On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 9

202. I had gone into the Museum that day to see the exact form of a duck's wing, the examination of a lively young drake's here at Coniston having closed in his giving me such a cut on the wrist with it, that I could scarcely write all the morning afterwards. Now in the whole bird gallery there are only two ducks' wings expanded, and those in different positions. Fancy the difference to the mob, and me, if the sh.e.l.ls and monkey skeletons were taken away from the mid-gallery, and instead, three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the length--or a quarter would do it--with judgment), showing the transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodc.o.c.k--in length of leg, from swift to stilted plover--and in length of wing, from auk to frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to their full sweep, and in another, shown at the limit of the down back stroke. For what on earth--or in air--is the use to me of seeing their boiled sternums and scalped sinciputs, when I'm never shown either how they bear their b.r.e.a.s.t.s--or where they carry their heads?

Enough of natural history, you will say! I will come to art in my next letter--finishing the ugly subject of this one with a single sentence from section ix. of the "Tale of a Tub," commending the context of it to my friends of the Royal Academy.

"Last week, I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse."--Ever, my dear ----, affectionately yours,

J. R.

_7th April, 1880._

MY DEAR ----,

203. I suppose that proper respect for the great first principles of the British Const.i.tution, that every man should do as he pleases, think what he likes, and see everything that can be seen for money, will make most of your readers recoil from my first principle of Museum arrangement,--that nothing should be let inside the doors that isn't good of its sort,--as from an attempt to restore the Papacy, revive the Inquisition, and away with everybody to the lowest dungeon of the castle moat. They must at their pleasure charge me with these sinister views; they will find that there is no dexter view to be had of the business, which does not consist primarily in knowing Bad from Good, and Right from Wrong. Nor, if they will condescend to begin simply enough, and at the bottom of the said business, and let the cobbler judge of the crepida, and the potter of the pot, will they find it so supremely difficult to establish authorities that shall be trustworthy, and judgments that shall be sure.

204. Suppose, for instance, at Leicester, whence came first to us the inquiry on such points, one began by setting apart a Hunter's Room, in which a series of portraits of their Master's favorites, for the last fifty years or so, should be arranged, with certificate from each Squire of his satisfaction, to such and such a point, with the portrait of Lightfoot, or Lucifer, or Will o' the Wisp; and due notification, for perhaps a recreant and degenerate future, of the virtues and perfections at this time sought and secured in the English horse. Would not such a chamber of chivalry have, in its kind, a quite indisputable authority and historical value, not to be shaken by any future impudence or infidelity?

Or again in Staffordshire, would it not be easily answered to an honest question of what is good and not, in clay or ware, "This will work, and that will stand"? and might not a series of the mugs which have been matured with discrimination, and of the pots which have been popular in use, be so ordered as to display their qualities in a convincing and harmonious manner against all gainsayers?

205. Nor is there any mystery of taste, or marvel of skill, concerning which you may not get quite easy initiation and safe pilotage for the common people, provided you once make them clearly understand that there is indeed something to be learned, and something to be admired, in the arts, which will need their attention for a time; and cannot be explained with a word, nor seen with a wink. And provided also, and with still greater decision, you set over them masters, in each branch of the arts, who know their own minds in that matter, and are not afraid to speak them, nor to say, "We know," when they know, and "We don't know,"

when they don't.

To which end, the said several branches must be held well apart, and dealt with one at a time. Every considerable town ought to have its exemplary collections of woodwork, iron-work, and jewelry, attached to the schools of their several trades, leaving to be ill.u.s.trated in its public museum, as in an hexagonal bee's cell, the six queenly and muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pottery, sculpture, architecture, and painting.

206. For each of these, there should be a separate Tribune or Chamber of absolute tribunal, which need not be large--that, so called, of Florence, not the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for the last century determined the taste of the European public in two arts!--in which the absolute best in each art, so far as attainable by the communal pocket, should be authoritatively exhibited, with simple statement that it is good, and reason why it is good, and notification in what particulars it is unsurpa.s.sable, together with some not too complex ill.u.s.trations of the steps by which it has attained to that perfection, where these can be traced far back in history.

207. These six Tribunes, or Temples, of Fame, being first set with their fixed criteria, there should follow a series of historical galleries, showing the rise and fall (if fallen) of the arts in their beautiful a.s.sociations, as practiced in the great cities and by the great nations of the world. The history of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, of Italy, of France, and of England, should be given in their arts,--dynasty by dynasty and age by age; and for a seventh, a Sunday Room, for the history of Christianity in its art, including the farthest range and feeblest efforts of it; reserving for this room, also, what power could be reached in delineation of the great monasteries and cathedrals which were once the glory of all Christian lands.

208. In such a scheme, every form of n.o.ble art would take harmonious and instructive place, and often very little and disregarded things be found to possess unthought-of interest and hidden relative beauty; but its efficiency--and in this chiefly let it be commended to the patience of your practical readers--would depend, not on its extent, but on its strict and precise limitation. The methods of which, if you care to have my notions of them, I might perhaps enter into, next month, with some ill.u.s.trative detail.--Ever most truly yours,

J. R.

_10th June, 1880._[7]

MY DEAR ----,

209. I can't give you any talk on detail, yet; but, not to drop a st.i.tch in my story, I want to say why I've attached so much importance to needlework, and put it in the opening court of the six. You see they are progressive, so that I don't quite put needlework on a _level_ with painting. But a nation that would learn to "touch" _must_ primarily know how to "st.i.tch." I am always busy, for a good part of the day, in my wood, and wear out my leathern gloves fast, after once I can wear them at all: but that's the precise difficulty of the matter. I get them from the shop looking as stout and trim as you please, and half an hour after I've got to work they split up the fingers and thumbs like ripe horse-chestnut sh.e.l.ls, and I find myself with five dangling rags round my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood, or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and beg the charity of a sound st.i.tch or two from any of the maids who know their woman's art; and thenceforward the life of the glove proper begins. Wow, it is not possible for any people that put up with this sort of thing, to learn to paint, or do anything else with their fingers decently:--only, for the most part they don't think their museums are meant to show them how to do anything decently, but rather how to be idle, indecently. Which extremely popular and extremely erroneous persuasion, if you please, we must get out of our way before going further.

210. I owe some apology, by the way, to Mr. Frith, for the way I spoke of his picture[8] in my letter to the Leicester committee, not intended for publication, though I never write what I would not allow to be published, and was glad that they asked leave to print it. It was not I who instanced the picture, it had been named in the meeting of the committee as the kind of thing that people best like, and I was obliged to say _why_ people best liked it:--namely, not for the painting, which is good, and worthy their liking, but for the sight of the racecourse and its humors. And the reason that such a picture ought not to be in a museum, is precisely because in a museum people ought not to fancy themselves on a racecourse. If they want to see races, let them go to races; and if rogues, to Bridewells. They come to museums to see something different from rogues and races.

211. But, to put the matter at once more broadly, and more accurately, be it remembered, for sum of all, that a museum is not a theater. Both are means of n.o.ble education--but you must not mix up the two. Dramatic interest is one thing; aesthetic charm another; a pantomime must not depend on its fine color, nor a picture on its fine pantomime.

Take a special instance. It is long since I have been so pleased in the Royal Academy as I was by Mr. Britton Riviere's "Sympathy." The dog in uncaricatured doggedness, divine as Anubis, or the Dog-star; the child entirely childish and lovely, the carpet might have been laid by Veronese. A most precious picture in itself, yet not one for a museum.

Everybody would think only of the story in it; everybody be wondering what the little girl had done, and how she would be forgiven, and if she wasn't, how soon she would stop crying, and give the doggie a kiss, and comfort his heart. All which they might study at home among their own children and dogs just as well; and should not come to the museum to plague the real students there, since there is not anything of especial notableness or unrivaled quality in the actual painting.

212. On the other hand, one of the four pictures I chose for permanent teaching in Fors was one of a child and a dog. The child is doing nothing; neither is the dog. But the dog is absolutely and beyond comparison the best painted dog in the world--ancient or modern--on this side of it, or at the Antipodes, (so far as I've seen the contents of said world). And the child is painted so that child _cannot_ be better done. _That_ is a picture for a museum.

Not that dramatic, still less didactic, intention should disqualify a work of art for museum purposes. But--broadly--dramatic and didactic art should be universally national, the l.u.s.ter of our streets, the treasure of our palaces, the pleasure of our homes. Much art that is weak, transitory, and rude may thus become helpful to us. But the museum is only for what is eternally right, and well done, according to divine law and human skill. The least things are to be there--and the greatest--but all _good_ with the goodness that makes a child cheerful and an old man calm; the simple should go there to learn, and the wise to remember.

213. And now to return to what I meant to be the subject of this letter--the arrangement of our first ideal room in such a museum. As I think of it, I would fain expand the single room, first asked for, into one like Prince Houssain's,--no, Prince Houssain had the flying tapestry, and I forget which prince had the elastic palace. But, indeed, it must be a lordly chamber which shall be large enough to exhibit the true nature of thread and needle--omened in "Thread-needle Street!"

The structure, first of wool and cotton, of fur, and hair, and down, of hemp, flax, and silk:--microscope permissible if any cause can be shown _why_ wool is soft, and fur fine, and cotton downy, and down downier; and how a flax fiber differs from a dandelion stalk, and how the substance of a mulberry leaf can become velvet for Queen Victoria's crown, and clothing of purple for the housewife of Solomon.

Then the phase of its dyeing. What azures, and emeralds, and Tyrians scarlets can be got into fibers of thread.

214. Then the phase of its spinning. The mystery of that divine spiral, from finest to firmest, which renders lace possible at Valenciennes--anchorage possible, after Trafalgar--if Hardy had but done as he was bid.

Then the mystery of weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of fishes possible, miraculous enough in any pilchard or herring shoal, gathered into companionable catchableness;--which makes, in fine, so many Nations possible, and Saxon and Norman beyond the rest.

215. And finally, the accomplished phase of needlework, the _Acu Tetigisti_ of all time, which does, indeed, practically exhibit what mediaeval theologists vainly tried to conclude inductively--How many angels can stand on a needle-point. To show the essential nature of a st.i.tch--drawing the separate into the inseparable, from the lowly work of duly restricted sutor, and modestly installed cobbler, to the needle-Scripture of Matilda, the Queen.

All the acicular Art of Nations, savage and civilized, from Lapland boot, letting in no snow-water--to Turkey cushion bossed with pearl--to valance of Venice gold in needlework -to the counterpanes and samplers of our own lovely ancestresses, imitable, perhaps, once more, with good help from Whiteland's College--and Girton.

216. It was but yesterday, my own womankind were in much wholesome and sweet excitement delightful to behold, in the practice of some new device of remedy for rents (to think how much of evil there is in the two senses of that four-lettered word! as in the two methods of intonation of its synonym tear!) whereby they might be daintily effaced, and with a newness which would never make them worse. The process began beautifully, even to my uninformed eyes, in the likeness of herring-bone masonry, crimson on white, but it seemed to me marvelous that anything should yet be discoverable in needle process, and that of so utilitarian character.

All that is reasonable, I say of such work is to be in our first museum room. All that Athena and Penelope would approve. Nothing that vanity has invented for change, or folly loved for costliness; but all that can bring honest pride into homely life, and give security to health--and honor to beauty.

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: These letters are reprinted from the _Art Journal_ of June and August 1880, where they were prefaced with the following note by the editor in explanation of their origin:--"We are enabled, through Mr.

Ruskin's kindness, to publish this month a series of letters to a friend upon the functions and formation of a model Museum or Picture Gallery.

As stated in our last issue the question arose thus:--At the distribution of the prizes to the School of Art at Leicester by Mr. J.

D. Linton and Mr. James Orrock, members of the Inst.i.tute of Painters in Water Colors, the latter, after stating the vital importance of study from nothing but the finest models, and expressing his regret that the present price of works of Art of the first cla.s.s rendered their attainment by schools almost prohibitory, offered drawings by William Hunt and David c.o.x as a nucleus for a collection. He urged others to follow this example, and with so much success that a few days saw a large sum and many works of Art promised in aid of a students' gallery.

The attention of the Leicester Corporation was thereupon drawn to the movement, and they at once endeavored to annex the scheme to their Museum. Failing in this, they in friendly rivalry subscribed a large sum of money, and the question at once arose how best to dispose of it, each naturally thinking his own ideas the best. At this juncture Mr. Ruskin's aid was invoked by one section of the subscribers, and he replied in a letter which, owing to its having been circulated without its context, has been open to some misconstruction. As he was only asked, so he only advised, what should _not_ be done. However, the letter bore its fruits, for both parties have had the attention of the country drawn to their proposals, and so are now more diffident how to set about carrying them into effect than they were before. Under these circ.u.mstances Mr. Ruskin has been induced to set out the mode in which he considers an Art Museum should be formed."

The letter which was "open to some misconstruction" may be found in _Arrows of the Chace_.]

[Footnote 5: Reprinted in vol. i., -- 253-273.--ED.]

[Footnote 6: In 1873. See the second lecture of _Love's Meinie_.--ED..]

[Footnote 7: _Art Journal_, August, 1880.]

[Footnote 8: The "Derby Day." See _Arrows of the Chase_.]

MINOR WRITINGS UPON ART.

THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS, VERONA. 1872.

VERONA AND ITS RIVERS (WITH CATALOGUE). 1870.