was banned in 1102 at St. Peter’s, Westminster, under-selling men in markets continues. The modern Politico-Economic slave suffers Compulsory Idleness—a shoemaker must undersell to destroy competitors, but a shoeless man must not cut cowhide for himself.
Mr. Alsager A. Hill defends the Boardmen’s Society as giving labourers full benefit of their work in a humble calling; capital is essential in industrial partnerships; street notices are not necessarily falsehoods. Ruskin replies that a man carrying a board with a bill could carry a board without one where wanted. He notes he uses no advertisements for his books. At Abingdon’s Crown and Thistle inn, he hears a seller crying “Soles, three pair for a shillin'”—in a rational market, such advertisement would be unnecessary. Strive first for leave to be useful. Independence is impossible—we depend on every act of others and on past acts of the dead. Virtue must be content in its own deed, desiring pay for others; vice is content in its deed, desiring pay to others. The Sainte Chapelle’s spire acted as a reverse lightning-rod, carrying earth’s electric fire to heaven, leaving France cold—a “holy Republic” as residue, which Garibaldi fights for against the ghost of St. Louis.
Ruskin quotes Mr. Freeman: a map of England in Victoria’s reign hardly differs from one in William the Conqueror’s. He wishes to tell of English ghosts. He recounts a king’s sorrow—three sons rebelling, urged by their mother. The first son was pardoned repeatedly, flew to France, warred against father and brother, repented as fever withered him, received the signet ring in forgiveness, lay on ashes with a halter, and died. The father fainted three times. The second son conspired and pursued his father through Norman France. The youngest, best beloved, abandoned him. The father died of grief on July 6, 1189. His son, standing by the corpse, had blood burst from his nostrils. One faithful child remained—son of Rosamond, whom the Queen poisoned; he won a battle saving England and became a bishop of the best.
The Tenth and the Land
Ruskin proposes a radical act of stewardship: that others give a tenth of what they have and earn, not to emigrate, but to remain in England and work for her happiness. He clarifies that he is not rich by current estimates, and much of his wealth is already engaged in maintaining art-workmen and public utility objects. Nevertheless, he pledges the tenth of whatever remains to him, with his accounts to be shown for accurate estimation, made over in perpetuity with the best security English law provides, on Christmas Day of this year. He further engages to add the tithe of his future earnings. The fund’s object is to begin and gradually increase the buying and securing of land in England that shall not be built upon but cultivated by Englishmen with their own hands and such force as wind and wave provide. He cares not how few join or how inconsiderable the scale—even two or three poor men’s gardens would suffice. If no help comes, he has done and said what he could.
The conditions for this help are specific and demanding. The land must be beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful; there shall be no steam-engines or railroads, no untended creatures, none wretched but the sick, and none idle but the dead. There shall be no liberty but instant obedience to known law and appointed persons, and no equality but the recognition of every betterness and reprobation of every worseness. Travel must be quiet and safe, not at forty miles an hour; goods carried on beasts’ backs, own backs, carts, or boats. There shall be plenty of flowers, vegetables, corn, and grass, but few bricks. There will be some music and poetry; children shall learn to dance and sing, and perhaps old people in time. There will be some art—an attempt, like the Greeks, to make pots, though probably not to paint gods; instead, pictures of insects and reptiles, butterflies and frogs, referencing an excellent old French potter who put frogs and vipers into his dishes. Higher art, imagination, and science may manifest—botany, history, even the uncalculating wisdom of rude Magi presenting gold and frankincense.
The Purpose of the Letters
Ruskin explains why he writes desultorily, “of things that you little care for, in words that you cannot easily understand.” He writes of things readers care little for because what they least care for is of greatest moment at this juncture. He writes in difficult words because he has no wish to tell anything understandable without trouble. Readers read so fast they catch only echoes of their own opinions. He wishes neither to please nor displease but to provoke thought, accurate thinking, and different opinions. He charges two pots of beer’s price, twelve times yearly, for this advice. He may be thought a quack doctor with caravan, drum, and skeleton, but he is an honest doctor. When he only opines, he holds his tongue and works until he knows. If things prove unknowable, he holds his tongue. If knowable, he writes when he knows—this is called his “arrogance.” Others write habitually of what they know nothing about.
He then details the cost of production: it costs ten pounds to print a thousand copies, five more for a picture, and a penny off sevenpence to send the book. A thousand sixpences are twenty-five pounds; buying a thousand Fors gives Ruskin five pounds and his shopman Mr. Allen five pounds. He will sell all large books henceforward well printed, well bound, at a fixed price; the trade may charge a proper profit. The public will know what they are about; the first producer answers for quality, and the retail dealer charges openly.
The Wood Hyacinths and Asphodel
Ruskin describes wild hyacinths opening in blue fire in Bagley wood, where Empress Maud fled in the snow. He slinks through lest the gamekeeper of the college of St. John catch him—the gamekeeper would distinguish between poacher and professor, but Ruskin dislikes giving account of himself. Scientists would say hyacinths are only green leaves turned blue, of no consequence, not in existence as flowers. These wood hyacinths have something to do with the battle of Marathon and are more vital than the Match Tax. The wood-hyacinth is the best English representative of flowers the Greeks called “Asphodel,” which they thought heroes fallen at Marathon or in just quarrel were rewarded by living in fields-full of—Elysian Fields, or Fields of Coming.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said to Civil Engineers that in colliery or cartridge-manufactory explosions, we send as many men or women into Elysium as after Marathon. On modern principles of religion and equality, every collier and cartridge-filler is as fit for Elysium as any heathen. Ruskin asks whether readers care for the hyacinthine Elysium they are going to, and why not live in Elysium here. Hyacinths grow on top of ground if we stop digging away the bottom. Another asphodel species—onions—was more important to Greeks; Lucian represents a dead hero complaining in Elysium because he got nothing but onions. The French did not understand that hyacinths and onions should fill their Champs Elysées, choosing carriages and roundabouts instead; hence a match tax there would be more productive than one on Asphodel. A Punch’s show recently had its corner knocked off by a shell from Mont Valérien, and the dog Toby “seriously alarmed.”
The Birmingham Correspondent and the Squire
Ruskin received a letter from a Birmingham resident advising that pottery colours must be ground by steam and musical instruments constructed by it. Ruskin answered that porcelain was painted before James Watt; music is not a recent invention; his company deserved no better colours than they got. He criticizes the masculine aristocracy of Europe for being more concerned with taxes on agricultural horses and carts than on matches. He contrasts the English squire, who sends himself to a “highly decorated gaol” (the Houses of Parliament) all spring, with his boy on Abingdon Bridge basking in May sunshine. The squire enjoys “dog-fights on the floor of the House,” which Ruskin calls “dog-fights of the Stars in their courses, Sirius against Procyon,” and makes the siege of Paris “the Entertainment of the Hour.”
Ruskin solemnly declares the sin of the Paris violence—including the possible fall of the Sainte Chapelle following the Vendôme Column—is not the poor rabble’s, nor the blasphemer’s, but has been done “by the kindest of us, and the most honourable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nurtured men” who sought only “the entertainment of the hour.” The robbery and blasphemy were taught by “False Prophets” who took Christ’s name in vain and leagued with “Covetousness, which is idolatry.” Ruskin names Covetousness “lady of Competition and of deadly Care,” idol above “Ignoble Victory,” builder of streets in cities of “Ignoble Peace,” and references Giotto’s picture of her with clawed hands. He promises next month to read a versifier friend of Giotto’s, and introduces Holbein’s portrait of a councillor at poor-law boards who counselled “Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction” for vagrants—good advice only if the vagrant has a home. He promises future talk with “an English lawyer and country gentleman, living on his farm, at Chelsea,” visited unexpectedly by the King of England, whose floor was strewn with green rushes; the farm was burnt, some said because bread of affliction had been served to heretics there, its master being “a stout Catholic” and “also a Communist.”
Postscript and the New Communism
In a postscript, Ruskin notes Reuter’s telegram that the Louvre and Tuileries are in flames, Federals having set fire to them with petroleum. He observes how the age’s “Mechanical Glories” manufacture their own brimstone scientifically, and quotes the “Essay on Liberty” author’s definition of utilities as “fixed and embodied in material objects,” questioning whether linseed oil or petroleum fits it. In Letter VII, Ruskin, whose work lies among stones, clouds, and flowers, has dined out since the Paris fighting and found no one sadder or wiser. He is himself a “Communist of the old school—reddest also of the red,” thinking his property belongs to everybody and everybody’s to him; he expected the Parisians to ask him, as Art Professor, whether the Louvre should be burnt. He notes the French word “Ouvrier” now means “To undo good work,” unlike the English working-men’s word “To do good work, whether we live or die.” He identifies a new political economy principle: “laissez refaire” instead of “laissez faire.”
Ruskin explains old-school Communism: everybody must work in common for dinner; if any man will not work, he must not eat. He quotes the Chelsea farmer, born in Milk Street, London, in 1480, who planned a “Place of Wellbeing” or Utopia. The quoted passage describes Utopian government ensuring no one lives idle, with six hours of work daily, eight hours’ sleep, and the rest for reading or proper exercise. The passage argues that few workers are needed for real service, since women, priests, rich men, and beggars are idle, and many trades are “vain and superfluous,” serving only riot and luxury; if all useless labour were redirected, prices would sink so tradesmen could not live by gains. Ruskin interjects “Fair and softly, Sir Thomas!” noting the farmer became Lord High Chancellor of England after Wolsey’s fall. The quotation continues: in Utopia scarce five hundred capable persons are idle, and even heads of government work as examples.
Ruskin explains old Communists fear not being out of work but not doing work well, considering themselves “common creatures” thankful to be gathered in St. Peter’s sheet. Their chief concern is finding wiser people to rule and teach them.
The Ideal of Horsemanship and the Three Treasures
Ruskin contrasts the true ideal of horsemanship—rooted in the chivalric traditions of the Knight of Athens, the Eques of Rome, the Ritter of Germany, the Chevalier of France, and the Cavalier of England—with the degraded practice of betting on the Derby. He insists that chivalry still exists secretly, even in La Mancha. He recalls his earlier teaching of three spiritual treasures: Admiration, Hope, and Love. Admiration, the faculty of giving Honour, encompasses wonder, reverence, awe, and humility. The Latins called this virtue “pudor,” negated as “impudence,” while the Greeks had a better word, “aidôs.” Ruskin laments that fifty years of teaching impudence as duty, coal-holes as proud existence, and vermin-generation as science have made recovery difficult, though children may yet learn.
In the five cities he named, children shall learn beautiful and brave deeds, the lives of heroes and heroines, and keep a calendar of reverent Memory—morning songs honouring births, evening songs for deaths. Music’s purpose is to say deeply what one means; children shall never sing what they don’t mean, finding no mirth in mockery or obscenity. Ruskin acknowledges the boldness of promising change, noting that good designs fail only when too narrow or hastily pushed. Success requires invisible slowness and invincible patience. His purpose requires neither knightly courage nor monkish enthusiasm: diverting charity from watching disease to guarding health, from punishing crime to rewarding virtue—exercise grounds instead of hospitals, training schools instead of penitentiaries. He recounts a sermon claiming no honest man can live by trade in England; the preacher concluded hearers should be thankful for heaven, not that trade should be amended.
He announces founding a separate Mastership of Drawing at Oxford, having found the Kensington system deficient; elementary schools open in University galleries next October. He reiterates that no great arts are practicable without contented lives, pure air, and emancipation from mechanical occupation. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland and Right Hon. William Cowper-Temple are Trustees of the St. George’s fund, accepting no responsibility for conduct or principles. Legal terms should be published by Christmas Eve.
Margate and the Degradation of the Seaside
Ruskin prints three Times letters documenting mob ruffianism at Margate pier—insults to a sick young lady and a crippled old gentleman, a passive policeman, indecent bathing, noise from mountebanks and organ-grinders, and drainage discharged on rocks. He contrasts this with the 1797 Encyclopædia Britannica account: Margate shipped corn, had a salt-water bath curing nervous and paralytic cases. Thanet was the Saxons’ first possession; the North Foreland is Britain’s terminal point. The painter who knew skies best—Turner—said the loveliest skies were in the Isle of Thanet, where he lived. Ruskin confirms this from Boulogne and Abbeville. Children will learn to see and breathe the sky, and behave under it as before a Father in heaven.
A Violent Tory of the Old School
In Letter X, dated 7th September 1871, Ruskin quotes the Daily Telegraph on the land question, advocating retaining intelligent yeomen. He declares himself “a violent Tory of the old school”—Walter Scott’s and Homer’s school. His childhood reading: Scott’s novels and Pope’s Iliad on weekdays; Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim’s Progress on Sundays, tempered by an aunt’s cold mutton. His mother forced him to learn long Bible chapters by heart, reading Scripture annually from Genesis to Apocalypse—giving him power of taking pains and literary taste. From Scott and Homer he learned kings do harder work and get less than others; modern kingship seems the contrary. His aunt lived at Bridge-end, Perth, with a garden sloping to the Tay, clear-brown water over pebbles.
The Father’s Business and Character
Ruskin’s father began as a wine-merchant with no capital and considerable debts bequeathed by Ruskin’s grandfather. He accepted the bequest and paid all debts before saving for himself, for which friends called him a fool. Ruskin wrote on his father’s gravestone that he was “an entirely honest merchant.” The family took a house at No. 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, whose windows commanded a view of an iron post with trap-doors for filling water-carts—a mystery Ruskin never tired of contemplating. From age four or five, his father could afford a postchaise and pair for two summer months, touring country customers. Ruskin sat on a little bracket in front, seeing all the highroads of England and Wales, and much of lowland Scotland as far as Perth. He read the ‘Abbot’ at Kinross and the ‘Monastery’ in Glen Farg, confusing it with “Glendearg,” believing the White Lady lived there as certainly as the Queen of Scots in Loch Leven.
Love of Pictures and Yearning for Restoration
Ruskin’s father had a rare innate faculty for discerning true art without practice. They stopped at towns near noblemen’s galleries; Ruskin cared more for castles and ruins, feeling “the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration.” He perceived it was happier to live in a small house and admire Warwick Castle than to live in the Castle with nothing to admire. He could not live in America, “a country so miserable as to possess no castles.” Having formed notions of kinghood from FitzJames in the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and noblesse from the Douglas there and in ‘Marmion,’ Ruskin wondered why castles were empty—Tantallon without Archibald of Angus, Stirling without the Knight of Snowdoun. He wore a gilded oak-apple on the 29th of May for Charles the Second’s Restoration, but felt that Restoration was like a gilded apple compared to a real one. His life’s purpose became “to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings.”
French Republicans and the Emperor’s Shadow
The declamation of French Republicans against the Emperor impressed Ruskin with kingship’s power. The Emperor did mischief in architecture—pulling down lovely buildings, putting up frightful ones carved with L.N.’s—but Republicans confessed themselves paralyzed: they could not trade, keep houses in order, study sun and moon, eat déjeûner à la fourchette, sail the Gulf of Lyons, climb Mont d’Or, walk straight, or speak plain, because of the Emperor. English Republicans said the same. The Emperor’s actual harm was limited: encouraging dressmakers and stone-masons, paying idle people salaries, silencing some talkative people. Yet Republicans could only propose assassinating “this shortish man, with a long nose.” If a king’s shadow holds millions helpless, what power in the substance? The greater loss is not the gibbering Republicans but the quiet peasants of Europe—sad-browed, honest-hearted, with no kings except those who rob them, no tutors except those who teach them “how to die.”
Country Clergymen and the Bishop of Manchester
A country clergyman’s wife remonstrated against Ruskin’s saying “Dying has been more expensive to you than living.” Ruskin asks: what more deadly blame against the clergy than that they are “the poor man’s only friends”? Have they so betrayed their Master’s charge that after twelve hundred years no man but they will have mercy on the poor? Ruskin has three dear friends who are country clergymen (one dead makes four). He reads evangelical tracts, including Mr. Zion Ward’s letter to Mr. William Dick of Glasgow, price twopence, concerning “the fall of Lucifer,” which says “the slain of the Lord shall be MAN-Y.” The Bishop of Manchester has been looking on at seaside recreations of his flock; “the thought struck him” that railroads advantage them in taking holidays from Manchester. Ruskin suggests the thought may strike him that a working man should find “holy days” at home.
London Misery and Miss Hill’s Work
A man with official authority, with the Oxford Regius Professor of Medicine, debated sanitary or moral remedies for London’s increasing misery. Ruskin said “you must not have large cities”; the minister called this unpractical. Ruskin felt no measures are practical except those touching the source of evil. A man of influence refusing one London season, staying on his estate, employing village shopkeepers instead of Bond Street ones, would practically conquer this evil. Ruskin mentions Miss Hill’s work in Marylebone, getting five percent from her. A London landlord who takes moderate fixed rent, assures secure possession, and provides playground space, establishes conditions of success. But while Miss Hill moralizes a couple of acres, fifty square miles of country are demoralized outside London by the upper classes’ itch for gossip and dress-display. If lords and ladies maintain the present system, they will not always find they can secure quiet by withdrawing police, nor will park-railings be the only thing to go down. Castle battlements will go down too. Lords and ladies have only forty or fifty winters more to see snow fall; there will be no snow in Heaven. The Telegraph praises the landowner “cultivating huge farms for himself with abundant machinery.” Ruskin asks if this is Lord Derby’s ideal, recalling the Black Countess in ‘Peveril of the Peak’ about “her sainted Derby.”
The Furness Abbey Scene
Ruskin describes waiting on the platform at Furness Abbey railway station on a Saturday afternoon. The station is “tastefully placed” so that one can see it—and nothing else—through the east window of the Abbot’s Chapel, over the ruined altar. A party of workmen employed on another line were taking “Sabbatical refreshment” at a tavern recently established at the south side of the Abbot’s Chapel. When the train whistled, they emerged “highly refreshed” and hurried through the tunnel under the line, taking long steps to keep balance, securing themselves laterally by hustling the wall or any chance passengers. The workmen were dressed universally in brown rags, which they perhaps felt to be the comfortablest kind of dress. Most had pipes, which Ruskin believes more enjoyable than cigars.
The Shepherds’ Return
The passage opens with the shepherds from the Nativity story returning to their business and never leaving it again. Ruskin finds this strange, noting that shepherding is a good business with chances of advancement, citing Jethro the Midianite’s Jew shepherd, the herdsman of Tekoa, and the keeper of few sheep in the wilderness whose brethren were under arms afield. He questions why they seek no advancement after the heavens opened to them, nor are called to ministry under a shepherd king, as fishermen or custom-takers were. Ruskin suggests the work itself may be the best for simple men—that shepherd Lord Clifford or Michael of the Green-head ghyll minister better in the wilderness than lords or commoners in Parliament. He notes the “Fishers of Men” wisely call themselves Pastors rather than Piscators. Yet it seems strange one never hears of these shepherds again. The boy who made pictures in this book left his sheep to preach the Nativity all his life, but they who saw it went back to their sheep.
The Magi and Education
Twelve days later, wiser people from far lands came. Ruskin contrasts them with the simple shepherds, quoting John Stuart Mill on the probable future of the labouring classes: that increased intelligence will make them less willing to be led by authority and prestige of superiors, having no deferential awe or religious principle of obedience. Ruskin finds it curious that in the Nativity story, educated persons produced an effect exactly contrary to Mill’s anticipation—the uneducated came only to see, but the highly trained came to worship, allowing themselves to be led by the authority of a superior person, a born king not of their people, asking “where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have come to worship him.”
Persian Education of Princes
Ruskin translates a Greek account of Persian prince education, written three hundred years before the Magi came to Bethlehem. At seven, the boy learns horsemanship and hunts wild beasts. At fourteen, four masters are chosen—the wisest, justest, most temperate, and bravest Persians. The wisest teaches the magic of Zoroaster (service of the Gods) and kingly duties; the justest teaches truth-speaking; the temperate teaches mastery over pleasures, that he may be free and king of himself; the bravest teaches fearlessness, knowing that fear makes one a slave. Ruskin notes these words were written three hundred years before the carpenter asked for room in the inn. Six times three hundred years have passed since, with theology, preaching, academies (Paduan, Parisian, Oxonian), burning of erroneous persons, grammars, and physical science—yet we still need Cassell’s Educator as a “patent filter of human faculty.”
The Four Masters Applied
Ruskin notes one master taught truth-speaking—so difficult the Persians thought it, though the French gazettes did it perfectly by “Holy Republican instincts.” The freedom-teaching master both French and English have had, but dialects differ on “freedom.” The fearlessness master is little needed, as modern Republicans fear the devil little and God less, though still afraid of thieves—Ruskin cites an English gentleman offered a Raphael Nativity picture for £25 who said it was too dear, yet paid £500 for a pocket-pistol shooting from both ends. None of the masters of justice, temperance, or fortitude were sent to Bethlehem’s Prince; He needed the fourth cardinal virtue—Obedience—for He had to become obedient unto Death.
Modern Magic Contrasted
Ruskin contrasts Zoroaster’s magic (service of God) with modern “magic”—sleight of hand and machine, American and Arabian magicians crying new lamps for old stable lanterns, American oil more inflammable than Gethsemane’s trees. He warns Aaron about oil running down his beard, wise virgins trimming wicks, and “Madelaine la Pétroleuse” with her improved spikenard.
Christmas Statistics
Quoting the Times of June 5th on Mr. Lowe’s statistics: twenty-two million people in 1825 drank nine million barrels of beer; thirty-two million now drink nearly twenty-six million. Spirits increased less proportionally; tobacco rose from sixteen to forty-one million pounds. Ruskin notes beer, spirits, tobacco are more at command, plus lantern magic, harlequin’s wand, necromancy, Witch of Endor—but not Zoroaster’s magic.
Service vs. Help
Ruskin distinguishes becoming God’s servants (court livery, gold-headed sticks) from helping Him. Before helping, one must see Him—indeed, see any creature of His, ascribing due worth or worship.
America’s Function
Ruskin explains he used American expressions to produce “acute cold”—America’s essential function is degradation, showing men how not to worship, never to be ashamed. Zoroaster’s magic is the reverse: finding worth in all things and doing reverence.
The Magi’s Treasures
The Magi bring gold, frankincense, myrrh as discerners of treasures—what is intrinsically worthy, best in brightness, sweetness, bitterness. Ruskin condemns modern teaching denying intrinsic value, telling only exchange value—what Judas can get in a given market, yet Judas had no joy of his bargain. The Zoroastrians “take stars for money,” rejoicing at seeing something they cannot pocket. He quotes their religion’s vital principle: recognition of one supreme power, God of Light, creating, ruling, defending against evil.
The Two Births
The Child is born twice: first from the womb, and then again in the heart of the believer, where He must be received with the same reverence and obedience that the Magi showed, bringing not worldly treasures but the offering of a transformed life, so that the second birth may be as real and as consequential as the first.
Main Arguments
The central argument of Fors Clavigera concerns the nature of capital, interest, and labour. Ruskin develops this through the parable of the plane: James makes a plane, lends it to William for a year, and receives a plank as payment. Ruskin demonstrates that the arrangement, when properly understood, involves no such thing as interest at all. James makes a plane annually and sells it to William for its proper price—a new plank. This, Ruskin insists, “has nothing to do with principal or interest.” The apparent profit from lending is merely the fair price of the object sold. Ruskin names this arrangement “the Position of William” for future investigations of capital and interest, exposing the fallacy by which lenders appear to gain advantage without working. He argues that if James did not lend the plane, he could only gain his plank by working with it himself and wearing it out himself, then making another. William, working with it instead, gets the advantage, must pay James the plank, and return what James would then have had—not a new plane but the worn-out one. James must make a new one for himself, as he would have had to do if no William existed. If William borrows it again for another plank, all is fair. The story, cleared of nonsense, shows that what is called interest is actually the price of a sale.
Ruskin extends this argument to the broader economic system. He contends that all wages mean food and lodging given by land possessors, and he questions how possessors became possessed and why they should still possess. Ricardo’s “Theory” of Rent, he argues, is “a creditably ingenious work of fiction for an economist” but will not explain the “Practice” of Rent. The true answer is that some land has been bought, some won by cultivation, but the greater part in Europe was seized originally by force of hand. If readers think they might seize some themselves, they and their children would hold it by the same title as present holders. Ruskin argues that the guilty Thieves of Europe are the Capitalists: those living by percentages or others’ labour. The real war in Europe, inaugurated by the fighting in Paris, is between Capitalists and workmen. Capitalists kept workmen poor, ignorant, and sinful to gather the produce of their toil.
Ruskin also argues against the modern economic principle of “laissez faire,” proposing instead “laissez refaire”—let us undo and remake. He distinguishes between simple, frank, brave theft, which does not corrupt souls, and “Occult Theft”—legal, respectable, cowardly theft—which corrupts utterly. The first reason for all wars, he claims, is that most persons in European nations are Thieves, greedy for neighbours’ goods, land, and fame. They are also fools, not understanding that neighbours’ prosperity is their own—”the communism of God.” “Invidia” (jealousy) is the curse of man; “Charitas” (desire to do grace) is the source of glory and blessing.
A further argument concerns the nature of modern science and education. Ruskin declares that the nineteenth century exhibits “the elect pattern of perfect Folly.” He criticises the Kensington Museum’s statue of a Newfoundland Dog standing on a Serpent as “the most perfectly and roundly ill-done thing” ever produced by art, whose unvirtue lay in abused instruction—makers had seen Roman, Florentine, Byzantine, Gothic work, misunderstood everything, like earthworms producing worm-casts. He attacks the botany lecture that taught “there were seven sorts of leaves” and whose object was to convince hearers “there was no such thing as a flower.” This, Ruskin argues, is the summary of modern science’s temper: Botany showing no flower, Humanity no Man, Theology no God. True science is “savoir vivre”; modern science is “savoir mourir.”
Ruskin’s positive argument centres on the three promises he requests from his readers for May 1: first, do your own work well, whether for life or death; second, help others at their work and avenge no injury; third, be sure you can obey good laws before altering bad ones. He amplifies these promises across the letters: die for your country doing her assured good; produce corn and sweet pease, not gunpowder and arsenic; rather die than make destroying mechanisms. Punish crime, but do not revenge. Learn to obey good laws, then good Men—”living, breathing, unblinded law”—and subdue base ones, under the “Lord of Light and Peace.”
Key Concepts
The title itself embodies the central concepts of the work. “Fors” is the best part of three English words: Force, Fortitude, Fortune. Force (in humanity) means power of doing good work; a fool or corpse can do mischief, but only a wise and strong man, or a weak one with true vital force, can do good. Fortitude means power of bearing necessary pain or trial of patience, whether by time or temptation. Fortune means the necessary fate of a man—the ordinance of his life that cannot be changed. To “make your Fortune” is to rule that appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable. “Clavigera” is the feminine of “Claviger,” meaning Club-bearer, Key-bearer, or Nail-bearer, each corresponding to one meaning of Fors: Fors the Club-bearer is the strength of Hercules, or of Deed; Fors the Key-bearer is the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience; Fors the Nail-bearer is the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law. Hercules’s club, the favorite weapon of Theseus, was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. The Second Fors is portress at a gate she cannot open till you have waited long; her robe is the colour of ashes or dry earth. The third Fors, power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal.
Ruskin introduces the concept of “the Position of William” as a name for the arrangement by which the borrower of capital appears to gain advantage while actually paying the fair price of what he uses. This concept is central to his critique of interest and his demonstration that what economists call interest is really a sale price.
The “St. George’s Fund” is Ruskin’s proposed solution to the problems he diagnoses. He pledges the tenth of whatever remains to him, estimated accurately, made over in perpetuity with English law’s best security on Christmas Day of this year, with engagement to add the tithe of future earnings. The fund’s object is to begin and gradually increase the buying and securing of land in England that shall not be built upon but cultivated by Englishmen with their own hands and such force as wind and wave provide. The conditions for help include: take small pieces of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, fruitful; no steam-engines or railroads; no untended creatures; none wretched but the sick; none idle but the dead; no liberty but instant obedience to known law and appointed persons; no equality but recognition of every betterness and reprobation of every worseness. Travel quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour; carry things on beasts’ backs, own backs, carts, or boats; plenty of flowers, vegetables, corn, grass; few bricks. Some music and poetry; children shall learn to dance and sing. Some art—try like the Greeks to make pots, though probably cannot paint gods; may put pictures of insects and reptiles—butterflies and frogs.
Ruskin distinguishes between “Republic” as “Re” (res, meaning ‘thing’) plus “publique”—the question being what thing is publicly alive: a Common-Wealth and Public-Thing, or in Paris a “Common-Illth” and “Public-Nothing.” He contrasts “Utopia” with “Kakotopia,” the latter being the condition of Paris where forts rained ruin on palaces and children cast fire into streets. He also distinguishes between old-school Communism and modern varieties: old-school Communism holds that everybody must work in common for dinner; if any man will not work, he must not eat. Old Communists fear not being out of work but not doing work well, considering themselves “common creatures” thankful to be gathered in St. Peter’s sheet. Their chief concern is finding wiser people to rule and teach them. The second law of old Communism concerns property: the public or common wealth shall be statelier than private wealth—cheap pictures inside houses, costly ones outside; magnificent Hôtel-de-Ville, low and plain cafés and taverns; lovely fountains for common drink; simple dwellings for dukes and lords, but majestic schools, almshouses, and workhouses with luxuries for the poor and sick. Private fortunes should be small; the common treasure should include pictures, statues, precious books, gold and silver vessels and bullion, noble horses and cattle, and vast flower-filled public lands with birds nobody could shoot. Instead of a national debt, there should be a “common wealth” of pleasant things distributed annually to the poor.
Ruskin introduces the concept of “dark-red Communists” who seek to make virtue common, wishing the mob would cry for it where it has accumulated. Virtue proportionate to income is suspect; keeping virtue exclusive vitiates it, like manna kept overnight that breeds worms. Dark-red Communists hate all thieving, even to “Coeur-de-Lion’s tar-and-feather extreme.” They most dislike “thieving on trust”—failed bankers’ necks would not be worth “half an hour’s purchase.”
The “Six Useful Things” are presented as the essentials of human life: three Material essentials—Pure Air, Water, Earth—and three Immaterial—Admiration, Hope, Love. Ruskin details how modern Political Economy destroys them: air vitiated by war corpses, chemical exhalations, town miasmata; water turned to sewers, rivers impure; Earth turned from Demeter to Tisiphone with explosive dust. For Admiration, men have learnt contempt; for Hope, no plan beyond ten years; for Love, Political Economy founded on “the desire to defraud his neighbour,” and women driven mad, asking not for Love but “justice.”
The “three spiritual treasures” of Admiration, Hope, and Love are further developed. Admiration is the faculty of giving Honour, encompassing wonder, reverence, awe, and humility. The Latins called this virtue “pudor” (negated as “impudence”); the Greeks had a better word, “aidôs.” Ruskin laments that fifty years of teaching impudence as duty, coal-holes as proud existence, and vermin-generation as science have made recovery difficult, though children may yet learn.
Themes
A recurring theme is the contrast between true and false wealth. Ruskin argues that machinery enables idleness, not better living or greater numbers—out of so much ground only so much living is got. Steam-ploughs on an acre produce only a given number of grains. Machinery increases “possibilities of idleness,” not life. He asks for examples of happy English families with iron servants, contrasting Bavarian, Swiss, Tyrolean farms. He recounts a Cumberland May festival where people walked after a steam plough that whistled for them—no dancing, no piping. Before power-looms, a woman could make a chemise and petticoat of bright appearance; he compares a Bavarian peasant-woman at church in Munich to Hesse’s high-art frescoes. With household demons weaving five hundred times more, Ruskin demands five hundred dresses—or asks whether others (capitalists) have got the goblins’ use, with workers paying interest in “the position of William.”
The theme of homesickness and homelessness runs through the letters. Ruskin argues that though women have historically laboured for husbands’ wealth or bread, never until now have they been so homeless as to say “I have no husband.” English women, he claims, have claimed “the privilege of isolation”—the end of universal education, civilization, and contempt for medieval chivalry. Men declare themselves too indolent to labour for daughters and wives, too poor to support them, and have made women hold independence as an honour, shrieking for “some hold of the mattock.” The work can be read as a meditation on what constitutes a true home and the conditions under which human beings can dwell contentedly on the earth.
The theme of childhood and education is prominent. Ruskin describes his own childhood: his mother forced him to learn long Bible chapters by heart, reading Scripture annually from Genesis to Apocalypse—giving him power of taking pains and literary taste. From Scott and Homer he learned that kings do harder work and get less than others. He recalls the house at No. 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, whose windows commanded a view of an iron post with trap-doors for filling water-carts—a mystery he never tired of contemplating. From age four or five, his father could afford a postchaise and pair for two summer months, touring country customers. Ruskin sat on a little bracket in front, seeing all the highroads of England and Wales, and much of lowland Scotland as far as Perth. He read the ‘Abbot’ at Kinross and the ‘Monastery’ in Glen Farg, confusing it with “Glendearg,” believing the White Lady lived there as certainly as the Queen of Scots in Loch Leven. These memories ground his proposals for education: children shall learn beautiful and brave deeds, the lives of heroes and heroines, and keep a calendar of reverent Memory—morning songs honouring births, evening songs for deaths. Music’s purpose is to say deeply what one means; children shall never sing what they don’t mean, finding no mirth in mockery or obscenity.
The theme of chivalry and its survival in the modern world appears throughout. Ruskin contrasts his ideal of horsemanship with betting on the Derby, invoking the chivalric traditions of the Knight of Athens, Eques of Rome, Ritter of Germany, Chevalier of France, and Cavalier of England. Chivalry, he insists, still exists secretly, even in La Mancha. The two chivalries are of the Horse and the Wave. He advocates small wooden ships, citing Sir Richard Grenville and Lord Dundonald, and argues that seamen cannot be vigilant in iron ships.
The theme of nature and its destruction by industrial progress is developed through specific examples. Ruskin describes a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once divine as Tempe, destroyed by “Railroad Enterprise”—rocks blasted, shale heaped into the stream; now fools travel between towns in half an hour. He describes the sky covered with grey cloud—a dry black veil, with a “strange, bitter, blighting wind.” All spring in London and Oxford has been grey-shrouded: meagre March, sullen April, despondent May, darkened June. The speaker, over fifty, has never seen such mornings. It looks like poisonous smoke (two hundred furnace chimneys within two square miles) or “dead men’s souls” flitting, doubting their place. He dislikes living in a world with “a multitude of murdered men in the ground.” Photography makes the sun draw brown landscapes, but the sun once drew green and blue landscapes in England, now lost to smoke.
The theme of the Fallen Race appears in the Furness Abbey scene, where the workmen are described as “quite an unmanageable sort of people,” and had been so for generations. The narrator knew this was partly the truth, but it made things seem more wrong: here were not only the actual two or three dozen unmanageable persons with taste for beer and none for architecture, but these implied many unmanageable persons before and after them—a long ancestral and filial unmanageableness. They were a “Fallen Race,” every way incapable of appreciating the beauty of ‘Modern Painters’ or fathoming the significance of ‘Fors Clavigera.’ But what they had done to deserve their fall, or what he had done to deserve the privilege of being author of those valuable books, remained obscure to him.
The theme of the two great masses of humanity—the “peasant paymasters” who produce food and the “polite persons” who consume it—is developed through the list of clerical, legal, courtly, literary, and military persons paid in turnips for their services. The peasant is not to be pitied if these arrangements are faithfully carried out—if he really gets moral advice, if his house is maintained to be his own, if courtly persons present a celestial appearance, if literary persons talk beautiful words, if the scarecrow (military person) stands quiet producing a picturesque effect. But if he gets immoral advice from his moralist, or his lawyer advises him his house is not his own, or his bard charms him with obscene and ugly words, or his scarecrow becomes disquiet and seems likely to bring a whole flight of scarecrows from neighbours’ fields, then it is time to look into such arrangements.
The Author’s Conclusions
Ruskin concludes that the modern economic system is fundamentally unjust and unsustainable. The real war in Europe is between Capitalists and workmen, and the Capitalists are the guilty Thieves who have kept workmen poor, ignorant, and sinful to gather the produce of their toil. The remedy lies not in revolution but in the patient construction of alternative arrangements: the purchase of land, its cultivation by human and animal labour without steam power, the education of children in useful skills and reverent memory, and the creation of a “common wealth” of beautiful and useful things. He proposes the St. George’s Fund as a concrete beginning, pledging a tenth of his fortune and calling on others to do likewise. He cares not how few join or how inconsiderable the scale—even two or three poor men’s gardens. If no help comes, he has done and said what he could.
Ruskin concludes that true justice is unequal: take most pains with the best material, not the dullest. He will not mend or reform people already “out of form,” but will shape unspoiled stuff. Mental rank is fixed from birth; no effort can increase faculties. He recounts a Scottish student who asked if he would draw as well as Turner; Ruskin answered it was more likely he would be Emperor of All the Russias. The student, vain and industrious, later died after straining to draw like Durer or Turner. Competitive examination causes deaths and mischief. Education will avoid straining youths, using crucial but not severe examinations. Happiness lies in admiring others’ faculties, not confidence in one’s own. Modern education teaches “impudence.”
Ruskin concludes that the Nativity story is certainly one of two things: a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning—not a cunningly devised fable, but an impression from strange spiritual cause on the human race at its most critical period, producing the greatest effect ever achieved by an intellectual conception, yet to guide by its truth or falsehood the absolute destiny of ages to come. He envies believers on weakest grounds more than deniers on strongest, but not those who imagine they believe and do not. He has always wanted to know what angels look like—eyes, hair, dress—but no one tells him.
