The Life of John Ruskin Part 3

"His imagination is Shakespearian in its mightiness. Had the scene of 'Juliet and her Nurse' risen up before the mind of a poet, and been described in 'words that burn,' it had been the admiration of the world.... Many-coloured mists are floating above the distant city, but such mists as you might imagine to be ethereal spirits, souls of the mighty dead breathed out of the tombs of Italy into the blue of her bright heaven, and wandering in vague and infinite glory around the earth that they have loved. Instinct with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and mingle among the pale stars, and rise up into the brightness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye gazes down into the deep waters of the sea for ever--that sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming with phosphor light, that emanates out of its sapphire serenity like bright dreams breathed into the spirit of a deep sleep. And the spires of the glorious city rise indistinctly bright into those living mists, like pyramids of pale fire from some vast altar; and amidst the glory of the dream there is, as it were, the voice of a mult.i.tude entering by the eye, arising from the stillness of the city like the summer wind pa.s.sing over the leaves of the forest, when a murmur is heard amidst their mult.i.tudes.

"This, O Maga, is the picture which your critic has p.r.o.nounced to be 'like models of different parts of Venice, streaked blue and white, and thrown into a flour-tub'!"

Before sending his reply to the editor of _Blackwood_, as had been intended, it was thought only right that Turner should be consulted. The MS. was enclosed to his address in London, with a courteous note from Mr. John James Ruskin, asking his permission to publish. Turner replied, expressing the scorn he felt for anonymous attacks, and jestingly hinting that the art-critics of the old Scotch school found their "meal-tub" in danger from his "flour-tub"; but "he never moved in such matters," so he sent on the MS. to Mr. Munro of Novar, who had bought the picture.

Ten days or so after this episode John Ruskin was matriculated at Oxford (October 18, 1836). He told the story of his first appearance as a gownsman in one of his gossiping letters in verse:

"A night, a day past o'er--the time drew near-- The morning came--I felt a little queer; Came to the push; paid some tremendous fees; Past; and was capped and gowned with marvellous ease.

Then went to the Vice-Chancellor to swear Not to wear boots, nor cut or comb my hair Fantastically--to shun all such sins As playing marbles or frequenting inns; Always to walk with breeches black or brown on; When I go out, to put my cap and gown on; With other regulations of the sort, meant For the just ordering of my comportment.

Which done, in less time than I can rehea.r.s.e it, I Found myself member of the University!"

In pursuance of his plan for getting the best of everything, his father had chosen the best college, as far as he knew, that in which social and scholastic advantages were believed to be found in pre-eminent combination, and he had chosen what was thought to be the best position in the college; so that it was as gentleman-commoner of Christ Church that John Ruskin made his entrance into the academic world.

After matriculation, the Ruskins made a fortnight's tour to Southampton and the coast, and returned to Herne Hill. John went back to King's College, and in December was examined in the subjects of his lectures.

He wrote to his father on Christmas Eve about the examination in English literature:

"The students were numerous, and so were the questions; the room was hot, the papers long, the pens bad, the ink pale, and the interrogations difficult. It lasted only three hours. I wrote answers in very magnificent style to all the questions except three or four; gave in my paper and heard no more of the matter: _sic transeunt bore-ia mundi_."

He went on to mention his "very longitudinal essay," which, since no other essays are reported in his letters about King's College, must be the paper published in 1893, in answer to the question. "Does the perusal of works of fiction act favourably or unfavourably on the moral character?"

At his farewell interview with Mr. Dale he was asked, as he writes to his father, what books he had read, and replied with a pretty long list, including Quintilian and Grotius. Mr. Dale inquired what "light books"

he was taking to Oxford: "Saussure, Humboldt, and other works on natural philosophy and geology," he answered. "Then he asked if I ever read any of the modern fashionable novels; on this point I thought he began to look positive, so I gave him a negative, with the exception of Bulwer's, and now and then a laughable one of the Theodore Hook's or Captain Marryat's." And so, with much excellent advice about exercise and sleep, and the way to win the Newdigate, he parted from Mr. Dale.

This Christmas was marked by his first introduction to the scientific world. Mr. Charlesworth, of the British Museum, invited him to a meeting of the Geological Society (January 4, 1837), with promise of introduction to Buckland and Lyell. The meeting, as he wrote, was "amusing and interesting, and very comfortable for frosty weather, as Mr. Murchison got warm and Mr. Greenau _(sic)_ witty. The warmth, however, got the better of the wit."

The Meteorological Society also claimed his attention, and in this month he contributed a paper which "Richard [Fall] says will frighten them out of their meteorological wits, containing six close-written folio pages, and having, at its conclusion, a sting in its tail, the very agreeable announcement that it only commences the subject."

CHAPTER VI

A LOVE-STORY (1836-1839)

Early in 1836 the quiet of Herne Hill was fluttered by a long-promised, long-postponed visit. Mr. Domecq at last brought his four younger daughters to make the acquaintance of their English friends. The eldest sister had lately been married to a Count Maison, heir to a peer of France; for Mr. Domecq, thanks in great measure to his partner's energy and talents, was prosperous and wealthy, and moved in the enchanted circles of Parisian society.

To a romantic schoolboy in a London suburb the apparition was dazzling.

Any of the sisters would have charmed him, but the eldest of the four, Adele Clotilde, bewitched him at once with her graceful figure and that oval face which was so admired in those times. She was fair, too--another recommendation. He was on the brink of seventeen, at the ripe moment, and he fell pa.s.sionately in love with her. She was only fifteen, and did not understand this adoration, unspoken and unexpressed except by intensified shyness; for he was a very shy boy in the drawing-room, though br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with life and fun among his schoolfellows. His mother's ideals of education did not include French gallantry; he felt at a loss before these Paris-bred, Paris-dressed young ladies, and enc.u.mbered by the very strength of his new-found pa.s.sion.

And yet he possessed advantages, if he had known how to use them. He was tall and active, light and lithe in gesture, not a clumsy hobbledehoy.

He had the face that caught the eye, in Rome a few years later, of Keats' Severn, no mean judge, surely, of faces and poet's faces. He was undeniably clever; he knew all about minerals and mountains; he was quite an artist, and a printed poet. But these things weigh little with a girl of fifteen who wants to be amused; and so she only laughed at John.

He tried to amuse her, but he tried too seriously. He wrote a story to read her, "Leoni, a Legend of Italy," for of course she understood enough English to be read to, no doubt to be wooed in, seeing her mother was English. The story was of brigands and true lovers, the thing that was popular in the romantic period. The costumery and mannerisms of the little romance are out of date now, and seem ridiculous, though Mr.

Pringle and the public were pleased with it then, when it was printed in "Friendship's Offering." But the girl of fifteen only laughed the more.

When they left, he had no interest in his tour-book; even the mountains, for the time, had lost their power, and all his plans of great works were dropped for a new style of verse--the love-poems of 1836.

His father, from whom he kept nothing, approved the verses, and did not disapprove his views on the young lady. Indeed, it is quite plain, from the correspondence of the two gentlemen, that Mr. Domecq intended his friend and partner's son to become his own son-in-law. He had the greatest respect for the Ruskins, and every reason for desiring to link their fortunes still more closely with those of his own family. But to Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable, unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in the nurture and admonition of the strictest Protestantism should fix his heart on an alien in race and creed. The wonder is that their relations were not more strained; there are few young men who would have kept unbroken allegiance to a mother whose sympathy failed them at such a crisis.

As the year went on his pa.s.sion seemed to grow in the absence of the beloved object. His only plan of winning her was to win his spurs first; but as what? Clearly his forte, it seemed, was in writing. If he could be a successful writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would not refuse him. And so he began another romantic story, "Velasquez, the Novice," opening with the Monks of St. Bernard, among whom had been, so the tale ran, a mysterious member, whose papers, when discovered, made him out the hero of adventures in Venice. He began a play, which was to be another great work, "Marcolini." He had no playwright's eye for situations, but the conversation is animated, and the characters finely drawn, with more discrimination than one would expect from so young an author.

This work was interrupted at the end of Act III. by pressing calls to other studies. But it was not that he had forgotten Adele. From time to time he wrote verses to her or about her; and as in 1838 she was sent to school with her sisters at Newhall, near Chelmsford, to "finish" her in English, in that August he saw her again. She had lost some of her first girlish prettiness, but that made no difference. And when the Domecqs came to Herne Hill at Christmas, he was as deeply in love as ever. But she still laughed at him.

His father was fond of her, liked all the sisters, and thought much of them as girls of fine character, but he liked Adele best. He seems to have been fond of his partner, too, worked very hard in his interests, and behaved very well to his heirs afterwards through many years of responsible and difficult management of their business. And at this time, when he went down to the convent school in Ess.e.x, as he often did, he must have had opportunities for seeing how hopeless the case was. Mr.

Domecq recognised it, too, but thought, it seems (they manage these things differently in France), that any of his daughters would do as well, and early in 1839 entertained an offer from Baron Duquesne, a rich and handsome young Frenchman. They kept this from John, fearing he would break down at the news, so fully did they recognise the importance of the affair. They even threw other girls in his way. It was not difficult, for by now he had made some mark in magazine literature, and was a steady, rising young man, with considerable expectations. But he could not think of any other girl.

In February or March, 1839, Mr. Domecq died. The Maisons came to England, and the marriage was proposed. Adele stayed at Chelmsford until September, when he wrote the long poem of "Farewell," dated the eve of their last meeting and parting.

At twenty young men do not die of love; but I find that a fortnight after writing this he was taken seriously ill. During the winter of 1839-40 the negotiations for the marriage in Paris went on. It took place in March. They kept the news from him as long as they could, for he was in the schools next Easter term, and Mr. Brown (his college tutor) had seemed to hope he would get a First, so his mother wrote to her husband. In May he was p.r.o.nounced consumptive, and had to give up Oxford, and all hope of the distinction for which he had laboured, and with that any plans that might have been entertained for his distinction in the Church. And his parents' letters of the period put it beyond a doubt that this first great calamity of his life was the direct consequence of that unfortunate matchmaking.

For nearly two years he was dragged about from place to place, and from doctor to doctor, in search of health. Thanks partly to wise treatment, more to new faces, and most to a plucky determination to employ himself usefully with his pen and his pencil, he gradually freed himself from the spell, and fifty years afterwards could look back upon the story as a pretty comedy of his youthful days.

CHAPTER VII

"KATA PHUSIN" (1837-1838)

Devoted as she was to her husband, Mrs. Ruskin felt bound to watch over her son at Oxford. It was his health she was always anxious about; doctoring was her forte. He had suffered from pleurisy; caught cold easily; was feared to be weak in the lungs; and n.o.body but his mother understood him. So taking Mary Richardson, she went up with him (January, 1837), and settled in lodgings at Adams' in the High. Her plan was to make no intrusion on his college life, but to require him to report himself every day to her. She would not be dull; she could drive about and see the country, and to that end took her own carriage to Oxford, the "fly" which had been set up two years before. John had been rather sarcastic about its genteel appearance. "No one," he said, "would sit down to draw the form of it." However, she and Mary drove to Oxford, and reckoned that it would only mean fifteen months' absence from home altogether, great part of which deserted papa would spend in travelling.

John went into residence in Peckwater. At first he spent every evening with his mother and went to bed, as Mr. Dale had told him, at ten. After a few days Professor Powell asked him to a musical evening; he excused himself, and explained why. The Professor asked to be introduced, whereupon says his mother, "I shall return the call, but make no visiting acquaintances."

The "early-to-bed" plan was also impracticable. It was not long before somebody came hammering at his "oak" just as he was getting to sleep, and next morning he told his mother that he really ought to have a gla.s.s of wine to give. So she sent him a couple of bottles over, and that very night "Mr. Liddell and Mr. Gaisford" (junior) turned up. "John was glad he had wine to offer, but they would not take any; they had come to see sketches. John says Mr. Liddell looked at them with the eye of a judge and the delight of an artist, and swore they were the best sketches he had ever seen. John accused him of quizzing, but he answered that he really thought them excellent." John said that it was the scenes which made the pictures; Mr. Liddell knew better, and spread the fame of them over the college. Next morning "Lord Emlyn and Lord Ward called to look at the sketches," and when the undergraduates had dropped in one after another, the Dean himself, even the terrible Gaisford, sent for the portfolio, and returned it with august approval.

Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church; Newton, afterwards Sir Charles, of the British Museum; Acland, afterwards Sir Henry, the Professor of Medicine, thus became John Ruskin's friends: the first disputing with him on the burning question of Raphael's art, but from the outset an admirer of "Modern Painters," and always an advocate of its author; the second differing from him on the claims of Greek archaeology, but nevertheless a close acquaintance through many long years; and the third for half a century the best of friends and counsellors.

The dons of his college he was less likely to attract. Dr. Buckland, the famous geologist, and still more famous lecturer and talker, took notice of him and employed him in drawing diagrams for lectures. The Rev.

Walter Brown, his college tutor, afterwards Rector of Wendlebury, won his good-will and remained his friend. His private tutor, the Rev.

Osborne Gordon, was always regarded with affectionate respect. But the rest seem to have looked upon him as a somewhat desultory and erratic young genius, who might or might not turn out well. For their immediate purpose, the Schools, and Church or State preferment, he seemed hardly the fittest man.

The gentlemen-commoners of Christ Church were a puzzle to Mrs. Ruskin; n.o.blemen of sporting tastes, who rode and betted and drank, and got their impositions written "by men attached to the University for the purpose, at 1s.6d. to 2s.6d., so you have only to reckon how much you will give to avoid chapel." And yet they were very nice fellows. If they began by riding on John's back round the quad, they did not give him the cold shoulder--quite the reverse. He was asked everywhere to wine; he beat them all at chess; and they invaded him at all hours. "It does little good sporting _his_ oak," wrote his mother, describing how Lord Desart and Grimston climbed in through his window while he was hard at work. "They say midshipmen and Oxonians have more lives than a cat, and they have need of them if they run such risks."

Once, but once only, he was guilty, as an innocent freshman, of a breach of the laws of his order. He wrote too good an essay. He tells his father:

"OXFORD, _February_, 1837.

"Yesterday (Sat.u.r.day) forenoon the Sub-dean sent for me, took me up into his study, sat down with me, and read over my essay, pointing out a few verbal alterations and suggesting improvements; I, of course, expressed myself highly grateful for his condescension.

Going out, I met Strangeways. 'So you're going to read out to-day, Ruskin. _Do_ go it at a good rate, my good fellow. Why do you write such devilish good ones?' Went a little farther and met March.

'Mind you stand on the top of the desk, Ruskin; gentlemen-commoners never stand on the steps.' I asked him whether it would look more dignified to stand head or heels uppermost. He advised heels. Then met Desart. 'We must have a grand supper after this, Ruskin; gentlemen-commoners always have a flare-up after reading their themes.' I told him I supposed he wanted to 'pison my rum-and-water.'"

And though they teased him unmercifully, he seems to have given as good as he got. At a big wine after the event, they asked him whether his essay cost 2s.6d. or 5s. What he answered is not reported; but they proceeded to make a bonfire in Peckwater, while he judiciously escaped to bed.

So for a home-bred boy, thrown into rather difficult surroundings, his first appearance at Christ Church was distinctly a success.

"Collections" in March, 1837, went off creditably for him. Hussey, Kynaston and the Dean said he had taken great pains with his work, and had been a pattern of regularity; and he ended his first term very well pleased with his college and with himself.