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
surreptitious portrait--an embarrassing 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 illustrate 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, Principal of Whitelands College for Pupil Teachers, and had
given various books and collections to illustrate the artistic side of
education. Now he instituted 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 institution 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 Hôtel 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 nobody 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 mediæval art. The legends
illustrated by her drawings were collected by herself, through an
intimate acquaintance with Italians of all classes, from the nobles 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 circumstances of his death are
touchingly related by Miss Alexander in "Christ's Folk; in the
Apennine."]
One evening before dinner he brought back to the hotel at Florence a
drawing of a lovely girl lying dead in the sunset; and a little
note-book. "I want you to look over this," he said, in the way, but not
quite in the tone, with which the usual MS. "submitted for criticism"
was tossed to a secretary to taste. It was "The True Story of Ida;
written by her Friend."
An appointment to meet Mr. E.R. Robson, who was making plans for an
intended Sheffield museum, took him back to Lucca, to discuss Romanesque
mouldings and marble facings. Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray also came to
Lucca with drawings commissioned for St. George's Guild. But Ruskin soon
returned to his new friends, and did not leave Florence finally until
he had purchased the wonderful collection of 110 drawings, with
beautifully written text, in which Miss Alexander had enshrined "The
Roadside Songs of Tuscany."
Returning homewards by the Mont Cenis he stayed a while at Talloires, a
favourite haunt, extremely content to be among romantic scenery, and
able to work steadily at a new edition of his books in a much cheaper
form, of which the first volumes were at this time in hand. He had been
making further studies also, in history and Alpine geology; but at last
the snow drove him away from the mountains. So he handed over the
geology to his assistant, who compiled "The Limestone Alps of Savoy"
(supplementary to "Deucalion") "as he could, not as he would," while
Ruskin wrote out the new ideas suggested by his visit to Cîteaux and St.
Bernard's birthplace. These notes he completed on the journey home, and
gave as a lecture on "Cistercian Architecture" (London Institution,
December 4th, 1882), in place of the previously advertised lecture on
crystallography.
He seemed now to have quite recovered his health, and to be ready for
re-entry into public life. What was more, he had many new things to say.
The attacks of brain fever had passed over him like passing storms,
leaving a clear sky.
After his retirement from the Oxford Professorship, a subscription had
been opened for a bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, in memorial of a University
benefactor; and the model (now in the Sheffield Museum) was placed in
the Drawing School pending the collection of the necessary £220. _The
Oxford University Herald_, in its article of June 5th, 1880, no doubt
expressed the general feeling in reciting his benefactions to the
University with becoming appreciation.
It was natural, therefore, that on recovering his health he should
resume his post. Professor (now Sir) W.B. Richmond, the son of his old
friend Mr. George Richmond, gracefully retired, and the _Oxford
University Gazette_ of January 16th, 1883, announced the re-election.
On March 2nd he wrote that he was "up the Old Man yesterday"; as much as
to say that he defied catechism, now, about his health; and a week later
he gave his first lecture. The _St. James's Budget_ of March 16th gave
an account of it in these terms:
"Mr. Ruskin's first lecture at Oxford attracted so large an
audience that, half-an-hour before the time fixed for its delivery,
a greater number of persons were collected about the doors than the
lecture-room could hold. Immediately after the doors were opened
the room was so densely packed that some undergraduates found it
convenient to climb into the windows and on to the cupboards. The
audience was composed almost equally of undergraduates and ladies;
with the exception of the vice-chancellor, heads of houses,
fellows, and tutors were chiefly conspicuous by their absence."
I omit an abstract of the lecture, which can be read in full in the "Art
of England." The reporter continued:
"He had made some discoveries: two lads and two lasses, who[48] ...
could draw in a way to please even him. He used to say that, except
in a pretty graceful way, no woman can draw; he had now almost come
to think that no one else can. (This statement the undergraduates
received with gallant, if undiscriminating, applause.) To many of
his prejudices, Mr. Ruskin said, in the last few years the axe had
been laid. He had positively found an American, a young lady, whose
life and drawing were in every way admirable. (Again great and
generous applause on the part of the undergraduates, stimulated, no
doubt, by the knowledge that there were then in the room two fair
Americans, who have lately graced Oxford by their presence.) At the
end of his lecture Mr. Ruskin committed himself to a somewhat
perilous statement. He had found two young Italian artists in whom
the true spirit of old Italian art had yet lived. No hand like
theirs had been put to paper since Lippi and Leonardo."
[Footnote 48: Referring to Misses Alexander and Greenaway, and Messrs.
Boni and Alessandri.]
Three more lectures of the course were given in May, and each repeated
to a second audience. Coming to London, he gave a private lecture on
June 5th to some two hundred hearers at the house of Mrs. W.H. Bishop,
in Kensington, on Miss Kate Greenaway and Miss Alexander. The
_Spectator_ shared his enthusiasm for the pen and ink drawings of Miss
Alexander's "Roadside Songs of Tuscany," and concluded a glowing account
of the lecture by saying: "All Professor Ruskin's friends must be glad
to see how well his Oxford work has agreed with him. He has gifts of
insight and power of reaching the best feelings and highest hopes of our
too indifferent generation which are very rare."
With much encouragement in his work, he returned to Brantwood for the
summer, and resolved upon another visit to Savoy for more geology, and
another breath of health-giving Alpine air. But he found time only for a
short tour in Scotland before returning to Oxford to complete the series
of lectures on recent English Art. During this term he was prevailed
upon to allow himself to be nominated as a candidate for the Rectorship
of the University of Glasgow. He had been asked to stand in the
Conservative interest in 1880, and he had been worried into a rather
rough reply to the Liberal party, when after some correspondence they
asked him whether he sympathised with Lord Beaconsfield or Mr.
Gladstone. "What, in the devil's name," he exclaimed, "have _you_ to do
with either Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the
University, and have no more business with politics than you have with
rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine with understanding,
you would have known that I care no more either for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr.
Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but
that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I
stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen." After that,
though he might explain[49] that he never under any conditions of
provocation or haste, would have said that he hated Liberalism as he did
_Mammon_, or Belial, or Moloch; that he "chose the milder fiend of Ekron
as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies," still the
matter-of-fact Glaswegians were minded to give the scoffer a wide berth.
He was put up as an independent candidate in the three-cornered duel;
and, as such candidates usually fare, he fared badly. The only wonder is
that three hundred and nineteen students were found to vote for him,
instead of siding, in political orthodoxy, with Mr. Fawcett or the
Marquis of Bute.
[Footnote 49: Epilogue to "Arrows of the Chace."]
At last a busy and eventful year came to a close at Coniston, with a
lecture at the village Institute on his old friend Sir Herbert Edwardes
(December 22nd). His interest in the school and the schoolchildren was
unabated, and he was always planning new treats for them, or new helps
to their lessons. He had set one of the assistants to make a large
hollow globe, inside of which one could sit and see the stars as
luminous points pricked through the mimic "vault of heaven," painted
blue and figured with the constellations. By a simple arrangement of
cogs and rollers the globe revolved, the stars rose and set, and the
position of any star at any hour of the year could be roughly fixed. But
the inclement climate of Coniston, and the natural roughness of
children, soon wrecked the new toy.
About this time he was anxious to get the village children taught music
with more accuracy of tune and time than the ordinary singing-lessons
enforced. He made many experiments with different simple instruments,
and fixed at last upon a set of bells, which he wanted to introduce into
the school. But it was difficult to interfere with the routine of
studies prescribed by the Code. Considering that he scorned "the three
R's," a school after his own heart would have been a very different
place from any that earns the Government grant; and he very strongly
believed that if a village child learnt the rudiments of religion and
morality, sound rules of health and manners, and a habit of using its
eyes and ears in the practice of some good handicraft or art and simple
music, and in natural philosophy, taught by object lessons--then
book-learning would either come of itself, or be passed aside as
unnecessary or superfluous. This was his motive in a well-known incident
which has sometimes puzzled his public. Once, when new buildings were
going on, the mason wanted an advance of money, which Mr. Ruskin gave
him, and then held out the paper for him to sign the receipt. "A great
deal of hesitation and embarrassment ensued, somewhat to Mr. Ruskin's
surprise, as he knows a north-country-man a great deal too well to
expect embarrassment from him. At last the man said, in dialect: 'Ah mun
put ma mark!' He could not write. Mr. Ruskin rose at once, stretched out
both hands to the astonished rustic, with the words: 'I am proud to know
you. Now I understand why you are such an entirely good workman.'"