The Life of John Ruskin Part 15

"THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE" (1865-1866)

Mention has been made of an address to working men at the Camberwell Inst.i.tute, January 24th, 1865. This lecture was published in 1866, together with two others,[11] under the t.i.tle 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.

[Footnote 11: Republished in 1873, with a fourth lecture added, and a Preface and notes on the political growth of Prussia, from Carlyle's "Frederick."]

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 ent.i.tled 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 cla.s.s.

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 G.o.ddess 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 of their 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 cla.s.ses 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 the _New Review_ for March 1892, there appeared a series of "Letters of John Ruskin to his Secretary," which, as the anonymous contributor remarked, ill.u.s.trate "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 a.s.siduity" became the too-trusted friend and _protege_ of Ruskin, Rossetti and others of their acquaintance. It was he who proposed and carried out the exhumation, reluctantly consented to, of Rossetti's ma.n.u.script 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 confidence[12]

he had ceased to act as Ruskin's secretary.

[Footnote 12: In the manner described by Mr. W.M. Rossetti at p. 351, Vol. I., of "D.G. Rossetti, his family letters," to which the reader is referred.]

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 s...o...b..y 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 was no 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 speak _more_ frankly 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:

"PARIS, _2nd May, 1866_.

"Lady Trevelyan is much better to-day, but it is not safe to move her yet--till to-morrow. So I'm going to take the children to look at Chartres cathedral--we can get three hours there, and be back to seven o'clock dinner. We drove round by St. Cloud and Sevres yesterday; the blossomed trees being glorious by the Seine,--the children in high spirits. It reminds me always too much of Turner--every bend of these rivers is haunted by him."

"DIJON, _Sunday, 6th May, 1866_.

"Lady Trevelyan is _much_ better, and we hope all to get on to Neufchatel to-morrow. The weather is quite fine again though not warm; and yesterday I took the children for a drive up the little valley which we used to drive through on leaving Dijon for Paris.

There are wooded hills on each side, and we got into a sweet valley, as full of nightingales as our garden is of thrushes, and with slopes of broken rocky ground above, covered with the lovely blue milk-wort, and purple columbines, and geranium, and wild strawberry-flowers. The children were intensely delighted, and I took great care that Constance should not run about so as to heat herself, and we got up a considerable bit of hill quite nicely, and with greatly increased appet.i.te for tea, and general mischief. They have such appet.i.tes that I generally call them 'my two little pigs.' There is a delightful French waiting-maid at dinner here--who says they are both 'charmantes,' but highly approves of my t.i.tle for them nevertheless."

"NEUFCHATEL, _10th May_, 1866.

"Lady Trevelyan is still too weak to move. We had (the children and I) a delightful day yesterday at the Pierre a Bot, gathering vetches and lilies of the valley in the woods, and picnic afterwards on the lovely mossy gra.s.s, in view of all the Alps--Jungfrau, Eiger, Blumlis Alp, Altels, and the rest, with intermediate lake and farmsteads and apple-blossom--very heavenly."

Here, within a few days, Lady Trevelyan died. Throughout her illness she had been following the progress of the new notes on wild-flowers (afterwards to be "Proserpina") with keen interest, and Sir Walter lent the help of botanical science to Ruskin's more poetical and artistic observations. For the sake of this work, and for the "children," and with a wise purpose of bearing up under the heavy blow that had fallen, the two friends continued their journey for a while among the mountains.

From Thun they went to Interlachen and the Giessbach. Ruskin occupied himself closely in tracing Studer's sections across the great lake-furrow of central Switzerland--"something craggy for his mind to break upon," as Byron said when he was in trouble. At the Giessbach there was not only geology and divine scenery, enjoyable in lovely weather, but an interesting figure in the foreground, the widowed daughter of the hotel landlord, beautiful and consumptive, but brave as a Swiss girl should be. They all seem to have fallen in love with her, so to speak the young English girls as much as the impressionable art-critic: and the new human interest in her Alpine tragedy relieved, as such interests do, the painfulness of the circ.u.mstances through which they had been pa.s.sing. Her sister Marie was like an Allegra to this Penserosa; bright and brilliant in native genius. She played piano-duets with the young ladies; taught Alpine botany to the savants; guided them to the secret dells and unknown points of view; and with a sympathy unexpected in a stranger, beguiled them out of their grief, and won their admiration and grat.i.tude. Marie of the Giessbach was often referred to in letters of the time, and for many years after, with warmly affectionate remembrances.

A few bits from his letters to his mother, which I have been permitted to copy, will indicate the impressions of this summer's tour.

"HoTEL DU GIESBACH, _6th June, 1866_,

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,

"Can you at all fancy walking out in the morning in a garden full of lilacs just in rich bloom, and pink hawthorn in ma.s.ses; and along a little terrace with lovely pinks coming into cl.u.s.ter of colour all over the low wall beside it; and a sloping bank of green sward from it--and below that, the Giesbach! Fancy having a real Alpine waterfall in one's garden,--seven hundred feet high. You see, we are just in time for the spring, here, and the strawberries are ripening on the rocks. Joan and Constance have been just scrambling about and gathering them for me. Then there's the blue-green lake below, and Interlaken and the lake of Thun in the distance. I think I never saw anything so beautiful. Joan will write to you about the people, whom she has made great friends with, already."

"_7th June, 1866_.

"I cannot tell you how much I am struck with the beauty of this fall: it is different from everything I have ever seen in torrents.

There are so many places where one gets near it without being wet, for one thing; for the falls are, mostly, not vertical so as to fly into mere spray, but over broken rock, which crushes the water into a kind of sugar-candy-like foam, white as snow, yet glittering; and composed, not of bubbles, but of broken-up water. Then I had forgotten that it plunged straight into the lake; I got down to the lake sh.o.r.e on the other side of it yesterday, and to see it plunge clear into the blue water, with the lovely mossy rocks for its flank, and for the lake edge, was an unbelievable kind of thing; it is all as one would fancy cascades in fairyland. I do not often endure with patience any c.o.c.kneyisms or showings off at these lovely places. But they do one thing here so interesting that I can forgive it. One of the chief cascades (about midway up the hill) falls over a projecting rock, so that one can walk under the torrent as it comes over. It leaps so clear that one is hardly splashed, except at one place. Well, when it gets dark, they burn, for five minutes, one of the strongest steady fireworks of a crimson colour, behind the fall. The red light shines right through, turning the whole waterfall into a torrent of fire."

"_11th June, 1866._

"We leave, according to our programme, for Interlachen to-day,--with great regret, for the peace and sweetness of this place are wonderful and the people are good; and though there is much drinking and quarrelling among the younger men, there appears to be neither distressful poverty, nor deliberate crime: so that there is more of the sense I need, and long for, of fellowship with human creatures, than in any place I have been at for years. I believe they don't so much as lock the house-doors at night; and the faces of the older peasantry are really very beautiful. I have done a good deal of botany, and find that wild-flower botany is more or less inexhaustible, but the cultivated flowers are infinite in their caprice. The forget-me-nots and milkworts are singularly beautiful here, but there is quite as much variety in English fields as in these, as long as one does not climb much--and I'm very lazy, compared to what I used to be,"

"_LAUTERBRUNNEN, 13th June, 1866._

"We had a lovely evening here yesterday, and the children enjoyed and understood it better than anything they have yet seen among the Alps. Constance was in great glory in a little walk I took her in the twilight through the upper meadows: the Staubbach seen only as a grey veil suspended from its rock, and the great Alps pale above on the dark sky. She condescended nevertheless to gather a great bunch of the white catchfly,--to make 'pops' with,--her friend Marie at the Giesbach having shown her how a startling detonation may be obtained, by skilful management, out of its globular calyx.

"This morning is not so promising,--one of the provoking ones which will neither let you stay at home with resignation, nor go anywhere with pleasure. I'm going to take the children for a little quiet exploration of the Wengern path, to see how they like it, and if the weather betters--we may go on. At all events I hope to find an Alpine rose or two."

In June, 1866, the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford was vacant; and Ruskin's friends were anxious to see him take the post. He, however, felt no especial fitness or inclination for it, and did not stand. Three years later he was elected to a Professorship that at this time had not been founded.

After spending June in the Oberland, he went homewards through Berne, Vevey and Geneva, to find his private secretary with a bundle of begging letters, and his friend Carlyle busy with the defence of Governor Eyre.

In 1865 an insurrection of negroes at Morant Bay, Jamaica, had threatened to take the most serious shape, when it was stamped out by the high-handed measures of Mr. Eyre. After the first congratulations were over another side to the question called for a hearing. The Baptist missionaries declared that among the negroes who were shot and hanged _in terrorem_ were peaceable subjects, respectable members of their own native congregations, for whose character they could vouch; they added that the gravity of the situation had been exaggerated by private enmity and jealousy of their work and creed. A strong committee was formed under Liberal auspices, supported by such men as John Stuart Mill and Thomas Hughes, the author of "Tom Brown's Schooldays"--men whose motive was above suspicion--to bring Mr. Eyre to account.

Carlyle, who admired the strong hand, and had no interest in Baptist missionaries, accepted Mr. Eyre as the saviour of society in his West Indian sphere; and there were many, both in Jamaica and at home, who believed that, but for his prompt action, the white population would have been ma.s.sacred with all the horrors of a savage rebellion. Ruskin had been for many years the ally of the Broad Church and Liberal party.

But he was now coming more and more under the personal influence of Carlyle; and when it came to the point of choosing sides, declared himself, in a letter to the _Daily Telegraph_ (December 20th, 1865), a Conservative and a supporter of order; and joined the Eyre Defence Committee with a subscription of 100. The prominent part he took, for example, in the meeting of September, 1866, was no doubt forced upon him by his desire to save Carlyle, whose recent loss and shaken nerves made such business especially trying to him. Letters of this period remain, in which Carlyle begs Ruskin to "be diligent, I bid you!"--and so on, adding, "I must absolutely _shut up_ in that direction, to save my sanity." And so it fell to the younger man to work through piles of pamphlets and newspaper correspondence, to interview politicians and men of business, and--what was so very foreign to his habits--to take a leading share in a party agitation.

But in all this he was true to his Jacobite instincts. He had been brought up a Tory; and though he had drifted into an alliance with the Broad Church and philosophical Liberals, he was never one of them. Now that his father was gone, perhaps he felt a sort of duty to own himself his father's son; and the failure of liberal philanthropy to realise his ideals, and of liberal philosophy to rise to his economic standards, combined with Carlyle to induce him to label himself Conservative. But his conservatism could not be accepted by the party so called.

Fortunately, he did not need or ask their recognition. He took no interest in party politics, and never in his life voted at a Parliamentary election. He only meant to state in the shortest terms that he stood for loyalty and order.

CHAPTER VII

"TIME AND TIDE" (1867)

The series of letters published as "Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne"

were addressed[13] to Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, whose portrait by Professor Legros is familiar to visitors at the South Kensington Museum. He was one of those thoughtful, self-educated working men in whom, as a cla.s.s, Ruskin had been taking a deep interest for the past twelve years, an interest which had purchased him a practical insight into their various capacities and aims, and the right to speak without fear or favour. At this time there was an agitation for Parliamentary reform, and the better representation of the working cla.s.ses; and it was on this topic that the letters were begun, though the writer went on to criticise the various social ideals then popular, and to propose his own. He had already done something of the sort in "Unto this Last"; but "Time and Tide" is much more complete, and the result of seven years' further thought and experience. His "Fors Clavigera" is a continuation of these letters, but written at a time when other work and ill health broke in upon his strength. "Time and Tide" is not only the statement of his social scheme as he saw it in his central period, but, written as these letters were--at a stroke, so to speak--condensed in exposition and simple in language, they deserve the most careful reading by the student of Ruskin.

[Footnote 13: During February, March and April, 1867, and published in the _Manchester Examiner_ and _Leeds Mercury_.]