JOHN RUSKIN JOHN RUSKIN, 1881. HY PROFESSOR HUBERT HERKOMER, R.A. {By permission of the Artist.) (See p. igi.) JOHN RUSKIN A Sketch of His Life, His Work, and His Opinions With Personal Reminiscences BY M. H/SPIELM ANN AUTHOR OF HENRIETTE RONNER, THE WORKS OF G. F. WATTS, R.A., ETC. EDITOR OF THE MAGAZINE OF ART TOGETHER WITH A PAPER BY JOHN RUSKIN, ENTITLED THE BLACK ARTS AND A NOTE ON RUSKIN BY HARRISON S. MORRIS, MANAGING DIRECTOR ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, PHILADELPHIA, PA. ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY MDCCCC TWO COPIES RECEIVED, Ubrary of Cong,, Office of | FEB 5 - 1900 KegUter of Copyrlgfatfe a L 54 Copyright, 19CX), BY J. B. LiPPiNCOTT Company. SECwiO copy, Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. }6loifl*' /«/? I DEDICATE THIS BOOK MY WIFE. A NOTE ON RUSKIN. The dying century for which he has laboured so valiantly marks the death of John Ruskin. On Saturday, the twentieth of January, 1900, he passed into the brightness of that day whose herald he has been, and his many books alone shall henceforth speak for him. He saw the light and caught the sounds from beyond our ken. He was the pilot of our race, leading the way into the realm of beauty that alone is truth. We gave him little heed ; we flouted his noble words ; we laughed at his whims and worries ; we pressed forward with steam and sordid desire in his despite. But as surely as the odour from a flower steals (5) 6 JOHN RUSKIN. out and purifies the air, as irresistibly as the brook runs into the unacknowledging sea, so do his opinions, his ethics, his very syllables, enter and take -part in our existence. We cannot silence them with jeers, for they are as silent in their influence as an odour, nor can we stifle them with ignorance. Each author, journalist, versifier, preacher, uses unheedingly a speech made purer by this master of our tongue, and each must utter the code, in whatsoever form, which the purer lips and richer brain have made a part of our unconscious thought. It is the mission of such a soul as John Ruskin's to deal with contemporary things rather than with elemental ones. He was born a lofty antagonist of besetting ills. He saw, indeed, the deeper purport of events, and spoke with profound meaning of them; the heights of erudition were early conquered, and the meaning and purpose of life and death were clear. But, instead of touching a creative chord, these thrilled to the dragon at the JOHN R US KIN. 7 gates, and he fought like a hero with the foe. Such a contest demands the qualities which uplift a people ; but when the knightly lance is forever at rest, the hero is a memory. His work is over ; it is history, and its interest for the generations is the interest of history, and not the interest of living and elemental force. Ruskin's work is over. He lies with his great ancestors in the English valhalla of thought, with Bacon and Jeremy Taylor and Burke, with Coleridge and Haydon and Carlyle. The good he achieved is the world's, and the world will hold him in blessed remembrance while beauty rests in the open landscape or rises into forms of stone that shall endure. His own volumes are his best exponents. They are the ripeness of his gleanings. They give the man's thought and mental stature ; but they omit the man. In the pages that follow some of the personal threads of his great career are woven into a likeness of him, and the reader who has drunk at his 8 JOHN RUSKIN. " well of English undefiled " will find here matter with which to realize the person who animates the books. Harrison S. Morris. PREFATORY NOTE. This book is intended to present a brief out- line of the life and opinions of the " Sage of Coniston," together with some account of his personality, which I have had the opportunity of gaining a knowledge of in his company and in that of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn ; as well as by the study of his writings and by in- quiry into the impressions made by Ruskin upon some of the chief writers of the day. I have also included the recital of certain facts and correspondence that arose out of our intercourse, deeming them interesting enough to be placed on record, not otherwise, perhaps, preservable. CONTENTS. PAGB Introduction 15 His Life 17 Character, Health, and Temperament 40 Author, Bookman, and Stylist 67 The Artist 73 The Teacher 80 The Educationist 92 His View of Things 96 The Letter-Writer 103 The Poet ... 109 Ruskin and George Cruikshank 115 Brantwood 125 "The Angel in the House" 145 Home-Life at Coniston 157 The Portraits of Ruskin 165 " The Black Arts." By John Ruskin 199 Epilogue 218 INDEX ... II ILLUSTRATIONS, PAGB I. — John Ruskin, 1881. By Prof. Herkomer, R.A. Frontispiece 2. — „ 1822. By. James Northcote, R.A. ... 19 3.— „ 1824. „ „ ... 23 4. — Christchurch College, Oxford; showing Ruskin's Rooms 27 5. — The Ruskin Drawing School, Oxford 35 6. — John Ruskin, 1842. By George Richmond, R.A. ... 47 7. — „ 1853. At Glenfinlas Waterfall. By Sir J. Millais, Br., R.A. ... ... 61 8. — A Page of One of Ruskin's Note-books, for "The Stones of Venice " 77 9. — Cathedral Spire, Rouen. By John Ruskin 81 10. — John Ruskin, 1857. By George Richmond, R.A. ... 85 11. — „ 1866. From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry 97 12. — John Ruskin, 1876. By Georges Pilotelle in 13. — BrantwoOd from Coniston Lake. By Arthur Sev- ern, R.I 127 14. — John Ruskin, 1877. From the Bust by Benjamin Creswick '. 131 15.— Ruskin's Study at Brantwood. By Arthur Sev- ern, R.I 135 16. — Ruskin's Bedroom, Brantwood 141 17. — Mrs. Arthur Severn. By Joseph Severn 149 18. — John Ruskin, 1880. From the Bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, Bt., R.A 153 19.— John Ruskin, 1882. From a Photograph by Bar- raud 167 20.— John Ruskin, 1884. From the Bust by Conrad Dressler 183 2 13 14 ILL USTRA TIONS. 2I.~John Ruskin, 1886. From a Photograph by Bar- raud 195 22. — Facsimile of Letter by John Ruskin ... ... ... 201 23— » » 205 24— » „ 209 Note.— The illustrations are here published by special permission or arrange- ment : that by Sir John Millais, by courteous permission of Sir Henry Acland, the owner of the copyright ; and the page of Ruskin's notebook, and the drawing of Rouen Spire, by consent of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn. JOHN RUSKIN. INTRODUCTION. 'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep, And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead. Since Tennyson died no greater loss has been sustained by English literature in the memory of the present generation than that of John Ruskin. Of all men who have dominated the Art-world of Britain during the nine- teenth century, Ruskin is beyond all question and beyond all comparison the greatest, and, by universal admission, the most individual and most interesting. What his exact position as a critic and preacher of Art may be, what his rank as a scientist or a leader of thought, I make no pretence here of determining. But IS 16 JOHN RUSKIN. by common consent, he has been the most dis- tinguished figure in the arena of Art-philosophy for half-a-century and more, the philanthropist- militant par_ excellence. He is the man who has admittedly moulded the taste of the public to a preponderating extent in matters aesthetic, and, apart from his labours outside the pale of Art has exerted an influence so powerful that he has given a direction to the practice of painting and architecture that may still be traced in some of the happiest productions of the day. His death has given reason for mourning to many; no one has more eloquently, more passionately, pleaded the cause of the poor than Ruskin — no one (except it be perhaps Mr. Gladstone, his political bete noire) could boast so vast a num- ber of friends amongst the great mass of the public. No one was more frequently appealed to for advice, nor to better or kindlier pur- pose. None, indeed, has loved his country better, or more loyally striven to serve her. And, in the general regret, few will be found so blind or rancorous as to remember aught but the conscientious labours of his life, the nobility of his sturdy efforts, and the sacrifices that he made for public and for private good. CHAPTER I. HIS LIFE. The outline of his life is briefly this. He was born in London, at 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, on February 8, 18 19. His father (his mother's cousin) was a Scotsman, bringing his "good and extremely strong wilV , as the son tells us, into the firm of wine mer- chants known as "Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq " (agents for Peter Domecq, the great sherry-grower of Xerez), and to such good purpose that he speedily became a successful and a wealthy man. John Ruskin, the son, was an only child, and for several years he was entirely without companions of his own age, with hardly an amusement or boyish joy, save such few as were allowed him by his austere mother and austerer aunt, and " accus- tomed to no other prospect than that of the brick walls over the way." Always an ex- tremely sensitive and nervous child, he became studious, thoughtful, and observant, but lively and impressionable withal ; so that when the "first event of his life" took place — no less an occasion than being taken by his eminently b 2* 17 18 JOHN RUSKIN. disagreeable nurse to the brow of Friar's Craig, or Derwentwater — the intense joy and awe he felt sank so deeply into his soul that the love of landscape became henceforth and for always his prevailing passion. In the conduct of his business Mr. Ruskin senior was constrained to drive throughout the length and breadth of England, travelling with post-chaise and pair ; and as soon as his son was old enough he carried him with him during the holidays, and never missed showing to him all the beautiful views, the cathedrals, castles, ruins, and picture- galleries, public and private, near which their course might lay. It was thus that the boy's love of scenery and of art was first nurtured and developed. He had already begun, at the age of eight, to sing the praises of land- scape in precocious verse ; and his father — a highly intellectual and cultivated man, and no mean artist himself — gladly recognised his tendency, and encouraged his passion by placing him for instruction under J. D. Harding and Copley Fielding. By those eminent but somewhat conventional water-colour painters — then reckoned amongst the best teachers of the day — his remarkable executive skill was formed, while his ordinary education he re- ceived first from members of his own family, and then from the testy, but kind-hearted, Canon Dale and other private tutors. JOHN RUSKIN, 1822. FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY JAMES NORTHCOTE, R.A. {By permission of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I.) (See / J jo.) HIS LIFE. 21 It was in 1835, at the age of sixteen, that Ruskin made his first appearance in the public press by contributing a series of geological articles, with illustrations by himself, to the Magazine of Natural History. Later on, under the pseudonym of " Kata Phusin " ("According to Nature"), he printed other papers on Art and Architecture in Loudon's Architectural Magazine which in 1892 were republished in sumptuous garb under the title of "The Poetry of Architecture." He was but eighteen when he wrote this book. In later years he excused the anonymity he had preserved in respect to it by pleading that the public would hardly have felt inclined to accept such frank dogmatism from one so young. When I reminded Mr. Burne- Jones of this candid excuse, the artist re- plied with smiling surprise: "When, then, should one be dogmatic if not at the age of eighteen ? " Having entered Christchurch, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, he began at once his friendship with his contemporary Dr. (now Sir Henry) Acland — half-a-century afterwards the indirect and unoffending cause, I believe, of his resignation of the Slade Professorship at the University. From Dr. Buckland he acquired that profound geological knowledge which has 22 JOHN RUSK IN. always been one of the mainstays of Ruskin's writings on Art or Science, and of inestimable service to him later, whether as critic, painter, lecturer, or disputant. It may also be said that to Mr. W7H. Harrison Ruskin owed much that was not inborn of the elegance and purity of his literary style ; just as from the Rev. Osborne Gordon he acquired the greater part of his general scholarship. In 1839 ne gained the Newdigate Prize, with his poem "Salsette and Elephanta," which has since been reprinted ; and he graduated B.A. in 1842. It was in that year that he wrote in support and defence of Turner, who, now eight-and-sixty years of age, old and alone, slighted and misunderstood by the public, was being savagely written down by nearly all the critics, who could neither appre- ciate his beauties nor excuse his faults. In 1843, when twenty-four years old, and three years after his introduction to Turner, Ruskin expanded this explosion, penned " in the height of black anger," into what is known as the first volume of " Modern Painters : By a Graduate of Oxford." This, without doubt, was the central event of Ruskin's life, eventful and contentious as it has ever been. The sensation which the book created in artistic circles has rarely been equalled before or since. Its reception was tremendous, and HIS LIFE. 25 the violence and bitterness with which the unknown author was attacked by the critics were drowned only by the rapturous storm of applause that arose from the Art-public at large, who accepted with enthusiasm the bril- liance and fire of his writing, and the force and genius of his powerful reasoning. The immediate effect of the work was to establish Turner's reputation, firmly and for ever, as the greatest landscape-painter the world has ever seen, and his own as perhaps the greatest of modern English prose-writers. Four more volumes completed the work, but the last was not published until i860 — after nearly twenty- years of laborious preparation, passed in inces- sant study and travelling, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, had been devoted to the task. Mr. Hamerton, in his " Intellectual Life," points out with truth how, in common with the Hum- boldts, Ruskin affords a striking example of the value of wealth to an intellectual career. Had it not been for his material prosperity, all his genius, force of resolution and resistance to every temptation to indolence would not have sufficed to enable him to carry through the work of seventeen years' study and expensive preparation. As Mr. Hamerton says, " Modern Painters " is not merely a work of genius, but of genius seconded by wealth. b 3 26 JOHN RUSK IN. In the meantime he had been busy with other writings. In 1847 he contributed his first review to the Quarterly — his text being Lord Lindsay's " History of Christian Art." Two years later — having been brought, during his preparation of " Modern Painters," to turn his attention to the Queen of the Arts — he published his " Seven Lamps of Architecture," in which he sets forth the theory how in a nation's dominant style of architecture may be seen reflected its life and manners, and even its passions and its religion. Following on the lines thus laid down, Ruskin proceeded, in "The Stones of Venice," issued in 1851 and 1853, to tell the history of the rise and fall of Venice, as illustrated by her buildings, and to show how the prosperity and art of a nation are synchronous and interdependent, and how the purity of national art and of the national conscience and morals act and re-act each upon the other. It was at IKiiT time, while Ruskin was astonishing the world with his originality and startling it with his eager sincerity, that the society then termed and since known as the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" sprang into being. A brilliant band of youthful enthusiasts — comprising John Everett Millais, W. Holman Hunt, W. M. Rossetti, Frederick G. Stephens, HIS LIFE. 29 James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti — combined with the avowed object of founding a school of painting of which absolute truth to nature in all things, especially in respect to detail, was to be the fundamental principle ; a path of material truth from which Raphael was held to have been the first to stray, and which, by a sort of tacit consent, had been untrodden by all others since his day. An object and mission so worthy were precisely such as would enlist the sympathies and fire the generous and chivalrous nature of Ruskin, encouraged and directed as he was by the advice of Dyce. He straightway threw himself heart and soul into the fray, first by his celebrated letter to the Times, and afterwards by his " Pre-Raphaelitism," and other writings, whereby he not only succeeded in securing a fair hearing and judgment for the harassed and persecuted exponents of the creed, but in educating the public into an appreciation of their works. He came, in fact, to be regarded as the prophet of the school, and his doughty championship constitutes one of the stormiest passages of his disputatious life. His chief, or most obvious, reward was the ridicule of the world, or such part of it as he especially ad- dressed himself to. The general sentiment aroused was fairly reflected by the well-known 30 JOHN RUSKIN. amusing cartoon by Mr. Frederick Sandys — himself, by the way, by no means out of sympathy with the teaching of the school. In this clever parody of Sir John Millais's " Sir Isumbras at the Ford," which was then the sensation of the Academy," Mr. Sandys humorously represented Ruskin as the ass of burden of the P.-R.B., on whose back Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti were carried across the stream of shallow waters. In i860 Ruskin, who had by this time become a power in the land, threw himself into a new crusade. Truth, purity of motive, and honesty of execution, which he had so long and so fervently preached as essentials, not only to the highest, but to all sincere art, he now came to consider in relation to social science, and he began a series of papers entitled " Unto this Last," which he contributed to the Comhill Magazine. Their tendency and effect may easily be imagined. They waged war — with all the bitterness and all the torrentuous eloquence of a prophet of old — against the whole world of commerce and its methods, and assailed the stronghold of the political economists with the fiery vigour of which John Ruskin, in these latter days, has almost alone been possessed. His principles and views, however, being based upon quite the highest interpre- HIS LIFE. 31 tation and application of an ethical morality such as his master, Carlyle, had preached before him, were rejected with anger and con- tempt by the commercial community. So strongly, indeed, did they resent his Utopian philosophy that the editor (who at that time was Thackeray), fearful for the fate of his maga- zine, which was threatened with serious injury by the publication of the obnoxious articles, put a summary stoppage to their further issue. It was, however, one of the crowning and closing glories of Ruskin's life — at once his delight and consolation — that in more recent times thinkers have come to accept many of his theories and contentions once spurned or rejected, and the public to receive them as truths. In 1865 and 1866 appeared "Sesame and Lilies " and " Crown of Wild Olive," the most popular of Ruskin's books in England and America alike (if sales may be taken as a criterion) and, perhaps, his masterpieces of prose-writing. In 1867 he was elected Rede Lecturer at Cambridge, with the honorary degree of LL.D. ; but so far back as 1853 he had made his debut as a lecturer, when he addressed the Edinburgh students on " Gothic Architecture." Moreover he, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and F. D. Maurice, had taken vast interest of the teaching sort in the 32 JOHN RUSKIh. Working Men's College in 1865. In 1870 he was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, to the chair founded in the previous year by Mr. Felix Slade. He was at Verona when he_ received the invitation, and, as he himself has written, " I foolishly accepted it. My simple duty at that time was to have stayed with my widowed mother at Denmark Hill" [his father had died in 1864], " doing whatever my hand found to do there. Mixed vanity, hope of wider usefulness, and partly her plea- sure in my being at Oxford again, took me away from her and from myself." Mrs. Ruskin dearly loved Oxford, where her son had spent those three happy years at college. The professorship he continued to hold until 1879, delivering lectures on every phase of Art — lectures which have since been published — and only resigned his post when he discovered that the enthusiasm and constant attendance of the students were due rather to personal attach- ment and appreciation of his original and force- ful way of putting things, than to real interest in the subjects upon which he discoursed. Ruskin's famous periodical, " Fors Clavi- gera " (" Fortune, the Club-bearer "), was begun in 1 87 1, and for eight years was devoted to the expositions of its author's views upon every- thing in general, written with a nervous energy HIS LIFE. 33 and an easy familiarity eminently Ruskinian, strikingly fresh in style and catholic in scope. It was in its pages that he announced his inten- tion of founding the "St. George's Guild," first established in that year — a practical attempt to start and carry on a land-owning society con- ducted on the principles which he would have all landowners to adopt. On this institution he at once settled .£7,000, and a London freehold of the value of ,£3,500 more, and of all this Miss Octavia Hill was appointed manageress. In this same "Fors," on July 2, 1877, appeared the author's famous criticism of Mr. Whistler and his pictures, then being exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. The trial has even now become a classic ; and how Mr. Whistler delivered his smart evidence in the witness- box, and how Ruskin — who was at the time confined to Brantwood with his first attack of serious illness — was unable to defend himself with his own testimony, and was made to pay his prosecutor one farthing for the rare privi- lege of saying what he thought of him — are to this day subjects of merry conversation where artists and lawyers meet. As a matter of fact, the verdict, which left each litigant to pay his own costs, made no call whatever on the purse of Mr. Ruskin. The amount of his costs reached, I believe, to £350, or thereabouts ; but a 34 JOHN RUSK IN. group of devoted admirers at once subscribed the amount, even to the last farthing — Mr. Whist- ler's farthing — and the sum was paid forthwith. But Mr. Ruskin never knew to the last to what the amount of the cost attained, nor the names of any of his enthusiastic friends, save that of Mrs. Talbot, of Barmouth. To the end he was not satisfied with his nominal defeat. "I am blamed by my prudent acquaintances for being too personal," said he; "but truly I find vaguely objurgatory language generally a mere form of what Plato calls ' shadow-fight.' " Similarly, when in conver- sation with him on one occasion I touched upon the subject, he quietly avoided it, saying, "I am afraid of a libel-action if I open my mouth, and if I can't say what I like about a person, I prefer to say nothing at all." By this time Mr. Ruskin's disciples and admirers, who, acknowledged " Ruskinites," were now to be counted by thousands, rightly perceived that if their Master's doctrines, social and artistic, were to bear good fruit, it would be necessary that some sort of organisation should be formed for the dissemination of his writings, the indexing of his works, and the carrying of his theories into practical effect. The result was the beginning of the foundation of the "Ruskin Societies of the Rose," in C/2 5 tf~ HIS LIFE. 37 1879, in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Glas- gow, Aberdeen, Birmingham, and other centres — bodies now collectively known as "The Ruskin Society," which have sought and obtained vitality by dealing generally with poetry and art, education, morals, ethics, and all such other subjects as the Ruskinian philosophy has pronounced upon, apart from the narrower or more defined teachings of Mr. Ruskin himself. These affiliated societies are all of them in active existence. After presenting many valuable gifts, artistic and mineralogical, to various institutions, en- dowing the Taylorian Galleries at Oxford with a school, furnishing it with exquisite works of art as copies, and making rich presents besides to the University, as well as to Cambridge and to the British Museum (whose collection of Silicas he catalogued) and rendering many other public services of a kindred nature, Mr. Ruskin crowned his work in this direction by the establishment and stock- ing of the St. George's Museum at Walkley, near Sheffield. He chose this spot because it was situated on the summit of a steep and toilsome hill, which, he hoped, the workers of Sheffield might understand to typify the ascent of the artistic path that none but earnest workers need care to face. But the hill proved 4 38 JOHN RUSK IN. to be too generally and too successfully de- terrent; and the removal of the reorganised museum to the fine old Georgian mansion of Meersbrook Park took place in 1890, when it was opened by the Earl of Carlisle. This beautiful museum, placed by deed under the joint control and management of the Trustees of the St. George's Guild and of the Corporation, contains a large collection of works of fine art, rare and exquisite books, Venetian casts, missals, splendid examples from his collection of mineralogy and natural history— all selected with thorough knowledge and purposeful care by "The Master " himself. And Ruskin House, Walkley, was in 1893 turned into a Girls' Training Home, with the hearty approval and cordial wishes of Ruskin. But by this time his course was nearly run. He resigned the Slade Professorship, to which he had been re-elected in 1876, when a passing but distressing attack of brain-dis- turbance warned him that he was straining too far his powers of endurance by the multiplicity and arduousness of his labours. In 1884, when he was engaged in delivering another series of lectures at Oxford, he found it necessary to cease their public delivery, and to confine them to students — for the rush of the outside world to listen to the lecturer, no less than the wide HIS LIFE. 39 range of subject and method of dealing with it adopted by him — acted upon the University authorities as an electric shock. The final split soon came ; the Professor, it was thought, was about to assail in his next lecture what he considered to be the vivisectionist tendencies of the University. Pressure was brought to bear upon him to " postpone" the lecture, which, in fact, he did. Ruskin then asked the University for a grant to permit of the better arrangement of the Art Section under his care. It was declined, on the ground of the University being in debt, but a few days later a vote was passed " endowing vivisection in the University," and on the following Sunday Mr. Ruskin's resignation was in the Vice- Chancellor's hands. The facts connected with the matter, it may be said, appear to have been strangely burked. Since that time Mr. Ruskin retired from personal contact with the public, although for a time his pen was still busy, and the press gave forth more than one volume of his earlier, as well as of his later, writings. But his first attack of illness was succeeded by others, under which he gradually, but yet more peacefully, sank, until there came the end which robbed England of one of her greatest men, and, so to speak, cast the better part of her into mourning. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. It is impossible to form any accurate esti- mate of the literary work of Ruskin, or of the worth of the man himself and his acts, without taking his character and temper, as influenced by his health, largely into account. This, of course, is in a measure true of all men. But with one possessed of an organisation so com- plex and delicate as that of Ruskin, such knowledge and careful judgment are absolutely necessary, for they afford the clue to many apparent inconsistencies. The conditions of his rearing all tended to foster self-conceit in the lad ; and the wonder is that, being as clever as he was, and finding him- self the object of constant applause from admir- ing friends, of the worship of parents, and the approval of some of the first intellects of the day — the wonder is, in truth, that he was so little of a prig. But his severe Bible teaching, the oft-repeated assurance that he was to become a preacher, and an eminent one, too, predisposed him, perhaps, towards the early idea of being 40 CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 41 appointed to be unto the public as a missionary, and later, as an oracle and a seer. But many of his most admirable qualities barred the way to his complete success in these characters, and made him feel, to his intense and abiding dis- appointment in his later years, that he was a very Cassandra among the prophets. " All my life,'* he declared in my hearing some years ago, " all my life I have been talking to the people, and they have listened, not to what I say, but to how I say it; they have cared not for the matter, but only for the manner of my words. And so I have made people go wrong in a hundred ways, and they have done nothing at all. I am not," he added bitterly, "an art-teacher; they have picked up a few things from me, but I find I have been talking too much and doing too little, and so have been unable to form a school ; and people have not been able to carry out what I say, because they do not understand it." If we had to define the main characteristics of Ruskin's mind, " and the keys to the secret of all he said or did," I think we could hardly do better than repeat the analysis he made of Turner's ; " Uprightness, generosity, extreme tenderness of heart, sensuality, excessive ob- stinacy, irritability, infidelity ; " and, we should have to add, " impulsiveness, violent prejudice, 4* 42 JOHN RUSK IN. kindliest sympathy, and profound piety/' But impulsiveness, and its offspring — prejudice — were at the root of too many of his acts and his hastier judgments. He was supposed to hate Jews on principle, not from religious motives, but simply because some of the lowest and most contemptible of them practised the usury that persecution had forced upon them ; he despised all bishops, because some of them died rich. No one really deserves hanging, he says some- where, save bankers and bishops. Perhaps this was written at the time of his famous duel with the late Bishop of Manchester on the subject of usury, when his indignation was aroused by what he imagined was the lukewarmness of his antagonist. Yet in no man's company did he more rejoice than in that of Dr. Harvey Good- win, Bishop of Carlisle, whom he entertained at Brantwood more than once, and whom he loved and esteemed as he loved few others. But all his prejudice is to be traced to exces- sive generosity — a fact which, with all his love of paradox, he never would recognise himself. It is not a little surprising, seeing how delicate and troubled he was in general health, and how numerous and actively bitter were his adversaries, that the engaging sweetness of his character was so often uppermost. His natural CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 43 gentleness was proof against the trying circum- stances of his early education. At Oxford, as he himself tells us, " I could take any quantity of jests, though I could not make one," even to the point of seeing with good-humour the fruit he had sent for from London thrown out of the window to the porters children. No man ever smiled more agreeably in his greet- ing; no man's eyes ever looked more kindly into yours. Having nothing to conceal, he was frank, even to a fault, making no attempt to hide his little amiable weaknesses and venial defects. " I like Wilson Barrett," he said one day, when discussing the drama ; " he flatters me so deliciously and in such tactful taste" — an ad- mission, by the way, confirmed long before in a letter of instructions to his private secretary, written from abroad: — " Send me as little as you possibly can. Tie up the knocker — say I'm sick — I'm dead (flattering and love-letters, please, in any attainable quantity. Nothing else)." Love-letters! how many did he not write and delight in receiving — platonic for the most part, perhaps for the whole, but the brightest, quaintest, most humorous, merriest love-letters imaginable! For the respect, the veneration, and admiration he entertained for the beau sexe as a whole — as an institution, as 44 JOHN RUSK IN. Artemus Ward calls it — were intensified, were all focussed, indeed, on young, pretty, and in- nocent femininity. Humour bubbles over the pages of many of his books and letters, but it is never quite so sly and quite so happy as when charming, modest, and lively girls are the subject or the object of them ; and I have heard a score of anecdotes of the pretty thraldom under which he has suffered beneath their yoke, and the not unwelcome tricks that have oft been played upon him. I have said that his amorous sport was entirely platonic ; it was more than that, it was essentially paternal : and usually ended in his presenting to his charmer, or tormentor, some dainty gift, with a playful grace that was altogether peculiar to himself. Herein I am breaking no confidences, for has he not told us all about it a score of pleasant times? "My pets" — his adopted daughter, Mrs. Arthur Severn (his veritable "Angel in the house") and Miss Hilliard, now Mrs. W. H. Churchill — are familiar, through his books, to all good Ruskinites. He speaks of them often enough in " Fors," and of others too : " First, those two lovely ladies who were studying the Myosotis palustris with me ; yes, and, by the way, a little beauty from Cheshire, who came in afterwards ; and then that charm- CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 45 ing (I didn't say she was charming, but she was and is) lady whom I had charge of at Furness Abbey, and her two daughters, and those three beautiful girls who tormented me so on the 23rd of May, 1875, an d another who greatly disturbed my mind at church only a Sunday or two ago with the sweetest little white straw bonnet I have ever seen, only letting a lock or two escape of the curliest hair ; so that I was fain to make her a present of a Prayer-book afterwards, advising her that her tiny ivory one was too coquettish ; and my own pet cousin ; and I might name more, but leave their accusation to their consciences." On another occasion, speaking of his garden and house at Denmark Hill, he says : " The camelias and azaleas stand in the ante-room of my library ; and everybody says, when they come in, ' How pretty ! ' and my young lady friends have leave to gather what they like to put in their hair when they are going to balls." He himself once admitted that when he fell in love in a "mildly confidential way" — "according to my usual manner of paying court to my mistresses, I wrote an essay for her, nine foolscap pages long, on the rela- tive dignity of music and painting ! " Many will remember with how much enthusiasm Charles Dickens, thirty or forty years ago, 46 JOHN RUSK IN. endorsed in All the Year Round what Ruskin had to say of " the beauties of the maids of merry England," and the artistic grace of their then fashionable attire. Even when combating an obnoxious theory, he would sometimes revert to pretty womanhood for an illustration, as when, in animadverting on the Darwinian doctrine of the Descent of Man as mischievous (in looking rather to the growth of the flesh than to the breath of the spirit), he says: "The loss of mere happiness in such modes of thought is incalculable. When I see a girl dance, I thank Heaven that made her cheerful as well as graceful, and envy neither the science nor sentiment of my Darwinian friend, who sees in her only a cross between a dodo and a daddy-long- legs." And again, when contesting the idea that a knowledge of anatomy is essential for painters, he writes to Monsieur Chesneau : "Will you please ask the next lover you meet how far he thinks the beauty of his mistress's fore-arm depends on the double bones in it, and of her humerus on the single one ? " Nay, one would swear that his " little Susie " — one of the sister ladies of Thwaite, to whom he wrote the delightful letters which have since been published under the title of " Hortus Inclusus " — must have been at once JOHN RUSKIN, 1842. FROM THE WATER COLOUR BY GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A. {By permission of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I.) {See p. 174-) CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 49 pretty and graceful, were one to judge alone by the tone adopted in the letters he wrote her. But, as a matter of fact, Miss Susannah Beever — his neighbour in Coniston village, living in a house on an eminence looking over the lake- head — was a few years his senior, and was seventy years of age at least when Ruskin first knew her. To the end of her long life this clever lady was surprisingly young, and so bright and cheerful and sweet and charming, that she fully deserved the daily letters that the Master of Brantwood sent her. She had, indeed, discovered for herself the art of growing old beautifully, and she reaped the reward by completely enslaving the intellectual affections of her ageing friend. But his love for pretty girls in no way lessened his love for children — a passion which inspired some of the most pathetic and beautiful passages that have issued from his pen. This tendency, together with his cordial and courteous old-fashioned hospitality and his overflowing charity, combined to form the bright side of his character — a side so bright that on the other there is none of his shortcomings but is thrown into shadow and belittled in its brilliancy. He has chosen to refer to his nature as " a worker's and a miser's . . . though I love giving, yet my 50 JOHN RUSK IN. notion is not at all dividing my last crust with a beggar, but riding through a town like a Commander of the Faithful, having any quantity of sequins and ducats in saddle-bags, and throw- ing them around in radiant showers and hailing handfuls ; with more bags to brace on when those were empty." But herein he did himself, as he often did, gross injustice, for I have ample documentary evidence in my possession that he delighted in nothing more — and almost daily gave rein to his delight — than giving, secretly, tactfully, and with kindliest judg- ment. It is not too much to say that the record of his benefactions and almsgiving would fill a volume. How when his father died he gave forthwith to those relations who, he thought, had been forgotten in the will, the sum of ^17,000, and to a cousin advanced another ,£15,000, a debt he promptly wiped off — "which hereby my cousin will please observe is very heartily done ; and he is to be my cousin as he used to be, without any more thought of it" — has ere now been made public. But his thousand -and -one kindnesses — now acts of grace and delicacy, now of substantial help and rescue — have never reached the ken of the public save by the confession of the recipients. A few extracts from his letters to CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 51 his secretary during the year 1866 may give some idea of the extent and number of his kindly deeds, and of his solicitude and warmth of heart, though they give little clue to the times out of number on which the gentle Samaritan was victimised — the usual fate of the philan- thropist who prides himself, beyond any other quality, on his worldly shrewdness and his knowledge of life and character. On February 22nd he writes with some show of mystery — "Here's something, please, I want done very much. Will you please go to the Crystal Palace to-morrow or the day after, which is the last day, but to-morrow better, and, if it is not sold, buy the lizard canary (^1) No. 282, page 17 of catalogue, in any name you like — not mine, nor yours — and give the bird to anybody who you think will take care of it, and I'll give you the price when I see you — which must be soon." To this canary, which was duly bought, there evidently hung a tale, for it formed the subject of many subsequent references and anxious directions. On the 5th of March he wrote — " Did Ned speak to you about an Irish boy whom I want to get boarded and lodged, and put to some art schooling — and I don't know how? " Three days afterwards he proceeded — 'Thanks for note about the boy, and infinite thanks for kindest offer. But I've no notion of doing as much 52 JOHN RUSK IN. as this for him. All I want is a decent lodging — he is now a shop-boy. I only want a bit of a garret in a decent house, and means of getting him into some school of art. I fancy Kensington best — and you should look after him morally and I artistically." On the -27th the boy from Ireland was duly settled on Ruskin's charity, and on the same date began the arrangement which ended in a gift of a hundred pounds to George Cruik- shank. Then ensued a prolonged visit to the Continent, on the conclusion of which there came a new request for almoner's duty : — "The enclosed is from a funny, rather nice, half- crazy old French lady (guessing at her from her letters), and I have a curiosity to know what kind of a being it is. Would you kindly call on her to ask for further information about the ' predicament,' and, if you think it at all curable or transit-able, I'll advance her 20 pounds without interest. I've only told her you will call to l inquire into the circumstances of the case.' " Although he complained that he " can't understand the dear old lady's letters," Ruskin decided — of course — to come to her help, charged his secretary to "look after" her a little, and added, "I shouldn't mind placing the over-charge sum at her bankers, besides." "Also look over the enclosed form from . I'm very sorry about this man — anything more wretched than the whole business can't be. He'll never paint, and how to keep him from starvation and madness I can't see. 1 CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 53 can't keep every unhappy creature who mistakes his voca- tion. What can I do? I've rather a mind to send him this fifty pounds, which would be the simplest way to me of getting quit of him — but I can't get quit of the thought of him. Is his wife nice, do you know — or if you don't, would you kindly go and see ? I've written to him to write to you, or to explain things to you, if you call. wrote to me in a worry for money the day before yesterday. I wrote I couldn't help him. All the earlier part of this week an old friend of my father's — a staff-writer on the Times — was bothering and sending his wife out here in cabs in the rain, to lend him ^800, on no security to speak of, and yesterday comes a letter from Edinburgh saying that my old friend Dr. John Brown is gone mad — owing to, among other matters, pecuniary affairs (after a whole life of goodness and usefulness)." Three days afterwards he put his foot down — temporarily. " Tell it's absolutely no use his trying to see me (I don't even see my best friends at present, as you know), and nothing is of the least influence with me but plain facts, plainly told, and right conduct" — a declaration that would have called a smile to the lips of many of the impostors who squeezed, before and since, the soft heart of the too sympathetic and charitable professor. On the 14th of September Ruskin wrote—- "That boy's sketches are marvellous. I should like to see him and be of any use I could to him," and immediately followed it by another scheme of charity. $4 JOHN RUSK IN. " Please just look over enclosed," he wrote, " and see if any little good can or ought to be done. I want you to go to Boulogne for me to see after the widow of a pilot who died at Folkestone of cholera. They were dear friends of mine, both as good as gold — she now quite desolate. When could you go, taking your cousin with you, if you like, for a few days ? You*would be well treated at the Hotel des Bains. I'll come over to-morrow and tell you about it. " I don't think it will be necessary," he continued, a day or two later, " for you to stay at Boulogne longer than the enclosed will carry you. It is more as a bearer of the expression of my sympathy that I ask you to go than to do much. The poor woman ought to be able to manage well enough with her one child, if she lives, and I doubt not she will do all she ought — but at present she is stunned, and it will do her good to have you to speak to." A few days afterwards another matter was forced on his attention. "This business is serious" [the next letter ran]. "Write to Miss that I do not choose at present to take any notice of it, else "the creditor would endeavour to implicate me in it at once, if there was the least ap- pearance of my having been acquainted with the transac- tion — and I don't at all intend to lose money by force, whatever I may do for my poor friend when she is quit of lawyers." Once more Ruskin lost patience at the unreasonable demands to which he was sub- jected, and on the 9th of November he wrote — " All that you have done is nice and right — but I am sorry to see that you are yourself over-worked. Also, I CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT 55 will take some measures to relieve you of this nuisance by writing a letter somewhere on modern destitution in the middle classes. I hope to be able to do this more effec- tively towards the beginning of the year, and to state that for the present I must retire from the position necessarily now occupied by a publicly recognised benevolent — or simple — person. . . I simply have at present no more money — and therefore am unable to help — in fact, I am a long way within of my proper banker's balance — and I don't choose at present to sell out stock and diminish my future power of usefulness. "I think I shall do most ultimate good by distinctly serviceable appropriation of funds, not by saving here and there an unhappy soul — I wish I could — when I hear of them — as you well know. I am at the end of my means just now, and that's all about it." Wherewith he at once made a further gift of a hundred pounds, " as I said I would." Such is the record of a few months of a single year taken at random ; and it may fairly be assumed that one year much resembled another in the cycle of the Ruskinian doctrine of Faith, Hope, and, above all, Charity. In his taste for amusement Mr. Ruskin was always simple. Almost to the last he retained his love for the theatre, and was an admirable critic of a play. " Now that I am getting old," he told me, "and can climb the hills no longer, my chief pleasure is to go to the theatre. Just as I can always enjoy Prout, even when I sometimes tire of Turner, 56 JOHN RUSK IN. so one of the only pleasures in my life en- tirely undiminished is to see a good actor and a good play. I was immensely pleased with Claudian and Mr. Wilson Barrett's act- ing of it." [It was during the run of that play that this conversation took place.] " In- deed, I admired it so much that I went to see it three times from pure enjoyment of it, although as a rule I cannot sit out a tragic play. It is not only that it is the most beautifully mounted piece I ever saw, but it is that every feeling that is expressed in the play, and every law of morality that is taught in it, is entirely right. I call that charming little play of School entirely immoral, be- cause the teaching of it is that a man should swagger about in knickerbockers, shoot a bull, and marry an heiress. Now, as for the litera- ture of modern plays, I think that in comedies the language is often very precious and piquant — more so in French than in English pieces ; but I know of no tragedy, French or English, whose language satisfies me." And he added that he was a critical admirer, too, with reservations, of Miss Mary Anderson — " a sweet lady and an excellent person — but not, I think, a great actress." In fine weather, when he did not roam about the moors and hills that overlook CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 57 Coniston Lake, he loved to cut brushwood that grew in the wood behind his house ; and in bad, when not reading, or drawing, or examining his fossils or other treasures, he would revel in a game of chess. He was an excellent player, and at one time talked of "publishing a selection of favourite old games by players of genius and imagination, as opposed to the stupidity called chess- playing in modern days. Pleasant play, truly ! in which the opponents sit calculating and analysing for twelve hours, tire each other nearly into apoplexy or idiocy, and end in a draw or a victory by an odd pawn." The darker side of his nature almost balanced, in intensity, the brighter. There is a weird, almost Dantesque, vein running through it. His love of life and beauty gave rise to a perfectly morbid horror of what was ugly or sad — illness and death were ideas utterly re- pugnant in the terror they bore in upon him. In a private letter he speaks of " Death and the North Wind — both Devil's inventions as far as I can make out." Indeed, during one of his last visits to London, I heard him say how his attacks of illness were brought on, or, at least, in a measure, induced, by the knowledge of the gradual approach of death — not so much the fear of death, he hastened to add, as the 58 JOHN RUSK IN. regret at the deprivation of life, which he was convinced he enjoyed with infinitely greater intensity than others did. The very idea of a funeral was abhorrent to him. He even declined to attend that of the Duke of Albany, of whom he was very fond; for the young Prince often sought his company at Oxford, and the old man and the young learned to appreciate the virtues of the other. "I had the deepest regard and respect," he said about the time of the Duke's death, " for what I would call his genius, rather than his intellect. He was entirely graceful and kind in every thought or deed. There was no mystery about him — he was perfectly frank and easy 3|i£h everyone. At Oxford I thought ,he desired to ta%e all the advantage that was possible from the university course. But I did not attend the funeral. It is ten years or more since I went to one," he continued gravely ; "and though there are several whom I love very dearly, I doubt very much if I should see them to the grave were they to die before me. No — I shall go to no more funerals till I go to my own." In this relation there may be appropriately quoted the reply he sent to the Secretary of the Church of England Funeral Reform Association — a society of all others of whose attentions and requests for recommenda CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 59 tion and approval he would most cheerfully have dispensed : — " Sir, — I entirely approve of the object of the Funeral Reform Association ; but if I could stop people from wasting their money while they were alive, they might bury themselves how they liked for aught I care. " Faithfully yours, "John Ruskin." The growing knowledge of a constitutional brain-weakness caused him acute suffering, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact ; on the contrary, it was a frank topic of conversation with him. There is something profoundly pathetic in a reference of his to his keen enjoy- ment, in his childhood, in reading Don Quixote's crazy life, but of the superlative .sadness with which the reference or thought of it filled him in later years. "My illnesses, so-called," he says somewhere else, "are only brought on by vexation or worry, and leave me, after a few weeks of wandering thoughts, the same as I was before, only a little sadder and wiser. Probably, if I am spared till I am seventy, I shall be as sad and wise as I ever wish to be, and will try to keep so to the end." At the age of twenty-one he spat blood, as a result of putting on a spurt in his study at Oxford, and obtained a year's leave of absence to recover. Ever since that time his letters 6o JOHN RUSK IN. are proof of constant ailing and sometimes of suffering. True illness, severe enough to confine him to his bed, he never had, from his alarming Oxford symptoms down to 1871, when an inflammatory illness laid him low at Matlock. Of the manner in which he characteristically took his treatment in great measure into his own hands he writes thus, under date 24th July, 1871 :— "Really your simplicity about naughty me is the most comic thing I know, among all my old friends. Me docile to Doctors ! I watched them — (I had three) — to see what they knew of the matter : did what they advised me, for two days; found they were utterly ignorant of the illness & were killing me. I had inflammation of the bowels, and they gave me ice ! & tried to nourish me with milk ! Another 12 hours & I should have been past hope. I stopped in the 7niddle of a draught of iced water, burning with insatiable thirst — thought over the illness myself steadily — and ordered the doctors out of the house. Everybody was in agony, but I swore and raged till they had to give in ; ordered hot toast and water in quantities, and mustard poultices to the bowels. One doctor had ordered fomentation ; that I persevered in, adding mustard to give outside pain. I used brandy and water as hot as I could drink it, for stimulant, kept myself up with it, washed myself out with floods of toast and water, & ate nothing & refused all medicines. In twenty-four hours I had brought the pain under, in twenty-four more I had healthy appetite for meat, and was safe; but the agony of poor Joanna! forced to give JOHN RUSKIN AT GLENFINLAS WATERFALL, 1853. BY STR JOHN MILLAIS, BART., R.A. (By special permission 0/ Sir Henry Acland, owner of the picture and copyright.) (See p. 178.) CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 63 me meat, for I ordered roast chicken instantly, when the doctors, unable to get at me, were imploring her to prevail on me not to kill myself, as they said I should. The poor thing stood it nobly — of course — none of them could move me, on which I forced them to give me cold roast beef & mustard at two o'clock in the morning ! ! And here I am, thank God, to all intents and purposes quite well again ; but I was within an ace of the grave, and I know now something of Doctors that — well — I thought Moliere bad enough on them, but he's compli- mentary to what / shall be after this." But with the exception of this grave, tragi- comical attack he never needed the calling in of a doctor for any physical ill. Yet at no time was he robust, a spine-weakness developed into a chronic stoop, and the aches and pains of a highly nervous, hard-worked constitution were for ever reminding him of the weakness of all flesh. A number of his letters are before me, written to his secretary and assistant — with whom, as I have already said, he was in ex- tremely frequent communication — during the years 1865 and 1866; and in many of them may be seen the record of his ailing moments and minor infirmities. "You must think it very strange in me," he writes under date 3rd November, 1865, "never asking you to come and see me. But I am very languid and ill just now — and I seem of all things to dread talking; it seems to force me to use my head faster than it should 64 JOHN RUSK IN. be used — I suppose I shall come out of the nervous fit some day. I am pretty well on the whole." In the summer of the next year (3rd August, 1866) he writes : — "I've been very sulky and ill, and somehow have wanted what humanity I could get, even out of letters, so I've kept them." Again, on the 3rd of November of the s^ame year, he says : — "You can't at all think what complicated and acute worry I've been living in the last two months. I'm getting a little less complex now — only steady headache instead of thorn-fillet — I don't mean to be irreverent; but in a small way in one's poor little wretched humanity it but expresses the differences. That's why I couldn't think about Cruikshank or anything." On the 2nd of December he again com- plains : — "I have perpetual faceache, which quinine hardly touches, and am pulled down rather far ; but in other respects a little better — stomach and the like." And so things went on — never very bad, but often bad enough to worry the neurotic subject with his little valetudinary troubles, while all the while his self-imposed tasks in- creased in daily volume. At one time, indeed, the correspondence of friends and applicants of all kinds, and particularly of sympathisers — those most troublesome of well-wishers — en- CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 65 croached so severely upon his time and patience, rendering the conditions of his life almost intol- erable, that the issue of this quaint manifesto was decided upon : — " Mr. Ruskin trusts that his friends will pardon his declining correspondence in the spring, and spending such days as may be spared to him in the fields, instead of at his desk. Had he been well he would have been in Switzerland, and begs his correspondents to imagine that he is so; for there is no reason, because he is obliged to stop in England, that he should not be allowed to rest there." Little wonder, then, that his health told upon his temper, and that nervous irritability tended to modify his character, and, to^ some extent, tended to embitter an old age that was already full of disappointments and disillusionments. After a lifetime of preaching to an unheeding world, or battling with a hostile or scornful one, finding his system of philosophy and theories rejected, or, if accepted, accepted only as the teaching of other and younger men, it is but natural that he should be prompted to say, after half-a-century of toil, " Some of me is dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a few things, forgotten many. In the total of me, I am but the same youth, disappointed and rheumatic." But, not beaten even to the last ; badgered and baited all through his life ; at- € 6* 66 JOHN RUSK IN. tacked by some, scoffed at by others — as all fighters of original genius must ever be — he complained not of counter-attack. It was the supineness of those who listened and applauded, but continued in what he held was the down- ward road, which caused him to confess the state of " quiet rage and wonder at everything people say and do in which I habitually live." CHAPTER III. AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. It is presumed that most of those who read these pages are too well informed on Ruskin's work to need any recapitulation of the order, or the titles, or even the purpose of his books. But it may be set down that they comprise art-criticism, art-instruction, architecture, natural history, political economy, morals and ethics, mineralogy and geology, biography and auto- biography, fairy - tale, military tactics, the " higher journalism " and most other things besides. But time will, perhaps, decide that by " Modern Painters " he will both stand and fall — a paradox which himself, I fancy, would be the first to admit. It is the monument he has raised to himself: but other works rank above them in the late author's opinion, if not for literary style, at least for concision of manner and closeness of thought. He told me he had ''never written closer" than in his University Lectures, known as "Aratra Pentelici " (" and they will recognise it one of these days "), while he has publicly declared 67 68 JOHN RUSK IN. that in that book, in "Val d'Arno," and u Eagle's Nest," " every word is weighed with care." " I give far more care to my lectures than to my books," he said ; " They are for the most part most carefully written, although I sometimes introduce matter extemporaneously in the delivery of them. II have taken more pains with my Oxford lectures than with any- thing else I have ever done, and I must say that I am immensely disappointed at their not being more constantly quoted and read." And thus saying, he took down a volume of the "Aratra" and read the concluding pages of one of the lectures in his own powerful and impressive manner. Then he closed the book, softly, with a sigh. Ruskin was, indeed, a rigorous critic of his own work, and cut to pieces " Modern Painters," " Seven Lamps of Architecture," "Stones of Venice," and "Elements of Draw- ing," when preparing second editions, "be- cause in the three first all the religious notions are narrow, and many false, and in the fourth there is a vital mistake about out- line, doing great damage to all the rest." But if it is one of the disturbing faults of Ruskin' s books that he often owns to his later change of thought, it is one of his merits that he is ready to confess it, clearly AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. 69 and unmistakably. These changes of thought he once intended to tabulate, while quaintly apologising for them. " Mostly matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four- sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for people in any way stiff in their opinions." At the same time he declared that his changes were those of a tree, by nourishment and natural growth — not those of a cloud. And what is his reflection on his own auctorial life? "I am quite horrified to see," he wrote to "Susie" — or was it " Rosie " ? — " what a lot of books I've written, and how cruel I've been to my- self and everybody else whoever has to read them." It was in his quality of author that Ruskin ran a-tilt at the book-selling trade, and suffered not a little in pocket from their retaliation. He objected to the whole system of " discount " as it had already then degenerated. The trade, not unnaturally, perhaps, retorted with a very effectual boycott, and Mr. Ruskin had to distribute his books to the public direct from his own special and private publisher — Mr. George Allen, who before had been his engraver. More lately a compromise was effected with the shops ; but, curiously enough, the trade boycott seems to have been taken 70 JOHN RUSK IN. up by the Press, which for a long series of years maintained rigorous silence in respect to Mr. Ruskin's newly - published works. Writing in 1887, Mr. E. T. Cook remarked: " So, too, the professedly literary journals have not noticed anything that one of the foremost literary men of the time has written since 1872!" Meanwhile, his works were being pirated in America and his own editions under- sold — a circumstance which increased his dis- like to the vulgarer side of American life, and of that unhappy country "which contains neither castle nor ruins." There is assuredly no need to await the ver- dict of posterity to establish Ruskin's position as a writer of English prose. No man pos- sessed of such a power of language, such a wealth of imagination and beauty of thought ever spent more care in the polishing of his sentences. And this not only with his written books, but with his newspaper letters, on which — as he told me himself — he expended the utmost pains at his command. With such natural gifts as these, his training was exactly such as would best develop his powers and form his style. The extensive Bible-reading and Bible-learning, forced upon him when a child, laid the foundations for pure and vigorous English, and encouraged AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. 71 his later admiration for the manner of Dr. Johnson. This alone would have gone far to educate him into the accomplished rhapsodist he soon became. But other carefully-selected reading exerted powerful influence upon his future style. Byron and Wordsworth he studied carefully (and indeed knew pretty well by heart) — the former for perfect fluency and realistic truth of vision, and the latter for the beauty of simplicity and naturalness of language and expression. " Even Shakespeare's Venice was visionary; and Portia as impossible as Miranda. But Byron told me of, and re- animated for me, the real people whose feet had worn the marble I trod on.'* And, finally, Carlyle, his friend and admirer, gave the final turn of originality of expression and that effec- tive directness and apparent ruggedness which endows all that Ruskin ever wrote with a rich quality of its own, and made the man, as Mr. Justice Pearson said, " the most eloquent writer of English, except Jeremy Taylor." In point of thought, Ruskin often confessed himself the pupil of Carlyle ; but hardly less is he so in re- spect to literary expression ; and the Sage of Chelsea returned the compliment by declaring to Mr. Froude that many of Ruskin' s utter- ances "pierced like arrows into my heart." We surely do not require the enthusiastic attes- 72 JOHN RUSKIN. tation of Mathew Arnold, or George Eliot, or John Morley, or the rest, of Ruskin's trans- cendent position as a prose-writer ; but if it be true, as indeed it is, that " Ruskin writes beau- tifully because he thinks beautifully, because his thoughts spring, like Pallas, ready armed," it was not because " the fashion of the armour costs him nothing," for his note-books exist, like the sketch-books of a painter, with beauti- ful descriptive sentences, sweetly turned and carefully moulded, ready for use when required, thus attesting the constant and almost exces- sive care, as well as the constructive method of his style. Ruskin's own estimate of his work, in his comparison of it with Tennyson's, is delightful in its modesty, and sufficient testimony of his critical faculty, or, at least, unselfish appreci- ation. "As an illustrator of natural beauty Tennyson is far beyond anything I ever did or could have done," he says ; and elsewhere de- clared that there is finer word-painting in the poet's " Brook " than can be found in all his own prose-writings put together. But, for all that, Ruskin is and must be regarded, by friend and foe alike, as the great modern master of English prose — the Magician of Coniston Lake. CHAPTER IV. THE ARTIST. A dozen years ago it might have been neces- sary to defend the position of Ruskin as an artist, or perhaps even primarily to inform the general public of the wondrous beauty to be found in his drawings. But since that time editions de luxe have fully established his rank as one of the most exquisite draughtsmen, both with the point and in water-colour sketching, that the country has produced. His work is limited in extent, rarely completed, and never executed for public exhibition ; but for manual skill, microscopic truth of observation, directed and moulded by a passionate poetic sense of the most refined and gentle order, he has rarely been excelled. He was, in truth, a landscape and architectural artist of the greatest talent, of infinite delicacy, grace, feeling, and patience ; and the writer has more than once heard him deplore that he had not given a greater share of his life to the practice of art by which he might have effected more real good than by all his word-painting and pen-preaching: "Not d 7 73 74 JOHN RUSK IN. that I should have done anything great," said he, "but I could have made such beautiful records of things. It is one of the greatest chagrins of my life." In respect to his theories of art, its technique, and execution, Ruskin entertained views which were not shared by the majority of the greatest painters of his day — even of most of his most in- timate friends and admirers. Such, for exam- ple, was the theory that all shadows should be painted purple — a dictum which most of the luministes of later days, the very "polar con- traries " of Ruskin, have widely adopted, though not perhaps to the full extent. Mr. Goodall, R.A., told me once of the surprise of Madame Rosa Bonheur when Ruskin laid down this proposition to her with all the firm- ness of conviction, and stoutly maintained through their crisp little discussion that thus should all her shadows be painted. " Mais oui> ma-t-il bien dit^ said she, in repeating the con- versation, " rouge et bleu ; " and she further de- clared that she was convinced that his views on this matter, as well as on his artistic work generally, were governed by a physical pecu- liarity of his retina, and that he possessed be- sides the microscopic eye of a bird: "// voit precisement comme un oiseau!' This sugges- tion, so swiftly and deftly made, goes a good THE ARTIST. 75 way towards explaining Ruskin's love of ex- haustive detail, the more accurately drawn and exquisitely finished the better; but it hardly tallies with the frequent breadth of handling and largeness of view to be found in his own work. Perhaps it was, in a measure, his early training in facsimile copying of great models that rendered him so precise, encouraged thereto by his own natural bent and genius for criticism and subtle analysis ; but no less was it his scientific knowledge and his cultivated accuracy that served him so well in the making of his innumerable sketches of natural phe- nomena and artistic shorthand notes of every sort of detail, to say nothing of his profound study and elaborate drawings of architecture — geometrical as well as picturesque. It is, per- haps, not too much to say that his " Glacier des Bossons, Chamouni " — in which the ice is inimitably represented creeping down the hill- side — with its exquisite drawing, its refinement and delicacy, and its beauty of sparkling colour, has never been surpassed in its own line by any artist however eminent. His actual masters in art, it has already been said, were J. D. Harding (who was the first to inspire him with the idea that there was some- thing more soulful and philosophic in art than appears upon the surface) and Copley Fielding. 76 JOHN RUSK IN. Then came his love for Prout — he who above all others appreciated " Modern Painters " to the full when it first appeared. It was upon his manner that Ruskin loved to form his own, as may be seen in the early drawing of "The Cathedral Spire, Rouen " (reproduced on page 81) and in many another work of his early years. Of this "Rouen/' by the way, pub- lished with two other drawings in the Maga- zine of Art in 1886, he wrote to me: "There ought to be a separate half-page of apology for the drawings of mine, in which the Rouen is a little bit too childish to show my proper early architectural power. All my really good draw- ings are too large — and most of them at Oxford ; but I should like you to give one of them, some day." He remained true to his " Proutism," which he cultivated so assiduously, to the end; for, speaking of his Brantwood drawings, he said : " Prout is one of the loves that always remain fresh to me ; sometimes I tire of Turner, but never of Prout." To what extent Turner was his idol it is not necessary here to insist: for Turner practically came for many years to be Ruskin's raison d'etre. Then followed his love for William Hunt and David Roberts ; and on the work of all these men his own style of art was founded. But his approval of Roberts was «V. /go.) "THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE." 155 " My little daisy — Miss Hilliard — is wild to-day about jewellers' shops, but not so wild as to have no love to send you. So here you have it, and some from the other one, too, though she's rather worse than the little one, because of a new bracelet. They've been behaving pretty well lately, and only broke a chair nearly in two this morning running after each other." Returning by way of Interlaken, Mr. Ruskin and his wards came back to Denmark Hill, after an absence of about three months, while the great war was proceeding and preventing them from reaching Italy ; but the time, as may be seen in " Praeterita," was occupied by a journey of such delight that Mrs. Severn has declared that it was one of the most pleasurable memories of her youthful days. It was in 1870 that Miss Agnew was married to Mr. Arthur Severn, the eminent water-colour painter, and became the " Joan Ruskin Severn " whose name is so closely linked with that of the Professor as his most trusted friend and counsellor, and the cheerful companion and guardian of his age. He always rejoiced in her company, and when he chanced to be ab- sent for a brief time he would send her daily letters of cheery import ; and the delight with which he watched her family grow up around him (for he would not spare her even when she was married — especially when she was married) equalled the pleasure he found in the friend- 156 JOHN RUSK IN. ship of her husband. But to the last, I think, he was always a little regretful that, although she had married the husband whom he wel- comed cordially as the companion best fitted for "his darling," he could not overbear the individuality of the artist to the point of making him in all respects a true disciple of the Ruskinian theory of painting. V CHAPTER XIII. HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. But for the occasional access of illness in his later years, and the periodical intrusion of worrying attacks or harassing troubles — as the sound of battle murmurs from afar, though sometimes, too, of persecution nearer home — the life of Ruskin in his retreat at Coniston was one of sweet peace and luxurious quiet. He lived, in a measure, by rote, ordering his life carefully — both the time for work and the time for leisure. Never, indeed, was man more methodical in his work than Ruskin, nor more precise and regular in obedience to the rules he laid down for h ; s guidance. From first to last his work- ing hours were from seven in the morning till noon, and for no consideration would he ex- ceed his limit. Within those five daily hours all his work was produced — not only his books, but his business and private correspondence. Work in the afternoon was by himself for- bidden, unless it took the form of reading, and never under any circumstances, save in the ex- tremely exceptional case of an important note, 14 157 158 JOHN RUSK IN. would he write letters in the evening. On one occasion, at a time when he was busily engaged upon one of his books, he wrote to a gentleman who afterwards became his confidential secre- tary for ar time : "lam ashamed of myself when I look at the date of your letter, but it arrived when I was far from well and in a press of work, and as I had only to answer with sincere thanks — and I find my gratitude will always keep — I put off replying till I am ashamed to reply." And nine years later, in May, 1865, writing to the same person, who was now about to enter on his secretarial duties and occupy the position of friendship he afterwards forfeited, he wrote : — " I could not even read your letter last night. I was at dinner, and I never answer or read letters after ' business hours ' — I never see anybody — my best friends — but by pre-engagement. Ask the Rossetti's or anyone else who knows me. I can't do it, having my poor, little, weak head and body divided enough by my day's work. But do not the less think me — ever faithfully yours." Those only who saw Ruskin at home can claim properly to have known him. There within his own atrium was little sign of the dogmatism that characterised his appearance in the lecture-room, or the shyness that so often attended him in the drawing-room of society and touched his deportment with a sus- HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 159 picion of gatickene. Writing of him in 1855, James Smetham said : " I wish I could re- produce a good impression of John for you, to give you the notion of his ' perfect gentle- ness and lowliness.' . . He is different at home from that which he is in a lecture be- fore a mixed audience, and there is a spiritual sweetness in the half-timid expression of his eyes." As he was in 1855 so he was in 1893: keen in respect to every subject which he dis- cussed, modest in respect to those in which he thought his interlocutor the better versed, and uncompromisingly emphatic when well upon his own ground. " Old Mrs. Ruskin," said Smetham, "puts 'John' down, and holds her own opinions, and flatly contradicts him ; and he receives all her opinions with a soft rever- ence and gentleness that is pleasant to wit- ness." And so he remained to the end — opinionated, undoubtedly, as he had a right to be, but gentle and considerate with his friends, as he had before been filially rever- ential to his mother. With his life at Denmark Hill, Ruskin made the world sufficiently acquainted in his writings. At Brantwood his life was necessarily of a more tranquil order, and, perhaps, more in accordance with the habits of a country squire. In weather that was "too fine and lovely to 160 JOHN RUSK IN. think of rascals in," as he wrote to me once apropos of certain artistic troubles that were brewing in London, he would climb the hills or walk along the lake-side, wander over the moor or cut away the underwood ; or he would romp with Mrs. Severn's youngest children, or "play cricket" (more properly battledore and shuttlecock) with the elder ones. For "cricket," indeed, " Di Pa" (as he was fondly love-named) was in great request; but, in truth, he was no great hand at the sport, and his protest to Mr. Ellis that he would rather have missed a catch at cricket than that Scott manuscript must be taken rather as a bit of humorous self-criticism than as serious judgment of his powers at the game. He was a tireless walker, and almost to the last he would ramble for hours during the day, attended by his valet, Baxter, or leaning on Mrs. Severn's arm, when the weather per- mitted, and the keen air threatened him with neither neuralgia nor chilblains. Until the latter years of his life he loved to read Scott in the evening, and the family was expected to sit round and listen while he rendered one or other of the Waverley Novels with that completeness of realisation that few could equal. He would modify his voice for the various characters, and would HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 161 revel in the Scottish accent, which he gave to perfection. As age began to tell upon him he would sometimes drop asleep for a moment or two in the middle of a chapter; but on awaking with a guilty start he would neverthe- less continue the appointed reading just as if nothing had happened. On the occasion of the visit to which I have before referred, the Scott-reading days were over. Ruskin no longer took his meals with the family, but alone in his study ; partly be- cause, in accordance with the doctor's mandate, he ate very slowly, and partly because he found that the lively interest he took in the conversa- tion had a deleterious effect upon his digestive processes. He would take an early breakfast in bed, comfortably propped by pillows and warmly wrapped in his dressing-gown, down the front of which his grey beard flowed with patriarchal dignity. He would then dress and descend to the study, when, after another break- fast, he would go out until a half-hour before luncheon time. Then, after resting for a time, he would sally forth again ; and, on returning, he would sit and think, or read. In the course of reading he would often annotate a book ; and I remember the amusement with which it was re- marked that an author's declaration of what he could " plainly see " had called forth a marginal / 14* 162 JOHN RUSKIN. note of " you owl ! " After dinner the Professor — or " Coz," as he was usually spoken of by Mrs. Severn in her own house — would come into the drawing-room and ensconce himself in his chair, with that *" back-cuddling " posture that was peculiar to him. Then, as he sipped at his cup of coffee, and afterwards at his glass of port, the chess-table was brought out, and the Pro- fessor and Mr. Arthur Severn, or the visitor, would settle down to a game. For, as it has been said, Ruskin passionately loved a game of chess. He had been a master of it, and played with great rapidity and considerable brilliancy. At one time he was a constant visitor to the Mas- kelyne and Cooke entertainment, where on at least one occasion he took a hand in the rubber with " Psycho ; " and whenever a new chess- playing automaton made a public appearance he would endeavour to try conclusions with it. Indeed, it was a matter of pride to him that he had obtained more than one victory over the famous player, " Mephisto," at the time when it was performing at the Crystal Palace with considerable eclat. Towards the end of his life he would rather listen than talk, and was readier to be amused than to amuse. Nevertheless he entered keenly into the subject of conversation, and his blue eyes flashed intelligence even when he preferred HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 163 to maintain silence. Yet he would talk, and talk well, if the humour took him. Thus, on the last evening of my latest visit he was, I re- member well, more than usually conversational, and in his brightest humour. The subject of birds was mooted, and then he fell a-thinking. " Ah ! " he said, with his quaint-sounding r-less articulation, " I have made a great mistake. I have wasted my life with mineralogy, which has led to nothing. Had I devoted myself to birds, their life and plumage, I might have pro- duced something worth doing. If I could only have seen a humming-bird fly," he went on with a wistful smile, " it would have been an epoch in my life ! Just think what a happy life Mr. Gould's must have been — what a happy life ! Think what he saw and what he painted. I once painted with the utmost joy a complete drawing of a pheasant — complete with all its patterns, and the markings of every feather, in all its particulars and details accurate. It seems to me an entirely wonderful thing that the Greeks, after creating such a play as • The Birds,' never went further in the production of any scientific result. You remember that perfectly beautiful picture of Millais' — 'The Ornithologist' — the old man with his birds around him ? — one of the most pathetic pictures of modern times." And thus he talked on during the evening, on one 164 JOHN RUSK IN. or other of his favourite subjects, until, at half- past ten, Mrs. Severn rose without a word and gently took his arm to escort him to his bed- room door. He submitted with a loving smile ; he gently -pressed his visitor's hand in both of his, and saying jocularly, " Good night, old 'un," to Mr. Arthur Severn, and merrily, " Good night, piggy-wiggy," to one of the young ladies, the old man moved with genial dignity to the door and through it made a slow and stately exit. CHAPTER XIV. THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. It is not a little interesting to see what man- ner of man was he who had but to put his pen to paper to set the whole art-world by the ears ; he kindled our admiration for his literary ex- cellences even while amusing us by his originality and his quaintness, startling us with the bitter- ness of his scorn, with the heat of his eloquence, and the gall of his contempt and ridicule, tick- ling us with the delicacy of his banter, or some- times even with the error of his parti przs, and charming us with the wealth, beauty, and poetry of his diction. How did his appearance, ex- ternal and physical, impress him who had formed his own conception of the author seen through his own writings ? Truth to tell, the first sight was a little disappointing. It has often been said that with Lord John Russell, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many more, he shared the distinction of being one of the great little men of his day; but this is certainly not founded upon fact. Mrs. Arthur Severn's testimony on this point is conclusive. " I grant, 165 166 JOHN RUSKIN. alas ! " she wrote early in 1891, " that in the last ten years he has stooped so much that he has shrunk into what might be considered by some people a little man ; but about twenty-five years ago I should certainly have called him much above the average height. And as a young man he was well over five feet ten inches — indeed, almost five feet eleven ; and people who knew him then would have called him tall ! " This evidence, incontrovertible by itself, is yet con- firmed by Dr. Furnivall's preface to Mr. Mau- rice's little book. " Ruskin," he says, " was a tall slight fellow, whose piercing and frank blue eye lookt through you and drew you to him." Thus, though the slightness of his build reduced the weight of his figure to little more than ten stone of humanity, such was the brilliancy of the con- versationalist that nothing remained but a com- manding magnetic personality, the sweetness of whose merry, fascinating smile, and the viva- cious, deeply sympathetic expression of whose bright blue eyes removed at once all sense of size or comparative diminutiveness. It is, perhaps, to be deplored that the head and features of "the Professor" were not more often recorded than is the case. Mr. G. F. Watts, who has painted a prodigious number of the most eminent men of the day, never sought to execute a portrait of Ruskin — "it JOHN RUSKIN, 1882. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BARRaUD. (See p. ibg.) THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 169 would have been impossible for me to attempt it," said he, for " I should have felt paralysed in Ruskin's presence." Several artists of distinc- tion have set those features on canvas, moulded them in clay, and carved them in marble ; but it is rather through the photographer that they will live, with all the thousand and one changes of expression and humour that no painter or sculptor could hope to seize so as to give a complete representation of the man.* More- over, Ruskin had no special love for being reproduced : paradoxical as it may sound, his lack of vanity in respect to his own features * As late as 1887 Mr. Ruskin wrote to me that "no photograph gives any of the good in me," and he was himself more pleased with the accurate truth than with the obliging amiability of the camera. When the Queen asked Chalon, the miniaturist, if his beautiful art would not be killed by photography, then newly-invented, the Academician replied, with a complacent bow : " Madame, photography cannot flattere." This, in a measure, Ruskin felt too, and, I think, a little resented. But he was en- tirely pleased with Mr. Barraud's portraits of himself, which he declared were " the first done of him that expressed what good or character there was in him for his work. ' ' The plate of himself standing by a tree-trunk was taken when he was in one of his more frivolous moods. Young ladies and professional beauties, he said, were taken beneath palm- branches, or leaning gracefully against a tree, and for that playful reason he selected the pose — very awkward for a man of such natural grace of movement as he was — shown in the photograph reproduced on page 195. H 15 170 JOHN RUSKIN. struck me once, when we were talking on this subject, as savouring not a little, but not un- pleasantly, of that very weakness. Yet, on the other hand, he certainly entertained no strong objection to sit for his portrait — an objection which in some men amounts to an absolute superstition. Isaac D'Israeli keenly observes in his "Curiosities of Literature": " Marville justly reprehends the fastidious feelings of those ingenious men who have resisted the solicitations of the artist to sit for their por- traits. In them it is sometimes as much pride, as it is vanity in those who are less difficult in this respect. Of Gray, Fielding, and Akenside we have no heads for which they sat; a cir- cumstance regretted by their admirers and by physiognomists." But here, by the way, D'Israeli was wrong, for Akenside did sit for his portrait to Pond in 1754, and it was engraved in mezzotint by Fisher in 1772. Certainly, Ruskin's father had no such preju- dices and scruples, and when his son was not more than three and a half years old he em- ployed James Northcote, R.A., to paint a por- trait of the child. This charming picture, the size of life, is well known by reputation to readers of " Fors Clavigera " and of the opening chapter of " Prseterita." Let Mr. Ruskin himself speak : "The portrait in question represents a THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 171 very pretty child with yellow hair, dressed in a white frock like a girl, with a broad light-blue sash and blue shoes to match ; the feet of the child wholesomely large in pro- portion to its body, and the shoes still more wholesomely large in proportion to the feet. These articles of my daily dress were all sent to the old painter for perfect realisation ; but they appear in the picture more remark- able than they were in my nursery, because I am represented as running in a field at the edge of a wood, with the trunks of its trees stripped across in the manner of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; while two rounded hills, as blue as my shoes, appear in the distance, which were put in by the painter at my own request, for I had already been once, if not twice, taken to Scotland, and my Scottish nurse having always sung to me as we approached the Tweed or Esk — ' For Scotland, my darling, lies full in thy view, With her barefooted lasses, and mountains so blue,' the idea of distant hills was connected in my mind with approach to the extreme felicities of life, in my Scottish aunt's garden of goose- berry bushes, sloping to the Tay. But that, when old Mr. Northcote asked me (little thinking, I fancy, to get any answer so ex- 172 JOHN RUSK IN, plicit) what I would like to have in the dis- tance of my picture, I should have said 'blue hills' instead of 'gooseberry bushes,' appears to me — and I think without morbid tendency to think overmuch of myself — a fact sufficiently curious, and not without promise in a child of that age." Of this picture there are two versions, the first the life-size portrait hanging in Brant- wood ; and the other an admirable reduced copy of it, at Mr. Arthur Severn's house at Heme Hill — the place which belonged at one time to the Professor's father, and which his own writings have endeared to all Ruskin- dom. How far this portrait is an accurate likeness it is impossible to say, but there is a manifest similarity between it and the pret- tily-conceived allegorical subject by the same artist which represents the child naked, with a faun or satyr — or, as Mr. Ruskin himself calls him, " a wild man of the woods " — extracting a thorn from the foot of the baby-shepherd. There is no missing the resemblance between the running child and the poor half-averted, panic-stricken, little face. This picture, Mr. Ruskin tells us, was painted at the special request of old Northcote, who had previously been so greatly charmed with the quaint repose and excellent sitting of the little model. THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 173 Assuming that the first-named portrait gives a fair impression of the child, we see young John Ruskin the possessor of a fine intellectual head, quite exceptional in one so young, with singularly beautiful blue eyes, and a mouth of great sensibility. Playing happily in the green fields "among the lambs and the daisies," he reveals the same love of nature which has always been his strongest passion from first to last. We may safely take it that the like- ness is a good one, for the artist was one of the best portrait-painters of his day; and although he greatly affected history-painting, sacred as well as profane, portraiture was his speciality. By this time, however, Northcote was a man greatly advanced in years, of whom Charles Westmacott, in his " Pindaric Ode," issued in 1824, had written — " Northcote, the veteran, let me praise. For works of past and brighter days." His star was manifestly in the descendent, and only one of his works was afterwards publicly shown in Somerset House, where the Royal Academy then held its court. Yet Ruskin always thought well of the painter, although he has written so little about him in his works. Showing me the artist's portrait of Mr. Ruskin, senior, which hangs in the 174 JOHN RUSK IN. dining-room at Brantwood, and which at once recalls something of Reynolds's " Banished Lord" to the memory of the beholder, the Professor expressed his gratification that his father " had the good taste and the good sense to have his portrait painted by so clever an artist." Neither of these portraits by Northcote was ever exhibited in the Royal Academy. We now come to the year 1842, when Mr. George Richmond, R.A., painted the full- length water-colour for Mr. Ruskin's father. At that time the young graduate was not yet famous. He had distinguished himself at Ox- ford; he had proved himself a born artist, by the charming drawings he had produced under the tutorship of Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding ; he had shown himself something of a poet — a "minor" one, at least — by the verses, instinct with feeling and imagination, which he had contributed to a magazine ; a scientist, by the manner in which he treated subjects, geological, mineralogical, meteorologi- cal, and other, as already recorded, in the pages of Loudon's Magazine of Natural History and other learned periodicals ; and an inventor, by his "cyanometer" — an instrument for meas- uring the depth of blue in the sky. He had fairly tested his keen critical faculty, as THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 17 1, the author of the series of papers on the " Poetry of Architecture," and a work destined to be much enlarged in defence of Turner, who was fast becoming the butt of the igno- rant critics. But his great work — the book that was to bring him such immortality as he may enjoy — was as yet unpublished. The first volume of " Modern Painters," or, as he was within an ace of calling it, " Turner and the Ancients," was, indeed, not unwritten ; but it was not issued until the following year. And when the portrait was hung in the Royal Academy and catalogued " 1061, John Raskin, Esq.," there was none so wise as to correct it. For that portrait, which is reproduced through the kindness of Mr. Arthur Severn and of the artist, Mr. Richmond had plenty of opportunity for studying his sitter. His senior by ten years, Mr. Richmond was of the Ruskin family party which, with Mr. Joseph (otherwise " Keats's ") Severn, journeyed through France and Italy for the purpose of studying nature and aesthetics in the artistic Elysium of Europe. He shared his enthusiasm for art and encour- aged his aspirations ; and he was his com- panion on other expeditions, for which reason this first portrait of Ruskin as a man — he was now in his twenty- fourth year — has a peculiar interest. It is manifestly like him ; and his at- 176 JOHN RUSK IN. titude as he turns from his desk, at which, may be, he had just been polishing his rounded periods in the proof-sheets of "Modern Painters," and was about to make some new drawing of the distant Alps, is thoroughly characteristic of the man. The mountain land- scape background, too, of which Mont Blanc is the principal feature, is what we might expect from the boy who asked for " boo hills." But the spectator cannot but be struck with sur- prise at his quite unusual tallness. This is a physical fact which we can hardly accept, tall though Ruskin undoubtedly was in his youth ; yet it may be that the natural slightness of the young author and a certain smallness of the furniture lent him a height which is misleading only through lack of proper comparison of pro- portion. As a work of art the portrait is in every way charming and interesting, and an ad- mirable example of the water-colour portraits with which Mr. Richmond — " dear George Rich- mond," as Ruskin calls him — was then building up his reputation. It shows us the Ruskin militant of those days — not yet steeped in the bitterness of contro- versy, but ready for the fray — good-humoured, sensitive, shrewd, and keen, turning his gentle and kindly face towards the friend who is paint- ing him. To judge by the shape of his head THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 177 and face, he already belongs to what phrenolo- gists and physiognomists would call the " eagle tribe " — the aquiline nose, as they would tell us, denoting sovereignty over men ; the projecting brows, perceptiveness with undoubted aesthetic tendencies ; and the chin, a considerable degree of reasoning power to direct his strongly-con- ceived opinions, yet with hardly a correspond- ing capacity for continuous logical deduction, Thus has his face been read by an accredited student of physiognomy. Yet with this version would the subject of it certainly have disagreed ; for Ruskin especially prided himself upon his power of logical deduction and analysis, and somewhere quotes Mazzini on him to the same effect. On these characteristics of face Sir John Everett Millais dwelt somewhat over-much in a chalk or pencil-drawing executed about this time, if we are to judge by the impression it made on those who saw it. Referring to this drawing, the late Mr. Woolner, R.A., wrote to me as follows : — " The Millais pencil-sketch was in the possession of Lady Trevelyan, wife of the late Sir Walter Trevelyan, of Wallington. The likeness, so far as I can remember, was very good, but the expression that of a hyena, or something between Carker and that hilarious animal. Enemies would call the expression 178 JOHN RUSKIN. characteristic, but friends would declare that it did him injustice." Whether this portrait is the same as that by Sir John, now belonging to Mr. Severn, I cannot say. In 1853 Sir John Millais began his brilliant portrait of the now celebrated art-critic. Ruskin was known as the author of " Modern Painters/' he had published his " Seven Lamps of Archi- tecture," the " Stones of Venice," and other things, and had assumed the position of the champion of the cause of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — a champion plus royaliste que le roi, more Pre-Raphaelite than the Pre-Raphael : ites, and with more impetuous enthusiasm in his own nervous brain and frame than in those of the whole other seven put together. This movement had for the last five years profoundly exercised the minds of the art-world, and no pen but Ruskin's could have fought its battle so fiercely, so powerfully, and so eloquently, nor with so great a measure of success. In acknowledgment of the yeoman's service he had rendered and was still rendering, Millais painted this portrait, which its possessor, Sir Henry Acland, of Oxford, has so courteously allowed me to reproduce. Both painter and sitter were in Scotland, whither the young author had gone to deliver his " Lectures on Architecture and Painting," and there, standing THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 179 by the waterfall of Glenfinlas, Millais painted him, religiously abiding in the execution of the picture by all the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite faith. Ruskin says somewhere that the English- man is content to have his portrait painted any way but praying, which was the chosen delight of the Venetian noble ; and similarly here, though not on his knees, but wrapped in loving reverence of nature, full of that spirit of hu- mility and reverential awe which all men feel at times, is the young preacher represented, as he stands bare-headed by the little cataract that rushes and dances down the " grey-white valley" to join the waters of Loch Lomond. With rare conscientiousness has Millais ren- dered every detail in the scene. The geologist can detect no flaw in the painting of the rocks, nor can the botanist find aught to carp at in the representation of lichen, plant, or flower, Detail was never more truthfully and accurately set on canvas than here in this small frame, measuring in all but eight-and-twenty inches by twenty-four, while In respect to technique the painter has rarely excelled the perfect execution of this work, which he completed in 1854, the year after his election into the Academy. Nor is the character of the figure at all unworthy of the still-life in this remarkable i8o JOHN RUSK IN. picture. The man is seen at a moment when his enthusiasm is lost in contemplation. The hair, always luxuriant, even to the last, is thrown back in somewhat heavy masses from his temples, and reveals once more, and, per- haps, more successfully than heretofore, the stamp of man he was. Drawn between profile and three-quarter face, the upper part of the head is perfectly rendered ; but the aquilinity of the nose is not sufficiently emphasized, nor is the full sensibility of the mouth made quite as much of as it deserves — and his mouth was one of his most remarkable features. In this connection a further extract from Mr. Woolner's private reminiscences of Ruskin's appearance may be appropriately quoted : — "As to Ruskin's mouth, it would be hard for anyone to read that feature. Rossetti told me that when a boy Ruskin had part of one of his lips bitten off by a dog. The mouth is the most expressive of all features, and tells the history of its owner's nature better than any other ; but under the circumstances how would it be possible to read it accurately ? To fill up the gaps in Sappho's verse would be but a schoolboy's exercise compared to such a task. Lavater might give a hint, or the Greek expert who discovered that Socrates was a sensual fellow, but I don't think any modern physiog- THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 181 nomist could do much with this modern in- stance. Of course, the main force of his head is perception, this faculty being unusually de- veloped ; but, so far as I remember, I do not think there is anything else out of the common in the shape of it. His expression is varied beyond all example in my experience." Sanguineness and sweetness of tempera- ment, when not crossed, appear to have been his chief characteristics at that time. Writing to me about our friend, as he knew him in those early days, Mr. Holman Hunt has re- corded his interesting recollections as follows : — " When I first met him I was struck by his great slenderness of build, which was not yet without remarkable gracefulness of motion in quiet life. In manner, his persevering polite- ness and untiring pains to interest me and others in his possessions almost surprised me, and it would have been really unbearable to receive so much attention had he not shown so much pleasure in gratifying his guests. On further acquaintance he was quite capable of expressing the most extreme discontent that his friends would not adopt all his views. He was displeased with me for my determination to go to the East, and that I did not set myself to work to found a school. I was often amused at his ignoring the state of 16 182 JOHN RUSK IN. paralysis I was generally in from want of means. He would ask me why I did not go to Scotland for a few weeks or months for a holiday _when I appeared overworked ? and more than once he urged me not to delay leaving England for the purpose of seeing Italy — when in truth my purse would have been empty at Dover, and there would have been no means of making sure of a home had I returned on foot from the coast. It was quite strange to witness how this life- long experience of finding all things that he wanted at hand had made him, not incapable of talking of poverty, but without power of realising how straitness of means prevented a man from obeying the inclinations of his mind and body at every turn. Whatever feeling he professed towards one's purposes, I can say that I never found him anything but most gentle and tenderly affectionate, and although for some years circumstances made us unable to see one another much, I never had any reason to think him other than one of the truest men I had ever met as a noble friend." It is not uninteresting to seek for the traits set forth in Mr. Holman Hunt's generous testimony in the admirable synchro- nous portrait by Millais. Three years later, in 1857, Mr. Richmond ■ . ifim -■"■ ■ 111 ■H 5S&" IMS] P M mBk Bl BBHgPifl ' i '^' \k 1 ;\ i- * ' " Bl'tfYv '^bifefc JpLy Wife, HHK4 'fli w 1 K^ m 2m mm In ■: W 1^«M| ■ .*$?*! ' ! u * ■mB Byffe, f J ^Bp /,lllh f zC^ ■ ■" ^"jJfum HHWSlliP^ " I'li'i'h" '' iiiiii , ' SI JOHN RUSKIN, 1884. FROM THE BUST BY CONRAD DRESSLER. (£J2^\. ukdliu^u^^ " THE BLACK ARTS." 211 and would, for my own part, gladly exchange my tricks of stippling and tinting for the good Doctor's gift of drawing two wire-haired ter- riers with a wink. And truly, putting all likings for old fashions out of the way, it remains certain that in a given time and with simple means, a man of imagina- tive power can do more, and express more, and excite the fancy of the spectator more, by frank outline than by completed work ; and that as- suredly there ought to be in all our national art schools an outline class trained to express them- selves vigorously and accurately in that man- ner. Were there no other reason for such les- soning, it is a sufficient one that there are modes of genius which become richly produc- tive in that restricted manner ; and yet by no training could be raised into the excellence of painting. Neither Bewick nor Cruikshank in England, nor Retsch, nor Ludwig Richter, in Germany, could ever have become painters ; their countrymen owe more to their unassuming instinct of invention than to the most exalted efforts of their historical schools. But it must be noted, in passing, that the practice of outline in England, and I suppose partly in continental academies also, has been both disgraced and arrested by the endeavour to elevate it into the rendering of ideal and 212 JOHN RUSKIN. heroic form, especially to the delineation of groups of statuary. Neither flesh nor sculp- tured marble can be outlined ; and the en- deavour, to illustrate classical art and historical essays on it, by outlines of sculpture and archi- tecture, has done the double harm of making outline common and dull, and preventing the public from learning that the merit of sculp- ture is in its surfaces, not its outlines. The essential value of outline is in its power of sug- gesting quantity, intricacy, and character, in accessory detail, and in the richly-ornamented treatment which can be carried over large spaces which in a finished painting must be lost in shade. But I have said in many places before now, though never with enough insistence, that schools of outline ought to be associated with the elementary practice of those entering on the study of colour. Long before the patience or observation of children are capable of draw- ing in light and shade, they can appreciate the gaiety, and are refreshed by the interest of colour ; and a very young child can be taught to wash it flatly, and confine it duly within limits. A little lady of nine years old coloured my whole volume of Guillim's heraldry for me without one transgression or blot ; and there is no question but that the habit of even and ac- " THE BLACK ARTS." 213 curately limited tinting is the proper foundation of noble water-colour art. In the original plan of " Modern Painters," under the head of " Ideas of Relation," I had planned an exact inquiry into the effects of colour-masses in juxtaposition ; but found when I entered on it that there were no existing data in the note-books of painters from which any first principles could be deduced ; and that the analysis of their unexplained work was far beyond my own power, the rather that the persons among my friends who had most definitely the gift of colour-arrangement were always least able to give any account of their own skill. But, in its connection with the harmonies of music, the subject of the relations of pure colour is one of deep scientific and — I am sorry to use the alarming word, but there is no other — metaphysical interest ; and without debate, the proper way of approaching it would be to give any young person of evident colour- faculty a series of interesting outline subjects, to colour with a limited number of determined tints, and to watch with them the pleasantness, or dul- ness — a discord of the arrangements which, ac- cording to the nature of the subjects, might be induced in the colours. It is to be further observed that although 214 JOHN RUSKIN. the skill now directed to the art of chromo- Jithotint has achieved wonders in that mecha- nism, the perfection of illustrated work must always be jn woodcut or engraving coloured by hand. No stamped tint of water-colour can ever perfectly give the gradation to the sharp edge left by a well-laid touch of the pencil. And there can be no question (it has so long been my habit to assert things — at all events very questionable in the terms I choose for them — in mere love of provocation, that now in my subdued state of age and infirmity I take refuge, as often as possible, in the Unquestion- able) that great advantage might be gained in the geography classes of primary schools by a system of bright color adapted to dissected maps. In the aforesaid condition of age and infirmity which I sometimes find it very difficult to amuse, I have been greatly helped by get- ting hold of a dissected map or two — four, to be accurate — Europe, France, England, and Scotland, and find it extremely instructive (though I am by way of knowing as much geography as most people) to put them to- gether out of chance-thrown heaps, when I am good for nothing else. I begin, for instance, in consequence of this exercise, to have some notion where Wiltshire is, and Montgomery- shire ; and where the departments of Haute " THE BLACK ARTS." 215 Loire and Haute Garonne are in France, and whereabouts St. Petersburg is, in Russia. But the chief profit and pleasure of the business to me is in colouring the bits of counties for my- self, to my own fancy, with nice, creamy body- colour, which covers up all the names, leaves nothing but the shape to guess the county by (or colour when once determined), and opens the most entertaining debates of which will be the prettiest grouping of colours on the con- dition of each being perfectly isolated. By this means, also, some unchangeable facts about each district may at once be taught, far more valuable than the reticulation of roads and rails with which all maps are now, as a. matter of course, encumbered, and with which a child at its dissected map period has nothing to do. Thus, generally reserving purple for the primitive rock districts, scarlet for the vol canic, green for meadow-land, and yellow for corn-fields, one can still get in the warm or cold hues of each colour variety enough to separate districts politically — if not geologically distinct ; one can keep a dismal grey for the coal coun- tries, a darker green for woodland — the forests of Sherwood and Arden, for instance — and then giving rich gold to the ecclesiastical and royal domains, and painting the lakes and rivers with ultra-marine, the map becomes a gay and 216 JOHN RUSKIN. pleasant bit of kaleidoscopic iridescence with- out any question of colour-harmonies. But for the sake of these, by a good composer in varie- gation, the geological facts might be ignored, and fixing first on long-confirmed political ones, as, for instance, on the blanche-rose colour and damask-rose for York and Lancaster, and the gold for Wells, Durham, Winchester, and Can- terbury, the other colours might be placed as their musical relations required, and lessons of their harmonic nature and power, such as could in no other so simple method be enforced, made at once convincing and delightful. I need not say, of course, that in manuscript illumination and in painted glass, lessons of that kind are constant, and of the deepest interest ; but in manuscript the intricacy of design, and in glass the inherent quality of the material, are so great a part of the matter that the abstract relations of colour cannot be ob- served in their simplicity. I intended in the conclusion of this letter to proceed into some inquiry as to the powers of chromolithotint ; but the subject is completely distinct from that of colouring by hand, and I have been so much shaken in my former doubts of the capability of the process by the wonderful facsimiles of Turner vignettes, lately executed by Mr. Long, from the collection in the subterranean domain " THE BLACK ARTS." 217 of the National Gallery, that I must ask per- mission for farther study of these results before venturing on any debate of their probable range in the future. CHAPTER XVI. EPILOGUE. There is little for me to add to this essay. I have purposely refrained from enlarging on Ruskin's many-sided character and achieve- ments, lest the size of the book should be car- ried far beyond the appointed limits. But I have, I think, done enough to direct the atten- tion of the reader to many of the chief — the most important or the most amusing — of Rus- kin's views, and to awaken a desire in some to study the works of one of the most original thinkers and most interesting writers of the day. Opinions may vary as to the practicability of his synthetic philosophy, and as to the sound- ness of what he held to be the basis and root- foundation of all true art. He may have regarded art too much as a moralist and too little as a technician ; he may have raised cer- tain individual workers too high in the compara- tive scale of art, so that the fall from off their perches has been inevitable. To all such errors and more a great reformer is liable, who single-handed, fierce and determined, and 218 EPILOGUE. 219 in face of all opposition, has sought to lift the art of his country into a mighty power for good, and to raise her conscience at the same time to a level of purity and morality. But whatever be the fate of his teaching, whatever the destiny of his artistic fame, he will always be numbered among the mighty ones of the pen ; one of the greatest, best, and kindest creatures who ever fought the people's fight of righteousness and truth. xa INDEX. Acland, Sir Henry, 21 Agates, Ruskin's collection of, 137 Agnew, Miss, see Mrs. Arthur Severn Albany, Duke of, 58 Anderson, Miss Mary, 56 Andrews, Mr., Miniature of Rus- kin by, 188 Aratra Pentelici, 67 Architectural Magazine, Contri- butions to the, 21 Architecture and Painting, Rus- kin lectures on, 178 Architecture, Ruskin's views on,26 Arrows of the Chace, 105 Art and Architecture, Papers on, 21 Art Books, Dulness of, 200 Art of England, Lecture on the, 192 Art, Ruskin's views of, 74, 84 Artist, Ruskin as, 73 et sea. Ashmore, Charles, Plaster Medal- lion of Ruskin, 186 Author, Bookman, and Stylist, Ruskin as, 67 et sea. Barraud's Portrait of Ruskin, 169 Barrett, Wilson, 43 Bedroom, Ruskin's, 140 Beever, Miss Susannah, 49, 107 Bewick, Ruskin's criticism of, 123 Birds, Ruskin's love of, 163 Bishop of Carlisle, Ruskin's friend- ship with the, 42 Bishop of Manchester, Discussion with the, 42 Bishops, Ruskin on, 42 Boehm, Sir J. Edgar, R.A., Bust of Ruskin by, 190 Bonheur, Madame Rosa, on Rus- kin, 74 Books, Collection of, 130, 137 Bookselling Trade, Disagreements with the, 69 Botticelli, 87, 133 Brantwood, 125 el sea.; Acquisi- tion of, 129; Description of, 129 et sea. ; Daily life at, 159 Brown, Dr. John, 208 British Museum, Ruskin arranges Silicas, 37 Buckland, Dr., Influence on Rus- kin, 21, 100 Burne- Jones, Drawings by, 130 Byron, Influence on Ruskin, 71, 109 Carlyle and Ruskin, 31, 71, 99; visits Brantwood, 146 Carpaccio, 87 Character, Health, and Tempera- ment of Ruskin, 40 et sea. Characteristics, Main, of Ruskin's mind, 41 Charity, Ruskin's, 47, 50 et sea., 55» 93 Chesneau, E., 46 Chess, Ruskin as a player of, 57, 162 Children, Ruskin's love for, 49; Education of, 92, 212 Churchill, Mrs. W. H., 44; trav- els with Ruskin, 147 Claudian, Ruskin on, 56 Cook, E. T., 70, 80 Cornhill Magazine, Contributions to, 30, 31 Creswick, Benjamin, Bust of Rus- kin by, 188 Critic, Ruskin on the, 104 Crown of Wild Olive % 31 19* 221 222 INDEX. Cruikshank, George, Ruskin's dealings with and views on, 115 et seq. Cycling, Ruskin's dislike of, 90 Daily Telegraph, 104 Dale, Canon, as Ruskin's tutor, 18 Dame Wiggins of Lee, 116 Darwin visits Brantwood, 102; Ruskin's views upon his the- ory, 46, 1 01 Death, Ruskin's horror of, 57 Degree, Ruskin receives B.A., 22; LL.D., 31 Discount, Ruskin objects to sys- tem of, 69 Disraeli and Ruskin, 96 Dixon, Thomas, 106 Drama, Criticism on the Modern, 5 6 Draughtsman, Ruskin as, 75 Dressier, Conrad, Bust of Ruskin by, 193 ; Impressions of Rus- kin, 197 Dyce, W., Advice to Ruskin of, 29 Eagle's Nest, 68 Education, Ruskin's views on, 92 et seq., 212 Elements of Drawing, 68, 106 Ethics of the Dust, 96 Fielding, Copley, Ruskin's early teacher, 18, 75 Forbes, James, teaches geology to Ruskin, 100 Fors Clavigera, 32, 106 Frondes Agrestes, 107 Funerals, Ruskin's horror of, 58 Generosity of Ruskin, 37, 48 et seq. t 50, 93 Geography, Suggestions for im- proved teaching of, 214 Geology, Ruskin's study and love of, 21, 100 Glacier des Bossons, Chamouni, 75 Gladstone, Mr., and Ruskin, 96, 99 Goodwin, Dr. Harvey, Ruskin's friendship for, 42 Gordon, Rev. Osborne, influence on Ruskin, 22 Graphic, Portrait of Ruskin pub- lished in, 192 Greenaway, Miss Kate, Portrait ot Ruskin begun by, 192; ad- miration of Ruskin for the art of, 192 Grimm, Plates of Cruikshank for, 116 Hamerton, P. G., on Ruskin, 25 Harding, J. D., Ruskin's early teacher, 18, 75 Harrison, W. H., Influence on Ruskin of, 22 Health, Ruskin's, and its influ- ence, 40 et seq. Herkomer, Prof. Hubert, R.A., Portrait of Ruskin by, 191 Hill, Miss Octavia, and Ruskin, 33 Hilliard, Miss, see Mrs. Churchill History of Christian Art, 26 Hogarth, Ruskin on, 123 Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, Let- ter to, 109 Holl, Francis, A.R.A., Engraving of Ruskin by, 185 Home life at Coniston, 157 et seq. Hortus Inclusus, 46 Hunt,W. Holman, 26, 76, 143, 181 Illness, Attacks of, 38, 60 Illustrated work, Perfection of, 214 Italy, Ruskin's trips to, 25, 147 Journalistic correspondence of Ruskin, 103 Lang, Andrew, 88 Leeds Mercury, 104 Letter-writer, Ruskin as, 1 03 et seq. Letters, Private, 107 Life of Ruskin, 17 et seq. Linton, W. J., owned Brantwood, 126 Literary Gazette, The, 104 Long, W., Chromo-lithotints by, 216 Luini, 87 INDEX. 223 Magazine of Art, Ruskin con- tributes to, 199 et seq. Magazine of Natural History, 21 Manchester City News, 104 Manchester Examiner and Times, 104 Manuscript illumination, 216 Mathematics, Ruskin 's dislike of, 101 Maurice, Rev. F. D., 31 Millais, Sir John Everett, R.A., 26; Portrait of Ruskin by, 178 Mineral Collection, Ruskin's, 137 Mineralogist, Ruskin as, 137 Modern Painters, Publication o f , 22; Ruskin's valuation of, 67, 213 Monetary Gazette, The, 104 Morning Post, The, 104 Morris, William, on Ruskin, 91 Muscle versus Machinery, 89 Northcote, James, R.A., Portraits of Ruskin, 130, 170; Rus- kin's esteem for, 173 Norton, Professor C. A., Gift of Portrait to, 186 Outline, Value of, 21 1 Oxford, Ruskin enters Christ- church, 21 ; endows Taylor- ian Galleries, 37; Lectures, 68 Pall Mall Gazette, 104 Palmerston and Ruskin, 96 Paris, Ruskin in, 148 Philosophy, Ruskin's early, 83 Picture, Ruskin's summary of a good, 208 Pilotelle, Georges, sketch of Ruskin, 187 Poems, Publication of Ruskin's, 109 Poet, Ruskin as, 109 et seq. Poetry of Architecture, 21 Political Economy, Ruskin's the- ory of, 96 Politician, Ruskin as, 99 Portraits of Ruskin, 165 et seq ; Barraud, 169; James North- cote, R.A., 170; George Richmond, R.A., 174, 182; Sir John Everett Millais,R.A., 177 ; Engraved by Francis Holl, A.R.A., 185; Rossetti, 185; by himself, 186; Mod- elled by Charles Ashmore, 186; Georges Pilotelle, 187; Andrews, 188; Arthur Sev- ern, 188; Benjamin Creswick, 188; Modelled by Sir J. Edgar Boehm, R.A., 190; Professor Hubert Herkomer, R.A., 191 ; Miss Kate Green- away, 192; T. Blake Wirg- man, 192; Modelled by Con- rad Dressier, 193 Prceterita, 113, 194 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rus- kin and the, 26, 29, 178 Press, Attitude of, towards Rus- kin, 70 Prout, Esteem of Ruskin for, 76 ; Drawings of, 133 Quarterly Review, Ruskin con- tributes to the, 26; attacks Ruskin, 8^ Railways, Ruskin's hatred of, 89 Reader, The, 104 Religious opinions of Ruskin, 102 Richmond, George, R.A., Por- traits of Ruskin, 174, 182; travels with Ruskin, 175 Roberts, David, Ruskin's ameni- ties with, 76 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 29 ; Por- trait of Ruskin by, 185 Rossetti, W. M., 26 Rouen Cathedral Spire, Drawing of, 76 Ruskin, John, birth of, 17; his love of scenery and art de- veloped, 18; first painting lessons of, 18; first appear- ance in public press, 21 ; en- ters Christ church,Oxford, 21 ; 224 INDEX. gains Newdigate Prize, 22; graduates B.A., 22 ; publishes Modern Painters, 22; cen- tral event of his life, 22; founds a school of painting, 26; wages war against ex- isting commercial morality, 30 ; elected Rede Lecturer at Cambridge, 31 ; appointed Professor of Fine Art at Ox- ford, 32 ; begins Fors Clavi- gera, 32 ; gifts to public in- stitutions, 37 ; first attacked by illness, 38; resigns Slade Professorship, 38 ; rupture with Oxford University, 39; retires from personal contact with public, 39; as a chess player, 57, 162; critic of his own works, 68, 72; theories of art, 74, 211 ; deplores the decadence of art, 87; ac- quires the art of crossing- sweeping, 88 ; the apotheosis of the navvy, 88; a theistic philosopher, 91 ; as politician, 99 ; as geologist, 100 ; corre- spondent of the public jour- nals, 103; intended for the Church, 109; facility in verse- making, 109; travels. abroad, *47> x 75; methodical ways, 157; dailylife, 157,159, 161; a tireless walker, 160; as in- ventor, 1 74 ; portrait of him- self, 186 ; dissatisfied with all his portraits, 197 ; enjoys judiciously applied flattery, 197; amused by dissected maps, 214 Ruskin, John, Senior, Portrait of, 1 73 ; death of, 32 Ruskin, Mrs., 32, 135 Ruskin Societies of the Rose founded, 34 Salsette and Elephanta, 22 Sandys, Frederick, 30 School Board, Ruskin 's views on the, 92 Scotland, Ruskin in, 178 Scotsman, The, 104 Scott, Sir Walter, no; Ruskin's admiration of, 133 ; original manuscripts of, 138; read aloud by Ruskin, 160 Sesame and Lilies, 31 Seven Lamps of Architecture, 26, 68 Severn, Arthur, R.I., Portrait of Ruskin by, 188 Severn, Mrs. Arthur, 44, 145, 147, 155 Shells, Ruskin's collection of, 133 Smetham, James, Letters to, 106 ; description of Ruskin by, 159 Slade Professor, Ruskin appointed in 1870, 32; re-elected in 1876,38; resigned in 1879,32 Stature of Ruskin, 166 Stephens, Frederick G., 26 St. George's Guild established, 33 St. George's Museum at Walkley established, 37 ; transferred to Meersbrook Park, 38 St. Mark's Venice, Ruskin's stud- ies of, 133 Stones of Venice, 68 Study at Brantwood, 134 Stylist, Ruskin as, 67 et sea. Switzerland, Ruskin in, 151 Taylorian Galleries at Oxford, Gifts to, 37 Teacher, Ruskin as, 80 Thackeray, Editor of Cornhill, 31 Theatre, Ruskin's love for the, 55 The Angel in the House, 145 et sea. Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne, 96, 106 Times, Ruskin's celebrated letter to the, 29, 103 Tintoret, 87 Trevelyan, Lady, travels abroad with Ruskin, 147 ; her death, 148 Turner, Ruskin's defence of, 22, 87; Ruskin's admiration of, 76; portrait of, 130; draw ings by, 137 INDEX. 225 Tynda.ll, Professor, Ruskin on, 101, 115 Ugliness, Ruskin 's condemnation of, 123 Unto this Last, 30 Vol D'Arno, 68 Venice, 26, 68 Verse-making, Ruskin 's facility in, 109 View of things, Ruskin's, 96 et seq. Vivisection, Ruskin opposed to, 39 Waldstein, Dr., on Ruskin, 91 Watts, G. F., R.A., and Ruskin, 166 Waverley Novels, Manuscripts of the, 138 Whistler, Ruskin's criticism on, and subsequent trial, 33 Wirgman, T. Blake, Portrait of Ruskin by, 192 Women, Ruskin's sentiments to- wards, 43 Woolner, T., R.A., 29, 177, 180 Working Men's College, Rus- kin's interest in the, 31