www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk ISSN 2053-8715 (print) ISSN 2053-8839 (online)
The Guild of St George The Companion No. 15 (2015)
Number 14 (2014)
(Above) St George’s Farm, Ruskinland, Bewdley. (Below) Three Guild Masters: Jim Dearden, Clive Wilmer and Julian Spalding at the Companions’ Weekend, Bewdley Museum. (Right) Ruskin Bread from Gerry’s Bakery, Walkley, celebrating RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD.
INSIDE LOST COMPANIONS & THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GUILD … WHITELANDS RUSKIN LECTURE & MAY FESTIVAL … EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM … A STUDENT VISIT TO RUSKINLAND … THE JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE … WEALTHY WEEKEND … 42ND STREET … THE RUSKIN LECTURE … VENICE COLLOQUY & TOUR … AMERICAN NOTES … ROYCROFT CONFERENCE … PLATO’S LAWS … RUSKIN, NORTON & TURNER … GUILD MEMORIES … HOSPITAL ARCHITECTURE … FLORENTINE BINDINGS … TOTLEY … RUSKIN IN TRANSLATION … THE CRESWICK LINK … RUSKIN SIGHTINGS … NEWS … BOOK & FILM REVIEWS … AND RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD.
THE MANY FACES OF JOHN R USKIN
This edition of the magazine is, as I am sure difficulty of how to answer the thorny you. agree, another cornucopia, thanks to the questions that Ruskin’s life. continues to not present variety of reports, features, reviews and pose. Nobody should deny the existence of on that other contributions provided by Companions what a friend recently called Ruskin’s occasion. and friends of the Guild. It is also late, so I ‘sharp edges’, but I think Companions The trust that it is a gift worth waiting for. agree that it is Ruskin’s ideas, rather than Guild’s
EDITORIAL I shall be sparing with my editorial his (lack of) love life, that are really tentacles are comments because you already hear enough interesting. That’s why I recently enjoyed reaching out from me. Thanks to the apparently ever- so much two lectures given by everywhere. growing number of Ruskin-related events, Companions, both very different but When the publications, items of news and so on, I am stimulating occasions. Marcus Waithe RUSKIN in never short of things to communicate with gripped an audience of about eighty SHEFFIELD you about in my capacity project was as Secretary of the Guild. I launched on Ruskin have very much 1st February, in Russia: Tatiana Nikitina’s Unfamiliar Ruskin (2014). appreciated the feedback I we were have received from so delighted to be joined by Chiaki Yokoyama, many of you in response one of our three Japanese Companions. Our to my frequent if irregular Russian Companion at Yasnaya Polyana, e-mail ‘newsletters’: Tatiana Nikitina, has recently written a book thank you. whose title in translation is Unfamiliar Ruskin, Last summer, not long introducing the sage who helped to inspire before the referendum, I Tolstoy to a modern Russian readership. It was in Scotland, and I includes a chapter on the Guild. Our Master, joined the audience at the Clive Wilmer, has recently been living and Edinburgh Fringe to watch teaching in Venice, strengthening existing Paul O’Keeffe re-enact, in connections and making new ones between full costume, one of Dr Marcus Waithe explores the history of St George’s Museum the Guild and Ruskin’s ‘Paradise of cities’. Ruskin’s lectures to an enthusiastic audience at Walkley Community Centre You still won’t believe me when I insist that originally given in that in February 2015. he really did turn 70 in February and I know impressive city. O’Keeffe’s memorable residents in Walkley, talking about Ruskin, he was grateful to the many well-wishers performance, which successfully captured St George’s Museum and the Guild in who got in touch to congratulate him from many of the mannerisms reported in Sheffield. His was one of the best public among the Companionship. journalistic accounts of Ruskin’s lectures, lectures on Ruskin I have heard. And The Companion, and the Guild, reflect the reinforced my belief that it often isn’t Cynthia Gamble engaged with an audience strength, diversity, vitality and enthusiasm of enough simply to read Ruskin. The lectures of Oxford medievalists at University those who contribute to its success. This is were, after all, performed, and to College to talk about Ruskin and Proust. our magazine, and our organisation, and I experience them is to feel anew the depth of They both demonstrated, like O’Keeffe, hope and believe that we all continue to look Ruskin’s insights. As Ruskin poked fun at his how far audiences are still stimulated by forward to working together to pursue the audiences, and often—deliberately—made Ruskin’s ideas in the 21st century. I know fruitful journey which Ruskin has set us on. them laugh, he challenged assumptions that that another example of this was Sara Stuart Eagles were not only deeply ingrained in the 19th Atwood’s talk last October at the Ruskin century, but which, despite his enormous Studio on Ruskinland, though sadly I was eloquence and influence, still persist in certain quarters to this day. I left the lecture theatre seeing the buildings around me through Ruskin’s eyes. If only recent film portrayals of Ruskin had achieved anything like such an effect. You’ll read a review of both Effie Gray and Mr Turner elsewhere in this issue (see pp. 30-31), but O’Keeffe got me thinking about other Ruskin in the thea- portrayals of Ruskin, too. Tom Hollander tre and on TV: Tom most recently brought Ruskin to us on the Hollander (above), small screen, in the series I like to call Carry Prof Bernard Rich- On Desperate Romantics in 2009. But who saw ards (near right) Ruskin’s take on contemporary news stories and Paul O’Keeffe in the same year, when he appeared on More4 (right-most). News courtesy of Companion, Prof. Bernard O’Keeffe reprised Richards? If only Richards or O’Keeffe had his role at this year’s Edinburgh been asked to reprise their roles by the Fringe. movie-makers, we surely wouldn’t have suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous cinematic fortune. Many of us have wrestled with the 2
A LETTER FROM THE MASTER OF THE GUILD Dear Companions with Titians and Carpaccios in the Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great painting The As I’m sure you’ll agree, the Master of background. She and Paul, who wrote the Allegory of Good Government at Siena— the Guild should be stable and trustworthy. very scholarly introduction, answered something more strongly felt in Italy than Alas, I’ve been something of a vagrant questions. There were speeches from a I’d judge it to be in England. Venice, he says Master recently—living in Venice for five number of scholars including Jeanne and in his new book, is dying. The evidence is in months, delighting in almost everything Donata Levi, and Paul took us to see some the population statistics—175,000 in 1951 that offered itself to my senses, and of those ‘principal pictures’. The great and to 58,000 now—and in the uncritical depending on Stuart Eagles and my fellow the good of Venice turned out in force. toleration of mass tourism at the expense of MASTER THE Directors to keep the Guild afloat. I did A few days later I went to another launch the interests of ordinary citizens. Venice have an excuse, however. Venice is so at which Ruskin (unsurprisingly) wasn’t will also die by drowning if something is not central to our first Master’s thinking that it named. But my goodness, he was present done soon to prevent the lagoon from
(Right and centre,) In March, architecture students (Below) The Master at 70. In Venice with his from Sheffield University, led by Carolyn partner, Patricia Fara. February Butterworth, toured Venice 2015. with the Master.
Photo: Gabriel Wilmer Photo: Carolyn Butterworth
constantly inspired me and the Guild was never far from my flooding it periodically, and thoughts. I was there to teach Photo: Carolyn Butterworth MOSE, the new system of Victorian literature (including flood barriers, which would Ruskin, of course) in the be coming into effect just language department at Ca’ Foscari in spirit! The book in question was Se now if it were not for another of Italy’s University, and our Companions there— Venezia muore (‘If Venice dies’) by Salvatore massive corruption scandals, is already out we have two, Jeanne Clegg and Emma Settis, who has made something of a mark of date and anyway likely to endanger the Sdegno, with Paul Tucker an occasional in Italy’s recent life. He is a distinguished ecology of the lagoon in the process of visitor from Florence—are keen to make art historian and archaeologist, the author saving the city. Yet the triumph of Ruskin a presence in the University and in in particular of a book on Giorgione, and Venice—what makes it for many of us the the city itself. he retired in 2010 as Director of the Scuola most beautiful city in Europe and a source And he has begun to be just that. Emma Normale Superiore in Pisa. Now in his of constant pleasure when you live there— has long argued that there should be at least early seventies, he has become the focus is the practical harmony its people have one Ruskinian event a year at the University for a major challenge to the orthodoxies of achieved between city and nature, nature in and, if I may describe myself as an event, I modern politics. He is a conservationist, this case being the possibly threatening sea. suppose my term there was this year’s who speaks up for the necessity of art for The loss of Venice, Settis argues, would be offering. But there have been other civilised democratic life, beauty and the the loss of any hopes we have for that form happenings too. On 4th March, Emma’s national patrimonio—what we, less happily, of civilisation and that kind of relationship. new Italian translation of Ruskin’s Guide to call ‘heritage’. He is especially concerned He says these things in the most magnificent the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts with the traditional bond between the prose, trenchant, lyrical and lucid, and to at Venice was launched in that very gallery urban and the rural, as ideally depicted in hear him speak is to know that one is in the 3
presence of a major modern prophet. Ruskin restoring his severely damaged gravestone. he’ll be taking over as manager of the Wyre came immediately to mind and I understand These acts of tribute and acknowledgement Community Land Trust. Much more is being that Ruskin is one of the writers he has were associated with a traditional ceremony contemplated. Expect news of it later in the absorbed. called a ‘well dressing’, which was conducted year. A third big Ruskin event was, as you by the Revd. Melanie Fitzgerald, the vicar of There is much else I could talk about—the know, our Guild meeting and tour there at the local parish church, and they provided the Guild is in a very active period just now— the end of March. When I knew I’d be going focus of this year’s Companions’ Day. (A full but I mustn’t hog your attention and I want to Venice, I somewhat rashly decided that, if report of this inspiring event will appear in to communicate some words of thanks. We Directors took responsibility for some of next year’s issue.) Special thanks are due to said goodbye last November to two of our their own expenses, we could afford to hold Richard Watts, the stone cutter we most committed labourers in the vineyard: a Board meeting in the city. But I also felt I commissioned, who has now become a Jim Dearden and Cedric Quayle, one an could only justify this if it was part of our Companion, and to Companions Marcus important former Master, the other an purpose to build on our Venetian links, add Waithe and Mark Frost, who wrote the texts exceptional Secretary. Much has been said to Directors’ knowledge of the city and offer for the stones, as well as providing the key about them in the last few months and more support and friendship to those of like mind lectures that have got the project launched in will be said before the year is through. Just in the Venetian community. So I proposed the spirit of Ruskin. for now I’d like to thank them for loyal and that we set up a public conversation—we Much else goes on in Sheffield still. Please creative service. I’d also like to thank my called it a ‘colloquy’—between the Guild remember to check the website. Apart from fellow Directors for the hard work they have and the most famous of the charitable the project itself, there was also Louise put in this past year, and I’d especially like to confraternities that played so vital a part in Pullen’s exhibition of bird prints and single out our Secretary Stuart Eagles, editor the history of the Republic. The so-called watercolours recently—The Illustrated and designer of this publication, for the scuole were among the models Ruskin had in Aviary—which mainly drew on the Ruskin depth of his commitment to the Guild and mind when he founded the Guild, above all Collection and deservedly received high the back-breaking hours he works for small the Scuola Grande di San Rocco where in praise. On 19th January 2016, the third of recompense. This year, however, I want 1845 he discovered the work of Jacopo our Triennial exhibitions will open, this time most of all to thank a significant number of Tintoretto—or ‘Tintoret’ as he always called on the theme of Craftsmanship. Last year’s my present readers, who have responded him. On 27th March we met the Guardian John Ruskin Prize exhibition, run by the generously to my plea to renew the habit of Grando (Grand Master) of the Scuola and his Campaign for Drawing and financed by the donation. Three years ago, the figure on our fellow trustees and the discussion between us Guild, was held in Sheffield at the Millennium accounts under the heading ‘Donations’ was was open to the public. The following day Gallery (see pp. 19-23). The theme was simply Nil. This year, as you’ll see at the we held a Directors’ meeting, and on Sunday Recording Britain Now and focused on AGM, the same space includes a substantial 29th March, the Directors, several other landscape and urban spaces. This year it will figure, which is really beginning to make a Companions and friends visited some of the be Recording Britain Now for a second time but difference. Several Companions have taken Venetian sites that Ruskin wrote about. (You with a focus on people rather than place. The out Standing Orders and Gift-aided their can read a full report on pp. 28-29.) show will be held in Walsall and then donations. This is especially helpful, of Meanwhile, elsewhere, events proceed London. course, because it enables us to plan things in apace. Under Ruth Nutter’s skilled and Things are also developing fast in the Wyre advance, and I hope others of your number passionate guidance, the RUSKIN in Forest. As you know, our long-standing will think of doing it. I would like at some SHEFFIELD project has taken off with élan. tenant at St George’s Farm, Jack Bishop, died time in the near future to hypothecate You will be reading more of that in this issue some eighteen months ago and the Board has donations and, with predictable funding, that and the next, so I won’t go into detail here, ambitious plans to develop our land and will be easier to achieve. But in any case, the but let me say something of our Guild event properties there. These will probably involve expansion of our work has recently involved in the summer. On 27th June, we unveiled a the setting up of a saw-mill there and the a (manageable) deficit, and these donations plaque on Ruskin House in Walkley, the development of former farm buildings to will do more than help with that. I am most building which originally housed St George’s provide housing for workers important to the grateful to you. If I don’t see you Museum. We then proceeded to the very Wyre projects and possibly craftsmen’s beforehand, I hope to catch up with you at picturesque Walkley Cemetery to unveil a workshops. Companion Tim Selman is the AGM on 7th November. similar plaque on the grave of Henry Swan, moving his main office into St George’s Farm All good wishes for now, the Museum’s first curator. It should be and when his work with the Wyre Forest Clive Wilmer added that the Guild was also responsible for Landscape Partnership ends in December,
COMPANION FOUND
Companion Dr Mark Frost is adept at locating the final resting places of early Companions. Together with his father, he was responsible for drawing to the Guild’s attention the whereabouts and neglected state of Henry Swan’s grave in Walkley Cemetery. We have now been able to repair that grave, and we have added to it a commemorative plaque, as part of the RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD project. The Frosts have also located the grave of ‘lost’ Companion, William Buchan Graham, in the churchyard of St Leonard’s Church, Ribbesford, Bewdley (right). The photos of Graham’s grave ( left and far right) are his.
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‘Impossible hopes’? Mark Frost’s The Lost Companions and Ruskin’s Guild of St George: A Revisionary History. London: Anthem Press, 2014. XIV+250pp.10 b/w illus. £60. ‘Anyone reading through the letters I had from Ruskin may wonder seeing the trust he put in me, how it was that I somehow ceased to be entirely under his influence, and may feel that I rather deserted him.’ —Robert Somervell, For Thirty-Three Years Assistant Master and Bursar of Harrow School: Chapters of Autobiography, ‘edited with additional material by his sons’ (London: Faber and Faber, undated) p. 59. So wrote one of the Guild’s most interesting moment that led Frost to seek out and to expenditures’ (Works early Companions Servant, Robert Somervell find several more hugely revealing 28.659. See also
(1851-1933), the son of the founder of K sources, including letters at the 29.27 and 29.47). ESSAY REVIEW Shoes, who is remembered now by Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia, and a These working men Ruskinians principally for his campaign to Guy family history published in New might well have resist the extension of the railways in the Zealand. Piecing together fragments of an nodded with a Lake District. He seems to have been the unfamiliar story is an art that Frost has vigour enhanced by Guild’s first Secretary, in all but name. I mastered here with considerable skill and bitterness as they offer extracts from the account given by this elegance, and whilst the picture he paints felt the significant Guild administrator of his of Ruskin and his closest allies—in consequences of a experiences in the 1870s, as a useful particular an insensitive George Baker and Master quitting complement to Mark Frost’s revisionary an often bibulous David Downs—is himself of history of the Guild, which draws on anything but flattering, it is vitally responsibility in evidence from Companions Militant who important that we do not avert our gaze other areas, too. Even in the matter of laboured on the land in an attempt to make a from what he shows us. expenditure, Ruskin was neglectful, Frost working reality of Ruskin’s utopian ideals. Somervell sat with a pen in his hand, reveals, leaving his working Guildsmen Though Somervell’s reminiscences were whereas Frost’s ‘lost’ Companions stood under-paid, if paid at all, and often paid late published, they seem to have been with spades in theirs. But the work of even then. overlooked by scholars, whereas much of Somervell explained how he came slowly the material Frost has unearthed was not to withdraw from the Guild and to grow even known about before now, at least not apart from the Master: by anyone still living. William Buchan The change came gradually. I could Graham (see grave, opposite), it turns out, not of course have really taken up stoically undertook back-breaking work in the work that was involved if his St. the Wyre Forest, doing much almost alone George scheme were to be realised, to establish the Guild’s footprint near and I came more and more to feel Bewdley. The tragic John Guy and his that at his age he never could realise beleaguered family led an unimaginably it. After his first serious illness—in tough life in Cloughton, Yorkshire. William 1880—this was certain, and I felt I Harrison Riley presided at Totley over a was not justified in seeing him or chaos that was not of his making but for writing to him, as I should only stir which he would ultimately be blamed. And up impossible hopes, while his great then there is the quite special case of James need was quiet and peace, and such Burdon, on which I shall dwell later. writing as he could do without For them, Somervell’s plea might be strain. I shall never cease to be reversed, for on the whole they felt that as grateful for all I learnt from him, and disciples who volunteered themselves to I should not like it to be felt, that I Ruskin’s cause, they had put trust in him, and Robert Somervell in 1882. had deserted him. In all our it was they who felt abandoned. All of them, intercourse he was ever the most however, share a sense of Ruskin’s waning Companions Servant and Companions Militant modest, gentle, and charming man I influence upon them. Assuming that most of was not unconnected. ‘I was able to give have ever known. you reading the present article have already [Ruskin] some little help in the business of —Somervell, op. cit., pp. 58-59. read Frost’s excellent book—and, if not, founding his “Guild of St George,”’ Frost shows in painful detail that Ruskin’s why not, for you should certainly read it Somervell wrote (p. 57). ‘It was curious conduct was anything but exemplary when it without further delay! –- I will attempt to and interesting to go with him and confer came to his working-class followers, but present here not so much a review as a with a Chancery barrister, [the Somervell’s evidence supports a long-held response, one that goes back to (at least conveyancer] Mr [William] Barber, Q.C., view among Ruskin scholars that what really some) original sources in an attempt to a very delightful man, just out of Court, undermined the Guild in those early years appreciate more fully both the work Frost and regaling himself with tea and a bun, was that no sooner had Ruskin set it up than has done to recuperate the early history of while we “conferred.”’ In Letter 67 of he became too ill to run it. Frost argues the Guild, and to suggest further work that Fors (July 1876), Ruskin announced that convincingly that this is only part of a more might yet be done. Somervell was in charge of co-ordinating complex story. For Frost, what is crucial is The book is the result of scholarly legal matters ‘regarding the tenure of the the tension in Ruskin’s philosophy between serendipity turned into academic treasure by Company’s land and property, now and his commitment to educate the working man diligent research. Frost’s journey began with in future. And I hold myself quit of all and his simultaneous denial of the inevitable the chance discovery (at Wellesley College, responsibility touching such tenure, consequences of it—the workers’ rising Massachusetts) of uncatalogued testimony maintaining simply the right of the Master sense of ambition and desire to improve their written by Graham. It was a ‘Eureka!’ to direct their current social status. For him, it explains much of 5
Ruskin’s apparently contradictory and Graham’s many reasonable but ultimately impressive scene if one dramatised the insensitive behaviour towards those fruitless appeals to Ruskin for attempted forgery. Who would play William enthusiastic disciples of his trying to lead compassionate understanding, will find it Walker, the cashier at the Chancery Lane lives on the land. impossible not to sympathise with his branch of the Union Bank where the cheques Frost’s account of Ruskin’s early schemes frustration and to feel the injustices he were feloniously uttered? And who could take and social interventions are the best suffered. Only Burdon strikes me as truly on the role of John Nolleth, the policeman summaries available: of the street-sweeping, difficult to like among this company. Only who apprehended James Burdon—characters the tea shop, the Hinksey road-digging, and he sought redress by direct and illegal named in the court record! Margaret's Well in Carshalton. And there means, and his case is worth turning to for Frost is right that Burdon’s account had are, besides the ‘lost’ Companions on whom reasons other than its exceptional nature. fallen into obscurity (he cites one instance of Frost concentrates, others who emerge Burdon’s trial for forging cheques in its only half-acknowledged use by a scholar), from this history whom we should also have Ruskin’s name took place at the Central but it might be added that at least one other known more about before now, some Criminal Court on 31st March 1879 person was aware of it. Quentin Bell gave a women key among them, including Isabella (Frost’s record can be found on pp. 188- lecture on Ruskin and Burdon at Abbot Hall, Tylor, Susan Miller and most notably, Emily 189 of his book). ‘The Burdon trial cast a based on Burdon’s Reminiscences, oddly enough Swan, ‘curatress’ at Walkley. long shadow…’ Frost writes: ‘[it] in support of the Ruskin Appeal Fund to save Somervell’s part in the Guild, I would permanently darkened [Ruskin’s] attitude Brantwood! We might be glad that it was argue, also deserves further attention and to Companions Militant, any of whom, he sparsely attended (the unlikely source is Joe reassessment. His sons (who together felt, might at any moment lead him into Boden, Bird’s Custard Island: A Culinary Memoir unusually adopted the first person singular!) further calamity’ (p. 189). As such, it was a (Xlibris Corp, 2007) (not paginated) though it noted that, ‘It looks as if, were it not for hugely significant episode that might is also referred to in Lucia Adams, Memoria Ruskin’s breakdown, my father would have explain, though never excuse, much of Academia 1960-1976 (Author House, 2014) p. become deeply involved in these Ruskin’s subsequent high-handedness. 190.)! undertakings. His loyalty to Ruskin and his Turning to the Proceedings of the Old Bailey Even Frost’s hugely illuminating account of keen sense of the dividing line between the (ref. t18790331-379 on Ruskin’s relationship with the Swans, which possible and the impossible might have
A letter in the Archives of the Society of Friends from Henry Swan’s son, Howard, regarding the death of his brother, Leonard, on Museum notepaper. 6
MARK HARVEY: SOME GUILD MEMORIES1 I became a Companion of the Guild in This proposal both shocked and alerted repair, or conservation. The advice of a then 1947—quite some time ago now! Memory the Guild. Alexander Farquharson made highly thought-of conservator—John is an odd thing; it seems to become, with several approaches—to Edinburgh, to Brierley— was sought, and eventually the FEATURE increasing age, increasingly selective—hence Brantwood itself, and to Reading. This last work was entrusted to him. so many gaps.2 because Professor Hodges of Reading The work took much longer than When I became a Companion, the Guild University had delivered a very well- expected, and the eventual cost far exceeded had several properties but little or no money received lecture on ‘Ruskin and Nature’ at Brierley’s original estimate. Eventually, after with which to maintain them. Of particular the Graves Gallery, which had organised a much heated debate between Guild concern were our properties at representatives and Sheffield, it was Barmouth—several dilapidated cottages decided that the only way to settle the in urgent need of attention, all let at Mark Harvey at the last Board meeting at the Ruskin debt was to sell the picture. peppercorn rents. The Westmill Gallery, Norfolk Street, Sheffield, 16th June 2000. The Guild was determined that the properties were in better condition, but picture should be sold to a public again the rents barely covered the cost gallery, and this is how it ended up in of upkeep. For many years—as I the National Gallery of Scotland in remember—the Guild’s properties Edinburgh.10 were the chief topic of discussion at This bizarre event did, however, Annual General Meetings, with no result in the Guild finding itself in mention of The Collection. possession of very considerable funds, Meetings were often held at station enabling it to finance a wide variety of hotels, such as The Paddington Hotel. schemes. Sometimes there might be as few as five From that time on, there was a real or six present, The Master, T. Edmund change in the Guild. Up to then, its Harvey (at that time MP for Joint activities had been limited to the Universities, a seat long ago upkeep of properties donated to it, the discontinued), his wife,3 myself, perhaps May Queen presentations,11 a nominal two or three of the faithful, and the contribution to the CPRE, and the truly valiant Secretary Bernard Wardle, annual essay prize open to Ruskin who on at least one occasion provided College students. Now there could be supper at his home in Vanbrugh Fields. Craft Awards, grants to the [Henry] It is fair to say that it was his selfless Doubleday Research Association [now service—and I suspect considerable Garden Organic], scholarships for financial assistance—that kept the Guild painters and art teachers, grants to going at that time.4 establishments providing country One most vivid recollection. The holidays for town children, grants to Master, T. E. Harvey, and Alexander City Farms. A wide variety, hopefully Farquharson—at that time Principal of reflecting in some way the breadth of the Institute of Sociology, and later to Ruskin’s interests and sympathies. become Master himself—seen from A major event was the return of the behind. These two elderly gentlemen Collection to Sheffield. For some side-by-side, two Cheeryble brothers in small exhibition of items from the Guild’s time, the Guild grew increasingly concerned both looks and benevolence, visiting the Collection to go with the lecture. about Reading’s inability both to house the Westmill tenants.5 At the time, the case for Reading seemed Collection appropriately and to ensure easy Neither of these old gentlemen was in strong. There was a well-established Art access for the general public. There had been good health. In 1949, T. E. Harvey School, with a very sympathetic head— talk of custom-built accommodation, but resigned, and after several approaches to Professor Betts—and it was a University this came to nothing. Eventually, there was Oxford and Cambridge academics, the eager to make use of the Collection for its something of a show-down and this resulted ‘Special Committee on Mastership’ academic studies. There was a keen interest in the return of the Collection to Sheffield. recommended that Alexander Farquharson in the purpose, form, and function of With the housing of the Collection in be asked to undertake the Mastership. This museums as evinced by the University’s premises provided by Sheffield—a restored Committee also suggested that a Deputy recently established Museum of English and re-vamped former off-license in Norfolk Master be appointed, but I do not remember Rural Life. Andrew Jewell, its first curator, Street—things were at last coming together. this coming about. However, a panel of became a Companion in 1976 and served The Collection was back where it truly ‘Master’s Visitors’ was formed, and this the Guild valiantly for 25 years. belonged, and the Guild could feel that it continued to function for some time.6 There were many meetings between the had a base. It had come home.12 Many It was during Alexander Farquharson’s Guild and the University, and with the memorable features were added by the Mastership7 that the whole question of the Mastership being offered to Professor Guild—stairs and stair-rails, the mezzanine right housing of the Collection arose. The Hodges,8 the future of the Collection floor balustrade and window bars were Museum at Meersbrook was found by seemed assured. commissioned from the smith, Giuseppe Sheffield to be in need of more repairing My next recollections are to do with Lund, who was later to make the Queen than they felt able to undertake. They meetings held in Professor Hodges’ book- Elizabeth Gates in Green Park. Some of the suggested that the Collection be put into lined sitting-room. A major problem arose window bars now supplement the planting store, with the possibility of some items when we were informed that the Guild’s in the Sheffield Winter Garden. The master being exhibited from time-to-time in the ‘Ruskin Madonna’9—perhaps the jewel of letter-cutter, David Kindersley, was Graves and Mappin Galleries. the Collection—was in urgent need of commissioned to design and cut a large name 7
specifically for 1950-51. The scripts are still in the Guild’s archives. 6. Mark went to visit the Guild’s field at Sheepscombe, as ‘The Master’s Assistant’ in about 1946. 7. Master, 1951-1954 8. Master, 1954-1973 9. The painting, The Madonna and Child, now known as The Ruskin Madonna, was acquired for the Guild’s Collection by Ruskin. Charles Fairfax Murray, acting on Ruskin’s behalf, bought the painting from the Venetian Manfrini Collection in 1877 for £100. It is the work of Andrea del Verrocchio, the Master of Leonardo da Vinci. Some are of the opinion that Leonardo himself may have helped with the painting. 10. The Guild subsequently Jim Dearden and Mark Harvey at the last Board meeting at commissioned Philippa Abrahams the Ruskin Gallery, Norfolk Street, Sheffield, 16th June 2000. to paint a copy of the picture, using only the pigments available to Verrocchio. This copy, now in tablet in green Cumberland slate to stand at 4. Mark recollected travelling to Bewdley the Ruskin Collection, shows what The the entrance to the new gallery. He also cut to meet Ruskin Williams, then the tenant Ruskin Madonna would have looked like when a smaller tablet installed inside the new of St George’s Bungalow in Ruskin Land. it left Verrocchio’s studio. gallery to commemorate its official opening 5. It was on this occasion that Mark first 11. A May Queen Ceremony was instituted in 1985 by Lord Strabolgi. met Admiral Kyrle Pope at Westmill, a at Whitelands College by Ruskin, who Edited by Jannes S. Dearden man who, until the 1990s, was a great annually gave copies of his books for the May and Cedric Quayle influence on life in that village, being Queen and her attendants. After Ruskin’s Chairman of the Greg Trust, the other death, the Guild continued the custom, but NOTES Trust holding property there. for some reason it lapsed. The custom was 1. Mark recorded his memories of the Guild Mark’s early Guild memories included revived in 1979. at the suggestion of Cedric Quayle, but he the Ruskin College essays—on a set 12. Mark’s manuscript ends at this point. did not want them published during his subject—which he and another Companion From here, the additions are as the editors lifetime. His wife, Jo, has now suggested would need to read in order to select the think he would have continued. that they should be published. Some prize winner. Mark remembered it being additional material, included here as ‘quite a wadge’ of papers, especially some endnotes, were added following conversations between Mark and Cedric. 2. Companionship was given to Mark Jim Dearden and Cedric Quayle at their last Board meeting, Harvey by his uncle, T. Edmund Harvey, Leader House, Sheffield, 14th November 2014. then Master, for his 21st birthday. The matter of the Guild Creed came to the fore and Mark, uneasy at signing his acceptance of it, approached his uncle who replied ‘Well, dear man, thee must go along with the spirit of the Creed.’ The Roll of Companions shows that Mark was admitted in 1946. His address was 1 Manor Way, Letchworth. A 21st birthday gift would make the date 1941. The report of 1945- 1946 states, ‘I have been happy to have been able to enroll my nephew Mr. Mark H. Harvey, of Letchworth, and Mr. Ian Porter, of Barnsley, as members of the Guild.’ 3. His wife, Irene A. Harvey, was admitted a Companion at the same time as Mark, in 1946. Her address was given as Rydal House, Grosvenor Road, Leeds, which I remember from my student days as one of the very posh roads!
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MATLOCK BATH: A FOOTNOTE
in the last issue of Mr. John Ruskin, who has been a The Companion, I was frequent visitor to the New Bath Hotel, reminded of a small Matlock, and whose autograph occurs promotional repeatedly in the Visitors' Book, has pamphlet in my recently penned, in reference to a
collection (front and threatened Railway extension to the FEEDBACK back covers, more secluded parts of the Peak district, pictured). The the following eloquent protest, which pamphlet measures gives some idea of what the Eminent 9cm by 12cm and Art Professor thinks of the Picturesque consists of 8 pages, beauty of Derbyshire in general, and of including the covers. Matlock Bath in particular. Pages 2-6 print Page 7 contains an excerpt from The most of a letter Lancet entitled ‘Derbyshire As A Health written by Ruskin to Resort’. The article argues that the The Companion is a pleasure to handle and the editor of the Manchester City News on ‘moorlands of Derbyshire and of its read! Thank you for all your efforts on behalf 13th April 1884 (Works 34.570-2) on neighbouring county, Yorkshire’ are just as of the Guild. railways. The letter is preceded by the beneficial to a person's health as any
Having read the article on Matlock Bath following paragraph: continental destination. Bob Knight
FRANK CONSTANTINE O.B.E. (1919-2014)
Frank Constantine was the head of Sheffield City Art Galleries between 1964 and 1982. He was invited to become a Companion of the Guild in 1977 at a time when the Guild was
increasingly unhappy about the way the OBIRUARY Collection was being treated at Reading University. Frank was soon elected a Director of the Guild. Frank was keen that the Collection should be returned to Sheffield, the home intended for it by Ruskin. At his invitation the Guild's Annual General Meeting of 1979 was held in Sheffield. It was at this meeting that I became a Companion and a Director; here too I met Frank, and his wife Eileen, for the first time. Behind the scenes, negotations were taking place, and in the summer of 1981 an agreement was signed with Sheffield to year, Frank, Mark Harvey and I were to sit masterminded some enjoyable evenings return the Guild's Collection to the city. At in on the awards meeting, and Tony had when he often regaled us with tales of his this time there was no permanent home for reserved over-night accommodation at the gastronomic experiences in France. the Collection and it returned to Sheffield to Chelsea Arts Club. When we arrived there Like his father, Frank was an go into storage for some time. The then they said they were a little over-booked, accomplished artist; he was a painter in oils volunteer museum-worker, Janet Barnes, and had arranged for us to stay on a barge while his father was essentially a was responsible for checking it in. on the river—and they directed us to it. On watercolourist. He was responsible for the Eventually, the Collection found a new arrival at the river bank, we found it was re-opening of the Mappin Gallery in Surrey home in specially prepared galleries in low water—lots of mud. There was a Street and during his time as Museums Norfolk Street, in the city centre. Frank, of precarious jetty leading to two barges, ours Director many notable accessions were course, was much involved with the being the outer one. Both leaned heavily made to the city's collections. arrangements, but he was shortly to retire riverwards. On arrival on our barge, we I liked Frank. We always got on well from his city appointment and his deputy, found the owners were not at home. together. I suppose we had our Curatorships Julian Spalding, also a Companion, Breathing a sigh of relief, we all beamed at in common, and we often talked about our succeeded him. each other! Mark went off to stay with his various collections. When Tony Harris was Master, Directors' daughter who lived in London, and Frank Frank resigned as a Director of the Guild meetings were occasionally held in his office and I went off and found an hotel in South when he gave up his Sheffield appointment, at Chelsea School of Art and we had lunch at Kensington. but he remained a Companion and I was the Chelsea Arts Club. At that time the Directors' meetings were held always delighted to see him at Annual Guild made annual Craft Awards, in increasingly in Sheffield. Frank always knew General Meetings. He will be greatly conjunction with the Crafts Council. One the best places in the city for dinner, and he missed. James S. Dearden 9
GERALD TAYLOR Gerald joined the Ashmolean's was the chap to do it. He agreed, but staff in the late 1940s and continued insisted that we would work jointly on the there until his retirement in 1990. project. And so it began. Despite suffering frequently from Gerald and his wife Hilary visited all of the incapacitating headaches resulting Ruskin collections in this country and from a war wound, Gerald was photographed everything. With the help of a
OBIRUARY always very busy in his department. Leverhulme Grant, I wrote to all the His particular specialities were overseas holdings of Ruskin drawings and silver and glass. But he also took a obtained photographs. And Gerald began to great interest in the Ruskin write. The catalogue of course included Drawing School's collection which works to which Ruskin himself referred, and is lodged at the Ashmolean. He re- to other works which were catalogued in catalogued it and was really the various places, in addition to the actual forefather of the current website, drawings which we located. As the years The Elements of Drawing. passed Gerald told me that he could only I had met Gerald a number of concentrate for a couple of hours daily—but times at either the Ashmolean or eventually by the end of 2005 he had Guild meetings. By chance we met completed the catalogue: some fifteen years’ again, soon after he retired, at a work. Gerald did tell me how many words meeting of Olive Madden's Ruskin he had written. I fear I can't remember With thanks to Hilary Taylor. Society—held for some strange whether it was a quarter or a half a reason in the Star Chamber at million—either way, a very considerable Gerald Taylor, who died earlier this year, Westminster Abbey. During the course of number. He insisted that the Catalogue was for a long time the Senior Assistant conversation, I asked Gerald if he wanted a should appear in our joint names. But Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum's retirement job. ‘Doing what?’ he asked. I eventually, because of the size of the Department of Fine Art, which later said I thought there was a great need for a project, we were unable to find a publisher. became the Department of Western Art. Catalogue Raisonné of all Ruskin's So Gerald's greatest academic achievement He became a Companion of the Guild of St drawings, and because of his work on the may never see the light of day.
George in 1982. Drawing School Collection, I thought he James S. Dearden
WHITELANDS RUSKIN LECTURE AND MAY FESTIVAL 2014
In 1881, the Revd. John Pincher contending and natural worth Faunthorpe, Principal of Whitelands to be one of the most solemn House, a highly-reputed teacher-training duties alike of young and old.
REPORT College for young women, wrote to Suppose you made it a custom Ruskin asking whether he would donate a that the scholars should copy of Proserpina annually as a prize for his annually choose by ballot, with students. Four years earlier, Faunthorpe, vowed secrecy, the Queen of an avid reader of Ruskin, had sent a May? And that the elected donation of £5 for the Guild of St George. queen had, with more Ruskin returned the £5 noting that it might important rights, that of giving be put to better use in the school. Over the the ‘Proserpina’ to the girl she succeeding years, they corresponded thought likeliest to use it with regularly and Ruskin sent books and advantage? pictures to enhance the girls’ education. Ruskin's counter-proposal However, he was cautious about appealed to Faunthorpe and the Faunthorpe's new proposal: very first Whitelands May Queen, I will give the annual Proserpina Queen Ellen, was chosen by her but not as a prize. I have a deep peers that same year. Faunthorpe and increasing sense of the wrong sent Ruskin a picture of Ellen. ‘I'm of all prizes and of every stimulus rather frightened of my queen’, he of a competitive kind. There replied. 'She looks to me between should be a strict and high pass 35 and 38 and rather as if she standard in all skills and knowledge would bring back the inquisition required, but one which it should and trial by the rack.' However, be dishonourable to fall short of, after receiving letters directly not a matter of exultation or from Queen Ellen his mood ground of praise to reach. In all changed: 'It's very nice getting competitions, success is more or these pretty letters of thanks, with less unjust ... while I intensely a little at the end of each, which dislike all forms of competition, I one can save up and keep.' Revd. John Pincher Faunthorpe This photo (and photo opposite) are believe the recognition of an un- Remarkably, these 'romantic reproduced with the kind permi sion of the Library of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. 10
fancies' (as Ruskin later wrote) still encouraging them to experience and depicting female saints designed by Edward continue. There have been some changes appreciate the world around them. Burne-Jones and made by Morris & Co. have over the years—the 'May Queen' became a Professor Birch discussed Proserpina, the been carefully installed along two corridors, 'May Monarch' in 1986 to allow for the text intended to be given to the May enabling them to be admired close up. A election of men as well as women; White- Queens. Referring to its complex play of William Morris-designed reredos, lands House has now become Whitelands ideas around flowers, beauty, transience previously in the Chapel, now graces the College, part of the University of and loss, she argued that Ruskin's May lecture theatre where the Investiture of the Roehampton. Queens were similarly beautiful, imperfect May Monarch tales place. Corridors Although Ruskin himself throughout the building never attended a Festival, he The May Day Festival at Whitelands College display photographs of May provided copies of his books was instituted at Ruskin’s suggestion. Queens from generations past each year and corresponded and the event remains a firm avidly with the May Queens. favourite with alumni of the The Guild has followed his College. Former May Queens lead, in supporting the Festival and Kings return for the day, for several decades. However, wearing their coronation last year, the partnership was outfits (or a version thereof!). extended with the establish- It is as much their day as it is ment of an annual Whitelands that of the newly crowned Ruskin Lecture. Held the Monarch. They processioned same week as the May Day first into the lecture theatre, a Festival, the inaugural lecture reminder of the lineage which was delivered by Professor the new monarch is about to Dinah Birch and entitled join. Indeed, these ‘Thinking Through the Past’: processions were among the John Ruskin and the Whitelands College May and mortal. He had Arthur Severn design a most spirited aspects of the day—a Festival. It proved to be both a fascinating delicate golden cross incorporating celebration of women (and more latterly, introduction to the Festival and a persuasive, hawthorn blossoms for each May Queen. men) of all ages. well-argued statement of Ruskin's Professor Birch observed that the hawthorn The Investiture of the new May Monarch progressive beliefs on the education of girls. blossom symbolised the fleeting nature of was conducted by the Bishop of Kingston in Professor Birch deftly explored a wide the may blossom and intriguingly an enjoyable service. The Head of College, range of themes surrounding the history and connected this idea of transient beauty with Companion Revd. Dr Mark Garner, meaning of the Festival. She described Ruskin's private grief over the death of channelled the spirit of Ruskin as he read Whitelands House as a progressive Rose La Touche in 1875. This several extracts from the correspondence institution founded by the National Society conceptualisation of a mortal May Queen with Revd. Faunthorpe. College musicians for the Promotion of Education of the Poor thus transforms what might be dismissed as and singers provided very professional in the Principles of the Established Church simply an idealisation of female beauty into performances. to provide a professional training for girls something far more complex and This year's May Monarch, Queen Elle, was from poor backgrounds to become teachers. evocative. Furthermore, Ruskin's wish that chosen by a vote of her peers, but not, as Faunthorpe, who became its Principal in the title be bestowed on the May Queen by Ruskin might have hoped, in a secret process 1874, worked tirelessly to improve its her fellow students reinforces the unbeknown to her. She had clearly had her standards and curriculum, such that by 1878 importance of co-operation, duties and eye on the title of May Monarch since inspectors hailed it as amongst the finest responsibilities, rather than competition, arriving at the College. Yet, in handing over schools of its kind in the country. themes Ruskin returns to throughout his her responsibilities to Queen Elle, Queen This progressive establishment appealed to writings. Sara—elected in 2013—reminded all of the Ruskin because it shared his own concerns The rich interplay of ideas in Professor charitable works expected of the Monarch about social welfare and the limited Birch's lecture provided an illuminating during the year, and one had the sense that educational opportunities for girls. Professor backdrop for this first-time attender to Birch noted how his own early education, enjoy the May Day celebrations the directed by his mother, reflected female following Saturday. On a perfect spring values in contrast to the traditional day, Whitelands College looked education of young boys. Women's magnificent. Now part of the University of aspirations and abilities were to be taken Roehampton, it moved to its current loca- seriously, he believed; as he later wrote in tion, Parkstead House, in 2011. Of Queen's Gardens: 'You bring up your girls Constructed in the early 1760s, the House as if they were meant for sideboard has gone through many changes, but still ornaments, and then complain of their retains much of its external grandeur. frivolity. Give them the same advantages There is, however, a certain irony in the that you give their brothers.' fact that a celebration initiated by Ruskin Yet, as Professor Birch highlighted, his now takes place in an eighteenth-century views on those advantages were not always neo-Palladian mansion, owned in his time in tune with his times. He was concerned and until recently, by a Jesuit training about an increasingly utilitarian approach to college. The first and second Whitelands Ruskin Lectures are education, driven by examinations, which When the College moved to Parkstead available now from the Guild ground down young people like machines. House it took with it several prized
May Day, another of the by the Queen and her attendants, albeit themes explored by without the socialist chants. Professor Birch. The year Just before the return of competitiveness of the first May Queen to the proceedings—with the Whitelands Festival—1881—was also Old Boys taking on the College's first eleven when the 'Old English football team—the jazz band in the marquee Fayre' took place at the quietened and the tea-cups were held still Albert Hall with a maypole and silent as the Master of the Guild at its centre. Professor mounted the stage to give a few well-chosen Birch perceptively words of Ruskinian congratulation to Queen identified this folk revival as Elle and her attendants. As he presented a means of resisting the them with copies of Ruskin's Drawings by this notion of service was equally important changes of industrialisation, expressed both Nicholas Penny, it brought us back full-circle to Queen Elle. as an idealisation of the rural past, but also to Professor Birch's lecture and to the origins Lunch followed, in a marquee on the as a focus for early socialists, including of the Festival itself, a reminder of a beautiful and tranquil lawns of the College, William Morris, whose 'Chants for tradition that continues, renewed and reminding one that festivities remain Socialists' included the poem 'May-Day'. refreshed. Long may it continue!
connected with the English folk traditions of Our afternoon also saw Maypole dancing Mark Lewis
COMPANIONS’ WEEKEND, BEWDLEY
Although we only spent just over a day laterally about the wealth in Bewdley at the Companions’ Week- that mattered to us. Each end on 11-12th July last year, there was person was given a charcoal pencil, a piece of REPORT so much to do, that it seemed like a short holiday. Proceedings began on string and four pieces of Friday evening at Bewdley Museum, paper which were hole- with a reception prior to a private view punched ready to be of Ruskin Yesterday and To-Day: Drawing inserted into the Menu on Nature, an exhibition exploring the Card. We were given Guild’s involvement in the Wyre Forest, four questions and we which was followed by the official had to answer them by opening and dedication of the Anthony drawing or writing on the Page Library. As it was a beautiful Supper at Bewdley Museum: The Master in conversation with pieces of paper. The Annie Creswick Dawson, in the presence of the Mayor of Bewdley. summer evening, we were able to eat questions were: what is supper outside (pictured, right); it was a your favourite view?, generous and well-cooked meal, served local people who were just attending that what makes you smile? who would you like in an open space in the museum, the evening. to thank? and what do you want to pass on? informality making it an ideal We met up again on Saturday morning at On completion, our task was to thread the opportunity to meet some who had Uncllys Farm in the Wyre Forest, the idea string through the holes, inserting our come for the weekend and other more being to immerse ourselves in the activities drawings inside the cover, so making a of the rural economy, and to experience ‘Recipe for Wealth’. The final task was some Ruskinian activities hands-on. The then to select a small wooden disc and day more than lived up to expectations, draw on it something which was precious helped considerably by the summer to us, bearing in mind our thoughts whilst weather, which meant that most of the making our ‘Recipe for Wealth’ menus. It time was spent outside, with a rustic was an extremely interesting exercise, barbeque lunch. There were two practical because by working through the four morning workshops. assignments, my final decision as to what 1) Natural Wealth, led by Ruth Nut- to draw on the wooden disc was ter (Producer, RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD). surprisingly different to my original idea. Ruth used the session as a trial run for an 2) Spinning and Textiles Workshop, activity she was planning for the Wealthy led by Rachel Dickinson, Linda Iles and Weekend in November in Sheffield when Jeannette Lock. Two spinning wheels were she was hoping to create a Tree of Wealth set up outside Uncllys, alongside a table made up of small wooden discs on the which displayed an assortment of wool. floor of the Millennium Gallery, (see pp. We were shown the art of carding and the 24-25). results of spinning different sorts of wools. In the Ruskin Studio, the beautiful re- The pulling and spinning of the threads built barn at Uncllys, Ruth had set up the looked so easy and relaxing, during the large table as if for a meal, with an empty demonstration, but it was actually Menu Card for each guest, titled ‘Recipe extremely hard to co-ordinate pumping the for Wealth’, which was standing up in feet to get the wheel turning, whilst The Master being tutored in spinning by front of each place-setting. Ruth’s aim pulling and encouraging the threads to Companion, Jeannette Lock, at Uncllys. was for us to discover what was spin. Nevertheless, we were all Sketch by Companion Michael Riggs. precious to us; she wanted us to think encouraged to try and master the art of
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spinning, and it was hard to run courses and workshops break away from the task for for architectural students the barbeque lunch. from Cardiff University who The programme for the were studying the diverse afternoon included a walk uses of oak (see pp. 18-19). through the Wyre Forest led Tea and cakes were laid on by Cedric Quayle, John Iles back at the Farm after the and Tim Selman. We were walk and time was allowed told the details of the Wyre for a recap on the day and for Forest Management Plan. The farewells, before everyone place of woodland set off in different directions management and coppicing in to return home. As a fairly the Plan were explained and new Companion, I very we were shown the difference much appreciated the between areas which had been opportunity of spending time cleared, allowing more light informally with other in and encouraging regrowth, Companions and seeing and compared with trees which Workshop: Writing Recipes for Wealth in the experiencing the continua- had been left to grow tall, reaching for the tion of Ruskin’s ideas in practice. light, which in turn prevented light getting Tim Selman explaining how the Guild was Christine Parker through to the undergrowth. The walk also hoping to develop the outbuildings to
included a visit to St George’s Farm, with create offices and accommodation and to
‘EDUCATION FOR EDUCATION’S SAKE?’: A SYMPOSIUM AT TOYNBEE HALL Download the programme and listen online:
Toynbee Hall for a symposium on Ruskin to count as REPORT and modern education. Organised by education. Companions Sara Atwood and Paul Tucker, Ruskin the day consisted of two shorter papers and focused his a plenary lecture, followed by a panel educational discussion joined by three further efforts on contributors who made introductory women and remarks to set out their views. This was the working- third time the Guild had collaborated with class men, the Ruskin Library and Research Centre at groups Lancaster University to run a symposium. largely The Master welcomed everyone to the ignored by original university settlement where many other graduates from Oxford, deeply influenced Victorian by Ruskin’s values, lived at the turn of the educationists. He had contributed to the market forces—the imperative to measure, nineteenth century into the twentieth. For teaching of art and industrial design, and quantify, and calculate—had driven down many, living among the poor in the East End had lectured at Oxford, the Working the number and duration of recreational was the beginning of a life of public service. Men’s College and elsewhere. His concern breaks and had led to less emphasis being Several prominent Guild Companions were was to educate the eye, hand and heart, placed on art. Ruskin wanted people to look among them: two Masters, Hugh Charles believing in the inseparability of body and closely at the world, to see something, a Fairfax-Cholmeley and T. Edmund Harvey; soul. Ruskin derived much of his philosophy that was underpinned by his John Howard Whitehouse, whose collection educational philosophy from his mother, conviction that the ‘Law of Help’–the forms the basis of the Ruskin Library, was who taught him to read, specifically to interdependence of all things—was an Toynbee’s Secretary immediately before read the whole of the Bible and learn much inviolable Truth. A thirst for applause is Clement Attlee assumed that role; and of it by heart. He taught that pictures, easily quenched today by social media. Howard Hull, Director of Brantwood, who buildings and landscapes can be read, too. Education should be about much more. The attended the symposium, worked at ‘If only’, Wilmer concluded, following aggressive market demands that have Toynbee Hall helping to organise its Ruskin, ‘our educators could teach us to penetrated to the heart of educational policy centenary celebrations in 1984. The arts- admire.’ have led Governments to stake claims that and-crafts building provided the perfect Sara Atwood’s paper followed on they are out-educating the rest of the world, setting for the day’s events. Lunch was perfectly, eloquently exploring the a phenomenon encapsulated in ideas such as served in Ashbee Hall—Charles Ashbee, the question of how we value education in a the ‘race to the top’ in the US. Good founder of the Guild of Handicraft, having market economy. She cited the ‘one governance, social justice, happiness, peace, run a Ruskin Society at Toynbee in the million words’ challenge of a school in community, citizenship, mutualism, and 1880s. Arizona where she lives. It’s fine to have a responsibility are all subordinated to the The Master said that whilst for Ruskin target, she said, but were these words marketplace and to the perceived necessity knowledge and understanding were worth reading? It is the question Ruskin of economic success. Prizes, cash incentives, valuable, they must be interwoven and would have asked. The incursion of leader-boards, competition: extrinsic 13
thinking and Ruskinian doing. Both Arnold motivation has a long-term negative and Ruskin opposed the mechanical in effect. The ‘real’ world, we keep being education. Ruskin’s enduring hatred of told, requires preparation for employ- competitive exams derives from this belief in ment. Even at school, we are imperfection and its role in the creative producers and consumers now. We imagination: don’t make happy carpenters any more. Good pictures do not teach a Dr Atwood related how her own col- nation; they are the signs of its lege students in Arizona were, on the having been taught. Good thoughts whole, unwilling or unable to engage in do not form a nation; it must be meaningful discussion. Unmeasurable formed before it can think them. Let Ruskinian virtues are out-of-favour and it once decay at the heart, and its the difference between education and good work and good thoughts will training has become blurred. We need become subtle luxury and aimless to ask what sort of society we want? Do sophism; and it and they will perish we want children who can Google together.—The Cestus of Agaia. paintings in an instant, or who take For Ruskin, it was not so much a case of time to look at them? Curiosity, ‘education for education’s sake’, but wonder, even confusion surely play a education for the liberation of the individual. more important role in the transform- The drive for perfection in the twenty-first ative process of a proper education than century is destructive. There are those who much of what counts for education expect too much and who often burn today? themselves out, and those who expect too Picking up directly where Dr Atwood little because perfection is unreachable. Yet left off, Dinah Birch’s keynote lecture the acceptance of failure is crucial. One was characteristically eloquent, an answer is that we should recognise the value exploration of the roots of Ruskin’s of the creative arts in education. The Guild’s thinking about perfection, or more Campaign for Drawing had been a fine precisely of imperfection and failure, example of the value of doing just that. and how it relates to nineteenth- Creative writing is vital, too. We need op- century notions of education. How can portunities positively to acknowledge we connect those Victorian ideas with failure. The system is over-prescriptive, and our twenty-first century understanding whilst skills of course need to be honed, of education? she asked. The belief in people do need guidance and something to the imperfection of humanity is born imitate—copying and practice are indeed out of Ruskin’s Christian faith—man’s vital—yet people need space to explore and fallen nature was a dominant doctrine to create, to allow the opportunity for among Evangelicals. Like Wilmer, individual development and growth. The Prof. Birch saw the role of Margaret current educational struggle has deep roots, Ruskin as crucial. She believed that and Ruskin is among those who can help us humanity has a duty to use its talents in to find new answers to an old challenge. God’s service. Margaret had hoped her In the discussion that followed, a dominant son would be a preacher or a teacher. theme was the gender divide: young men But Ruskin also drew on the Romantic and young women can be casualties of not inheritance from his father, with whom having internalised a work discipline. There he read novels and travelled. was a feeling expressed that there needs to Prof. Birch then traced Ruskin’s be a move away from the culture of uncompromising insistence on the unrelenting assessment. There is too much absolute law that imperfection is vital in ‘dividing up’ in education—making for art, craft and architecture, to the same small packets or snippets of unconnected quality in nature itself. Prof. Birch learning. It is not exceptional for 18-year- traced this thread in Ruskin’s life by olds, Prof. Birch said, to go to Russell reference to Turner, to ‘The Mystery Group universities without ever having read of Life and Its Arts’ and ‘The Nature of a novel in its entirety. The Master added Gothic’ and argued persuasively that that this packaged approach kills the joy of this belief in imperfection lies at the reading, because the experience is base of Ruskin’s philosophy of incomplete. Reading gives a sense of what it education. Ruskin’s perspective was in is like to be someone else, or at least to exact and stark contrast to Matthew understand someone else’s point-of-view. Arnold’s. Arnold famously defined Prof. Birch spoke of the ‘fizz’ one feels when culture as ‘the study of perfection’. In making new connections, and forming ideas part the contrast can be explained by in the mind: it is an example of deep the difference between Arnoldian pleasure. Children will find books that adults don’t approve of that will mean something (From the top) Clive Wilmer; Sara Atwood; the audience in the Lecture Hall during Dr Atwood’s to them. But there are growing issues of talk; Prof. Dinah Birch; Paul Tucker; Howard access because of the running down of school Hull; and Prof. Stephen Wildman. All photos: libraries. John Iles. 14
Co-organiser and Companion Paul Tucker mainstream education, and Gordon related (University of Florence) spoke on the example of finding room at the Trust ‘“Thoughtful labour”: Ruskin and the nature for the ‘Croydon tyre-slasher’. In of education” analysing the asymmetrical concentrating on the hand, on touch, on relationship between learner and teacher. sensory boundaries; in nurturing craftsman- Drawing on Stefan Collini, Tucker argued ship; in ‘accurate discipline in doing’—it that higher education was no longer was possible for individuals failed by the considered a public good guided by state system to thrive. Neurologists have educational judgment, but rather by a lightly validated Ruskin before educationists have, regulated market in which student choice is he said. Funding streams have to be sovereign. For Ruskin, to educate and to declared in medicine, Gordon remarked, govern were one and the same: a vital, but not in education, and why not? Role- formative process subordinating learner to modelling was a way of re-forging relation- educator, a process that might be character- ships. Emotional cognitive resistance is the ised as ‘thoughtful labour’. Tucker delivered embodiment of the heart in the head, and a careful analysis that probed the intricacies the head in the body. In education, we need of Ruskin’s precise distinctive use of to go to nature, as Ruskin did. We need to language, and which looked closely at the disestablish the classroom and take the education process through the lens of speech pupil to the tree—not the tree to the class- -act theory. Ruskin wrote that, ‘I know room. Our mission should be to draw (to myself to be a true master, because my attract) not to push (or repel). pupils are well on the way to do better than Challenging much of what had gone I have done.’ We live that we may learn. before, Anthony O’Hear (Professor of Stephen Wildman then introduced a panel Philosophy, University of Buckingham) of three short presentations that preceded a proved provocative with his short panel discussion that included all of the day’s paper, ‘“You alone can bring them into speakers, as well as participation from the their right minds”: a few Ruskinian audience. This session was chaired by thoughts on education’. Andrew Tate of Lancaster University. Dr It was necessary to know things, not by Tate ably and humorously summarised the learning facts, but by initiation in culture. papers up to that point, and reminded us Introducing children to the worlds of Art, that Ruskin was the defender of Modern Music, and History was vital. Reading Rus- Painters, as well as Old Masters: we must be kin on Milton, O’Hear found conflicting open to new and emerging ideas, too. elements in Ruskin’s thought. We cannot Melissa Benn, an education campaigner hope to be original so we learn from oth- enthusiastically delivered ‘Some thoughts on ers. What, O’Hear asked, is the intrinsic Ruskin's relevance to present-day debates on value of education? It is a question not suffi- education’. Commending thoughtful labour, ciently examined by anyone, including she underlined the limitations of the three Ruskin. Enjoyment and happiness are not Rs; spoke of the role of families and house- necessary, O’Hear insisted. Do we want, as hold relationships in shaping children’s Mill put it, to have ‘a fool satisfied, or education; and the importance of process compared to outcomes—and she lamented (From the top) Dr Andrew Tate; Melissa Benn; that in practice our emphasis is typically Aonghus Gordon, Prof. Anthony O’Hear; Benn and O’Hear in conversation; and (below) Dr Jim reversed. Learning by heart is ‘Goveite’, she Dearden talking with Dr Sara Atwood and Chris insisted; learning by transfer was what was Harris. All photos: John Iles. needed. A fact-led curriculum could never give the arts and humanities their proper place. We have lost sight of the paramount- cy of doing things in order to lose oneself— and losing oneself in doing. Ruskin under- stood the connectedness of different sub- jects. Education was rapidly becoming an increasingly expensive prize, a vehicle for ambition, striven for because it confers status. Put children themselves in charge of art budgets and canteen budgets, she suggested: they and we will learn a great deal from that. Aonghus Gordon (Ruskin Mill Trust) spoke inspiringly on ‘Education from the inside out’. Ruskin underpinned the co- ordinating principles of the Trust’s work, he said: charity, education, enterprise, science, nature and co-operation. The Trust deliberately embraced those excluded from
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Socrates dissatisfied’? ‘We should be trying cases of exclusion. Benn countered that warned of the dangers of parents perpetuat- to make children unhappy with what they the dangers of corporate interference ing social divisions. In her comprehensive are, and to aspire’, O’Hear said. Education were potentially greater, but acknowl- school, Birch was confronted by new ideas is an end in itself, but how should it be edged that the state as it was now run was and experiences that would not have fallen ‘produced’? O’Hear’s belief was that the often not a good education provider, but to her from her farming parents, she said. state was not the right provider of education that it could and should be. John Iles, busily It was a lively and successful symposium because it would always defer to economic handling the roving mic all afternoon, which took place at a venue rich in imperatives and political aims (what he remarked that most people didn’t crave Ruskinian associations on an unusually called ‘indoctrination’). It could and should choice, what they wanted was their local sunny and warm autumn day. still be free, but provided by others. school to be of a high standard, and of Stuart Eagles Thanks in large part to O’Hear, the de- value to the community. Prof. Birch also bate that followed was lively, though he found himself in a minority of one in the disputatious dialogue that ensued. Benn was first to respond. Cultural literacy is important, but how it is de- livered is vital. Enjoyment is essential to learning, but difficulty within learn- ing is crucial, too. She totally disagreed about the role of the state. O’ Hear responded that cultural literacy is a means of being creative. Prof. Birch commented that ‘happiness’ was per- haps being misunderstood. Put more accurately, the view she had been ad- vancing was that pleasure and enjoy- ment were derived from conquering difficulty, that education should mean making new connections, not simply confirming an individual’s sense of identity. The love of puns among chil- dren is a powerful example of this, she said: a real and challenging expansion of meaning and self. Dr Atwood agreed, and underlined the distinction between this and traditional notions of what fun means. Howard Hull spoke of the need to train and discipline the mind: we need to know things—but not by rote; technology has set us chal- lenges and opened up opportunities in this respect. The independence of the independent sector is vital, O’Hear said. But Benn argued that for the type of students in the independent sector, their privileged position was such that it would be diffi- cult to fail. O’Hear further provoked debate when he spoke about the duties and responsibilities of parents. Prof. Birch pointed out that many parents have not had a sufficient education themselves to make informed decisions on behalf of their children. O’Hear said that he found this position deeply pat- ronising and unconvincing. The State, he said, could compel parents who PAST MASTER: neglect their children to take an inter- HENRY ELFORD LUXMOORE (1841-1926) est in their education. Benn argued that often middle-class advantage is often This portrait of Luxmoore, which hangs in the Hall at Eton College, confirmed by the system. Peter Miller where Luxmoore was both a student and a Master, commended the comprehensive system is by Charles Wellington Furse (1868-1904). as an equaliser. Gordon responded that he did not trust the state to deliver education because of the dangers of Reproduced by kind permission of Eton College. political interference. State methodology was leading to rising 16
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CARDIFF ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS ON RUSKINLAND ‘Discoveries are made through the act of making that cannot be anticipated in the code space of an architectural drawing.’—(Kate Darby, architect) This is our fifth and final year of full-time come was evident in our instant desire to time helping each other just to carry and
REPORT architectural study and all nine of us have nest and prepare lavish menus for the manoeuvre the timber around the farm and fought off competition to join Kate Darby’s week. After negotiating which would be workshop, or to replace the multiple drill ‘Tectonics, Form & Place’ unit at Cardiff the girls’ room and which the boys’, and bits that we snapped just trying to put University. The unit is dedicated to learning how to stoke the Rayburn for heat screws into it. developing a place-specific architectural and hot water, we were given our first task These early days taught us two things: that language by exploring the links between of compiling a cutting list for the wood we were extremely dependent upon each place and material through first-hand miser. This proved harder than we had other for help, and that we were going to be interaction with both. Oak is the material up against it to complete our projects in the we are focussing on for our year-long All photos on this page show architecture time remaining. This sense of a shared project and the source of this is the 120-year students and/or their Ruskinland oak challenge seemed to bring out the best in -old trees that surround Ruskinland in the everyone. Despite the great ambition of Wyre Forest. Comprising 6000ha of ancient many of the projects, it became completely woodland, the Forest in the early Industrial normal to drop one’s own work to go and Revolution was intensively managed for help someone else when asked, or simply charcoal production to supply fuel for the offer a hand if you could see someone might smelting of iron in the Black Country. Since struggle. A system of help-trading quickly then, however, the timber supply-chain has became established both in terms of labour broken down and many of the skills for and problem-solving, and a spirit of mutual working with hardwood have been lost. As support and encouragement kept everyone trainee architects, our interest in the timber in good spirits, even as the work days crept is for construction purposes; but as citizens into the small hours. As days passed and the of a fragile global economy and an unstable workload for some of the projects remained climate, our task is also to take responsibility considerable, it started to become clear that for our role within the life-cycle of the elements of the projects would have to be timber. From planting and growth, to abandoned. The challenge presented was to felling, construction and use, we have been streamline the designs so that the end result striving to understand the impact that this could still be achieved, but without as much cycle has on those dependent on the forest material or complexity as originally for life or livelihoods. The autumn term intended—a valuable lesson in economy of was therefore dedicated to research and design. developing our individual areas of interest; Eight days of fabrication, two days of and from this we each created a design for a installation: during the autumn term, our 1:1 scale ‘fragment’—an architectural scope of research covered an area of the UK taster—that we set out to construct during a that runs from St George’s Farm to the ten-day stay in the forest. centre of Birmingham, along the train-line. We arrived at St George’s Farm—our Our group analysis had aimed to capture the home for the ten days—in a heavy frost and history, character and nature of the places in cars laden with bedding, tools and we encountered along this route, and as crockery. Despite weeks of preparation, individuals we had chosen sites in which we our level of inexperience for what was to imagined. Co-ordinating nine people to would like to focus our own projects. These provide a simple breakdown of the cuts of wood they each needed for their fragment, including tolerance for any wobble in the cutting, and—horror—converting metric into imperial measurements, took two days, at least three different lists and a lot of miser-operator patience to complete. Meanwhile, we were given an induction to the well-equipped workshop up at Uncllys Farm and we were allowed the opportunity to practise using the enormous table saw and planer/thicknesser under the supervision of experienced eyes. Most of us had already learned how to use the tools in the university workshop, but none of us had worked with oak before, let alone built anything sizable. The reality about oak that we discovered first is that it’s tough. Either seasoned or green, oak puts up an almighty fight at every opportunity which meant that for the first few days we spent most of our 18
were the sites where our fragments would structural integrity, now be installed. To achieve this, each of achieve the effect the projects that would require sought by the transportation had been designed to be designer, and be best dismantled and reassembled, and a van was angled for hired that could accommodate the largest photographing. pieces. Determining the schedule of Each project became installation was a logistical challenge with a group project and several constraints: daylight hours in which each member of the to assemble, photograph and disassemble; team became a part packing and arranging the pieces into the van of other’s work. to avoid damage and facilitate easy removal; This led to a spirit of and pre-arranged permission from the excitement and owners of the designated sites of installation. enthusiasm for each Students gathered in the Ruskin Studio at Uncllys. Those planning on assembling their works in other’s projects and city centres had the hardest time gaining an opportunity for approval. It seems it was all too easy to the designer to learn how others responded create a space that one can bodily enter and ignore an email or reject a phonecall making to their work. Ultimately, it was thanks to inhabit, is an immeasurably valuable an unconventional request, but harder, this level of cooperation and commitment experience. There are lessons that we have apparently, to do so face-to-face. Meetings that every project reached its end goal of learned handling oak and working with it in most cases proved more productive and in completion and installation within the time that can never be taught in the studio; and several cases the activity was greeted with limits. there are experiences and feelings that can enthusiasm. The vast majority of university and never be imagined or expressed with the Constructing each of the fragments was a professional work that we have undertaken architect’s drawing. During the week, each very physical process and required the so far has been executed using a computer of us developed a powerful respect for oak as strength, co-ordination and cooperation of and printer. Desk-based and drawing- a material, but also for those who work with each member of the team. With the centred, architectural training, and the oak, with their hands and with the challenges fragment’s designer initially directing us as profession itself are, it seems, inherently of ever-changing environmental conditions. to her/his intentions and aims, the project disconnected from buildings and their Such a learning experience is one that we then became a group activity, as individuals locations. For this reason, having the will all take forward into our future training made suggestions as to how the piece might opportunity to work first-hand with such a and practice.
be manoeuvred or assembled to improve its beautiful and historical material, and to Gemma Wheeler
RECORDING BRITAIN NOW: THE JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE 2014 When Clive Wilmer suggested an annual Brantwood, a location greatly appreciated by charcoal, lithography, typewriting, woven John Ruskin Prize, I jumped at the the 16 shortlisted artists. When planning its tapestry and embroidery. As you will read opportunity to create a platform for less sequel, we were fortunate that Kim Streets in her contribution, runner-up Mandy Payne and Kirstie Hamilton welcomed the
established artists. During thirteen years as used spray-painted and oil-coated concrete- REPORT the Serpentine Gallery’s founding exhibition as a companion to the V&A tour of slab canvases in her work based on the director, my constant aim had been to Recording Britain. Our Recording notorious Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. One exhibit exceptional artists, especially those Britain Now invited contemporary of her small, but powerful, reliefs of the from outside London, who had been documentation of Britain’s urban, rural and estate has been purchased for the Ruskin overlooked, or were simply not good at social environments to complement the work Collection. self-promotion. Two John Ruskin Prizes commissioned by Sir Kenneth Clark in 1939. Kirstie Hamilton and Lucy Cooper did a later, the Guild’s inspired sponsorship has Clark’s purpose was to depict the country as magnificent job of installing the exhibition in allowed the Campaign for Drawing to win it faced the damaging effects of ‘progress’, the V&A’s Craft and Design Gallery, greater support from the creative development—and the threat of war. where—happily sandwiched between the community by offering much-needed Thanks to the Prize’s growing reputation V&A’s touring exhibition and the Ruskin exposure for their work. It has also and the theme’s appeal, there were more than Collection—it was seen by over 35,000 extended knowledge of the Guild and its twice as many entries in 2014 as in 2012, visitors and received very positive feedback. founder, whose beliefs inform everything many of remarkable quality. The shortlisted The critic Daniel Dylan Wray wrote in we do. artists clearly thought today’s environmental Creative Tourist: ‘There is a beauty to be The John Ruskin Prize is open to all threats most likely to arise from neglect, and found within much of it. This is an artists, amateur and professional, based in they focused on urban sprawl, dereliction and exhibition that makes for varied, intriguing the UK and aged over eighteen. The Prize’s the endangered countryside. Ruskin would and immersive viewing.’ He continued, ‘In a emphasis on observation upholds Ruskin’s surely have applauded their powers of country more heavily populated than ever, belief that drawing helps us to see the world observation, but he would have been with our lives becoming increasingly busy more clearly, and to become more aware of disheartened by many aspects of today’s cities and manic, these artists—almost its fragility. All shortlisted artists are and countryside. Human beings were absent universally—chose some kind of seclusion included in a public exhibition, and the first from all but one painting, though their when asked to capture Britain. They offer a two winners received £1,000 each to help negative impact on our environment was retreat, an escape from humans and the further their practice. clearly implied. business of life. The two most prominent The first John Ruskin Prize—A New Despite this, the exhibition was enjoyable themes of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ often seem Look at Nature—attracted 300 entries and and uplifting, thanks to a rich mix of divided and opposed: the encroaching was exhibited at Ruskin’s home, techniques and materials—paint and presence of urban life on rural life is 19
Clive Wilmer Sue Grayson Ford Dr Jonathan Foyle captured. This is city versus the country; once made. The hut where Michael attract a wider audience to this somewhat industry and concrete versus nature and Faraday conducted experiments to improve remote part of East London, we staged a grass.’ lighthouse lighting still stands on the site. successful series of public events alongside We were determined to bring the Dr Jonathan Foyle, TV presenter and the exhibition—from a Sketch Crawl and exhibition to London, and found space in an CEO of World Monuments Fund Britain, family ‘building site’ project to a sell-out intriguing location. Trinity Buoy Wharf is a opened the London version of Recording symposium. The latter, Tide of Change in surviving vestige of London Docklands’ Britain Now, emphasising his agreement East London, was a discussion about the history, home to London’s only lighthouse with Ruskin that drawing could connect changing face of London’s historic docklands and the place where Trinity buoys were people of all ages to their heritage. To led by Paul Finch, Programme Director of
SELECTING THE BEST day it was a difficult task. I was We had all remembered certain works, but After displaying the first John Ruskin conscious that we needed to create a to see them ‘in the flesh’ exceeded Prize winner in the Force of Nature shortlist that was also an exhibition— expectations. We met as a panel once more exhibition, I was delighted when Sue two quite different things. The and as the discussion progressed, there was Grayson Ford, Director of the Campaign shortlisting was done by viewing images a definite group of favourites emerging. for Drawing, contacted me to discuss of the works rather than the actual The winner, Maggie Hargreaves, astonished working together on the second John works themselves, which can be us all with the atmosphere and level of Ruskin Prize. Sue’s drive and enthusiasm problematic as it is often difficult to detail and skill she was able to achieve is infectious. We immediately agreed that appreciate detail and scale. We debated working on such a large scale and using the V&A’s Recording Britain exhibition long and hard, discussed the lack of charcoal. was the perfect starting point for the figurative work and what seemed to be a One of the most rewarding aspects of Prize’s theme. Sir Kenneth Clark’s preoccupation with the often forgotten being on the selection panel was to meet Recording Britain project was initiated in and less immediate spaces created by the artists at the private view and hear their 1939 with an emphasis on drawing and urban sprawl. At times we were at odds, perspectives. Our selection process was watercolour painting and the exhibition with some of us passionately supporting informed by looking at the work and the mainly consisted of works from the ’40s a work while the rest did not recognise artists’ statements; age and experience had and ’50s, inspiring Sue and me to the same degree of significance. not come into it. From Maggie explaining consider how the Prize could bring this However, we all agreed that there was that this was a new career for her, and theme into the present day. Thus no shortage of outstanding work. As I Colin Maxwell making a special trip from Recording Britain Now emerged. calculated on the spot whether Ireland, to Evy Jokhova sharing her Alongside being flattered at the everything would fit into the gallery, we pleasure at the way her work was invitation to be on the selection panel for agreed to display work by 23 artists, displayed, and Michael Cox explaining that the Prize, I felt a strong sense of more than we had initially planned. My this was the first time he had entered responsibility. The chance to look at the colleague, Lucy Cooper, who is something like this—I felt privileged to submissions is a great opportunity for a Exhibition Curator at Museums have been part of bringing them together. curator; seeing large groups of work Sheffield, had the challenging and The support they expressed for one always stimulates new thoughts and ideas rewarding task of hanging the exhibition another, and their enthusiasm for the Prize, but there is also the responsibility to and did a wonderful job. The clear will stay with me for some time. In the end select the best works in a short time. The theme helped give coherence to the we had over 35,000 visits to the exhibition panel was made up of Gill Saunders exhibition and the artist's works and some very positive feedback, leaving (Curator of Recording Britain, V&A), complemented each other beautifully. me with the hope that Sheffield will display Laura Oldfield Ford (artist), Clive Once all the works were on the wall, another John Ruskin Prize in the future. Wilmer, Sue and myself—and with a list there was one last task to perform. Who Kirstie Hamilton of over 600 submissions to look at in one would win the John Ruskin Prize 2014?
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the World Architecture Festival. It included Extraordinarily, both our 2014 winner and to restore the human presence noticeably presentations from many of the architects of and runner-up are in their second careers. absent from the 2012 and 2014 shortlists. these major changes. Maggie’s forensic methods as a biologist for Once again, we will invite artists to engage Although not conceived as a selling twenty years are apparent in the superb huge with a society in rapid transition. exhibition, eight pieces were sold, to the delight charcoal drawings we exhibited, where The grant has enabled us better to support of their creators. The stunning charcoal drawing nature is seen taking revenge on earlier the shortlisted artists in delivering their work by our winner, Maggie Hargreaves, was human intrusions. Mandy’s exquisite to a regional venue, to increase the Prize’s purchased by Mike Davies of Rogers Stirk miniatures reveal the skills she acquired value and to produce a catalogue to provide a Harbour, designer of the Millennium Dome during a 25-year career as a children’s lasting legacy. We are approaching additional (now the O2), directly across the Thames from dentist. Other pieces from her Park Hill sponsors for purchase prizes, thus increasing Trinity Buoy Wharf. The sale of Jennifer series were on the shortlist of five for the the rewards available to Prize applicants. Morgan’s hand-embroidered trio of Student £25,000 John Moores Painting Prize. Having recruited artist Adam Dant (described Finance letters was equally special—the first As we plan the third John Ruskin Prize, in The Observer as ‘the Hogarth for our times’, sale of her career. As a Sheffield art student, Recording Britain Now: Society, we and the official chronicler of the 2015 general Jennifer could not afford to attend the London hope—with the help of a grant from the election campaign) as one of this year’s judges, Private View, but her three works were bought Pilgrim Trust (sponsors of the original 1939 we know we will again attract work of an by a sociology lecturer, in whose university Recording Britain Now in the V&A)—to outstanding calibre, and make even more office they now hang. provide yet more contemporary relevance discoveries. Sue Grayson Ford
The winner of the John Ruskin Prize 2014 was announced on 27th June. (Top left and right) The Master congratulates winner, Maggie Hargreaves. Millennium Gallery, Sheffield.
MILLENNIUM GALLERY
Recording Britain Now, the exhibition of 23 artists’ works shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize, ran at the Millennium Gallery from 28th June to 12th October.
All those short- Kim Streets, listed for the John Ruskin Prize in attendance at the Private Chief Executive of Museums Sheffield, addressing the audience View of Recording Britain Now (pictured above). 21 gathered to hear who had won the John Ruskin Prize. All photos: Andy Brown, with thanks.
I have been interested for some time in our interaction with the natural environment. When I saw the advertisement for the John Ruskin Prize, I was immediately drawn to it as the theme was Recording Britain Now, inviting ‘fresh, contemporary visions of the UK's urban, rural or social environment’. This theme fits well with my own practice. We live on this Earth amongst the multitude of other species, all of which have their part to play in the complex network which makes up our ecology. I am concerned for our loss of direct contact with and understanding of the natural world. As children play out less, and people live and work in cities, it is all too easy to forget that the rest is out there and its huge importance to us. The competition was well run and the staff at the Millennium Gallery were very efficient and helpful, especially Lucy Cooper. I was thrilled to receive the email saying that I was included in the exhibition, and when I went to Sheffield to take my work there (my first visit to the city) I found the gallery easily, in its prominent position. The exhibition produced a very varied collection of drawing styles and processes which led to very interesting and informative discussions with the other artists at the private view. I was delighted to be part of such a show, and it was
JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE WINNER PRIZE RUSKIN JOHN exciting to have the awards announced by Sue Grayson Ford of the Campaign for Drawing and Clive Wilmer of the Guild of St George at the opening, without any pre-warning to the winner! After a (very) short speech—and photos—I met the other judges, Laura Oldfield Ford, Kirstie Hamilton and Gill Saunders, and also Ruth Nutter of the RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD Project. They all warmly congratulated me on winning and I congratulated them, for putting together a great show.
(Above) Prize-winning Slowly Creeping by Maggie Hargreaves. (Right) Maggie Hargreaves with her works —Changing Space II (bottom).22
It is clear that drawing takes many forms, from expressionist mark making My journey as an artist has not been very conventional. I to detailed modelling using a great variety of materials. For my part, in originally trained as a dentist and spent 25 years working drawing a complex image, I like to place the basic elements first then in the NHS, specialising in Children's Dentistry, gradually sharpen the detail all over the image, so I work on one area then working largely in the Community and Hospital Dental another, then return to the first. This process goes on repeatedly over the Services. whole drawing as I continue to understand how to depict textures, I was always interested in art and studied A level art before my dental degree. After qualifying, I took many structures, spacing, light qualities and so on. evening and weekend classes in painting, etching, Drawing allows time for detailed examination of a subject, so that, as you drawing and sculpture. look closely, you begin to understand how a structure works, its form, In 2007, wanting to take my art further, I embarked texture, scale and relationship to its surroundings, and so gradually the on a part-time HND in Fine Art at Sheffield College whole image becomes clear. In drawing the outdoor places I choose, the finishing in 2010. The credits obtained from this multitude of plant and animal species we live amongst becomes apparent. qualification enabled me to study part-time for a BA in Using charcoal, the marks are drawn and erased and redrawn until I am Fine Art at Nottingham University, from where I satisfied with the image. This reflects the changing nature of the places graduated in 2013. shown, as species grow and die, compete and gain and lose territory In 2012, I took a career break from dentistry to work (ourselves included). as an artist full-time. My work is largely inspired by landscape, particularly Drawing is not only the process of looking, understanding, decision- the urban and edgeland areas of Sheffield, and the rural making and mark-making. It is also the finished object. But it is not just the backdrop of the Peak District, which are close to where image that is important—the support and materials used can be included in I live. I am particularly drawn to locations that are often the meaning of the work. In these drawings, I left certain elements blank so overlooked or neglected, and I am also fascinated by the the bright white paper shows through the image, reinforcing the object-ness capacity of a place to absorb memories and experiences. of the work but also creating highlights in the image. When I draw, I am My principal painting medium is mixed media, working very aware that I am producing an object—a surface with marks on it which primarily in acrylics, aerosols and oils. The physicality of will be encountered and considered, usually within a gallery space. In doing paint is an essential element in my work, as is exploring very large-scale drawings, I want the viewer to be transported into the different media and processes, from staining, pouring space of the drawing, entering and connecting with that place, so that there and splattering to more layered and impasto processes. Colour and texture are also important to me, I often is a ‘vacillation’ between the two, the drawing space and the gallery space. incorporate different materials into my paint such as As a fairly recent graduate of Fine Art, I am still finding my way, sand and cement to produce a distinctive surface quality. discovering what direction my practice will take. Winning the Prize was a I like to work in situ initially, working from direct great thrill and a huge encouragement to me to continue drawing in detail, observation and drawings, and then using photographs to as a central element of my art practice. Maggie Hargreaves complete the piece, particularly for colour referencing. A large part of my practice also involves printmaking and I have explored many techniques including; screen-print, collagraphs, etching, stone lithography, lino and woodcut in an attempt to interpret the landscape. The three paintings that were accepted for the John Ruskin Prize were based on my explorations of Park Hill, the Grade II* listed council estate in Sheffield and one of Britain’s largest examples of Brutalist architecture. I have been visiting the site for more than two years and the work was first undertaken as part of my studies for my Fine Art degree. Park Hill is currently undergoing regeneration and, as such, it is an interesting place to observe. Part of the estate has undergone transformation into shiny, luxury flats, whilst half remains boarded up and derelict. A small part is still inhabited—the residents remaining defiantly loyal. I am particularly drawn to the un-refurbished parts of the estate, where the memories and layers of the past are almost tangible. I wanted to create observational paintings that spoke of the desolation and displacement of the established communities, and the temporality of urban landscapes. Spending time at Park Hill underlined for me that concrete was the unifying link throughout the estate and could be regarded as a potential palimpsest. In the refurbished sites, the concrete has been restored to exacting standards, but in the old parts it is spalled, weathered and tarnished, which gives it a rawness and beauty of its own. I wanted to work with materials that were integral to the estate itself, namely concrete and aerosol spray paints. I started working with concrete mixed into the paint to give texture, but then cast up slabs of concrete to work on directly. I drew the image onto the concrete first and then, using micro masking tapes, I masked areas out depending on what shade of aerosol was required in a particular area. It was a process not dissimilar from producing a multi-coloured linocut. Mandy Payne, runner-up, John Ruskin Prize 2014 All That Remains by Mandy Payne. Purchased for the Ruskin Collection. 23
WEALTHY WEEKEND the Guild’s Wealthy Weekend was the video and pictorial installation, ‘Fairness on manner in which it brought together the 83’, featuring filmed interviews and people of diverse backgrounds, photographs showing what users of opinions, skills, interests, and hopes to Sheffield’s no. 83 bus route made of issues of think about quintessentially Ruskinian inequality and fairness. questions concerning how we conceive It was clear from the latter that the city’s of and place value on wealth. long reputation for radicalism is still Prominent amongst Sunday’s justified, and this feeling was only reinforced pleasures at the Millennium Gallery, by attending the 12 noon talk, Manifesto For Sheffield, were the series of craft and Wealth. This brought together six local other activities that drew in pretty speakers to discuss what wealth meant to impressive numbers: about 300 people them. Ably chaired by Jane Hodson of the attended throughout the day. Those English Department at the University of attending could hear about a project, Sheffield, the broad range of views ReMake Castlegate, run by University of articulated in the short presentations Sheffield Architecture students to collectively challenged us to widen our consult on the future of the Castlegate definition of wealth. Market site, and then join in with some Julia Udall’s inspirational talk outlined the architectural model-making of their way in which 500 local artists, craft workers, The welcome extension of the Guild AGM own to add to a 3D map of the city centre. and members of the community had joined into a whole (wealthy) weekend made for a They were also able relaxing and convivial atmosphere, but also to contribute by permitted all kinds of interesting themes and creating a charcoal connections to emerge across a pleasingly drawing of what
REPORT diverse range of events and activities. Many they valued on a of Saturday’s events articulated a great deal section of birch of discontent with modern civilization: Gray trunk. Together, the Brechin’s Ruskin Lecture elegiacally various sections will recalling the social and cultural vigour, form a Ruskinian ambition, and breadth of America’s New Tree of Wealth. Deal; Janet Barnes’s recollections of the Both the charcoal equally ambitious cultural programme of and the birch were 1970s Sheffield museums in her moving provided by the tribute to its much-loved and recently- Guild’s enthusiastic Images and words of Wealth projected on to the front of Upper Chapel. departed former leader, Frank Constantine; Wyre Forest Photo: Carole Baugh. and a slideshow of the challenging artworks community, as part that made the shortlist for the latest Guild- of a more general deepening of relations in a share issue purchase of the Portland sponsored John Ruskin Prize. It was between the Guild’s principal sites. Youth Works building in order to continue 140 pleasing, therefore, that Sunday balanced the theatre specialists stepped out of their years of making on the site. Intelligent use of weekend by its consistent focus on the comfort zone (outdoor performance and small, varied workshop spaces has opened up contents of civilization—both in terms of theatrical set-design) to offer visitors the opportunities to provide a community hub what constitutes our collective culture, and opportunity to create something beautiful and improve social relations. Udall was what it is about our culture that makes us from natural materials; while Opus particularly keen to underline that the most feel content, or that might bring us greater Independents, a local not-for-profit important source of wealth at the site was its contentment in future. One of the joys of independent media organisation, offered a human resources.
Wealthy Weekend. Photos: Carole Baugh and Andy Brown.
Manifesto For Wealth. Local thinkers, makers and doers offering insights into the wealth that matters to them.
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This theme was even more strongly poorest members of underlined by Tony Bowring, co-ordinator society; and led to an of the sterling Arts on the Run scheme that extended discussion draws immigrants to work on diverse of the complex projects and, in doing so, uncovers a wealth problems of urban of inspiring and troubling back stories that tree planting; before feed the project’s aesthetic aims, but also its closing with a final desire to create a forum for progressive intervention from discussion and debate about multiculturalism John Iles, of the in the United Kingdom. Guild’s Wyre Forest Felicity Stout, Woodland Historian at the estate, pointing out University of Sheffield, turned to James I’s that perhaps the most 1612 Proclamation about the future of important form of British forests and its call to protect the wealth—a sustainable precious collective inheritance or climate and commonwealth of our woodlands. environment—had Outlining the economic, environmental, and not been mentioned, cultural wealth offered by forests, and and that the huge celebrating Sheffield’s position as the challenges in this area European city with the greatest proportion had not yet been of trees, Stout directed our attention to the faced. With that continuously vital role of woodlands. sobering thought, a Sheffield Equality Group was represented most useful and by Jason Leman, who asked the audience to challenging hour think of control as a form of wealth. Skilfully came to an end. It outlining the ways in which a lack of control would have been Tree of Wealth, over our personal and working lives can interesting to hear if drawing by Carole deleteriously affect our attitude to the Ruskin’s ideas had Baugh and adorned with birch discs from world, our confidence, our engagement directly influenced Ruskinland, decorated with society and politics, and our mental any of the speakers. by the public. health, Leman argued that access to wider In terms of those cultural wealth is dependent on an overall attending the day, Photo: Ruth Nutter sense of individual self-control, and he there was a pleasing demographic mixture, day. There was often a real sense of closed by calling for a re-distribution of the from young children to pensioners; and intensive engagement between those wealth represented by control. ranging from people who knew a lot about attending and those organising events. In many ways, Sara Hill’s talk for Opus Ruskin to those who knew nothing at all. The vibrancy of the weekend has much to Independents exemplified the possibilities of Much of the buzz of the day, as well as its do with leadership—of the organisation as answering Leman’s call. As an independent sense of openness and welcome, came from a whole, by the Master, Secretary, and media outlet, Opus (the makers of ‘Fairness this mix of people, and from the manner in directors, to the local, with Ruth Nutter on the 83’) see their role as taking the which events were set up for anyone to (Producer of the Guild’s RUSKIN in opportunities offered by the digital come in and engage with in any way that SHEFFIELD project) deserving particular revolution to democratise access to media suited them. Around half the visitors commendation for her ability to create and culture, and, in challenging traditional dropped in rather speculatively and stayed communities and enthusiasm wherever she gatekeepers to knowledge, to enhance access for quite a while, trying more than one goes. to the power of knowledge. activity. A significant number (almost half) Mark Frost The final speaker, Chris Bennett, came from other towns in South Yorkshire We will carry a full report in the next issue about the Philosopher at the University of Sheffield, and happened to be in Sheffield for the day’s seminar, Wealth That Matters. made a case for considering voting as an extremely important form of wealth. RUSKIN DRAWING WALK Arguing that some aspects of wealth are Photos from the Ruskin Drawing Walk run by Ruth Nutter with Kate Genever last essentially social, Bennett suggested that September as part of Museums Sheffield's Drawing the Summer project. Ruth and Kate collective wealth would be enhanced by introduced the group of 13-16 year-olds to the Ruskin Collection and the Recording Britain greater engagement in the political process, Now John Ruskin Prize Exhibition, before taking them to the activity room to do some warm and argued that voting had intrinsic rather -up drawings. This was followed by a walk to Persistence Works (Yorkshire Artspace than merely instrumental value in our Studios) rooftop to draw views from there, and finally on to the roof at Portland Works, society. where the group also heard The speakers faced a number of interesting about the history of the questions from an audience of around 60, building. Every participant and it was a shame, given the collective produced a beautiful series of articulation of a democratising agenda of sketches ranging from natural widening participation, that more time was not available to extend this phase. history objects to sweeping Questioners queried the practical limits of views of the city skyline. The technological democratisation, pointing out sketchbooks were on display that growth in online forms and information during Wealthy Weekend. disproportionately discriminates against the
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A HORSFALL SPACE FOR ANCOATS It is with huge delight that we are able to the Guild of St George whose invaluable Arts; a public realm artwork delivered with announce funding from the Heritage Lottery advocacy, advice and financial support artist Lucy Harvey (see montage below) and a Fund to further develop our plans for a made our funding case to the HLF all that magical night of music and film with Open permanent Horsfall Space in
REPORT Music Archive. This latest project, Ancoats, Manchester. The Victorian corner shop will be transformed into the The Horsfall. Our journey—a truly which closed the programme, saw transformative process—began young people from 42nd Street with a simple Google search for taking pianola roles of music ‘+Ancoats +Art’ in 2013. What played in Victorian Ancoats, quickly revealed itself was a digitising them and reinterpreting fascinating, relevant and little- them as dance music to a crowded known story; that of Thomas Halle St Peters in Ancoats. These Coglan Horsfall, the Ancoats Art Museum and Ruskin’s influence on compositions were then re- Horsfall as an early champion of presented as a concerto by pianists arts education and an innovator in from the Royal Northern College arts and public health or well- of Music. The night was concluded being. This story informed A with an interpretation of the Different Spirit; an 18-month pieces by Graham Massey, founder programme working with young people experiencing mental health of 808 State and innovator in problems, contemporary artists digital music in the Manchester and residents of Ancoats to better dance scene in the 1980s. A far cry understand the story of Horsfall from the Smoking Concerts and and to contemporise his project for young more compelling. After 18 months, we can orchestras of the Ancoats Art Museum but people in 21st-century Manchester. You can look back at four incredible projects: a true to the spirit and essence of Horsfall; art read a report from me in last year’s photographic register of Ancoats, its fauna making a difference in the lives of ordinary magazine. Partnerships were formed with and flora; a pop-up shop selling useful and people. Manchester Art Gallery and crucially with beautiful objects developed with Grizedale Julie McCarthy USEFUL WORK VERSUS USELESS TOIL: AN EXHIBITION AT 42ND STREET
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THE RUSKIN LECTURE 2014 ‘Necessitous Men Are Not Free Men’: Bridging Ruskin’s Thought and the New Deal by Gray Brechin
Gray Brechin’s talk on the New Deal opened Central to the story, however, was the Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870- with a dramatic photograph of the Golden relationship of Eleanor to Franklin. In a 1920 (OUP, 2011). Gray notes that Gate Bridge in his home State of California. nice touch of biographical portraiture, Gray Roosevelt did read Ruskin, as did Eleanor, REPORT Through a sleight of his PowerPoint hand he compared the young Roosevelt cousins as but that many of the ingredients of contrived to part the bridge in the middle two distant branches of the family destined ‘Ruskinian’ behaviour were in the air—and and, like Tower Bridge in London, it was as to bring together in marriage very different in Franklin and Eleanor’s personality. The if we were passing through, rather than life experiences—he, wealthy, privileged power of the Settlements is rightly invoked across this bridge, at the start of a great and entitled, with doting parents; she, to show evidence that by the time the couple voyage. As indeed we were. For Gray’s orphaned and discouraged, rescued by her were growing up, Ruskin’s ideas were being fascinating talk upon the debt of Franklin experience of London and the friendship put into practical form on an institutional Roosevelt to Ruskin was about the scale across continents. Roosevelt’s journeys that some very practical people appointments to his Administration show undertook, enabling Ruskin’s ideas to evidence of selection from Settlement- cross the Atlantic, spanning time and experienced staff. cultures, reforming and reshaping even as So what of the New Deal itself? In Gray’s they did so, until they found themselves description, ‘More than three decades after instrumental in one of the greatest Ruskin’s death in 1900 those prescriptions enactments of political and economic [i.e. Ruskin’s] merged with other streams vision to hallmark the first half of the such as the Social Gospel and trade union twentieth century. movements to emerge in a geyser of Gray is no apologist. From the start he practical solutions to the Great Depression affirmed the worth of the New Deal and in the United States.’ A richly illustrated made no bones of his belief that history telling of the sheer variety, character and has not recognised its importance or its number of programmes enacted by the Civil enduring value. Throughout his talk and Works Administration (CWA), Federal in questions that followed, he spoke of Emergency Relief Agency (FERA), and recovering our awareness and above all the Works Progress Administration understanding of the New Deal’s history (WPA), concluded Gray’s important and —and reasserting its values. With gentle often moving talk more eloquently than any humour he threw out cutting asides to dry description of economic or social data lament today’s lack of political vision, or could have done. Much that has since to expose the aridity of economic analysis defined American society—its culture and that only measures value in terms of the community—can be seen as taking shape market. He attacked that branch of here. Christianity which remained adamantly Gray treated us to a television recording of theological, insisting that the New Deal Roosevelt’s ‘Second Bill of Rights’— was an enactment of Practical economic rights—given just a year before he Christianity. The strength of Gray’s talk, died. He showed how this remarkable however, lay in combining his passion with she made with Marie Souvestre, doyenne of document was intended to stand as a model an underpinning scholarship so that what the Allenswood finishing school to which for all mankind and how, within three years might, in other hands, have become mere she had been despatched. Gray’s portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt pioneered the Universal polemic, was closely argued and carefully Franklin Roosevelt was, however, also well Declaration of Human Rights at the United evidenced. rounded. We heard of his practical Nations, unanimously adopted on 10th The history of ideas is very much the Christian upbringing, his innate sympathy December 1948. Like Gandhi’s history of people and Gray has a talent for with the poor and disadvantaged, of the revolutionary politics in India, Roosevelt’s bringing the characters of his story to life. At train journeys in which he would point out New Deal and Second Bill of Rights drew on the start we were introduced to Mary Ward, to his young wife how to read the signs in streams of thinking fed in their headwaters Marie Souvestre and Eleanor Roosevelt. the landscape that told the story of people’s by Ruskin. As the twentieth century gets a Exemplary in the practical expression of living conditions. And then, in 1921, little further away from us we can, perhaps, Ruskin’s ideas from 1884 onwards was the Franklin was struck by polio and thereafter see it a little more clearly. Listening to Gray emergence of the Universities’ Settlement his own disability (he was confined to a trace the roots of the New Deal back to Movement, starting at Toynbee Hall in wheelchair) taught him empathy with those Ruskin, and thinking of the influence of London’s East End. In the closing decades of in difficulty and how the helpfulness and Ruskin upon the foundation of the Welfare the 19th Century, Europe still formed an generosity of others could make a State in Britain, one wonders if history may essential reference point for socially difference. yet speak of the world passing through a committed and open-minded Americans and It is against this rich background that Ruskin era—not because all such things Gray spent time unpacking the route by Franklin Roosevelt’s political career was owed a debt to Ruskin, but because his which Settlements came to North America. formed. Gray treats the question of the writings might be said to most perfectly In the process he described the experience directness of the influence of Ruskin’s speak to the ambitions of those who, often and relationships which helped to shape the writings with the caution it deserves, unwitting of Ruskin, recognised that their young Eleanor Roosevelt during her visits to referencing Stuart Eagles’ masterly study of journey towards the Law of Help was Britain and Europe. Ruskin’s legacy, After Ruskin: The Social and necessary and did not hesitate to embark upon it. 27 Howard Hull
VENICE WITH THE MASTER The meeting of Friends and Companions of Thursday evening and an enquiry into local spoken word, to make them again living the Guild over four days in March (a specialities (risotto and tiramisu, for presences. This happened inside the Church lightning tour of Ruskin’s Venice led by the example) blended into a flow of exchange, of the Frari the next morning, with fresh Master of the Guild, Clive Wilmer) was a learned yet unstuffy, wide-ranging and illuminations on paintings by Titian and REPORT dazzling success, yet is almost impossible to heartfelt—an achieved and generous Bellini, followed by the overwhelming describe. So perhaps Ruskin’s words openness that was sustained over the four impact of the Tintorettos in the Scuola following his first meeting (or Grande di San Rocco, with the union) with the Tintorettos in the words of another inspiring host, Scuola di San Rocco are the best Emma Sdegno, in our heads. way in: ‘It was a mystery.’ ‘I have Apparently simple things to bear in been overwhelmed today…’ Or mind (Tintoretto’s focus on maybe Ruskin on the ‘range of poverty, a ‘foregrounding’ of the glittering pinnacles’ of San Marco, Eucharist and Baptism) that made ‘their confusion of delight’. The one look again. I have to admit to truth is that words alone won’t do being ‘blown away’ on the ground justice to overwhelming floor, by depictions of ‘The experiences, and recollections in Annunciation’ and ‘The Flight tranquil prose cannot hope to match From Egypt’. By the time we the spontaneous overflow of reached the Great Upper Hall (that powerful feelings generated by such haunting depiction of The Baptism; an experience. Readers, it was the Crucifixion in the Albergo awesome. Hall) I was at one with Ruskin. For this Friend (and new Tintoretto ‘took it so entirely out Companion) the texture of what of me’ that I did want to do nothing was seen and learnt was a more than ‘lie on a bench and ‘confusion’ in the best possible laugh’. I was probably not alone in sense. One of the first things to our group in feeling more than stress is the intangible, inestimable unusually lost that afternoon. quality of direct experience— In the evening, the Colloquy took meeting and befriending those place back under the scrutiny of the around one being at the heart of it. figures of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion. This makes one realise first-hand The warmth was felt in the words the inextricable bonds of art and and new-forming bonds between life, the aesthetic and the social, one the home team from the Scuola, of the pillars of Ruskinian thought. and the representatives from the The group had to observe closely, Guild. Coats were buttoned up, study, and then reckon the forces— but hearts and minds were open. It the qualities of life—that brought requires time and space that I do about such beauty. So my memories of the days. I was lucky enough to be staying over not have to give anything like an adequate trip are peopled and underpinned by the with the Master, and we stopped off account of what was said. However, the faces and words of those I walked with; afterwards to study the Palazzo Soranzo in speakers, in turn, were: the Guardian these made the intensity and the lyrical the Campo San Polo, in one of many Grando of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, nature of what we experienced even more impromptu lessons, to marvel at the dog- Franco Posocco, a distinguished architect; special. tooth and cable, the infinite variety in Professor Emma Sdegno, Clive Wilmer, We met at the Taverna San Trovaso on design, re-animating Ruskin’s drawings of John Iles and Louise Pullen; then Maria the orders of Laura Picchio Forlati, Emeritus Professor of Venetian International Law at the University of Padua, Arches. I was a Consorella of the Scuola. Clive talked privileged to about the history and purpose of the Guild, be learning dispelling myths and, with his enviable light from a man touch, opening door after door into the whose soul values and fine detail of Ruskin’s life and was at one legacy. John Iles, custodian of the eight with the hectares of Guild woodland in the Wyre place. Forest near Bewdley showed us Ruskin in I suppose action, the Ruskin who wants us to live in a that this was better way in a better England. (This was an the inspiring ‘dirt under the finger nails’ cornerstone approach and we were thoroughly convinced of the visit: that the study centre there is a living entity, words, practical and blooming.) Louise Pullen then images and talked with passion and well-judged drawings economy and modesty about her gifted brought to curation of the Ruskin Collection in life, by the Sheffield, convincing Franco Posocco, that Professor Picchio Forlati addressing the Guild Colloquy at the Scuola 28 Grande di San Rocco, Venice.
The Master leading Companions on a tour through Venice in March 2015. Photos: Olga Sinitsyna.
‘made in Sheffield’ could be applied to more when bells from the Campanile tumbled all the other members of the group, so things than knives and forks. Maria Forlati’s out their sound. Undaunted, the Master welcoming and delightful. I will end with a final words were inspiringly honest and continued and we strained to hear ‘a detail from Clive’s contribution to the uplifting, as she roamed around the notions continuous chain of language and of life— Colloquy that seems apposite: In 1876 Ruskin of how organisations could work and go angels and the signs of heaven, and the noticed a beautifully carved inscription in Istrian forward together, in practical, but more labours of men…’ in the ‘kind of awe’ that marble set in the east external wall of Venice’s importantly, spiritual, or ‘ineffable’ ways. I Ruskin famously delineates. This will live oldest church, San Giacomo di Rialto, just below just came away thinking what a wonderful in the memory. the gable. The inscription, which Ruskin dates group of people was gathered together, and The group dispersed late on Sunday from ‘about the year 1090’ (Works 21.268), what potential forces for the good they afternoon, and the Master was guided consists of two sentences, the first carved on an represented. towards some much-deserved rest asymmetrical cross, the second on a band beneath This was the formal centrepiece of the thereafter. Returning to England was an it. He tells what he saw as follows: visit, along with the meeting of the Board of enforced culture shock, as the ugly The inscription on the cross is,— Directors at the Istituto Canossiano the next necessity of car-park areas around Gatwick ‘Sit crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco’ day, but I must mention ‘Wilmer’s and the M25 took over from the (Be Thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place.) Ruskinian tour’, as it was billed, on the innumerable and significant moments of And on the band beneath,— ‘Hoc circa templum sit jus mercantibus aequum, Sunday. Following a trip down the Grand beauty that had been in their place. I am Pondera nec vergant nec sit convention prava.’ Canal the (by-now-tired-yet-ever-eager) grateful to Clive for his unflagging patience (Around this temple, let the merchants’ law be just, group entered the Piazza San Marco just and an understanding of Ruskin, the Their weights true and their contracts fair.) (24:417) before eleven thirty on Palm Sunday. Clive product of a life’s work, that was so Peter Carpenter started reading from Ruskin’s Stones of Venice generously and easily handed on. Also, to BIBLIOGRAPHY 2014-15 Compiled by James S.. Dearden
Atwood, Sara: ‘An enormous difference between knowledge and education’: Eagles, Stuart: Miss Margaret E. Knight and St George’s Field, Sheepscombe. What Ruskin Can Teach Us. (The Second Whitelands Ruskin Lecture.) York: Guild of St George Publications, 2015. York: Guild of St George Publications, 2015. Frost, Mark: The Lost Companions and John Ruskin's Guild of St George. Atwood, Sara: ‘The Earth-Veil’: Ruskin and Environment. York: Guild London: Anthem Press, 2014. of St George Publications, 2015. Harvey, John: The Subject of a Portrait. (A novel.) Cheltenham: Polar Birch, Dinah: Thinking through the Past. John Ruskin and the Whitelands Books, 2014. College May Festival. (The First Whitelands Ruskin Lecture.) York: Ingram, David: The Gardens at Brantwood. Evolution of John Ruskin's Guild of St George Publications, 2014. Lakeland Paradise. London: Pallas Athene & The Ruskin Foundation, 2014. Brechin, Gray: ‘Necessitous Men are not Free Men’: Bridging Ruskin’s Ings-Chambers, Caroline. Louisa Waterford and John Ruskin: ’For you have Thought and the New Deal. (The Ruskin Lecture.) York: Guild of St not Falsely Praised.’ London: Legenda, 2015. George Publications, 2014. Jacobson, Ken & Jenny: Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin’s Lost Bunney, Sarah: ‘John Wharlton Bunney's British Patrons, Pictures Daguerreotypes: London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2015. lost and found.’ British Art Journal, Vol.XX, No.1, Autumn 2014. Lewis, John, and Kenningham, Bridget: Every Fool in Bakewell. Pontefract Davis, Alan (ed.): Ruskin Review and Bulletin, Vol.10, No.1, Spring Press in association with Guild of St George, n.d. 2014 (incl.: F.O'Gorman: ‘John Ruskin and Contemporary Lightman, Naomi: ‘"No man could owe more". John Ruskin's Debt to Economics’; D.Birch: ‘John Ruskin's Political Economy and the Anna Barbauld's books for children.’ ch.12 in McCarthy, W. & Murphy, Culture of "Social Affection"’; H.Miki: ‘The Reception of John Ruskin 0. (eds.): Anna Letitia Barbauld. New Perspectives. Lewisburg: Bucknell in early twentieth-century Japan’; D.Ingram: ‘The Robinson, Ruskin University Press, 2014. and Severn Corrrespondence’; S.Bunney: ‘Victory for Banstead Nikitina, Tatyana: Unfamiliar Ruskin. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, Commons with help (a little) from Ruskin’; J.A.Hilton: ‘Ruskin's 2014(in Russian). Heraldry’; V.A.Burd: ‘A Peripatetic Photograph of John Ruskin’; S. Ruskin, J.: Guida ai principali dipinti nell' Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. Wildman: ‘Ruskin Bibliography 2013.’) Edited by Paul Tucker and translated by Emma Sdegno. Verona: Electa, Davis, Alan (ed.): Ruskin Review and Bulletin, Vo1.10, No. 2, Autumn 2014. 2014 (incl.: J.Batchelor: ‘Ruskin among the giants’; A.Davis: ‘Ruskin Sato, Shoji (ed. and tr.): Translated Short Essays by Dr Van Akin Burd in and the Rose Queen’; J.S.Dearden: ‘A Tale of Two Churches. John Honor of his Centenary Birthday. Tokyo: The Ruskin Papers Press, 2014 Ruskin buys a porch, or history repeats itself’; P.Dawson: ‘The 1858 Wilmer, Clive: ‘A new road on which the world should travel’: John Ruskin, Lecture Tour of Tunbridge Wells’). ‘The Nature of Gothic’ and William Morris. York: Guild of St George Dearden, James S: Rambling Reminiscences. A Ruskinian's Recollections. Publications, 2014. London: Pallas Athene, 2014. (DVD) Effie Gray, dir: Richard Laxton. Sovereign Films. 104 mins. 29
RUSKIN ON THE RACK: Effie Gray and Mr. Turner For one of the intellectual giants of the marriage as they had proved hopelessly sympathetic Lady Eastlake, James Fox as her nineteenth-century culture, John Ruskin is incompatible. genial husband Sir Charles, Derek Jacobi as getting a rather raw deal from twenty-first The film Effie Gray has had a long and Effie’s lawyer, Robbie Coltrane as a no- century film-makers. There is no more difficult gestation. It is the personal project nonsense Scottish doctor and Claudia contentious issue in the life of John Ruskin of Emma Thompson who became intrigued Cardinale as an Italian aristocrat who than his marriage to Effie Gray. The manner by the subject after reading an account of befriends the Ruskins. But David Suchet and of its dissolution became one of the great the marriage in Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives Julie Walters as John James and Margaret scandals of Victorian society. The marriage (1983). She wrote the script and then spent Ruskin come across like a pair of villains in a
FILM REVIEW FILM was annulled in 1854 after six years on the three years setting up the project. The film Wilkie Collins Gothic novel: resenting grounds of non-consummation and a church was finally shot in 2011. But its release was Effie’s presence, controlling all aspects of court declared that the cause was Ruskin’s immediately halted by the initiation of two their son’s life, keeping her a virtual prisoner ‘incurable impotency’. She went on to plagiarism suits, one by Eve Pomerance in their dark, sinister mansion and finally marry the painter John Everett Millais and who had written her own screenplay on the resorting to doping her with laudanum. As to produce eight children. Two rival and subject and one by Gregory Murphy whose Effie, the American actress Dakota Fanning, diametrically opposed interpretations of this play The Countess, which dramatised the who deploys a very acceptable English accent event are currently available in the form of marriage breakup, ran for over six hundred (regardless of the fact that it should by rights books: Suzanne have been a Perthshire Fagence Cooper’s accent), convincingly Effie, first published portrays the gradual in 2010 and decline of the innocent reissued to coincide young girl as she sees with the release of her hopes of a happy the film Effie Gray, and fulfilled marriage to and Robert a great man evaporate Brownell’s Marriage in the face of his of Inconvenience growing indifference, (Pallas Athene, his parents’ hostility and 2013). Fagence her sexual frustration Cooper’s which manifests itself in interpretation is a a succession of feminist one. Her psychosomatic illnesses. Effie, a lively, The film presents her as feisty, intelligent a Pre-Raphaelite victim, young woman, is a showing her dreaming classic victim of of herself as Millais’s Victorian drowned Ophelia, and patriarchal tyranny reproducing a as exercised both succession of paintings by her husband and his parents. In an performance off Broadway after its opening of other ill-used Pre-Raphaelite women. A endorsement of the book, actress and in 1999 but managed only a month’s run in stylised introduction with Effie wandering screenwriter Emma Thompson wrote: London in 2005. Unlike the film, the play through a beautiful garden sets up the ‘Effie’s story is emblematic of the struggle of covered only the period from June 1853 to context as one of a fairy tale gone badly Victorian women’ and her film Effie Gray April 1854 and its London run may not wrong. What is missing from the depiction takes the same line. It has become the have been helped by the miscasting of the of Effie is the flirtatiousness which was a conventional wisdom of the post-Victorian actors playing Ruskin (Nick Moran) and marked feature of her character. Greg Wise world. Brownell in a nearly six hundred Millais (Damian O’Hare). They would have gives an entirely one-dimensional portrait of page book, dense with original been more convincing if they had switched Ruskin. Apart from one scene in which he documentation, proposes a radically roles. The law suit dragged on through the passionately defends the Pre-Raphaelites at a revisionist view. He argues that Effie had no American courts until 2014 when Royal Academy dinner, his attitude almost real interest in Ruskin or his work, but judgement was finally made in favour of throughout is one of icy indifference and married him for his money, as her father was Emma Thompson on the grounds that silent disapproval. There is no sign of his facing bankruptcy and her family ruin and history cannot be owned. This enabled the well attested charm and sense of humour. disgrace, and the Ruskins were, in today’s film to be released in the autumn of 2014 The infamous wedding-night episode where values, millionaires. Brownell further argues to almost universally dire reviews. There Effie removes her night dress and he walks that Ruskin connived at the separation and are two ways of looking at the film: out of the bedroom, ‘disgusted’, as she later divorce. He did not consummate the historical and cinematic. Aesthetically the tells Lady Eastlake, ‘by her person’ is put marriage as a way of securing its termination film is ravishingly beautiful and director down to a generalised puritanical prudery. in one of the few ways available in the mid- Richard Laxton and cinematographer The film thus avoids becoming explicit about nineteenth century. He endorses Ruskin’s Andrew Dunn deserve the highest praise the controversy which still rages and in position that the couple mutually agreed to for the way in which they have captured the which pubic hair, menstruation and body refrain from sex until Effie was twenty-five, misty Scottish landscapes, the romantic odour have been individually advanced to so that the inevitable pregnancies would not Venetian locations and the colourful bustle explain the disgust. Brownell has an entirely interfere with his programme of travel, of mid-Victorian London. There is a different interpretation, arguing that research and writing. But by the time she splendid supporting cast, mainly in cameo ‘person’ here meant personality, not body, reached that age he was anxious to get out of roles: Emma Thompson herself as a and what he objected to was her shallowness 30
and promiscuous flirtatiousness and this Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, released at the objection developed over the years. An same time as Effie Gray, also had a long inexplicably bearded Tom Sturridge as period of gestation. In Leigh’s case, it was Millais, who was actually clean-shaven, has fifteen years since he first began to think little to do but smoulder with desire and about making a film on the life of one of discontent as his physical contact with Effie Britain’s greatest painters. He wrote a is limited to a squeeze of the hand. script and like Emma Thompson, When it comes to the actual history, eventually put together a consortium of Greg Wise outraged Ruskinians have lined up to point backers which in his case included the (far right) as Ruskin, with his out the errors of fact and omissions of British Film Institute, Channel Four Films parents, played by Julie Walters and David Suchet in significant events. One such critic has and a variety of French and German Effie Gray. Photo (and below right): Sovereign Films. identified fifty errors. But to be fair to film- companies. The film cost the relatively makers, the demands of drama are different modest sum of £8.4 million to make, of the squabbles and rivalries between them. from the requirements of historians. There despite a running time of two and a half For Ruskinians, the sole flaw in an otherwise is a limit to the amount of history you can hours and a dramatic span embracing the memorable and absorbing work is the include in a one hundred minute film which last twenty five years of Turner’s life (1826 depiction of Ruskin (Joshua McGuire) as a is in this case covering a period of six years, -1851). When the film came out, the pretentious, lisping popinjay. In an interview from the marriage in 1848 to the separation critical reaction was the exact opposite to about the film, Leigh explained why he in 1854. In all historical films, characters are the reception for Effie Gray. It was almost decided to depict Ruskin as a comic eliminated or merged, events telescoped, universally hailed as a masterpiece with character: ‘It seemed very natural that he’s chronology altered. So it is with Effie Gray Timothy Spall acclaimed for his this priggish, opinionated, precious but in this case to tilt the argument mesmerising performance as Turner, overgrown schoolboy…We see Ruskin’s decisively against Ruskin and in her favour. played as eccentric, curmudgeon and parents and that they indulged him. When The film depicts John and Effie as living genius with a unique and remarkable he went to Oxford University, his mother permanently with his parents at Denmark repertoire of growls and grunts. The film is went with him—he was very stunted in Hill, whereas in fact they had their own essentially a study in obsession as all the many ways. But he was a great commentator marital homes, first at Park Street and later notable films about artists are, charting the and a great defender of Turner, although he at Herne Hill. This underlines Effie’s total domination of a life by the desire to was also critical. And Turner did apparently condition as effectively a prisoner of the paint at the expense of all else, including take the piss out of him to some degree. So Ruskins. More significantly, the two trips to crucially human relationships. Turner’s it was all very organic. But apart from Venice are merged, but much is missed that only genuine feelings seem to be for his anything else, we thought that the wheeze of would have given a more rounded picture of devoted father (beautifully played by Paul having a comic version of Ruskin was too Effie. It is not revealed that Venice was Jesson). Turner’s anguish at his death is one good to resist’. It is a pity that the under Austrian occupation and that Effie had of the film’s emotional high points. On the temptation was not resisted for there is scant a high old time flirting with the young other hand, he selfishly exploits women for recognition of the courageous and Austrian officers, whom she described sexual gratification, including the put-upon determined championship of Turner that was lipsmackingly as ‘the finest-looking men I housekeeper Hannah Danby (a lovely such a feature of Ruskin’s work. We still ever saw in their white coats and tight blue performance by Dorothy Atkinson), though await a film that will give a fair and balanced Italy trowzers’ (sic). She described herself in there is no actual evidence of a sexual account of one of the great intellects of a letter as ‘the Belle of All the Balls’. Two relationship between them. As in Victorian Britain. officers fought a duel over her and she Alexander Korda’s Rembrandt (1936) with Jeffrey Richards developed an intense romantic relationship Charles Laughton, John Huston’s Moulin with a dashing Austrian lieutenant, Charles Rouge (1952) with José Ferrer as Toulouse- Paulizza. The theft of her jewels during her Lautrec, and Vincente stay also caused a sensation and a scandal. Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956) None of this is covered by the film and with Kirk Douglas as Van instead a fictional episode is substituted Gogh, Mike Leigh with his where she is pursued by the amorous son of cinematographer Dick Pope has her Italian chaperone and flees in terror chosen to shoot the film in the from him. The result is an unbalanced, style of his subject and the film unfair portrayal of both John and Effie and is ravishingly beautiful to look one which gives absolutely no indication of at it, with specific recreations why he was regarded with such reverence as of such masterpieces as Rain, sage, critic and prophet. Steam and Speed and The Fighting Temeraire as well as the overall use of Turnerian composition Joshua McGuire as Ruskin in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner. and lighting. Mike Leigh’s dialogue has an engaging Dickensian richness, and there are welcome glimpses of a galaxy of Victorian artistic notables such as Benjamin Robert Haydon, Clarkson Stanfield, David Roberts and John Constable and a reminder
Ruskin and Effie (Dakota Fanning) in Effie Gray. 31
ON BECOMING A COMPANION Now, when I consider the influence of inspired former tutor of Ruskin Ruskin in the life I have led, it becomes College, Katherine Hughes, it FEATURE increasingly clear to me that, although his proved to be the motivation I inspirational and motivational qualities were needed to pursue my work. Having mostly not spoken about in the family, my since become a Companion of the formative years were very much an example Guild, ever more treasuries have of what Ruskin had envisaged the life of a opened to me, in terms of my craftsman should be. A craftsman—or pursuit of a better understanding of craftswoman—that is, working in a small Ruskin’s complexities—his unit, producing works of art by means of influence, and in particular his traditional processes, with very little relationship with Benjamin mechanical aid, to produce designs at their Creswick. The wealth of heart simple, useful and beautiful. It might knowledge within the Guild, and have been a rather hand-to-mouth existence, the generosity of scholars in sharing but it was incalculably rich in everything of their expertise, has been an real worth, and enhanced by the pleasures of enormous help to me. The support a calling whose main reward was to and mentoring of the Master has surround us with things of beauty and good formed a key part of it. With design. We were part of a community life further research, and the new works of craftspeople of like-mind, who shared of interest and new contacts yielded with us very similar values. Work was a joy by my website
of settings for such studies, with its wealth The Launch of the SHEFFIELD project in of plant life. It has helped in the personal the Ruskin Hall Community Centre was a development of my work, which now prime example of the Guild at work, fully focuses more on plant material and cell engaged with the residents of Walkley and structures. Reading the work of wider afield. For me, it was such a privilege Companion Howard Hull, I have become to bring records and images of Benjamin conscious of the deeper and broader Creswick’s life and work to modern interpretations of cell structures and their Walkley, so near to where the Swans first relation to all the impermeable and ever- nurtured it. It was one of the most changing boundaries in nature. The fact rewarding moments of my life and work. that phenomena as diverse as plants and Director Janet Barnes, herself once curator rocks, which appear so different, are in fact of the Ruskin Gallery at Norfolk Street, both constantly changing, yet at vastly warmed my heart by kindly highlighting different rates, is evidence of the natural Benjamin, and the connection to him, in her rhythm that flows in nature. Companion welcome speech. That Ruth Nutter and her David Walker Barker’s insightful references dedicated team had put such hard work into to the ‘seed’ of crystals forming and the preparations for this launch was growing, has helped me link the ‘seed’ of immediately apparent on entering the plant-life to the growth of cells, and the crowded Hall. I was quickly surrounded by flow of water between plant, earth, lake people whose interest in Benjamin and the and sky. The sight of clouds being absorbed image of the Cutlers Hall frieze in London and reabsorbed, endlessly forming and re- was so informed and genuine. So many of forming, is to watch the mysterious flow of them read the full and detailed list of the life, including human life itself. The work I activities Creswick depicts in his work; the am now preparing includes the forms of many questions I was answering underlined cell structures and their boundaries, the for me how deep and genuine their interest shells and eggs, seeds in all forms—from was. What was true for me applied to every the windblown thistledown to the other project in the Hall. The wish among seemingly hard eggshell that the soft bird- visitors to be an active part of the project nestlings break through from their egg-sac became more obvious as the evening to give life new form: there is movement progressed. One was watching a community and flow everywhere. As Howard Hull has hungry to rediscover a sense of their neatly put it, ‘the only certainty is that of neighbourhood and the sense of social constant change.’ Again, I am so grateful cohesion in the city at large (see back cover). for this development of my understanding. That the Guild of St George was so ably My life, incomparably enriched by fostering this, and with such genuine warmth Ruskin’s legacy, continues to expand, and sensitivity, was evident. I personally had assisted, supported, and developed by the a strong feeling of the presence of John Companions’ work and generosity of spirit. Ruskin, Ben Creswick and his son Charles, The diversity of that Companionship is in the hall. I felt that they could not but be nurtured by an understanding Master. pleased that their words, work and Through collaborative ventures, the inspiration were enduring and relevant, in Guild’s potential to thrive is developed in the best way possible, and after the passage so many fields of art, education and social of so many years, were carried in the hands change. This is typified in the diverse of such worthy stewards, working for nature of the RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD good—to inform, engage and bring joy. project, which I have been involved in, Annie Creswick Dawson giving me the opportunity to assist in advancing the recognition of the apparently unique nature of Benjamin Creswick’s life as a working man whose talent was recognised by Ruskin and whose development was fostered by the curator and curatress of the Walkley Museum. As a result of Ruskin’s mentorship, he became a living, working example of Ruskin’s vision of the craftsman. Steamed Leaves (2014) by Lin Russell, Annie Creswick Dawson 33 and students at Brantwood. Brantwood Seedhead (2014). Photo: Annie Creswick Dawson.
AMERICAN NOTES Jim Spates ([email protected]) and Sara Atwood ([email protected])
True justice consists, mainly, in the granting to every human being due aid in the development of such faculties as it possesses for action and enjoyment, primarily for useful action, because all enjoyment worth having in some way arises out of such action. --Fors Clavigera, Letter 9 (Works 27.147-8)
The saying is that ‘life is short but art is elegant style Hubbard made popular: Elbert on his Why Ruskin? blog, his intent being to long.’ It is, of course, so, as anyone who has Hubbard and the Arts and Crafts Movement, inform readers of Ruskin’s genius, using ever studied art seriously can attest. quarto, illuminated throughout, medieval- quotes from Ruskin’s works and images of Something similar might be said about true style binding; Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, in his art:
on Gray’s on-going work, see Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin’s Lost his website, http:// Daguerreotypes. The book records and graybrechin.net. provides images from the Jacobsons’ Tim Holton continues his remarkable discovery, in 2006, of a lost work as a frame-maker in the trove of pictures taken by or belonging to Arts and Crafts style Ruskin. The find has doubled the number of championed by Ruskin and known Ruskin daguerreotypes, and revises Morris. His studio (see: the myth that he disliked photographic
RUSKIN IS EVERYWHERE ... The Master lecturing at the Hillside Club, Berkeley, California. Last year.
The Hillside Club at Berkeley, CA, has become a regular host for discussions about Ruskin.
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THE ANNUAL ARTS & CRAFTS CONFERENCE (OCTOBER 3rd-5th 2014) RUSKIN, MORRIS, AND HUBBARD: A CELEBRATION OF THE ARTS & CRAFTS ROYCROFT CAMPUS, EAST AURORA, NEW YORK
A major conference celebrating the pivotal ‘George Allen: From Pupil to Publisher— Morris and the publishing example of Allen, roles of Ruskin, William Morris, and Elbert A Lifetime of Loyalty.’ As most people focused on ‘Elbert Hubbard and the Hubbard was held this past October (2014) reading these pages are aware, Allen, at American Arts and Crafts Movement.’ In his on the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora, Ruskin’s suggestion, became his exclusive illustrated talk, Joe related much of the New York. The Roycroft Community was publisher in the 1870s after a dispute history of printing at Roycroft, told us of founded by Hubbard in the mid-1890s as a between the great writer and his long-time Hubbard’s emergence as one of the major living experiment based on the ideas of publishers—Smith, Elder—failed to heal. American publishers as a result of writing Ruskin and Morris (both of whom Hubbard The relationship between the two men and producing more than 200 books at had visited in England) which would (sometimes fraught with difficulties Roycroft, told us too of Hubbard’s creation, demonstrate the truth of their arguments resulting from Ruskin’s deteriorating in the service of these volumes, of the largest that, if human life was ever to be healthy and mental health during his later working printing operation in Western New York, happy, the practice of what we now call the years) turned out to be one of the most and of the Roycroft founder’s unfaltering arts and crafts would be essential to the important of the Victorian age, establishing commitment not only to making his books creation of such greatly desired ends. Allen as one of the foremost publishers of beautiful but also affordable. As 2015 began, Though much has changed in the interim, his time: the producer of magnificent Joe was engaged in recreating Hubbard’s after more than a century’s passing, books—The Library Edition of the Works of print shop at Roycroft. This includes the NORTH AMERICANCOMPANIONS NORTH Roycroft still thrives John Ruskin (39 volumes, still holding up acquisition and retooling of the original In addition to featuring workshops on marvellously in its 12th decade!)—and, presses from Hubbard’s time and using them various arts and crafts for those who because of his printing relationship with (unrivalled in their ability to create books of attended, the Conference featured lectures William Morris, one of the principal exquisite quality), to publish more examples by a number of speakers with a special models for the Arts and Crafts Movement which make palpable how ‘hand work’—the interest in how the work of these three on both sides of the Atlantic. The highlight idea lying at the core of the thinking of eminents contributed to what is now a world- of Paul’s talk was a cornucopia of new Ruskin, Morris, and Hubbard about the wide and growing interest in the arts and insights about Allen and his work which his good effects which accrue from working in crafts and how its theory and practice research has made possible. Currently, he any of the arts and crafts—generates, by its contributes to our personal and collective is working on a biography of Allen and his very nature, an aesthetic experience capable well-being. Knowing that readers of this relationship with Ruskin, a volume not of transforming both the creators of such magazine will be interested in the subjects of only much needed but highly anticipated books and those who read them. these talks, a brief description of each given the new insights just noted. Rachel Dickinson (Principal Lecturer follows. All of the speakers are Companions Joe Weber (Member, The Roycroft and Programme Leader, Interdisciplinary of the Guild of St. George. Campus Corporation) provided a perfectly Studies Department, Cheshire Campus, Paul Dawson (Editor, The Friends of apt follow-up to Paul’s lecture because of Manchester Metropolitan University) took Ruskin’s Brantwood Newsletter) gave us an his status as Roycroft’s principal printer. us in another direction, as reflected by the overview, based on his extensive knowledge Joe’s beautiful books, usually illuminated, title of her profusely illustrated talk, of the life and work of his subject, namely, and all inspired by the ideas of Ruskin and ‘Refined in Feature and Beautiful in Dress:
(From left) Companions Joe Weber, Rachel Dickinson, Paul Dawson, Jim Spates and Howard Hull at the Roycroft Conference. 36
Ruskin and Cloth.’ In many writings was the birth of emphasising the importance of the arts and ‘the modern’—a crafts in creating a well-lived life and a new style of healthy society, Ruskin noted the key role of building which, textiles in our lives. He argued that what we contrary to wear should be simple, modest, and popular aesthetically pleasing; that production of our sentiment then clothing should be sustainable, and now, environmentally friendly, and community impoverished our focused. As her talk progressed, Rachel architecture and related a story now all but forgotten—how all who worked Ruskin’s ideals regarding cloth work were on it, used it, or put into practice in various locales in the UK just saw it. Jim is in the later decades of the Victorian period. currently Then, using her own students as examples, working on a she concluded by showing us how, even in book on Ruskin’s this age when machines produce almost social thought: everything we wear, young people continue summarising for Howard Hull to be amazed and delighted by the power contemporary which inheres in the creation of cloths of readers his core arguments about how it is course of a hundred and fifty and more their own making. Rachel is writing a possible to have an honest economy and a years, has refused to die because it is a view journal article on Ruskin and cloth that will humane society as these are set forth in of life deeply imbued with truth, a truth include some of what she covered at Ruskin’s two classics, Unto this Last and intuitively sensed by all and easily testable by Roycroft, and is giving other talks and Munera Pulveris. anyone working in print, working in cloth, workshops on Ruskin and textiles. Howard Hull (Director of the Ruskin working in architecture, or any of the arts Foundation and and crafts. He concluded by suggesting that Brantwood) was this ‘perfectly possible dream’ was still the Keynote realizable on a broad scale and that it was the Speaker. His task of all of us who had assembled to talk, ‘A honour the names and work of these three Perfectly great thinkers to find ways to make this ‘life Possible Dream: more abundant’ come into being. Recapturing the Jim Spates Vision of Ruskin, Morris, and Hubbard,’ was, in its essence, a ‘call to action.’ Howard argued that all three of the visionaries Rachel Dickinson. who were the subjects of this Jim Spates (Professor of Sociology conference, believed in the beauty of work Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith and in works of beauty, and believed Colleges) designed his talk to remind us of further that, when these two elements the great work in which Ruskin explained were conjoined, we—and society for the first time why participation in hand generally— Arts and crafts workshops at Roycroft. work is so important in our lives. His thrived, and illustrated talk, ‘“This Paradise of Cities”: when they did Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, and the Birth of not, we the Arts and Crafts Movement,’ placed faltered. special emphasis on the author’s argument Reassessing that the most beautiful and delightful the history of architecture in Venice—St. Mark’s Basilica, the Arts and the Ducal Palace are instances—was built Crafts during the Middle Ages, a time when Movement in workers were encouraged to add to the both the UK vitality of the buildings on which they and North worked by exercising their own imagination America, and unique skill. Jim also stressed Ruskin’s Howard went parallel argument that this abiding respect on to suggest for the worker, his intelligence, and creative that this dual ability began to wane as the Renaissance was insight was a born and the master architect became king. view of life The consequence of this shift, Ruskin saw, that, over the 37
RUSKIN, NORTON, AND TURNER The Houghton Rare Book Library and Harvard’s Art Teaching Museums
R. Dyke Benjamin's Speech at the Burne- Jones, was Ruskin’s spiritual plans are now being formed for a virtual Opening of the Exhibition brother. digital 2019 global exhibition reaching from In 1869, at the Ruskin family home on the UK to North America and The specific theme of today’s experience Denmark Hill in suburban London, Charles Japan. Through this enterprise, institutions encompasses the friendship and Eliot Norton visited the estate’s Turner- and collectors hope to provide a robust case collaboration of Oxford’s first Slade lined rooms and recorded his psychological study for many other institutional/individual Professor of Art (1870) and Harvard’s analysis of Ruskin’s thought processes in collaborations. legendary Fine Arts Professor (1874) at the these words: ‘John time of this month’s reopening of the Ruskin suffers from his Harvard’s Art/Teaching Museums. The solitariness, and, in Houghton Library exhibit is designed to be thinking of him, I am complementary to the Harvard Art often reminded of the Museums’ re-openings. last pages in Modern Also, we are examining the importance of Painters in which he the collaboration of the institutional and the speaks of the treatment individual collector. The Houghton Library Turner received from exhibit is accompanied by a QR code link to the public, of his
NORTH AMERICANCOMPANIONS NORTH the digitized exhibition catalog which Peter loneliness, and of its evil Accardo and I authored as we co-curated at effect upon his work and Harvard and the Grolier Club in New York character.’ Charles Eliot in the year 2000, the centennial recognition Norton followed this of the year of Ruskin’s death. Through such intelligent observation in collaborations in the digital era, research a sensitive letter to possibilities are multiplying. Ruskin: ‘How strange, Tom Hyry, Peter Accardo and I welcome how fortunate for that you to this occasion of double collaboration: unconscious sympathy 1) The collaboration and friendship of that brought us together Oxford’s John Ruskin and Harvard’s Charles 13 years ago to reopen Eliot Norton within the context of J.M.W. into the conscious Turner’s legacy. sympathy which makes 2) The collaboration of an institutional up so large a part of the and an individual collector. interests of my life at If J.M.W. Turner were John Ruskin’s least!’ A Ruskin self-portrait? Presented by Ruskin to Charles Eliot ‘first earthly master’, and Thomas Carlyle Charles Eliot Norton’s Norton in 1874, Norton's first year as Professor at Harvard. were Ruskin’s ‘second earthly master’, daughter edited and From R. Dyke Benjamin’s Collection. Charles Eliot Norton, along with ‘Ned’ annotated The Letters of Charles Eliot Norton in 1913. Sarah Finally, today’s event illustrates that the described the Nortons’ 1869 terms ‘institution’ and ‘collector’ do not Italian travels and Ruskin’s visits: always reveal the underlying intellectual and ‘In Florence first and then in Siena personal friendships that evolve within these establishing themselves in villas… entities, today so beautifully exemplified by and later in Venice and in Rome Ruskin’s and Norton’s friendship. In fact, they passed two delightful Charles Eliot Norton became John Ruskin’s years…. the student of art and literary executor. Even in today’s gathering, life possessing himself of insights old friends and new in the realms of books which for more than thirty years and art might open new chapters in our own after his return to America he gave interconnected biographies. Already to successive generations at amongst you, are some of my closest friends. Harvard.’ Thank you, Bob Darton, Bill Stoneman, Like Ruskin, his Oxford Roger Stoddard, Martin Antonetti, Eric collaborator, Norton—the future Holzenberg and especially Peter Accardo Harvard Fine Arts Professor— for years of empathetic collaboration with enjoyed ‘A love of perfection in this individual collector. Thank you, Tom the details and the methods of Hyry, for being so agreeable during the every art, which gave to some of opening of this additional chapter in his interests in the applied arts— institutional and individual collaboration on printing in especial—almost the a subject so significant to Harvard’s and craftsman's own enjoyment and Oxford’s intellectual history and future understanding.’ This was Sarah scholarship. Norton’s observation. R. Dyke Benjamin For the 200th anniversary of John Ruskin’s 1819 birth, early
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SOME DECORATIVE FLORENTINE BINDINGS head of the front board, and incorporates the decorative M of the title in pink on a brushed gold ground. The F or Florence is in FEATURE red, also on a brushed gold ground. The title on the spine is written in black lower case letters, with red capitals M and F. There are two black lines at the head and tail of the spine. The end papers have an alternating repeating floral pattern in red and blue. The printed decorative border on the title page has been ‘enhanced’ in red, blue and green and the capital M and F have been given red and blue backgrounds, but this page could have been decorated by the book's owner. On the rear end paper is an indistince stamp reading 'Miniatures / Parchment Leather [?] Factory / 14 Piazza Pitti / and at / Gadda / Firenze / 30 via Gucciardini'. Knowing these two bindings in the collection of which I was the Curator, I was intrigued to see, many years ago, in the window of a bookshop in Selborne, a volume in a similarly decorated binding. I The front cover of the American edition of Mornings in Florence and its decorated end paper. was unable to resist the temptation to add it to my own collection—which I could do Florence, in the nineteenth century, had a provenance. It was already in the collection with a clear conscience because it was not a considerable English community and was when I became responsible for its care in book by Ruskin! also much visited by English travellers. Many 1957. This is a copy of George Allen's The book which I bought, again of of these visitors and residents liked to buy 'Pocket Edition', the edition usually found Florentine association, is a copy of The Vita visitors’ books, photograph albums and bound in limp red leather with Ruskin's Nuova or The New Life of Dante Alighieri, other useful items well-bound in decorated monogram in gold on the top cover. The translated from the Italian by Frances de vellum. Consequently, a number of leather of these bindings does not wear Mey. It was published by George Bell & businesses developed in Florence to cater for well, and volumes in this edition are often Sons. The first edition was printed at the this demand. found with very dilapidated bindings. Chiswick Press in September 1902; my copy In the Whitehouse Collection, in the Mornings in Florence first appeared in this was printed in December 1902. Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, are series in 1904. The present example is the Roughly the same height as the Allen two volumes of books by Ruskin, bound for 26th edition of 1911. edition of Mornings in Florence, The Vita Nuova this market. Appropriately, both books are Like the earlier example, it is bound in is rather wider; but the decoration is quite copies of Ruskin's Mornings in Florence in limp vellum with two wash-leather ties. similar in style. The large T is in blue and English. The flower and leaf decoration in blue, brushed gold with a trailing decoration of The earlier of the two examples was green and pink, occupies the left side and leaves and flowers in red, blue and green. published in New York in 1902. It is in a full limp vellum binding with two wash-leather ties and with a double line of wash-leather stitches at the spine-side of the covers. The top cover is decorated with a formalised flower and leaf border at the top and right side, with the Florentine lily in the top right angle of the decoration. The title of the book—Ruskin—Mornings in Florence—is written on the spine with the capitals R, M and F in red and the remainder of the words in lower case and black ink. The end papers are decorated with a repeating grey wave pattern interspersed with clusters of red dots. There is a binder's or bookseller's label on the last page— Alfonso Dori / Borgo S.S.Apostoli 14 / Presso Piazza S.Trinita / Florence. This volume once belonged to Ruskin's god-daughter, Constance Oldham, and was presented to the Whitehouse Collection with a number of other volumes by Ruskin which formerly belonged to her. The second example is of unknown The George Allen edition of Mornings in Florence and its decorated end paper. 39
The title, other than the opening initial, is The title: Dante /—/ New / written in black with black pen-drawn Life /, is written on the spine in decoration. As with the American edition of black ink with red initials and a short Mornings in Florence, the red Florentine lily red rule. The end papers are forms a central part of the decoration. The decorated overall in a red and rather damp-stained, limp vellum binding yellow four-tier repeating pattern— has single wash-leather ties. really rather nasty! On the reverse of the free front end paper is the small label—Giulio Giannini, Parchment Works, 19-20 Piazza Pitti, Florence. Signor Giannini was a near neighbour of the binder of the Allen Mornings. This business was established in 1856 by Pietro Giannini (1811- 1882). Although essentially a stationers, the firm received commissions for high-quality book bindings. Pietro's son, Guido (1853- 1931), transformed the business by concentrating on artistic The front cover of The New Life of Dante Alighieri bookbinding. The business has prospered, It is still at the same address in I am grateful to Rebecca Patterson of the Ruskin Florence's Piazza Pitti where the fifth and Library for her help in the preparation of this sixth generations continue the book- short article. binding business and have developed the James S. Dearden Giulio Giannini standing in the production of marbled papers. doorway of his shop in Piazza Pitti.
HOSPITAL ARCHITECTURE: PLACING ARCHITECTS, ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS AT THE HEART OF THE COMMISSIONING PROCESS
Healing Environment, 2014). the challenge of attempting to grapple with a It is recognised that all building process that places engagement between commissions should proceed on a people and nature first: it’s a process called sound economic basis but, as Dr Ross biophilic Design. implies, there should be a more Biophilic Design is a model of balance Old Glasgow Southern General Hospital (to be replaced by balanced and creative approach, with between nature and use of space. Edward O. New South Glasgow Hospital—NSGH). A Quiet Room art and design integrated into the Wilson, American biologist and zoologist,
fabric of the building, and the defined the term ‘biophilia’ as a bond
In his 1849 essay, The Seven Lamps of buildings located in a garden-style between human beings and other species. Architecture, Ruskin presents the idea that setting. We are inclined subconsciously to seek buildings and architecture are two separate In a talk I gave to Macmillan Charity, Art connections with nature, to find balance and things; one is purely functional and the other and the Healing Environment (August 2014), I inner harmony. One of the key biophilic FEATURE has meaning: ‘All architecture proposes an asked the audience to close their eyes and directions in architecture is the use of effect on the human mind, not merely a imagine a place of tranquillity, safety and organic and naturalistic forms that offer an service to the human frame.’ peace. It might be a woodland glade, a immediate way of allowing individuals to Modern hospitals often have rooms walled garden, a stream or a meadow. As connect to spaces and nature. without windows or views onto concrete they held that image in their minds, I then Roger Ulrich’s classic study (1984) façades—they are often located on sites with presented a slide of a modern hospital showed that patients recovering from limited connections to nature, such as parks Quiet Room, a place where conversations surgery had better outcomes when nursed in or green areas. With strong clinical evidence are held between clinical staff, patients and rooms overlooking a small stand of trees to suggest the need for a different approach families. These spaces often have no rather than a brick wall. They required to hospital design, how did we arrive at this windows, flat ceilings with harsh lighting position? and hard wall and floor surfaces that A leading health practitioner, Dr Donnie amplify the vibrations of sounds. This, I Ross (former Medical Director of a large explained, is the task for designers and acute hospital in North East Scotland and ex- artists: to find ways to humanise clinical Chairman of Grampian Hospital Arts Trust) spaces—rooms, waiting areas and offers us some insights: ‘[T]he NHS is about corridors—to foster dignity and enable healing but the elements of wholeness, conversations to take place. compassion and creativity have been In my own practice as an artist, I squeezed out by technology, rationality and recognise the faults in the health building hard economics’ (Seminar, Art and the and commissioning system, but enjoy 40 Completed Quiet Room—New South Glasgow Hospital (NSGH) 2015. Photo courtesy of NSGH.
fewer analgesic pharmaceuticals, made controlled or clinical space/room within the fewer demands on nurses and needed hospital. shorter lengths of stay. There were two strands to the engagement In the interior design of the New South process: Glasgow Hospital (NSGH), a number of 1. Workshops held in a garden space the Quiet Rooms set aside for families were with volunteers drawn from both designed with no window or with windows The Hidden Gardens’ own that look over building façades. In fact, the programme and also from the NSGH interior architecture of the rooms are very Community Engagement Team’s similar to the rooms in the hospitals which volunteers. are being replaced. New hospitals may have 2. Clinical conversations: meetings new shells, but often the interior with key clinical staff that will be architecture (design of rooms) remains very responsible for the clinical functions similar to what went before. in the new hospital. What, crucially, are missing, are Ideally, both strands would have included designed interior spaces that provide a creative activity, but the clinical deeper way of connecting to people; conversations took a more pragmatic form, designs that create a sense of the familiar, focussing on the practical aspects of the uses Staff & volunteers, providing spaces that offer warmth and of the Quiet Rooms. Hidden Gardens Glasgow, 2013. comfort, with views out onto the natural A typical workshop began with the world. participants walking around the garden. This The artist/designer can fulfil the crucial set the stage for the workshop, where the role of finding how to reconnect spaces to garden became ‘a laboratory’ for the day; a people, and offer some creative quality to place to listen to nature, to discuss ideas on the room. It would have been sensible if dignity within clinical spaces and to make an that process had started at the beginning of image from nature. The garden was also a the building design process, but as with place to rebalance each participant’s most commissions, the artist/designer is engagement; the presence of nature would brought in at the end; to offer a service to help to guide their responses. The morning the contractor—and not to be a full session was devoted to consideration of the creative partner. design elements within the clinical rooms: The commission for Lead Artist NSGH the furniture, lighting, wall colours, etc. I Quiet Rooms offered the opportunity to encouraged them to express preferences, unite my practice as an artist with my based on their own experiences of working interest in biophilic design. To drive this in, or receiving support from, the Health biophilic thinking I used a popular garden Service. Images of clinical chairs, or light space in Glasgow that had been developed units, as well as examples of art, were from a barren urban setting, Hidden presented and people discussed whether they Gardens, close to the Tramway Centre for preferred abstract or realistic art, natural Visual Arts. This space became my working scenes, painting or photography. laboratory. It also underpinned my idea of We discussed the characteristics of the using a Walled Garden as a metaphor for a institutional environment, including the
Application of fabric designs to furniture selected Cyanotypes from Hidden Garden workshops, 2013. for Quiet Rooms in the New South Glasgow Hospital, 2015. 41
conservative and utilitarian character of garden and freely chose the leaf types and images and placing them under glass. The furniture, as well as the character of flower petals that spoke to them. The pressed plant forms were then exposed to lighting: strip-lights were unanimously participants had the freedom to choose how sunlight. In the garden shed/studio, within judged to be too harsh, and people felt that the various leaf types and petals should be the grounds of The Hidden Gardens, a wall lights should be used instead. Natural arranged on a sheet of paper. The only temporary photographic studio had been set light was seen as essential, and where that guidance was to ‘let nature speak’. Some up and the cyanotypes, or ‘sun pictures’, wasn’t available, the idea of light boxes with participants found the request difficult; one were then developed and hung to dry. At nature-based imagery was supported. commented, ‘I am not an artist, I can’t each stage, the workshop participants saw Participants commented that rooms should make art.’ The reassurance that they were the process unfolding: from the selection of have a sofa as well as chairs. A sofa allows not required to be fully-fledged artists— leaves, to making a picture, to creating a people to sit together in comfort, to comfort only to enjoy connecting to nature— photogram and finally to seeing the result. and to be comforted. It was also observed helped free up their creative responses. See the website for video clips of this that in a potentially difficult relationship it is Individuals chose plants for a range of process:
Fabric designs developed from cyanotype imagery, 2014. Unless stated otherwise, all 42 photos: Alex Hamilton.
‘Derbyshire is a lovely child’s alphabet’: RUSKIN, RAILWAYS, ST GEORGE’S FARM
AND TOTLEY’S HERITAGE FEATURE
There seem to be two important dates in Totley’s history which are relevant to this article. The first is May 1842, when the Totley Enclosure Act was passed, giving away Totley’s common land to a few wealthy and distinguished landowners. The landowners’ rights became ‘almost absolute’ and ‘people’s rights [were] effectively, non- existent’.1 The second date is 1935, when Totley, Dore and Greenhill were taken in by the City of Sheffield, away from the county of Derbyshire. The long development of the railways took place between these two dates, specifically the outward growth of the railway from Sheffield to Totley in the early to mid-1870s, and then into Derbyshire and beyond to Manchester in the 1880s and 1890s. This was a period when many rural communities were joined to towns and cities. Sheffield expanded to Totley. Links between towns, cities, villages and counties all over the country would change forever. The Saxon origin of the name Totley indicates the settlement of ‘Tot’ or ‘Toft’ on the hill amidst the open clearings. As a ‘look Brian Edwards traced out a route through George Museum in Walkley, Sheffield. -out’ it provides glorious views extending Totley by which the monks would have Edward Carpenter, socialist, poet, for miles. 2 Totley includes land situated taken their flocks of sheep over the course philosopher, and early gay activist, was from about 400 feet below Totley Rise, of the year, a journey made for almost influenced by and wrote to Ruskin, climbing to 1300 feet at Flask Edge on its far three hundred years until the Dissolution of describing them: south-western border. It grew to cover an the Monasteries. This rich medieval history A small body—about a dozen--of area of some three and a half miles by two would have been looked on approvingly by men calling themselves Communists, miles, by the nineteenth century. It is an Ruskin, and he might have felt that ‘in the mostly great talkers, had joined area of fast-flowing streams, abundant in main temper of its inhabitants, old English, together with the idea of establishing wood—and with the local gritstone, Totley and capable, therefore, yet of ideas of themselves on land somewhere; and had all the raw materials necessary for the honesty and piety by which Old England it was at their insistence that John grinding-wheels in the watermills were lived.’4 Ruskin bought a small farm (of dotted along the local streams and Ruskin outlined a bucolic vision in the thirteen acres or so) at Totley near tributaries that ran into the River Sheaf at first number of Fors in 1871 that suited Sheffield, which he afterwards made Totley Brook, and on to Sheaf-field, or rural Totley well: over to St. George’s Guild. Sheffield, some six miles away. From We will try to take some small Carpenter followed the fortunes of St. medieval times, lead smelting and rolling, piece of English ground, beautiful, George’s Farm and lived close by in paper-making, corn-grinding and scythe- peaceful and fruitful. We will have Bradway, and on inheriting money from his making were prominent at various stages, no steam trains upon it and no father, he established himself at Millthorpe, although much of the workforce remained railroads; we will have no untended near Barlow, Derbyshire for a simpler life engaged in agriculture. or unthoughtful creatures upon it; closer to nature, a life of market gardening Over the centuries, Totley had consisted none wretched, but the sick; none and rural craft. The period from 1877 largely of a succession of farms and farming idle, but the dead …5 onwards marks a chequered history for St communities. In the medieval period, This is the spirit in which Ruskin George’s Farm, as so well outlined in Frost’s Totley’s land was close to Beauchief Abbey approached the creation of St. George’s new book, The Lost Companions.7 When John in the parish of Ecclesall—an abbey in a Farm in Totley where: Ruskin visited his new venture some two dale. The Abbey was founded by Robert A few of the Sheffield working years later, on 17th October 1879, all FitzRanulf in 1183 and had mills on the men who admit the possibility of seemed—at least on the surface—to be River Sheaf. The monks residing there the St George’s notions being just, going well. Ruskin cheerfully described his farmed sheep, for fleece and mutton. By the have asked me to let them rent ‘faithful old Gardener’ David Downs, as 12th century they had a sheep grange at some ground from the Company, resident ‘for a while at least, at Abbeydale’8 Streberry-ley (Strawberry Lee) in Totley whereupon to spend the spare to look after the communal agricultural Bents. Whilst the Abbey is still partially hours they have, of morning or project with Riley ‘in feathers’ and standing, and the old ponds which supplied evening, in some useful labour.6 ‘especially proud of some rows of cabbages’. the monks with their carp remain,3 the The communal farm at Totley was started Ruskin tells us that he ‘had tea in state at original pasture of their sheep grange can by a group of men shortlisted by Henry Totley and looked at all the crops.’9 Yet, as only be traced through old documents. Swan, the Curator of the Guild of St. Frost points out, ‘relations remained 43
Then and now: St George’s Farm, Totley. With thanks to Totley History Group and Sally Goldsmith.
44
cordially guarded.’10 In fact, after his visit, this, as I started out by saying, was the Totley farm ‘Abbeydale’ providing a link Ruskin decided to remove Riley from St growth of the railways. Prior to the back to the Abbey at Beauchief. George’s Farm and leave the management to Sheffield railway line reaching Dore and its Already in the summer of 1873, the Totley Downs. This marked a phase where the immediate neighbour, Totley, there was Brook Estate Company, made up of a brush Totley ‘experiment’ went through a difficult just one horse-drawn bus per day which manufacturer, a County Court Clerk, a period. travelled out from Sheffield covering the timber merchant and two building Yet, on that day’s visit, Ruskin must have six or so miles to this area. This must have contractors—Sheffielders all—was planning seen around him the beautiful Derbyshire entailed a long and often difficult journey; new housing. As Brian Edwards rightly countryside, which is reflected in a line in a especially in the autumn and winter. With points out, ‘The railway was the turning letter he wrote to the Manchester City News in the opening of the railway station in 1872, point in the development of the [Totley] 1884: ‘Derbyshire is a lovely child’s there were trains carrying far more people district.’14 The railway ushered in an era of alphabet; an alluring first lesson in all that’s out to Dore and Totley and with greater building that gained momentum in the admirable and powerful, chiefly in the way it frequency, at speed and with protection decades that followed. engages and fixes the attention.’11 from the weather. Land prices rose as a St George’s Farm, led first by Edwin William Harrison Riley had come to result, and even before the arrival of the Priest and later by Riley, hosted fellow Sheffield in 1877. He edited The Socialist railway, plans for suburban villas were travellers during 1878, who were dropping from June to December of that year, sending being drawn. Sheffield men were coming in to lend a hand, discuss politics and poetry a copy to Ruskin, who, with some guarded to the rural village of Totley. Symbolically, and crack intellectual jokes. comment and criticism, thought there was a with the building of Dore and Totley Many visitors went to the farm, great deal of good in it. Riley took centre- station, the site of the medieval Walk and newspaper correspondents had stage in the St George’s Farm community Mill—which the monks of Beauchief Abbey things to say about us, wise and for a period in 1878. Like Carpenter, he was had worked, fulling (cleansing) their otherwise. Now our expenses were an admirer of the American poet Walt cloth—was demolished, and the dam that increased and we had to meet them, Whitman, and looked for a communal powered the mill was filled in. A few years so we had parties to visit during the agrarian life. It was a project nourished ‘by a later, Ruskin, apparently looking back to summer taking tea, for which they vague but persisting recollection of a past the monks at Beauchief Abbey, described were charged. … Every Wednesday, Golden Age … a Garden of Eden separated his St George Farm workers as ‘in the spirit we went to Dore and Totley in time and space from the realities of of monks gathered for missionary [station] from Sheffield, bringing common life.’12 Totley fitted this service.’13 He always preferred to call the back fruit, eggs, and vegetables to description, in that it had been long protected by the The coming of the railway transformed the green band of Derbyshire village of Totley into the modern Whirlow, Ecclesall suburb of a commercial city in South Yorkshire. Woods, Ladyspring Wood and Beauchief Hall—hidden and remote from Sheffield’s industrial sprawl. Yet in the late 19th century, change was accelerating everywhere and one of the main agents in 45
staying at Millthorpe with of people, and had looked back to an age of Edward Carpenter. Common Land which had been undermined Ashbee recorded his by the Enclosure Acts. It had given a small impressions of the new group of Sheffield men, who had dreamed of commune: a communal enterprise away from the town, There we have a the opportunity to experiment. These community of early people had political ideas that were new, Christians pure and though, in part, rooted in the Chartist simple—some ten movement. The Totley Farm shows how men and three women fraught with difficulties such a communal … and no private project was. Ruskin—in choosing the rural property except in and remote Derbyshire village of Totley, at a wives … there was a time when the railway he abhorred was brightness and rapidly opening the area up to speculation, clearness in the faces change and enterprise—became an the meetings which the members of most of them which bespoke important part of the local history before purchased.15 enthusiasm for humanity.18 Totley left Derbyshire and became a suburb The Totley Brook villa estate started in By the end of the 1880s, the Guild of St of an industrial city in South Yorkshire. 1873, later failed as the land and its planned George offered George Pearson the farm housing was bisected by the incoming rent-free for a couple of years, until he This article was written in tribute to Brian railway as it reached Totley. Another very could afford to pay. Ironically, it was Edwards, who died in February of this year on grand enterprise, though short-lived, took largely the building of the Totley railway his 78th birthday. Illustrations from his shape in the mid-1880s, initially rooted tunnel to Grindleford, linking it up with publications, Brian Edwards’ Drawings of entirely in land speculation. Alderman the line to Manchester, that put Pearson in Historic Totley (1979), Totley and the Joseph Mountain, one of Sheffield’s building profit. He found a regular market among magnates, planned a pleasure garden that the railway navvies, and despite the Tunnel (1985) and Dore, Totley and would rival the Belle Vue Gardens in smallpox outbreak in Totley at the start of Beyond (1993) have been reproduced with Manchester. Many used the railway to go to the 1890s, he continued to do well, even the kind permission of his widow, Pamela the opening of Victoria Gardens which lay when other tradesmen were less fortunate. Edwards. on a piece of land bordered by Baslow Road, So it was largely the railway that revived Brian was a creative and intuitive Mickley Lane and Totley Brook. Opened on the fortunes of the Guild’s farm, and put researcher, and an accomplished artist and Whit Monday, 1883, the ceremony Pearson on the path to success. By 1935, he designer. He lived in Totley for many years, attracted 10,000 people who enjoyed a had seven greenhouses and a packing shed, recording its history, buildings and natural variety of theatrical entertainments; there he grew bedding plants, tomatoes and features at a time when the area was was a ballroom, and refreshments were cucumbers, and had by then bought beginning to change rapidly. His rich archive served (the restaurant roof and walls were neighbouring land; the owner of 43 acres. mostly made of glass) and there was a 400- By the time Totley became part of Sheffield of notes and drawings is available for yard promenade with extensive views over and the utopian dream had faded, and viewing. It is housed at 79, Baslow Road, the Derbyshire Moors. The grounds were before the farm had become a flourishing Totley and can be seen by appointment. later laid out for cricket, tennis, bowls and commercial concern, the Guild had sold Please contact the Totley History group at archery, and later still for cycle racing.16 the farm to him outright. [email protected] for Local landowners were not happy with this Yet for a while, at least, Ruskin’s scheme further details. large development. A drinks licence was had given some land back to a community Andrew Russell refused, and in 1886, Mountain was summoned on grounds of a breach of the Public Health Act, for permitting raw sewage from one of his Totley The building of the Totley tunnel. Rise properties to drain into a local landowner’s lake. By 1887, the venture was failing. When Joseph Mountain died in 1893, the Victoria Gardens were offered for sale. Meanwhile, David Downs, Ruskin’s gardener, continued looking after St George’s Farm, which was operating at a financial loss, and when he died in 1888, the land was let to John Furniss, George Pearson and others. Furniss was a considerable figure among the Sheffield Socialists, an old-style preacher and an impressive speaker who used Totley as a base for his political activity.17 In the autumn of the following year, St George’s Farm was visited by G. L. Dickinson and C. R. Ashbee, two young Cambridge idealists 46
NOTES 5. Works 27.96. History, p.72 (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. 6. Works 29.98. Ltd). 1. Only connect: soil, soul, society: the best of 7. Frost, Mark (2014) The Lost Companions 14. Edwards, Totley and the Tunnel, p.4. Resurgence Magazine 1990-1999 (2000), p. and John Ruskin’s Guild of St George: a 15. Maloy, M., ‘St George’s Farm’ in 61 ed. John Lane and Maya Kumar Mitchell revisionary history (London & New York: Commonweal (25th May 1889), p. 165. (Totnes: Green Books). Anthem Press). 16. See
(Above) The yard at St George’s Farm. With thanks to Totley History Group. (Left) The Pearson family. They made a commercial success of running the farm at Totley. With thanks to Totley History Group.
Why not watch Sally Goldsmith’s perambulatory play, Boots, Fresh Air and Ginger Beer, set and performed in Totley? It is available online with other RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD content at
47
ON TRANSLATING RUSKIN’S ACADEMY GUIDE1 The Guide to the Principal Pictures in the markedly used with ‘cutting’ and ‘linking’ once intimately paternalistic and Academy of Fine Arts at Venice (1877) was one functions, with the full stop, the colon and complicit—in which Ruskin surprises his FEATURE of the first of Ruskin’s works to be the dash, so ubiquitous in Ruskin’s diaries reader-visitor by removing him temporarily translated into Italian, preceded only by G. and private correspondence, signalling from the Galleries: So (always supposing the Pasolini Zanelli’s edition of ‘The Shrine of pauses, accelerations, changes of direction day fine,) go down to your boat, and order the Slaves’, the First Supplement to St Mark’s and resumptions. If the early Ruskin’s yourself to be taken to the church of the Frari. It Rest, published by George Allen in 1885.2 vocabulary had been copious and tended to is clear from this that the Guide founds its The Guide came sixteen years later, when variatio, that of this later Ruskin is generally whole mode of communication on a familiar, Maria Pezzè Pascolato selected it for her spare and essential, with a tendency to one-to-one relationship, teacher to pupil, anthology volume, Venezia (1901), which repetitio. And the marked use of adjectives master to disciple, intimate to the point of also included translations of St Mark’s Rest in threes in the early books gives way to a being at times, almost brutally intrusive. and other Ruskin writings on Venetian art.3 much reduced use of attributes in general And here we find confirmation of the Pascolato’s translation is an important work and to the insistent repetition of a handful textual coherence of a work which is of cultural mediation, and remains valuable of plain terms, most of them seemingly stylistically and rhetorically so much tighter for its historical reconstruction of Venice as neutral or, at any rate, barely connotative. and sparer than Ruskin’s previous writings, it was in the early years of the twentieth As the argument of the Guide develops moving in radically and provocatively new century, in particular for the arrangement of and its aesthetic perspective gradually directions. Himself a guide sui generis, at paintings in the Accademia galleries. (Cook emerges, these terms begin to perform a once both aesthetic and spiritual, Ruskin and Wedderburn made ample use of the crucial role in the argument—semantic and leads his visitor through the galleries of the volume in this respect.) emotional refrains which guide the reader Academy and the ‘sacred’ sites of Venetian Since Venezia, last re-issued in 1925, no through it. Quite ordinary adjectives such art addressing at once the mind, the eyes and further translation of the Guide has appeared; as quiet and bright, verbs such as amuse and the ‘heart’ of his reader. The same singular its fate has essentially been no different enjoy, and their respective derivations, are mode of address underpins St Mark’s Rest, from that of its English original. The focus of woven together to form a fine web of from which this volume offers an extract much attention and debate at the time of fixed, recurrent meanings and functions. (the ‘Shrine of the Slaves’), together with a publication, it has been over-shadowed, over The present translation, made in close fragment (not used at the time) from the years, by the ‘greater’ works of Ruskin’s collaboration with Paul Tucker, aims at the ‘Carpaccio’s Ape’. Such examples confirm early and middle periods. The various Italian highest possible adherence, both formal and the stylistic continuity that links these texts, translations of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, semantic, to the original, whose figures of written during the same period and arising The Stones of Venice and Modern Painters, which repetition and brevity are marked features, out of the unified vision discussed in detail in have succeeded one another since the early and could neither be reduced in number Tucker’s Introduction. The singular status of twentieth century, have helped Italian nor modified. Variatio—variation of the Guide’s addressee—and the same is true readers to consolidate their knowledge of vocabulary by means of synonyms—is of St Mark’s Rest—appears all the more Ruskin’s writings on Venetian art up to generally encouraged in Italian, but in this marked when we contrast it with passages 1860. Those readers may well be surprised case, it was avoided in deference to the (included here among the Supplementary by this Guide, and may find it an unsettling, Guide’s deliberate grounding in these and Texts) taken from numbers of Fors Clavigera even disturbing work—not just by reason of only these stylistic characteristics. which date from the same period but its content but also because of the terms in And what about the presence of the explicitly address more than one singular which that content is expressed. In his reader: that you who is so insistently reader: ‘the Workmen and Labourers of scholarly introduction to this new translation rebuked, reprimanded, exhorted and Great Britain’. of the Guide (Guida ai principali dipinti dell’ scolded in the Guide? How was Italian with Lastly, among the challenges the Guide Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, published by its three pronouns for the English one—the poses for an Italian translator are the Electa, 2014), Paul Tucker shows in detail familiar tu, the polite Lei and the plural complexities of those inter-linguistic that the Ruskin of the Guide and St Mark’s voi—to register that person in its text? An passages for which the sources are Italian. In Rest re-thinks the ideological, cultural and older generation would have settled for voi, his attempt to recover the vestiges of religious premises in which The Stones of rather as a French writer would use vous; Venice’s historical and cultural past, Ruskin Venice and other early works had been that is what Pascolato, for instance, uses as turned for the Story of St Ursula told in Fors grounded. A no less deeply critical do all other translators without exception, Clavigera (and given here in the reappraisal of those writings imbues the but it is a usage which skates over the issue Supplementary Texts) to the English version language in which they are expressed, of who is being addressed and exploits the by his pupil James Reddie Anderson, which radically transforming their syntactic and ambivalence of the English second person was based on Francesco Zambrini’s 1855 lexical superstructure. Rigorously and (both singular and plural). It is a form collection of legends of saints’ lives,4 while methodically, Ruskin rejects the persuasive which, though widely used in Italian until a for Veronese’s famous interrogation before elaboration of his early rhetoric for a more few decades ago, is hopelessly outdated the Inquisitors he used his friend Edward immediate and essential rendering of the today. Instead, we opted for tu and, in Cheney’s translation from the Venetian- ‘truth’ of the object. While the syntax of doing so, were guided by precise clues in language original held in the Venice Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice was the text. There are passages in Part II Archives.5 Often presenting himself as broadly hypotactic (i.e. made up of long where Ruskin explicitly addresses the sponsor of these researches, Ruskin does not sentences involving many subordinate British traveller and the modern British man of summarise these texts but reprints them in clauses) that of the Guide, with its short business, but at such points one might full, thus expressing his deliberate intention sentences, participle and gerund verb-forms suppose that he was picking out selected to adhere to their sources by offering and the habit of making lists, is noticeably figures from among his readership. The translations which bear linguistic traces of more paratactic, which is to say, based on singular reference of the pronoun is their originals. If Ruskin, therefore, presents straightforward syntax and basic sentence unequivocally manifested, however, in the us with translations from Italian to English forms. Punctuation is frequently and use of yourself in one particular passage—at that are as faithful as possible to their 48
sources, though in modernised versions, it NOTES years in Tuscany, she returned to Venice in seemed appropriate to reproduce as far as 1. This article is based on my Translator’s 1896, where she became deeply involved in possible the original Italian versions but Note to the Guida ai principali dipinti promoting children’s and women’s without obsolete, archaic or dialect forms dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. I wish education. The founder of the first children’s and features. In so doing I hoped to give the to thank Jeanne Clegg, Stuart Eagles and library in Italy, and first translator of Hans Italian reader a taste of how the Ruskin of Clive Wilmer for their precious help in Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, she wrote the 1870s thought of a good translation: one making the English version up to ‘what several novels for children and poems in the which ‘aims straight, and with almost Ruskin and the Guide deserve’. Venetian vernacular. She also translated fiercely fixed purpose, at getting into the 2. For a list of Italian translations of extensively from the English—Carlyle and heart and truth of the thing it has got to say; Ruskin’s works, see my Saggi su Ruskin: Thoreau as well as Ruskin. and unmistakably, at any cost of its own Stile Retorica Traduzione, Venezia, 2004, pp. 4. Francesco Zambrini, Collezioni di dignity, explaining that to the hearer, 149-53; also in D. Lamberini (ed.), leggende inedite scritte nel buon secolo della shrinking from no familiarity, and restricting L’eredità di John Ruskin nella cultura italiana lingua italiana, Bologna, 1855. itself from no expansion in terms, that will del Novecento, Firenze, 2006, pp. 241-246. 5. A transcript is now available in Terisio make the thing meant clearer’ (Works 3. Maria Pezzè Pascolato (1869-1933) Pignatti, Paolo Veronese. Convito in casa Levi, 31.116). came from a family very active in Venetian Venezia, 1986; and Maria Elena Massimi, La Emma Sdegno political and social life. After taking a cena in casa di Levi. Il Processo riaperto, degree in letters and philosophy at the Venezia, 2011.
University of Padua and spending some
John Ruskin. Guida ai principali dipinti nell’Accademia di Belli Arti di Venezia. Edited by Paul Tucker. Translated into Italian by Emma Sdegno. Electa, 2014. 224 pp. 25 Euros.
Ruskin’s Guide to the Principal Pictures in the identification: many pictures have been Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, published in moved, transferred to the reserve two parts in 1877, has never been much collection or sent back to their original noticed. It was one of the books which homes, and the system of numbering has Ruskin wrote to educate the ordinary more than once been changed. But Paul English tourist and, as such, belongs with Tucker has worked it all out and gives the Mornings in Florence and St Mark’s Rest. reader the correct modern references, so
Indeed, according to Companion Paul the first value of this Italian edition is that it BOOK REVIEW BOOK Tucker, the editor of this new Italian can easily be used: which is also the first of translation, it may originally have been many reasons why I think the publishers intended as part of St Mark’s Rest, and much have made a mistake in declining to publish of what Ruskin wrote—for instance, about an English-language edition. Carpaccio’s St Ursula cycle—seems to have Despite those problems of identification, been almost randomly divided between that my experiment proved to me for the book and the Guide. It is certainly the case umpteenth time how closely, accurately that, at this stage in his life, Ruskin was and intelligently Ruskin sees. The manically writing more books than he judgements were, of course, eccentric if would ever have been able to finish and all measured against the hierarchies accepted of them are effectively incomplete. Several, in Ruskin’s day, and many of them will still moreover, are touched from time to time seem strange now. But if you are willing to with that note of near hysteria that, in the consider the possibility that the fourteenth course of this same year, 1877, betrayed century (‘the Age of the Masters’) Ruskin into his conflict with Whistler. In produced greater art than the age of February 1878 his mind broke down Michelangelo, and that Vittore Carpaccio is bother to mention it, unless there is altogether and it does not seem to me a greater artist than Titian, Veronese or something valuable to be learnt from it. It mistaken to suggest that the extremes of even, by this stage, the revered Tintoretto, isn’t clear to me, for example, that he even emotional response that damage, for you can surrender yourself to a civilised knew who Tiepolo was: the most spectacular instance, Mornings in Florence, are the engagement with Ruskin. By the standards artist of the era he most disliked is simply rumblings of an approaching avalanche, of his later work, there is not much rant or disregarded. though Tucker is surely right to insist that, hyperbole. One reason why the book is The virtues of this approach, such as they when Ruskin wrote the Guide, he had not neglected, as Tucker points out, is that are, and the part played by this remarkable yet lost his grip on reality. Ruskin simply refuses to do what book in the context of Ruskin’s criticism, As it happens, however, despite one or guidebooks normally do. He declines to are well laid out in Tucker’s introduction, two extreme judgements, the Guide to the cover the ground with a supposedly neutral which, meticulously scholarly, is followed by Academy is a balanced book: witty, valuably perspective and ignores the accumulated nineteen double-columned pages of even reflective and felicitous in its conversational judgements of the centuries. Carpaccio’s more scholarly endnotes. The plates are style. A dozen years ago, I photocopied the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is ‘the best excellent and they, too, are thoroughly Library Edition text, which is little more picture’ in the whole Gallery; Titian’s annotated. It is very strange that the than forty pages long, stapled the pages Presentation of the Virgin is ‘To me, simply publishers in this era of mass tourism have together and took them round the the most stupid and uninteresting picture refused to publish an English text—a normal Accademia Gallery, reading as I went. ever painted by him.’ The latter remark is thing to do even with books not originally There is no better way of reading Ruskin on something of an exception; when Ruskin written in English and not by classic authors. art. There were one or two problems of dislikes a picture, he doesn’t on the whole For the English Ruskinian—and for the
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rhetorical figures is notoriously century ‘vicar’ Stefano ‘Plebanus’ di challenging and, as it is easy to Sant’Agnese, for example, is ‘Symmetrical, guess, the spontaneous manner of orderly, gay, and in the heart of it nobly Ruskin’s later writing presents grave … [It] has much in it of the future peculiar challenges. What is one to methods of Venetian composition.’ Or take do, for instance, with Ruskin’s the anonymous relief sculpture on the façade forms of address, in particular his of the Scuola della Carità, the medieval use of personal pronouns. When he building that has housed the Accademia since addresses his audience—in this case the early nineteenth century: the English traveller in Italy, though You see the infant sprawls on [the The launch of the Guide at the Accademia, Venice, 4th February much the same issue is raised by his Virgin’s] knee in an ungainly 2015. (L-R) Angeli Janhsen, Emma Sdegno and Paul Tucker. Photo: Michela Vanon. Alliata public lectures—he uses that manner: she herself sits with quiet notoriously slippery English maiden dignity, but in no manner of foreign tourist with no Italian—this is pronoun, ‘you’. Is it meant to be sentimental adoration. something of a wasted opportunity. The understood as singular or as plural, as That is Venetian naturalism; value of Ruskin’s book has been put into familiar or polite, as personal or showing their henceforward steady high relief by Tucker’s work, as well as by impersonal? You can get away with the desire to represent things as they the translator Emma Sdegno’s. There can be ambiguity in English—that is part of its really (according to the workman’s no doubt that theirs is the most important value for Ruskin—but you can’t in Italian, notions) might have existed. It work of scholarship ever to have been where each of these distinctions entails the begins first in this [the fourteenth] published on the Guide and an important use of different words. Sdegno raises such century, separating itself from commentary on Ruskin’s account of problems in her ‘Translator’s Note’: a brief Byzantine formalism… Venetian painting as spread throughout his essay but an important one, which seems And so on. It is hard to resist the implied work. This is a book that Ruskin scholars likely to initiate a too-long-neglected study invitation to search the Gallery for babies need to be familiar with. of Ruskin’s style. That being the case, I rendered naturalistically. One would The translation seems to me exceptionally have asked her permission to print an certainly find them: in Bellini, Carpaccio, intelligent and readable. But (you may well English paraphrase of it here. (See pp. 48- Giorgione, Titian and lesser artists as well. want to ask) has it any value for readers of 49.) In his subtle accounts of such minor works The Companion? It would obviously be At the time of writing, I am resident in we see in little the sparkle and independence foolish to suggest that an Italian version Venice and have had the chance to take the of the critic who rescued Tintoretto from mattered more than the original, but a good Guide to the Accademia again and check it the near oblivion his name had fallen into. translation is also a form of criticism, and against the pictures. It is as fresh as ever. If It is not often one wants to recommend— Sdegno, who worked closely with Tucker readers of this article know it at all, I given the beauty of Ruskin’s prose—the from start to finish, is one of the most suspect it will be mainly for the writing on translation of one of his books, but if, under original of contemporary Ruskinians. She has Carpaccio—something on which Tucker is the auspices of two such important scholars an expertise, moreover, that is uncommon especially knowledgeable—and less as Sdegno and Tucker, this Italian Guida these days among Anglophone scholars: a obviously that on Bellini, Tintoretto and draws attention to the neglected English firm grounding, and serious scholarly Veronese. Ruskin is very good on all those Guide, it will have done something almost as interest, in classical rhetoric. (See her Saggi artists, but what about the lesser-known or valuable as, through Ruskin’s eyes, showing su Ruskin: Stile Retorica Traduzione [Venice: anonymous painters and sculptors? The Italy to the Italians. Cafoscarina, 2004].) The translation of Coronation of the Virgin by the fourteenth- Clive Wilmer
Jan Marsh, Ciao, Carpaccio! An infatuation. Pallas Athene, 2014. 192 pp. £12.95. In this, her several other publications. It appears that words, to ‘confront England’s dragons’. latest book, he had followed a tip-off from Edward Ruskin came to see Carpaccio as being ‘in the Burne-Jones on a visit to Venice in 1869 the most vital and conclusive sense, a man of distinguished and was soon captivated. He wrote back, genius’ and in the Guide to the Academy at Venice travel writer ‘My DEAREST Ned,—There’s nothing he explains: Jan Morris here like Carpaccio! ... I’ve only seen For the rest, I am not going to praise argues that Carpaccio’s reputation had the Academy ones yet, and am going this Carpaccio’s work. Give time to it; and languished for centuries after his death, but ‘it morning (cloudless light) to your St if you don’t delight in it, the essential was to be revived largely by the paradoxical George of the Schiavoni and I must send faculty of enjoying art is wanting in influence of John Ruskin’. Ruskin is seen as this word first to catch post.- Ever your you, and I can’t give it you by ten ‘The improbable champion’ whose loving, JR’ (Works 4.356). minutes’ talk; but if you begin really enthusiasm for the painter ‘entered an Ruskin’s encounter with Carpaccio’s to feel the picture, observe that its infatuation far more fateful than mine’, she painting St George and the Dragon in the supreme merit is in the exactly just says. Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni balance of all virtue;—detail perfect, However, Ruskin was initially slow to (Scuola meaning association or Guild) in yet inconspicuous; composition appreciate the work of Carpaccio but was Venice, with its portrayal of immortal intricate and severe, but concealed later to describe him as ‘faultless’ and chivalry was to play a part in the under apparent simplicity; and ‘consummate’ in Verona and its Rivers (1870). conceptualisation of the Guild of St painter’s faculty of the supremest, His fullest engagement with the artist’s work George. This, in order to rescue the used nevertheless with entire appeared in 1877 in his Guide to the Academy at country, Morris tells us, ‘from the subjection of it to intellectual purpose. Venice and also in St Mark’s Rest along with various evils that beset it;’ in other Titian compared to Carpaccio, paints 50
David Ingram, The Gardens at Brantwood: Evolution of John Ruskin’s Lakeland Paradise. Pallas Athene and the Ruskin Foundation, 2014. 120 pp, illustrated. £12.99 When the Director of the Ruskin Library at implications of a Ruskinian form Lancaster University, Stephen Wildman, of environmentalism. asked David Ingram to take a look at the Ingram explains the sensitive Library’s holdings of Ruskin’s botanical inter-relation of three generations studies, both literary and visual, he could of gardeners at Brantwood. First not have asked a better person. Professor there was Ruskin, who created no Ingram is a former Regius Keeper of the fewer than six distinct gardens Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, a within the woodland estate that botanist, plant scientist and horticulturalist. he acquired in 1871: some were He is also clearly a man of sympathy and practical, like the Professor’s imagination. Garden with its beehives, some Though botany played a key role in poetic, like the Zig-zaggy, with its
Ruskin’s world view, it is fair to say that his suggestion of Dante’s path to poetic approach is a challenge to most paradise, and one, the Moorland Garden kind of homeopathy for plants that has links readers, and his attempt in that late part- was never completed, though it gave to the estate management of the Rudolf work, Proserpina (1875-86) to establish a Ruskin the ability to turn on his own Steiner-inspired Ruskin Mill Trust. There is quasi-etymological botanical system of his waterfall. The second was Ruskin’s the Fern Garden, a response to the work of own was, in Ingram’s own words, cousin—and eventual carer—Joan Severn. an earlier owner of Brantwood, the radical ‘audaciously unconventional’. But Ingram’s As Ruskin fell into silence in the 1890s, she W.J. Linton, who wrote and illustrated Ferns expertise is such that he has been able to allowed his creations to fall into desuetude, of the English Lake Country, published in 1865. open what would otherwise be a closed book but made her own Victorian vistas that There is the restoration of the wildflower to the lay reader. Not only has he been able added colour to the hillside. meadow in front of the house, there is an to make sense of the botanical archive at the Her creations, too, would have been orchard designed, in Ruskinian manner, for Ruskin Library, in this delightful book he has overgrown and lost, were it not for Sally the flowers not the fruit, and there are Sally explored one of the living sources of Beamish, who arrived at Brantwood in Beamish’s own contributions to the REVIEW BOOK Ruskin’s inspiration, his Lakeland home. 1987 as a volunteer, at a time when the horticultural expressions of Ruskin’s ideas. The Gardens of Brantwood is much more than house was beginning to attract fresh Rightly, this book is as much a celebration of the excellent guide book that it is: it is a interest and investment. The following Sally Beamish’s creative service to many layered history, a scientific description year she was appointed Head Gardener, Brantwood, as it is of Ruskinian values. and a celebration of the continuing work to and since then she and a dedicated team, Elegantly produced, with gorgeous sustain this ‘living laboratory’ for the study who are rightly celebrated at the start of photographs that complement Ruskin’s own of the right relationship between people and the book, have not only recovered so much drawings, The Gardens at Brantwood is an landscape. It is at once engaging and that was in danger of being lost, but have inspiration. Both accessible and scholarly, it profoundly stimulating, whether you are a added to the Ruskinian legacy with is enjoyable in itself—and even more visitor who simply wants to make the most boldness and imagination. valuable for the way it brings understanding of your time at Brantwood, a gardener who Thus we learn about Brantwood’s to a vital aspect of Ruskin’s life and thought. wants to know about plant types, or experiments in ‘biodynamic cultivation’, a Robert Hewison someone who is interested in the deeper
as a circus-rider rides,—there is painterly techniques, chromatic gradations or the question: ‘A simpler kind of genius?’ nothing to be thought of in him but artistic affinities’ believing that her infatuation The book is a small hardback and landscape in his riding. But Carpaccio paints as a with him ‘is largely affectionate fancy’. All format. This facilitates the inclusion of good knight rides; his riding is the this, of course, does not really mean that we illustrations which suit the general shape of the least of him, and to himself— have an innocent eye at work. She published artist’s canvases. Also included are many close- unconscious in its ease. (Works her book on Venice (as James Morris) in 1960 ups relating to specific small details examined so 24.160) and that excellent volume contained many carefully in the text. This generally works very Although Morris has enormous respect references to Carpaccio. The special nature of well and one can almost see this book perhaps and admiration for Carpaccio she is not her writing relates to the highly personal way being developed as a hypertext/multi-media quite able to place him in what she calls the in which she takes us into close engagement DVD. The photographic illustrations are of very ‘supreme pantheon’—stating that ‘Devoted with and observation of pictorial content, high quality. (if ignorant) advocate though I am, I would through the description of the mass of imagery It seems from the first chapter, that for many not promote him there myself’. This, which makes up most of the works by this people ‘Carpaccio’ is something which appears however, does not in any way dampen her artist. It is a highly inquisitive approach, driven as an item on a menu; originally as a dish of raw passionate enthusiasm for his paintings by curiosity; such reading and looking permit beef slices with a Dijon sauce. This was which has been fed through a long deeper and deeper explorations of the internal apparently first devised in 1970 by one engagement in close looking at the artist’s themes of the paintings. However, these Giuseppe Cipriani, owner of Harry’s Bar in work in galleries around the world, and in observations and descriptions are also Venice. It has since developed variants including the contemplation of her own collection of supported by a lifetime’s experience and a ‘venison carpaccio, tuna carpaccio, octopus art books. She claims to have been under considerable amount of research—the carpaccio, beetroot carpaccio’ and many others. Carpaccio’s spell for a long time and has research is worn very lightly. Chapters cover It is to be hoped that this beautifully written written her book out of ‘self-indulgent ‘first acquaintances’, ‘Looking for meaning’, new book by Jan Morris will help re-focus caprice’. Morris states that she is ‘no ‘Pomp and Circumstance’, ‘A Gentler Side’, attention on the magnificent paintings of this connoisseur, cultural scholar, or art and many other things, including humorous superb artist. historian’, that she knows ‘nothing about aspects in Carpaccio’s work, and ending with Ray Haslam 51
William Morris: The Odes of Horace. Facsimile edition; printed on Tatami paper in coloured inks with gold and silver foil; bound in Indian smooth-grain goatskin with five raised bands on the spine; gold blocked on spine, edges and doublures; 192pp. Together with 61-page hard-bound book containing the 1870 photograph of William Morris, an eight-page Commentary by Clive Wilmer, and translations of the Odes by William Gladstone (1894). All in a large handsome box. Folio Society, 2014. £395.
Following its facsimile editions of the reference to the Odes or to Horace as a Kelmscott Chaucer and three books by Eric poet in Morris’s letters. The first Gill, the Folio Society has now produced a mention of Horace is in a letter to splendid edition of Morris’s manuscript Charles Fairfax Murray, in Italy in BOOK REVIEW BOOK version of The Odes of Horace. Clive Wilmer’s 1874, instructing him to get some high- informative Commentary tells the reader of quality vellum which Morris needed for Morris’s preoccupation, in his Sunday this manuscript, remarking that ‘the leisure time in the period 1869-75, with odes are so short so there is nearly an what he called ‘painted books’; he produced ornamental letter to every page’, and some 1,500 pages of lettering and ornament, adding that ‘I have in mind to try and and 18 illustrated books, though only two of sell a book if I could find a customer: I because of Morris’s unfailing inventiveness; them were completed. May Morris’s work much neater now, & have got I think on page after page we encounter designs of recollections of her father at work at his more style in the ornament, & have taken the utmost elegance and vitality, using gold desk at the time are delightfully quoted. rather to the Italian work of about 1450 for and silver to impressive effect. There is no Morris had already shown his enthusiasm for a type’; Morris never found such a repetition, and Morris clearly enjoys taking medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian customer. Later, in a letter to the aspiring on new tasks, as for instance in the changing Library at Oxford when he was an poet James Henderson in October1885, colour-schemes of the pages as they come undergraduate. His early attempts at writing Morris referred to Horace in the advice he before us. There is only one fully decorated were awkwardly Gothic in form, but he gave, but here Horace was simply a source page, but a host of others filled by the came under the influence of decorator with the energy of Renaissance writing-books and life. In her biography of developed a clearer and more Morris, Fiona MacCarthy has attractive style. Most of us will brought out well how on these know Morris’s work in this area pages ‘the pictorial decoration mainly through the attractive swims into the lettering’. She 1870 Book of Verse facsimile notes the richness of the produced by the Scolar Press for ‘Leaves and grapes and rose the V&A in 1981. Wilmer hips; honeysuckle trellis; a argues that the Rubaiyat of Omar thousand dotting rosebuds’— Khayyam (1872), The Odes of giving sometimes ‘a sense of Horace (1874), and above all the demented wallpaper’—and unfinished folio Aeneid (1874-5), finds the general effect are even finer. Certainly, the ‘inexpressibly peculiar, at Book of Verse is a quiet little once beautiful and decorous volume, lacking the gold and yet fraught and slightly manic’. silver exuberance of the later She is led to think of Lewis books. Morris ceased work of this kind in for common-sense ideas about writing. Carroll, Blake, French Surrealism and the 1875, giving no explanation, but having Wilmer argues that Horace appeals to Czech avant-garde. Wilmer’s conclusion is learnt lessons about the making of books that readers in various ways, and that the less excited, but conveys admirably the would come to fruition at the Kelmscott Victorians, ‘troubled by doubt’, responded mysterious appeal to be found here: Press. Overall, Wilmer sees the venture as to his emphasis on transience and The Odes of Horace is a little book, ‘a qualified failure’. mortality, his ‘humane scepticism’. He kept in a small box. When we open Wilmer gives a clear account of Morris’s then provides the text of Gladstone’s the leather covers and behold the life, emphasising the influence of Ruskin, translation of the Odes published in 1894, neatly bound pages with their both on his criticism of industrial capitalism though admitting that Gladstone had ‘no elegant lettering and delicate and, on a smaller scale, quoting his poetic talent’ and was politically anathema decoration, we seem to have been argument that the purpose of illumination to Morris by that time. If a reader wants to granted access to a treasure: ‘was not to lead the mind away from the know what the poems are about—though vulnerable, threatened by the very text, but to enforce it’. Wilmer admits that many of us may simply want to look at the transience that Horace’s odes resist we do not know why Morris chose Horace pages aesthetically—it seems to me a pity and lament, and therefore all the for such elaborate treatment. I can find no that access is not given rather to the more highly to be prized. remarkable Wordsworth edition, The book is undoubtedly expensive, but Horace. The Odes in English Verse, edited the reproductive work is of very high by Antony Lentin in 1997; here we quality. encounter fine versions by such poets as Readers who have the good fortune to be Cowper, Dryden, Housman, Johnson, able to afford it will find it a rich source of Jonson and Rochester, as well as visual pleasure, and perhaps a stimulus to specialist translators. taking up the study of calligraphy or of the The text that we can now happily Latin tongue. encounter is likely to impress the reader Peter Faulkner 52
James S. Dearden, Rambling Reminiscences. A Ruskinian’s Recollections. Pallas Athene, 2014. 342 pp. £20. You can spot him in a crowded room, JSD; Meanwhile, Jim, as he recounts in his amongst a throng. Seen from above, the present book, was already in the army—as room’s like a simmering pot. And the bit a second-lieutenant, straight from school, with the most bubbles in it will be the one and enjoying it–even National Service. No, around James Dearden. especially National Service, in a training Not that he’ll necessarily be holding battalion! He doesn’t deal with the subject forth—he’s just as likely to be listening with at any length, but he is already identifiable concentrated attention; for he’s as good a in the person of this smart, alert, confident listener as he is a talker. And after a while, junior officer: called up at the age of he will move away—not because he’s eighteen, setting a high standard—adroit at bored, but because he wants to share his devising with the Platoon NCOs ingenious time with as many people as he can—and, patterns for marching and counter- he cannot but know that this feeling is likely marching. I squirm with recollected pain, to be reciprocal. but from this distance in time, I can Happy man— within a happy family life. understand and applaud—for, in a quite The recent sad news of Jill’s death—they different way, I was to get a lot out of had married in 1958—means that one re- National Service, too. reads his book already in a rather different Returning to ‘civvy street’, Jim found
way: but Jim will know that; will be only work with antiques and in the book trade, too aware that ‘things happen’. then picked up the skills of traditional Jim showed me how the printing process He had worked on determinedly at printing. At which point, as if predestined, (in two or three colours) had brought life to Bembridge School , even when seen as ‘old J. H. Whitehouse, saviour of Brantwood the despairing poems of the young JR regime’; surviving two heart attacks in 1993 and founder of Bembridge School, died. addressed to the ‘impossibly Catholic’- and 1997...along with all those trips abroad: Died at the very moment when Jim (a Adèle ... I was genuinely charmed. the weight of responsibility, with the former head boy) was available, and the Jim was in charge of the treasure store at checking-in again and out again, the boxes Whitehouse accumulation of Ruskin Bembridge. He looked at me—and most of exhibition treasure for each show and treasures and trivia needed to be re- generously and trustingly—produced one of conference. arranged and continuous cataloguing the saddest letters from Rose La Touche— I had first met Jim in 1987, but that had ensued. He also taught the boys—then, the to me, the saddest letter I’d ever read [from been a meeting waiting to happen, and the boys and girls—printing: craft-printing with Rose La Touche to Joan Severn, 4 September, place in which it was going to happen would traditional moveable type. 1874.] REVIEW BOOK be an Art Room/Gallery in a school. My That is what he was doing when I met I’ve given up forever any attempt to read wife and I had first got together in the Art him for the first time in 1988. I had been this aloud: I always blub. Room of our Birmingham co-ed grammar very efficiently and thoughtfully despatched Poor Rose … Thank you for that, Jim— school (in 1949) and we were soon gazing (by Janet Barnes) to Bembridge, and the and for your letters, with their many wise regularly at Ruskin’s lovely (and fading) other principal Ruskin collections, in order and bright thoughts. Congratulations, again; large blue watercolour, La Cascade de la Folie to prepare for a guest-show project at the congratulations on it all. Congratulations in the Pre-Raphaelite Room of Birmingham Norfolk Street Gallery, to celebrate the among the commiserations, Jim. CM&AG. centenary of Praeterita. Donald Measham
Graham Peel: Alec Miller. Carver, Guildsman, Sculptor. Tenbury Wells: Graham Peel, 2014, 295 pp. £14.
The work of Alec Miller, sculptor and wood who recognised his ability and helped to carver, is of a comparable quality to the foster his interests and career. carvings on the stalls in Amiens Cathedral, He completed his apprenticeship in 1898 so admired by John Ruskin. And like the and a couple of years later he was attending names of the Amiens carvers, Alec Miller's drawing classes at Glasgow School of Art name was in danger of slipping into where he met Muirhead Bone. Soon he was obscurity. However, it is now well and truly introduced to the London art world and a rescued and documented by Graham Peel in patron gave him a copy of Ruskin's Seven his excellent and very readable new Lamps of Architecture. Twenty years later, he biography. made heart-felt thanks to Ruskin's influence Alec Miller was born into a poor Glasgow in a lecture at the Art Workers' Guild. family on 12th February 1879. He was one Miller met C. R. Ashbee and when the of six children and he started working as a latter's arts and crafts community moved 'milk boy' at the age of eight. As a child he from Essex House in east London to began drawing and showed talent. When he Chipping Campden, Miller was offered the was twelve he was apprenticed as a wood running of the wood-carving and modelling carver, mainly producing carved panels for workshop. Ashbee came to see Miller as his furniture. He attended drawing classes and ‘ideal craftsman’ and together the two men came into contact with one or two people visited Florence. Miller and the Ashbees 53 From Bembridge School newspaper (A Supplement), No. 90, Summer 1949
Urswick Church didn't. At that age I didn't know about the Arts and Crafts Movement, nor did I particularly appreciate craftsmanship. But now I know why the interior of Urswick didn't look old. For several years around 1910, Alec Miller and a small Chipping Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft, the Campden team had been working in the Guild closed. However, Miller church, providing a scheme of carved and two colleagues stayed on at decoration for the whole church principally Chipping Campden to continue based on the chancel. the work of the Guild's carving My next association with Alec Miller was workshop. Miller was doing more when I was a boy at school at Bembridge. and more ecclesiastical work and Howard Whitehouse, the founder of the still regularly toured America. school and its Ruskin collection, must have Finally, in the spring of 1939, he known Miller for years. They had many and his family emigrated to mutual friends and in fact Miller's son, America, ultimately settling in Alastair, was educated at Bembridge. In California. 1949, Miller was commissioned to make a In America, he developed his carving of St George and the Dragon to speciality of carving or sculpting serve as part of the school's memorial to Old portrait heads in both wood and Bembridgians killed in the war. The carving, stone. Largely, these were in the in two pieces of Corsham stone, weighing in remained close friends throughout their round, but he also carved a number of at over half a ton, was made in Oxford and lives. small portrait bas-reliefs. He became well- Miller accompanied it on its journey to Miller's workshop was doing more and known for his portrait work and received Bembridge. He stayed here for two or three more work for churches up and down the many commissions. Miller had become a days to see it raised into its position on the country. Surely one of the largest jobs must well-known and sought-after craftsman. chapel tower above the main entrance. have been the screen and bishop's desk for But England was not forgotten and he During those few days, I had the opportunity Coventry Cathedral, unhappily destroyed made periodic return visits here—in fact he to meet him several times. What I didn't with the rest of the cathedral during the died here during a visit to Kent, on 17th know then was that the life-sized head of war. By now Miller was also beginning to May 1960. Fridtjof Nansen, the explorer and statesman make lecture tours to America, where he Alec Miller had kept only limited records admired by Whitehouse, which was at that was also obtaining commissions. of his many commissions, but happily many time in the chapel, had been carved by After Miller had spent six years with of them were photographed, and these Miller from a self-portrait which Nansen had photographs and his remaining archive was given to the school in 1928. The carving is given by the family to the Victoria and illustrated on page 255 of Peel's book. Albert Museum. Using this valuable Some years later, when I was the Curator resource, Graham Peel has been able to of the school's Ruskin Galleries, I had in my compile a fascinating and important book study Miller's carved relief of the head of recording the life and work of a master Arthur Geddes, who was the friend of both craftsman, rescuing him for posterity from Miller and Whitehouse. We also had in the the danger of oblivion. collection Miller's sculpted head of his son Until I read the book I hadn't realised that Alastair. This is now in my collection, and I my tenuous connection with Alec Miller once saw the almost identical head, carved in goes back more than seventy years! When I wood, in the Cheltenham Museum. was ten or eleven, I used to take off on My final connection with Alec Miller was Saturdays on my bicycle, with my in 1960. Van Burd and I had decided to sandwiches in the saddlebag, and ride attempt to trace all Ruskin manuscripts and around the lanes of that part of (what was letters internationally and I had a letter from then) north Lancashire, called Furness, Alec Miller telling me that his sister-in-law visiting the various churches, abbeys and was the daughter of George Baker, the castles. One of my favourite churches was Guild's benefactor and second Master, and that at Great Urswick—because it was the that she had a number of letters to Baker oldest in the district. But I fear I was always from Ruskin. In 1960 I didn't follow that up, disappointed when I went inside, because I but now, who knows what may turn up! like my old buildings to look old and James S. Dearden 54
OTHER RUSKIN SIGHTINGS In this year notable for its release of two an early scene when we are in her flat, Smith (on leave here from her Downton Abbey films which seriously misrepresent the we see his picture—one of those taken ‘dowagership’). The short of the story is great master who inspires these pages (for during his mid-1880s sittings— that, in America, a fiftyish seriously review, see pp. 54-55), Jim Spates sends prominently displayed. Considerably estranged son (Kline) learns that he has this brief report on two other films later, the husbands discover that their inherited his father’s copious Paris which contain, if more briefly than either wives, who had not been overly apartment. He arrives to take possession of Mr. Turner and Effie Gray, a more positive forthcoming about where they were it, only to find a 93-year old woman, of impression of Ruskin. Both are very going, are in Italy. After which, they irrepressible, irascible demeanour (Smith), much worth watching. show up, one by one, at the rented villa. living there. As his father’s former mistress, The first is an older film, Enchanted Complications ensue. All will be by French law she claims she has life-rights April, which, as a whole, is exactly as its resolved in due course. In one scene, to the place and that, if he wants to live title implies: two truly enchanting hours one of the surprising husbands, having there, he will have to pay her rent! Visiting of movie-viewing. In the early part of the met our Ruskin-reading dame for the regularly is her daughter (Scott-Thomas). last century, a number of London ladies, first time, is so taken by her description Complications ensue. All will be resolved in either bored with life or dissatisfied with of her ‘friends’ that he takes her by the due course. In one of the scenes where the their husbands or both, decide to go on arm and, leading her to another room, son confronts this antique nemesis, she holiday ‘alone together’ in Italy. Among gently but enthusiastically says, ‘Now, I upbraids him for his dissipated state, telling their number is an older lady, a Mrs want you to tell me all about him in no uncertain terms that (and she Fisher, played by the always marvellous Ruskin!’ And, if that isn’t enough to should know!) ‘There is no Wealth but Joan Plowright, a widower who has whet your appetite, there’s Italy! Life!’ (Of course, she does not acknowledge made her otherwise uneventful later life The second film is much more recent. the source of her six words of wisdom, but it pleasant by regularly reading a group of My Old Lady sports a magisterial cast: is an arresting moment nonetheless.) And, if great authors she lovingly calls ‘my Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott-Thomas, and that isn’t enough to whet your appetite, friends’. Among these is Mr Ruskin. In the magnificent and eternal Maggie there’s Paris! Jim Spates
RUSKIN IN OREGON— Sara Atwood
Sesame and Lilies The Multnomah County Library Visiting the coastal town of Cannon Beach, Oregon, this On a recent visit to Portland, Oregon (preparatory to moving past March, I was surprised to find an interior design store to the area with my family), our ten-year-old son, Liam, was named Sesame and Lilies. Intrigued, and certain that the keen to see the Multnomah County Library, Portland’s main name could have only one inspiration, I went inside to look library. A fan of the Percy Jackson books (which brings Greek around. The store is large and full of beautiful things; one myth to life in modern America), Liam was keen to see the could easily spend hours poking around (and rather a lot of library in which Percy and his friends discovered a Harpy. money as well!). I asked the young woman behind the till Unfortunately, the library had closed for the evening, but as how the store had come by its name and to my delight she we walked around the building, I looked up and found that I pointed out a nineteenth-century American edition of was standing just below a panel that bore Ruskin’s name. Sesame and Lilies displayed on the counter (alongside it lay a Morris is also included in the grouping, as is Froebel—an copy of Ian Warrell’s Turner’s Secret Sketches). interesting conjunction given the many similarities between ‘The owner found this book,’ she told me, ‘and liked the Ruskin’s and Froebel’s educational philosophies. name, so chose it for the store.’ ‘I know the book well,’ I said, ‘Does the owner particularly like Ruskin then?’ ‘Well,’ the young woman replied, ‘I’m the only one who works here who has read it.’ Oh dear. Perhaps on my next visit to Cannon Beach I’ll have a chance to speak with the owner and put in a word on Ruskin’s behalf!
55
SEARCHING FOR RUSKIN’S LAWS OF PLATO, or, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But If You Try,
FEATURE Sometimes You Get A Recipe For Brown Bread
’To me, every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story. There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness.’ —Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for some Into this simmering dissatisfaction, about the Ruskin-Plato connection. ‘No,’ he time. It’s all true, of course, not an a decade and a half later, Ruskin entered— immediately replied.2 ‘But,’ he added, after embellishment anywhere. It’s kind of a by having been placed on the reading list of a moment’s reflection, ‘if anyone would hodge-podge: a record of a serious search a course I was co-teaching on ‘London in know, it would be Helen Viljoen. Helen,’ he for an important, unpublished Ruskin the Nineteenth Century’ with a colleague, continued, ‘had been, prior to her death in manuscript, an object lesson about the Claudette Columbus, from our 1974, one of my great “friends in Ruskin”. surprises which often attend archival Department of English and Comparative As a result, she left all the papers pertaining research, and a ‘scholarly thriller’ (there are Literature. I had never heard his name to her massive unfinished biography of such things; whether this belongs to the before. Immediately, I was taken by his Ruskin to me, hoping, I think, that I might genre you will have to decide) with a sociological writings—Unto this Last, finish her task. But, by that time I was hard (possibly) delicious ending. Munera Pulveris, The Crown of Wild Olive, at work on The Ruskin Family Letters and For me, a quarter of a century before I Time and Tide, Fors Clavigera—for, each and couldn’t possibly entertain the notion. So ‘met’ Mr Ruskin, there was, mostly, Plato. every one of them was doggedly focused on that other scholars could use them, I donated He came into my life during my third ferreting out which forms of social life all her incredibly valuable biographic undergraduate year at Colby College, were good for us, which were not, and, materials to the Pierpont Morgan Library in introduced to me by the study, over a having made this critical determination, New York where she had done most of her baker’s dozen of weeks, of The Republic, the showing us how to secure the former and research work. If you like, we could go to core text in a course—’Normative Social dismantle or avoid like the plague the the Morgan and you can see if she may have Theory’—taught by the professor, Kingsley latter. I liked it, very much. learned anything about this.’ Birge, who would be my inspiration for But as I read these remarkable books for And so, a few weeks later, go we did. becoming a sociologist. King (we became that first time, not too many pages had After routing about in dozens of boxes of good friends after my graduation) designed moved to the left before I began to think notes, letter transcripts, and draft chapters the semester in the shape of a Socratic that much of it sounded like Plato. It was for the unpublished biography, I came to a dialogue, trying to work out with us as we no fantasy. In more than a few places, disappointing conclusion: that, quite made our careful way through all ten Ruskin himself acknowledged his debt to understandably, her attentions having been ‘Books’ (chapters) of The Republic, what the the Athenian master. At which point, an fixed on Ruskin’s days instead of on the nature of truly good and humane society idea! I would research the connection development of his thought, Viljoen had might be. I was transfixed—and, better, between Ruskin and Plato and write a book nothing to say on the subject. Frustrated, transformed—by the experience, accepting about it. By doing so, I would be able to while Van continued to work on another by semester’s end Plato’s (and Birge’s) give Ruskin’s claims for what constituted a aspect of Viljoen’s legacy, I thought to have a axiomatic argument that the entire reason good society much more credence than look at the Morgan’s copy of Viljoen’s The for studying society was to discover the they received in his day and simultaneously Brantwood Diary of John Ruskin (the crowning answer to the question, ‘How should we revivify the relevance of Plato for modern achievement of her limited published live?’ social thought. But I soon learned that scholarship), recalling that, in it somewhere, So focused, I went to graduate school, finding such links was not as easy as I had she had mentioned Plato. Only to find, as I only to discover that virtually every expected. To be sure, the index of the opened the book (p. xvii) this: that, as she professor in my chosen field had no interest Library Edition of Ruskin’s works devotes edited the manuscript for print, she had in this question whatever. Having adopted almost a page and a half to Plato’s influence included everything in the holograph except the methodological model of ‘objective’ on his life and thought (see Works 39.411- the left side of ‘pages 105-211 which had… analysis developed in the physical sciences 12). But, if one checks these references, been used for his translation of Books I and II (chemistry, biology, etc.), they saw their one finds mostly ‘incidental’ remarks: of Plato’s Laws’! role as essentially ‘reportorial,’ their task ‘Plato is the source of all my Political It was as if a match had been lit in a dark being to explain what was going on in Economy’ (Works 17.18); he is Plato’s room. Immediately I walked to the Reading different social settings (nothing wrong with ‘disciple’ (Works 38.112)—nothing which Room desk to ask Inge du Pont (for many that) but to leave it to others to decide tells us why Ruskin placed Plato on the very years the wonderful aide of scholars working whether the social forms they described highest echelon of his tutors. there) if she would call up the real were beneficent or inimical. I didn’t like it. I turned to the biographies and the (few) Brantwood Diary (Viljoen had donated the Later, after I had become a professor, I scholarly studies of Ruskin’s social thought. manuscript to the Morgan after finishing her began going to conferences attended by These proved almost as unilluminating.1 work). A few minutes later, that remarkable sociologists from both the US and other Then came a brainstorm. Knowing that he record containing Ruskin’s account of his countries, finding (not very surprisingly by lived only an hour and a half away, I called frightening march toward his first mental now) that, with few exceptions, all Professor Van Akin Burd, to ask if his breakdown in 1878, was at my seat. embraced the value-free approach, and celebrated work on an important set of Gingerly, I opened to page 105. There it treated with disdain, even hostility, anyone letters Ruskin had written between 1858 was! Page after page in his hand which, who thought that Plato’s core question was and 1868 (The Winnington Letters), a time likely, no one, save their writer, Viljoen, the proper one for framing the study of when he was intently at work on his and F. J. Sharp (the collector who society. I didn’t like it. sociology, might have provided insight into bequeathed the diary to Viljoen), had ever 56
seen! What a find! Having read Ruskin’s reproduces every dialogue in the original Plato” (ten relating to The Laws), also in his theory of the complex nature of the thing Greek. If my book was to exhaust the hand; pages (number unspecified) from we commonly call ‘fate,’ and which he sources for Ruskin’s work on The Laws, it Jowett’s Plato translations with Ruskin’s called ‘fors,’ I was sure that this was a case of was clear that I had to access this edition. notes; notes on Athenian history dictated by the helpful side of fors at work. After hitting Trouble was, the Bekker set was housed, Ruskin to Alexander Wedderburn; and a fair blank walls in my search for evidence with the rest of John Howard Whitehouse’s copy in Wedderburn’s hand of Ruskin’s explaining why Ruskin had chosen Plato as invaluable trove of Ruskiniana, at the translation of Books I and II of The Laws with his prime counsellor in matters of social Ruskin Galleries at Bembridge School on notes correcting the secretary’s version— study,3 I had been shown another road by the Isle of Wight off the south coast of $100. In short, it was a book essential for my which I could make an even more significant England, another costly outing. project. The savings in time and money argument. As we made our way back to Upstate which would result from being able to use a In this way: almost always, when New York, I explained all this to Van. clean copy of the translations of Books I and presenting passages from Plato in the letters Hearing me out, he said: ‘Well, you know, II (with Ruskin’s corrections!) was almost constituting Fors Clavigera, Ruskin uses his Jim, although I gave to the Morgan impossible to contemplate. To entice own version. He does so because of his everything of Helen’s which pertained to prospective purchasers to buy this and other conviction that all the English translations of her biography, there was one box of manuscripts, Goodspeed inserted this Plato’s works then available were materials I kept, things which had to do problematic, either because a translator’s with sources she had used. I thought I Greek was not sufficient to grasp what Plato might eventually consult them in my own was really saying, or because the more work.4 Have you ever heard of Charles modern writer got the ‘tone’ of the original Goodspeed?’ I replied that I knew that he wrong, making his rendering stilted was a famous Boston bookseller who, at compared with Plato’s more lyrical, one time, collected Ruskin. ‘More than appealing, and convincing statement—or collected,’ Van returned. ‘For many years both. Prime among translations wide of the he was a sort of archival vacuum cleaner, mark, Ruskin believed, were those of his buying up everything of Ruskin’s he could Oxford colleague, Benjamin Jowett, whose find—letters, manuscripts, paintings, complete version of the dialogues had, after whatever came on the market. Then, so Some of the Ruskin Manuscripts offered for their publication in 1871, become the that he could buy more expensive things, sale in Goodspeed’s 1932 Catalogue (The standard edition. Most offensive was he started selling off items of lesser Laws of Plato second from bottom). Jowett’s rendering of The Laws, Plato’s last, significance. A lot of important Ruskiniana longest, and, save for The Republic, most he kept at his shop to show possible picture in his catalogue. sociological work. Although he was never to customers, but many of the rarest things he But then reality raised its head. The finish his version, it seemed likely that kept at home. In the early 1940s, his house present moment—1996—was more than Ruskin had in mind that he would publish his caught fire. He and his family ran out, sixty years later. How could I, during those Laws of Plato as a corrective not just to saving themselves. But quickly it became days when most libraries had yet to post Jowett’s effort, but as an object lesson to all evident that the house would be lost, along their holdings on the fledgling internet, find translators, current or future, in how Plato with his most treasured Ruskin items. So, out who had this book? After generously should be represented in English. All this in very bravely, he raced back in, re-emerging loaning me the catalogue (Van, as many mind, I decided I would write a book called with some of these treasures in his arms, reading these lines know, is always Ruskin’s Plato’s Laws, publishing in it, for the among them the holograph of Ruskin’s generous!), I thanked him and, as soon as I first time, Ruskin’s translations of Books I autobiography, Praeterita—smoldering! was back at Hobart and William Colleges, and II of The Laws, including everything else After this fright, he decided he could not went to Joseph Chmura of our library staff (not an insignificant amount) he had written take a chance that this irreplaceable and asked his help in flushing it out. Over about this last Platonic dialogue, and material might be lost in another the next few weeks we tried much: an interpret everything as I went. catastrophe. So he donated many items to internet search on the title (nothing), a trip But difficulties loomed. For one, decoding the Beinecke at Yale and other libraries. to the University of Rochester to collect a Ruskin’s hand, even for one well-practiced The Praeterita manuscript went to the print-out detailing the whereabouts of all in the task (as I am), is a chore under the Beinecke. If you call it up, as I have, you Ruskin manuscripts in the UK (nothing), a best of circumstances. And, as I looked at can still see the singeing on the pages! The search of the files (annually published) of all Ruskin’s pages translating Plato’s Laws, I saw point of telling you all this is that, in that manuscript gifts to colleges and universities that, decidedly, these were not such box of Helen’s, there’s a catalog for one of of manuscripts (nothing), a query sent to an circumstances: his hand is considerably Goodspeed’s “Ruskin sales.” You might international list-serve, ‘Exlibris,’ regularly smaller and more cramped than usual, find something.’5 consulted by libraries and museums complications made worse by corrections he And so—the helpful fors obviously at (nothing). makes to his original renderings with words work again—it proved to be. For in Van’s At last, a vein opened. A librarian in or phrases interpolated by means of arrows, box was a catalogue, issued by Goodspeed’s Kansas who had seen our Exlibris request superscripts, and subscripts. To convert all Book Shop in 1932, offering for purchase said that he knew, from his time there as a this into workable prose would require at no fewer than 77 Ruskin paintings and student worker, that the library at least six weeks of work while rooming and drawings [instance: a ‘Street View of Dartmouth College had a dozen or more boarding in very expensive New York City. Amiens’ (1880; $60!)] accompanied by no letters which Ruskin had written to a “B. For another, Viljoen’s comments in her fewer than 24 Ruskin manuscripts, among Jowett” in the early 1880s. Wonderful! version of the Brantwood Diary inform us that them—imagine my delight!—a red-cloth- Though not the ms itself, it was possible that much of Ruskin’s work on The Laws derives bound volume bearing the title, The Laws of the letters might contain complaints Ruskin from notes, some extensive, he had made Plato, containing: two pages of an had posted to his colleague regarding that and transposed from his copy of Bekker’s “Introduction” to The Laws in Ruskin’s eminent’s translations of not only The Laws eight volume compendium (1825) which autograph; 13 pages of “Notes to but other Plato dialogues. Moments after 57 … Continued on p. 59.
Sarah Quill, Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones Revisited. Lund Humphries, 2015. 256 pp. £24.
What does the Ruskin scholar, enthusiast, or has also been possible to include a few Frari, or the capitals of the Ducal Palace. initiate take to Venice? Even in compact daguerreotypes from the collection of Ken Compare the crucial section on ‘Orders of formats the Stones themselves are and Jenny Jacobson—those ‘missing’ and Venetian Arches’ in the new edition with the unwieldy—and daunting to many. Ruskin discovered in auction in Penrith in 2006 earlier. In his 1849-50 ‘M’ Diary, Ruskin made an edition ‘in more serviceable form’ (and just published in Carrying off the notes his discovery on 23rd November 1849 intended ‘for the use of travellers while Palaces: The Lost Daguerreotypes of John of this enduring taxonomy: ‘I obtained to- staying in Venice and Verona’ (1879-81) but Ruskin). For example, Quill includes The day for the first time a clue to the whole did not follow through his initial intention to Fondaco dei Turchi (c. 1845) and Palazzo system of pure Venetian Gothic’. Quill now include ‘photographic reductions of the Zorzi Bon (c. 1849) as antecedents to her includes these decisive pages showing principal plates in the larger volumes’. own vivid photographs, originally taken on Ruskin’s sketch of the key stages in the Arnold Whittick’s Ruskin’s Venice of 1976 is a film in the last quarter of the twentieth evolution of the Orders whereby the Gothic valuable and compact compilation, century for the first edition; see the subtly infiltrates the stilted Byzantine structured on Ruskin’s ‘Venetian Index’, glowing Turnerian Columns of the Lion of St hierarchy and then transforms it with with the advantage of including some key Mark and St Theodore in the Piazetta (Photo: flowing energy. The sense of discovery is paintings, especially a long section on the 1997, p. 69 new ed.; p. 61 1st ed.). Along pointed up with new photographs of the Tintorettos in the Scuola di San Rocco—but with presenting the great churches and 14th-century Palazzo Moroni showing a not the photographs are quite limited, and uncommon hybrid mixture of fourth and all black and white. Since the new fifth-order arches on the same façade. millennium, the cicerone has had to be Altogether this important section of the Sarah Quill’s Ruskin’s Venice: The Stones book is some thirty percent longer than Revisited (subsequently available in before. Then, for the portals of Venice, paperback) with its sparkling colour Notebook drawings from the ‘Gothic photographs, and a tripartite Book’ and the ‘House Book 2’—aligned organisation based on Ruskin’s texts, with more new photographs—reinforce interpreting the two venerated styles of the understanding of Ruskin as a visual Byzantine and Gothic and a—not thinker; here scrutinising a door near the entirely hated—Renaissance. Now The Fondaco De’ Turchi, or some pages Stones Revisited has itself been revisited in later, the magnificently arborescent a major new edition. Some facts: Its portal to the Ca’ Magno in the octavo format has expanded slightly, and Campiello della Chiesa. This considerably thickened from 206 to 256 enrichment, nuancing and amplification pages, giving it more the feel of the characterises the whole, making it—if substantial art monograph associated not quite a new book—very much more with the Lund Humphries imprint. Its than a normal ‘new edition’. Everyone pages are more handsome, too, with an who bought the first book will need and invitingly calm double-column format, want this one, too, and it is certain to far preferable to the busy design of the attract fresh admirers. The new edition previous edition—and the updated has only a historic 1847 map of Venice hardback is 300 grams heavier (a to contextualise Ruskin’s research; the paperback version is available). This might palaces of the three periods, one great reference map linked to grid-references in be called the ‘Pevsner-effect’ whereby quality of Quill’s first edition was its feeling the Index has been omitted—but this outline increased content has to be weighed for Ruskin as a gleaner and gatherer of the map was always intended to be ‘used in somewhat against portability. So this is a real fragments of a lost Byzantine-medieval conjunction with a good street map’. So, to ‘new edition’ with many new photographs Venice ‘hidden in many a grass grown find Ruskin’s gleanings in the labyrinths of to show the significant amount of restoration court, and silent pathway’. Just as Ruskin Venice, into the explorer’s shoulder-bag— and cleaning that has taken place since did in his ‘Bit [Note] Book’, and other along with the indispensable Quill—should 2000—striking in the case of the façades of pocket-books, she assiduously sought out go the map-guide Calli, Campielli e Canali. S. Moisè and S. Stefano, or the north façade and recorded these more humble ‘bits’ Stephen Kite of the Basilica of S. Marco. Tantalisingly, it coequally with the noble traceries of the
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Continued from p. 57 ... learning this, I called the head librarian, I don’t need to take it. But might it be to the ceiling. (Immediately, I start scanning explained my project, and asked if he might alright with you if I came to Boston for a volume bound in red-cloth.) be so kind as to send me photocopies. He sometime—soon—came to your house and Moments later, from another room, an would be glad to be so kind. read it? I’d also like to take some notes if old, bent gentleman, very properly dressed Ten days later, the copies came. Eagerly, I that would be acceptable. It would help my in a coat and tie considerably more elegant opened the packet and read the first, brief project more than I can explain!’ Long than his visitor’s, emerges: Mr George missive: ‘Dear Jowett, The typesetting on pause. ‘You can come, but [still more Goodspeed. He moves slowly, offers his the last chapter was wonderful. I shall send intently] you can’t take it!’ ‘Yes, sir, I hand as he approaches, introduces himself, the next shortly. [signed] JR.’ (???) I read the understand. I could come once my and asks, clearly having forgotten, who I am. second: ‘Dear Jowett, I am doubtful that I semester is over. In June.’ ‘You can come, As I give my name, he leans over so that he can get the ms of the new book to you by but [most vehemently yet] you can’t take might hear my words. ‘Oh yes!’ he Christmas. However that may be, my it!’ ‘Yes, of course! Understood! [Pulling interrupts before I can say anything else. confidence in you is infinite, and when it out my calendar:] Would the third Friday ‘Now, I’m very sure that you will like to does arrive, you will handle it with your in June be alright? I could come to your examine these paintings with me.’ ‘I’d be usual brilliant compositional skills! JR.’ (???) house at, say, 1:30 in the afternoon?’ honored,’ I reply. And examine them we The rest were all in the same vein—hardly Another pause. Then: ‘Yes, come. But did, for nearly half an hour. Moving from the vein I had hoped for!—terse notes about remember you can’t take it!’ ‘Of course! I one to the next, Mr Goodspeed tells me the publishing. Then I remembered: for years shall so much look forward to seeing you, dates when Ruskin had drawn each, gives Ruskin had employed a typesetter, Henry Mr Goodspeed! You are most kind.’ Here their titles, and recites, at some length, the Jowett, with whom he, always particular was the answer to the mystery! The Laws reasons why the great Victorian selected about how his words sat on the printed page, manuscript had not sold and so had these subjects. He ends each presentation corresponded. The letters were to this descended to the son. For some unknown with the story of how his father came to own Jowett not his Plato-translating namesake! I reason, he had kept it, and, for a second the drawing. It was all quite stunning; called the Dartmouth librarian and told him unknown reason, was intensely attached to beyond words. The living room tour of the mistake in his archive listings. He it. No matter. The point was to read and complete, he says: ‘I have more in the apologised profusely and promised to right take notes on it. There is was!—in bedroom and, of course, in the hallway you the wrong. Decidedly not a good stroke of Boston—all these years! Found! Fors!! come up. Shall we look at these as well?’ fors! At last the two months needed to bring ‘Well,’ I say, now a little concerned about Happily, my disappointment did not live our semester to an end passed and my not having broached the real reason for my long, for, a week later, the Exlibris notice family and I headed to New Hampshire to visit. ‘I would dearly love to see all you generated another email. One of the visit some dear friends. After a few days at have, but you’ll recall that I’ve come to look librarians at Harvard’s Houghton Library, their summer camp on the shore of one of at Ruskin’s manuscript, The Laws of Plato.’ suggested that I call George Goodspeed, America’s loveliest lakes, I donned a suit ‘Manuscript?’ he repeats, pausing in the Charles Goodspeed’s son. George, I was and tie and drove, with my dear friend, amble he has begun toward the bedroom: told, had inherited everything on his father’s Jack Harris, to Boston for my much ‘What manuscript?’ ‘The Laws of Plato,’ I say, death in 1950. Though in his nineties, his anticipated meeting with the bookseller’s a sinking feeling entering my stomach. ‘I mind was, he thought, still pretty good. He son, worrying, as the miles shrank, how I don’t have any manuscript!’ he says with the might recall and, even if he didn’t, financial might convince that elderly, apprehensive same forcefulness I had heard on the phone. records might exist which would tell me to owner to let me have what I knew would ‘Aren’t you here to buy drawings?’ ‘No,” I whom or to what institution The Laws ms. need to be many hours of work with the ms reply, the interior hole widening. ‘Don’t had been sold. To help me along this path, if I were to extract the information I you remember my letter and our phone he kindly included the younger Goodspeed’s needed. As the appointed hour neared, conversation? You told me that you had this address and the phone number for his home Jack, having some errands to run in Boston, Ruskin Plato manuscript, that it was here in Brookline, one of Boston’s posh inner dropped me at the foot of Brookline’s [pointing], in this bookcase in fact, and that, suburbs. Webster Street. although you’d be glad to let me see it, I Two days later, I posted a long letter A short walk takes me to the Goodspeed couldn’t take it. That’s why I’m here—to explaining my project to Mr Goodspeed and door. I knock. Nothing. I knock again. see The Laws manuscript.’ Mr Goodspeed is the need I had to find, if only to read and Finally, steps. The door opens. I am considerably confused. I am too. ‘Aren’t you transcribe passages from, the missing greeted by a woman in her 60s. Seeing my the gallery owner?’ he asks. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I’m manuscript. Days passed. Nothing. Deciding surprise, she says she is Mr Goodspeed’s the sociologist.’ Reaching into my folder I to take the bull by the horns, I dialled the daughter. She often comes to help him out. produce a copy of my letter and give it to Brookline number. After a few rings, an I am expected. Would I like to come in, go him. After a moment, he says: ‘I never got answer, the voice obviously aged but clear: upstairs, and meet her father? Happily! As this. Who are you again…?’ ‘I’m…,” I ‘George Goodspeed here.’ I introduced we ascend, I see that I am in not just a begin… myself, then asked: ‘Did you get my letter?’ lovely house but a remarkable Ruskin ‘Oh,’ interjects his daughter who, until ‘I have it,’ he said. ‘My letter?’ [Short pause, house—because, as we climb, I see that we now, has been silent. ‘I’m so very sorry! then:] ‘Didn’t you hear me? I said I have it, are accompanied every step of the way by You know what must have happened? My but you can’t take it!’ (???) ‘Are you stunning Ruskin drawings. At the top we father’s in his mid-90s and, as you can see, is speaking of my letter, Mr Goodspeed, or are welcomed by yet another drawing, a very hard of hearing. When you called, he [hope springing!] are you saying that you large watercolour of one of the palazzi of must’ve thought you wanted Ruskin have the book containing Ruskin’s Venice. Turning toward the living room, I paintings. He’s now willing to sell them. manuscript called The Laws, the one which see, on the right hand wall, another good- The children, myself included, like them, once belonged to your father?’ Again, with sized, very beautiful, Ruskin painting (a but, to tell the truth, we would rather have irritation: ‘I said, I have it, but you can’t take landscape) looking brightly out from over a the money they will bring. So Daddy’s it!’ ‘The manuscript?’ ‘I’m looking at it right couch. It is flanked by two lesser Ruskin agreed selling’s the best thing.’ ‘But,’ I say, now. It’s across the room. In the bookcase. I drawings. The opposite wall is occupied by despondence beginning to mingle with the can see it.’ (!!!) ‘Really?! That’s wonderful! a six-shelf built-in bookcase which reaches abdominal vacancy, ‘our conversation was 59 … Continued on p. 61.
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Continued from p. 59... never about paintings. It was about a lost beginning of enough time. Ruskin’s is no doubt in my mind that fors is at work manuscript of Ruskin’s.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she annotations are copious, not only as they again. But at this point, having been returns: ‘That sort of thing happens all the relate to The Laws and The Republic but tempered by earlier events, I am in some time. It’s partly his loss of hearing and almost every other dialogue. doubt about which variety has emerged. partly’ [here she glances over at her Dejected, but determined to use the time It is two mornings later: I am at the perplexed sire and says, soto voce] ‘that his I have, I continue. Sometime, early in the scholar’s door five minutes after securing my mind just isn’t as agile as it was. He third day, for a change, I ask Jim if I might pass, where I am treated to the second great misunderstood.’ One more chance! I ask if see some of Ruskin’s diaries for the 1870s, library honour of this trip: I am brought to any financial records from her grandfather’s a time when he was working intently on Duke Humphrey’s reading room. First sales of his Ruskiniana survive. ‘Once,’ she Plato. Jim produces a stack of holographs. I opened in the late 15th century, in the says, ‘we had boxes and boxes of them. He start but soon I am again in despair. There spectrum of scholars’ reading rooms in sold so many things. But Daddy destroyed is so much to read and no time to do it. I set which I have had the privilege of reading them decades ago. They were just taking up them aside. Later that same day, taking a across North America and Europe, there is space and no government agency or anyone Bekker break, I wander into Jim’s office. no match for its elegance and sense of else—until, today, you!—ever was As we begin to chat, I notice, out of the history. For here you are encircled by a interested in them.’ ‘Do you have any idea corner of my eye, in a bookcase, quite a collection containing many of the greatest whether the manuscript burned in the fire in few red cloth-bound volumes, looking just maps, manuscripts, and music scores the 1940s?’ ‘I never knew much about that,’ like those offered for sale by Goodspeed in Western civilisation has created. an she says, ‘but I do know that my father— his catalogue. ‘What are those?’ I ask. environment which makes you feel that, as well, you can see for yourself—has no ‘Those are Wedderburn’s typescripts,’ Jim you turn your pages and take your notes, memory of it now or, for that matter, of replies, ‘of Ruskin’s diaries. To make their Dante, Milton, Bacon, and Shakespeare are many other things.’ A few minutes later, work on the Library Edition easier, Cook there with you. And Ruskin. after thanking the good Goodspeeds for their and Wedderburn gave Ruskin’s letters and I am seated at a small carrel and brought a time, I find myself (the description is apt) manuscripts to hired typists. With the stack of Wedderburn’s typescripts. These again on Webster Street, walking slowly to resulting typescripts they could more easily include, in addition to The Laws of Plato, the spot where I am supposed to meet Jack. interpolate what they needed into the Ruskin’s diaries for the 1870s which I have When he arrives, he discovers in the guise of volumes of the Library Edition as these ordered ‘just in case.’ The Laws volume is in his friend, a very glum Ruskin scholar. were produced. I didn’t show you them the middle of the pile. As soon as I am alone, There is one more part to the story. The because scholars always want to work with I pull it out. In seconds I know it is not a part with the recipe. the originals. Of course, you are welcome second copy of Goodspeed’s manuscript. It More than a little daunted by these to look at them if you want to save time.’ is a typed copy of Ruskin’s translations for visitations by the unhelpful fors, I press on. But by now my interest in diaries has Books I and II. As such, it is no small find, On, specifically, to the Isle of Wight. I write vanished. I tell Jim about Goodspeed’s as, once I get a copy to the US, it will allow Jim Dearden, who, at that pre-Ruskin volume of The Laws manuscript. ‘Might me to check the Brantwood Diary holograph Library time, was still conducting at there be a chance,’ I ask, ‘that a second copy against it, saving me many hours of work. Bembridge School his invaluable oversight of existed and, if so, where might it be?’ But it contains nothing more: no Ruskin the Whitehouse Collection. (What a debt ‘Almost surely at Oxford,’ he says. ‘Introduction,’ no ‘Notes to Plato,’ no those of us who revere Ruskin owe both of ‘Wedderburn gave a number of typescripts annotations of Jowett’s translations, no these gentlemen!) ‘Yes,’ Jim says, replying to the Bodleian when he died.’ I ask, ‘Do dictated Athenian history, and these versions to my request, ‘Come over. I’ll give you a you have a list of what he donated?’ ‘Of of Books I and II have no Ruskin corrections. table and you can take your time with course,’ Jim replies and leaves the office. Fors. Ruskin’s Bekker.’ Minutes later, he is back: ‘I checked my That’s almost the end of the story. I never And so, in mid-summer, I arrive, only to record of what’s at the Bodleian,’ he tells did find the manuscript of Ruskin’s Plato’s be treated to one of the truly great moments me, ‘and found there is a volume called The Laws. No more matches ever flared in dim of my Ruskin journey: the chance, while Laws of Plato, 144 pages.’ ‘Oh, my archival rooms. Possibly it is held in private they still existed, to work in the Ruskin goodness,’ I think, ‘there is another copy!’ hands, or stands quietly on the shelves of Galleries that Whitehouse founded after I tell Jim I must see this book. Since I’ve some small library. (If anyone knows, do let Ruskin’s death. They were nothing less than never worked at Bodley, he says he will call me know!). But I doubt it. I think the most a treasure trove, chockfull of Ruskin’s and recommend me as a responsible scholar plausible explanation is that it was lost in the drawings, manuscripts, and letters. After a who can read rare manuscripts. He does so elder Mr Goodspeed’s fire, not being, when tour, Jim, as he had promised, sits me at a and is given the procedure by which I can that frantic collector re-entered his flaming large table and brings out the eight volumes obtain a visiting scholar’s card. But how to home, of the same holographic status as the of Bekker. Immediately, I begin copying make this happen? My flight to the US is smoking manuscript of Praeterita (and rightly everything which seems relevant to my only three days away and commitments at so!). Likely we shall never know its fate. project. There is much, and much of home, not to mention money, preclude Nor did I, though my discovery of the substance. Along the way, I encounter changing plans. There is only one way. I typed translations of Books I and II at Oxford Ruskin remarks pithy and delightful, like— will finish today’s Bekker work, then, made it possible, ever finish The Laws in a passage remarking on Jowett’s tomorrow, take the first ferry and train to project. (Glad to help any scholar interested, translation of The Republic: ‘Poor Jowett! He Oxford. The morning after I will get my though. Just ask.) For, during that same trip really has this bit completely wrong.’ And— card the moment the office opens and then to the Morgan with Van, while reading commenting on a passage in The Laws: go directly to the Bodleian. Knowing time Viljoen’s files, I learned that had she ever ‘Plato’s being utterly foolish here—all is of the essence, Jim kindly dials Oxford published her biography, Viljoen would have twaddle this and for the next four pages.’ again and asks if The Laws can be reserved so argued, based on reams of new evidence And, this—on The Symposium: ‘Here’s the I can start work right away. It can. At the gathered from thousands (yes!) of letters glorious bit on true friendship!’ I have end of the working day, no more than half other biographers had missed or chosen not allotted a week for the work. Before the first way through Bekker’s volumes, I thank Jim to read, that all of Ruskin’s biographies were day is through, I know this is not even the profusely for his help and generosity. There in serious error on virtually every major aspect 61
of his life story: his relations with his (1937). Especially pertinent for readers of parents, the intense crisis he fell into after NOTES The Companion is Chapter 12, ‘The Spell of discovering that his idol, the painter J. M. 1. In the latter category, see J. C. Ruskin.’ W. Turner, had created a substantial cache Sherburne, John Ruskin, Or the Ambiguities of 6. The holograph can be found at the of pornographic drawings, his love of Rose Abundance (1972), P. D. Anthony, John Bodleian Library, Oxford: Ruskin Diary, La Touche, the reasons for his increasingly Ruskin’s Labour (1983); the best treatment is 1871-72-73: Ms. Eng. Misc. c 226; severe bouts of madness. Publishing these in W. Henderson, John Ruskin’s Political between pp. 130-131. Reading the recipe I corrections, particularly after the Economy, Ch. 5 (2000). could not help but be reminded of the disappointments generated by my 2. Although I have used quotation marks remark made by Ruskin’s long-time guide unsuccessful search for Ruskin’s Plato’s Laws, throughout, some conversations derive on the Continent, Joseph Couttet, about his seemed the more important contribution. from memory alone, whilst more often impractical master: ‘Le pauvre enfant, This I have done. important ones are recounted from notes I il ne sait pas vivre.’ (Works 27.61) Thanks to Lastly. After discovering the contents of was minded to make at the time. Clive Wilmer for locating the remark. The Laws volume at Duke Humphrey’s, I 3. Other classical writers, Ruskin makes Thanks, as always, to Jenn Morris for her knew that, what with my plane flying the clear, also played significant roles in perceptive comments on a draft. Thanks, Atlantic the following day, I hadn’t time to shaping his social thought--among these, too, to Jenn Webb of the Digital Learning copy Wedderburn’s transcriptions (no Xenophon, Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Centre at Hobart and William Smith portable computers in those days). So, some Cicero. Colleges for designing the recipe page. unexpected hours on my hands, I decided to 4. A few years later, Van donated this box read through a number of the diary to the Morgan, specifying that it become POST SCRIPT transcripts. Aware that the three volume part of the ‘Viljoen Papers.’ In the next issue of The Companion, you will version of Ruskin’s diaries published by Joan 5. For a delightful memoir detailing a life in be able to read about attempts to make this Evans and Whitehouse had omitted books, see Goodspeed’s, Yankee Bookseller bread as part of RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD. significant elements (his drawings and side comments, for instances), I read to see if any stray comments he may have made about his Plato work had been among the excisions. I found none. As I neared the end of the last diary, a piece of paper written in Ruskin’s hand fell out. It had been sandwiched between a page enlivened by his critique of a Raphael cartoon and another containing a list of 16 Turner drawings he owned, with estimations of their worth. Why and how this stray bit of holograph had come to rest in this location, I had no idea. Reading it, I found that Ruskin, waxing eloquent and elliptical as always, had set down a recipe for ‘the greatest brown bread’ he had ever tasted. It was so delicious, he recorded, there was no question it was ‘much better than anything we have ever made at home [Brantwood].’ (He probably never shared the sentiment with Joan Severn.) There was no indication of where or when he had tasted the bread or from whom he had the recipe. As I read on my Laws-less spirits began to rise, because Ruskin’s rendering of the steps required to bring this remarkable loaf to its delicious conclusion seemed emblematic of the whole search I had made for Ruskin’s Plato’s Laws. There were steps specific, steps fuzzy, steps surely correct, steps surely wrong, with some steps, apparently, having been left out altogether! It was a veritable roller-coaster ride for the kitchen, a ride which, like life, was attended every step of the way by all the varieties and vagaries of fors, leading… I copied the steps out verbatim and re-nestled the original where I had found it, between two of the world’s great painters. You can’t always get what you want, but… And so here it is: Mr Ruskin’s recipe for Brown Bread, published here for the first time (my interpolations in brackets).6 Try it (if you can figure it out). Let me know what you think. 62 Jim Spates DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
2nd, 3rd, 8th & 10th September Clive Wilmer’s lectures in California, US.
17th September Ruskin Foundation Lecture The charity for arts, crafts and the rural economy, founded by John Ruskin in 1871. Andrew Hill: Registered charity 231758. Limited company no. 12583. ‘No Wealth but Life’:
25th June
PROJECT LAUNCH Walkley Community Centre 1st February 2015
ARTISTS, historians, academics, museum staff and members of the public turned out in their dozens to attend the launch of RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD in Walkley on Sunday (1st Feb) evening—with one attendee travelling all the way from Japan for the occasion. More than 100 folk braved the freezing temperatures and icy conditions to gather in Ruskin Hall at Walkley Community Centre to learn more about events and activities taking place this year to rediscover the heritage of John Ruskin—the 19th-century writer, artist, art critic and social reformer—in Sheffield. The programme will culminate in an exhibition at the Millennium Gallery this autumn. Dr Janet Barnes CBE, a Director of the Guild of HAVE YOUR SAY… St George, welcomed everyone and explained The next issue of The Companion will how people could get involved in the project, include accounts of all the major events which aims to explore Ruskin’s legacy in in the RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD calendar. Walkley, Totley, Rivelin Valley and Stannington. The RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD project is supported Why not send us your stories, by the Guild of St George and an award has been memories, sketches, photos and made by the Heritage Lottery Fund. whatever else the project has inspired The community heritage project will focus on you to create—for possible inclusion two of Ruskin's Guild of St George projects in in the magazine? Sheffield in the late 19th century—St George's Museum in Walkley, which was created to inspire Just email and educate the metalworkers of Sheffield. It was [email protected] the original home of the Ruskin Collection, now housed in the Millennium Gallery after the closure of the dedicated Ruskin Gallery in Norfolk Street. And St George's Farm in Totley, acquired for a group of working men to cultivate while making their livelihoods through boot making. After the brief introduction, those attending had the chance to mingle with the staff and volunteers involved with the different arms of RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD and even to try their hand at drawing objects such as a magpie's wing or a piece of driftwood. Teatime refreshments helped the thirsty work of meeting many like-minded people interested in the work of John Ruskin and learning more from the talented craftsmen and artists from across the country—not to mention academic Chiaki Yokoyama, of Keio University in Japan—to give their time and share their talents and interest in John Ruskin's involvement in Sheffield. And there was even a special wheatsheaf loaf on display, baked to commemorate the launch by Gerry of South Road, Walkley-based Gerry's Bakery (see front cover photo). Michele Vincent
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