The Life of John Ruskin Part 16

Before this work was ended, Carlyle had come back from Mentone to Chelsea, and was begging his friend, in the warmest terms, to come and see him. Shortly afterward, a pa.s.sage which Ruskin would not retract gave offence to Carlyle. But the difference was healed, and later years reveal the sage of Chelsea as kindly and affectionate as ever. This friends.h.i.+p between the two greatest writers of their age, between two men of vigorous individuality, outspoken opinions, and widely different tastes and sympathies, is a fine episode in the history of both.

In May, Ruskin was invited to Cambridge to receive the honorary degree of LL.D., and to deliver the Rede Lecture. The _Cambridge Chronicle_ of May 24th, 1867, says: "The body of the Senate House was quite filled with M.A.'s and ladies, princ.i.p.ally the latter, whilst there was a large attendance of undergraduates in the galleries, who gave the lecturer a most enthusiastic reception." A brief report of the lecture was printed in the newspaper; but it was not otherwise published, and the ma.n.u.script seems to have been mislaid for thirty years. I take the liberty of copying the opening sentences as a specimen of that Academical oratory which Mr. Ruskin then adopted, and used habitually in his earlier lectures at Oxford.

The t.i.tle of the discourse was "The Relation of National Ethics to National Arts."

"In entering on the duty to-day entrusted to me, I should hold it little respectful to my audience if I disturbed them by expression of the diffidence which they know that I must feel in first speaking in this Senate House; diffidence which might well have prevented me from accepting such duty, but ought not to interfere with my endeavour simply to fulfil it. Nevertheless, lest the direction which I have been led to give to my discourse, and the narrow limits within which I am compelled to confine the treatment of its subject may seem in anywise inconsistent with the purpose of the founder of this Lecture--or with the expectations of those by whose authority I am appointed to deliver it, let me at once say that I obeyed their command, not thinking myself able to teach any dogma in the philosophy of the arts, which could be of any new interest to the members of this University: but only that I might obtain the sanction of their audience, for the enforcement upon other minds of the truth, which--after thirty years spent in the study of art, not dishonestly, however feebly--is manifest to me as the clearest of all that I have learned, and urged upon me as the most vital of all I have to declare."

He then distinguished between true and false art, the true depending upon sincerity, whether in literature, music or the formative arts: he reinforced his old doctrine of the dignity of true imagination as the attribute of healthy and earnest minds; and energetically attacked the commercial art-world of the day, and the notion that drawing-schools were to be supported for the sake of the gain they would bring to our manufacturers.

In this lecture we see the germ of the ideas, as well as the beginning of the style, of the Oxford Inaugural course, and the "Eagle's Nest"; something quite different in type from the style and teaching of the addresses to working men, or to mixed popular audiences at Edinburgh or Manchester, or even at the Royal Inst.i.tution. At this latter place, on June 4th, Sir Henry Holland in the chair, he lectured on "The Present State of Modern Art, with reference to advisable arrangement of the National Gallery," repeating much of what he had said in "Time and Tide"

about the taste for the horrible and absence of true feeling for pure and dignified art in the theatrical shows of the day, and in the admiration for Gustave Dore, then a new fas.h.i.+on. Mr. Ruskin could never endure that the man who had ill.u.s.trated Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques"

should be chosen by the religious public of England as the exponent of their sacred ideals.

In July after a short visit to Huntly Burn near Abbotsford, he went to Keswick for a few weeks, from whence he wrote the rhymed letters to his cousin at home, quoted (with the date wrongly given as 1857) in "Praeterita" to ill.u.s.trate his "heraldic character" of "Little Pigs" and to shock exoteric admirers. Like, for example, Rossetti and Carlyle, Ruskin was fond of playful nicknames and grotesque terms of endearment.

He never stood upon his dignity with intimates; and was ready to allow the liberties he took, much to the surprise of strangers.

He reached Keswick by July 4, and spent his time chiefly in walks upon the hills, staying at the Derwent.w.a.ter Hotel. He wrote:

"Keswick, _19th July, '67, Afternoon, 1/2 past 3_.

"My dearest Mother,

"As this is the last post before Sunday I send one more line to say I've had a delightful forenoon's walk--since 1/2 past ten--by St.

John's Vale, and had pleasant thoughts, and found one of the most variedly beautiful torrent beds I ever saw in my life; and I feel that I gain strength, slowly but certainly, every day. The great good of the place is that I can be content without going on great excursions which fatigue and do me harm (or else worry me with problems;)--I am _content_ here with the roadside hedges and streams; and this contentment is the great thing for health,--and there is hardly anything to annoy me of absurd or calamitous human doing; but still this ancient cottage life--very rude and miserable enough in its torpor--but clean, and calm, not a vile cholera and plague of bestirred pollution, like back streets in London. There is also much more real and deep beauty than I expected to find, in some of the minor pieces of scenery, and in the cloud effects."

"_July 16_.

"I have the secret of extracting sadness from all things, instead of joy, which is no enviable talisman. Forgive me if I ever write in a way that may pain you. It is best that you should know, when I write cheerfully, it is no pretended cheerfulness; so when I am sad--I think it right to confess it."

"_30th July._

"Downes[14] arrived yesterday quite comfortably and in fine weather. It is not bad this morning, and I hope to take him for a walk up Saddleback, which, after all, is the finest, to my mind, of all the c.u.mberland hills--though that is not saying much; for they are much lower in effect, in proportion to their real height, than I had expected. The beauty of the country is in its quiet roadside bits, and rusticity of cottage life and shepherd labour. Its mountains are sorrowfully melted away from my old dreams of them."

[Footnote 14: The gardener at Denmark Hill.]

Next day he "went straight up the steep front of Saddleback by the central ridge to the summit. It is the finest thing I've yet seen, there being several bits of real crag-work, and a fine view at the top over the great plains of Penrith on one side, and the c.u.mberland hills, as a chain, on the other. Fine fresh wind blowing, and plenty of crows. Do you remember poor papa's favourite story about the Quaker whom the crows ate on Saddleback? There were some of the biggest and hoa.r.s.est-voiced ones about the cliff that I've ever had sympathetic croaks from;--and one on the top, or near it, so big that Downes and Crawley, having Austrian tendencies in politics, took it for a 'black eagle.' Downes went up capitally, though I couldn't get him down again, because he _would_ stop to gather ferns. However, we did it all and came down to Threlkeld--of the Bridal of Triermain,

"'The King his way pursued By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood,'

"in good time for me to dress and, for a wonder, go out to dinner with Acland's friends the Butlers."

As an episode in this visit to Keswick, ten days were given to the neighbourhood of Ambleside, "to show Downes Windermere."

"Waterhead, Windermere,

"_10th August, 1867, Evening_.

"I was at Coniston to-day. Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing in the boats, _exists_ no more.--Its place is grown over with smooth Park gra.s.s--the very site of it forgotten! and, a quarter of a mile down the lake, a vast hotel built in the railroad station style--making up, I suppose, its fifty or eighty beds, with coffee-room--smoking-room--and every pestilent and devilish Yankeeism that money can buy, or speculation plan.

"The depression, whatever its cause, does not affect my strength. I walked up a long hill on the road to Coniston to-day (gathering wild raspberries)--then from this new Inn, two miles to the foot of Coniston Old Man; up it; down again--(necessarily!)--and back to dinner, without so much as warming myself--not that there was much danger of doing that at the top; for a keen west wind was blowing drifts of cloud by at a great pace, and one was glad of the shelter of the pile of stones, the largest and _oldest_ I ever saw on a mountain top. I suppose the whole mountain is named from it.

It is of the shape of a beehive, strongly built, about 15 feet high (so that I made Downes follow me up it before I would allow he had been at the top of the Old Man) and covered with lichen and short moss. Lancaster sands and the Irish sea were very beautiful, and so also the two lakes of Coniston and Windermere, lying in the vastest s.p.a.ce of sweet cultivated country I have ever looked over,--a great part of the view from the Rigi being merely over black pine forest, even on the plains. Well, after dinner, the evening was very beautiful, and I walked up the long hill on the road back from Coniston--and kept ahead of the carriage for two miles: I was sadly vexed when I had to get in: and now--I don't feel as if I had been walking at all--and shall probably lie awake for an hour or two--and feeling as if I had not had exercise enough to send me to sleep."

"LANGDALE, _13th August, Evening._

"It is perfectly calm to-night, not painfully hot--and the full moon s.h.i.+ning over the mountains, opposite my window, which are the scene of Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' It was terribly hot in the earlier day, and I did not leave the house till five o'clock. Then I went out, and in the heart of Langdale Pikes found the loveliest rock-scenery, chased with silver waterfalls, that I ever set foot or heart upon. The Swiss torrent-beds are always more or less savage, and ruinous, with a terrible sense of overpowering strength and danger, lulled. But here, the sweet heather and ferns and star mosses nestled in close to the das.h.i.+ng of the narrow streams;--while every cranny of crag held its own little placid lake of amber, trembling with falling drops--but quietly trembling--not troubled into ridgy wave or foam--the rocks themselves, _ideal_ rock, as hard as iron--no--not quite that, but _so_ hard that after breaking some of it, breaking solid white quartz seemed like smas.h.i.+ng brittle loaf sugar, in comparison--and cloven into the most n.o.ble ma.s.ses; not grotesque, but majestic and full of harmony with the larger mountain ma.s.s of which they formed a part. Fancy what a place! for a hot afternoon after five, with no wind--and absolute solitude; no creature--except a lamb or two--to mix any ruder sound or voice with the plash of the innumerable streamlets."

It was during this tour that he looked at a site on the hill above Bowness-on-Windermere, where Mr. T. Richmond, the owner, proposed building him a house. He liked the view, but found it too near the railway station.

After spending September with his mother at Norwood under the care of Dr. Powell, he was able to return home, prepare "Time and Tide" for publication, and write the preface on Dec. 14th. On the 19th the book was out, and immediately bought up. A month later the second edition was issued.

CHAPTER VIII

AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE (1868)

Of less interest to the general reader, though too important a part of Ruskin's life and work to be pa.s.sed over without mention, are his studies in Mineralogy. We have heard of his early interest in spars and ores; of his juvenile dictionary in forgotten hieroglyphics; and of his studies in the field and at the British Museum. He had made a splendid collection, and knew the various museums of Europe as familiarly as he knew the picture-galleries. In the "Ethics of the Dust" he had chosen Crystallography as the subject in which to exemplify his method of education; and in 1867, after finis.h.i.+ng the letters to Thomas Dixon, he took refuge, as before, among the stones, from the stress of more agitating problems.

In the lecture on the Savoy Alps in 1863 he had referred to a hint of Saussure's that the contorted beds of the limestones might possibly be due to some sort of internal action, resembling on a large scale that separation into concentric or curved bands which is seen in calcareous deposits. The contortions of gneiss were similarly a.n.a.logous, it was suggested, to those of the various forms of silica. Ruskin did not adopt the theory, but put it by for examination in contrast with the usual explanation of these phenomena, as the simple mechanical thrust of the contracting surface of the earth.

In 1863 and 1866 he had been among the Nagelfluh of Northern Switzerland, studying the puddingstones and breccias. He saw that the difference between these formations, in their structural aspect, and the hand-specimens in his collection of pisolitic and brecciated minerals was chiefly a matter of size; and that the resemblances in form were very close. And so he concluded that if the structure of the minerals could be fully understood a clue might be found to the very puzzling question of the origin of mountain structure.

Hence his attempt to a.n.a.lyze the structure of agates and similar banded and brecciated minerals, in the series of papers in the _Geological Magazine_;[15] an attempt which though it was never properly completed, and fails to come to any general conclusion, is extremely interesting as an account of beautiful and curious natural forms till then little noticed by mineralogists.

[Footnote 15: August and November, 1867, January, April and May, 1868, December, 1869, and January, 1870, ill.u.s.trated with very fine mezzotint plates and woodcuts.]

A characteristic anecdote of this period is preserved in "Arrows of the Chace."

"The _Daily Telegraph_ of January 21st, 1868, contained a leading article upon the following facts. It appeared that a girl, named Matilda Griggs, had been nearly murdered by her seducer, who, after stabbing her in no less than thirteen places, had then left her for dead. She had, however, still strength enough to crawl into a field close by, and there swooned. The a.s.sistance she met with in this plight was of a rare kind.

Two calves came up to her, and disposing themselves on either side of her bleeding body, thus kept her warm and partly sheltered from cold and rain. Temporarily preserved, the girl eventually recovered, and entered into recognizances, under a sum of forty pounds, to prosecute her murderous lover. But 'she loved much,' and failing to prosecute, forfeited her recognizances, and was imprisoned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for her debt. 'Pity the poor debtor,' wrote the _Daily Telegraph_, and in the next day's issue appeared the following letter, probably not intended for the publication accorded to it. 'Sir,--Except in 'Gil Blas,' I never read of anything Astraean on the earth so perfect as the story in your fourth article to-day. I send you a cheque for the Chancellor. If forty, in legal terms, means four hundred, you must explain the farther requirements to your impulsive public.

"'I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 'J. RUSKIN.'"

The writer of letters like this naturally had a large correspondence, beside that which a circle of private friends and numberless admirers and readers elicited. About this time it grew to such a pitch that he was obliged to print a form excusing him from letter-writing on the ground of stress of work. And indeed, this year, though he did not publish his annual volume, as usual, he was fully occupied with frequent letters to newspapers, several lectures and addresses, a preface to the reprint of his old friend Cruikshank's "Grimm," and the beginning of a new botanical work, "Proserpina," in addition to the mineralogy, and a renewed interest in cla.s.sical studies. Of the public addresses the most important was that on "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, Dublin (May 13th), and printed in "Sesame and Lilies."

After this visit to Ireland he spent a few days at Winnington; and late in August crossed the Channel, for rest and change at Abbeville. For the past five years he had found too little time for drawing; it was twenty years since his last sketching of French Gothic, except for a study (now at Oxford), of the porch at Amiens, in 1856. He took up the old work where he had left it, after writing the "Seven Lamps," with fresh interest and more advanced powers of draughtsmans.h.i.+p as shown in the pencil study of the Place Amiral Courbet, now in the drawing school at Oxford.

The following are extracts from the usual budget of home letters; readers of "Fors" will need no further introduction to their old acquaintance, the tallow-chandler.

"ABBEVILLE, _Friday, 18th Sept._, 1868