The Life of John Ruskin Part 17

"You seem to have a most uncomfortable time of it, with the disturbance of the house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best--or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago--the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil--everything they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they begin to know you. I am drawing at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and to-day, for the first time had to go inside for rain. He was very courteous and nice, and warned me against running against the candle-ends--or bottoms, as they were piled on the shelves, saying--'You must take care, you see, not to steal any of my candles'--or 'steal _from_ my candles,' meaning not to rub them off on my coat. He has a beautiful family of cats--papa and mamma and two superb kittens--half Angora."

"_22nd Sept._

"I am going to my cats and tallow-chandler.... I was very much struck by the superiority of manner both in him and in his two daughters who serve at the counter, to persons of the same cla.s.s in England. When the girls have weighed out their candles, or written down the orders that are sent in, they instantly sit down to their needlework behind the counter, and are always busy, yet always quiet; and their father, though of course there may be vulgar idioms in his language which I do not recognize, has entirely the manners of a gentleman."

_30th Sept_.

"I have the advantage here I had not counted on. I see by the papers that the weather in England is very stormy and bad. Now, though it is showery here, and breezy, it has always allowed me at some time of the day to draw. The air is tender and soft, invariably--even when blowing with force; and to-day, I have seen quite the loveliest sunset I ever yet saw,--one at Boulogne in '61 was richer; but for delicacy and loveliness nothing of past sight ever came near this."

Earlier on the same day he had written:

"I am well satisfied with the work I am doing, and even with my own power of doing it, if only I can keep myself from avariciously trying to do too much, and working hurriedly. But I can do _very_ little quite _well_, each day: with that however it is my bounden duty to be content.

"And now I have a little piece of news for you. Our old Herne Hill house being now tenantless, and requiring some repairs before I can get a tenant, I have resolved to keep it for myself, for my rougher mineral work and ma.s.s of collection; keeping only my finest specimens at Denmark Hill. My first reason for this, is affection for the old house:--my second, want of room;--my third, the incompatibility of hammering, washing, and experimenting on stones with cleanliness in my stores of drawings. And my fourth is the power I shall have, when I want to do anything very quietly, of going up the hill and thinking it out in the old garden, where your greenhouse still stands, and the aviary--without fear of interruption from callers.

"It may perhaps amuse you, in hours which otherwise would be listless, to think over what may be done with the old house. I have ordered it at once to be put in proper repair by Mr. Snell; but for the furnishing, I can give no directions at present: it is to be very simple, at all events, and calculated chiefly for museum work and for stores of stones and books: and you really must not set your heart on having it furnished like Buckingham Palace.

"I have bought to-day, for five pounds, the front of the porch of the Church of St. James. It was going to be entirely destroyed. It is worn away, and has little of its old beauty; but as a remnant of the Gothic of Abbeville--as I happen to be here--and as the church was dedicated to my father's patron saint (as distinct from mine) I'm glad to have got it. It is a low arch--with tracery and niches, which ivy, and the Erba della Madonna, will grow over beautifully, wherever I rebuild it."

At Abbeville he had with him as usual his valet Crawley; and as before he sent for Downes the gardener, to give him a holiday, and to enjoy his raptures over every new sight. C.E. Norton came on a short visit, and Ruskin followed him to Paris, where he met the poet Longfellow (October 7). At last on Monday, 19th October, he wrote:

"Only a line to-day, for I am getting things together, and am a little tired, but very well, and glad to come home, though much mortified at having failed in half my plans, and done nothing compared to what I expected. But it is better than if I were displeased with all I _had_ done. It isn't Turner--and it isn't Correggio--it isn't even Prout--but it isn't bad."

Returning home, he gave an account of his autumn's work in the lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution, January 29th, 1869, on the "Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme." This lecture was not then published in full: but part of the original text is printed in the third chapter of the work we have next to notice, "The Queen of the Air."

CHAPTER IX

"THE QUEEN OF THE AIR" (1869)

In spite of a "cla.s.sical education" and the influence of Aristotle upon the immature art-theories of his earlier works, Ruskin was known, in his younger days, as a Goth, and the enemy of the Greeks. When he began life, his sense of justice made him take the side of Modern Painters against cla.s.sical tradition. Later on, when considering the great questions of education and the aims of life, he entirely set aside the common routine of Greek and Latin grammar as the all-in-all of culture.

But this was not because he shared Carlyle's contempt for cla.s.sical studies.

In "Modern Painters," Vol. III., he had followed out the indications of nature-worship, and tried to a.n.a.lyse in general terms the att.i.tude of the Greek spirit towards landscape scenery, as betrayed in Homer and Aristophanes and the poets usually read. Since that time his interest in Greek literature had been gradually increasing. He had made efforts to improve his knowledge of the language; and he had spent many days in sketching and studying the terra-cottas and vases and coins at the British Museum. He had also taken up some study of Egyptology, through Champollion, Bunsen and Birch, in the hope of tracing the origin of Greek decorative art. Comparative mythology, at that time, was a department of philology, introduced to the English public chiefly by Max Muller. Under his influence Ruskin entered step by step upon an inquiry which afterwards became of singular importance in his life and thought.

In 1865 he had told his hearers at Bradford that Greek Religion was not, as commonly supposed, the worship of Beauty, but of Wisdom and Power.

They did not, in their great age, worship "Venus," but Apollo and Athena. And he regarded their mythology as a sincere tradition, effective in forming a high moral type, and a great school of art. In the "Ethics of the Dust" he had explained the myth of Athena as parallel to that of Neith in Egypt; and in his fable of Neith and St. Barbara he had hinted at a comparison, on equal terms, of Ancient and Mediaeval mythology. He ended by saying that, though he would not have his young hearers believe "that the Greeks were better than we, and that their G.o.ds were real angels," yet their art and morals were in some respects greater, and their beliefs were worth respectful and sympathetic study.

The "Queen of the Air" is his contribution to this study.

On March 9th, 1869, his lecture at University College, London, on "Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm," began with an attempt to explain in popular terms how a myth differs from mere fiction on the one hand and from allegory on the other, being "not conceived didactically, but didactic in its essence, as all good art is." He showed that Greek poetry dealt with the series of Nature-myths with which were interwoven ethical suggestions; that these were connected with Egyptian beliefs, but that the full force of them was only developed in the central period of Greek history, and their interpretation was to be read in a sympathetic a.n.a.lysis of the spirit of men like Pindar and aeschylus. "The great question," he said, "in reading a story is, always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it. And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at the n.o.blest age of the nation among whom it was current."

In the next chapter he worked out, as a sequel to his lecture, two groups of Animal-myths; those connected with birds, and especially the dove, as type of Spirit, and those connected with the serpent in its various significances. These two studies were continued, more or less, in "Love's Meinie" and in the lecture printed in "Deucalion," as the third group, that of Plant-myths, was carried on in "Proserpina." The volume contained also extracts from the lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of the Somme, and two numbers of the "Cestus of Aglaia," and closed with a paper on The Hercules of Camarina, read to the South Lambeth Art School on March 15th. This study of a Greek coin had already formed the subject of an address at the Working Men's College, and antic.i.p.ated the second course of Oxford Lectures. For the rest, "The Queen of the Air" is marked by its statement, more clearly than before in Ruskin's writing, of the dependence of moral upon physical life, and of physical upon moral science. He speaks with respect of the work of Darwin and Tyndall; but as formerly in the Rede Lecture, and afterwards in the "Eagle's Nest," he claims that natural science should not be pursued as an end in itself, paramount to all other conclusions and considerations; but as a department of study subordinate to ethics, with a view to utility and instruction.

Before this book was quite ready for publication, and after a sale of some of his less treasured pictures at Christie's he left home for a journey to Italy, to revisit the subjects of "Stones of Venice," as in 1868 he had revisited those of the "Seven Lamps." At Vevey, on the way, he wrote his preface (May 1st).

By quiet stages he pa.s.sed the Simplon, writing from Domo d'Ossola, 5th May, 1869:

"I never yet had so beautiful a day for the Simplon as this has been; though the skin of my face is burning now all over--to keep me well in mind of its sunshine. I left Brieg at 6 exactly--light clouds breaking away into perfect calm of blue. Heavy snow on the col--about a league--with the wreaths in many places higher than the carriage. Then, white crocus all over the fields, with Soldanelle and Primula farinosa. I walked about three miles up, and seven down, with great contentment; the waterfalls being all in rainbows, and one beyond anything I ever yet saw; for it fell in a pillar of spray against shadow behind, and became rainbow altogether. I was just near enough to get the belt broad, and the down part of the arch: and the whole fall became orange and violet against deep shade. To-morrow I hope to get news of you all, at Baveno."

"BAVENO, _Thursday, 6th May_, 1869.

"It is wet this morning, and very dismal, for we are in a ghastly new Inn, the old one being shut up; and there is always a re-action after a strong excitement like the beauty of the Simplon yesterday, which leaves one very dull. But it is of no use growling or mewing.

I hope to be at Milan to-morrow--at Verona for Sunday. I have been reading Dean Swift's life, and 'Gulliver's Travels' again. Putting the delight in dirt, which is a mere disease, aside, Swift is very like me, in most things:--in opinions exactly the same."

At Milan, next day, he went to see the St. Catherine of Luini which he had copied, and found it wantonly damaged by the carelessness of masons who put their ladders up against it, just as if it were a bit of common whitewashed wall.

On the 8th he reached Verona after seventeen years' absence, and on the 10th he was in Venice. There, looking at the works of the old painters with a fresh eye, and with feelings and thoughts far different from those with which he had viewed them as a young man, in 1845, he saw beauties he had pa.s.sed over before, in the works of a painter till then little regarded by connoisseurs, and entirely neglected by the public.

Historians of art like Crowe and Cavalcaselle[16] had indeed examined Carpaccio's works and investigated his life, along with the lives and works of many another obscure master: artists like Hook and Burne-Jones had admired his pictures; Ruskin had mentioned his backgrounds twice or thrice in "Stones of Venice." But no writer had noticed his extraordinary interest as an exponent of the mythology of the Middle Ages, as the ill.u.s.trator of poetical folk-lore derived from those antique myths of Greece, and newly presented by the genius of Christianity.

[Footnote 16: Their "History of Painting in North Italy," containing a detailed account of Carpaccio, was published in 1871.]

This was a discovery for which Ruskin was now ripe, He saw at once that he had found a treasure-house of things new and old. He fell in love with St. Ursula as, twenty-four years earlier, he had fallen in love with the statue of Ilaria at Lucca; and she became, as time after time he revisited Venice for her sake, a personality, a spiritual presence, a living ideal, exactly as the Queen of the Air might have been to the sincere Athenian in the pagan age of faith. The story of her life and death became an example, the conception of her character, as read in Carpaccio's picture, became a standard for his own life and action in many a time of distress and discouragement. The thought of "What would St. Ursula say?" led him--not always, but far more often than his correspondents knew--to burn the letter of sharp retort upon stupidity and impertinence, and to force the wearied brain and overstrung nerves into patience and a kindly answer. And later on, the playful credence which he accorded to the myth deepened into a renewed sense of the possibility of spiritual realities, when he learnt to look, with those mediaeval believers; once more as a little child upon the unfathomable mysteries of life.

But this antic.i.p.ates the story; at the time, he found in Carpaccio the man who had touched the full chord of his feelings and his thoughts, just as, in his boyhood, Turner had led him, marvelling, through the fire and cloud to the mountain-altar; and as, in his youth, Tintoret had interpreted the storm and stress of a mind awakening to the terrible realities of the world. It was no caprice of a changeful taste, nor love of startling paradox, that brought him to "discover Carpaccio;" it was the logical sequence of his studies, and widening interests, and a view of art embracing far broader issues than the connoisseurship of "Modern Painters," or the didacticism of "Seven Lamps," or the historical research of "Stones of Venice."

Soon after the "Queen of the Air" was published Carlyle wrote:

"Last week I got y'r 'Queen of the Air,' and read it. _Euge, Ettge._ No such Book have I met with for long years past. The one soul now in the world who seems to feel as I do on the highest matters, and speaks _mir aus dem Herzen_, exactly what I wanted to hear!-As to the natural history of those old myths I remained here and there a little uncert'n; but as to the meanings you put into them, never anywhere. All these things I not only 'agree' with, but w'd use Thor's Hammer, if I had it, to enforce and put in action on this rotten world. Well done, well done!--and pluck up a heart, and continue ag'n and ag'n. And don't say 'most g't tho'ts are dressed _in shrouds_': many, many are the Phoebus Apollo celestial arrows you still have to shoot into the foul Pythons, and poisonous abominable Megatheriums and Plesiosaurians that go staggering ab't, large as cathedrals, in our sunk Epoch ag'n...."

CHAPTER X

VERONA AND OXFORD (1869-1870)

The main object of this journey was, however, not to study mythology, but to continue the revision of old estimates of architecture, and after seventeen years to look with a fresh eye at the subjects of "Stones of Venice."

The churches and monuments of Verona had been less thoroughly studied than those of Venice, and now they were threatened with imminent restoration. On May 25th he wrote:--"It is very strange that I have just been in time--after 17 years' delay--to get the remainder of what I wanted from the red tomb of which my old drawing hangs in the pa.s.sage"--(the Castelbarco monument). "To-morrow they put up scaffolding to retouch, and I doubt not, spoil it for evermore." He succeeded in getting a delay of ten days, to enable him to paint the tomb in its original state; but before he went home it "had its new white cap on and looked like a Venetian gentleman in a pantaloon's mask." He brought away one of the actual stones of the old roof.

On June 3 he wrote:

"I am getting on well with all my own work; and much pleased with some that Mr. Bunney is doing for me; so that really I expect to carry off a great deal of Verona.... The only mischief of the place is its being too rich. Stones, flowers, mountains--all equally asking one to look at them; a history to every foot of ground, and a picture on every foot of wall; frescoes fading away in the neglected streets--like the colours of the dolphin."

As a.s.sistants in this enterprise of recording the monuments of Venice and Verona, and of recording them more fully and in a more interesting way than by photography, he took with him Arthur Burgess and John Bunney, his former pupils. Mr. Burgess was the subject of a memoir by Ruskin in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_ (April, 1887), appreciating his talents and lamenting his loss. Mr. Bunney, who had travelled with Ruskin in Switzerland in 1863, and had lately lived near Florence, thenceforward settled in Venice, where he died in 1882, after completing his great work, the St. Mark's now in the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield. A memoir of him by Mr. Wedderburn appeared in the catalogue of the Venice Exhibition, at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in November, 1882.

At Venice Ruskin had met his old friend Rawdon Brown[17], and Count Giberto Borromeo, whom he visited at Milan on his way home, with deep interest in the Luinis and in the authentic bust of St. Carlo; so closely resembling Ruskin himself. Another noteworthy encounter is recorded in a letter of May 4th.[18]

[Footnote 17: Whose book on the English in Italy (from Venetian doc.u.ments) was shortly to be published, with funds supplied by Ruskin.]

[Footnote 18: This date ought to be "June 4th," as Mr. E.T. Cook notices (Library Edn. XIX., p. liv.).]