But when he began to write against rent and interest there were plenty of critics ready to cite this and other investments as a damning inconsistency.  He was not the man to offer explanations at any time.  It was no defence to say that he took less and did more than other landlords.  And so he was glad to part with the whole to Miss Hill; nor did he care to spend upon himself the L3,500, which I believe was the price.  It went right and left in gifts; till one day he cheerfully remarked: 

    “It’s a’ gane awa’
    Like snaw aff a wa’.”

“Is there really nothing to show for it?” he was asked.  “Nothing,” he said, “except this new silk umbrella.”

He had talked so much of the possibility of carrying on honest and honourable retail trade, that he felt bound to exemplify his principles.  He took a house No. 19, Paddington Street, with a corner shop, near his Marylebone property, and set himself up in business as a teaman.  Mr. Arthur Severn painted the sign, in neat blue letters; the window was decked with fine old china, bought from a Cavaliere near Siena, whose unique collection had been introduced to notice by Professor Norton; and Miss Harrie Tovey, an old servant of Denmark Hill, was established there, like Miss Mattie in “Cranford,” or rather like one of the salaried officials of “Time and Tide,” to dispense the unadulterated leaf to all comers.  No advertisements, no self-recommendation, no catchpenny tricks of trade were allowed; and yet the business went on, and, I am assured, prospered with legitimate profits.  At first, various kinds of the best tea only were sold; but it seemed to the tenant of the shop that coffee and sugar ought to be included in the list.  This was not at all in Ruskin’s programme, and there were great debates at home about it.  At last he gave way, on the understanding that the shop was to be responsible for the proper roasting of the coffee according to the best recipe.  After some time Miss Tovey died.  And when, in the autumn of 1876, Miss Octavia Hill proposed to take the house and business over and work it with the rest of the Marylebone property, the offer was thankfully accepted.

Another of his principles was cleanliness; “the speedy abolition of all abolishable filth is the first process of education.”  He undertook to keep certain streets, not crossings only, cleaner than the public seemed to care for, between the British Museum and St. Giles’.  He took the broom himself, for a start, put on his gardener, Downes, as foreman of the job, and engaged a small staff of helpers.  The work began, as he promised, in a humorous letter to the Pall Matt Gazette upon New Year’s Day, 1872, and he kept his three sweepers at work for eight hours daily “to show a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line.”