Volume 14 Number 3 Article 8 Spring 3-15-1988 The Anonymous Fairy Tale: Ruskin's King of the Golden River Marjorie J. Burns Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Burns, Marjorie J. (1988) "The Anonymous Fairy Tale: Ruskin's King of the Golden River," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 14 : No. 3 , Article 8. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol14/iss3/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses Ruskin’s only fairy tale as a successful work, reflecting his interest in Northern landscapes. Notes female symbolism despite a lack of female characters. Recounts how Ruskin’s psychological problems made him ambivalent toward, and eventually mistrustful of, fantasy. Additional Keywords Ruskin, John—Biography; Ruskin, John—Psychology; Ruskin, John—Relations with children; Ruskin, John—Views on nature; Ruskin, John. King of the Golden River—Criticism and interpretation This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol14/iss3/8 MYTHLORE 53: Spring 1988 The Anonymous Tairy Tale Rustem's K in g of the golden River Marjorie } Burns The German romanticists (Tieck, Novalis, Hoffmann) Not only was it published anonymously, ten years began creating their haunting, folk-based tales in the after it was written, but Ruskin’ s reluctance to last years of the eighteenth century. In England the acknowledge the work is made further evident in the movement was Blower. The earliest well-known English advertisement attached to the first edition of the fairy Kunstmarchen was The King o f the Golden River, tale: written in 1841 by the art critic and social prophet John Ruskin at the beginning of his career. The story The Publishers think it due to the was Ruskin’s firBt attempt at a fairy tale and Author of this Fairy Tale, to state the cir­ remained the only fully conceived work in this genre cumstances under which it appears. that he was ever to produce. Written at the request The King of the Golden River was writ­ of a twelve year old girl, it was not published until ten in 1841, at the request of a very young 1851 and then only anonymously. lady, and solely for he amusement, without any idea for publication. It has since Ruskin’s reticence to acknowledge authorship of remained in the possession of a friend, to the fairy tale is not surprising. It was to a large part whose suggestion, and the passive assent of the result of the general ambivalence his age felt the Author, the Publishers are indebted for toward fairy tales and was justified, likely enough, by the opportunity of printing it. (Works, I, 310) the conviction that such a work was out of character and too trivial for a young man fresh from Oxford, a Even at the end of his life Ruskin remained apolo­ young man who had won the Newdigate Prize for getic about this work of his youth. In his unfinished poetry in 1839 and had published several articles in autobiography Praeterita he gives The King o f the the Architectural Magazine before he was twenty. Golden River only the briefest mention: "The ’King of the Golden River’ was written to amuse a little girl; There was, however, in Ruskin’s case a further and being fairly good imitation of Grimm and Dickens, restraint less easily acknowledged. Throughout his life mixed with a little Alpine feeling of my own, has been Ruskin remained torn between a fanciful, aesthetic rightly pleasing to nice children, and good for them. nature and the inhibitions imposed upon him by a But it is totally valueless, for all that. I can no more rigid, puritanical upbringing. He became moralist and write a story than compose a picture." (Works, XXXV, aesthete at once; and though in his art he sometimes 303-04) found a means of reconciling the two halves of his character, at other times, inevitably, his divided In an age of moral seriousness the urge toward nature troubled the consistency of his writing. Even frivolity was hard to justify, and for Ruskin the con­ at the end of his career, when the popular attitude flict between desire and duty was particularly and toward fairy tales had become increasingly relaxed, personally incapacitating. It was his private life that Ruskin maintained a somewhat double attitude toward most suffered when impulse and passion fell short fairy literature, impulse conflicting with reflection.1 under the inhibitions of guilt and religious austerity. The deep passion Ruskin expressed to Effie Gray dur­ ing their engagement was not fulfilled during their Ruskin was born in 1819, an only and severely marriage, and the similar feelings he later cherished loved child of a late marriage. The rigid isolation of for Rose La Touche were, perhaps fortunately, never his household was broken only by occasional visits put to the test. Significantly, Ruskin reserved one with cousins and by the holiday tours his family section of his diary for the intellect and another for began taking through Britain and Europe as his feeling. father’s wine business became increasingly successful. The holiday tours consisted mostly of a passive expo­ sure to the countryside, witnessed through carriage In his published writings, however, Ruskin was windows, but the effects, especially of mountain scen­ not always able to maintain this separation, and in his ery, were extreme. Not surprisingly, The King of the most sober works a fanciful strain will unexpectedly Golden River is Alpine in setting and Germanic in emerge. In the midst of an essay on art, architecture, characterization.2 or social reform he swells forth, to quote Peter Quen- nell, with "one of those ’pretty passages,’ of which But for all the strong ties The King o f the Golden secretly he was always a trifle ashamed — as of some River has with Ruskin’s boyhood, it most likely would unseemly indulgence in uncensored, unsanctified feel­ never have been written if it had not been privately ing — but which correspond to an important aspect of inspired. Ruskin, like so many men of his century, the writer’s divided nature."3 depended upon contact with children, especially girl children, for a release from the serious role of an And yet Ruskin is at his best at such moments, at adult and male Victorian. Like his mystical and moments when the aesthete and the moralist work for instructional The Ethics of the Dust, written in 1866 each other, the one strengthening the other. The King for the school girls of Winnington Hall, Ruskin’s fairy o f the Golden River, in spite of Ruskin's authorial tale The King o f the Golden River was written for reticence, succeeds in achieving this blend of righ­ twelve-year-old Effie Gray, the girl who seven years teousness and fancy which characterizes the best of later became his wife. his works. In his medieval and fairy tale version of Stiria, Ruskin has created a magical world (vivid and Ruskin did not intend the story for publication. active), where nature, in all its forces, is in accord MYTHLORE 53: Spring 1988 with Christianity and where the ornate and colorful At last they are reduced to one gold drinking (both in language and description) have shed the mug, cleverly wrought in the shape of a man’s head, a strictures of Victorian propriety without becoming round faced, round nosed man, whose long hair on incompatible with it. each side forms the two handles. It is Gluck’s own mug, given to him long ago by an uncle, but it too is The opening sentences recreate, with fairy tale sacrificed, and Gluck is left in charge of the melting simplicity and with a sensuous richness worthy of and pouring of his own and only treasured posses­ Keats, the mountain vistas and valley farms that Rus- sion. kin had early grown to love. "In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was, in old time, a But out of the melting pot comes another little valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. man, the King of the Golden River. He gives the fol­ It was surrounded, on all sides, by steep rocky moun­ lowing advice to Gluck: "Whoever shall climb, to the tains, rising into peaks, which were always covered top of that mountain, from which you'see the Golden with snow, and from which a number of torrents River issue, and shall cast into the stream at its descended in constant cataracts.... The clouds were source three drops of holy water, for him, and for drawn so constantly to the snowy hills,, and rested so him only, the river shall turn to gold.