CHAPTER V

"... With the Professor, who dislikes railways very much, it was not a question of travelling by rail. He said, 'I will take you in a carriage and with horses, and we will drive the whole way from London to the North of England. And I will not only do that, but I will do the best in my power to get a postilion to ride, and we will go quite in the old-fashioned way ...' The Professor went so far that he actually built a carriage for this drive. It was a regular posting carriage, with good strong wheels, a place behind for the luggage, and cunning drawers inside it for all kinds of things that we might require on the journey. We started off one fine morning from London—I must say without a postilion—but when we arrived at the next town, about twenty miles off, having telegraphed beforehand that we were coming, there was a gorgeous postilion ready with the fresh horses, and we started off in a right style, according to the Professor's wishes."After many pleasant days of travelling, we at last arrived at Sheffield, and I well remember that we created no small sensation as we clattered up to the old posting inn. I think it was the King's Head. We stayed a few days, and visited the old Museum at Walkley; and I remember the look of regret on the Professor's face when he saw how cramped the space was there for the things he had to show. However, with his usual kindliness, he did not say much about it at the time, and he did not complain of the considerable amount of room it was necessary for the curator and his family to take up in that place. We stayed about two days looking at the beautiful country,—and I am glad to say there was a good deal still left,—and then the Professor gave orders that the carriage should be got ready to take us on our journey, and that a postilion should be forthcoming, if possible. I remember leaving the luncheon table and going outside to see if the necessary arrangements were complete. Sure enough, there was the carriage at the door, and a still more gorgeous postilion than any we had had so far onour journey. His riding breeches were of the tightest and whitest I ever saw; his horses were an admirable pair, and looked like going. A very large crowd had assembled outside the inn, to see what extraordinary kind of mortals could be going to travel in such a way."I went to the room where the Professor was still at luncheon, and told him that everything was ready, but that there was a very large crowd at the door. He seemed rather amused; and I said, 'You know, Professor, I really don't know what the people expect—whether it is a bride and bridegroom, or what.' He said, 'Well, Arthur, you and Joan shall play at being bride and bridegroom inside the carriage, and I will get on the box.' He got Mrs. Severn on his arm, and had to hold her pretty tightly as he left the door, because when she saw the crowd outside she tried to beat a retreat. At last he got her into the carriage, I was put in afterwards, and he jumped up on the box. The crowd closed in, and looked at us as if we were a sort of menagerie. I was much amused when I thought how little these eager people knew that the real attraction was on the box; I felt inclined to put my head out of the window, and say, 'My good people, there is the man you should look at,—not us.' I did not like to do so; and the Professor gave the word to be off, the postilion cracked his whip, and we went off in grand style, amidst the cheers of the crowd...."

"After many pleasant days of travelling, we at last arrived at Sheffield, and I well remember that we created no small sensation as we clattered up to the old posting inn. I think it was the King's Head. We stayed a few days, and visited the old Museum at Walkley; and I remember the look of regret on the Professor's face when he saw how cramped the space was there for the things he had to show. However, with his usual kindliness, he did not say much about it at the time, and he did not complain of the considerable amount of room it was necessary for the curator and his family to take up in that place. We stayed about two days looking at the beautiful country,—and I am glad to say there was a good deal still left,—and then the Professor gave orders that the carriage should be got ready to take us on our journey, and that a postilion should be forthcoming, if possible. I remember leaving the luncheon table and going outside to see if the necessary arrangements were complete. Sure enough, there was the carriage at the door, and a still more gorgeous postilion than any we had had so far onour journey. His riding breeches were of the tightest and whitest I ever saw; his horses were an admirable pair, and looked like going. A very large crowd had assembled outside the inn, to see what extraordinary kind of mortals could be going to travel in such a way.

"I went to the room where the Professor was still at luncheon, and told him that everything was ready, but that there was a very large crowd at the door. He seemed rather amused; and I said, 'You know, Professor, I really don't know what the people expect—whether it is a bride and bridegroom, or what.' He said, 'Well, Arthur, you and Joan shall play at being bride and bridegroom inside the carriage, and I will get on the box.' He got Mrs. Severn on his arm, and had to hold her pretty tightly as he left the door, because when she saw the crowd outside she tried to beat a retreat. At last he got her into the carriage, I was put in afterwards, and he jumped up on the box. The crowd closed in, and looked at us as if we were a sort of menagerie. I was much amused when I thought how little these eager people knew that the real attraction was on the box; I felt inclined to put my head out of the window, and say, 'My good people, there is the man you should look at,—not us.' I did not like to do so; and the Professor gave the word to be off, the postilion cracked his whip, and we went off in grand style, amidst the cheers of the crowd...."

On one of these posting excursions, they came to Hardraw; Mrs. Alfred Hunt tells the story in her edition of Turner's "Richmondshire"; Mr. Severn's account is somewhat different. After examining the Fall, Mrs. Severn and Mr. Ruskin left Mr. Severn to sketch, and went away to Hawes to order their tea. When they were gone, a man who had been standing by came up and asked if that were Professor Ruskin. "Yes," said Mr. Severn, "it was; he is very fond of the Fall, and much puzzled to know why the edge of the cliff is not worn away by the water, as he expected to find it after so many years." "Oh," said the other, "there are twelve feet of masonry up there to protect the rock. I'm a native of the place, and know all about it." "I wish," said Mr. Severn, absently, as he went on drawing, "Mr. Ruskin knewthat; he would be so interested." And the stranger ran off. When the sketcher came in to tea he felt there was something wrong. "You're in for it!" said his wife. "Let us look at his sketch first," said Mr. Ruskin; and luckily it was a very good one. By and by it all came out;—how the Yorkshireman had caught the Professor, and eagerly described the horrible Vandalism, receiving in reply some very emphatic language. Upon which he took off his hat and bowed low: "But, sir," he faltered, "the gentleman up there said I was to tell you, and you would be so interested!" The Professor, suddenly mollified, took off his hat in turn, and apologised for his reception of the news: "but," said he, "I shall never care for Hardraw Waterfall again."

"The Professor," said Mr. Severn, "dislikes railways very much:" and on his arrival at Brantwood after that posting journey he wrote a preface to "A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District," by Mr. Robert Somervell. Ruskin's dislike of railways has been the text of a great deal of misrepresentation, and his use of them, at all, has been often quoted as an inconsistency. As a matter of fact, he never objected to main lines of railway communication; but he strongly objected, in common with a vast number of people, to the introduction of railways into districts whose chief interest is in their scenery; especially where, as in the English Lake district, the scenery is in miniature, easily spoiled by embankments and viaducts, and by the rows of ugly buildings which usually grow up round a station; and where the beauty of the landscape can only be felt in quiet walks or drives through it. Many years later, after he had said all he had to say on the subject again and again, and was on the brink of one of his illnesses, he wrote in violent language to a correspondent who tried to "draw" him on the subject of another proposed railway to Ambleside. But his real opinions were simple enough, and consistent with a practicable scheme of life.

In August 1876 he left England for Italy. He travelled alone, accompanied only by his new servant Baxter, who had lately taken the place vacated by Crawley, Mr. Ruskin's former valet of twenty years' service. He crossed the Simplon to Venice, where he was welcomed by an old friend, Rawdon Brown, and a new friend, Prof. C.H. Moore, of Harvard. He met two Oxford pupils, Mr. J. Reddie Anderson, whom he set to work on Carpaccio; and Mr. Whitehead—"So much nicer they all are," he wrote in a private letter, "than I was at their age;"—also his pupil Mr. Bunney, at work on copies of pictures and records of architecture, the legacy of St. Mark to St. George. Two young artists were brought into his circle, during that winter—both Venetians, and both singularly interesting men: Giacomo Boni, now a celebrated antiquary, then capo d'opera of the Ducal Palace, and doing his best to preserve, instead of "restoring," the ancient sculptures; and Angelo Alessandri, a painter of more than usual seriousness of aim and sympathy with the fine qualities of the old masters.

Ruskin had been engaged on a manual of drawing for his Oxford schools, which he now meant to complete in two parts: "The Laws of Fésole"—teaching the principles of Florentine draughtsmanship; and "The Laws of Rivo Alto"—about Venetian colour. Passages for this second part were written. But he found himself so deeply interested in the evolution of Venetian art, and in tracing the spirit of the people as shown by the mythology illustrated in the pictures and sculptures, that his practical manual became a sketch of art history, "St. Mark's Rest"—as a sort of companion to "Mornings in Florence," which he had been working at during his last visit to Italy. His intention was to supersede "Stones of Venice" by a smaller book, giving more prominence to the ethical side of history, which should illustrate Carpaccio as the most important figure of the transition period, and do away with the exclusive Protestantism of his earlier work.

He set himself to this task, with Tintoret's motto—Sempre si fa il mare maggiore, and worked with feverish energy, recording his progress in letters home.

"13Nov.—I never was yet, in my life, in such a state of hopeless confusion of letters, drawings, and work: chiefly because, of course, when one is old, one'sdonework seems all to tumble in upon one, and want rearranging, and everything brings a thousand old as well as new thoughts. My head seems less capable of accounts every year. I can'tfixmy mind on a sum in addition—it goes off, between seven and nine, into a speculation on the seven deadly sins or the nine muses. My table is heaped with unanswered letters,—MS. of four or five different books at six or seven different parts of each,—sketches getting rubbed out,—others getting smudged in,—parcels from Mr. Brown unopened, parcelsforMr. Moore unsent; my inkstand in one place,—too probably upset,—my pen in another; my paper under a pile of books, and my last carefully written note thrown into the waste-paper basket."3Dec.—I'm having nasty foggy weather just now,—but it's better than fog in London,—and I'm really resting a little, and trying not to be so jealous of the flying days. I've a mostcumfyroom [at the Grand Hotel]—I've gone out of the very expensive one, and only pay twelve francs a day; and I've two windows, one with open balcony and the other covered in with glass. It spoils the look of the window dreadfully, but gives me a view right away to Lido, and of the whole sunrise. Then the bed is curtained off from rest of room like that [sketch of window and room] with fine flourishing white and gold pillars—and the black place is where one goes out of the room beside the bed."9Dec.—I hope to send home a sketch or two which will show I'm not quite losing my head yet.... I must show at Oxford some reason for my staying so long in Venice."Beside studies in the Chapel of St. George, he copied Carpaccio's "Dream of St. Ursula" which was taken down—it had been "skied" at the Academy until then—and placed in the sculpture gallery; and be laboured to produce a facsimile."24Dec.—I do think St. Ursula's lips are coming pretty—and her eyelids—but oh me, her hair. Toni, Mr. Brown's gondolier, says she's all right—and he's a grave and close looking judge, you know."

"3Dec.—I'm having nasty foggy weather just now,—but it's better than fog in London,—and I'm really resting a little, and trying not to be so jealous of the flying days. I've a mostcumfyroom [at the Grand Hotel]—I've gone out of the very expensive one, and only pay twelve francs a day; and I've two windows, one with open balcony and the other covered in with glass. It spoils the look of the window dreadfully, but gives me a view right away to Lido, and of the whole sunrise. Then the bed is curtained off from rest of room like that [sketch of window and room] with fine flourishing white and gold pillars—and the black place is where one goes out of the room beside the bed.

"9Dec.—I hope to send home a sketch or two which will show I'm not quite losing my head yet.... I must show at Oxford some reason for my staying so long in Venice."

Beside studies in the Chapel of St. George, he copied Carpaccio's "Dream of St. Ursula" which was taken down—it had been "skied" at the Academy until then—and placed in the sculpture gallery; and be laboured to produce a facsimile.

"24Dec.—I do think St. Ursula's lips are coming pretty—and her eyelids—but oh me, her hair. Toni, Mr. Brown's gondolier, says she's all right—and he's a grave and close looking judge, you know."

Christmas Day was a crisis in his life. He was attacked by illness; severe pain, followed by a dreamy state in which the vividly realized presence of St. Ursula mingled with memories of his dead lady, whose "spirit" had been shown him a year before by a "medium" met at a country house. Since then he had watched eagerly for evidences of another life: and the sense of its conceivability grew upon him, in spite of the doubts which he had entertained of the immortality of the soul. At last, after a year's earnest desire for some such assurance, it seemed to come to him. What others call coincidences, and accidents, and states of mind flashed, for him, into importance; times and seasons, names and symbols, took a vivid meaning. His intense despondency changed for a while into a singular happiness—it seemed a renewed health and strength: and instead of despair, he rejoiced in the conviction of guarding Providences and helpful influences.

Readers of "Fors" had traced for some years back the re-awakening of a religious tone, now culminating in a pronounced mysticism which they could not understand, and in a recantation of the sceptical judgments of his middle period. He found, now, new excellences in the early Christian painting; he depreciated Turner and Tintoret, and denounced the frivolous art of the day. He searched the Bible more diligently than ever for its hidden meanings; and in proportion as he felt its inspiration, he recoiled from the conclusions of modern science, and wrapped the prophet's mantle more closely round him, as he denounced with growing fervour the crimes of our unbelieving age.

In the summer of 1875, Ruskin had written:

"I begin to ask myself, with somewhat pressing arithmetic, how much time is likely to be left me, at the age of fifty-six, to complete the various designs for which, until past fifty, I was merely collecting material. Of these materials I have now enough by me for a most interesting (in my own opinion) history of fifteenth century Florentine Art, in six octavo volumes; an analysis of the Attic art of the fifth century B.C. in three volumes; an exhaustive history of northern thirteenth-century art, in ten volumes; a life of Sir Walter Scott, with analysis of modern epic art, in seven volumes; a life of Xenophon, with analysis of the general principles of education, in ten volumes; a commentary on Hesiod, with final analysis of the principles of Political Economy, in nine volumes; and a general description of the geology and botany of the Alps, in twenty-four volumes."

The estimate of volumes was—perhaps—in jest; but the plans for harvesting his material were in earnest.

"Proserpina"—so named from the Flora of the Greeks, the daughter of Demeter, Mother Earth—grew out of notes already begun in 1866. It was little like an ordinary botany book;—that was to be expected. It did not dissect plants; it did not give chemical or histological analysis: but with bright and curious fancy, with the most ingenious diagrams and perfect drawings—beautifully engraved by Burgess and Allen—illustrated the mystery of growth in plants and the tender beauty of their form. Though this was not science, in strict terms it was a field of work which no one but Ruskin had cultivated. He was helped by a few scientific men like Professor Oliver, who saw a value in his line of thought, and showed a kindly interest in it.

"Deucalion"—from the mythical creator of human life out of stones—was begun as a companion work:to be published in parts, as the repertory of Oxford lectures on Alpine form, and notes on all kinds of kindred subjects. For instance, before that hasty journey to Sheffield he gave a lecture at the London Institution on "Precious Stones" (February 17th, repeated March 28th, 1876. A lecture on a similar subject was given to the boys of Christ's Hospital on April 15th). This lecture, called "The Iris of the Earth," stood first in Part III. of "Deucalion": and the work went on, in studies of the forms of silica, on the lines marked out ten years before in the papers on Banded and Brecciated Concretions; now carried forward with much kind help from the Rev. J. Clifton Ward, of the Geological Survey, and Mr. Henry Willett, F.G.S., of Brighton.

On the way home over the Simplon in May and June, 1877, travelling first with Signor Alessandri, and then with Mr. G. Allen, Professor Ruskin continued his studies of Alpine flowers for "Proserpina." In the autumn he gave a lecture at Kendal (Oct. 1st, repeated at Eton College Dec. 8th) on "Yewdale and its Streamlets."

"Yewdale"—reprinted as Part V. of "Deucalion"—took an unusual importance in his own mind, not only because it was a great success as a lecture—though some Kendalians complained that there was not enough "information" in it:—but because it was the first given since that Christmas at Venice, when a new insight had been granted him, as he felt, into spiritual things, and a new burden laid on him, to withstand the rash conclusions of "science falsely so called," and to preach in their place the presence of God in nature and in man.

Writing to Miss Beever about his Oxford course of that autumn, "Readings in Modern Painters,"38he said, on the 2nd December:

"I gave yesterday the twelfth and last of my course of lectures this term, to a room crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members of the University, and with its door wedged open by those who could not get in; this interest of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the first time in Oxford I have been able to speak to them boldly of immortal life. I intended when I began the course only to have read 'Modern Painters' to them; but when I began, some of your favourite bits39interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a proportion of undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to re-inforce and press them home; and people say I have never given so useful a course yet. But it has taken all my time and strength."

He wrote again, on Dec. 16th, from Herne Hill:

"It is a long while since I've felt so good-for-nothing as I do this morning. My very wristbands curl up in a dog's-eared and disconsolate manner; my little room is all a heap of disorder. I've got a hoarseness and wheezing and sneezing and coughing and choking. I can't speak and I can't think; I'm miserable in bed and useless out of it; and it seems to me as if I could never venture to open a window or go out of a door any more. I have the dimmest sort of diabolical pleasure in thinking how miserable I shall make Susie by telling her all this; but in other respects I seem entirely devoid of all moral sentiments. I have arrived at this state of things, first by catching cold, and since trying to 'amuse myself' for three days."

He goes on to give a list of his amusements—Pickwick, chivalric romances, theDaily Telegraph, Staunton's games of chess, and finally analysis of the Dock Company's bill of charges on a box from Venice.

Ten days after he wrote from Oxford, in his whimsical style:

"Yesterday I had two lovely services in my own cathedral. You know theCathedralof Oxford is the chapel of Christ Church College, and I have my high seat in the chancel, as an honorary student, besides being bred there,and so one is ever so proud and ever so pious all at once, which is ever so nice you know: and my own dean, that's the Dean of Christ Church, who is as big as any bishop, read the services, and the psalms and anthems were lovely; and then I dined with Henry Acland and his family ... but I do wish I could be at Brantwood too." Next day it was "Cold quite gone."

But he was not to be quit so easily this time of the results of overwork and worry.

He had been passing through the unpleasant experience of a misunderstanding with one of his most trusted friends and helpers. His work on behalf of the St. George's Guild had been energetic and sincere: and he had received the support of a number of strangers, among whom were people of responsible station and position. But he was surprised to find that many of his personal friends held aloof. He was still more surprised to learn, on returning from Venice, full of new hope and stronger convictions in his mission, that the caution of one upon whom he had counted as a firm ally had dissuaded an intending adherent from joining in the work. A man of the world, accustomed to overreach and to be overreached, would have taken the discovery coolly, and accepted an explanation. But Ruskin was never a man of the world; and now, much less than ever. He took it as treason to the great work of which he felt himself to be the missionary. Throughout the autumn and winter the discovery rankled, and preyed on his mind. As for the sake of absolute candour he had published in "Fors" everything that related to the Guild work,—even his own private affairs and confessions, whatever they risked,—he felt that this too must out; in order that his supporters might judge of his conduct and that nothing affecting the enterprise might be kept back. And so, at Christmas, he sent the correspondence to his printers.

Years afterwards, by the intervention of friends, this breach was healed: but what suffering it costcan be learnt from the sequel. To Ruskin it was the beginning of the end. His Aberdeen correspondent asked just then for the usual Christmas message to the Bible class: and instead of the cheery words of bygone years, received the couplet from Horace:

"Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras,Omnemcrede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.""Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believeeveryday that has dawned on thee to be thy last."

"Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras,Omnemcrede diem tibi diluxisse supremum."

"Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believeeveryday that has dawned on thee to be thy last."

From Oxford, early in January, 1878, he went on a visit to Windsor Castle, whence he wrote: "I came to see Prince Leopold, who has been a prisoner to his sofa lately, but I trust he is better; he is very bright and gentle under severe and almost continual pain." No less gentle, in spite of the severe justice he was inflicting upon himself even more than upon his friend, was the author of "Fors," as the letters of the time to his invalid neighbour in "Hortus Inclusus" show. How ready to own himself in the wrong,—at that very moment when he was being pointed at as the most obstinate and egotistic of men—how placable he really was and open to rebuke, he showed, when, from Windsor, he went to Hawarden. Nearly three years before he had written roughly of Mr. Gladstone; as a Conservative, he was not predisposed in favour of the leader of the party to whom he attributed most of the evils he was combating. Mr. Gladstone and he had often met, and by no means agreed together in conversation. But this visit convinced him that he had misjudged Mr. Gladstone; and he promptly made the fullest apology in the current number of "Fors," saying that he had written under a complete misconception of his character. In reprinting the old pages he not only cancelled the offending passage, but he left the place blank, with a note in the middle of it, as "a memorial of rash judgment."

He went slowly northward, seeking rest at Ingleton;whence he wrote, January 17:—"I've got nothing done all the time I've been away but a few mathematical figures [crystallography, no doubt, for 'Deucalion,'] and the less I do the less I find I can do it; and yesterday, for the first time these twenty years, I hadn't so much as a 'plan' in my head all day." Arrived at Brantwood, as rest was useless, he tried work. Mr. Willett had asked him to reprint "The Two Paths," and he got that ready for press, and wrote a short preface. At Venice, Mr. J.R. Anderson had been working out for him the myths illustrated by Carpaccio in the Chapel of S. Giorgio de' Schiavoni; and the book had been waiting for Ruskin's introduction until he was surprised by the publication of an almost identical inquiry by M. Clermont-Ganneau. He tried to fulfil his duty to his pupil by writing the preface immediately; most sorrowfully feeling the inadequacy of his strength for the tasks he had laid upon it. He wrote:

"My own feeling, now, is that everything which has hitherto happened to me, and been done by me, whether well or ill, has been fitting me to take greater fortune more prudently, and to do better work more thoroughly. And just when I seem to be coming out of school,—very sorry to have been such a foolish boy, yet having taken a prize or two, and expecting now to enter upon some more serious business than cricket,—I am dismissed by the Master I hoped to serve, with a—'That's all I want of you, sir.'"

In such times he found relief by reverting to the past. He wrote in the beginning of February a paper for theUniversity Magazineon "My First Editor," W.H. Harrison, and forgot himself—almost—in bright reminiscences of youthful days and early associations. Next, as Mr. Marcus Huish, who had shown great friendliness and generosity in providing prints for the Sheffield museum, was now proposing to hold an Exhibition of Mr. Ruskin's "Turners" at the Fine Art Galleries in New Bond Street, it was necessary to arrange the exhibits and to prepare thecatalogue. For the next fortnight he struggled on with this labour, and with his last "Fors"—the last he was to write in the long series of more than seven years.40How little the thousands who read the preface to his catalogue, with its sad sketch of Turner's fate, and what they supposed to be its "customary burst of terminal eloquence," understood that it was indeed the cry of one who had been wounded in the house of his friends, and was now believing every day that dawned on him to be his last. He told of Turner's youthful picture of the Coniston Fells and its invocation to the mists of morning, bidding them "in honour to the world's great Author, rise,"—and then how Turner's "health, and with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly with a snap of some vital chord," after the sunset splendours of his last, dazzling efforts....

"Morning breaks, as I write, along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the moorlands, veil the lower woods, and the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake-shore. Oh that some one had but told me, in my youth, when all my heart seemed to be set on these colours and clouds, that appear for a little while and then vanish away, how little my love of them would serve me, when the silence of lawn and wood in the dews of morning should be completed; and all my thoughts should be of those whom, by neither, I was to meet more!"

The catalogue was finished, and hurried off to the printers. A week of agitating suspense at home, and then it could no longer be concealed. Friends and foes alike were startled and saddened with the news of his "sudden and dangerous illness,"—some form of inflammation of the brain—the result of overwork, but still more immediately of the emotional strain from which he had been suffering.

On March 4th, the Turner Exhibition opened, and day by day the bulletins from Brantwood announcinghis condition were read by multitudes of visitors with eager and sorrowful interest. Newspapers all the world over copied the daily reports: in the Far West of America the same telegrams were posted, and they say even a more demonstrative sympathy was shown. Nor was the feeling confined to the English speaking public. The Oxford Proctor in Convocation of April 24th, when the patient, after the first burst of the storm was slowly drifting back into calmer waters, thought it worth while, in the course of his speech, to mention that in Italy, where he had lately been on an Easter vacation tour, he had witnessed a widespread anxiety about Ruskin, and prayers put up for his recovery.

By May 10th he was so much better that he could complete the catalogue with some gossip about those Alpine drawings of 1842 which he regarded as the climax of Turner's work. The first—and best in some ways—of the series was the Splügen. Without any word to him, the diligence of kind friends and the help of a wide circle of admirers traced the drawing, and subscribed its price—1,000 guineas, to which Mr. Agnew generously added his commission—and it was presented to Mr. Ruskin as a token of sympathy and respect. He was not insensible to the personal compliment implied, and by way of some answer he spent the first few days of his convalescence in arranging and annotating a series of drawings by himself, and engravings, illustrating the Turners, to add to his show during the remainder of the season. When they were sent off (early in June) to Bond Street, he left home with the Severns to complete his recovery at Malham.

There was another reason why that spontaneous testimonial was welcome at the moment, for a curious and unaccustomed ordeal was impending for his claims as an art critic. On his return from Venice after months of intercourse with the great Old Masters, he found the Grosvenor Gallery just opened for the first time, with its memorable exhibition of the different extra-academical schools. It placed before thepublic, in sharp contrast, the final outcome of the Pre-Raphaelitism for which he had fought many a year before, and samples of the last new fashion from Paris. The maturer works of Burne-Jones had been practically unseen by the public, and Ruskin took the opportunity of their exhibition to write his praise of the youngest of the Old Masters in the current numbers of "Fors," and afterwards in two papers on the "Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism" (Nineteenth Century Magazine, November and December, 1878). But in the same "Fors" he dismissed with half a paragraph of contempt Mr. Whistler's eccentric sketch of Fireworks at Cremorne. Long before, in 1863, when he was working with various artists connected with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Mr. Whistler had made overtures to the great critic through Mr. Swinburne the poet; but he had not been taken seriously. Now he had become the missionary in England of the new French gospel of "impressionism," which to Ruskin was one of those half-truths which are ever the worst of heresies. Mr. Whistler appealed to the law. He brought an action for libel, which was tried on November 25th and 26th before Baron Huddleston, and recovered a farthing damages. Ruskin's costs—amounting to £386 12s. 4d.—were paid by a public subscription to which one hundred and twenty persons, including many strangers, contributed.

By that time he was fully recovering from his illness, back at Coniston, after a short visit to Liverpool. It was forbidden to him to attempt any exciting work. He had given up "Fors" and Oxford lecturing, and was devoting himself again to quiet studies for "Proserpina" and "Deucalion." On the first day of the trial the St. George's Guild was registered as a Company; on the second day he wrote to Miss Beever:

"I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you rightly for bread, sweet odours, roses and pearls, and must just allow myself to be fed, scented, rose-garlanded and be-pearled, as if I were a poor little pet dog, or pet pig. But my cold is better, and Iamgettingon with this botany; but it is really too important a work to be pushed for a week or fortnight."

Early in 1879 his resignation of the Slade Professorship was announced; followed by what was virtually his election to an honorary doctor's degree; or, as officially worded—"the Hebdomadal Council resolved on June 9, 1879, to propose to Convocation to confer the degree of D.C.L.honoris causaupon John Ruskin, M.A., of Ch. Ch., at the enænia of that year; but the proposal, though notified in theGazetteof June 10, was not submitted to vote owing to the inability of Mr. Ruskin to be present at the encænia." The degree was conferred, in his absence, in 1893.

NOTES:

Nov. 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 27, 29 and Dec. 1, 1877. These lectures were never prepared for publication as a course; the last lecture was printed in theNineteenth Centuryfor January, 1878.

Miss Beever had published early in 1875 the extracts from "Modern Painters," so widely known as "Frondes Agrestes."

"Fors" was taken up again, at intervals, later on; but never with the same purpose and continuity.

Sixty years of one of the busiest lives on record were beginning to tell upon Ruskin. He would not confess to old age, but his recent illness had shaken him severely. The next three years were spent chiefly at Coniston, in comparative retirement; but neither in despair, nor idleness, nor loneliness. He had always lived a sort of dual life, solitary in his thoughts, but social in his habits; liking company, especially of young people; ready, in the intervals of work, to enter into their employments and amusements, and curiously able to forget his cares in hours of relaxation. Sometimes, when earnest admirers made the pilgrimage to their Mecca—"holy Brantwood" as a scoffing poet called it—they were surprised and even shocked, to find the prophet of "Fors" at the head of a merry dinner-table, and the Professor of Art among surroundings which a London or aBoston "æsthete" would have ruled to be in very poor taste.

Shall I take you for a visit there,—to Brantwood as it was in those old times?

It is a weary way to Coniston, whatever road you choose. The inconvenience of the railway route was perhaps one reason of Ruskin's preference for driving on so many occasions. After changing and changing trains, and stopping at many a roadside station, at last you see, suddenly, over the wild undulating country, the Coniston Old Man and its crags, abrupt on the left, and the lake, long and narrow, on the right. Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a spot it is.

To come out of the station after long travel is to find yourself face to face with magnificent rocks, and white cottages among the fir-trees. As you are whirled down through the straggling village, and along the shore round the head of the lake, the panorama, though not Alpine in magnitude, is almost Alpine in character. The valley, too, is not yet built up; it is still the old-fashioned lake country, almost as it was in the days of the "Iteriad." You drive up and down a narrow, hilly lane, catching peeps of mountains and sunset, through thick, overhanging trees; you turn sharp up through a gate under dark firs and larches, and the carriage stops in what seems in the twilight a sort of court,—a gravelled space, one side formed by a rough stone wall crowned with laurels and almost precipitous coppice, thebrant(or steep) wood above, and the rest is Brantwood, with a capital B.41

You expect that Gothic porch you have read of in "Lectures on Architecture and Painting," and you are surprised to find a stucco classic portico in the corner, painted andgrained, and heaped around with lucky horseshoes, brightly blackleaded, and mysterious rows of large blocks of slate and basalt and trap—a complete museum of local geology, if only you knew it—very unlike an ideal entrance; still more unlike an ordinary one. While you wait you can see through the glass door a roomy hall, lit with candles, and hung with large drawings by Burne-Jones and by the master of the house. His soft hat, and thick gloves, and chopper, lying on the marble table, show that he has come in from his afternoon's woodcutting.

But if you are expected you will hardly have time to look round, for Brantwood is nothing if not hospitable. The honoured guest—and all guests are honoured there—after welcome, is ushered up a narrow stair, which betrays the original cottage, into the "turret room." It had been "the Professor's" until after his illness, and he papered it with naturalistic pansies, to his own taste, and built out at one corner a projecting turret to command the view on all sides, with windows strongly latticed to resist the storms. There is old-fashioned solid comfort in the way of furniture; and pictures,—a Dürer engraving, some Prouts and Turners, a couple of old Venetian heads, and Meissonier's "Napoleon," over the fireplace—a picture which Ruskin bought for one thousand guineas, showed for a time at Oxford, and hung up here in a shabby little frame to be out of the way.42

If you are a man, you are told not to dress; if you are a lady, you may put on your prettiest gown. They dine in the new room, for the old dining-room was so small that the waitress could not get round the table. The new room is spacious and lofty comparedwith the rest of the house; it has a long window with thick red sandstone mullions—there at last is a touch of Gothicism—to look down the lake, and a bay window open on the narrow lawn sloping steeply down to the road in front, and the view of the Old Man. The walls, painted "duck egg," are hung with old pictures; the Doge Gritti, a bit saved from the great Titian that was burnt in the fire at the Ducal Palace in 1574; a couple of Tintorets; Turner and Reynolds, each painted by himself in youth; Raphael by a pupil, so it is said; portraits of old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and little John and his "boo hills." There he sits, no longer little, opposite: and you can trace the same curve and droop of the eyebrows prefigured in the young face and preserved in the old, and a certain family likeness to his handsome young father.

Since Mr. Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' the cuss!'"

There are generally two or three young people staying in the house, salaried assistants43or amateur, occasional helpers; but though there is a successionof visitors from a distance, there is not very frequent entertainment of neighbours.

A Brantwood dinner is always ample; there is no asceticism about the place; nor is there any affectation of "intensity" or of conversational cleverness. The neat things you meant to say are forgotten—you must be hardened indeed to say them to Mr. Ruskin's face; but if you were shy, you soon feel that there was no need for shyness; you have fallen among friends; and before dessert comes in, with fine old sherry—the pride of your host, as he explains—you feel that nobody understands you so well, and that all his books are nothing to himself.

They don't sit over their wine, and smoking is not allowed. Ruskin goes off to his study after dinner—it is believed for a nap, for he was at work early and has been out all the afternoon. In the drawing-room you see pictures—water-colours by Turner and Hunt, drawings by Prout and Ruskin, an early Burne-Jones, a sketch in oil by Gainsborough. The furniture is the old mahogany of Mr. Ruskin's childhood, with rare things interspersed—like the cloisonné vases on the mantelpiece.

Soon after nine Ruskin comes in with an armful of things that are going to the Sheffield museum, and while his cousin makes his tea and salted toast, he explains his last acquirements in minerals or missals, eager that you should see the interest of them; or displays the last studies of Mr. Rooke or Mr. Fairfax Murray, copies from Carpaccio or bits of Gothic architecture.

Then, sitting in the chair in which he preached his baby-sermon, he reads aloud a few chapters of Scott or Miss Edgeworth, or, with judicious omissions, one of the older novelists; or translates, with admirablefacility, a scene of Scribe or George Sand. When his next work comes out you will recognise this evening's reading in his allusions and quotations, perhaps even in the subjects of his writing, for at this time he is busy on the articles of "Fiction, Fair and Foul."

After the reading, music; a bit of his own composition, "Old Aegina's Rock," or "Cockle-hat and Staff"; his cousin's Scotch ballads or Christy Minstrel songs; and if you can sing a new ditty, fresh from London, now is your chance. You are surprised to see the Prophet clapping his hands to "Camptown Races," or the "Hundred Pipers"—chorus given with the whole strength of the company; but you are in a house of strange meetings.

By about half-past ten his day is over; a busy day, that has left him tired out. You will not easily forget the way he lit his candle—no lamps allowed, and no gas—and gave a last look lovingly at a pet picture or two, slanting his candlestick and shading the light with his hand, before he went slowly upstairs to his own little room, literally lined with the Turner drawings you have read about in "Modern Painters."

You may be waked by a knock at the door, and "Are you looking out?" And pulling up the blind, there is one of our Coniston mornings, with the whole range of mountains in one quiet glow above the cool mist of the valley and lake. Going down at length on a voyage of exploration, and turning in perhaps at the first door, you intrude upon "the Professor" at work in his study, half sitting, half kneeling at his round table in the bay window, with the early cup of coffee, and the cat in his crimson arm-chair. There he has been working since dawn, perhaps, or on dark mornings by candlelight. And he does not seem to mind the interruption; after a welcome he asks you to look round while he finishes his paragraph, and writes away composedly.

A long, low room, evidently two old cottage-rooms thrown into one; papered with a pattern specially copied from Marco Marziale's "Circumcision" in theNational Gallery; and hung with Turners. A great early Turner44of the Lake of Geneva is over the fireplace. You are tempted to make a mental inventory. Polished steel fender, very unæsthetic; curious shovel—his design, he will stop to remark, and forged by the village smith. Red mahogany furniture, with startling shiny emerald leather chair-cushions; red carpet and green curtains. Most of the room crowded with bookcases and cabinets for minerals. Scales in a glass case; heaps of mineral specimens; books on the floor; rolls of diagrams; early Greek pots from Cyprus; a great litter of things and yet not disorderly nor dusty. "I don't understand," he once said, "why you ladies are always complaining about the dust; my bookcases are never dusty!" The truth being that, though he rose early, the housemaid rose earlier.

Before you have finished your inventory he breaks off work to show you a drawer or two of minerals, fairy-land in a cupboard; or some of his missals, King Hakon's Bible, or the original MS. of the Scott he was reading last night; or, opening a door in a sort of secrétaire, pulls out of their sliding cases frame after frame of Turners—the Bridge of Narni, the Falls of Terni, Florence, or Rome, and many more—to hold in your hand, and take to the light, and look into with a lens—quite a different thing from seeing pictures in a gallery.

At breakfast, when you see the post-bag brought in, you understand why he tries to get his bit of writing done early. The letters and parcels are piled in the study, and after breakfast, at which, as in old times, he reads his last-written passages—how much more interesting they will always look to you in print!—after breakfast he is closeted with an assistant, and they work through the heap. Private friends, known by handwriting, he puts aside; most of the morning will go in answering them. Business he talks over,and gives brief directions. But the bulk of the correspondence is from strangers in all parts of the world—admirers' flattery; students' questions; begging-letters for money, books, influence, advice, autographs, criticism on enclosed MS. or accompanying picture; remonstrance or abuse from dissatisfied readers, or people who object to his method of publication, or wish to convert him to their own religion. And so the heap is gradually cleared, with the help of the waste-paper basket; the secretary's work cut out, his own arranged; and by noon a long row of letters and envelopes have been set out to dry—Mr. Ruskin uses no blotting-paper, and, as he dislikes the vulgar method of fastening envelopes, the secretary's work will be to seal them all with red wax, and the seal with the motto "To-day" cut in the apex of a big specimen of chalcedony.

If you take, as many do, an interest in the minutiæ of portrait painting, and think the picture more finished for its details, you may notice that he writes on the flat table, not on a desk; that he uses a cork penholder and a fine steel pen, though he is not at all a slave to his tools, and differs from others rather in the absence of thesine quâ nonfrom his conditions. He can write anywhere, on anything, with anything; wants no pen-wiper, no special form of paper, or other "fad." Much of his work is written in bound notebooks, especially when heisabroad, to prevent the loss and disorder of multitudinous foolscap. He generally makes a rough syllabus of his subject, in addition to copious notes and extracts from authorities, and then writes straight off; not without a noticeable hesitation and revision, even in his letters. His rough copy is transcribed by an assistant, and he often does not see it again until it is in proof.45

Printers' proofs are always a trial, and he is glad to shift the work on to an assistant's shoulders, such as Mr. Harrison was, who saw all his early worksthrough the press. But he is extremely particular about certain matters, such as the choice of type and arrangements of the page; though his taste does not coincide with that of the leaders of recent fashions. Mr. Jowett (of Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney, Limited) said inHazell's Magazinefor September; 1892, that Ruskin made the size of the page a careful study, though he adopted many varieties. The "Fors" page is different from, and not so symmetrical as that of the octavo "Works Series," although both are printed on the same sized paper—medium 8vo. Then there is the "Knight's Faith" and "Ulric," in both of which the type (picamodern—"this delightful type," wrote Ruskin) and the size of the page are different from any other; yet both were his choice. The "Ulric" page was imitated from an old edition of Miss Edgeworth. The first proof he criticised thus: "Don't you think a quarter inch off this page, as enclosed, would look better? The type is very nice. How delicious a bit of Miss Edgeworth's is, like this!" "Ida" was another page of his choice, and greatly approved. His title pages, too, were arranged with great care; he used to draw them out in pen and ink, indicating the size and position of the lines and letters. He objected to ornaments and to anything like blackness and heaviness, but he was very particular about proportions and spacing, and about the division of words.

In the morning everybody is busy. There are drawings and diagrams to be made, MS. to copy, references to look up, parcels to pack and unpack. Someone is told off to take you round, and you visit the various rooms and see the treasures, inspect the outhouse with its workshop for carpentry, framing and mounting, casting leaves and modelling; one work or another is sure to be going on; perhaps one of the various sculptors who have made Ruskin's bust is busy there. Down at the Lodge, a miniature Brantwood, turret and all, the Severn children livewhen they are at Coniston. Then there are the gardens, terraced in the steep, rocky slope, and some small hot-houses, which Ruskin thinks a superfluity, except that they provide grapes for sick neighbours.

Below the gardens a path across a field takes you to the harbour, begun in play by the Xenophon translators and finished by the village mason, with its fleet of boats—chief of them the "Jumping Jenny" (called after Nanty Ewart's boat in "Redgauntlet"), Ruskin's own design and special private water-carriage. Outside the harbour the sail-boats are moored, Mr. Severn'sLily of Brantwood. Milliard's boat, and hisSnail, an unfortunate craft brought from Morecambe Bay with great expectations that were never realized; though Ruskin always professed to believe in her, as areal sea-boat(see "Harbours of England") such as he used to steer with his friend Huret, the Boulogne fisherman, in the days when he, too, was smitten with sea-fever.

After luncheon, if letters are done, all hands are piped to the moor. With billhooks and choppers the party winds up the wood paths, "the Professor" first, walking slowly, and pointing out to you his pet bits of rock-cleavage, or ivied trunk, or nest of wild strawberry plants. You see, perhaps, the ice-house—tunnelled at vast expense into the rock and filled at more expense with the best ice; opened at last with great expectations and the most charitable intent—for it was planned to supply invalids in the neighbourhood with ice, as the, hothouses supplied them with grapes; and revealing, after all, nothing but a puddle of dirty water. You see more successful works—the Professor's little private garden, which he is supposed to cultivate with his own hands; various little wells and watercourses among the rocks, moss-grown and fern-embowered; and so you come out on the moor.

There great works go on. Juniper is being rooted up; boggy patches drained and cultivatedcranberries are being planted, and oats grown; paths engineered to the best points of view; rocks bared to examine the geology—though you cannot get the Professor to agree that every inch of his territory has been glaciated. These diversions have their serious side, for he is really experimenting on the possibility of reclaiming waste land; perhaps too sanguine, you think, and not counting the cost. To which he replies that, as long as there are hands unemployed and misemployed, a government such as he would see need never be at a loss for labourers. If corn can be made to grow where juniper grew before, the benefit is a positive one, the expense only comparative. And so you take your pick with the rest, and are almost persuaded to become a companion of St. George.

Not to tire a new comer, he takes you away after a while to a fine heathery promontory, where you sit before a most glorious view of lake and mountains. This, he says, is his "Naboth's vineyard";46he would like to own so fine a point of vantage. But he is happy in his country retreat, far happier than you thought him; and the secret of his happiness is that he has sympathy with all around him, and hearty interest in everything, from the least to the greatest.

Coming down from the moor after the round, when you reach the front door you must see the performance of the waterfall: everybody must see that. On the moor a reservoir has been dug and dammed, with ingenious flood-gates—Ruskin's device, of course—and a channel led down through the wood to a rustic bridge in the rock. Some one has stayed behind to let out the water, and down it comes; first a black stream and then a white one, as it gradually clears; and the rocky wall at the entrance becomes for ten minutes a cascade. This too has it uses; not only is there a supply of water in case of fire(the exact utilisation of which is yet undecided), but it illustrates one of his doctrines about the simplicity with which works of irrigation could be carried out among the hills of Italy.

And so you go in to tea and chess, for he loves a good game of chess with all his heart. He loves many things, you have found. He is different from other men you know, by the breadth and vividness of his sympathies, by power of living as few other men can live, in Admiration, Hope and Love.

NOTES:

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