The Life of John Ruskin Part 22

"13 _Nov_.--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's _done_ work 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't _fix_ my 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, parcels _for_ Mr. 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.

"3 _Dec_.--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 most _c.u.mfy_ room [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 gla.s.s. 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.

"9 _Dec_.--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.

"24 _Dec_.--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 a.s.surance, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

CHAPTER V

DEUCALION AND PROSERPINA (1877-1879)

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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lysis of modern epic art, in seven volumes; a life of Xenophon, with a.n.a.lysis of the general principles of education, in ten volumes; a commentary on Hesiod, with final a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lysis: but with bright and curious fancy, with the most ingenious diagrams and perfect drawings--beautifully engraved by Burgess and Allen--ill.u.s.trated 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 Inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d in nature and in man.

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

[Footnote 38: 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 the _Nineteenth Century_ for January, 1878.]

"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 bits[39] interested 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."

[Footnote 39: Miss Beever had published early in 1875 the extracts from "Modern Painters," so widely known as "Frondes Agrestes."]

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 hoa.r.s.eness 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 amus.e.m.e.nts--Pickwick, chivalric romances, the _Daily Telegraph_, Staunton's games of chess, and finally a.n.a.lysis 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 the _Cathedral_ of 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 pa.s.sing 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 cost can 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 cla.s.s: and instead of the cheery words of bygone years, received the couplet from Horace:

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

"Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believe _every_ day 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 pa.s.sage, 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 ill.u.s.trated 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. .h.i.therto 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 the _University Magazine_ on "My First Editor," W.H. Harrison, and forgot himself--almost--in bright reminiscences of youthful days and early a.s.sociations. 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 the catalogue. 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.[40] How 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....

[Footnote 40: "Fors" was taken up again, at intervals, later on; but never with the same purpose and continuity.]

"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-sh.o.r.e. 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 announcing his condition were read by mult.i.tudes 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 Splugen. 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, ill.u.s.trating 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 the public, 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: