The Life of John Ruskin Part 21

It was only the term before that Prince Leopold had been at Oxford, a constant attendant on Ruskin's lectures, and a visitor to his drawing school. The gentle prince, with his instinct for philanthropy, was not to be deterred by the utterances of "Fors" from respecting the genius of the Professor; and the Professor, with his old-world, cavalier loyalty, readily returned the esteem and affection of his new pupil. A sincere friendship was formed, lasting until the Prince's death.

In June, 1875, Princess Alice and her husband, with Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, were at Oxford. Ruskin had just made arrangements completing his gifts to the University galleries and schools. The Royal party showed great interest in the Professor and his work. The Princess, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and Prince Leopold acted as witnesses to the deed of gift, and Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold accepted the trusteeship.

With all the Slade Professor's generosity, the Ruskin drawing school, founded in these fine galleries to which he had so largely contributed, in a palatial hall handsomely furnished, and hung with Tintoret and Luini, Burne-Jones and Rossetti, and other rare masters, ancient and modern; with the most interesting examples to copy--at the most convenient of desks, we may add--yet in spite of it all, the drawing school was not a popular inst.i.tution. When the Professor was personally teaching, he got some fifteen or twenty--if not to attend, at any rate to join. But whenever the chief attraction could not be counted on, the attendance sank to an average of two or three. The cause was simple. An undergraduate is supposed to spend his morning in lectures, his afternoon in taking exercise, and his evening in college. There is simply no time in his scheme for going to a drawing school. If it were recognised as part of the curriculum, if it counted in any way along with other studies, or contributed to a "school" akin to that of music, practical art might become teachable at Oxford; and Professor Ruskin's gifts and endowments--to say nothing of his hopes and plans--would not be wholly in vain.

As he could not make the undergraduates draw, he made them dig. He had noticed a very bad bit of road on the Hinksey side, and heard that it was n.o.body's business to mend it: meanwhile the farmers' carts and casual pedestrians were bemired. He sent for his gardener Downes, who had been foreman of the street-sweepers; laid in a stock of picks and shovels; took lessons in stone-breaking himself, and called on his friends to spend their recreation times in doing something useful.

Many of the disciples met at the weekly open breakfasts at the Professor's rooms in Corpus; and he was glad of a talk to them on other things beside drawing and digging. Some were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character. The most brilliant undergraduate of the time, seen at this breakfast table, but not one of the diggers, was W.H. Mallock, afterwards widely known as the author of "Is Life Worth Living?" He was the only man. Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him--referring to "The New Republic." But while Mallock saw the reactionary and pessimistic side of his Oxford teacher, there was a progressist and optimistic side which does not appear in his "Mr.

Herbert." That was discovered by another man whose career, short as it was, proved even more influential. Arnold Toynbee was one of the Professor's warmest admirers and ablest pupils: and in his philanthropic work the teaching of "Unto this Last" and "Fors" was ill.u.s.trated--not exclusively--but truly. "No true disciple of mine will ever be a Ruskinian" (to quote "St. Mark's Rest"); "he will follow, not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator."

Like all energetic men, Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work.

One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books ("Bibliotheca Pastorum") suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George's Company. The first book he chose was the "Economist" of Xenophon, which he asked two of his young friends to translate. To them and their work he would give his afternoons in the rooms at Corpus, with curious patience in the midst of pre-occupying labour and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing at the London Inst.i.tution on the Alps[34]--reading a paper to the Metaphysical Society[35]--writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and "Proserpina," etc.--as well as his regular work at "Fors," and the St.

George's Company was then taking definite form;--and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circ.u.mstances, and he forbidden to approach her.

[Footnote 34: "The Simple Dynamic Conditions of Glacial Action among the Alps," March 11, 1875.]

[Footnote 35: "Social Policy based on Natural Selection," May 11.]

At the end of May she died. On the 1st of June the Royal party honoured the Slade Professor with their visit--little knowing how valueless to him such honours had become. He went north[36] and met his translators at Brantwood to finish the Xenophon,--and to help dig his harbour and cut coppice in his wood. He prepared a preface; but the next term was one of greater pressure, with the twelve lectures on Sir Joshua Reynolds to deliver. He wrote, after Christmas:

[Footnote 36: "On a posting tour through Yorkshire". He made three such tours in 1875--southward in January, northward in June and July, and southward in September: and another northward in April and May, 1876.]

"Now that I have got my head fairly into this Xenophon business, it has expanded into a new light altogether; and I think it would be absurd in me to slur over the life in one paragraph. A hundred things have come into my head as I arrange the dates, and I think I can make a much better thing of it--with a couple of days' work. My head would not work in town--merely turned from side to side--never nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer before Anabasis: and his speech after the sleepless night."

Delphic answers--for he was then again brought into contact with "spiritualism"; and sleepless nights--for the excitement of overwork was telling upon him--were becoming too frequent in his own experience; and yet the lectures on Reynolds went off with success.[37] The magic of his oratory trans.m.u.ted the scribbled jottings of his MS. into a magnificent flow of rolling paragraph and rounded argument that thrilled a captious audience with unwonted emotion, and almost persuaded many a hearer to accept the gospel of "the Ethereal Ruskin." In spite of a sense of antagonism to his surroundings, he did useful work which none other could do in the University. That this was acknowledged was proved by his re-election, early in 1876: but his third term of three years was a time of weakened health. Repeated absence from his post and inability to fulfil his duties made it obviously his wisest course, at the end of that term, to resign the Slade Professorship.

[Footnote 37: Nov. 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, and 27; 1875.]

CHAPTER IV

ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK (1875-1877)

In the book his Bertha of Canterbury was reading at twilight on the Eve of St. Mark, Keats might have been describing "Fors." Among its pages, fascinating with their golden broideries of romance and wit, perplexing with mystic vials of wrath as well as all the Seven Lamps and Shekinah of old and new Covenants commingled, there was gradually unfolded the plan of "St. George's Work."

The scheme was not easy to apprehend; it was essentially different from anything then known, though superficially like several bankrupt Utopias.

Ruskin did not want to found a phalanstery, or to imitate Robert Owen or the Shakers. That would have been practicable--and useless.

He wanted much more. He aimed at the gradual introduction of higher aims into ordinary life: it giving true refinement to the lower cla.s.ses, true simplicity to the upper. He proposed that idle hands should reclaim waste lands; that healthy work and country homes should be offered to townsfolk who would "come out of the gutter." He asked land-owners and employers to furnish opportunities for such reforms;--which would involve no elaborate organization nor unelastic rules;--simply the one thing needful, the refusal of Commercialism.

As before, he scorned the idea that real good could be done by political agitation. Any government would work, he said, if it were an efficient government. No government was efficient unless it saw that every one had the necessaries of life, for body and soul; and that every one earned them by some work or other. Capital--that is, the means and material of labour, should therefore be in the hands of the Government, not in the hands of individuals: this reform would result easily and necessarily from the forbidding of loans on interest. Personal property would still be in private hands; but as it could not be invested and turned into capital, it would necessarily be restricted to its actual use, and great acc.u.mulation would be valueless.

This is, of course, a very sketchy statement of the ground-work of "Fors," but to most readers nowadays as comprehensible as, at the time of its publication, it was incomprehensible. For when, long after "Fors"

had been written, Ruskin found other writers advocating the same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he too was a Socialist.

But the Socialists of various sects have complicated, and sometimes confused, their simple fundamental principles with various ways and means; to which he could not agree. He had his own ways and means. He had his private ideals of life, which he expounded, along with his main doctrine. He thought, justifiably, that theory was useless without practical example; and so he founded St. George's Company (in 1877 called St. George's Guild) as his ill.u.s.tration.

The Guild grew out of his call, in 1871, for adherents: and by 1875 began to take definite form. Its objects were to set the example of a common capital as opposed to a National debt, and of co-operative labour as opposed to compet.i.tive struggle for life. Each member was required to do some work for his living--without too strict limits as to the kind--and to practice certain precepts of religion and morality, broad enough for general acceptance. He was also required to obey the authority of the Guild, and to contribute a t.i.the of his income to a common fund, for various objects. These objects were--first: to buy land for the agricultural members to cultivate, paying their rent, not to the other members, but to the company; not refusing machinery, but preferring manual labour. Next, to buy mills and factories, to be likewise owned by the Guild and worked by members--using water power in preference to steam (steam at first not forbidden)--and making the lives of the people employed as well spent as might be, with a fair wage, healthy work, and so forth. The loss on starting was to be made up from the Guild store, but it was antic.i.p.ated that the honesty of the goods turned out would ultimately make such enterprises pay, even in a commercial world. Then, for the people employed and their families, there would be places of recreation and instruction, supplied by the Guild, and intended to give the agricultural labourer or mill-hand, trained from infancy in Guild schools, some insight into Literature, Science and Art--and tastes which his easy position would leave him free to cultivate.

So far the plan was simple. It was not a _colony_--but merely the working of existing industries in a certain way. Antic.i.p.ating further development of the scheme, Ruskin looked forward to a guild coinage, as pretty as the Florentines had; a costume as becoming as the Swiss: and other Platonically devised details, which were not the essentials of the proposal, and never came into operation. But some of his plans were actually realised.

The chief objects of "St. George" come under three heads, as we have just noticed: agricultural, industrial, and educational. The actual schools would not be needed until the farms and mills had been so far established as to secure a permanent attendance. But meanwhile provision was being made for them, both in literature and in art. The "Bibliotheca Pastorum," was to be a comprehensive little library--far less than the 100 books of the _Pall Mall Gazette_--and yet bringing before the St.

George's workman standard and serious writing of all times. It was to include, in separate volumes, the Books of Moses and the Psalms of David and the Revelation of St. John. Of Greek, the Economist of Xenophon, and Hesiod, which Ruskin undertook to translate into prose. Of Latin the first two Georgics and sixth aeneid of Virgil, in Gawain Douglas'

translation. Dante; Chaucer, excluding the "Canterbury Tales"--but including the "Romance of the Rose"; Gotthelf's "Ulric the Farmer," from the French version which Ruskin had loved ever since his father used to read it him on their first tours in Switzerland; and an early English history by an Oxford friend. Later were published Sir Philip Sidney's psalter, and Ruskin's own biography of Sir Herbert Edwardes, under the t.i.tle of "A Knight's Faith."

These books were for the home library; reference works were bought to be deposited in central libraries, along with objects of art and science.

It was not intended to keep the Guild property centralised; but rather to spread it, as its other work was spread, broad-cast. A number of books and other objects were bought with the Guild money, and lent or given to various schools and colleges and inst.i.tutions where work akin to the objects of the Guild was being done. But for the time Ruskin fixed upon Sheffield as the place of his first Guild Museum--being the home of the typical English industry--central to all parts of England, near beautiful hill-country, and yet not far from a number of manufacturing towns in which, if St. George's work went on, supporters and recruits might be found.

The people of Sheffield were already, in 1875, building a museum of their own, and naturally thought that the two might be conveniently worked together. But that was not at all what Ruskin wished. Not only was his museum to be primarily the storehouse of the Guild, rather than one among many means of popular education; but the objects which he intended to place there were not such as the public expected to see. He had no interest in a vast acc.u.mulation of articles of all kinds. He wanted to provide for his friends' common treasury a few definitely valuable and interesting examples--interesting to the sort of people that he hoped would join the Guild or be bred up in it; and valuable according to his own standard and experience.

In September 1875, Ruskin stayed a couple of days at Sheffield to inspect a cottage at Walkley, in the outskirts of the town, and to make arrangements for founding the museum--humbly to begin with, but hoping for speedy increase. He engaged as curator, at a salary of 40 a year and free lodging on the premises, his former pupil at the Working Men's College, Henry Swan, who had done occasional work for him in drawing and engraving. Swan was a Quaker, and a remarkable man in his way; enthusiastic in his new vocation, and interested in the social questions which were being discussed in "Fors." Under his care the Museum remained at Walkley, acc.u.mulating material in the tiny and hardly accessible cottage--being so to speak in embryo, until the way should be clear for its removal or enlargement, which took place in 1890.

When Ruskin came back on his posting tour of April 1876, he stayed again at Sheffield, to meet a few friends of Swan's--Secularists, Unitarians, and Quakers, who professed Communism. They had an interview (reported in the Sheffield _Daily Telegraph_, April 28th, 1876), which brought out rather curiously the points of difference between their opinions and his. They refused to join the Guild because they would not promise obedience, and help in its objects. Ruskin, however, was willing to advance theirs. A few weeks afterwards he invited them to choose a piece of ground for their Communist experiment. They chose a farm of over thirteen acres at Abbeydale, which the Guild bought in 1877 at a cost of 2,287 16s.6d. for their use--the communists agreeing to pay the money back in instalments, without interest, by the end of seven years: when the farm should be their own.

When it was actually in their hands they found that they knew nothing of farming--and besides, were making money at trades they did not really care to abandon. They engaged a man to work the farm for them: and then another. They were told that the land they had chosen was--for farming purposes--worthless. Their capital ran short; and they tried to make money by keeping a tea-garden. The original proposer of the scheme wrote to Ruskin, who sent 100:--the others returned the money. Ruskin declined to take it back, and began to perceive that the Communists were trifling. They had made no attempt to found the sort of community they had talked about; neither their plans nor his were being carried out. So when the original proposer and a friend of his named Riley approached Ruskin again, they found little difficulty in persuading him to try them as managers. The rest, finding themselves turned out by Riley, vainly demanded "explanations" from Ruskin, who then was drifting into his first attack of brain fever. So they declined further connection with the farm; the Guild accepted their resignation, and undertook for the time nothing more than to get the land into good condition again.

This was not the only land held by the St. George's Guild. It acquired the acre of ground on which the Sheffield Museum stood, and a cottage with a couple of acres near Scarborough. Two acres of rock and moor at Barmouth had been given by Mrs. Talbot in 1872; and in 1877 Mr. George Baker, then Mayor of Birmingham, gave twenty acres of woodland at Bewdley in Worcestershire, to which at one time Mr. Ruskin thought of moving the museum, before the present building was found for it by the Sheffield Corporation at Meersbrook Park. On the resignation of the original Trustees, in 1877, Mr. Q. Talbot and Mr. Baker were offered the trust: and on the death of Mr. Talbot the trust was accepted by Mr. John Henry Chamberlain. After he died it was taken by Mr. George Thomson of Huddersfield, whose woollen mills, transformed into a co-operative concern, though not directly in connection with the Guild, have given a widely known example of the working of principles advocated in "Fors."

In the middle of 1876, Egbert Rydings, the auditor of the accounts which, in accordance with his principles of "gla.s.s pockets," Ruskin published in "Fors," proposed to start a homespun woollen industry at Laxey, in the Isle of Man, where the old women who formerly spun with the wheel had been driven by failure of custom to work in the mines. The Guild built him a water mill, and in a few years the demand for a pure, rough, durable cloth, created by this and kindred attempts, justified the enterprise. Ruskin set the example, and had his own grey clothes made of Laxey stuffs--whose chief drawback was that they never wore out.

A little later a similar work was done, with even greater success, by Mr. Albert Fleming, another member of the Guild; who introduced old-fashioned spinning and hand-loom weaving at Langdale.

The story of Ruskin's posting tour was told many years afterwards, at the opening of the new Sheffield museum, by Mr. Arthur Severn, a famous _raconteur_, whose description of the adventures of their cruise upon wheels includes so bright a picture of Ruskin, that I must use his words as they were reported on the occasion in the magazine _Igdrasil_:

"... 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 s.p.a.ce 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 on our 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 a.s.sembled 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 knew that; 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 Fesole"--teaching the principles of Florentine draughtsmanship; and "The Laws of Rivo Alto"--about Venetian colour. Pa.s.sages 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.trate 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.