his own; curious experiments. It need hardly be said, and it need never
be regretted, that these were not workmanlike performances. The mere
fact of his trying to compose is curious; and though it is not part of
his life's work, it explains some passages and turns of his thought. It
would be really more wonderful if he had succeeded in learning to be a
musician, along with all the other things he attempted. But look at his
face, in the truthful if not sentimental portrait by Mr. Creswick. I
do not much believe in physiognomy, and yet in the faces of those who
have the gift of execution--quite a separate power from intellectual or
emotional appreciation, or even from composition--I think you notice
that the groove which marks off the wing of the nose, _ala nasi_,
at the top is strongly developed; sometimes it is so sharp as to be
almost a deformity. There is none in Ruskin's face. That trait may mean
nothing; but the fact remains that so able a man spent time and labour
in vain over an art which many learn easily, without a hundredth part
of his general power. In a word, he had a great love for music, and
within certain limits a true taste, but no talent.
There were, however, friends of his who could find his little tunes
interesting and enjoyable, and even pay him pretty compliments about
them. Without attaching too much importance to it, I venture to quote
part of a letter from Ernest Chesneau (author of "The English School
of Painting") to John Ruskin, dated "Oxford, 12 juin, 1884, 8^{h.} 1/2
a.m."
"Hier a 5 heures, nous sommes alles reclamer a miss Macdonald junior
la chanson de notre John. L'aimable enfant n'a pas eu le temps encore
de l'ecrire et me l'a promise pour demain; mais pour me consoler de ma
deception, que son fin regard de fillette a bien lue sur mon visage,
elle m'en a chante une autre; et je lui ai fait redire la premiere.
En ecoutant ces doux petits airs simples, naifs et touchants, ma
memoire evoquait--sans que ma volonte y eut part--le souvenir d'une
grande fugue du vieux Bach que l'orgue de New College avait fort bien
joue la veille. Et ma pensee inconsciement associait, rapprochait la
magnificence du Bach et la timide delicatesse du Ruskin. Et la douce
petite chanson m'apparaissait comme ces exquises graminees dont la
graine, apportie par les oiseaux du ciel, fleurit aux frontons de
marbre des palais ou aux corniches de pierre des cathedrales. Et la
fleurette apportee des champs voisins se perpetuera a travers les
ages, quand les somptuosites creees de main d'homme ne seront plus que
des ruines ou s'arretera le regard curieux de l'artiste. C'est que
la petite fleur des champs et la naive chanson expriment l'ame des
simples; et que la fugue comme le temple ou le palais expriment les
raffinements des scholastiques, c'est a dire l'ephemere de l'art."
In "Elements of English Prosody," written 1880, there is a good deal
about his views on music, made sadly unreadable, not by the error of
his ideas, but by his perverse neglect of recognised technicalities.
Among the rest is an attempt at a setting of "Ye Mariners of England,"
with bars inserted as if to mark the feet of the prosody instead of the
beat of the melody, which was part of his scheme, though it naturally
offends a musician.
[Music illustration: "TRUST THOU THY LOVE"
FACSIMILE OF MUSIC BY JOHN RUSKIN]
His little output of musical composition need never see the light.
Once he had "Blow, blow thou winter wind" set up in type, but it was
discreetly blotted. The manuscript page of "On Old AEgina's Rocks" is
in the Coniston Museum for the curious to behold. Others were little
rhymes for children--the words printed in his "Poems," or fragments
from Scott and Shakespeare, "How should I thy truelove know," "From
Wigton to the foot of Ayr," "Come unto these yellow sands," "From the
east to western Ind," and so forth, with a couple of odes of Horace,
"Faune, Nympharum" and "Tu ne quaesieris." Here, as specimens, it is
enough to give a little scrap from "Marmion," to which he set the air
and sketched the accompaniment; and his own rough draft of a songlet,
of which the words, at any rate, are lovely, and intimately Ruskin.
They might be the motto to the Queen's Gardens of "Sesame":
Trust thou thy Love; if she be proud, is she not sweet?
Trust thou thy Love; if she be mute, is she not pure?
Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet;
Fail, Sun and Breath;--yet, for thy peace, she shall endure!
XI
RUSKIN'S JEWELS
XI
RUSKIN'S JEWELS
A standing treat for Ruskin's visitors was to look at minerals. Some
people, it was known, did not appreciate Turners, but everybody was
sure to show emotion over the diamonds and nuggets. It was not an
ordinary collection, with a bit of this and a bit of that, samples of
all the ores in the handbook; there were only certain sorts, but each
specimen was the pick of the market and of many years' selection, and
every sort was a type of beauty.
Ruskin was not a "scientific" mineralogist, though he was an F.G.S.
from an early age, and used the word "science" pretty freely in his
writings. He really knew a great deal about minerals, too; but his
knowledge was that of the artist and collector, taking little notice of
the mathematics and chemistry which you read about, yet finding deep
and keen interest in the forms and colours, the development, the "Life
of Stones," "Ethics of the Dust," as he put it, about which science, up
to his time, had nothing to say. And yet, as he showed his collection,
you could not but feel that this was a kind of Nature-study not only
fascinating, but of real importance.
A standard work, under the heading, "Native Gold," tells us: "The
octahedron and dodecahedron are the most common forms. Crystals
sometimes acicular ... also passing into filiform, reticulated, and
arborescent shapes; and occasionally spongiform," &c. But it does
not show you, as Ruskin could--pulling out drawer after drawer of his
plush-lined cabinets, and letting you handle and peer into the dainty
things with a lens--what gold, as Nature makes it, actually is. The
scientific book never asks why some gold is born in the shape of tiny,
solid, squarish crystals, as truly crystals as the uncut diamonds
lying beside them, or the quartz in which they nestle; or why other
samples are spun into hair, or woven into wisps, or ravelled into knots
of natural gold lace; or again, why these have grown into the shape
of exquisitely finished moss, and those into seaweed leaves, flat
and curly, and powdered with dust of gold crystals, springing from
the rough brown stone, or semi-transparent spar, inside of which you
can see them like flower-stalks in water. Here is quite a new world
of wonder and mystery, and that is the kind of "science" he puzzled
over. Some more solid masses, not water-worn nuggets, are like a tiny
_netsuke_; he had a miniature cobra, chased with its scales--all by
the art of Nature; and others so like early Greek coins that one might
fancy they had given suggestions to primitive mint-masters, who like
all good artists modelled their work on Nature. What a happy world,
he used to say, if all the gold were in its native fronds; and even
for jewellery how much prettier these leaves of gold as it grew, than
anything the manufacturing goldsmith sells you. I have drawn a group of
eight such fronds, arranged as a cross, the centre piece with two tiny
crystals of quartz naturally set into it, a gift from his collection
to a friend, as an instance of what Ruskin called a jewel: and from
his own rapid sketch in colour (over leaf) is a knot of natural silver
wire, for silver, too, has its "arborescent filiform" shapes.
[Illustration: GOLD AS IT GROWS
(ACTUAL SIZE)]
After gold and silver and diamonds you might think the interest of the
mineral-drawers would begin to wane. But no! we come to richer colours
and still more striking forms. This big pebble, rosy pink, with hazy
streaks inside which catch the light as you turn it about, and reveal
mysterious inner architecture--that is a ruby; and this also, a bit
of frozen raspberry jam engraved with mystic triangles, one inside
another like a dwarf-wrought seal of a fairy king. Then hold up this
slab of talc to the light; the dark patch in it glows like a red lamp
with the intense colour of the garnet. Lower down the cabinet there are
bunches of beryls, angelica stalks Queen Thyri would not have scorned;
or trimmed by Nature into quaint likeness to those six-sided Austrian
pencils, point and all: emeralds in short and snapped-off sticks of
mossy green; pale pink rods of tourmaline; clippings of a baby's hair,
but crimson, and so fragile you must not breathe on them--that is
ruby copper, chalcotrichite; black needles of rutile piercing through
and through the solid, glassy quartz-crystals; amianthus, plush on a
stone, tow on a distaff, waving seaweed in a motionless aquarium of
hard spar. Why were these dainty things created, or how did they grow,
hidden away from all possible light for their colours to develop or
sight of man to enjoy them, until mining folk dug them up from their
lurking-places? And then there are those which even when found show
little of their beauty until they are polished; agates, and Labrador
spar, and malachites, and fire opals; what theory of Nature accounts
for this latent loveliness? he would say; how little this kind of
beauty is known and enjoyed by people who are satisfied with jewellery
from the price-list! One of his plans was to form a jewel-museum in
which the curator should exhibit, with lens and leisurely explanations,
such treasures to admiring groups of visitors. The place, indeed, was
fixed, at Keswick; the curator named. But the curator designate shirked
the too responsible honour.
[Illustration: NATIVE SILVER
BY JOHN RUSKIN]
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM MINERAL CATALOGUE
BY JOHN RUSKIN (ABOUT 1831)]
Less for pure beauty but still wonderful were all the many forms of
chalcedony and kindred minerals toward the end of his entertainment.
One is a specimen of hyalite--a sort of ropy, waxy glass-bubble holding
water inside. He would tell how he wanted to know why the water was in
it, and what sort of mysterious liquid was so sealed up and treasured
by the powers that be; so he had it carefully sawn asunder and the
sacred ichor collected and analysed. It turned out to be just like
Thames water.
The page photographed from one of his earliest writings--the mineral
dictionary he made at ten or eleven in a shorthand which, later on, he
could not read himself--is now in the Coniston Museum. It shows his
very early interest and diligence, at the time when he cared nothing
for pictures or political economy, but loved Nature in all her ways.
This page begins his juvenile account of Galena, a word which in later
days often brought out a smile and a story. For years, he said, he
was wretched because his great and glorious specimen of this same
Lead Glance had a flaw in it, an angular notch, breaking the dainty
exactitude of the big, black, shining crystal, otherwise as regular as
the most consummate art could plane and polish it. One day, with the
lens, he noticed that the form of the notch corresponded with the shape
of a crystal of calcite embedded in another specimen. His galena had
not been damaged; it was Nature's work, all the more wonderful now; and
life was still worth living.
Few Ruskin readers know his papers on Agates in back numbers of the
_Geological Magazine_, with their fine coloured plates illustrating
some of the best in his grand series; but this was one of his pet
studies, and it was a great regret of his declining age that he had
never carried it through. By careful drawing he learned, as any one
must, far more of the secrets of agate-structure than can be found by
merely looking and talking, and he thought that the usual explanation
was quite insufficient; agates were not made in layers poured one
after another into the hollows of the rock, but by some kind of
"segregation," the withdrawal of different materials from a mixed mass.
This is not the place to discuss his theory; but only to note that
duplicates of his own set, in illustration of his papers, are now in
the Coniston Museum, which indeed was founded by his gift of a general
mineral collection in 1887.
[Illustration: BIT OF A LETTER WITH SKETCH OF SNOW CRYSTALS
BY JOHN RUSKIN]
His "Catalogue of a series of specimens in the British Museum (Natural
History) illustrative of the more common forms of Native Silica"
(George Allen, 1884) to a certain extent suggests his agate theory.
This is well worth looking through when a visit to the Museum gives
the reader an opportunity of comparing these beautiful stones, many of
them presented by Ruskin, who also gave the great jewels he called the
Colenso diamond and the Edwardes ruby (after his friend Sir Herbert
Edwardes, whose life he wrote in "A Knight's Faith").
[Illustration: DIAMOND DIAGRAM
BY JOHN RUSKIN]
Another printed catalogue, running to fifty pages, was written to
expound a collection given to St. David's School, Reigate (the Rev.
W. H. Churchill's, now at Stonehouse, Broadstairs) in 1883. A third
collection, similarly catalogued, was given to Kirkcudbright Museum,
and others to Whitelands College, Chelsea, and the St. George's (now
called the Ruskin) Museum, Sheffield. These do not exhaust the list of
his gifts, but serve to show how eager he was to share his interests
with boys and girls, working men and the big public, who must surely,
he thought, love these phases of Nature's beauty when they had
opportunity of seeing them.
After the illness of 1878 which set him aside from Oxford work, he took
to stones of all sorts with ardour. Even at Oxford he had not quite
forgotten them: the lecture called "The Iris of the Earth" (given in
London, February 1876) is a poetical miscellany of jewel-lore. While
he was at work on this at Oxford he sent the college messenger round
with a pressing note for one of his pupils to come at once. "I want to
know what _gules_ means. Run to Professor ---- and Professor ---- and
find out. The books say it means _gueule_, the red of a wild beast's
throat, but that is too nasty." "Why not _gul_? I think that is Persian
for _rose_," said the pupil. "Wonderful!" said he; "_In the gardens of
Gul!_ Of course!" And down it went in the lecture.
At Brantwood in the early 'eighties there was a busy time with
minerals. He was trying to get deeper into the secret, and to look up
the more scientific side of the question. He even got a microscope,
and his secretary had to make drawings of diamond anatomy, which I am
afraid only confirmed him in his distrust of microscopes. He pored over
crystallography, and tried to rub up his mathematics, only to find that
nothing of the sort explained why gold made itself into fronds, and
snow into stars, and diamonds into marvellous domes built up of shield
within shield, round-sided triangles--not round-sided after all, but
mysteriously straight lines, simulating curves, and so blended and
harmonised and perfected that a good uncut diamond is perhaps the most
bewilderingly beautiful thing in Nature. Here is one of his sketches
giving a diagram of the big "St. George's" diamond he bought for L1000,
and studied, and made his secretary study, for weeks together. It ought
perhaps to be said that the diagram represents only one facet, and that
this is magnified fully two diameters; the diamond is large, but not
so large as all that. I cannot reproduce the best drawing made at the
time, too elaborate in its attempt at transparency and detail; "That
style of drawing was too utter by far," he said; but his diagram may
give some hint of the reason why he preached "uncut diamonds" as well
as the jewellery of native gold.
He put his theory into practice more than once; especially in a fine
pendant he gave to Mrs. Severn, who designed the setting. It is about
two and three-quarter inches long, not including the clasp. Two
large moonstones _en cabochon_ but irregular in outline are set in
an arrangement of gold leaves and twigs; among them are nine spikes
of uncut sapphire each about half an inch long, radiating from the
moonstones, which are joined by two uncut diamonds, one round and one
triangular; a quantity of small rubies are dotted about the group to
give contrast of colour. The effect is most picturesque, but of course
it has not the glitter--the vulgar glitter, Ruskin called it--of
ordinary jewellery. To see the special charm you have to look close.
A much more entertaining and to him satisfactory line of research was
in finding illustrations of crystal form and banded structure among the
stones of the neighbourhood, with which his porch became encumbered,
or in sugar and salt and coloured pastry, or tracing the diffusion
of cream in fruit-juice, which makes a temporary agate. It was more
fun for the secretary too, than working problems in the kitchen after
bedtime, the only chance for a smoke; and who can tackle geometry of
three dimensions without a pipe? If Ruskin had smoked he might have
mastered his Miller and Cloiseaux; but it was better that he should
satisfy himself that their ways were not his ways. The poetry of
jewel-lore can't be stated in terms of _h. k. l._
Those pie-crust experiments were everybody's delight. They are partly
told in "Deucalion," illustrated with drawings by Laurence Hilliard,
who became expert at bogus mineralogy on his own account. After
displays of nature's wonders and Ruskin's eloquence, the visitor at
luncheon or tea (tea was at the dining-room table) often did not know
whether to laugh or look shocked when Laurie made minerals of bread
and jam, or anything handy, irresistibly like; and described them
gravely in the very accents of the Professor, who found it "entirely
lovely," and sometimes even suggestive. He was always looking out for
analogies, and could make bogus minerals too. One day, showing his
jewels to a very young lady, he brought out of its purple plush nook
in the glittering drawer a wonderful specimen, ropy, arborescent,
semi-transparent, lustrous; descanting the while on stalactitic growth,
chalcedony, chrysoprase, hyalite. "And what is this called?" she asked.
"Wax, my dear; I got it at the candle myself."
XII
RUSKIN'S LIBRARY
XII
RUSKIN'S LIBRARY
In any strange house, while you wait for your host or hostess, how much
you gather of their tastes and ways from the books on the table and
in the shelves! You cannot help noticing either the presence or the
absence of literature, and you do not need to open the volumes to guess
what sort of reading the good people like. Well-known bindings and
styles of binding betray them at once; and unless they are abnormally
tidy their pet books are sure to be somewhere in the room they use. Of
course, one must discount the evidence of a cover which too obviously
matches the furniture; and if you are an author, and expected to call,
be not too lifted up on spying your own book gracefully displayed. You
may assume that working books, professional tools, are in the workshop;
and there are few houses without a certain litter of ephemeral
printing, magazines and library volumes, necessary for intelligent
conversation. But if the people read, you will soon know it, and learn
at a glance much about their tastes and characters.
When you know your friends well enough to browse among their books you
learn still more. The way they cut their pages, skipping or plodding;
and if they ever do scribble on the margins, what they have marked; and
which books are much used, and which are exiled to top shelves; and how
they are kept--unbound, or perhaps all too beautifully bound; these
things tell you more than an autobiography would, more than many years
of ordinary acquaintance.
Ruskin's library was scattered all over his house--and though he has
been dead these three years, and for many years earlier made little
use of his books, the bulk of them still remain pretty much as he
left them. At one time, when he was busy upon literary work, he was
continually buying, and every corner was heaped with new purchases and
old lots weeded out to be given away or sold; but the net result of his
choice and taste, what he personally cared for and kept, can be seen
by a visitor at Brantwood--the books for constant use in the study,
and favourite reading in his bedroom, and the rest dispersed about
the place. Most of these books I remember in just these same places
twenty-five years ago, or more; so that in taking you into his study I
am showing you the workshop where he wrote "Oxford Lectures" and "Fors
Clavigera," and handling the tools he used.
Art and Political Economy were the main subjects of those lectures
and letters, and I suppose the public assumes that these were the
subjects most interesting to him. Whether you are of those who think
him great on Art but astray on Economics, or of the later school who
have resolved that he never knew anything of Art, but had real insight
and foresight in matters social and political, you would expect to find
evidences of both--rows of reference volumes, and all the standard
works. But they are not here; Art and Political Economy are conspicuous
by their absence.
Perhaps you will query my sweeping statement as you take down a volume
of Crowe and Cavalcaselle from the "history bookcase" to the right of
the fireplace: but see, it is only a stray volume!--and open it; only
a few pages are cut, and those considerably bescribbled with dissent.
Ought he to have known by heart these authorities on Italian painting?
It might have saved him from an error or two, and from some useless
discussions; but he knew the pictures themselves, and his business
was not to write handbooks, but to bring his readers directly into
touch with the generalised human view he took of painting. There is,
however, the "Dictionnaire de l'Architecture" of Viollet-le-Duc, much
used in parts, for he alternately admired the research and quarrelled
with the conclusions of the great French architect, whose name he
persisted in spelling "Violet." There are some very successful artists
whose perspective is always wrong; and others whose drawing can always
be corrected by an art student; but they can paint pictures! Ruskin's
work is full of little faults; _de minimis non curat_; but he got at
the root of the matter, mostly, and he could make you see it. All the
tinkering criticism about his mistakes only shows that he thought
"first-hand," so to say, and wrote with a full pen.
This bookcase is chiefly made up of Carlyle, Gibbon, Alison, Milman,
and the old standards, of course thickly annotated. There are also
some volumes of Mr. W. S. Lilly, but you may open them and find no
sign of life; Ruskin may have read but he has not marked. There is his
old copy of Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art" (1847), reviewed by him in
the June _Quarterly_ of that year. It is stamped with "Mr. Murray's
compliments," but that must refer to the previous owner. You see his
name in queer cramped pencil "Burgon: Oriel," with Greek e--Burgon of
the Greek vase, the High Churchman, whose dark thin face and bright
eyes, and humorous contempt for all "doxies" but his own, make him
so well remembered by Oxford men of the passing generation. There is
something odd in Ruskin's early excursion into primitive Italian art
being, as it were, "_vice_ Burgon, resigned." Then there is "Roman
Antiquities," by Alexander Adam, LL.D., 1819, doubly ear-marked by
"John J. Ruskin," and kept for his father's sake, and for the sake of
his father's old school-master. Ruskin, at all times, was open to the
appeal of associations; all his judgments about men, women and things
must be corrected by the personal equation, and without his biography
one can never quite rightly appraise his works.