Ruskin Relics
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Ruskin Relics Author: W. G. Collingwood The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruskin Relics, by W. G. Collingwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Ruskin Relics Author: W. G. Collingwood Illustrator: John Ruskin Various Release Date: July 26, 2014 [EBook #46426] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSKIN RELICS *** Produced by sp1nd, John Campbell, June Troyer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Superscripts are denoted by ^ eg 8^{h.} Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. More detail can be found at the end of the book. RUSKIN RELICS RUSKIN RELICS BY W. G. COLLINGWOOD AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN," ETC. WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN RUSKIN AND OTHERS NEW YORK T. Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS 1904 _Twelve chapters are here reprinted, with some additions, from "Good Words," by the courtesy of the Editor and Publishers. Another, on Ruskin's Drawings, is adapted, by permission, from the author's "Prefatory Notes to the Catalogue of the Ruskin Exhibition at the Gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours" in 1901. The first chapter is newly written for this book._ _W. G. C._ _Coniston, September 1903_ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Ruskin's Chair 1 II. Ruskin's "Jump" 13 III. Ruskin's Gardening 29 IV. Ruskin's Old Road 45 V. Ruskin's "Cashbook" 63 VI. Ruskin's Ilaria 83 VII. Ruskin's Maps 105 VIII. Ruskin's Drawings 119 IX. Ruskin's Hand 133 X. Ruskin's Music 149 XI. Ruskin's Jewels 165 XII. Ruskin's Library 179 XIII. Ruskin's Bibles 193 XIV. Ruskin's "Isola" 213 Index 299 ILLUSTRATIONS _Page_ _Ruskin's Study at Brantwood_ 5 _Brantwood Harbour in the Seventies_ 17 _Coniston Hall and Boathouse_ 18 _Ruskin's "Jump" adrift off Brantwood_ 19 _The Ruskin Museum, Coniston_ 22 _Trial Model for the Jumping Jenny_ 25 _The Waterfall at Brantwood Door_ 33 _Ruskin's Reservoir, Brantwood_ 37 _Ruskin's Moorland Garden_ 41 _On Ruskin's Old Road, between Morez and Les Rousses, 1882_ 53 _Lake of Geneva and Dent d'Oches under the Smoke-cloud_ 57 _The Gorge of Monnetier and Buttresses of the Salève, 1882_ 61 _Mont Blanc clearing; Sallenches, Sept. 1882_ 67 _The Head of the Lake of Annecy_ 71 _The Mont Cenis Tunnel in Snow, Nov. 11, 1882_ 75 _A Savoy Town in Snow, Nov. 1882_ 79 _The Palace of Paolo Guinigi, Lucca_ 87 _Ilaria del Carretto; head of the Effigy_ 91 _Thunderstorm clearing, Lucca_ 95 _The Marble Mountains of Carrara from the Lucca Hills_ 99 _Ruskin's first Map of Italy_ 108 _Geology on the Old Road, by John Ruskin_ 109 _Sketch of Spain, by John Ruskin_ 112 _Physical Sketch of Savoy, by John Ruskin_ 113 _The History of France, by John Ruskin_ 117 _Early Journal at Coniston, by John Ruskin_ 137 _Ruskin's Handwriting in 1836_ 139 _Ruskin's Handwriting in 1837_ 141 _Notes for "Stones of Venice," by John Ruskin_ 143 _Ruskin's Handwriting in 1875_ 145 _Ruskin's Piano in Brantwood Drawing-room_ 153 _John Ruskin in the Seventies, by Prof. B. Creswick_ 157 _At Marmion's Grave; air by John Ruskin_ (_two pages of Music_) 160 _"Trust Thou Thy Love," facsimile of music by John Ruskin_ 163 _Gold as it Grows_ 169 _Native Silver, by John Ruskin_ 170 _Page from an early Mineral Catalogue, by John Ruskin_ 171 _Letter on Snow Crystals, by John Ruskin_ 174 _Diamond Diagrams, by John Ruskin_ 175 _Ruskin's Swiss Figure_ 185 _His "Nuremberg Chronicle" and Pocket "Horace"_ 189 _The Bible from which John Ruskin learnt in Childhood_ 197 _Sermon-book written by Ruskin as a Boy_ 199 _Greek Gospels with Annotations by Ruskin_ 201 _King Hakon's Bible, owned by Ruskin_ 203 _An Illuminated Page of King Hakon's Bible_ 207 _Lady Mount Temple, portrait by Edward Clifford_ 217 _Lady Mount Temple, chalk drawing by G. F. Watts, R.A_ 221 _Lady Mount Temple, 1886_ 223 _Lady Mount Temple, 1889_ 224 I RUSKIN'S CHAIR I RUSKIN'S CHAIR "This is all very well," said a visitor, after looking over the sketches and books of the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, "but what the public would prefer is to see the chair he sat in." Something tangible, that brings before us the person, rather than his work, is what we all like; for though successful workers are continually asking us to judge them by what they have done, we know there is more. We want to see their portraits; their faces will tell us--better than their books--whether we can trust them. We want to know their lives by signs and tokens unconsciously left, before we fall down and worship them for what, after all, may be only a lucky accident of success. They cry out indignantly that this should not be; but so it is. Relics of heroes even the ancient Romans treasured. Relics of saints our forefathers would fight for and die for. Relics of those who in modern times have made our lives better and brighter we need not be ashamed of preserving. And among relics I count all the little incidents, the by-play of life, the anecdotes which betray character, so long as they are truly told and "lovingly," as George Richmond said about his portrait of Ruskin. "Have not you flattered him?" asked the severe parents. "No; it is only the truth lovingly told." In his study you see two chairs; one, half-drawn from the table, with pen and ink laid out before it, where he used to sit at his writing; the light from the bay window coming broadly in at his left hand, and the hills, when he lifted his eyes, for his help. The other, by the fireside, was the arm chair into which he migrated for those last ten years of patience, no longer with his own books but others' books before him. Then, turning to the chapter on his Music, you can see the chair by the drawing-room table, in which, making a pulpit of it, he preached his baby sermon--"People, be dood!" [Illustration: (_Miss Brickhill, photographer_) RUSKIN'S STUDY AT BRANTWOOD] But it is about another kind of chair that I have more to say in this first chapter, if you will forgive the pun; the metaphorical chair which professors are supposed to fill at the University. Ruskin's was nominally that of Fine Art, but he was really a sort of teaching Teufelsdröckh, Professor of Things in General. His chair stood on four legs, or even more, like some antique settles of carved oak; very unlike the Swiss milking-stool of the modern specialist. Not that it stood more firmly; good business-folk, whose sons fell under his influence, and dons with an eye to college successes in the schools, thought his teaching deplorable; and from their point of view much was to be said. It cannot be denied, also, that like the born teacher he was, he sometimes tried to make silk purses out of sows' ears. He taught none of us to paint saleable pictures nor to write popular books. A pupil once asked him outright to do so. "I hope you're not serious," he replied. To learn the artist's trade he definitely advised going to the Royal Academy schools; his drawing school at Oxford was meant for an almost opposite purpose--to show the average amateur that really Fine Art is a worshipful thing, far beyond him; to be appreciated (and that alone is worth while) after a course of training, but never to be attained unless by birth-gift. At the start this school, provided by the Professor at his own cost of time, trouble and money, was well attended; in the second year there were rarely more than three pupils. It was in 1872 that I joined it, having seen him before, introduced by Mr. Alfred W. Hunt, R.W.S., the landscape painter. Ruskin asked to see what I had been doing, and I showed him a niggled and panoramic bit of lake-scenery. "Yes, you have been looking at Hunt and Inchbold." I hoped I had been looking at Nature. "You must learn to draw." Dear me! thought I, and I have been exhibiting landscapes. "And you try to put in more than you can manage." Well, I supposed he would have given me a good word for that! So he set me to facsimile what seemed like a tangle of scrabbles in charcoal, and I bungled it. Whereupon I had to do it again, and was a most miserable undergraduate. But the nice thing about him was that he did not say, "Go away; you are no good"; but set me something drier and harder still. I had not the least idea what it was all coming to; though there was the satisfaction of looking through the sliding cases between whiles at "Liber Studiorum" plates--rather ugly, some of them, I whispered to myself--and little scraps of Holbein and Burne-Jones, quite delicious, for I had the pre-Raphaelite measles badly just then, in reaction from the water-colour landscape in which I had been brought up.