THE OLD RUSKIN

Evening Post, Issue 27, 31 July 1935, Page 4

THE OLD RUSKIN

HIS LIFE AT CONISTOtf

FIGHT AGAINST RAILWAYS

If memory, "the warden of the brain," can be trusted, it was in 1885 and the fall of that year. Having discharged a journalistic assignment further afield, I had halted at Coniston for a brief holiday. Standing one afternoon in front of that homely, comfortable old inn, The Dove, idly watching

Four (lucks on n pond, A grass linnlt liuyond . . . • White clouds on the wing. my reverie was shattered by a village gossip, who in the course of his babbling confided that "t'ow'd mon's gay bad," writes E. W. Hane in the "Sydney Morning Herald." The first impulse was to turn about and survey the majestic peak soaring skyward to see what herald of tempest was hovering above its summit with its threat to shatter the peace of a perfect day. But before it was acted upon I recollected that John Ruskin was locally known as "Coniston's Old Man."

Next day saw me tramping the road along the shore, round the head of the lake, .through scenery which if not alpine in magnitude, is almost alpine in character, intent upon determining the accuracy or otherwise of the information so casually imparted. Arrived at my destination Arthur Severn, whose death at the advanced age of 88 was reported comparatively recently, himself an artist and the son of an artist still more distinguished, received me and readily answered my inquiries. The news, I ascertained, was all too true. Ruskin was indeed grievously ill from an affliction not of the body but of the mind.

The sickness was a recurrence of the' brain trouble from which Ruskin suffered in '78 and again in '81. As events proved it presaged the mental failure of a man who was conspicuous among the Victorian prophets. John Ruskin at this time was in his 66th year, and his slow decline was infused with a tragic pathos. In the years that followed he withdrew himself gradually from public life. More and more he became an invisible and legendary figure; more and more the object of the solicitude and tender care of Mrs. Severn, who was his niece and ward. In later days the malady from which Ruskin suffered has been diagnosed as a "manic depression"—which, according to the experts, may range from enthusiasm to madness itself. In all he suffered six attacks; and long before his death in 1900 he was broken by sorrow, conscious of the tragic clouding of a sensitive and active brain. GREAT WRITER'S RETREAT. At intervals during the fortnight that succeeded my .first visit to Brantwood the call was repeated; but after the lapse of fifty years all that the limbo of half-remembered things yields is a composite picture of long walks on fair days and foul. There are memories of days of honeyed sunshine, and of other days when a sombre grey mist swathed the landscape and rain fell with a steady sibilence transformed to a suspirati'on on the turfy margin of the road. At the journey's end a warm •welcome, pleasant conversation, and generous hospitality were balm for fatigue. Then there were books and manuscripts to be looked at and, more interesting still, pictures to admire. In the roomy entrance hall a number of large drawings by Ruskin confronted the visitor, as well as numerous cabinets of patiently collected mineral and rock specimens, typical of the geology of the district. In the drawing-room there were further sketches by, Ruskin, and choice examples of the work of Turner, Prout, Morland, and other representatives of the early English school of water-colourists; a Gainsborough, and a Burne Jones. ■ At this time Ruskin was writing "Praelerita" and "Delicta" —the book in which "garrulously and at ease," the author summons "long past scenes for present scrutiny." It is worth recalling that the last page of this book was1 the last written by Ruskin for the world.

Along with many of his contemporaries, John Ruskin has been subjected to the pitiful and pitiless process euphemistically called "debunking." Accepted for years as the High Pontiff of artistic taste, there are those who now tell us "that some art critics consider that he may have been an expert in political economy; that political economists admit that he may: have known something about art; but that many people write him down as ass and a bore." For myself lam still too much under the spell of the "eminent Victorians" to accept placidly so iconoclastic a pronouncement. It may be that of the melodious noise with which Ruskin filled the ears of his contemporaries, but a memory remains; yet he is still revered today by many as a great man and a genius—though possibly his greatness has yet to be properly assessed. But whatever the verdict of posterity, fifty years ago John Ruskin indubitably was notable in . the world of art and literature. FAMILIAR FIGURE. His was a familiar figure about the countryside. Of medium height and spare build, he carried himself with an air. Out of doors he usually wore a cape-like cloak over a highly-but-toned frock coat, and a sombrero of Bohemian amplitude; and he invariably carried a stout rustic stick. His face was small, with large features set in a whispy grey beard. Eyebrows, nose, and underlip were prominent— a combination reminiscent of the facial characteristics of General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Though there was a local awareness that they were harbouring a man of credit and renown in the outer world, the simple people of the dales and fells were unacquainted with Ruskin's flowing, and prophetic utterances, and his pellucid, if somewhat austere, prose. His books were caviare to the public. They were published in ornate volumes at a prohibitive price—and deliberately so; for cheap editions, that boon and blessing to man, were in the catalogue of things that were anathema. No, it was not as art critic, political economist, or sociologist that Ruskin was known to his neighbours in the Lake district. To them he was an irascible, tart old fogey, whose acerbity found free expression in letters to "The Times" and in the replies to numerous correspondents. He was a queer character, who uttered raging absurdities about railways, or Mr. Gladstone, or cotton mills, and who fulminated against touring and buses and restorations. In "Modern Painters" lie called upon the love and knowledge of landscape to mend specifically the foolish spirit of a century "bent upon annihilating time and space by steam." It was long after the invention of railways that Ruskin finally became resigned to main lines, but to the end any and every proposal for a byway or branch line that would invade the serenity and desecrate the beauty of his beloved Dake country found in him a bitter and relentless .opponent. "Going by railway," he once declared, "I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel"—a piece of philosophy echoed by another "eminent" Victorian, Tony Weller, who also considered "that the rail is unconslitootional and an in--1 wader of privileges." CAN APPROVE NOW. In this year of grace one can applaud Ruskin's stubborn fight' against the encroachments of modernity, and express