The Life of John Ruskin Part 24

"FORS" RESUMED (1880-1881)

Retirement at Brantwood was only partial. Ruskin's habits of life made it impossible for him to be idle, much as he acknowledged the need of thorough rest. He could not be wholly ignorant of the world outside Coniston; though sometimes for weeks together he tried to ignore it, and refused to read a newspaper. The time when General Gordon went out to Khartoum was one of these periods of abstraction, devoted to mediaeval study. Somebody talked one morning at breakfast about the Soudan. "And who _is_ the Soudan?" he earnestly inquired, connecting the name, as it seemed, with the Soldan of Babylon, in crusading romance.

"Don't you know," he wrote to a friend (January 8th, 1880):

"That I am entirely with you in this Irish misery, and have been these thirty years?--only one can't speak plain without distinctly becoming a leader of Revolution? I know that Revolution _must come_ in all the world--but I can't act with Dan ton or Robespierre, nor with the modern French Republican or Italian one. I _could_ with you and your Irish, but you are only at the beginning of the end. I have spoken,--and plainly too,--for all who have ears, and hear."

The author of "Fors" had tried to show that the nineteenth-century commercialist spirit was not new; that the tyranny of capital was the old sin of usury over again; and he asked why preachers of religion did not denounce it--why, for example, the Bishop of Manchester did not, on simply religious grounds, oppose the teaching of the "Manchester School," who were the chief supporters of the commercialist economy. Not until the end of 1879 had Dr. Fraser been aware of the challenge; but at length he wrote, justifying his att.i.tude. The popular and able bishop had much to say on the expediency of the commercial system and the error of taking the Bible literally; but he seemed unaware of the revolution in economical thought which "Unto this Last" and "Fors" had been pioneering.

"I'm not gone to Venice yet," wrote Ruskin to Miss Beever, "but thinking of it hourly. I'm very nearly done with toasting my bishop; he just wants another turn or two, and then a little b.u.t.ter." The toasting and the b.u.t.tering appeared in the _Contemporary Review_ for February 1880; and this incident led him to feel that the mission of "Fors" was not finished. If bishops were still unenlightened, there was yet work to do.

He gave up Venice, and resumed his crusade.

Brantwood life was occasionally interrupted by short excursions to London or elsewhere. In the autumn he had heard Professor Huxley on the evolution of reptiles; and this suggested another treatment of the subject, from his own artistic and ethical point of view, in a lecture oddly called "A Caution to Snakes," given at the London Inst.i.tution, March 17th, 1880 (repeated March 23rd, and printed in "Deucalion"). He was not merely an amateur zoologist and F.Z.S., but a devoted lover and keen observer of animals. It would take long to tell the story of all his dogs, from the spaniel Dash, commemorated in his earliest poems, and Wisie, whose sagacity is related in "Praeterita," down through the long line of bulldogs, St. Bernards, and collies, to Bramble, the reigning favourite; and all the cats who made his study their home, or were flirted with abroad. To Miss Beever, from Bolton Abbey (January 24th, 1875) he describes the Wharfe in flood, and then continues: "I came home (to the hotel) to quiet tea, and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped half my cream-jugful (and yet I had plenty), sitting on my shoulder."

Grip, the pet rook at Denmark Hill, is mentioned in "My First Editor,"

as celebrated in verse by Mr. W.H. Harrison.

Ruskin had not Th.o.r.eau's intimate acquaintance with the details of wild life, but his att.i.tude towards animals and plants was the same; hating the science that murders to dissect; resigning his Professors.h.i.+p at Oxford, finally, because vivisection was introduced into the University; and supporting the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with all his heart. But, as he said at the Annual Meeting in 1877, he objected to the sentimental fiction and exaggerated statements which some of its members circulated. "They had endeavoured to prevent cruelty to animals," he said, "but they had not enough endeavoured to promote affection for animals. He trusted to the pets of children for their education, just as much as to their tutors."

It was to carry out this idea (to antic.i.p.ate a little) that he founded the Society of Friends of Living Creatures, which he addressed, May 23rd, 1885, at the club, Bedford Park, in his capacity of--not president--but "papa." The members, boys and girls from seven to fifteen, promised not to kill nor hurt any animal for sport, nor tease creatures; but to make friends of their pets and watch their habits, and collect facts about natural history.

I remember, on one of the rambles at Coniston in the early days, how we found a wounded buzzard--one of the few creatures of the eagle kind that our English mountains still breed. The rest of us were not very ready to go near the beak and talons of the fierce-looking, and, as we supposed, desperate bird. Ruskin quietly took it up in his arms, felt it over to find the hurt, and carried it, quite unresistingly, out of the way of dogs and pa.s.sers-by, to a place where it might die in solitude or recover in safety. He often told his Oxford hearers that he would rather they learned to love birds than to shoot them; and his wood and moor were harbours of refuge for hunted game or "vermin;" and his windows the rendezvous of the little birds.

He had not been abroad since the spring of 1877, and in August 1880 felt able to travel again. He went for a tour among the northern French cathedrals, staying at old haunts,--Abbeville, Amiens, Beauvais, Chartres, Rouen,--and then returned with Mr. A. Severn and Mr. Brabazon to Amiens, where he spent the greater part of October. He was writing a new book--the "Bible of Amiens"--which was to be to the "Seven Lamps"

what "St. Mark's Rest" was to "Stones of Venice."

Before he returned, the secretary of the Chesterfield Art School had written to ask him to address the students. Mr. Ruskin, travelling without a secretary, and in the flush of new work and thronging ideas, put the letter aside; he carried his letters about in bundles in his portmanteau, as he said in his apology, "and looked at them as Ulysses at the bags of Aeolus." Some wag had the impudence to forge a reply, which was actually read at the meeting in spite of its obviously fict.i.tious style and statements:

"HARLESDEN(!), LONDON, _Friday_.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Your letter reaches me here. Have just returned [commercial English, not Ruskin] from Venice [where he had meant to go, but did not go] where I have ruminated(!) in the pasturages of the home of art(!); the loveliest and holiest of lovely and holy cities, where the very stones cry out, eloquent in the elegancies of iambics" (!!)--and so forth.

However, it deceived the newspapers, and there was a fine storm, which Mr. Ruskin rather enjoyed. For though the forgery was clumsy enough, it embodied some apt plagiarism from a letter to the Mansfield Art School on a similar occasion.

Not long before, a forgery of a more serious kind had been committed by one of the people connected with St. George's Guild, who had put Mr.

Ruskin's name to cheques. The bank authorities were long in tracing the crime. They even sent a detective to Brantwood to watch one of the a.s.sistants, who never knew--nor will ever know--that he was honoured with such attentions; and none of his friends for a moment believed him guilty. He had sometimes imitated Mr. Ruskin's hand; a dangerous jest.

The real culprit was discovered at last, and Mr. Ruskin had to go to London as a witness for the prosecution. "Being in very weak health,"

the _Times_ report said (April 1st, 1879), "he was allowed to give evidence from the bench." He had told the Sheffield communists that "he thought so strongly on the subject of the repression of crime that he dare not give expression to his ideas for fear of being charged with cruelty"; but no sooner was the prisoner released than he gave the help needed to start him again in a better career.

Though he did not feel able to lecture to strangers at Chesterfield, he visited old friends at Eton, on November 6th, 1880, to give an address on Amiens. For once he forgot his MS., but the lecture was no less brilliant and interesting. It was practically the first chapter of his new work, the "Bible of Amiens,"--itself intended as the first volume of "Our Fathers have Told us: Sketches of the History of Christendom, for Boys and Girls who have been held at its Fonts." The distinctly religious tone of the work was noticed as marking, if not a change, a strong development of a tendency which had been strengthening for some time past.

Early in 1879 the Rev. F.A. Malleson, vicar of Broughton, near Coniston, had asked him to write, for the Furness Clerical Society's Meetings, a series of letters on the Lord's Prayer. In them he dwelt upon the need of living faith in the Fatherhood of G.o.d, and childlike obedience to the commands of old-fas.h.i.+oned religion and morality. He criticised the English liturgy as compared with mediaeval forms of prayer; and pressed upon his hearers the strongest warnings against evasion, or explaining away of stern duties and simple faiths. He concluded:

"No man more than I has ever loved the place where G.o.d's honour dwells, or yielded truer allegiance to the teaching of His evident servants. No man at this time grieves more for the damage of the Church which supposes him her enemy, while she whispers procrastinating _pax vobisc.u.m_ in answer to the spurious kiss of those who would fain toll curfew over the last fires of English faith, and watch the sparrows find nest where she may lay her young, around the altars of the Lord."

But if the Anglican Church refused him, the Roman Church was eager to claim him. His interest in mediaevalism seemed to point him out as ripe for conversion. Cardinal Manning, an old acquaintance, showed him special attention, and invited him to charming _tete-a-tete_ luncheons.

It was commonly reported that he had gone over, or was going. But two letters (of a later date) show that he was not to be caught. To a Glasgow correspondent he wrote in 1887:

"I shall be entirely grateful to you if you will take the trouble to contradict any news gossip of this kind, which may be disturbing the minds of any of my Scottish friends. I was, am, and can be, only a Christian Catholic in the wide and eternal sense. I have been that these five-and-twenty years at least. Heaven keep me from being less as I grow older! But I am no more likely to become a Roman Catholic than a Quaker, Evangelical, or Turk."

To another, next year, he wrote:

"I fear you have scarcely read enough of 'Fors' to know the breadth of my own creed or communion. I gladly take the bread, water, wine, or meat of the Lord's Supper with members of my own family or nation who obey Him, and should be equally sure it was His giving, if I were myself worthy to receive it, whether the intermediate mortal hand were the Pope's, the Queen's, or a hedge-side gipsy's."

At Coniston he was on friendly terms with Father Gibson, the Roman Catholic priest, and gave a window to the chapel, which several of the Brantwood household attended. But though he did not go to Church, he contributed largely to the increase of the poorly-endowed curacy, and to the charities of the parish. The religious society of the neighbourhood was hardly of a kind to attract him, unless among the religious society should be included the Thwaite, where lived the survivors of a family long settled at Coniston--Miss Mary Beever, scientific and political; and Miss Susanna, who won Mr. Ruskin's admiration and affection by an interest akin to his own in nature and in poetry, and by her love for animals, and bright, unfailing wit. Both ladies were examples of sincerely religious life, "at once sources and loadstones of all good to the village," as he wrote in the preface to "Hortus Inclusus," the collection of his letters to them since first acquaintance in the autumn of 1873. The elder Miss Beever died at an advanced age on the last day of 1883; Miss Susanna survived until October, 29, 1893.

In children he took a warm and openly-expressed interest. He used to visit the school often, and delighted to give them a treat. On January 13th, 1881, he gave a dinner to 315 Coniston youngsters, and the tone of his address to his young guests is noteworthy as taken in connection with the drift of his religious tendency during this period. He dwelt on a verse of the Sunday School hymn they had been singing: "Jesu, here from sin deliver." "That is what we want," he said; "to be delivered from our sins. We must look to the Saviour to deliver us from our sin.

It is right we should be punished for the sins which we have done; but G.o.d loves us, and wishes to be kind to us, and to help us, that we may not wilfully sin."

At this time he used to take the family prayers himself at Brantwood: preparing careful notes for a Bible-reading, which sometimes, indeed, lasted longer than was convenient to the household; and writing collects for the occasion, still existing in ma.n.u.script, and deeply interesting as the prayers of a man who had pa.s.sed through so many wildernesses of thought and doubt, and had returned at last--not to the fold of the Church, but to the footstool of the Father.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RECALL TO OXFORD (1882-1883)

This Brantwood life came to an end with the end of 1881. Early in the next year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed much better, and ventured to reappear in public. On March 3rd he went to the National Gallery to sketch Turner's Python. On the unfinished drawing is written: "Bothered away from it, and never went again. No light to work by in the next month."

An artist in the Gallery had been taking notes of him for a surrept.i.tious portrait--an embarra.s.sing form of flattery.

He wrote: "No--I won't believe any stories about overwork. It's impossible, when one's in good heart and at really pleasant things. I've a lot of nice things to do, but the heart fails--after lunch, particularly!" Heart and head did, however, fail again; and another attack of brain fever followed. Sir William Gull brought him through, and won his praise as a doctor and esteem as a friend. Ruskin took it as a great compliment when Sir William, in acknowledging his fee, wrote that he should keep the cheque as an autograph.

By Easter Monday the patient was better again, and plunging into work in spite of everybody. He wrote:

"I was not at all sure, myself, till yesterday, whether I _would_ go abroad; also I should have told you before. But as you have had the (sorrowful?) news broken to you--and as I find Sir William Gull perfectly fixed in his opinion, I obey him, and reserve only some liberty of choice to myself--respecting, not only climate,--but the general appearance of the--inhabitants, of the localities, where for antiquarian or scientific research I may be induced to prolong my sojourn.--Meantime I send you--to show you I haven't come to town for nothing, my last bargain in beryls, with a little topaz besides...."

But the journey was put off week after week. There was so much to do, buying diamonds for Sheffield museum, and planning a collection of models to show the normal forms of crystals, and to ill.u.s.trate a subject which he thought many people would find interesting, if they could be got over its first difficulties. Not only Sheffield was to receive these gifts and helps: Ruskin had become acquainted with the Rev. J.P.

Faunthorpe, Princ.i.p.al of Whitelands College for Pupil Teachers, and had given various books and collections to ill.u.s.trate the artistic side of education. Now he inst.i.tuted there the May Queen Festival, in some sort carrying out his old suggestion in "Time and Tide." Mr. A. Severn designed a gold cross, and it was presented, with a set of volumes of Ruskin's works, sumptuously bound, to the May Queen and her maidens. The pretty festival became a popular feature of the school, "patronised by royalty," and Ruskin continued his annual gift to Whitelands, and kept up a similar inst.i.tution at the High School at Cork.

At last, in August, he started for the Continent and stayed a while at Avallon in central France, a district new to him. There he met Mr. Frank Randal, one of the artists working for St. George's Guild, and explored the scenery and antiquities of a most interesting neighbourhood. He drove over the Jura in the old style, revisited Savoy, and after weeks of bitter _bise_ and dark weather, a splendid sunset cleared the hills.

He wrote to Miss Beever:--"I saw Mont Blanc again to-day, unseen since 1877; and was very thankful. It is a sight that always redeems me to what I am capable of at my poor little best, and to what loves and memories are most precious to me."

At Annecy he was pleased to find the waiter at the Hotel Verdun remembered his visit twenty years before;--everywhere he met old friends, and saw old scenes that he had feared he never would revisit.

After crossing the Cenis and hastening through Turin and Genoa, he reached Lucca, to be awaited at the Albergo Reale dell' Universo by a crowd, every one anxious to shake hands with Signor Ruskin. No wonder!--for instead of allowing himself to be a mere Number-so-and-so in a hotel, wherever he felt comfortable--and that was everywhere except at pretentious modern hotels--he made friends with the waiter, chatted with the landlord, found his way into the kitchen to compliment the cook, and forgot n.o.body in the establishment--not only in "tips," but in a frank and sympathetic address which must have contrasted curiously, in their minds, with the reserve and indifference of other English tourists.

At Florence he met Mr. Henry Roderick Newman, an American artist who had been at Coniston and was working for the Guild. He introduced Ruskin to Mrs. and Miss Alexander. In these ladies' home he found his own aims, in religion, philanthropy, and art, realised in an unexpected way. Miss Alexander's drawing at first struck him by its sincerity. Not only did she draw beautifully, but she also wrote a beautiful hand; and it had been one of his old sayings that missal-writing, rather than missal-painting, was the admirable thing in mediaeval art. The legends ill.u.s.trated by her drawings were collected by herself, through an intimate acquaintance with Italians of all cla.s.ses, from the n.o.bles to the peasantry, whom she understood and loved, and by whom she was loved and understood. By such intercourse she had learned to look beneath the surface. In religious matters her American common-sense saw through her neighbours--saw the good in them as well as the weakness--and she was as friendly, not only in social intercourse, but in spiritual things, with the worthy village priest as with T.P. Rossetti,[47] the leader of the Protestant "Brethren," whom she called her pastor. And Ruskin, who had been driven away from Protestantism by the poor Waldensian at Turin, and had wandered through many realms of doubt and voyaged through strange seas of thought, alone, found harbour at last with the disciple of a modern evangelist, the frequenter of the little meeting-house of outcast Italian Protestants.

[Footnote 47: A cousin of the artist, and in his way no less remarkable a man. A short account of his life is given in "D.G. Rossetti, his family letters," Vol. I., p. 34. The circ.u.mstances of his death are touchingly related by Miss Alexander in "Christ's Folk; in the Apennine."]