THE DIVERSIONS OF BRANTWOOD (1879-1881)
Sixty years of one of the busiest lives on record were beginning to tell
upon Ruskin. He would not confess to old age, but his recent illness had
shaken him severely. The next three years were spent chiefly at
Coniston, in comparative retirement; but neither in despair, nor
idleness, nor loneliness. He had always lived a sort of dual life,
solitary in his thoughts, but social in his habits; liking company,
especially of young people; ready, in the intervals of work, to enter
into their employments and amusements, and curiously able to forget his
cares in hours of relaxation. Sometimes, when earnest admirers made the
pilgrimage to their Mecca--"holy Brantwood" as a scoffing poet called
it--they were surprised and even shocked, to find the prophet of "Fors"
at the head of a merry dinner-table, and the Professor of Art among
surroundings which a London or a Boston "æsthete" would have ruled to
be in very poor taste.
Shall I take you for a visit there,--to Brantwood as it was in those old
times?
It is a weary way to Coniston, whatever road you choose. The
inconvenience of the railway route was perhaps one reason of Ruskin's
preference for driving on so many occasions. After changing and changing
trains, and stopping at many a roadside station, at last you see,
suddenly, over the wild undulating country, the Coniston Old Man and its
crags, abrupt on the left, and the lake, long and narrow, on the right.
Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests
and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems
uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the
fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a
spot it is.
To come out of the station after long travel is to find yourself face to
face with magnificent rocks, and white cottages among the fir-trees. As
you are whirled down through the straggling village, and along the shore
round the head of the lake, the panorama, though not Alpine in
magnitude, is almost Alpine in character. The valley, too, is not yet
built up; it is still the old-fashioned lake country, almost as it was
in the days of the "Iteriad." You drive up and down a narrow, hilly
lane, catching peeps of mountains and sunset, through thick, overhanging
trees; you turn sharp up through a gate under dark firs and larches, and
the carriage stops in what seems in the twilight a sort of court,--a
gravelled space, one side formed by a rough stone wall crowned with
laurels and almost precipitous coppice, the _brant_ (or steep) wood
above, and the rest is Brantwood, with a capital B.[41]
[Footnote 41: The archway supporting a great pile of new buildings did
not exist in the time when this visit is supposed to be made. Since that
time new stables and greenhouses also have been built; with other
additions somewhat altering the cottage-like house of Ruskin's working
days.]
You expect that Gothic porch you have read of in "Lectures on
Architecture and Painting," and you are surprised to find a stucco
classic portico in the corner, painted and _grained_, and heaped around
with lucky horseshoes, brightly blackleaded, and mysterious rows of
large blocks of slate and basalt and trap--a complete museum of local
geology, if only you knew it--very unlike an ideal entrance; still more
unlike an ordinary one. While you wait you can see through the glass
door a roomy hall, lit with candles, and hung with large drawings by
Burne-Jones and by the master of the house. His soft hat, and thick
gloves, and chopper, lying on the marble table, show that he has come in
from his afternoon's woodcutting.
But if you are expected you will hardly have time to look round, for
Brantwood is nothing if not hospitable. The honoured guest--and all
guests are honoured there--after welcome, is ushered up a narrow stair,
which betrays the original cottage, into the "turret room." It had been
"the Professor's" until after his illness, and he papered it with
naturalistic pansies, to his own taste, and built out at one corner a
projecting turret to command the view on all sides, with windows
strongly latticed to resist the storms. There is old-fashioned solid
comfort in the way of furniture; and pictures,--a Dürer engraving, some
Prouts and Turners, a couple of old Venetian heads, and Meissonier's
"Napoleon," over the fireplace--a picture which Ruskin bought for one
thousand guineas, showed for a time at Oxford, and hung up here in a
shabby little frame to be out of the way.[42]
[Footnote 42: Sold in 1882 for 5,900 guineas.]
If you are a man, you are told not to dress; if you are a lady, you may
put on your prettiest gown. They dine in the new room, for the old
dining-room was so small that the waitress could not get round the
table. The new room is spacious and lofty compared with the rest of the
house; it has a long window with thick red sandstone mullions--there at
last is a touch of Gothicism--to look down the lake, and a bay window
open on the narrow lawn sloping steeply down to the road in front, and
the view of the Old Man. The walls, painted "duck egg," are hung with
old pictures; the Doge Gritti, a bit saved from the great Titian that
was burnt in the fire at the Ducal Palace in 1574; a couple of
Tintorets; Turner and Reynolds, each painted by himself in youth;
Raphael by a pupil, so it is said; portraits of old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin,
and little John and his "boo hills." There he sits, no longer little,
opposite: and you can trace the same curve and droop of the eyebrows
prefigured in the young face and preserved in the old, and a certain
family likeness to his handsome young father.
Since Mr. Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become
more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table
and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of
countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment,
light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he,
"it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' the
cuss!'"
There are generally two or three young people staying in the house,
salaried assistants[43] or amateur, occasional helpers; but though there
is a succession of visitors from a distance, there is not very frequent
entertainment of neighbours.
[Footnote 43: The face most familiar at Brantwood in those times was
"Laurie's." A strange, bright, gifted boy--admirable draughtsman,
ingenious mechanician, marvellous actor; the imaginer of the quaintest
and drollest humours that ever entered the head of man; devoted to boats
and boating, but unselfishly ready to share all labours and contribute
to all diversions; painstaking and perfect in his work, and brilliant in
his wit,--Laurence Hilliard was dearly loved by his friends, and is
still loved by them dearly. He was Ruskin's chief secretary at Brantwood
from Jan., 1876 to 1882, when the death of his father, and ill-health,
led him to resign the post, which was then filled by Miss Sara D.
Anderson. Hilliard continued to live at Coniston, and was just beginning
to succeed as a painter of still life and landscape when he died of
pleurisy on board a friend's yacht in the Aegean, April 11th, 1887, aged
thirty-two.]
A Brantwood dinner is always ample; there is no asceticism about the
place; nor is there any affectation of "intensity" or of conversational
cleverness. The neat things you meant to say are forgotten--you must be
hardened indeed to say them to Mr. Ruskin's face; but if you were shy,
you soon feel that there was no need for shyness; you have fallen among
friends; and before dessert comes in, with fine old sherry--the pride of
your host, as he explains--you feel that nobody understands you so well,
and that all his books are nothing to himself.
They don't sit over their wine, and smoking is not allowed. Ruskin goes
off to his study after dinner--it is believed for a nap, for he was at
work early and has been out all the afternoon. In the drawing-room you
see pictures--water-colours by Turner and Hunt, drawings by Prout and
Ruskin, an early Burne-Jones, a sketch in oil by Gainsborough. The
furniture is the old mahogany of Mr. Ruskin's childhood, with rare
things interspersed--like the cloisonné vases on the mantelpiece.
Soon after nine Ruskin comes in with an armful of things that are going
to the Sheffield museum, and while his cousin makes his tea and salted
toast, he explains his last acquirements in minerals or missals, eager
that you should see the interest of them; or displays the last studies
of Mr. Rooke or Mr. Fairfax Murray, copies from Carpaccio or bits of
Gothic architecture.
Then, sitting in the chair in which he preached his baby-sermon, he
reads aloud a few chapters of Scott or Miss Edgeworth, or, with
judicious omissions, one of the older novelists; or translates, with
admirable facility, a scene of Scribe or George Sand. When his next
work comes out you will recognise this evening's reading in his
allusions and quotations, perhaps even in the subjects of his writing,
for at this time he is busy on the articles of "Fiction, Fair and Foul."
After the reading, music; a bit of his own composition, "Old Aegina's
Rock," or "Cockle-hat and Staff"; his cousin's Scotch ballads or Christy
Minstrel songs; and if you can sing a new ditty, fresh from London, now
is your chance. You are surprised to see the Prophet clapping his hands
to "Camptown Races," or the "Hundred Pipers"--chorus given with the
whole strength of the company; but you are in a house of strange
meetings.
By about half-past ten his day is over; a busy day, that has left him
tired out. You will not easily forget the way he lit his candle--no
lamps allowed, and no gas--and gave a last look lovingly at a pet
picture or two, slanting his candlestick and shading the light with his
hand, before he went slowly upstairs to his own little room, literally
lined with the Turner drawings you have read about in "Modern Painters."
You may be waked by a knock at the door, and "Are you looking out?" And
pulling up the blind, there is one of our Coniston mornings, with the
whole range of mountains in one quiet glow above the cool mist of the
valley and lake. Going down at length on a voyage of exploration, and
turning in perhaps at the first door, you intrude upon "the Professor"
at work in his study, half sitting, half kneeling at his round table in
the bay window, with the early cup of coffee, and the cat in his crimson
arm-chair. There he has been working since dawn, perhaps, or on dark
mornings by candlelight. And he does not seem to mind the interruption;
after a welcome he asks you to look round while he finishes his
paragraph, and writes away composedly.
A long, low room, evidently two old cottage-rooms thrown into one;
papered with a pattern specially copied from Marco Marziale's
"Circumcision" in the National Gallery; and hung with Turners. A great
early Turner[44] of the Lake of Geneva is over the fireplace. You are
tempted to make a mental inventory. Polished steel fender, very
unæsthetic; curious shovel--his design, he will stop to remark, and
forged by the village smith. Red mahogany furniture, with startling
shiny emerald leather chair-cushions; red carpet and green curtains.
Most of the room crowded with bookcases and cabinets for minerals.
Scales in a glass case; heaps of mineral specimens; books on the floor;
rolls of diagrams; early Greek pots from Cyprus; a great litter of
things and yet not disorderly nor dusty. "I don't understand," he once
said, "why you ladies are always complaining about the dust; my
bookcases are never dusty!" The truth being that, though he rose early,
the housemaid rose earlier.
[Footnote 44: Since sold, and replaced by a della Robbia Madonna.]
Before you have finished your inventory he breaks off work to show you a
drawer or two of minerals, fairy-land in a cupboard; or some of his
missals, King Hakon's Bible, or the original MS. of the Scott he was
reading last night; or, opening a door in a sort of secrétaire, pulls
out of their sliding cases frame after frame of Turners--the Bridge of
Narni, the Falls of Terni, Florence, or Rome, and many more--to hold in
your hand, and take to the light, and look into with a lens--quite a
different thing from seeing pictures in a gallery.
At breakfast, when you see the post-bag brought in, you understand why
he tries to get his bit of writing done early. The letters and parcels
are piled in the study, and after breakfast, at which, as in old times,
he reads his last-written passages--how much more interesting they will
always look to you in print!--after breakfast he is closeted with an
assistant, and they work through the heap. Private friends, known by
handwriting, he puts aside; most of the morning will go in answering
them. Business he talks over, and gives brief directions. But the bulk
of the correspondence is from strangers in all parts of the
world--admirers' flattery; students' questions; begging-letters for
money, books, influence, advice, autographs, criticism on enclosed MS.
or accompanying picture; remonstrance or abuse from dissatisfied
readers, or people who object to his method of publication, or wish to
convert him to their own religion. And so the heap is gradually cleared,
with the help of the waste-paper basket; the secretary's work cut out,
his own arranged; and by noon a long row of letters and envelopes have
been set out to dry--Mr. Ruskin uses no blotting-paper, and, as he
dislikes the vulgar method of fastening envelopes, the secretary's work
will be to seal them all with red wax, and the seal with the motto
"To-day" cut in the apex of a big specimen of chalcedony.
If you take, as many do, an interest in the minutiæ of portrait
painting, and think the picture more finished for its details, you may
notice that he writes on the flat table, not on a desk; that he uses a
cork penholder and a fine steel pen, though he is not at all a slave to
his tools, and differs from others rather in the absence of the _sine
quâ non_ from his conditions. He can write anywhere, on anything, with
anything; wants no pen-wiper, no special form of paper, or other "fad."
Much of his work is written in bound notebooks, especially when he _is_
abroad, to prevent the loss and disorder of multitudinous foolscap. He
generally makes a rough syllabus of his subject, in addition to copious
notes and extracts from authorities, and then writes straight off; not
without a noticeable hesitation and revision, even in his letters. His
rough copy is transcribed by an assistant, and he often does not see it
again until it is in proof.[45]
[Footnote 45: In later years he sometimes had his copy type-written.]
Printers' proofs are always a trial, and he is glad to shift the work on
to an assistant's shoulders, such as Mr. Harrison was, who saw all his
early works through the press. But he is extremely particular about
certain matters, such as the choice of type and arrangements of the
page; though his taste does not coincide with that of the leaders of
recent fashions. Mr. Jowett (of Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney, Limited)
said in _Hazell's Magazine_ for September; 1892, that Ruskin made the
size of the page a careful study, though he adopted many varieties. The
"Fors" page is different from, and not so symmetrical as that of the
octavo "Works Series," although both are printed on the same sized
paper--medium 8vo. Then there is the "Knight's Faith" and "Ulric," in
both of which the type (pica _modern_--"this delightful type," wrote
Ruskin) and the size of the page are different from any other; yet both
were his choice. The "Ulric" page was imitated from an old edition of
Miss Edgeworth. The first proof he criticised thus: "Don't you think a
quarter inch off this page, as enclosed, would look better? The type is
very nice. How delicious a bit of Miss Edgeworth's is, like this!" "Ida"
was another page of his choice, and greatly approved. His title pages,
too, were arranged with great care; he used to draw them out in pen and
ink, indicating the size and position of the lines and letters. He
objected to ornaments and to anything like blackness and heaviness, but
he was very particular about proportions and spacing, and about the
division of words.
In the morning everybody is busy. There are drawings and diagrams to be
made, MS. to copy, references to look up, parcels to pack and unpack.
Someone is told off to take you round, and you visit the various rooms
and see the treasures, inspect the outhouse with its workshop for
carpentry, framing and mounting, casting leaves and modelling; one work
or another is sure to be going on; perhaps one of the various sculptors
who have made Ruskin's bust is busy there. Down at the Lodge, a
miniature Brantwood, turret and all, the Severn children live when they
are at Coniston. Then there are the gardens, terraced in the steep,
rocky slope, and some small hot-houses, which Ruskin thinks a
superfluity, except that they provide grapes for sick neighbours.
Below the gardens a path across a field takes you to the harbour, begun
in play by the Xenophon translators and finished by the village mason,
with its fleet of boats--chief of them the "Jumping Jenny" (called after
Nanty Ewart's boat in "Redgauntlet"), Ruskin's own design and special
private water-carriage. Outside the harbour the sail-boats are moored,
Mr. Severn's _Lily of Brantwood_. Milliard's boat, and his _Snail_, an
unfortunate craft brought from Morecambe Bay with great expectations
that were never realized; though Ruskin always professed to believe in
her, as a _real sea-boat_ (see "Harbours of England") such as he used to
steer with his friend Huret, the Boulogne fisherman, in the days when
he, too, was smitten with sea-fever.
After luncheon, if letters are done, all hands are piped to the moor.
With billhooks and choppers the party winds up the wood paths, "the
Professor" first, walking slowly, and pointing out to you his pet bits
of rock-cleavage, or ivied trunk, or nest of wild strawberry plants. You
see, perhaps, the ice-house--tunnelled at vast expense into the rock and
filled at more expense with the best ice; opened at last with great
expectations and the most charitable intent--for it was planned to
supply invalids in the neighbourhood with ice, as the, hothouses
supplied them with grapes; and revealing, after all, nothing but a
puddle of dirty water. You see more successful works--the Professor's
little private garden, which he is supposed to cultivate with his own
hands; various little wells and watercourses among the rocks, moss-grown
and fern-embowered; and so you come out on the moor.
There great works go on. Juniper is being rooted up; boggy patches
drained and cultivated cranberries are being planted, and oats grown;
paths engineered to the best points of view; rocks bared to examine the
geology--though you cannot get the Professor to agree that every inch of
his territory has been glaciated. These diversions have their serious
side, for he is really experimenting on the possibility of reclaiming
waste land; perhaps too sanguine, you think, and not counting the cost.
To which he replies that, as long as there are hands unemployed and
misemployed, a government such as he would see need never be at a loss
for labourers. If corn can be made to grow where juniper grew before,
the benefit is a positive one, the expense only comparative. And so you
take your pick with the rest, and are almost persuaded to become a
companion of St. George.
Not to tire a new comer, he takes you away after a while to a fine
heathery promontory, where you sit before a most glorious view of lake
and mountains. This, he says, is his "Naboth's vineyard";[46] he would
like to own so fine a point of vantage. But he is happy in his country
retreat, far happier than you thought him; and the secret of his
happiness is that he has sympathy with all around him, and hearty
interest in everything, from the least to the greatest.
[Footnote 46: Since then become part of the Brantwood estate.]
Coming down from the moor after the round, when you reach the front door
you must see the performance of the waterfall: everybody must see that.
On the moor a reservoir has been dug and dammed, with ingenious
flood-gates--Ruskin's device, of course--and a channel led down through
the wood to a rustic bridge in the rock. Some one has stayed behind to
let out the water, and down it comes; first a black stream and then a
white one, as it gradually clears; and the rocky wall at the entrance
becomes for ten minutes a cascade. This too has it uses; not only is
there a supply of water in case of fire (the exact utilisation of which
is yet undecided), but it illustrates one of his doctrines about the
simplicity with which works of irrigation could be carried out among the
hills of Italy.
And so you go in to tea and chess, for he loves a good game of chess
with all his heart. He loves many things, you have found. He is
different from other men you know, by the breadth and vividness of his
sympathies, by power of living as few other men can live, in Admiration,
Hope and Love.