"The loneliness is very great, and the peace in which I am at present is only as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood—for the cry of the earth about me is in my ears continually, if I do not lay my head to the very ground."
"The loneliness is very great, and the peace in which I am at present is only as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood—for the cry of the earth about me is in my ears continually, if I do not lay my head to the very ground."
And a few months later:
"I am still very unwell, and tormented between the longing for rest and lovely life, and the sense of this terrific call of human crime for resistance and of human misery for help, though it seems to me as the voice of a river of blood which can but sweep me down in the midst of its black clots, helpless."
"I am still very unwell, and tormented between the longing for rest and lovely life, and the sense of this terrific call of human crime for resistance and of human misery for help, though it seems to me as the voice of a river of blood which can but sweep me down in the midst of its black clots, helpless."
Sentences like these, passages here and there in the last volume of "Modern Painters," and still more, certain passages omitted from that volume, show that about 1860 something of a cloud had been settling over him,—a sense of the evil of the world, a horror of great darkness. In his earlier years, his intense emotion and vivid imagination had enabled him to read into pictures of Tintoret or Turner, into scenes of nature and sayings of great books, a meaning or a moral which he so vividly communicated to the reader as to make it thenceforward part and parcel of the subject, however it came there to begin with. It is useless to wonder whether Turner, for instance, consciously meant what Ruskin found in his works. A great painter does not paint without thought, and such thought is apt to show itself whether he will or no. But it needs imaginative sympathy to detect and describe the thought. And when that sympathy was given to suffering, to widespread misery, to crying wrongs; joined also with an intense passion for justice, which had already shown itself in the defence of slighted genius and neglected art; and to the Celtic temperament of some highstrung seer and trance-prophesying bard; it was no wonder that Ruskin became like one of the hermits of old, who retreated from the world to return upon it with stormy messages of awakening and flashes of truth more impressive, more illuminating than the logic of schoolmen and the state-craft of the wise.
And then he began to take up an attitude of antagonism to the world, he who had been the kindly helper and minister of delightful art. He began to call upon those who had ears to hear to come outand be separate from the ease and hypocrisy of Vanity Fair. Its respectabilities, its orthodoxies, he could no longer abide. Orthodox religion, orthodox morals and politics, orthodox art and science, alike he rejected; and was rejected by each of them as a brawler, a babbler, a fanatic, a heretic. And even when kindly Oxford gave him a quasi-academical position, it did not bring him, as it brings many a heretic, back to the fold.
In this period of storm and stress he stood alone. The old friends of his youth were one by one passing away, if not from intercourse, still from full sympathy with him in his new mood. His parents were no longer the guides and companions they had been; they did not understand the business he was about. And so he was left to new associates, for he could not live without some one to love,—that was the nature of the man, however lonely in his work and wanderings.
The new friends of this period were, at first, Americans; as the chief new friends of his latest period (the Alexanders) were American, too. Charles Eliot Norton, after being introduced to him in London in 1855, met him again by accident on the Lake of Geneva—the story is prettily told in "Præterita." Ruskin adds:
"Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, and, from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of necessity, a kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance.... I was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affectionately submissive to it, so that he might have done anything with me, but for the unhappy difference in our innate, and unchangeable, political faiths."
"Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, and, from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of necessity, a kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance.... I was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affectionately submissive to it, so that he might have done anything with me, but for the unhappy difference in our innate, and unchangeable, political faiths."
So, after all, he stood alone.
Another friend about this time was Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe, to whom he wrote on June 18th, 1860, from Geneva:
"It takes a great deal, when I am at Geneva, to make me wish myself anywhere else, and, of all places else, inLondon; nevertheless, I very heartily wish at this moment that I were looking out on the Norwood Hills, and were expecting you and the children to breakfast to-morrow."I had very serious thoughts, when I received your note, of running home; but I expected that very day an American friend, Mr. Stillman, who, I thought, would miss me more here than you in London, so I stayed."What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion of the order of nature. I think America is a sort of 'United' States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivered, and having obtained entrance into this better world, should never be expected to return (sentence irremediably ungrammatical), particularly when they have been making themselves cruelly pleasant to friends here. My friend Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water, had no business to go back to Boston again, any more than you...."So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances! I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like 'Positively the last appearance on any stage.' What was the use of thinking abouthim? You should have had your own thoughts about what was to come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so quickly. It will last pretty nearly as long as Protestantism, which keeps it up; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main question just now for everybody."
"It takes a great deal, when I am at Geneva, to make me wish myself anywhere else, and, of all places else, inLondon; nevertheless, I very heartily wish at this moment that I were looking out on the Norwood Hills, and were expecting you and the children to breakfast to-morrow.
"I had very serious thoughts, when I received your note, of running home; but I expected that very day an American friend, Mr. Stillman, who, I thought, would miss me more here than you in London, so I stayed.
"What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion of the order of nature. I think America is a sort of 'United' States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivered, and having obtained entrance into this better world, should never be expected to return (sentence irremediably ungrammatical), particularly when they have been making themselves cruelly pleasant to friends here. My friend Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water, had no business to go back to Boston again, any more than you....
"So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances! I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like 'Positively the last appearance on any stage.' What was the use of thinking abouthim? You should have had your own thoughts about what was to come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so quickly. It will last pretty nearly as long as Protestantism, which keeps it up; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main question just now for everybody."
W.J. Stillman had been a correspondent about 1851,—"involved in mystical speculations, partly growing out of the second volume of 'Modern Painters,'" as he said of himself in an article on "John Ruskin" in theCenturyMagazine (January, 1888). With him Ruskin spent July and August of 1860 at Chamouni. He did but little drawing, and in the few sketches that remain of that summer there is evidence that his mind was far away from its old love of mountains and of streamlets. His lonely walks in the pinewoods of the Arveron were given to meditation on a great problem which had been set, as it seemed, for him to solve, ever since he had written that chapter on "The Nature ofGothic." Now at last, in the solitude of the Alps, he could grapple with the questions he had raised; and the outcome of the struggle was "Unto this Last."
The year before, from Thun and Bonneville and Lausanne (August and September, 1859) he had written letters to E.S. Dallas, suggested by the strikes in the London building trade. In these he appears to have sketched the outline of a new conception of social science, which he was now elaborating with more attempt at system and brevity than he had been accustomed to use.
These new papers, painfully thought out and carefully set down in his room at the Hôtel de l'Union, he used—as long before he read his daily chapter to the breakfast party at Herne Hill—to read to Stillman: and he sent them to theCornhill Magazine, started the year before by Smith and Elder. Ruskin had already contributed to it a paper on "Sir Joshua and Holbein," a stray chapter from Vol. V., "Modern Painters." His reputation as a writer and philanthropist, together with the friendliness of editor and publisher, secured the insertion of the first three,—from August to October. The editor then wrote to say that they were so unanimously condemned and disliked, that, with all apologies, he could only admit one more. The series was brought hastily to a conclusion in November: and the author, beaten back as he had never been beaten before, dropped the subject, and "sulked," so he called it, all the winter.
It is pleasant to notice that neither Thackeray, the editor nor Smith, the publisher quarrelled with the author who had laid them open to the censure of their public,—nor he with them. On December 21st, he wrote to Thackeray, in answer apparently, to a letter about lecturing for a charitable purpose: and continued:
"The mode in which you direct your charity puts me in mind of a matter that has lain long on my mind, though I never have had the time or face to talk to you of it.In somebody's drawing-room, ages ago, you were speaking accidentally of M. de Marvy.8I expressed my great obligation to him; on which you said that I could prove my gratitude, if I chose, to his widow,—which choice I then not accepting, have ever since remembered the circumstance as one peculiarly likely to add, so far as it went, to the general impression on your mind of the hollowness of people's sayings and hardness of their hearts. The fact is, I give what I give almost in an opposite way to yours. I think there are many people who will relieve hopeless distress for one who will help at a hopeful pinch; and when I have the choice I nearly always give where I think the money will be fruitful rather than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I wouldnotfor a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not—unless I had no other object—his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than to feed the fallen."
"The mode in which you direct your charity puts me in mind of a matter that has lain long on my mind, though I never have had the time or face to talk to you of it.In somebody's drawing-room, ages ago, you were speaking accidentally of M. de Marvy.8I expressed my great obligation to him; on which you said that I could prove my gratitude, if I chose, to his widow,—which choice I then not accepting, have ever since remembered the circumstance as one peculiarly likely to add, so far as it went, to the general impression on your mind of the hollowness of people's sayings and hardness of their hearts. The fact is, I give what I give almost in an opposite way to yours. I think there are many people who will relieve hopeless distress for one who will help at a hopeful pinch; and when I have the choice I nearly always give where I think the money will be fruitful rather than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I wouldnotfor a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not—unless I had no other object—his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than to feed the fallen."
The winter passed without any great undertaking. G.F. Watts proposed to add Ruskin's portrait to his gallery of celebrities; but he was in no mood to sit. Rossetti did, however, sketch him this year. In March he presented eighty-three Turner drawings to Oxford, and twenty-five to Cambridge. The address of thanks with the great seal of Oxford University is dated March 23rd, 1861; the Catalogue of the Cambridge collection is dated May 28th.
On April 2nd he addressed the St. George's Mission Working Men's Institute, and shortly afterwards, though at this time in a much enfeebled state of health, gave a lecture before "a most brilliant audience," as theLondon Reviewreported, at the Royal Institution (April 19th, 1861). Carlyle wrote to his brother John:
"Friday last I was persuaded—in fact had inwardly compelled myself as it were—to a lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street, Lecture on TreeLeaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A crammed house, but tolerable even to me in the gallery. The lecture was thought to 'break down,' and indeed it quite did 'as a lecture'; but only did fromembarras de richesses—a rare case. Ruskin did blow asunder as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were manifold, curious, genial; and in fact, I do not recollect to have heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic one."
"Friday last I was persuaded—in fact had inwardly compelled myself as it were—to a lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street, Lecture on TreeLeaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A crammed house, but tolerable even to me in the gallery. The lecture was thought to 'break down,' and indeed it quite did 'as a lecture'; but only did fromembarras de richesses—a rare case. Ruskin did blow asunder as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were manifold, curious, genial; and in fact, I do not recollect to have heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic one."
Papers on "Illuminated Manuscripts" (read before the Society of Antiquaries on June 6th) and on "The Preservation of Ancient Buildings" (read to the Ecclesiological Society a fortnight later) show that old interests were not wholly forgotten, even in the stress of new pursuits, by this man of many-sided activity.
During May, 1861, he paid a visit to the school girls at Winnington, in June and July he took a holiday at Boulogne with the fisher folk, in August he went to Ireland as guest of the Latouches of Harristown, County Kildare, and in September he returned to the Alps, spending the rest of the year at Bonneville and Lucerne.
NOTE:
8
Louis Marvy, an engraver, and political refugee after the French Revolution of 1848. He produced the plates, and Thackeray the text, of "Landscape Painters of England, in a series of steel engravings, with short Notices."
Louis Marvy, an engraver, and political refugee after the French Revolution of 1848. He produced the plates, and Thackeray the text, of "Landscape Painters of England, in a series of steel engravings, with short Notices."
After an autumn among the Alps, hearing that the Turner drawings in the National Gallery had been mildewed, he ran home to see about them in January 1862; and was kept until the end of May. He found that his political economy work was not such a total failure as it had seemed. Froude, then editor ofFraser's Magazine, thought there was something in it, and would give him another chance. So, by way of a fresh start, he had his fourCornhillarticles published in book form; and almost simultaneously, in June 1862 the first of the new series appeared.
The author had then returned to Lucerne with Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones, with whom he crossed the St. Gothard to Milan, where he tried to forget the harrowing of hell in a close study of Luini, and in copying the "St. Catherine" now at Oxford. Ruskin has never said so much about Luini as, perhaps, he intended. A short notice in the "Cestus of Aglaia," and occasional references scattered up and down his later works, hardly give the prominence in his writings that the painter held in his thoughts. It was about this time that he was made an Hon. Member of the Florentine Academy.
He re-crossed the Alps, and settled to his work on political economy at Mornex, where he spent the winter except for a short run home, which gave him the opportunity of addressing the Working Men's College on November 29.
His retreat is described in one of his letters home:
"MORNEX,August31 (1862)."MY DEAREST MOTHER,"This ought to arrive on the evening before your birthday: it is not possible to reach you in the morning, not even by telegraph as I once did from Mont Cenis, for—(may Heaven be devoutly thanked therefore)—there are yet on Mont Salève neither rails nor wires...."The place I have got to is at the end of all carriage-roads, and I am not yet strong enough to get farther, on foot, than a five or six miles' circle, within which is assuredly no house to my mind. I cast, at first, somewhat longing eyes on a true Savoyard château—notable for its lovely garden and orchard—and its unspoiled, unrestored, arched gateway between two round turrets, and Gothic-windowed keep. But on examination of the interior—finding the walls, though six feet thick, rent to the foundation—and as cold as rocks, and the floors all sodden through with walnut oil and rotten-apple juice—heaps ofthe farm stores having been left to decay in the ci-devant drawing room, I gave up all medieval ideas, for which the long-legged black pigs who lived like gentlemen at ease in the passage, and the bats and spiders who divided between them the corners of the turret-stair, have reason—if they knew it—to be thankful."The worst of it is that I never had the gift, nor have I now the energy, tomakeanything of a place; so that I shall have to put up with almost anything I can find that is healthily habitable in a good situation. Meantime, the air here being delicious and the rooms good enough for use and comfort, I am not troubling myself much, but trying to put myself into better health and humour; in which I have already a little succeeded."
"MORNEX,August31 (1862).
"MY DEAREST MOTHER,
"This ought to arrive on the evening before your birthday: it is not possible to reach you in the morning, not even by telegraph as I once did from Mont Cenis, for—(may Heaven be devoutly thanked therefore)—there are yet on Mont Salève neither rails nor wires....
"The place I have got to is at the end of all carriage-roads, and I am not yet strong enough to get farther, on foot, than a five or six miles' circle, within which is assuredly no house to my mind. I cast, at first, somewhat longing eyes on a true Savoyard château—notable for its lovely garden and orchard—and its unspoiled, unrestored, arched gateway between two round turrets, and Gothic-windowed keep. But on examination of the interior—finding the walls, though six feet thick, rent to the foundation—and as cold as rocks, and the floors all sodden through with walnut oil and rotten-apple juice—heaps ofthe farm stores having been left to decay in the ci-devant drawing room, I gave up all medieval ideas, for which the long-legged black pigs who lived like gentlemen at ease in the passage, and the bats and spiders who divided between them the corners of the turret-stair, have reason—if they knew it—to be thankful.
"The worst of it is that I never had the gift, nor have I now the energy, tomakeanything of a place; so that I shall have to put up with almost anything I can find that is healthily habitable in a good situation. Meantime, the air here being delicious and the rooms good enough for use and comfort, I am not troubling myself much, but trying to put myself into better health and humour; in which I have already a little succeeded."
After describing the flowers of the Salève he continues:
"My Father would be quite wild at the 'view' from the garden terrace—but he would be disgusted at the shut in feeling of the house, which is in fact as much shut in as our old Herne Hill one; only to get the 'view' I have but to go as far down the garden as to our old 'mulberry tree.' By the way there's a magnificent mulberry tree, as big as a common walnut, covered with black and red fruit on the other side of the road. Coutet and Allen are very anxious to do all they can now that Crawley is away; and I don't think I shall manage very badly," etc.
"My Father would be quite wild at the 'view' from the garden terrace—but he would be disgusted at the shut in feeling of the house, which is in fact as much shut in as our old Herne Hill one; only to get the 'view' I have but to go as far down the garden as to our old 'mulberry tree.' By the way there's a magnificent mulberry tree, as big as a common walnut, covered with black and red fruit on the other side of the road. Coutet and Allen are very anxious to do all they can now that Crawley is away; and I don't think I shall manage very badly," etc.
A little later he took in addition a cottage in which the Empress of Russia had once stayed: it commanded a finer view than the larger house, which has since been turned into a hotel (Hôtel et Pension des Glycines). This place was for some time the hermitage in which he wrote his political economy. Of his lonely rambles he wrote later on:
"If I have a definite point to reach, and common work to do at it—I take people—anybody—with me; but all my bestmentalwork is necessarily done alone; whenever I wanted to think, in Savoy, I used to leave Coutet at home. Constantly I have been alone on the Glacier des Bois—and far among the loneliest aiguille recesses. I found the path up the Brezon above Bonneville in a lonely walk one Sunday; I saw the grandest view of the Alps of Savoy Iever gained, on the 2nd of January, 1862, alone among the snow wreaths on the summit of the Salève. You need not fear for me on 'Langdale Pikes' after that."
"If I have a definite point to reach, and common work to do at it—I take people—anybody—with me; but all my bestmentalwork is necessarily done alone; whenever I wanted to think, in Savoy, I used to leave Coutet at home. Constantly I have been alone on the Glacier des Bois—and far among the loneliest aiguille recesses. I found the path up the Brezon above Bonneville in a lonely walk one Sunday; I saw the grandest view of the Alps of Savoy Iever gained, on the 2nd of January, 1862, alone among the snow wreaths on the summit of the Salève. You need not fear for me on 'Langdale Pikes' after that."
In September the second article appeared inFraser."Only a genius like Mr. Ruskin could have produced such hopeless rubbish," says a newspaper of the period. Far worse than any newspaper criticism was the condemnation of Denmark Hill. His father, whose eyes had glistened over early poems and prose eloquence, strongly disapproved of this heretical economy. It was a bitter thing that his son should become prodigal of a hardly earned reputation, and be pointed at for a fool. And it was intensely painful for a son "who had never given his father a pang that could be avoided," as old Mr. Ruskin had once written, to find his father, with one foot in the grave, turning against him. In December the third paper appeared. History repeated itself, and with the fourth paper the heretic was gagged. A year after, his father died; and theseFraserarticles were laid aside until the end of 1871, when they were taken up again, and published on New Year's Day 1872, as "Munera Pulveris."
From the outset, however, he was not without supporters. Carlyle wrote on June 30, 1862:
"I have read, a month ago, yourFirstinFraser, and ever since have had a wish to say to it and you,Euge macte nova virtute.I approved in every particular; calm, definite, clear; rising into the sphere ofPlato(our almost best), wh'h in exchange for the sphere ofMacculloch, Mill and Co.is a mighty improvement! Since that, I have seen the littlegreenbook, too; reprint of yourCornhilloperations,—about 2/3 of wh'h was read to me (knownonly from what the contradict'n of sinners had told me of it);—in every part of wh'h I find a high and noble sort of truth, not one doctrine that I can intrinsically dissent from, or count other than salutary in the extreme, and pressingly needed in Engl'd above all."
"I have read, a month ago, yourFirstinFraser, and ever since have had a wish to say to it and you,Euge macte nova virtute.I approved in every particular; calm, definite, clear; rising into the sphere ofPlato(our almost best), wh'h in exchange for the sphere ofMacculloch, Mill and Co.is a mighty improvement! Since that, I have seen the littlegreenbook, too; reprint of yourCornhilloperations,—about 2/3 of wh'h was read to me (knownonly from what the contradict'n of sinners had told me of it);—in every part of wh'h I find a high and noble sort of truth, not one doctrine that I can intrinsically dissent from, or count other than salutary in the extreme, and pressingly needed in Engl'd above all."
Erskine of Linlathen wrote to Carlyle, August 7th, 1862:
"I am thankful for any unveiling of the so-called science of political economy, according to which, avowed selfishness is the Rule of the World. It is indeed most important preaching—to preach that there is not one God for religion and another God for human fellowship—and another God for buying and selling—that pestilent polytheism has been largely and confidently preached in our time, and blessed are those who can detect its mendacities, and help to disenchant the brethren of their power...."
"I am thankful for any unveiling of the so-called science of political economy, according to which, avowed selfishness is the Rule of the World. It is indeed most important preaching—to preach that there is not one God for religion and another God for human fellowship—and another God for buying and selling—that pestilent polytheism has been largely and confidently preached in our time, and blessed are those who can detect its mendacities, and help to disenchant the brethren of their power...."
J.A. Froude, then editor ofFraser, and to his dying day Mr. Ruskin's intimate and affectionate friend, wrote to him on October 24 (1862?):
"The world talks of the article in its usual way. I was at Carlyle's last night.... He said that in writing to your father as to subject he had told him that when Solomon's temple was building it was credibly reported that at least 10,000 sparrows sitting on the trees round declared that it was entirely wrong—quite contrary to received opinion—hopelessly condemned by public opinion, etc. Nevertheless it got finished and the sparrows flew away and began to chirp in the same note about something else."
"The world talks of the article in its usual way. I was at Carlyle's last night.... He said that in writing to your father as to subject he had told him that when Solomon's temple was building it was credibly reported that at least 10,000 sparrows sitting on the trees round declared that it was entirely wrong—quite contrary to received opinion—hopelessly condemned by public opinion, etc. Nevertheless it got finished and the sparrows flew away and began to chirp in the same note about something else."
Our hermit among the Alps of Savoy differed in one respect from his predecessors. They, for the most part, saw nothing in the rocks and stones around them except the prison walls of their seclusion; he could not be within constant sight of the mountains without thinking over the wonders of their scenery and structure. And it was well for him that it could be so. The terrible depression of mind which his social and philanthropic work had brought on,found a relief in the renewal of his old mountain-worship. After sending off the last of hisFraserpapers, in which, when the verdict had twice gone against him, he tried to show cause why sentence should not be passed, the strain was at its severest. He felt, as few others not directly interested felt, the sufferings of the outcast in English slums and Savoyard hovels; and heard the cry of the oppressed in Poland and in Italy: and he had been silenced. What could he do but, as he said in the letters to Norton, "lay his head to the very ground," and try to forget it all among the stones and the snows?
He wandered about geologizing, and spent a while at Talloires on the Lake of Annecy, where the old Abbey had been turned into an inn, and one slept in a monk's cell and meditated in the cloister of the monastery, St. Bernard of Menthon's memory haunting the place, and St. Germain's cave close by in the rocks above. At the end of May he came back to England, and was invited to lecture again at the Royal Institution. The subject he chose was "The Stratified Alps of Savoy."
At that time many distinguished foreign geologists were working at the Alps; but little of conclusive importance had been published, except in papers embedded in Transactions of various societies. Professor Alphonse Favre's great work did not appear until 1867, and the "Mechanismus der Gebirgsbildung" of Professor Heim not till 1878; so that for an English public the subject was a fresh one. To Ruskin it was familiar: he had been elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1840, at the age of twenty-one; he had worked through Savoy with his Saussure in hand nearly thirty years before, and, many a time since that, had spent the intervals of literary business in rambling and climbing with the hammer and note-book. In the field he had compared Studer's meagre sections, and consulted the available authorities on physical geology, though he had never entered upon the more popular sister-science of palaeontology. Heleft the determination of strata to specialists: his interest was fixed on the structure of mountains—the relation of geology to scenery; a question upon which he had some right to be heard, as knowing more about scenery than most geologists, and more about geology than most artists.
As examples of Savoy mountains this lecture described in detail the Salève, on which he had been living for two winters, and the Brezon, the top of which he had tried to buy from the commune of Bonneville—one of his many plans for settling among the Alps. The commune thought he had found a gold-mine up there, and raised the price out of all reason. Other attempts to make a home in the châteaux or chalets of Savoy were foiled, or abandoned, like his earlier idea to live in Venice. But his scrambles on the Salève led him to hesitate in accepting the explanation given by Alphonse Favre of the curious north-west face of steeply inclined vertical slabs, which he suspected to be created by cleavage, on the analogy of other Jurassic precipices. The Brezon—brisant, breaking wave—he took as type of the billowy form of limestone Alps in general, and his analysis of it was serviceable and substantially correct.
This lecture was followed in 1864 by desultory correspondence with Mr. Jukes and others inThe Reader, in which he merely restated his conclusions, too slightly to convince. Had he devoted himself to a thorough examination of the subject—but this is in the region of what might have been. He was more seriously engaged in other pursuits, of more immediate importance. Three days after his lecture he was being examined before the Royal Academy Commission, and after a short summer visit to various friends in the north of England, he set out again for the Alps, partly to study the geology of Chamouni and North Switzerland, partly to continue his drawings of Swiss towns at Baden and Lauffenburg, with his pupil John Bunney. But even there the burdenof his real mission could not be shaken off, and though again seeking health and a quiet mind, he could not quite keep silence, but wrote letters to English newspapers on the depreciation of gold (repeating his theory of currency), and on the wrongs of Poland and Italy; and he put together more papers, not then published, in continuation of his "Munera Pulveris."
Since about 1850, Carlyle had been gradually becoming more and more friendly with John Ruskin; and now that this social and economical work had been taken up, he began to have a real esteem for him, though always with a patronizing tone, which the younger man's open and confessed discipleship accepted and encouraged. This letter especially shows both men in an unaccustomed light: Ruskin, hating tobacco, sends his "master" cigars; Carlyle, hating cant, replies rather in the tone of the temperance advocate, taking a little wine for his stomach's sake:
"CHELSEA, 22Feby, 1865"DEAR RUSKIN,"You have sent me a munificent Box of Cigars; for wh'h what can I say in ans'r? It makes me both sad and glad.Ay de mi."We are such stuff,Gone with a puff—Thenthink, and smoke Tobacco!'"The Wife also has had her Flowers; and a letter wh'h has charmed the female mind. You forgot only the first chapter of 'Aglaia';—don't forget; and be a good boy for the future."The Geology Book wasn'tJukes; I found it again in the Magazine,—reviewed there: 'Phillips,'9is there such a name? It has ag'n escaped me. I have a notion to come out actually some day soon; and take a serious Lecture from you on what you really know, and can give me some intelligible outline of, ab't the Rocks,—bonesofour poor old Mother; wh'h have always been venerable and strange to me. Next to nothing of rational could I ever learn of the subject...."Yours ever,"T. CARLYLE."
"CHELSEA, 22Feby, 1865
"DEAR RUSKIN,
"You have sent me a munificent Box of Cigars; for wh'h what can I say in ans'r? It makes me both sad and glad.Ay de mi.
"We are such stuff,Gone with a puff—Thenthink, and smoke Tobacco!'
"We are such stuff,Gone with a puff—Thenthink, and smoke Tobacco!'
"The Wife also has had her Flowers; and a letter wh'h has charmed the female mind. You forgot only the first chapter of 'Aglaia';—don't forget; and be a good boy for the future.
"The Geology Book wasn'tJukes; I found it again in the Magazine,—reviewed there: 'Phillips,'9is there such a name? It has ag'n escaped me. I have a notion to come out actually some day soon; and take a serious Lecture from you on what you really know, and can give me some intelligible outline of, ab't the Rocks,—bonesofour poor old Mother; wh'h have always been venerable and strange to me. Next to nothing of rational could I ever learn of the subject....
"Yours ever,
"T. CARLYLE."
NOTE:
9
"Jukes,"—Mr. J.B. Jukes, F.R.S., with whom Ruskin had been discussing inThe Reader. "Phillips," the Oxford Professor of Geology, and a friend of Ruskin's.
"Jukes,"—Mr. J.B. Jukes, F.R.S., with whom Ruskin had been discussing inThe Reader. "Phillips," the Oxford Professor of Geology, and a friend of Ruskin's.
Wider aims and weaker health had not put an end to Ruskin's connection with the Working Men's College, though he did not now teach a drawing-class regularly. He had, as he said, "the satisfaction of knowing that they had very good masters in Messrs. Lowes Dickinson, Jeffery and Cave Thomas," and his work was elsewhere. He was to have lectured there on December 19th, 1863; but he did not reach home until about Christmas; better than he had been; and ready to give the promised address on January 30th, 1864. Beside which he used to visit the place occasionally of an evening to take note of progress, and some of his pupils were now more directly under his care.
It was from one of these visits to the College, on February 27th, that he returned, past midnight, and found his father waiting up for him, to read some letters he had written. Next morning the old man, close upon seventy-nine years of age, was struck with his last illness; and died on March 3rd. He was buried at Shirley Church, near Addington, in Surrey, not far from Croydon; and the legend on his tomb records: "He was an entirely honest merchant, and his memory is, to all who keep it, dear and helpful. His son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to speak truth, says this of him."
Mr. John James Ruskin, like many other of our successful merchants, had been an open-handed patron of art, and a cheerful giver, not only to needy friends and relatives, but also to various charities. For example, as a kind of personal tribute to Osborne Gordon, his son's tutor, he gave £5,000 toward the augmentation of poor Christ-Church livings. His son's open-handed way with dependants and servants was learned from the old merchant, who, unlike many hard-working money-makers, was always ready to give, though he could not bear to lose. In spite of which he left a considerable fortune behind him,—considerable when it is understood to be the earnings of his single-handed industry and steady sagacity in legitimate business, without indulgence in speculation. He left £120,000 with various other property, to his son. To his wife he left his house and £37,000, and a void which it seemed at first nothing could fill. For of late years the son had drifted out of their horizon, with ideas on religion and the ordering of life so very different from theirs; and had been much away from home—he sometimes said, selfishly, but not without the greatest of all excuses, necessity. And so the two old people had been brought closer than ever together; and she had lived entirely for her husband. But, as Browning said,—"Put a stick in anywhere, and she will run up it"—so the brave old lady did not faint under the blow, and fade away, but transferred her affections and interests to her son. Before his father's death the difference of feeling between them, arising out of the heretical economy, had been healed. Old Mr. Ruskin's will treated his son with all confidence in spite of his unorthodox views and unbusiness-like ways. And for nearly eight years longer his mother lived on, to see him pass through his probation-period into such recognition as an Oxford Professorship implied, and to find in her last years his later books "becoming more and more what they always ought to have been" to her.
At the same time, her failing sight and strength needed a constant household companion. Her son, though he did not leave home yet awhile for any long journeys, could not be always with her. Only six weeks after the funeral he was called away for a time to fulfil a lecture-engagement at Bradford. Before going he brought his pretty young Scotch cousin. Miss Joanna Ruskin Agnew, to Denmark Hill for a week's visit. She recommended herself at once to the old lady, and to Carlyle, who happened to call, by her frank good-nature and unquenchable spirits; and her visit lasted seven years, until she was married to Arthur Severn, son of the Ruskins' old friend, Joseph Severn, British Consul at Rome. Even then she was not allowed far out of their sight, but settled in the old house at Herne Hill: "nor virtually," said Ruskin in the last chapter of "Præterita," "have she and I ever parted since."
All through that year he remained at home, except for short necessary visits, and frequent evenings with Carlyle. And when, in December, he gave those lectures in Manchester which afterwards, as "Sesame and Lilies," became his most popular work, we can trace his better health of mind and body in the brighter tone of his thought. We can hear the echo of Carlyle's talk in the heroic, aristocratic, Stoic ideals, and in the insistence on the value of books and free public libraries,10—Carlyle being the founder of the London Library. And we may suspect that his thoughts on women's influence and education had been not a little directed by those months in the company of "the dear old lady and ditto young" to whom Carlyle used to send his love.
In 1864 a new series of papers on Art was begun, the only published work upon Art of all these ten years. The papers ran inThe Art Journalfrom January to July, 1865, and from January to April. 1866, under the title of "The Cestus of Aglaia," by which was meant the Girdle, or restraining law, of Beauty, as personified in the wife of Hephaestus, "the Lord of Labour." Their intention was to suggest, and to evoke by correspondence, "some laws for present practice of art in our schools, which may be admitted, if not with absolute, at least with a sufficient consent, by leading artists." As a first step the author asked for the elementary rules of drawing. For his own contribution he showed the value of the "pure line," such as he had used in his own early drawings. Later on, he had adopted a looser and more picturesque style of handling the point; and in the "Elements of Drawing" he had taught his readers to take Rembrandt's etchings as exemplary. But now he felt that this "evasive" manner, as he called it, had its dangers. And so these papers attempted to supersede the amateurish object lesson of the earlier work by stricter rules for a severer style; prematurely, as it proved, for the chapters came to an end before the promised code was formulated. The same work was taken up again in "The Laws of Fésole"; but the use of the pure line, which Ruskin's precepts failed to enforce, was, in the end, taught to the public by the charming practice of Mr. Walter Crane and Miss Greenaway.
A lecture at the Camberwell Working Men's Institute on "Work and Play" was given on January 24th, 1865; which, as it was printed in "The Crown of Wild Olive," we will notice further on. Various letters and papers on political and social economy and other subjects hardly call for separate notice: with the exception of one very important address to the Royal Institution of British Architects, given May 15th, "On the Study of Architecture in our Schools."
NOTE:
10
The first lecture, "Of Kings' Treasuries," was given, December 6th, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall, Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute. The second, "Queens' Gardens," was given December 14th, at the Town Hall, King Street, now the Free Reference Library, Manchester, in aid of schools for Ancoats.
The first lecture, "Of Kings' Treasuries," was given, December 6th, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall, Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute. The second, "Queens' Gardens," was given December 14th, at the Town Hall, King Street, now the Free Reference Library, Manchester, in aid of schools for Ancoats.
Writing to his father from Manchester about the lecture of February 22, 1859—"The Unity of Art"—Ruskin mentions, among various people of interest whom he was meeting, such as Sir Elkanah Armitage and Mrs. Gaskell, how "Miss Bell and four young ladies came from Chester to hear me, and I promised to pay them a visit on my way home, to their apparent great contentment."
The visit was paid on his way back from Yorkshire. He wrote:
"WINNINGTON, NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE."12March, 1859."This is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday: an enormous old-fashioned house—full of galleries and up and down stairs—but with magnificently large rooms where wanted: the drawing-room is a huge octagon—I suppose at least forty feet high—like the tower of a castle (hung half way up all round with large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings) and with a baronial fireplace:—and in the evening, brightly lighted, with the groups of girls scattered round it, it is a quite beautiful scene in its way. Their morning chapel, too, is very interesting:—though only a large room, it is nicely fitted with reading desk and seats like a college chapel, and two pretty and rich stained-glass windows—and well-toned organ. They have morning prayers with only one of the lessons—and without the psalms: but singing the Te Deum or the other hymn—and other choral parts: and as out of the thirty-five or forty girls perhaps twenty-five or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service—like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than anything else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched penance of college chapel."The house stands in a superb park, full of old trees and sloping down to the river; with a steep bank of trees on the other side; just the kind of thing Mrs. Sherwood likes to describe;—and the girls look all healthyand happy as can be, down to the little six-years-old ones, who I find know me by the fairy tale as the others do by my large books:—so I am quite at home."They have my portrait in the library with three others—Maurice, the Bp. of Oxford, and Archdeacon Hare,—so that I can't but stay with them over the Sunday."
"WINNINGTON, NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE.
"12March, 1859.
"This is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday: an enormous old-fashioned house—full of galleries and up and down stairs—but with magnificently large rooms where wanted: the drawing-room is a huge octagon—I suppose at least forty feet high—like the tower of a castle (hung half way up all round with large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings) and with a baronial fireplace:—and in the evening, brightly lighted, with the groups of girls scattered round it, it is a quite beautiful scene in its way. Their morning chapel, too, is very interesting:—though only a large room, it is nicely fitted with reading desk and seats like a college chapel, and two pretty and rich stained-glass windows—and well-toned organ. They have morning prayers with only one of the lessons—and without the psalms: but singing the Te Deum or the other hymn—and other choral parts: and as out of the thirty-five or forty girls perhaps twenty-five or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service—like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than anything else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched penance of college chapel.
"The house stands in a superb park, full of old trees and sloping down to the river; with a steep bank of trees on the other side; just the kind of thing Mrs. Sherwood likes to describe;—and the girls look all healthyand happy as can be, down to the little six-years-old ones, who I find know me by the fairy tale as the others do by my large books:—so I am quite at home.
"They have my portrait in the library with three others—Maurice, the Bp. of Oxford, and Archdeacon Hare,—so that I can't but stay with them over the Sunday."
The principles of Winnington were advanced; the theology—Bishop Colenso's daughter was among the pupils; the Bishop of Oxford had introduced Ruskin to the managers, who were pleased to invite the celebrated art-critic to visit whenever he travelled that way, whether to lecture at provincial towns, or to see his friends in the north, as he often used. And so between March 1859 and May 1868, after which the school was removed, he was a frequent visitor; and not only he, but other lions whom the ladies entrapped:—mention has been made in print (in "The Queen of the Air") of Charles Halle, whom Ruskin met there in 1863, and greatly admired.
"I like Mr. and Mrs. Halle so very much," he wrote home, "and am entirely glad to know so great a musician and evidently so good and wise a man. He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to—which is, in its way, something like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses. But afterwards he played Home, sweet Home, with three variations—quitethe most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music. Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible—a meremistof rapidity; thehandsmoving slowly and softly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away. It was beautiful too to see the girls' faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment."
"I like Mr. and Mrs. Halle so very much," he wrote home, "and am entirely glad to know so great a musician and evidently so good and wise a man. He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to—which is, in its way, something like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses. But afterwards he played Home, sweet Home, with three variations—quitethe most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music. Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible—a meremistof rapidity; thehandsmoving slowly and softly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away. It was beautiful too to see the girls' faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment."
Ruskin could not be idle on his visits; and as he was never so happy as when he was teaching somebody, he improved the opportunity by experiments in education permitted there for his sake. Among other things, he devised singing dances for a selectdozen of the girls, with verses of his own writing; one, a maze to the theme of "Twist ye, twine ye," based upon the song in "Guy Mannering," but going far beyond the original motive in its variations weighted with allegoric thought. Deep as the feeling of this little poem is, there is a nobler chord struck in the Song of Peace, the battle-cry of the good time coming; in the faith—who else has found it?—that looks forward to no selfish victory of narrow aims, but to the full reconciliation of hostile interests and the blind internecine struggle of this perverse world, in the clearer light of the millennial morning.
Ruskin's method of teaching, as illustrated in "Ethics of the Dust," has been variously pooh-poohed by his critics. It has seemed to some absurd to mix up Theology, and Crystallography, and Political Economy, and Mythology, and Moral Philosophy, with the chatter of school-girls and the romps of the playground. But it should be understood, before reading this book, which is practically the report of these Wilmington talks, that it is printed as an illustration of a method. It showed that play-lessons need not want either depth or accuracy; and that the requirement was simply capacity on the part of the teacher.
The following letter from Carlyle was written in acknowledgment of an early copy of the book, of which the preface is dated Christmas, 1865.
"CHELSEA,"20 Decr, 1865."The 'Ethics of the Dust,' wh'h I devoured with't pause, and intend to look at ag'n, is a most shining Performance! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet—andotherlightnings) of all commendable kinds! Never was such a lecture onCrystallographybefore, had there been nothing else in it,—and there are all manner of things. In power ofexpressionI pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who hadsuchthings to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunningDreamsab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from theirelucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them apoetrythat might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too; nothing wanting in the stage-direct'ns, in the pretty little indicat'ns: a very pretty stage anddramatis personæaltogeth'r. Such is my first feeling ab't y'r Book, dear R.—Come soon, and I will tell you all thefaultsof it, if I gradually discover a great many. In fact,comeat any rate!"Y'rs ever,"T. CARLYLE."
"CHELSEA,
"20 Decr, 1865.
"The 'Ethics of the Dust,' wh'h I devoured with't pause, and intend to look at ag'n, is a most shining Performance! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet—andotherlightnings) of all commendable kinds! Never was such a lecture onCrystallographybefore, had there been nothing else in it,—and there are all manner of things. In power ofexpressionI pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who hadsuchthings to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunningDreamsab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from theirelucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them apoetrythat might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too; nothing wanting in the stage-direct'ns, in the pretty little indicat'ns: a very pretty stage anddramatis personæaltogeth'r. Such is my first feeling ab't y'r Book, dear R.—Come soon, and I will tell you all thefaultsof it, if I gradually discover a great many. In fact,comeat any rate!
"Y'rs ever,
"T. CARLYLE."
The Real Little Housewives, to whom the book was dedicated, were not quite delighted—at least, they said they were not—at the portraits drawn of them, in their pinafores, so to speak, with some little hints at failings and faults which they recognised through the mask ofdramatis personæ.Miss "Kathleen" disclaimed the singing of "Vilikins and his Dinah," and so on. It is difficult to please everybody. The public did not care about the book; the publisher hoped Mr. Ruskin would write no more dialogues: and so it remained, little noticed, for twelve years. In 1877 it was republished and found to be interesting, and in 1905 the 31st thousand (authorised English edition) had been issued. At that time, however, Sesame and Lilies had run to 160,000 copies.
Winnington Hall, the scene of these pastimes, is now, I understand, used by Messrs. Brunner, Mond & Co. as a commonroom or clubhouse for the staff in their great scientific industry.
Mention has been made of an address to working men at the Camberwell Institute, January 24th, 1865. This lecture was published in 1866,together with two others,11under the title of "The Crown of Wild Olive"—that is to say, the reward of human work, a reward "which should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor," as Aristophanes said.
True work, he said, meant the production (taking the word production in a broad sense) of the means of life; every one ought to take some share in it, according to his powers: some working with the head, some with the hands; but all acknowledging idleness and slavery to be alike immoral. And, as to the remuneration, he said, as he had said before in "Unto this Last," Justice demands that equal energy expended should bring equal reward. He did not consider it justice to cry out for the equalization of incomes, for some are sure to be more diligent and saving than others; some work involves a great preliminary expenditure of energy in qualifying the worker, as contrasted with unskilled labour. But he did not allow that the possession of capital entitled a man to unearned increment; and he thought that, in a community where a truly civilized morality was highly developed, the general sense of society would recognise an average standard of work and an average standard of pay for each class.
In the next two lectures he spoke of the two great forms of Play, the great Games of Money-making and War. He had been invited to lecture at Bradford, in the hope that he would give some useful advice towards the design of a new Exchange which was to be built; in curious forgetfulness, it would appear, of his work during the past ten years and more. Indeed, the picture he drew them of an ideal "Temple to the Goddess of Getting-on" was as daring a sermon as ever prophet preached. But when he came to tell them that the employers of labour might be true captains and kings, the leaders and the helpers oftheir fellow-men, and that the function of commerce was not to prey upon society but to provide for it, there were many of his hearers whose hearts told them that he was right, and whose lives have shown, in some measure, that he did not speak in vain.
Still stranger, to hearers who had not noted the conclusion of his third volume of "Modern Painters," was his view of war, in the address to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, in December 1865. The common view of war as destroyer of arts and enemy of morality, the easy acceptance of the doctrine that peace is an unqualified blessing, the obvious evils of battle and rapine and the waste of resources and life throughout so many ages, have blinded less clear-sighted and less widely-experienced thinkers to another side of the teaching of history, which Ruskin dwelt upon with unexpected emphasis.
But modern war, horrible, not from its scale, but from the spirit in which the upper classes set the lower to fight like gladiators in the arena, he denounced; and called upon the women of England, with whom, he said, the real power of life and death lay, to mend it into some semblance of antique chivalry, or to end it in the name of religion and humanity.
In theNew Reviewfor March 1892, there appeared a series of "Letters of John Ruskin to his Secretary," which, as the anonymous contributor remarked, illustrate "Ruskin the worker, as he acts away from the eyes of the world; Ruskin the epistolographer, when the eventuality of the printing-press is not for the moment before him Ruskin the good Samaritan, ever gentle and open-handed when true need and a good cause make appeal to his tender heart; Ruskin the employer, considerate, generous—an ideal master."
Charles Augustus Howell became known to Ruskin (in 1864 or 1865) through the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites; and, as the editor of the letters puts it, "by his talents and assiduity" became thetoo-trusted friend andprotégéof Ruskin, Rossetti and others of their acquaintance. It was he who proposed and carried out the exhumation, reluctantly consented to, of Rossetti's manuscript poems from his wife's grave, in October, 1869; for which curious service to literature let him have the thanks of posterity. But he was hardly the man to carry out Ruskin's secret charities, and long before he had lost Rossetti's confidence12he had ceased to act as Ruskin's secretary.
From these letters, however, several interesting traits and incidents may be gleaned, such as anecdotes about the canary which was anonymously bought at the Crystal Palace Bird Show (February 1866) for the owner's benefit: about the shopboy whom Ruskin was going to train as an artist; and about the kindly proposal to employ the aged and impoverished Cruikshank upon a new book of fairy tales, and the struggle between admiration for the man and admission of his loss of power, ending in the free gift of the hundred pounds promised.
In April, 1866, after writing the Preface to "The Crown of Wild Olive," and preparing the book for publication, Ruskin was carried off to the Continent for a holiday with Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan, her niece Miss Constance Hilliard (Mrs. Churchill), and Miss Agnew (Mrs. Severn), for a thorough rest and change after three years of unintermitting work in England. They intended to spend a couple of months in Italy. On the day of starting, Ruskin called at Cheyne Walk with the usual bouquet for Mrs. Carlyle, to learn that she had just met with her death, in trying to save her little dog, the gift of Lady Trevelyan. He rejoined his friends, and they crossed the Channel gaily, in spite of what they thought was rather a cloud over him. At Paris they read the news. "Yes," he said, "I knew. But there wasno reason why I should spoil your pleasure by telling you."
On his arrival at Dijon he wrote to Carlyle, who in answer after giving way to his grief—"my life all laid in ruins, and the one light of it as if gone out,"—continued:—"Come and see me when you get home; come oftener and see me, and speakmorefrankly to me (for I am very true to y'r highest interests and you) while I still remain here. You can do nothing for me in Italy; except come home improved."
But before this letter reached Ruskin, he too had been in the presence of death, and had lost one of his most valued friends. Their journey to Italy had been undertaken chiefly for the sake of Lady Trevelyan's health, as the following extracts indicate: