The Life of John Ruskin written by W. G. Collingwood
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W. G. Collingwood >> The Life of John Ruskin
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24 THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN
by
W. G. COLLINGWOOD
M.A., F.S.A., Late Professor of Fine Art, University College, Reading
1911
PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION
This book in its first form was written nearly twenty years ago with the
intention of contributing a volume to a series of University Extension
Manuals. For that purpose it included a sketch of Ruskin's "Work," with
some attempt to describe the continuous development of his thought. It
had the advantage--and the disadvantage--of being written under his eye;
that is to say, he saw as much of it as his health allowed; and it
received his general approval.
To explain my venturing upon the subject at all, I may perhaps be
allowed to state that I became his pupil in 1872 (having seen him
earlier), and continued to be in some relation to him--as visitor,
resident assistant, or near neighbour--until his death.
After his death the biographical part of my book was enlarged at the
expense of the description of his writings; and in revising once more I
have thrown out much relating to his works, chiefly because they are now
accessible as they were not formerly.
W.G.C.
CONISTON, May 1911
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE BOY POET (1819-1842)
CHAPTER
I. HIS ANCESTORS
II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819-1825)
III. PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM (1826-1830)
IV. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP (1830-1835)
V. THE GERM OF "MODERN PAINTERS" (1836)
VI. A LOVE-STORY (1836-1839)
VII. "KATA PHUSIN" (1837-1838)
VIII. SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE (1837-1839)
IX. "THE BROKEN CHAIN" (1840-1841)
X. THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD (1841-1842)
BOOK II
THE ART CRITIC (1842-1860)
I. "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS" (1842-1844)
II. CHRISTIAN ART (1845-1847)
III. "THE SEVEN LAMPS" (1847-1849)
IV. "STONES OF VENICE" (1849-1851)
V. PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851-1853)
VI. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES (1853-1854)
VII. THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE (1854-1855)
VIII. "MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED (1855-1856)
IX. "THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART" (1857-1858)
X. "MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED (1858-1860)
BOOK III
HERMIT AND HERETIC (1860-1870)
CHAPTER
I. "UNTO THIS LAST" (1860-1861)
II. "MUNERA PULVERIS" (1862)
III. THE LIMESTONE ALPS (1863)
IV. "SESAME AND LILIES" (1864)
V. "ETHICS OF THE DUST" (1865)
VI. "THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE" (1865-1866)
VII. "TIME AND TIDE" (1867)
VIII. AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE (1868)
IX. "THE QUEEN OF THE AIR" (1869)
X. VERONA AND OXFORD (1869-1870)
BOOK IV
PROFESSOR AND PROPHET (1870-1900)
I. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES (1870-1871)
II. "FORS" BEGUN (1871-1872)
III. OXFORD TEACHING (1872-1875)
IV. ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK (1875-1877)
V. "DEUCALION" AND "PROSERPINA" (1877-1879)
VI. THE DIVERSIONS OF BRANTWOOD (1879-1881)
VII. "FORS" RESUMED (1880-1881)
VIII. THE RECALL TO OXFORD (1882-1883)
IX. THE STORM-CLOUD (1884-1888)
X. DATUR HORA QUIETI (1889-1900)
THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN
BOOK I
THE BOY POET (1819-1842)
THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN
CHAPTER I
HIS ANCESTORS
If origin, if early training and habits of life, if tastes, and
character, and associations, fix a man's nationality, then John Ruskin
must be reckoned a Scotsman. He was born in London, but his family was
from Scotland. He was brought up in England, but the friends and
teachers, the standards and influences of his early life, were chiefly
Scottish. The writers who directed him into the main lines of his
thought and work were Scotsmen--from Sir Walter and Lord Lindsay and
Principal Forbes to the master of his later studies of men and the means
of life, Thomas Carlyle. The religious instinct so conspicuous in him
was a heritage from Scotland; thence the combination of shrewd
common-sense and romantic sentiment; the oscillation between levity and
dignity, from caustic jest to tender earnest; the restlessness, the
fervour, the impetuosity--all these are the tokens of a Scotsman of
parts, and were highly developed in John Ruskin.
In the days of auld lang syne the Rhynns of Galloway--that
hammer-headed promontory of Scotland which looks towards Belfast
Lough--was the home of two great families, the Agnews and the Adairs.
The Agnews, of Norman race, occupied the northern half, centring about
their island-fortress of Lochnaw, where they became celebrated for a
long line of hereditary sheriffs and baronets who have played no
inconsiderable part in public affairs. The southern half, from
Portpatrick to the Mull of Galloway, was held by the Adairs (or, as
formerly spelt, Edzears) who took their name from Edgar, son of
Dovenald, one of the two Galloway leaders at the Battle of the Standard.
Three hundred years later Robert Edzear--who does not know his
descendant and namesake, Robin Adair?--settled at Gainoch, near the head
of Luce Bay; and for another space of 300 years his children kept the
same estate, in spite of private feud, and civil war, and religious
persecution, of which they had more than their share.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, John Adair, the laird of
Little Genoch, was married to Mary Agnew, a near kinswoman of the
celebrated Sir Andrew, colonel of the Scots Fusiliers at Dettingen. The
exact relationship of Mary Agnew to "the bravest man in the British
army" remains undecided, but letters still extant from the Lady Agnew of
the day address her as "Dear Molly," and end, "Your affectionate cousin"
or "kinswoman." Her son Thomas succeeded his father in 1721, and,
retiring with his captaincy, settled on the estate. He married Jean,
daughter of Andrew Ross of Balsarroch and Balkail, a lady noted for her
beauty, her wit, and her Latin scholarship, and a member of a family
which has given many distinguished men to the army and navy. Among them
Admiral Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer, Sir Hew Dalrymple, and
Field-Marshal Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross, were all her great-nephews, and
her son, Dr. John Adair, was the man in whose arms Wolfe died at the
taking of Quebec; it is he who is shown in Benjamin West's picture
supporting the General.
Dr. Adair's sister Catherine, the daughter of Thomas Adair and Jean
Ross, married the Rev. James Tweddale, minister of Glenluce from 1758 to
1778, representative of an old Covenanting family, and holder of the
original Covenant, which had been confided to the care of his great-aunt
Catherine by Baillie of Jarviswood on his way to execution in the
"killing time." The document was sold with his library at his death, his
children being then under age, and is now in the Glasgow Museum. One of
these children, Catherine, married a John Ruskin.
The origin of the name of Ruskin is English, dating from the middle
ages. Soon after the dissolution of Furness Abbey, Richerde Ruskyn and
his family were land-owners at Dalton-in-Furness. One branch, and that
with which we are especially concerned, settled in Edinburgh.
John Ruskin--our subject's grandfather--when he ran away with Catherine
Tweddale in 1781, was a handsome lad of twenty. His portrait as a child
proves his looks, and he evidently had some charm of character or
promise of power, for the escapade did not lose him the friendship of
the lady's family. Major Ross, her uncle and guardian, remained a good
friend to the young couple. She herself was only sixteen at her
marriage--a bright and animated brunette, as her miniature shows, in
later years ripening to a woman of uncommon strength, with old-fashioned
piety of a robust, practical type, and a spirit which the trials of her
after-life--and they were many--could not subdue. Her husband set up in
the wine trade in Edinburgh. For many years they lived in the Old Town,
then a respectable neighbourhood, among a cultivated and well-bred
society, in which they moved as equals, entertaining, with others, such
a man as Dr. Thomas Brown, the professor of philosophy, a great light in
his own day, and still conspicuous in the constellation of Scotch
metaphysicians.
JOHN ADAIR, = MARY, cousin of Sir Andrew Agnew, of Lochnaw,
of Little Genoch. | hereditary Sheriff of Wigtownshire.
|
|
Capt. Thomas Adair, = Jean Ross, of Balsarroch, great-aunt of Sir
of Little Genoch. | John Ross, the Arctic explorer,
| of Sir Hew Dalrymple, and of Sir
| Hew Dalrymple Ross.
|
+-----------------------+============+
| | | |
Rev. = Isobel Dr. Mrs. Cath. = Rev. John
Andrew McDouall, Adair, Maitland Adair | James Ruskin
Adair, of of grand- | Twaddle, (1732-
Minister Logan Quebec mother | of 1780)
of and of | Glen- |
Whithorn London J.E. | luce |
Maitland | |
of | |
Kenmure | |
Castle | |
| |
+---------+=======+ +==========+--------------+
| | | | |
Cath. = James Cath. = John Margt. = Capt. Other
Mactaggart | Tweddale, Tweddale| Ruskin Ruskin | Cox issue
(aunt of | of (1765- | of (b. 1756)| of
Sir John | Glen- 181[?]) | Edinburgh | Yarmouth
Joseph Mactaggart, | laggan | (1761- | (1757-
Severn Bart., M.P., | | 1812[?]) | 1789[?])
of of | | |
Rome Ardwell) | | |
| | | |
+-+ +----+ +----+==+ +====+---+
| | | | | | |
| George = Cath. | Peter = Jessie J.J. = Margaret Bridget= Mr.
| Agnew, |Tweddale| Richard- | Ruskin Ruskin, | Cox Cox |Richard-
| hered- | | son, | of | (1781- | son
| itary | +----+ of | Billiter | 1871) | of
| Sheriff- | | Bridgend,| Street | | Market
| clerk | Other Perth | and | | Street,
| of | isssue | Denmark | | Croydon
| Wigtown | | Hill | |
| | | (1785- | |
| | | 1864) | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
+-+------+ +-------+------+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+ | +-+++-+-+-+
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Other Arthur = Joan Other James John John (d.
issue Severn, | Ruskin issue (d. young), Ruskin in
R.I., | Agnew John, of (b. 1819) Australia),
of | Glasgow, William
Hearne | William, M.D., George (of
Hill | (Tunbridge Croydon)
| Wells), Charles
+-+-+++-+ Andrew (d. in (drowned
| | | | | Australia), 1834)
Lily Catherine Margaret
Arthur (d. young), Bridget
Agnew Margaret and
Violet Peter
Herbert (d. young)
Mary
(1815-1849),
Jessie
(1818-1827)
Their son, John James Ruskin (born May 10, 1785), was sent to the
famous High School of Edinburgh, under Dr. Adam, the most renowned of
Scottish head-masters, and there he received the sound old-fashioned
classical education. Before he was sixteen, his sister Jessie was
already married at Perth to Peter Richardson, a tanner living at Bridge
End, by the Tay; and so his cousin, Margaret Cox, was sent for to fill
the vacant place.
She was a daughter of old Mr. Ruskin's sister, who had married a Captain
Cox, sailing from Yarmouth for the herring fishery. He had died in 1789,
or thereabouts, from the results of an accident while riding homewards
to his family after one of his voyages, and his widow maintained herself
in comfort by keeping the old King's Head Inn at Croydon Market-place.
Of her two daughters the younger married another Mr. Richardson, a baker
at Croydon, so that, by an odd coincidence, there were two families of
Richardsons, unconnected with one another except through their
relationship to the Ruskins.
Margaret, the elder daughter, who came to keep house for her uncle in
Edinburgh, was then nearly twenty years of age. She had been the model
pupil at her Croydon day-school; tall and handsome, pious and practical,
she was just the girl to become the confidante and adviser of her
dark-eyed, active, and romantic young cousin.
Some time before the beginning of 1807, John James, having finished his
education at the High School, went to London, where a place had been
found for him by his uncle's brother-in-law, Mr. MacTaggart. He was
followed by a kind letter from Dr. Thomas Brown, who advised him to keep
up his Latin, and to study political economy, for the Professor looked
upon him as a young man of unusual promise and power. During some two
years, he worked as a clerk in the house of Sir William Gordon, Murphy
and Co., where he made friends, and laid the foundation of his
prosperity; for along with him at the office there was a Mr. Peter
Domecq, owner of the Spanish vineyards of Macharnudo, learning the
commercial part of his business in London, the headquarters of the
sherry trade. He admired his fellow-clerk's capacity so much as to offer
him the London agency of his family business. Mr. MacTaggart found the
capital in consideration of their taking his relative, Mr. Telford, into
the concern. And so they entered into partnership, about 1809, as
Ruskin, Telford and Domecq: Domecq contributing the sherry, Mr. Henry
Telford the capital, and Ruskin the brains.
How he came by his business capacity may be understood--and in some
measure, perhaps, how his son came by his flexible and forcible
style--from a letter of Mrs. Catherine Ruskin, written about this time;
in which, moreover, there are a few details of family circumstances and
character, not without interest. John James Ruskin had been protesting
that he was never going to marry, but meant to devote himself to his
mother; she replied:
"... But my son an old Batchelor--believe me my beloved Child I
feel the full force and value of that affection that could prompt
to such a plan--dear as your society is to me it would then become
the misery of my existence--could I see my Child so formed for
domestick happiness deprived of every blessing on my account. No my
Dr John I do not know a more unhappy being than an old Batchelor
... may God preserve my Child from realizing the dreary picture--as
soon as you can keep a Wife you must Marry with all possible
speed--that is as soon as you find a very Amiable woman. She must
be a good daughter and fond of Domestick life--and pious, without
ostentation, for remember no Woman without the fear of God, can
either make a good Wife or a good Mother--freethinking Men are
shocking to nature, but from an Infidel Woman Good Lord deliver us.
I have thought more of it than you have done--for I have two or
three presents carefully [laid] by for her, and I have also been so
foresightly as to purchase two Dutch toys for your Children in case
you might marry before we had free intercourse with that
country.... Who can say what I can say 'here is my Son--a hansome
accomplished young man of three and twenty--he will not Marry that
he may take care of his Mother--here is my Dr Margaret, hansome,
Amiable and good and she would not leave her _Ant_ (I mean Aunt)
for any Man on Earth.' Ah My Dear and valuable children, dear is
your affection to my heart, but I will never make so base a use of
it. I entreat my Dr John that you will not give yourself one
moment's uneasiness about me--I will at all events have L86 a year
for life that your Father cannot deprive me of, and tho' I could
not live very splendidly in a Town on this, yet with a neat little
House and Garden in the country, it would afford all the means of
life in fullness to Meggy myself and our servant. You forget, my Dr
how much a woman can do without in domestick affairs to save
Money--a Woman that has any management at all can live with more
comfort on L50 a year than a Man could do on two hundred. There was
a year of my life that I maintained myself and two children on
twenty pound, the bread too was 1/2 the loave that year: we did not
indeed live very sumptuously nor shall I say our strength improved
much but I did not contract one farthing of debt and that to me
supplyed the want of luxuries. Now my Dr John let me never hear a
fear expressed on my account; there is no fear of me; make yourself
happy and all will be well, and for God sake my beloved Boy take
care of your health, take a good drink of porter to dinner and
supper and a little Wine now and then, and tell me particularly
about yr new Lodgings," etc.
He returned home to Edinburgh on a visit and arranged a marriage with
his cousin Margaret, if she would wait for him until he was safely
established; and then he set to work at the responsibilities of creating
a new business. It was a severer task than he had anticipated, for his
father's brain and business, as the above letter hints, had both gone
wrong; he left Edinburgh and settled at Bower's Well, Perth, ended
tragically, and left a load of debt behind him, which the son, sensitive
to the family honour, undertook to pay before laying by a penny for
himself. It took nine years of assiduous labour and economy. He worked
the business entirely by himself. The various departments that most men
entrust to others he filled in person. He managed the correspondence,
he travelled for orders, he arranged the importation, he directed the
growers out in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off
his father's creditors, and secured his own competence.
This was not done without sacrifice of health, which he never recovered,
nor without forming habits of over-anxiety and toilsome minuteness which
lasted his life long. But his business cares were relieved by cultured
tastes. He loved art, painted in water-colours in the old style, and
knew a good picture when he saw it. He loved literature, and read aloud
finely all the old standard authors, though he was not too old-fashioned
to admire "Pickwick" and the "Noctes Ambrosianae" when they appeared. He
loved the scenery and architecture among which he had travelled in
Scotland and Spain; but he could find interest in almost any place and
any subject; an alert man, in whom practical judgment was joined to a
romantic temperament, strong feelings and opinions to extended
sympathies. His letters, of which there are many preserved, bear witness
to his character, taste, and intellect, curiously anticipating, on some
points, those of his son. His portraits give the idea of an expressive
face, sensitive, refined, every feature a gentleman's.
So, after those nine years of work and waiting, he went to Perth to
claim his cousin's hand. She was for further delay; but with the
minister's help he persuaded her one evening into a prompt marriage in
the Scotch fashion, drove off with her next morning to Edinburgh, and on
to the home he had prepared in London at 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick
Square (February 27, 1818).
The heroine of this little drama was no ordinary bride. At Edinburgh she
had found herself, though well brought up for Croydon, inferior to the
society of the Modern Athens. As the affianced of a man of ability, she
felt it her duty to make herself his match in mental culture, as she was
already in her own department of practical matters. Under Dr. Brown's
direction, and stimulated by his notice, she soon became--not a
blue-stocking--but well-read, well-informed above the average. She was
one of those persons who set themselves a very high standard, and
resolve to drag both themselves and their neighbours up to it. But, as
the process is difficult, so it is disappointing. People became rather
shy of Mrs. Ruskin, and she of them, so that her life was solitary and
her household quiet. It was not merely from narrow Puritanism that she
made so few friends; her morality and her piety, strict as they were
within their own lines, permitted her most of the enjoyments and
amusements of life; still less was there any cynicism or misanthropy.
But she devoted herself to her husband and son. She was too proud to
court those above her in worldly rank, and she was not easily approached
except by people fully equal to her in strength of character, of whom
there could never be many. The few who made their way to her friendship
found her a true and valuable friend.
CHAPTER II
THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819-1825)
Into this family John Ruskin was born on February 8, 1819, at half-past
seven in the morning. He was baptised on the twentieth by the Rev. Mr.
Boyd.
The first account of him in writing is in a letter from his mother when
he was six weeks old. She chronicles--not without a touch of
superstition--the breaking of a looking-glass, and continues: "John
grows finely; he is just now on my knees sleeping and looking so
sweetly; I hope I shall not get proud of him." He was a fine healthy
baby, and at four months was "beginning to give more decided proofs that
he knows what he wants, and will have it if crying and passion will get
it." At a year his mother resolves that "this will be cured by a good
whipping when he can understand what it is," and we know that she
carried out her Spartan resolve.
This, and the story in "Arachne," how she let him touch the tea-kettle;
and the reminiscences in "Praeterita" of playthings locked up, and a lone
little boy staring at the water-cart and the pattern on the carpet--all
these give a gloomy impression of his mother, against which we must set
the proofs of affection and kindliness shown in her letters. In these we
can see her anxiously nursing him through childish ailments, taking him
out for his daily walk to Duppas Hill with a captain's biscuit in her
muff, for fear he should be hungry by the way; we hear her teaching him
his first lessons, with astonishment at his wonderful memory, and
glorying with Nurse Anne over his behaviour in church; and all these
things she retails in gossiping letters to her husband, while Mr.
Richard Gray gives two-year-old John "his first lesson on the flute,
both sitting on the drawing-room floor, very deeply engaged." "I am
sure," she says, "there is no other love, no other feeling, like a
mother's towards her first boy when she loves his father;" and her pride
in his looks, and precocity, and docility--"I never met with a child of
his age so sensible to praise or blame"--found a justification in his
passionate devotion to the man who was so dear to them both.
Though he was born in the thick of London, he was not City-bred. His
first three summers were spent in lodgings in Hampstead or Dulwich, then
"the country." So early as his fourth summer he was taken to Scotland by
sea to stay with his aunt Jessie, Mrs. Richardson of Perth. There he
found cousins to play with, especially one, little Jessie, of nearly his
own age; he found a river with deep swirling pools, that impressed him
more than the sea, and he found the mountains. Coming home in the
autumn, he sat for his full-length portrait to James Northcote, R.A.,
and being asked what he would choose for background, he replied, "Blue
hills."
Northcote had painted Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and, as they were fond of
artistic company, remained their friend. A certain friendship too, was
struck up between the old Academician, then in his seventy-seventh year,
the acknowledged cynic and satirist, and the little wise boy who asked
shrewd questions, and could sit still to be painted; who, moreover, had
a face worth painting, not unlike the model from whom Northcote's
master, the great Sir Joshua, had painted his famous cherubs. The
painter asked him to come again, and sit as the hero of a fancy picture,
bought at the Academy by the flattered parents. There is a grove, a
flock of toy sheep, drapery in the grand style, a mahogany Satyr taking
a thorn out of the little pink foot of a conventional nudity--poor
survivals of the Titianesque. But the head is an obvious portrait, and a
happy one; far more like the real boy, so tradition says, than the
generalized chubbiness of the commissioned picture.
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