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 analysis 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 analysis of modern epic art, in seven volumes; a
life of Xenophon, with analysis of the general principles of
education, in ten volumes; a commentary on Hesiod, with final
analysis 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 analysis:
but with bright and curious fancy, with the most ingenious diagrams and
perfect drawings--beautifully engraved by Burgess and Allen--illustrated
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 Institution 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 God 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 hoarseness 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 amusements--Pickwick, chivalric
romances, the _Daily Telegraph_, Staunton's games of chess, and finally
analysis 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 passing 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 class: 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 passage, 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 illustrated 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 hitherto
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 associations. 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-shore. 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 multitudes 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 Splügen. 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, illustrating 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:
"I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you rightly for
bread, sweet odours, roses and pearls, and must just allow myself
to be fed, scented, rose-garlanded and be-pearled, as if I were a
poor little pet dog, or pet pig. But my cold is better, and I _am_
getting on with this botany; but it is really too important a work
to be pushed for a week or fortnight."
Early in 1879 his resignation of the Slade Professorship was announced;
followed by what was virtually his election to an honorary doctor's
degree; or, as officially worded--"the Hebdomadal Council resolved on
June 9, 1879, to propose to Convocation to confer the degree of D.C.L.
_honoris causa_ upon John Ruskin, M.A., of Ch. Ch., at the enænia of
that year; but the proposal, though notified in the _Gazette_ of June
10, was not submitted to vote owing to the inability of Mr. Ruskin to be
present at the encænia." The degree was conferred, in his absence, in
1893.