John Ruskin’s Europe A Collection of Cross-Cultural Essays edited by Emma Sdegno, Martina Frank, Pierre-Henry Frangne, Myriam Pilutti Namer The Stones of Venice: Lady Augusta Gregory and John Ruskin Eglantina Remport Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary Abstract Lady Augusta Gregory was among those Victorian Anglo-Irish genteel women who were deeply influenced by Ruskin’s views on the political and artistic history of Venice. She stayed at Ca’ Cappello during he visits to Venice, Sir Austen Henry Layard and Lady Enid Layard’s beau- tiful palace on the Grand Canal. She often walked the streets of the Mediterranean city in search of architectural details that Ruskin mentioned in The Stones of Venice. The chapter considers the significance of these Ruskin-inspired sojourns on the formation of Lady Gregory’s aesthetic sensibilities at the turn of the twentieth century and reveals the true subject matter of one of her Venetian sketches, now held at the National Library of Ireland. Keywords Ruskin. Lady Gregory. Lady Layard. Sketching. Travel writing. Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 Ruskin and The Stones of Venice. – 3 Lady Gregory and the Stones of Venice. – 4 Conclusion. 1 Introduction John Ruskin’s three-volume The Stones of Venice1 may have been only one of several trav- el books written about the Apennine Peninsula during the Victorian period, but it was cer- tainly the one that exerted the most influence on the writers of the Irish Literary Reviv- al between 1880 and 1930. My recent study, Lady Gregory and Irish National Theatre: Art, Drama, Politics,2 explores the seminal influence of Ruskin’s social thought in Ireland dur- ing the Revival period, as expressed in the volumes of The Stones of Venice and in later works such as Time and Tide and Fors Clavigera.3 Lady Augusta Gregory herself was a ded- icated Ruskinian who disseminated Ruskin’s thoughts in various ways through the work of 1 Works, 9-11. 2 Remport 2018. 3 Works, 17; 27-29. Fonti, letterature, arti e paesaggi d’Europa | Sources, Literatures, Arts & Landscapes of Europe 1 ISSN 2724-6620 DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-487-5/017 ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-487-5 | ISBN [print] 978-88-6969-488-2 © 2020 | cb Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution alone for the texts | cbknd Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License for the figures 283 Eglantina Remport The Stones of Venice: Lady Augusta Gregory and John Ruskin the Co-operative Movement, the Home Industries Move- ber 1881, their first excursion on Sir Henry’s gondola was ment and the Abbey Theatre, known at the time as the out to the Stabilimento, followed by visits to the Acad- Irish National Theatre.4 Dramatist, director and design- emy (to view the new exhibition), to St. Mark’s (to see er, Lady Gregory of Roxborough in the west of Ireland the Pala d’Oro), to the Seminario (to view pictures and county of Galway, became a powerful player in the Irish sculptures), and to the Lido (for the Layards’ custom- literary scene. She overcame countless struggles when ary afternoon/evening stroll). Lady Gregory had much managing the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and fought dog- to learn because Sir Henry and Sir William were fervent gedly during and after the years of the First World War art lovers, paintings in particular, and were associat- for a public space in the city to house the impressive art ed with both the National Gallery and the British Mu- collection of her nephew Hugh Lane. seum in London. These two men were boundless wells Lady Augusta was the wife of Sir William Gregory of information on the history of European art, includ- of Coole Park, descendant of a long-line of Gregorys in ing that of Italy. Sir Henry and Sir William were also British colonial service, including the famous East-India involved with the Arundel Society that published John Company. She is mostly remembered as a friend of Wil- Ruskin’s explanatory notes on Giotto’s frescoes in the liam Butler Yeats, Noble Prize-winning poet and play- Arena Chapel in Padua. wright of Dublin/Sligo and of George Bernard Shaw, Os- Lady Gregory herself had read Ruskin’s The Stones of car and Noble Prize-winning playwright from Dublin. Venice when she was still a young, single woman, living Lady Gregory’s achievements, however, should be appre- with her family in County Galway’s Roxborough House. ciated in their own rights, acknowledging her immense She wrote in her autobiography that when she was read- knowledge of literature and art, and her love of Ireland. ing Ruskin’s book – that she had found in the library of It was this love of Ireland, in fact, that rocked the boat a nearby landed estate of Castle Taylor – she believed of her friendship with Lady Enid Layard, who used to it was “without much prospect of ever seeing Venice it- welcome her to Ca’ Cappello from the early 1880s un- self”.5 Augusta’s confessions about reading the book are til the late 1900s. Sir Henry and Lady Layard showed particularly interesting because of the context in which Lady Gregory the best of what Venetian life had to of- they are given: her comments on The Stones of Venice fer, including visits to the Academy, the Ducal Palace, are immediately followed by the story of Sir William St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the Rossini Theatre. Lady La- Gregory’s marriage proposal, indicating perhaps an ear- yard reveals in her diaries that when walking around ly instance of Sir William’s marked influence on the aes- Venice, she and her husband would carry around with thetic education of the soon-to-be Lady Gregory. All the them a Ruskin book or booklet, reading out passages greater was her delight when she finally saw Venice her- from the much-valued publications (Layard, September self and met Sir Henry on his gondola.6 In her memoirs, 22, 1882). When Sir William and Lady Gregory arrived Lady Gregory dedicated a whole chapter to Sir Henry, re- at Venice for the first time as a married couple in Octo- counting the instance of Ruskin’s visit to Ca’ Cappello to 4 Remport 2018, 85-119. 5 Smythe 1974, 28. 6 Smythe 1974, 172. Fonti, letterature, arti e paesaggi d’Europa | Sources, Literatures, Arts & Landscapes of Europe 1 284 John Ruskin’s Europe. A Collection of Cross-Cultural Essays, 283-296 Eglantina Remport The Stones of Venice: Lady Augusta Gregory and John Ruskin examine the illustrious Layard Collection that included a some of the trade from Ruskin himself – and Lady Greg- Carpaccio, a Luini, and works by Giovanni Bellini. After ory soon followed her friend in documenting the streets the death of her husband in 1894, Lady Layard took to of Venice. Leaving Ca’ Cappello for long walks around making copies of these paintings with a view to includ- the city, she studied Venetian architecture with a keen ing them in a book celebrating the collection. Lady La- eye – her sketches are testimonies of her love of Venetian yard was very fond of drawing and sketching – learning art and her knowledge of Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice. 2 Ruskin and The Stones of Venice Ruskin wrote The Stones of Venice following two visits there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, to Venice between 1849 and 1852. Observing a travel- and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the ler’s descent from the Alps to the Po Valley and then on- central river. In one of these tracts is built RAVEN- to the Adriatic, Ruskin describes the arrival of river peb- NA, and in the other VENICE.7 bles into the Veneto region as follows: These astute observations about the journey of the When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there mountain pebble from the French-Italian Alps to Vene- is no feature by which it is more likely to be arrested to would have described Ruskin’s own descent from the than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junc- east of France to Northern Italy, travelling from Chamo- tion of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the nix through Milan to Venice, as he usually did. Whether great basin of Lombardy. […] The character of the in company or on his own, Ruskin tended to rest in Cham- Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the onix in the French Alps to take in the beauty of the moun- ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part tains and the warm welcome of Chamonix’s inhabitants.8 of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with nar- Ruskin’s remarks about the traveller’s first views of row courses of brick; […] The finer dust among which Venice are no less poetical. Writing under the spell of these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the riv- English romanticism that coloured Lord Byron’s views ers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so of the city, Ruskin describes the arrival of the visitor in- that, however pure their waters may be when they is- to the winding lagoons as follows: sue from the lakes at the foot of the great chain, they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is And at last, when its walls were reached, and the out- at once thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a most of its untrodden streets was entered, not through vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of Italy.