let us be antean: let us touch earth. let us look at the pit out of which we were digged: let there be no false shame; let us talk of clay: of all the things in which the modern world has gone wrong there is nothing in which it has gone wrong more than in the point of clay. our fathers before us, who were great men and wise—they knew what the thing was. when they had robbed a monastery or killed a king, or in some other way acquired an estate in land, what did they? they said to the steward or to the fathers of the village: "is there no clay about?" and when they heard there was, there did they found their house. and in this way it has come about that all great englishmen, or very nearly all great englishmen have been born and brought up on clay.
that noble and regal city, the city of london, the second city of the west, the city which was founded by brutus himself, the city which is directly descended from ancient ilion and bears its glories—london, i say, could not be built save upon clay. for though at first, in their folly, the builders of london put up their wretched wattled huts on[pg 9] gravel, yet when the spirit took them that they would grow, and they determined to make a town of it, on to the clay they went.
then again, the clay bred the wheat that used to grow in england, and it grew the barley also, and man, who was made of clay, lived on the clay, drank out of the burnt clay, and ate the fruit of the clay; nor is this all that clay has done for us (and what have we done for clay!), for when i speak of drinking out of the burnt clay it recalls to me another function of this admirable ungotten mineral—at least it is for the greater part ungotten. but for clay where should we be for pipkins, pannikins, porcelain of all kinds, and but for clay what should we do for the olla, for the cream jug, and for those large flat basins in which people pour milk that the cream may rise on top of it? at least the wise people, who go by the old fashions and will not use a separator—for if you know anything of the matter you will know that no pig will thrive upon skim milk unless the cream has risen from it in the old manner: and there i make an end of this digression.
you may think i have exhausted the matter of clay, but you are wrong. clay has a further quality: it is a mystery. any one can see how granite came about. and as for chalk, it was made by a vast number of little fishes. sand is a thing a tom-fool can understand; limestone is self-evident; and i never knew any one yet who was puzzled by alluvial soil; but clay is a harder nut to crack. how was it[pg 10] made? those who were there when the foundations of the earth were laid and who pretend that they know everything, those whose god is matter and whose infallible authority is printer's ink, boast like lucifer their father, and will explain everything to you on their eight fingers and two thumbs—but they confess that they cannot explain clay. it is all very well to say that clay is full of alumina; that it is the breaking up of granite rocks, but no one can tell you how all this came about, nor why it is so pasty. "it is not known" (says my encyclopædia) "why certain specimens of granite are rapidly corroded and crumbled down, while others have resisted for ages the same causes of decay." no! no, by heaven! it is not known. and it is a great day in modern times when one can get one of the scientists to admit that he is not possessed of universal knowledge. no man living knows how clay came to be. i repeat it is a mystery and is crammed with the virtue of all mysterious things. and should it not be mysterious, seeing what are its powers?
for remember that all this does but touch upon the edge and fringe of the greatness of clay. records were first kept in clay, and but for clay would never have survived. they were scratched on clay tablets and burnt, and they have come down to our own time. bricks have to be made from clay, and with bricks did men first learn to build small and reasonable houses, for before they thought of bricks the rich man could live in stone, but the poor man[pg 11] had to do as best he could in wood and wattles. but the moment they thought of clay and of making bricks, reasonable houses for the middle-class appeared; and with the middle-class there came also public opinion, common-sense, good manners, verse, sculpture, and the art of living.
you may very reasonably prove, and to the satisfaction of most men, that without clay there could be no middle-class; nor does this great service which the clay has done us by any means exhaust the debt we owe to clay. there would be no dew ponds on the chalk heights of england had not our ancestors long before history carefully puddled clay. and very probably there would be no statues in the world had it not been for clay, for it is clay that suggests the statue. so whenever you see a good statue (of which there are so many in this world, as for instance: the madonna over the south porch of rheims; the mary magdalen at brou; the statue of our lady of paris in notre dame; the venus of milo, which is by no means the first-comer among statues; the headless victory with wings, which is a first-rate statue and looks as if it was going to fly down the steps of the louvre; the statue of the archer in that same gallery; the statue of st. john the baptist in south kensington, which is a copy of the one in the luxembourg—or indeed of any other statue)—i say, when you see a statue that is good and pleases you, remember clay. but for clay that statue could never have been.
[pg 12]
do you think that with this we have come to the end of what clay has done? why, we have not, so to speak, begun the first page of the volume!
but for clay there would be no smoking: clay made pipes. and but for clay we should not be able to drain our fields. from clay also comes aluminium, which has some purpose or other, i forget what; and clay made the sologne. for that great heath and desert, which so few men know, owes its very life to clay. it is the clay holding the water which has turned it into the forest it is, full of little pools and cram full of wild boars and other ingenious beasts.
roses adore the clay—they are as native to clay as salt is to the sea; and there is another thing we owe to clay, for if we had no clay we should have no roses; and talking of that, the oak is a clay tree. all that gnarled, hard, native stuff which you clap your hand on when you strike an oak beam is nourished and made strong by clay. an oak may be called the living son of the dead clay; it is a sort of clay turned vegetable, a slow, a fundamental, and an enduring thing.
now by way of ending! being a modern man you will grumble and say, "yes, but it is bad to live on." you are wrong. it is the best soil of any to live on. true, if you are a town man you find that your feet get wet on it; you cannot walk about after a shower as you can in london; therefore you prefer to be upon gravel or sand. that is because you are[pg 13] artificial and a snob. you were intended, my lamb, to plunge about in mud when the weather is muddy—it is an excellent discipline for the soul. and all that love of sand and gravel goes with rhododendrons, copper beeches, and villas of red brick, and the death of the soul. you will then object that the house built upon clay goes up and down, heaving, as it were, with the weather. why not? all things that live and are worthy have in themselves the principle of motion. would you inhabit something dead? aristotle has said it, that death, the absence of life, is essentially rigidity, the absence of motion. give thanks then that your house should shift, and that the water that you must drink on clay is of a muddy kind; it is better for your health than that sparkling stuff which gives men goitre in the high hills.
in a word, there is nothing human nor anything about man which is not the better for clay. he was made of clay, he should live on clay, his wood must be the fruit of clay, and so must his food, and so must his drink, and so must the flowers that are his ornament. and when he dies the very best soil in which you can bury him is clay.
