264: The Matrix and our Connection to it

It is often remarked in the literature, not inaccurately, that Fors clavigera, Ruskin’s lengthy series of letters, published monthly, largely in the 1870s, and addressed to the “workmen and laborers of Great Britain,” is one of the strangest masterpieces in the English language. His desire to compose the missives, largely for an audience many of the members of which would have been mildly literate at best, originated largely as a result of his conviction as the 1870s dawned that, once again, he had failed in any deep, transformative way, his target audience – those impoverished uncountables who had been and continued to be markedly disadvantaged by their weaker positions in the social order. His intent, as always, was, by reaching such harmed souls more directly than was possible in his more lengthy and weighty books, to give them the intellectual and moral motivational tools they would require to transform their lives for the better. (It was never clear the Fors letters had this effect.) The series had no fixed subject. Ruskin, always a font of ideas which he thought would be useful for others to think about seriously, simply fixed on one he deemed important, cogitated on it for a while, and then wrote an essay focused on it–usually about 10 to 15 pages in length–an essay which became the fors issue for any given month.

Such is the case with today’s excerpt from Fors Letter 28. Ruskin, ever conscious of his own place of privilege in the social order as one of the renowned members of the literary class and always feeling somewhat guilty about the advantages such status afforded, is reflecting on his ability, partly made possible because of his fame but mostly because of his pockets being deeper than the same repositories of many of his readers, is reflecting on the “indulgences” which his advantage allows and is asking his audience (ourselves) to similarly recognize and reflect on their own position in the social order and determine whether or not such taken-for-granted opportunities they could enjoy as a result of such positioning were truly beneficent, or, more baldly put, merely selfish. With that context in mind, consider the following excerpt from Letter 28. I think you will find that, as always, when we give him our good attention, Ruskin gets us thinking!

You have, I hope, noticed that, throughout these Letters, I have addressed you as workmen and laborers – and, once or twice, have even ventured to call myself your “fellow workman” and spoken of myself as belonging to–and sharing–modes of thought with those who are not laborers but who live in various ways by their wits – as do lawyers, authors, reviewers, clergyman, parliamentary secretaries and the like – or who live absolutely in idleness on the labor of others – as do most representative squires [the truly rich]. Broadly speaking, then, I address you as workers, and speak of the rest [of us] as idlers–thus not estimating mere wit-work as work at all (such work is always play, when it is good).

Speaking to you, then, as workers, and of myself as an idler, tell me honestly whether you consider me as addressing my betters or my worsers? Let us not give ourselves airs on either side. Which of us, do you seriously think, you or I, is leading the more honorable life? Would you like to live my life rather than your own or, if you couldn’t help finding it pleasanter, would you be ashamed of yourselves for leading mine? Is your place, or mine–considered as cure or sinecure–the better?…I would fain have your real opinion on these things.

But note further, there is another relation between us than that of idler and laborer: the much more direct one of Master and Servant. [Because I have a little money,] I can set you to any kind of work I like, whether it be good for you or bad, pleasant to you or painful. Consider, for instance, what I am doing at this very instant: 7:30 in the morning, 25 February, 1873. Outside, it is bitter black frost, the ground is deep in snow and more falling. I am writing [at my desk in my study in my commodious home in the beautiful English north, Brantwood], comfortably, in a perfectly warm room. Some of my servants were up in the cold at 5:30 to get things ready for me; others, a few days ago where digging coals for my fire in Durham at the risk of their lives; an old woman brought me my watercress two miles through the snow for breakfast yesterday; another old woman is going two miles through the snow today to fetch me my letters at 10 o’clock. Half a dozen men are building a wall for me to keep the sheep out of my garden, and a railroad stoker is holding his own against the north wind to fetch me some raspberry plants to put in it. Somebody in the East End of London is making new boots for me, for I can’t wear those I have much longer; a washer woman is working somewhere in suds to get me a clean shirt for tomorrow; a fisherman is in dangerous waters somewhere else catching me some fish for Lent; and my cook [at this very moment] is making me pancakes, it being Shrove Tuesday. Having written this sentence, I go to the fire to warm my fingers, saunter about a little listlessly, reenter the room, and grumble because I can’t see to the other side of the lake.

And all these people, my serfs or menials, who are undergoing any quantity of hardship I choose to put on them–all these people, nevertheless, are more contented than I am: I can’t be happy, not I !– for one reason because I haven’t gotten the manuscript (never mind the catalog number!) in the British Museum, a manuscript they bought in 1848 for 200 pounds and I never saw it! And I have never been easy in my mind since…

But I used a terrible word just now – “menial.” The modern English mind has a wonderful dread of doing anything of that sort! I suppose there is scarcely another word in the language which they dislike having applied to them, or of which they so deeply misunderstand the application. It comes from a beautiful old Chaucerian word, “menie”, or “many,” which we may apply to the company of anyone worth attending to–the disciples of a master, the scholars of a teacher, the soldiers of a leader… Therefore there is nothing intrinsically dishonorable in being “menial.” The only question is – whose “many” do you belong to, and whether he is a person worthy of being belonged to, or even safe to be belonged to. If you follow for love, that is good menial – if for honor, good menial also; if for ten percent – as a railroad company executive follows its director – it is not good menial…

With that, it is probably best to end for today and let you have some moments to carefully reflect, as he would wish, using Mr. Ruskin’s ruminations, about our own place in the great matrix of life.

Until our next Post, please do continue well out there!

cheers,

🙂

Jim