Ruffianism

“ I went home and I says, 'Rufus, my son,' and he says, 'Yes, fayther!' Says I, 'Rufus, am I a Christian man, though frail and human, am I a Christian man or am I not?' Rufus says, 'You are a Christian, fayther.' Then says I, 'What is the praycher, Rufus, my boy?' and Rufus, that uses tobackka in no shape nor form, says, 'He's a consayted, ignerant, bigitted bladderskite of a Pharisee!' Sir, I was proud of that boy!'
"That was very fine of your son to stand up for his father like that. You can't say that your foes were those of your own household. ”

“ The holy Anselm at home, the valiant Helias beyond the sea, are the men with whom Rufus has to strive. And the saint of Aosta, the hero of La Flèche, are men who of themselves are enough to draw our thoughts to the times and the lands in which they lived. Each, in his own widely different way, stands forth as the representative of right in the face of a power of evil which we still feel to be not wholly evil. All light is not put out, all better feelings are not trampled out of being, when evil stands in any way abashed before the presence of good. ”

“ In such a state of things the burthen of oppression would undoubtedly fall by far the most heavily upon the native English; they would be the class most open to suffering and least able to obtain redress. The broken promises of the King had been specially made to them, and they would feel specially aggrieved and disheartened at his breach of them. Still the good government which Rufus promised, but which he did not give, was a good government which would have profited all the King’s men, French and English, and the lack of it pressed, in its measure, on all the King’s men, French and English. ”

“ And nothing draws the sons of the soil more closely together than the presence of strangers on the soil. In their presence they learn to forget any mutual grievances against one another. Their favour helps the fusion of races. In after times Normans and English drew together against Brabançons and Poitevins. We may feel sure that they did so from the beginning, and that the reign of Rufus really had its share in making ready the way for the fusion of the two races, by making both races feel themselves fellow-sufferers in a time of common wrong-doing. ”

“ The count was calling the extremists of both schools together, and Ruffiano expostulated.
“This is a time,” said the count, addressing me, “at which we must sink all divisions. We shall find ample time to quarrel when the work is done. In the meantime the work lies before us, and no good Italian can hang back from it.”
“We shall do nothing but quarrel,” Ruffiano protested. “We shall be at daggers drawn among ourselves.” ”

“ He could not bear that any man, least of all a man of a spirit so much higher than his own, should be so near the throne as Helias threatened to be. The men of Maine, said the Count of Meulan, were a cunning and faithless race. All that the captive Helias sought by his offers was to insinuate himself into the King’s favour, to learn his secrets, that he might be able, when a fitting moment came, to rise up against him with more advantage and join himself to his enemies with greater power. The purpose of Rufus was changed by the malignant counsel of Count Robert. ”

“ Possibly the importance of Orderic, long growing, grows yet greater at the very end of our tale. And we still make a certain use of Wace. The story of the death of William Rufus is one of those in which it is desirable to look in all manner of quarters to which we should not commonly think of turning, not so much in search of facts, as to see how such a story impressed men’s minds, and what forms it took in various hands. ”

“ Rufus answered, with a touch of defiance in his voice. "What I want to know is, how or in what way we are better off than say the vicar and his curate?"
"My dear fellow, surely you can see that they are the puppets of an exploded superstition."
"Well, suppose they are. What are we the puppets of?"
"We are not puppets at all. We are free men." [Pg 262]
"Words again," Rufus answered, with a pathetic smile. "We are as completely hemmed in by the forces that surround us as they are. As completely baffled by the riddle of existence. In what does our freedom consist? ”

“ Rufus used to say, ‘If you have leisure to praise me, my teaching has been in vain.’ Accordingly he used to talk in such a way that each individual one of us who sat there thought that some one had been telling Rufus about him: he so put his finger upon what we had done, he so set the individual faults of each one of us clearly before our eyes.
“The philosopher’s lecture-room, gentlemen, is a surgery: when you go away you ought to have felt not pleasure but pain. For when you come in, something is wrong with you: one man has put his shoulder out, another has an abscess, another a headache. ”

“ One motive was that he could not raise a greater sum without doing wrong to his tenants—​the wrong which he had declared Ælfheah to be a true martyr for refusing to do. [1214] Rufus refuses it.The King was now in the mood for short and wrathful speeches. “Keep your money and your jaw to yourself; I have enough of my own. Get you gone.” [1215] Anselm obeyed, remembering that at his enthronement the Gospel had been read which said that no man could serve two masters. ”

“ Some passably good people have been said, upon occasions, to hold a candle to the devil. With a similar diversion from general principle, Rufus was known occasionally to perform acts of harmless utility. He charmed away warts and corns, he prepared love philtres, and sold lucky stones. He foreran the societies which insure against accident, and would guarantee whole bones for a year or a lifetime, according to the insurer’s purse or fancy. ”

“ Pre-Raphaelitism, a movement headed by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, of revolt against the style of art in vogue, traceable all the way back to Raphael, and of a bold return to the study of nature itself, agreeably to the advice of Ruskin, that “they should go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought than how best to penetrate her meaning: rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing” ”

“ On the first point he touched Rufus to the quick. He described every mental emotion through which he had passed, and showed how every merely human philosophy had failed to satisfy the need of the human heart. Every word of this part of the discourse was absolutely true to Rufus's own experience.
But when the preacher came to deal with the second part of his subject, Rufus felt all his old scepticism returning with a rush; and yet so reasonably did the preacher talk that he was compelled to listen. He did not speak like an advocate with a bad case. ”

“ The words of the Chronicle. The dark words of the Chronicle are in truth more impressive than the tale, true or false, of Walter Tirel. Rufus was shot in his hunting from his own men. That is enough; his day was over. End and character of Rufus. A life was ended, stained with deeds which, in our history at least, stand out without fellow before or after, but a life in which we may here and there see signs of great powers wasted, even of momentary feelings which might have been trained into something nobler. ”

“ Not long since, a man rather well organized mentally, but very slightly enlightened by the true science, brought out a book entitled Ruverabhoni, in which, heaping up all the ancient and modern sophisms pronounced against the social organization founded upon the establishment of the family, he aspired to change the instinct of nature, in this respect, and to found true happiness upon the débris of all the ties of blood, of all the affections of the soul, and of all the duties of consanguinity. ”

“ Men’s minds were charged with expectation; every sight, every sound, became an omen; if some men risked prophecies, if some of their prophecies were fulfilled, it was not wonderful. The first half of 310 the year, blank in events, was rich in auguries; in the second half the auguries had largely become facts. In its first months men were saying with hope, “Non diu dominabuntur effeminati.” [748] Before the twelvemonth was out, they were beginning to say with joy, “Hic rex Henricus destruxit impios regni.” [749]
§ 1. The Last Days of William Rufus. ”

“ But they have opposed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above described, which only began after Raphael's time: and they have opposed themselves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools; a feeling compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride. Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school in England. ”

“ The ruffian whom we read of, a little time ago, who stabbed a young woman because she was breaking from him to take the arm of another man whom she preferred, acted upon the principle of the ministers, the noblesse, and the clergy of France. They could no longer unjustly possess, therefore they would destroy. They saw that if a just government were established; that if the people were fairly represented in a national council; they saw that if this were to take place, they would no longer be able to wallow in wealth at the expense of the people ”

“ I confessed that I should prefer to await a confirmation of his story by the newspapers, but the count interrupted me with a wave of the hand.
“You will see,” he said, “that the newspapers will confirm the story to-morrow, and in the meantime we shall have saved a day. France is awake, and the awaking of France is the dawn of liberty for Italy. We must hold a meeting to-night. You will wait?” he asked me. “I have a hundred things to talk of, but I must first despatch Count Ruffiano to our friends.” ”

“ We begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature is full of faults, and that he is to improve her; but that Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the better ”

“ Rufus? What you talkin' about!"
"Rufus. And the girl he is engaged to marry."
Rufus's father wheeled about, to the imminent danger of his eyes and the points of the open scissors. "What in the name of common sense— Why, Elviry, what you mean?"
"I mean w'at I say, father."
"Rufus? Why, you can't! It's—it's redic'lous. He ain't growed up. He's—he's—"
"Now, father, 'tain't no use to sputter this way. You set still! How can I cut 'ith you dancin' round like a teetotum? Rufus is a man—"
"A man! He ain't never hed a freedom suit." ”

“ The ruffs are small, but there is character about them. See two approach each other from opposite directions—looking, perhaps, for something to eat. They meet, stop, straddle wide their legs, and blow up their neck-feathers. Regarding each other fixedly, they rock solemnly to and fro. Then they let fall their collars and go off, each on his way, as though nothing had happened. It is a rude courtesy—a sort of ruff etiquette, in fact. Sometimes, however, this putting on of frills—as the same thing will do in other places—leads to fights. ”

“ It was John Ruskin, in England, who made us see what a splendid heritage the Middle Ages had bequeathed to us. Ruskin and his disciples then fell into the error of turning the tables on the Renaissance, and regarded everything that deviated from Gothic convention as debased; the whole art of the eighteenth century p. 293was anathema to them. The decadence began, according to Ruskin, with Raphael. Out of that ingenious error, or synchronous with it, began the brilliant movement of the Pre-Raphaelites in the middle of the last century. ”

“ Ruffin’s elevation, is that he studied law while he was at his barber’s chair, and dependent upon it for a living.
As a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, Mr. Ruffin exhibited scholarly attainments in his speeches that placed him at once amongst the foremost men of that body. As a speaker, he is interesting, for his addresses show that he gives his subjects a thorough canvassing before he delivers them. Mr. Ruffin is a good [Pg 542] student, and is destined, we think, to rise still higher in his profession. ”

“ When it became known that Rufus had failed, that he had been forestalled with his invention, the Express openly rejoiced. Such unpatriotic characters did not deserve to succeed. It hinted that there was a rough and ready justice in the world that dealt out to men the measure of their deserts—which, being interpreted, meant, that to those who had was given, and from those who had not was taken away even what they had. ”

“ Ruffinusʼ hair begins to turn grey, but he is healthy; his ruddy cheeks and sparkling eyes promise him at least twenty years more; he is lively, jovial, familiar, and does not care for anything; he laughs heartily, even when he is alone, and without any cause; he is satisfied with himself, with his family, his little fortune, and calls himself fortunate. Some time since he lost his only son, a young man of great promise, who might have become an honour to his family ”

“ Petrib. 1088. “On þisum geare wæs þis land swiðe astirad, and mid mycele swicdome afylled; swa þæt þa riceste Frencisce men þe weron innan þrisan lande wolden swican heore hlaforde þam cynge, and woldon habban his broðer to cynge, Rodbeard, þe wæs eorl on Normandige.” The duty of faithfulness to the lord, whoever he may be, is always strongly felt; still William Rufus is only “heora hlaford se cyng,” not “heora cynehlaford.” But the notion that Robert had any special right as the eldest son seems not to have come into any purely English mind of that age. ”