OXFORD TEACHING (1872-1875)
Early in 1872, after bringing out "Munera Pulveris," the essays he had
written ten years before for _Fraser_ on economy; after getting those
street-sweepers to work near the British Museum where he was making
studies of animals and Greek sculpture; and after once more addressing
the Woolwich cadets, this time[25] on the Bird of Calm (the mythology of
the Halcyon), Professor Ruskin went to Oxford to give a course of ten
lectures[26] on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, afterwards
published under the title of "The Eagle's Nest." He wrote to Professor
Norton:
[Footnote 25: January 13, 1872.]
[Footnote 26: Feb. 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24. 29; March 2, 7, and 9.]
"I am, as usual, unusually busy. When I get fairly into my lecture
work at Oxford I always find the lecture would come better some
other way, just before it is given, and so work from hand to mouth.
I am always unhappy, and see no good in saying so. But I am
settling to my work here--recklessly--to do my best with it:
feeling quite sure that it is talking at hazard for what chance
good may come. But I attend regularly in the schools as mere
drawing-master, and the men begin to come in one by one, about
fifteen or twenty already; several worth having as pupils in any
way, being of temper to make good growth of."
Why was he always unhappy? It was not that Mr. W.B. Scott criticised
"Ruskin's influence" in that March; or that by Easter he had to say
farewell to his old home on Denmark Hill, and settle "for good" at
Brantwood. Nor that he could go abroad again for a long summer in Italy
with Mr. and Mrs. Severn and the Hilliards and Mr. Albert Goodwin. They
started about the middle of April, and on the journey out he wrote,
beside his "Fors" which always went on, a preface to the Rev. R. St.
John Tyrwhitt's "Christian Art and Symbolism." He drew the Apse at Pisa,
half-amused and half-worried by the little ragamuffin who varied the
tedium of watching his work by doing horizontal-bar tricks on the
railings of the Cathedral green. Then to Lucca, where, to show his
friends something of Italian landscape, he took them for rambles through
the olive farms and chestnut woods, among which Miss Hilliard lost her
jewelled cross. Greatly to Ruskin's delight, as a firm believer in
Italian peasant-virtue, it was found and returned without hint of
reward.
At Rome they visited old Mr. Severn, and then went homeward by way of
Verona, where Ruskin wrote an account of the Cavalli monuments for the
Arundel society, and Venice, where he returned to the study of
Carpaccio. At Rome he had been once more to the Sistine, and found that
on earlier visits the ceiling and the Last Judgment had taken his
attention too exclusively. Now that he could look away from Michelangelo
he become conscious of the claims of Botticelli's frescoes, which
represent, in the Florentine school, somewhat the same kind of interest
that he had found in Carpaccio. He became enamoured of Botticelli's
Zipporah, and resolved to study the master more closely. On reaching
home he had to prepare "The Eagle's Nest" for publication; in the
preface he gave special importance to Botticelli, and amplified it in
lectures on early engraving, that Autumn;[27] in which I remember his
quoting with appreciation the passage on the Venus Anadyomene from
Pater's "Studies in the Renaissance" just published.
[Footnote 27: "Ariadne Florentina," delivered on Nov. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30,
and Dec. 7, and repeated on the following Thursdays. Ruskin's first
mention of Botticelli was in the course on Landscape, Lent Term, 1871.]
This sudden enthusiasm about an unknown painter amused the Oxford
public: and it became a standing joke among the profane to ask who was
Ruskin's last great man. It was in answer to that, and in expression of
a truer understanding than most Oxford pupils attained, that Bourdillon
of Worcester wrote on "the Ethereal Ruskin,"--that was Carlyle's name
for him:--
"To us this star or that seems bright,
And oft some headlong meteor's flight
Holds for awhile our raptured sight.
"But he discerns each noble star;
The least is only the most far,
Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are."
The critical value of this course however, to a student of art-history,
is impaired by his using as illustrations of Botticelli, and of the
manner of engraving which he took for standard, certain plates which
were erroneously attributed to the artist. "It is strange," he wrote in
despair to Professor Norton, "that I hardly ever get anything stated
without some grave mistake, however true in my main discourse." But in
this case a fate stronger than he had taken him unawares. The
circumstances do not extenuate the error of the Professor, but they
explain the difficulties under which his work was done. The cloud that
rested on his own life was the result of a strange and wholly unexpected
tragedy in another's.
It was an open secret--his attachment to a lady, who had been his pupil,
and was now generally understood to be his _fiancée_. She was far
younger than he; but at fifty-three he was not an old man; and the
friends who fully knew and understood the affair favoured his intentions
and joined in the hope, and in auguries for the happiness for which he
had been so long waiting. But now that it came to the point the lady
finally decided that it was impossible. He was not at one with her in
religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed--it
seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally
yoked with an unbeliever. To her, the alternative was plain; the choice
was terrible: yet, having once seen her path, she turned resolutely
away.[28]
[Footnote 28: In former editions the following sentence was added:
"Three years after, as she lay dying, he begged to see her once more.
She sent to ask whether he could yet say that he loved God better than
he loved her; and when he said 'No,' her door was closed upon him for
ever." The statement was suggested by information from Ruskin in later
days. I must, however, have misrepresented the facts, as the lady's
mother has left it in writing that no such incident occurred.]
Meanwhile, in the bitterest despair he sought refuge as he had done
before, in his work. He accepted the lesson, though he, too, could not
recant; still he tried to correct his apparent levity in the renewed
seriousness and more earnest tone of "Fors," speaking more plainly and
more simply, but without concession. He wrote on the next Christmas Eve
to an Aberdeen Bible-class teacher:
"If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to
them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble
themselves about what they ought _not_ to do, but about what they
_ought_ to do. The condemnation given from the Judgment
Throne--most solemnly described--is all for the _undones_ and not
for the _dones_. People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but
unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day
long, and the degree does not matter. Make your young hearers
resolve to be honest in their work in this life. Heaven will take
care of them for the other."
That was all he could say: he did not _know_ there was another life: he
_hoped_ there was: and yet, if he were not a saint or a Christian, was
there any man in the world who was nearer to the kingdom of Heaven than
this stubborn heretic?
His heretical attitude was singular. He was just as far removed from
adopting the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with
religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting--and in his
biography important--on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to
the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his
position and to state a qualified belief in the supernatural.
With that year expired the term for which he had been elected to the
Slade Professorship, and in January 1873 he was re-elected. In his first
three years he had given five courses of lectures designed to introduce
an encyclopædic review and reconstruction of all he had to say upon art.
Beginning with general principles, he had proceeded to their application
in history, by tracing certain phases of Greek sculpture, and by
contrasting the Greek and the Gothic spirit as shown in the treatment of
landscape, from which he went on to the study of early engraving. The
application of his principles to theory was made in the course on
Science and Art ("The Eagle's Nest"). Now, on his re-election, he
proceeded to take up these two sides of his subject, and to illustrate
this view of the right way to apply science to art, by a course on
Birds, in Nature, Art and Mythology, and next year by a study of Alpine
forms. The historical side was continued with lectures on Niccola Pisano
and early Tuscan sculpture, and in 1874 with an important, though
unpublished, course on Florentine Art.
It is to this cycle of lectures that we must look for that matured
Ruskinian theory of art which his early works do not reach; and which
his writings between 1860 and 1870 do not touch. Though the Oxford
lectures are only a fragment of what he ought to have done, they should
be sufficient to a careful reader; though their expression is sometimes
obscured by diffuse treatment, they contain the root of the matter,
thought out for fifteen years since the close of the more brilliant, but
less profound, period of "Modern Painters."
The course on Birds[29] was given in the drawing school at the
University Galleries. The room was not large enough for the numbers that
crowded to hear Professor Ruskin, and each of these lectures, like the
previous and the following courses, had to be repeated to a second
audience. Great pains had been given to their preparation--much greater
than the easy utterance and free treatment of his theme led his hearers
to believe. For these lectures and their sequel, published as "Love's
Meinie," he collected an enormous number of skins--to compare the
plumage and wings of different species; for his work was with the
_outside_ aspect and structure of birds, not with their anatomy. He had
models made, as large as swords, of the different quill-feathers, to
experiment on their action and resistance to the air. He got a valuable
series of drawings by H.S. Marks, R.A., and made many careful and
beautiful studies himself of feathers and of birds at the Zoological
Gardens, and the British Museum; and after all, he had to conclude his
work saying, "It has been throughout my trust that if death should write
on these, 'What this man began to build, he was not able to finish,' God
may also write on them, not in anger, but in aid, 'A stronger than he
cometh.'"
[Footnote 29: March 15, May 2 and 9; repeated March 19, May 5, and 12,
1873.]
Two of the lectures on birds were repeated at Eton[30] before the boys'
Literary and Scientific Society and their friends; and between this and
1880 Ruskin often went to address the same audience, with the same
interest in young people that had taken him in earlier years to
Woolwich.
[Footnote 30: May 10 and 17.]
After a long vacation at Brantwood, the first spent there, he went up to
give his course on Early Tuscan Art ("Val d'Arno")[31]. The lectures
were printed separately and sold at the conclusion and the first numbers
were sent to Carlyle, whose unabated interest in his friend's work was
shown in his letter of Oct. 31st: "_Perge, perge_;--and, as the Irish
say, 'more power to your elbow!' I have yet read this 'Val d'Arno' only
once. Froude snatched it away from me yesterday; and it has then to go
to my brother at Dumfries. After that I shall have it back...."
[Footnote 31: On Mondays and Thursdays, Oct. 21, 23, 27, 30, Nov. 3, 6,
10, 13, 17, 20; repeated on the Wednesdays and Fridays following.]
During that summer and autumn Ruskin suffered from nights of
sleeplessness or unnaturally vivid dreams and days of unrest and
feverish energy, alternating with intense fatigue. The eighteen lectures
in less than six weeks, a "combination of prophecy and play-acting," as
Carlyle had called it in his own case, and the unfortunate discussion
with an old-fashioned economist who undertook to demolish Ruskinism
without understanding it, added to the causes of which we are already
aware, brought him to New Year, 1874, in "failing strength, care, and
hope." He sought quiet at the seaside, but found modern hotel-life
intolerable; he went back to town and tried the pantomimes for
distraction,--saw Kate Vaughan in Cinderella, and Violet Cameron in Jack
in the Box, over and over again, and found himself:
"Now hopelessly a man of the world!--of that woeful outside one, I
mean. It is now Sunday; half-past eleven in the morning. Everybody
else is gone to church--and I am left alone with the cat, in the
world of sin."
Thinking himself better, he went to Oxford, and announced a course on
Alpine form; but after a week was obliged to retreat and go home to
Coniston, still hoping to return and give his lectures. But it was no
use. The gloom without deepened the gloom within; and he took the wisest
course in trying Italy, alone this time with his old servant Crawley.
The greater part of 1874 was spent abroad--first travelling through
Savoy and by the Riviera to Assisi, where he wrote to Miss S. Beever:
"The Sacristan gives me my coffee for lunch in his own little cell,
looking out on the olive woods; then he tells me stories of
conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the sacristy
and have a reverent little poke-out of relics. Fancy a great carved
cupboard in a vaulted chamber full of most precious things (the
box which the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin
with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things that are only
shown twice in the year or so, with fumigation! all the
congregation on their knees--and the sacristan and I having a great
heap of them on the table at once, like a dinner service. I really
looked with great respect on St. Francis's old camel-hair dress."
Thence he went to visit Colonel and Mrs. Yule at Palermo, deeply
interested in Scylla and Charybdis, Etna and the metopes of Selinus. His
interest in Greek art had been shown, not only in a course of lectures,
but in active support to archæological explorations. He said once, "I
believe heartily in diggings, of all sorts." Meeting General L.P. di
Cesnola and hearing of the wealth of ancient remains in Cyprus then
newly discovered, Mr. Ruskin placed £1,000 at his disposal. General di
Cesnola was able, in April, 1875, to announce that in spite of the
confiscation of half the treasure-trove by the local Government, he had
shipped a cargo of antiquities, including many vases, terra-cottas, and
fragments of sculpture. Whence, precisely, these relics came is now
doubtful.
The landscape of Theocritus and the remains of ancient glories roused
him to energetic sketching--a sign of returning strength, which
continued when he reached Rome, and enabled him to make a very fine copy
of Botticelli's Zipporah, and other details of the Sistine frescoes.
Late in October he reached England, just able to give the promised
Lectures on Alpine forms,[32]--I remember his curious attempt to
illustrate the névé-masses by pouring flour on a model;--and a second
course on the Æsthetic and Mathematic schools of Florence;[33] and a
lecture on Botticelli at Eton, of which the Literary and Scientific
Society's minute-book contains the following report:
[Footnote 32: Oct. 27, 30; Nov. 3 and 6, 1874.]
[Footnote 33: Nov. 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27; Dec. 1 and 4, 1874.]
"On Saturday, Dec. 12th (1874), Professor Ruskin lectured before a
crowded, influential and excited audience, which comprised our
noble Society and a hundred and thirty gentlemen and ladies, who
eagerly accepted an invitation to hear Professor Ruskin 'talk' to
us on Botticelli. It is utterly impossible for the unfortunate
secretary of the Society to transmit to writing even an abstract of
this address; and it is some apology for him when beauty of
expression, sweetness of voice, and elegance in imagery defy the
utmost efforts of the pen."
Just before leaving for Italy he had been told that the Royal Institute
of British Architects intended to present him with their Gold Medal in
acknowledgment of his services to the cause of architecture; and during
his journey official announcement of the award reached him. He dictated
from Assisi (June 12, 1874) a letter to Sir Gilbert Scott, explaining
why he declined the honour intended him. He said in effect that if it
had been offered at a time when he had been writing on architecture it
would have been welcome; but it was not so now that he felt all his
efforts to have been in vain and the profession as a body engaged in
work--such as the "restoration" of ancient buildings--with which he had
no sympathy. It had been represented to him that his refusal to accept a
Royal Medal would be a reflection upon the Royal donor. To which he
replied:
"Having entirely loyal feelings towards the Queen, I will trust to
her Majesty's true interpretation of my conduct; but if formal
justification of it be necessary for the public, would plead that
if a Peerage or Knighthood may without disloyalty be refused,
surely much more the minor grace proceeding from the monarch may be
without impropriety declined by any of her Majesty's subjects who
wish to serve her without reward, under the exigency of peculiar
circumstances."
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 institution. 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 nobody'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 illustrated--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 Institution 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 circumstances, 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 transmuted 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.]