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LETTER 391

THE CART GOES BETTER, SO2

1. ON a foggy forenoon, two or three days ago, I wanted to make my way quickly from Hengler's Circus to Drury Lane Theatre, without losing time which might be philosophically employed; and therefore afoot, for in a cab I never can think of anything but how the driver is to get past whatever is in front of him.

On foot, then, I proceeded, and accordingly by a somewhat complex diagonal line, to be struck, as the stars might guide me, between Regent Circus and Covent Garden. I have never been able, by the way, to make any coachman understand that such diagonals were not always profitable. Coachmen, as far as I know them, always possess just enough geometry to feel that the hypothenuse is shorter than the two sides, but I never yet could get one to see than an hypothenuse constructed of cross streets in the manner of the line A C, had no advantage, in the matter of distance to be traversed, over the simple thoroughfares A B, B C, while it involved the loss of the momentum of the carriage, and a fresh start for the cattle, at seventeen corners instead of one, not to mention the probability of a block at half-a-dozen of them, none the less frequent since underground railways, and more difficult to get out of, in consequence of the increasing discourtesy and diminishing patience of all human creatures.

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2. Now here is just one of the pieces of practical

[As a summary of the contents of this Letter Ruskin wrote in his copy, Comparison between Theatric true life and practical false."]

2 [For the bearing of the title, see § 8.]

geometry and dynamics which a modern schoolmaster, exercising his pupils on the positions of letters in the word Chillianwallah,' would wholly despise. Whereas, in St. George's schools, it shall be very early learned, on a square and diagonal of actual road, with actual loaded wheelbarrow-first one-wheeled, and pushed; and secondly, twowheeled, and pulled. And similarly, every

A

B

Fig. 1

bit of science the children learn shall be directly applied by them, and the use of it felt, which involves the truth of it being known in the best possible way, and without any debating thereof. And what they cannot apply they shall not be troubled to know. I am not the least desirous that they should know so much even of the sun as that it stands still (if it does). They may remain, for anything I care, under the most simple conviction that it gets up every morning and goes to bed every night; but they shall assuredly possess the applicable science of the hour it gets up at, and goes to bed at, on any day of the year, because they will have to regulate their own gettings up and goings to bed upon those solar proceedings.'

3. Well, to return to Regent Street. Being afoot, I took the complex diagonal, because by wise regulation of one's time and angle of crossing, one may indeed move on foot in an economically drawn line, provided one does not miss its main direction. As it chanced, I took my line correctly enough; but found so much to look at and think of on the way, that I gained no material advantage. First, I could not help stopping to consider the metaphysical reasons of the extreme gravity and self-abstraction of Archer Street. Then I was delayed a while in Prince's Street,

1 [See Letter 30, § 9 (Vol. XXVII. p. 558).]

[This passage was written in January 1874, and in his diary Ruskin notes the grumbling which his persistent early rising caused in his hotel in London. On the next day (January 22) he records a visit to the circus (see § 6 here): "the splendid fellows and girls and horses, so humiliating to me in their own power and virtue."]

XXVIII.

Soho, wondering what Prince it had belonged to.1 Then I got through Gerrard Street into Little Newport Street; and came there to a dead pause, to think why, in these days of division of mechanical labour, there should be so little space for classification of commodities, as to require oranges, celery, butchers' meat, cheap hosiery, soap, and salt fish, to be all sold in the same alley.

4. Some clue to the business was afforded me by the sign of the "Hôtel de l'Union des Peuples" at the corner, "bouillon et boeuf à emporter;" but I could not make out why, in spite of the union of people, the provision merchant at the opposite corner had given up business, and left his house with all its upper windows broken, and its door nailed up. Finally, I was stopped at the corner of Cranbourne Street by a sign over a large shop advising me to buy some "screwed boots and shoes." I am too shy to go in and ask, on such occasions, what screwed boots are, or at least too shy to come out again without buying any, if the people tell me politely, and yet I couldn't get the question what such things might be out of my head, and nearly got run over in consequence, before attaining the Arcadian shelter of Covent Garden. I was but just in time to get my tickets for Jack in the Box, on the day I wanted, and put them carefully in the envelope with those I had been just securing at Hengler's for my fifth visit to Cinderella. For indeed, during the last three weeks, the greater part of my available leisure has been spent between Cinderella and Jack in the Box; with this curious result upon my mind, that the intermediate scenes of Archer Street and Prince's Street, Soho, have become to me merely as one part of the drama, or pantomime, which I happen to have seen last;

1 [The appearance of Archer Street, Great Windmill Street, is now a good deal changed, as the new Lyric and Apollo theatres abut upon it. Prince's Street, Wardour Street, was "so called from the Military Garden of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King James I., which stood on part of Prince's Street and Gerard Street." Hence, also, the name "Archer" Street. "Gerrard" (as the street is now called) is a mis-spelling. The whole district was laid out by the Prince as a garden for military exercises; it subsequently came into the possession of Charles Gerard, the first Earl of Macclesfield, who let the ground for building: see Peter Cunningham's Handbook of London, 1850, pp. 200, 410.]

or, so far as the difference in the appearance of men and things may compel me to admit some kind of specific distinction, I begin to ask myself, Which is the reality, and which the pantomime? Nay, it appears to me not of much moment which we choose to call Reality. Both are equally real; and the only question is whether the cheerful state of things which the spectators, especially the youngest and wisest, entirely applaud and approve at Hengler's and Drury Lane, must necessarily be interrupted always by the woeful interlude of the outside world.

5. It is a bitter question to me, for I am myself now, hopelessly, a man of the world!-of that woeful outside one, I mean. It is now Sunday; half-past eleven in the morning. Everybody about me is gone to church except the kind cook, who is straining a point of conscience to provide me with dinner. Everybody else is Everybody else is gone to church, to ask to be made angels of, and profess that they despise the world and the flesh, which I find myself always living in (rather, perhaps, living, or endeavouring to live, in too little of the last). And I am left alone with the cat, in the world of sin.

6. But I scarcely feel less an outcast when I come out of the Circus, on week days, into my own world of sorrow. Inside the Circus, there have been wonderful Mr. Edward Cooke, and pretty Mademoiselle Aguzzi, and the three brothers Leonard, like the three brothers in a German story,' and grave little Sandy, and bright and graceful Miss Hengler, all doing the most splendid feats of strength, and patience, and skill. There have been dear little Cinderella and her Prince, and all the pretty children beautifully dressed, taught thoroughly how to behave, and how to dance, and how to sit still, and giving everybody delight that looks at them; whereas, the instant I come outside the door, I find all the children about the streets ill-dressed, and ill-taught, and ill-behaved, and nobody cares to look at

1 [As, for instance, in Grimm's "Three Children of Fortune." See also Ruskin's own story of The King of the Golden River (Vol. I. pp. 305 seq.), in which the characters are German.]

them. And then, at Drury Lane, there's just everything I want people to have always, got for them, for a little while; and they seem to enjoy them just as I should expect they would. Mushroom Common, with its lovely mushrooms, white and grey, so finely set off by the incognita fairy's scarlet cloak; the golden land of plenty with furrow and sheath; Buttercup Green, with its flock of mechanical sheep, which the whole audience claps because they are of pasteboard, as they do the sheep in Little Red Riding Hood because they are alive; but in either case, must have them on the stage in order to be pleased with them, and never clap when they see the creatures in a field outside. They can't have enough, any more than I can, of the loving duet between Tom Tucker and little Bo Peep: they would make the dark fairy dance all night long in her amber light if they could; and yet contentedly return to what they call a necessary state of things outside, where their corn is reaped by machinery, and the only duets are between steam whistles.1 Why haven't they a steam whistle to whistle to them on the stage, instead of Miss Violet Cameron? Why haven't they a steam Jack in the Box to jump for them, instead of Mr. Evans? or a steam doll to dance for them, instead of Miss Kate Vaughan? Vaughan? They still seem to have human ears and eyes, in the Theatre; to know there, for an hour or two, that golden light, and song, and human skill and grace, are better than smoke-blackness, and shrieks of iron and fire, and monstrous powers of constrained elements. And then they return to their underground railroad, and say, "This, behold, this is the right way to move, and live in a real world."

7. Very notable it is also that just as in these two theatrical entertainments-the Church and the Circus,-the imaginative congregations still retain some true notions of the value of human and beautiful things, and don't have steam-preachers nor steam-dancers,-so also they retain some just notion of the truth, in moral things: Little Cinderella, 1 [Compare Letter 5, § 11 (Vol. XXVII. p. 89).]

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