TRAGIC JOHN RUSKIN: A BALANCED STUDY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27688, 18 June 1955, Page 3

TRAGIC JOHN RUSKIN: A BALANCED STUDY

[Reviewed by J.C.G.] John Ruskin. By Joan Evans. Jonathan Cape. 447 pp. This biography of Ruskin has regrettably received only a lukewarm reception from reviewers overseas, not because Dr. Joan Evans has not written a good book, for she has written a very good book indeed. But her biography comes at the end of a series of revelations about Ruskin’s private life, touched oft by Admiral James in 1948 with the publication of "The Order of Release.” In the next year Derrick Leon’s impressive biography “Ruskin, the Great Victorian” and Peter Quennell’s vivid and skilful account. "John Ruskin, the Portrait of a Prophet,” both appeared. Then came J H. Whitehouse’s valiant attempt to vindicate Ruskin with new evidence in 1951, and still later the revelations of Kathleen Olander about the last phase of Ruskins life—revelations which bad little to do with Effie Gray or Rose la Touche and added to the picture of tragic abnormality to which we were growing accustomed. It may be that the reviewers were, understandably, growing restless. When it was known that Dr. Evans was editing Ruskin’s diaries, curiosity was piqued, and then disappointment was expressed that the diaries did not alter the picture. Wherein then does the special merit of this book lie? It is simply the best balanced book yet written about Ruskin. Peter Quennell did less justice to Ruskin’s thought, daunted as he was by what he called the “dense thicket” of Ruskin’s published work; and Derrick Leon emphasised too strongly Ruskin’s social thought. Dr. Evans is an historian of art who has also a very wide knowledge of the Victorian scene and of Victorian ideas; ahe has also an intimate (and closely parallel) experience of that very Italian art which so profoundly affected Ruskin in youth. These qualifications enable her to put the man and his work in admirable perspective.

It may be questioned whether, it she had added no fresh detail, she has not made the life more vivid by recourse to the diaries. We knew for instance that Ruskin was deeply disturbed by the marriage of Adele Domecq with whom, in his own desperate, ineffective way, he had early fallen in love. But we did not know that he had written in his diary, at Oxford, more than a year later: “My thoughts . went back to that evening in Christ Church when I first knew of it . . . and went staggering down the dark passage through the howling wind, to Child’s room, and sat there working through long, interminable problems, for what seemed an infinite time, without error, without thought, all contusion and horror in eyes and brain. How well I remember how my feet slipped on the smooth pebbles, as I staggered on, and the stars danced among the dismal clouds above me like fire-flies!” That Ruskin had great power to express and explore his feeling was obvious in “Praeterita”; the day to day record of the diaries

GOOD TASTE Good and Bad Taste. By Odd Brochmann. Translated by M. A. Michael. Illustrated by the author. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 128 pp. To some the term “good taste” has a slightly irritating sound—a phrase that has perhaps an undertone of suburban refinement and gentility. If so, it is because associations have been acquired that do not belong to the real meaning of the words. The thesis of Me Brochmann’s book is that it is not sufficient to say, “I don’t know why I like it, but I do,” and he would presumably only agree partly with William Morris’s remark, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful” Mr Brochmann holds that the judgment of the aesthetic qualities of an object should rest on more than a feeling for beauty or a half formulated belief. In this book he attempts to define the intrinsic qualifies that are essential if something is to be “in good taste.” Mr Brochmann explains why fitness for its function is a prerequisite for an object to give aesthetic pleasure, and he stresses the importance of form and proportion. He thinks that colour and texture are two factors whose consideration is vital. He devotes another chapter to traditions in furniture and decoration, and contends that those styles which were intrinsically good are still equally usable today. Such is the skeleton of this book and in outline it does not differ greatly from many others that have been •written on the same subject. What makes Mr Brochmann’s book original is his treatment. He discusses abstract questions of artistic form without writing either down to or above the general reader. Whilst he manages to teach him a good deal of the general principles of the subject, he minimises the theoretical aspect of it and emphasises the practical, by drawing his examples from common objects. They are not only original and amusing, but pointed as well. He backs these up with some very witty, sketches, and has great delight with some of the more unfortunate productions of potters and furniture makers. Certainly they provide ready material but his citing of them is more than easy derision; he picks his targets in such a way that he illustrates the point he is making with delightful precision. Mr Brochmann’s writing shows another pleasing feature. Whilst he obviously admires and advises the development of styles and forms fitted to the life of our particular time, he is not one of those to whom the term “contemporary” is almost a mystic incantation —an adjective whose applicability is considered to breathe virtue into any creation. He is equally prepared to admit the satisfaction that can be derived from every-day objects from any period, providing that thev conform to his standards of good taste. The label “contemporary” holds no priority for him. Nor is he clamorous with facile scorn for the “mass produced”—an attitude that is only too often adopted by writers who dismiss the question with a superiority that ignores the many advantages that mass-production has brought. Mr Brochmann acknowledges the uses to which it can be put under intelligent planning a .id design, particularly in bringing well-styled objects within the reach of more people. The only quarrel that might be made with the book is with the style of the printing used under the illustrations. Is it particularly functional to use a rather illegible handwriting rather than ordinary types?

FROM BEOWULF TO VIRGINIA WOOLF (Wemie Laurie. 78 pp.) by Robert Manson Myers is an attempt to do for English literature what “1066 and All That” did for English history. Unfortunately it does not come off. The author tries too hard to be funny, and his nonsense is too overcrowded with witticisms that very often lack point, and are not always original. The sample below shows Mr Manson at his wildest: “William Jennings Eyron, author of ‘Thanatopsis.’ is considered *the playboy of the Western-world.’ As a child he* was called Harold, but at school he became known as the Wolf. At Harrow he played Rugby, served on the tennis team, and gambled on the village green with Bella Donna, an Italian lady of English distraction. Finally he married his first cousin, and the belles of London peeled forth. After that first fine careless rupture, however, the Byrons moved from Bond street to Tobacco road, where Lord Byron lived amid all the unadulterated lust practicable in a private household. On the morning after the appearance of *English Birds and Scotch Retrievers,’ he awoke to find himself, but was disappointed. Later he was exiled to Don Juan, whence he finally escaped to Greece.”

?° e ,L m ?u e than confir m that: it iUusbe remar kable power of his spontaneous, unpremeditated prose ~ . e most interesting aspect of th a grlohv d iu hen a Ce ° f ° r - bto! A D hy > s the documentation it gives of Ruskin as maniac-depressive from an early age. Long ago R. H. Wilenshowed h fb» bril ‘ la -! book on Ruskin, >. the importance of this; Dr and put * the al ternating ecstasy apathy into proper relationship with his unhappy personal life and hies eSP p nSe Pamtmgs and buildP8 a- Poor Ruskin, cofidled like a hot-house plant, denied by sheer w?,nta lO b frOm ex P erient 'ing affection would have grown up strange in any % heredity of mania added bewnriered The distortions oewiiaered him: in my genius T am a nd broken ” he wrote. The best and strongest part hafflir.S° bld not be ex Plained.” The th? formed c °mplexity of which the tormented genius was all too otWF the magisterial commeffi I Henry James, after a visit seem ?e?v St sim r ni tal: “R uskin himself is a very simple matter. In face in manner, m talk, in mind, he is weakness, pure and simple. I use the word Fwn iil v ‘ d iousiy, but scientifically ’ Ru^kin J^ e b S qualifying remark that hv t h m his ideas was “scared back vmrld nF 1 ” face of realit y into the world of unreason and illusion and suidp^?ir there a com Pass or ai i y light save the fitful flashes of his beautiful genius”— even this, however well it may express ? mlntu everi ? h excitement over a multitude of interests, fails in imaginative sympathy. The life was a tragedy, perhaps the greatest tragedy of nineteenth century letters. unfniX f hlS tragedy that Dr. Evans ld * for . Al us ’. with love and pity, a^ d ya „ Justice. Perhaps nohv pS- e ’ Ver x gai . n . be much affected uskms art criticism (he was too a moralist, for all that his nn S^!iS 1C n® nse was vivid); perhaps a2l V ly 111 !.- ever a^ain be much affected by his economic writings exas an exam ple of outraged social consciousness; but the drama of a wrest ling with a baffling I k neVer Seem Ctale - In that m 2.™! ther l ar e passages of almost miraculous beauty and passages of ma pia but neither can be read with quietude.