"Can you tell me how far it is to Brantwood?" I asked.
"Oh, not far--just across the lake."
He arose and flung the shutter open so I could see the old, yellow house
about a mile across the water, nestling in its wealth of green on the
hillside. Soon the waiter brought our lunch, and while we discussed the
chops and new potatoes we talked Ruskiniana.
The old gentleman knew a deal more of "Stones of Venice" and "Modern
Painters" than I; but I told him how Thoreau introduced Ruskin to America
and how Concord was the first place in the New World to recognize this
star in the East. And upon my saying this, the old gentleman brought his
knife-handle down on the table, declaring that Thoreau and Whitman were
the only two men of genius that America had produced. I begged him to
make it three and include Emerson, which he finally consented to do.
By and by the waiter cleared the table preparatory to bringing in the
coffee. The old gentleman pushed his chair back, took the napkin from
under his double chin, brushed the crumbs from his goodly front, and
remarked:
"I'm going over to Brantwood this afternoon to call on Mr. Ruskin--just
to pay my respects to him, as I always do when I come here. Can't you go
with me?"
I think this was about the most pleasing question I ever had asked me. I
was going to request him to "come again" just for the joy of hearing the
words, but I pulled my dignity together, straightened up, swallowed my
coffee red-hot, pushed my chair back, flourished my napkin, and said, "I
shall be very pleased to go."
So we went--we two--he in his knickerbockers and I in my checks and
outing-shirt. I congratulated myself on looking no worse than he, and as
for him, he never seemed to think that our costumes were not exactly what
they should be; and after all it matters little how you dress when you
call on one of Nature's noblemen--they demand no livery.
We walked around the northern end of Coniston Water, along the eastern
edge, past Tent House, where Tennyson once lived (and found it
"outrageous quiet"), and a mile farther on we came to Brantwood.
The road curves in to the back of the house--which, by the way, is the
front--and the driveway is lined with great trees that form a complete
archway. There is no lodge-keeper, no flowerbeds laid out with square and
compass, no trees trimmed to appear like elephants, no cast-iron dogs,
nor terra-cotta deer, and, strangest of all, no sign of the lawn-mower.
There is nothing, in fact, to give forth a sign that the great Apostle of
Beauty lives in this very old-fashioned spot. Big boulders are to be seen
here and there where Nature left them, tangles of vines running over old
stumps, part of the meadow cut close with a scythe, and part growing up
as if the owner knew the price of hay. Then there are flowerbeds, where
grow clusters of poppies and hollyhocks (purple, and scarlet, and white),
prosaic gooseberry-bushes, plain Yankee pieplant (from which the English
make tarts), rue and sweet marjoram, with patches of fennel, sage, thyme
and catnip, all lined off with boxwood, making me think of my
grandmother's garden at Roxbury.
On the hillside above the garden we saw the entrance to the cave that Mr.
Ruskin once filled with ice, just to show the world how to keep its head
cool at small expense. He even wrote a letter to the papers giving the
bright idea to humanity--that the way to utilize caves was to fill them
with ice. Then he forgot all about the matter. But the following June,
when the cook, wishing to make some ice-cream as a glad surprise for the
Sunday dinner, opened the natural ice-chest, she found only a pool of
muddy water, and exclaimed, "Botheration!" Then they had custard instead
of ice-cream.
We walked up the steps, and my friend let the brass knocker drop just
once, for only Americans give a rat-a-tat-tat, and the door was opened by
a white-whiskered butler, who took our cards and ushered us into the
library. My heart beat a trifle fast as I took inventory of the room; for
I never before had called on a man who was believed to have refused the
poet-laureateship. A dimly lighted room was this library--walls painted
brown, running up to mellow yellow at the ceiling, high bookshelves, with
a stepladder, and only five pictures on the walls, and of these three
were etchings, and two water-colors of a very simple sort;
leather-covered chairs; a long table in the center, on which were strewn
sundry magazines and papers, also several photographs; and at one end of
the room a big fireplace, where a yew log smoldered. Here my inventory
was cut short by a cheery voice behind:
"Ah! now, gentlemen, I am glad to see you."
There was no time nor necessity for a formal introduction. The great man
took my hand as if he had always known me, as perhaps he thought he had.
Then he greeted my friend in the same way, stirred up the fire, for it
was a North of England summer day, and took a seat by the table. We were
all silent for a space--a silence without embarrassment.
"You are looking at the etching over the fireplace--it was sent to me by
a young lady in America," said Mr. Ruskin, "and I placed it there to get
acquainted with it. I like it more and more. Do you know the scene?" I
knew the scene and explained somewhat about it.
Mr. Ruskin has the faculty of making his interviewer do most of the
talking. He is a rare listener, and leans forward, putting a hand behind
his right ear to get each word you say. He was particularly interested in
the industrial conditions of America, and I soon found myself "occupying
the time," while an occasional word of interrogation from Mr. Ruskin gave
me no chance to stop. I came to hear him, not to defend our "republican
experiment," as he was pleased to call the United States of America. Yet
Mr. Ruskin was so gentle and respectful in his manner, and so
complimentary in his attitude of listener, that my impatience at his want
of sympathy for our "experiment" only caused me to feel a little heated.
"The fact of women being elected to mayoralties in Kansas makes me think
of certain African tribes that exalt their women into warriors--you want
your women to fight your political battles!"
"You evidently hold the same opinion on the subject of equal rights that
you expressed some years ago," interposed my companion.
"What did I say--really I have forgotten?"
"You replied to a correspondent, saying: 'You are certainly right as to
my views respecting the female franchise. So far from wishing to give
votes to women, I would fain take them away from most men.'"
"Surely that was a sensible answer. My respect for woman is too great to
force on her increased responsibilities. Then as for restricting the
franchise with men, I am of the firm conviction that no man should be
allowed to vote who does not own property, or who can not do considerably
more than read and write. The voter makes the laws, and why should the
laws regulating the holding of property be made by a man who has no
interest in property beyond a covetous desire; or why should he legislate
on education when he possesses none! Then again, women do not bear arms
to protect the State."
"But what do you say to Mrs. Carlock, who answers that inasmuch as men do
not bear children, they have no right to vote: going to war possibly
being necessary and possibly not, but the perpetuity of the State
demanding that some one bear children?"
"The lady's argument is ingenious, but lacks force when we consider that
the bearing of arms is a matter relating to statecraft, while the baby
question is Dame Nature's own, and is not to be regulated even by the
sovereign."
Then Mr. Ruskin talked for nearly fifteen minutes on the duty of the
State to the individual--talked very deliberately, but with the clearness
and force of a man who believes what he says and says what he believes.
Thus, my friend, by a gentle thrust under the fifth rib of Mr. Ruskin's
logic, caused him to come to the rescue of his previously expressed
opinions, and we had the satisfaction of hearing him discourse earnestly
and eloquently.
Maiden ladies usually have an opinion ready on the subject of masculine
methods, and, conversely, much of the world's logic on the "woman
question" has come from the bachelor brain.
Mr. Ruskin went quite out of his way on several occasions in times past
to attack John Stuart Mill for heresy "in opening up careers for women
other than that of wife and mother."
When Mill did not answer Mr. Ruskin's newspaper letters, the author of
"Sesame and Lilies" called him a "cretinous wretch" and referred to him
as "the man of no imagination." Mr. Mill may have been a cretinous wretch
(I do not exactly understand the phrase), but the preface to "On Liberty"
is at once the tenderest, highest and most sincere compliment paid to a
woman, of which I know.
The life of Mr. and Mrs. John Stuart Mill shows that perfect mating is
possible; yet Mr. Ruskin has only scorn for the opinions of Mr. Mill on a
subject which Mill came as near personally solving in a matrimonial
"experiment" as any other public man of modern times, not excepting even
Robert Browning. Therefore we might suppose Mr. Mill entitled to speak on
the woman question, and I intimated as much to Mr. Ruskin.
"He might know all about one woman, and if he should regard her as a
sample of all womankind, would he not make a great mistake?"