Letters from the Continent 1858 9781487579302

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LETTERS FROM THE CONTINENT 1858

EDITED BY JOHN HAYMAN

John Ruskin Letters from the Continent 1858

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS TORONTO BUFFALO LONDON

© University of Toronto Press 1982 Reprinted in 2018

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4875-8054-4 (paper)

ISBN 0-8020-5583-4

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Ruskin, John, 1819-1900. Letters from the continent 1858 Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-5583-4 ISBN 978-1-4875-8054-4 (paper)

Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 - Correspondence. 2. Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 - Journeys - Europe. 3. Ruskin, John James, 1785-1864. 4. Authors, English 19th century - Correspondence. I. Hayman, John, 1935ll. Title. PR5263.A462 828' .809 C82-094345-2 1.

FRONTISPIECE: John Ruskin engraving by Francis Holl, 1858, of 1857 portrait by George Richmond National Portrait Gallery, London

TO MY PARENTS

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii Plates xxix The Letters 3 Appendix 173 Index 197

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Most of the letters from John Ruskin to John James Ruskin, his father, are in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; the letters from father to son (together with much related manuscript material) are in the Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight. At Bembridge, James Dearden has welcomed me on my repeated visits and aided me immensely; at New Haven, Marjorie G. Wynne has ensured that my visits have been as much social pleasures as scholarly necessities. Research Grants and a Study Leave (1980-1) from the University of Victoria and a Leave Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (1980-1) have enabled me to complete this edition and pursue my enquiries abroad. For their assistance, I wish to thank Alan S. Bell, formerly of the National Library of Scotland, Glenise Matheson of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, and the staffs at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Columbia University Library, the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, and the Pierpont Morgan Library. At home, I am grateful to the staff of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, and to Emma Lowther for reading rather than merely typing the manuscript. I wish to thank the following for responding to my written enquiries: Herbert Cahoon ofthe Pierpont Morgan Library, Philip N. Cronenwett of the Baker Memorial Library at Dartmouth College, Ellen S. Dunlop of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, George Goodspeed of Goodspeed's Bookshop in Boston, Judith Nemethy of Cornell University Library, and Catherine Stover of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Mr George Goyder and

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Major-General Michael Lewis have also been most generous in providing information about items in their private collections and in granting me permission to publish these items. For permission to publish previously unpublished material in their collections, I am also indebted to the Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Bodleian Library, the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, the National Library of Scotland, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Princeton University Library, and the John Rylands University of Manchester. Permission to publish this material has also been granted by the Ruskin Trustees, George Allen & Unwin. In addition, I am grateful to the following for providing photographs: the Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight; the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal ; Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co; Galleria Sabauda; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; the Pierpont Morgan Library; and the National Portrait Gallery, London. This book has been published with the help of grants from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Publications Fund of the University of Toronto Press. I am indebted at points too numerous to specify to E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, the editors of Ruskin's Works (1903-12) , and to such recent editors of Ruskin's letters as John Lewis Bradley, Harold I. Shapiro, Mary Lutyens, and Virginia Surtees. I wish especially to thank Van Akin Burd, whose encouragement throughout has been most reassuring; John Unrau, whom I have come to value as a Ruskinian pen pal; and Jean Hagstrum, who has maintained an interest in my personal and professional well-being since my distant days as a graduate student. Finally, in a volume of family letters, it is particularly pleasing to thank my fellow-travellers, Cisca and Andrew.

ABBREVIATIONS

Works The Works ofJohn Ruskin, ed E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London 1903-12). Cat 'Catalogue of Ruskin's Drawings' (in Works, xxxvm, 215-3o6) Bod Typed transcripts of manuscripts prepared for Works but not included: in Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Englett c 32-52 Yale John Ruskin, Autograph Letters to his Father, etc. 6 vols: in Heinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Bern The Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight JJR John James Ruskin. Unless otherwise noted, references are to his letters to John Ruskin (Bern L4). Diaries The Diaries ofJohn Ruskin, ed Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse, 3 vols (Oxford 1956-9) Family Letters The Ruskin Family Letters The Correspondence of John James Ruskin, His Wife, and Their Son, John, 1801-1843, ed Van Akin Burd, 2 vols (Ithaca, New York 1973) Murray's Switzerland John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont (London 1858)

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Murray's Northern Italy John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, part 1 (London 1856) Wilton Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of].M.W. Turner (London 1979)

INTRODUCTION

During the winter and early spring of 1857-8 Ruskin was hard at work on the Turner drawings in the National Bequest- 'every day, all day long, and often far into the night,' as he was to record in the' Preface' to Modern Painters v (186o) (Works, v11, 5). 'I have never in my life felt so much exhausted,' he remarked further, 'as when I locked the last box, and gave the keys to Mr. Wornum, in May, 1858.' Nor was this attempt to arrange and preserve 'upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper' Ruskin's only undertaking during this period. There were as well the Notes on the Royal Academy, his classes at the Working Men's College, and three lectures. The continental tour on which he set out in the middle of May, 1858, was therefore intended to provide relaxation and a regaining of strength. Granted this, Ruskin felt justified in delaying work on the final volume of Modern Painters, even though he knew how eager his father was that he should complete the work. And John James Ruskin, his father, also urged this concern with health, declaring near the close of the tour that he and his wife 'only want you to come as soon as agreeable very leisurely not to lose an Ounce of flesh & not in Equinoctials' (20 August). Despite this inclination for rest, Ruskin's tour was affected by various interests and intentions. There was, first of all, his concern with 'Turnerian Topography,' a term he used to refer to the imaginative, rather than factual, depiction of a scene. He had been much impressed by Turner's 'magnificent series' of 'later coloured sketches' in the National Bequest, and consequently, as he explained in Modern Painters v, 'I thought I might rest myself by hunting down these Turner subjects, and sketching what I could of them, in order to

xiv illustrate his compositions' (Works, v11, 5). In addition, Ruskin was studying Swiss history at this time. In 1854, he had hit on the idea of engraving a series of his own drawings of historic Swiss towns, and he had initially decided to concentrate on Geneva, Fribourg, Basie, Thun, Baden, and Scaffhausen (Works, xxxv, 483). Subsequently, he dropped Geneva (since it was 'too much spoiled to be worth notice'),' and he added Lucerne, Sion, Bellinzona, and Rheinfelden. This project inevitably became entangled with the attempt to 'illustrate' Turner, and it was pursued in a rather wayward manner. But it provided a diversion from the task of completing Modern Painters, and it produced some exceptionally fine drawings. In 1858, Ruskin was especially concerned with Rheinfelden and Bellinzona, but as he remarked to Charles Eliot Norton he also 'examined with a view to history Habsburg, Zug, Morgarten, Griitli, Altdorf, Biirglen, and Bellinzona' (Works, xxxv1, 293) . Finally, this on-the-site study of Swiss history merged with an interest in the relationship between national character and art. In his 'Cambridge Inaugural Address,' delivered on 29 October 1858, he remarked that he had taken up 'the subject of the ultimate effects of Art on national mind' before his 1858 tour, and the 'chief fields of Swiss history' proved to be a fitting, if disturbing, setting for further reflection (Works, xvi, 190) . In particular, he was forced there to a 'provoking' recognition about the apparent incompatibility of moral worth and artistic merit. Such various investigations resulted in an uncertain itinerary, and Ruskin 's letters display frequent changes in his plans. At first, though, his progress was closely organized. He crossed from Dover to Calais on 13 May, his father recording in a letter two days later: 'I followed your Boat into a Speck.' The next day he adopted the different modes of travel that characterize the tour, since he went by carriage to Boulogne in order to take the train to Paris. From there he went again by train to Bar-le-Due where he was delighted by the town's natural beauty. After passing his Sunday there, he journeyed to Basie on 17 May, where he was joined by Joseph Marie Couttet, the guide from Chamonix. The following day he took 'a carriage drive of two hours' to Rheinfelden, where he settled for a week ( 19-27 May) . Here he experienced the delight of recognition as he related different perspectives to Turner's depictions, and he set about the drawings that were to be the most successful of the tour. Two of these were subsequently engraved for Modern Painters v: The BridgeofRheinfelden (plate 83),

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and Peace (plate 84), a depiction of the moat by the town wall, designed 'to show the kind of scene which modern ambition and folly are destroying, throughout Switzerland' (Works, v11, 437). Ruskin was to remark in Praeterita (1885-9) that his father was 'well pleased' with these engravings (Works, xxxv, 485), and of a panorama of the town - reproduced here as plate 2 - he noted on the drawing itself: 'I never did nor shall do better.' From Rheinfelden, Ruskin journeyed on 27 May to Laufenburg, where he stayed just long enough to dine and make a sketch, before moving on to Brugg. Here he sketched the castle of Habsburg on the following day, passed the night in Bremgarten, and then settled until 3 June at Zug where he was much impressed by the view of Mont Pilatus. Subsequently he stayed on the shores of Lake Lucerne for about a week (3-11 June), finding that the region was both 'a complete centre for the history of Europe in politics and religion' and a basis for the further study of Turnerian topography. Despite this, he felt frustrated by being unable to speak German, and he even concluded that the lake itself was 'an entire humbug and failure of a lake' (letter 27). Consequently, he was soon ready to set out for Bellinzona, and he decided immediately on arrival there on 12 June that it would serve as his summer 'headquarters.· Earlier, in 1845, Ruskin had written to his father: 'Neither you nor I need trouble ourselves hereafter about Bellinzona or the head of the lago Maggiore. It is ugly and unhealthy - Bellinzona fine in form, but Turner's single sketch [is] worth the whole valley with all the towns in it.' 2 But by 1858 his attitude was quite different. In Catalogue of the Turner Sketches in the National Gallery ( 1857). he declared: 'The town of Bellinzona is, on the whole, the most picturesque in Switzerland, being crowned by three fortresses, standing on isolated rocks of noble form, while the buildings are full of beautiful Italian character' ( Works, xm, 207). While in Bellinzona he seems only slightly concerned with either Turner or the town's historical significance. It is the natural beauty of the setting that chiefly claims his attention. As John James remarked in a letter to Jane Simon: 'John seems to have arrived in the happy Valley for his letters are delightful'(Bem ms u2). Ruskin stayed there from 12 June to 8 July with a single brief excursion to Locarno. Only a discontent with his drawings marred his stay at Bellinzona, but his repeated statement of this sense of failure sounds ominously throughout his letters. According to a letter to the painter John

xvi Lewis written at Turin later in the tour (see Appendix, pp 185-7), he had attempted at Bellinzona to produce 'a drawing in complete light & shade' and had abandoned the attempt on realizing the number of years he would take to complete it. The reference may be to the 'furious' attempt noted in Praeterita - 'to draw the entire town, three fortresses, and surrounding mountains of Bellinzona' (Works, xxv, 494). Or, more likely, itistothedrawingknownas Cure'sGarden at Bellinzona (plate 5), since it was this drawing that left Ruskin feeling 'entirely .. . beaten' (letter 57). He decided, at any rate, that he had failed to incorporate in his drawings both detail and scope. One possible consolation was a return to isolated detail - as in the attempt recorded in Praeterita to 'draw every stone of the roof right in one tower of the vineyards.' Another strategy was the use of watercolour and pen outline that he had recently studied in Turner's drawings. By this technique it was possible to isolate detail within an encompassing wash, and there is an effective use of the technique in the panorama of Bellinzona (plate 4) . For Ruskin, however, the uncertain movement among different techniques amounted to a downright 'catastrophe.' To his father, he declared: ' I have tried and failed' (letter 52). For relief, Ruskin turned to Turin. On his way, he contemplated the decaying splendour of the Borromean islands (7-10 July), the developing industry around Baveno (11-13 July), and the transformation of Arona in Turner's depiction. Then, on 15 July, he arrived at Turin. Soon, he was reporting on the pleasures of city life: the comfort of a superior hotel; the easy access to paintings in the Gallery, where he copied details of Veronese's Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; and the allure offeminine fashions, saunters in the park, military bands, and casual evenings at the comic opera. In this setting, Ruskin seems to have enjoyed characterizing himself as a sentimental traveller. At home, he reflects, his life brings 'no strong feeling of any kind, ' but abroad he experiences 'a sensation every now and then - and knowledge always' (letter 68). His relationship with an actress in the opera displays this inclination for sensation and sentiment especially well. Near the conclusion of his stay in the city, he discovered that she supported her mother and father and a brother on her 'small pittance,' and he gave her four napoleons (by his own later estimate, the equivalent of £5) (Works , xxxv, 498). 'She thanked me simply & quietly,' he reported, 'with real

xvii tears in her eyes, if ever a girl had' (letter 110) . The idiom is exactly that of Laurence Sterne- and later developments would fit well into Sterne's fiction as well. For Ruskin was to discover that the actress was more tenacious than he had anticipated. In an undated letter, he later reports: 'I made acquaintance with a poor little lady of the opera at Turin. Hearing the world was going hard with her I had sent her a little present - the result of which is - I've got two begging letters from her since-which I should be delighted to answer, but they're so ill spelt I can't read them.'3 Even John James had entered earlier into the spirit of gallantry. In responding to his son's account, he had written 'the 1/8d Hall & Danseuse as Pepys would have at once admitted - mi9hty pleasant' (27 August) . But he might well have thought the expenditure excessive if he had read in Praeterita his son's boast that he spent 'about a hundred pounds at Turin in grapes, partridges, and the opera' (Works, xxxv, 497) . Ruskin stayed almost seven weeks at Turin (15 July-31 August), rather than the single week he had originally contemplated, and he justified this prolonged sojourn by appealing to the numerous studies of details in Veronese's Solomon and the Queen of Sheba that he was making. After his sense of failure at Bellinzona, he was apparently elated by this different mode of painting. 'I see my forte is in copying and criticizing,· he wrote (letteq8). And, again: 'I have entirely won the game now with my painting so far as copying goes' (letter 86) . Oddly enough, Ruskin seems to have returned with little to show for his labour, despite his writing of six or seven separate studies in his letters. In describing one study (plate 8, or a related study), he remarked in Praeterita : 'It wasn't the Queen herself, ... but only one of her maids of honour, on whose gold brocaded dress, (relieved by a black's head, who carried two red and green parrots on a salver,) I worked till I could do no more; - to my father's extreme amazement and disgust, when I brought the petticoat, parrots, and blackamoor, home, as the best fruit of my summer at the Court of Sardinia' (Works, xxxv, 497) . The father's disappointment is certainly understandable, but the experience of producing the copy was immensely important. It provided Ruskin with an alternative to sauntering in the streets of Turin and forced him to forgo listlessness for disciplined effort. Perhaps he even achieved something akin to trance in his contemplation of the detail he attempted to copy. Certainly, the waspish account of Augustus Hare suggests this. 'He .. . looked at the flounce

xviii in the dress of a maid of honour of the Queen of Sheba for five minutes,' Hare wrote, 'and then he painted one thread: he looked for another five minutes, and then he painted another thread. At the rate at which he was working he might hope to paint the whole dress in ten years' (cited, Works, xvi, xi) . Admittedly, such an attempt to see the object as in itself it really is may result from anxiety-and it may provoke further anxiety as well. But essentially Ruskin's studious contemplation seems to have served as a form of therapy- a way of finding a still life that satisfied amid flux and uncertainty. Writing to Charles Eliot Norton the followingyear, Ruskin remarked that he had not made up his mind 'what to fight for' - and that he was uncertain 'whether people ought to dress well or ill; whether ladies ought to tie their hair in beautiful knots; ... whether Art is a Crime or only an Absurdity; whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied, or exterminated by arsenic, like rats .. .' (Works, xxxv1, 313). 'Meantime,' he continued, Tm copying Titian as well as I can, that being the only work I see my way to at all clearly, and if I can ever succeed in painting a bit of flesh, or a coil of hair, I'll begin thinking "what next".' Ruskin had made copies of paintings before 1858, but a sustained interest in the practice may be traced from the tour of that year. After his extended stay at Turin, Ruskin had two weeks in which to return home by his allotted date. He had time, therefore, to do some 'geologising' with Couttet while walking to Lanslebourg on the second day out of Turin, and he later made an excursion from Annecy to take up Turnerian topography at Rumilly. He then settled at St Gervais (6-10 September) in order to be with John and Jane Simon, and he took the opportunity to visit Chamonix during these days. Following this, he again made use of the railway. After a night in Geneva (10 September), where changes in the city seemed to him to have rendered it 'no longer habitable,' he journeyed to Paris on the following day. He passed the Sunday (12 September) in Paris, travelled the following day to Calais, and on the 14th was reunited with his parents. The letters Ruskin wrote on his tour provide much valuable biographical information. He intended that they should serve as his diary, and consequently his entries in his diary notebook during this period are largely limited to a list of place-names. Later he added: 'This is all the diary for 1858, it being full in my letters home. I don't know if I have kept these. '4

xix Ruskin's relationship with his father is especially well intimated by the correspondence. The postal service permitted more exchange of ideas than had been possible during earlier separations, since letters often passed between them in three or four days. As a result, father and son were able to discuss current affairs quite closely, and it becomes apparent that disagreement on political and social issues has not yet affected their relationship. On the contrary, they are at one in their attitudes towards such current concerns as the pollution of the Thames- a subject that even moved John James to write a letter to the press (see Appendix, p 195). The same agreement is evident when Ruskin laments the lack of voluntary co-operation among property owners in Switzerland. 'You & I think of Liberty in the same way,' John James assured his son (2July) . In this, he may well be recalling the declaration in a lecture delivered earlier in the year. 'You will find on fairly thinking of it, ' Ruskin had maintained, 'that it is his Restraint which is honourable to man, not his Liberty' (Works, xvi, 407).

Ruskin's closeness to his father shows itself in other ways as well. Before his departure, he had authorized his father to open his mail 'a privilege not always accorded to Fathers,' as John James remarked to Charles Eliot Norton with understandable pride.5 While on the tour, he wishes that his parents might settle at Basie or Lucerne so that they would be closer to him. He looks forward also to a tour with them in England after his return. The strength of John J ames's attachment is even more apparentand his attempts to be tactful and understanding can be downright touching. In his first letter, he declares: 'I was less sad at your going away this time because I felt it proper & necessary & a more thorough release & liberty for you' ( 15 May) . Subsequently he displayed patience during his son's extended absence, even counselling him not to hasten home. 'We do not understand why you so hurry for 15 Sept.,' he writes. 'We never received you with such Joy as please God we shall this time but we cannot bear one day press or hurry' (20 August). This attempt at patience was of course difficult to sustain. Two days later John James writes: ' I would say stop a few weeks longer in any favourite place abroad but I dare not for your having named 15 Sepr & excited a hope has made Mama too nervous to bear a disappointment greater than what might arise from your guarding against hurry for a day or two or three. I do not know exactly what is making Mama anxious & nervous - perhaps the uncertainty of Life at our years.' This quiet reference to age was undoubtedly intended to

xx strike home, for at the time ofwritingJohnJames was seventy-three and Margaret was seventy-six. It is understandable, then, that Ruskin should have occasionally found the emotion inherent in his father's address somewhat oppressive. At one point, for example, John James writes of the 'unspeakable pleasure' provided by his son's letters - 'a pleasure almost pathetic from the tenderness they breathe' (13July). At another, he consoles himself that 'this Diary Correspondence is worth almost a Separation else it could not have existed' ( 10 July). But to this latter rationalization, Ruskin responds rather coolly. 'The fact is,' he remarks, 'it is much easier and more natural to express one's feelings by letter than by word; and I have always noticed that we understand each other best and most deeply by writing' (letter 66) . Clearly the likelihood of misunderstanding in such a relationship was strong, but one must be careful not to read the correspondence in the light of dissensions that arose later. This would be to commit the error of which Ruskin himself may be guilty when later reflecting on his father's purchase of Turner's Rochester, Stroud and Chatham, Medway, Kent, during his absence. (See letters 33 and4oand plate6.) According to George Allen, Ruskin maintained that his father had purchased the painting in order to entice him home 'a fortnight earlier, '6 and there is admittedly some justification for this interpretation. When John James first reports the purchase (16 June) , he declares that the picture is 'so beautiful that I hope you will come home a week earlier than intended to see it.' But John James had by this time developed an independent interest in Turner - 'finding his Water Colours come out more & more on my Senses' (30 June). Moreover, mention of Rochester soon drops from the correspondence; it was not persistently used as bait. The source of subsequent disagreement between Ruskin and his father became more apparent the following year when John James interfered with his son's publishing an essay on politics. This essayhis letters on 'The Itali an Question' -drew directly on experiences of the 1858 tour, and Ruskin had planned to publish his opinions in The Witness, an Edinburgh journal edited by a family acquaintance, Peter Bayne. When John James heard of the project - through inadvertently opening a letter from Bayne to his son - he assured Bayne: ' It is better for him at present to Keep to the Fine Arts & avoid politics. '7 Bayne accordingly obliged by not publishing the pieces. Of the rift between himself and his father that developed from precisely such

xxi interference, Ruskin wrote many years later to Bayne: 'one of the chief causes of the sorrow and alienation of mind between us, in later days, was the indignation with which I saw him taking counsel with you, and one or two other very weak and narrow persons, respecting mywork.'8 The letters of 1858 are also of value in that they reveal Ruskin at what he later considered a significant turning-point in his life. He was, after all, in his fortieth year- a notable time even for those not inclined to introspection. In addition, he was to isolate two momentous experiences of the tour. First, there was his drawing of some orchises on a Sunday at Rheinfelden. In a note on these diary sketches, he remarked a decade later: 'This drawing of Orchises was the first I ever made on Sunday: and marks, henceforward, the beginning of total change in habits of mind' (Diaries, 11, 535). Secondly, there was his celebrated 'unconversion' on a Sunday at Turin. Later, he wrote of this in slightly differing ways. In Fors Clavigera no. 76 (April, 1877), he emphasized the drama of the experience. 'In 1858,' he wrote, 'it was with me, Protestantism or nothing: the crisis of the whole turn of my thoughts being one Sunday morning, at Turin' (Works, xx1x, 89). Feeling'quiteoverwhelmed' by the 'God-given power' evidenced in Veronese, he went to the Waldensian chapel. The preacher at this Protestant service was 'a little squeaking idiot,' the congregation was an 'audience of seventeen old women and three louts,' and Ruskin came away 'a conclusively un-converted man.' In Praeterita, the sequence of events is reversed. From the chapel Ruskin walks to the gallery 'where Paul Veronese's Solomon and the Queen of Sheba glowed in full afternoon light' ( Works, xxxv, 495) . Here, to the background accompaniment of military music, there was 'no sudden conversion .. . But, that day, my evangelical beliefs were put away, to be debated of no more.' Significantly, the letters do not suggest the importance of these experiences. The Sunday drawing is not mentioned, and the Sunday service is briefly described on the following Wednesday (4 August) with an accompanying hope that a visit to the Vaudois Protestants will reveal a finer state of faith. Perhaps Ruskin did not wish to alarm his parents by such breaks with his religious upbringing-or possibly the importance of the experiences became fully apparent to him only later. As it is, the 'Notes' on pictures in the Turin Gallery that Ruskin enclosed with some of his letters contain reflections that John James found sufficiently disturbing. It is in a 'Note,' for example, rather

xxii than in a letter, that Ruskin writes more probingly of his Sunday experience in Turin. Is it possible, he asks, to consider Paul Veronese 'a servant of the devil' -and 'the poor little wretch in a tidy black tie .. . a servant of God?' ( Works, v11, xii). No doubt it is a reflection of his filial caution that Ruskin should present his notion in the form of a question, but the question is clearly rhetorical. In another part of the 'Note' he writes on the value to the artist of 'a good, stout, self-commanding, magnificent Animality.' To this John James pru• dently responds (4/5 August): 'I must enquire further for your Strange notes on Sensual Painters, as a source of deep thinking.' This apparent difference between a reticence in the letters and a forthrightness in the accompanying 'Notes' accentuates a divided attitude that is sometimes apparent from the letters alone. This division within Ruskin probably results in part from the difference between his mother and father, for Margaret Ruskin emerges from the correspondence as fiercely Protestant and unbending and John James as more generous and worldly. The strong background presence of Margaret Ruskin is quite dramatically rendered. She is rarely addressed directly, and Ruskin's dispatch of love to her at the ends of letters is sometimes rather brusquely reduced to the shorthand 'L.M.' - but she is nonetheless a persistent presence in the correspondence. She is reported as being 'in dire mood against poor Players' (27 August), when her husband donates £10 to a fund for 'decayed Actors,' but Ruskin wholly approved of his father's openly subscribing to the fund. Margaret Ruskin's own donation of £5 to a Protestant fund in Italy was in turn neatly balanced by Ruskin's gift to the Turin actress. The same division - with Ruskin's same tendency to the worldly - is reflected in the balance of his delight in the daily life of Turin against the occasional weekend pilgrimages to nearby Protestant regions. Or there is his analysis of the 'white' and 'black' ladies of Turin. The white ladies occasionally display a 'softly turned and softly expressive face,' but they seem usually lacking in feeling and passion and 'look as if they could no more, now, either poison anybody, or love them' (letter 111). The black ladies, on the other hand, have a strongly sensual appeal. Ruskin studied a darkened form of this 'slight shadow of the negress' in the detail he strategically isolated from Veronese's crowded canvas (plate 8). The same inclination for the passionate and the sensual is evident also in the final letter when Ruskin distinguishes between Italy and France. Italian women, Ruskin remarks, may be animals, but French women are dolls. French

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children are similarly stifled with artificiality, whereas Italian children display a natural vigour. He recalls that at Turin 'one of the finest things' he saw was 'a group of neglected children at play on a heap of sand-one girl of about ten, with her black hair over her eyes & half naked - bare-limbed to above the knees - and beautifully limbed - lying on the sand like a snake.· In Paris, such a girl would have been a contemptible creature with carefully plaited hair, a parasol, and pink boots. As John James remarked in another context, there is here 'a source of deep thinking.· Ruskin's own deep thinking during the winter following his tour was devoted to 'the deepest qualities of Venetian art' ( Works, VII, 9), and it is a further value of the letters that they illuminate the final volume of Modern Painters ( 186o). In particular, they prepare us for Ruskin's understanding that in Venice 'the painter saw that sensual passion in man was, not only a fact, but a Divine fact' (Works, VII, 296). This realization is an aspect of Ruskin's further shift from the 'purist' to the 'naturalist' ideal. Early '"Christian"' art, he was to suggest, had 'erred by pride in its denial of the animal nature of man' (Works, VII, 264); Venetian art, and Veronese and Titian especially, showed that sincere religious belief was compatible with a delight in things of this world. Ruskin did not attain this understanding easily; the letters written on his tour reveal this. His new attitude also had its saddening implications. As he was to remark in a letter of 12 July 186o, to Charles Norton: 'That depreciation of the purist and elevation of the material school is connected with much loss of happiness to me, and (as it seems to me) of innocence; nor less of hope. I don't say that this connection is essential, but at present it very distinctly exists' ( Works, xxxv1, 339). Man had indeed been created in 'the image of God,· but the title of the chapter in which Ruskin contemplates this truth in Modern Painters vis 'The Dark Mirror' (part 1x, chapter 1). The letters are not only of interest, however, for the light they throw on Ruskin's personality and critical beliefs; they constitute also a vigorous travel account. The places where Ruskin settled on his 1858 tour were not his usual 'centres,' and his accounts are therefore often unparalleled in his other letters or diaries. Turin, in particular, was a surprising place for him to sojourn in, since he had earlier ranked it with such unfavoured places as Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Moreover,

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his itinerary took him through regions that were undergoing changes as momentous as those he himself was experiencing. On occasion, too, Ruskin shows an awareness of such political and social change. He reflects astutely, for example, on the implications of industrial development (letter 60). A lonely onlooker who indicates only the briefest encounters with others in his travels, Ruskin is nonetheless alert to the living world around him. The holographs of the bulk of Ruskin's 1858 letters to his father are at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, bound within a volume made up in 1889. Some leaves of the correspondence with pen and ink drawings are not included in this volume. When Cook and Wedderburn were preparing the Library Edition of Ruskin's Works (1903-12), these leaves were at Brantwood. Subsequently six of the leaves were included in the Sotheby Sale entitled The final portion of the Manuscripts and Library ofjohn Ruskin (18 May 1931, lot 31), and they then passed to Goodspeed's Bookshop in Boston where they are listed as item 87 in A Catalo9ue of Paintin9s, Drawin9s, and Manuscripts by John Ruskin ... No 211. Regrettably it has not been possible to trace these leaves, and I have used the typed transcripts of them which are bound with the holographs at Yale. In the present edition, these leaves are letters 4, 5, 14, 17, 72, 82, and 94. One of the leaves is, however, reproduced in the Sotheby Sale Catalogue of 1931, and it is reproduced again here from that source (plate 3: letter 14). Several other letters (numbers 96, 100, and 121) came into the possession of Miss Blanche Atkinson, Ruskin's secretarial assistant after 1874, and these have since passed to the Ruskin Collection at Bembridge (ms 38). The latter part of letter 111 is now among the Viljoen papers at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Only one letter is missing, and this is a letter from Zug of 31 May which John James Ruskin never received - 'containing I believe,' Ruskin assured his father, 'nothing of much interest.' In addition to Ruskin's birthday letter to his mother (letter 112: Bern ms 26), there was a letter to her written from La Tour between 20 and 22 August which has not been traced. About one-third of the material has been published previously in Ruskin's Works (1903-12), often in the form of brief extracts from complete letters. The holographs of thirty-six of John James Ruskin's letters are in the Ruskin Collection at Bembridge. John James's summaries of his letters in his diary (Bern ms 33) and Ruskin's references to his father's

XXV

letters suggest that this is about half the number written. Fortunately, the diary summaries sometimes make possible the elucidation of brief allusions in Ruskin's letters when John James's part of the correspondence has been lost. I have quoted generously from John J ames's letters in notes, mainly for the purpose of elucidation but also to indicate the relationship of father and son. Apart from an almost daily letter to his father , Ruskin wrote so few other letters during his tour that it has seemed advisable to include most of those hitherto unpublished in an Appendix. In several of these letters, Ruskin is much concerned with his own drawings. In a letter to John F. Lewis, he is extremely self-critical. (Part of this letter, in the collection of Major-General Michael Lewis, has been published in his John F. Lewis R.A . 1805-76 [Leigh-on-Sea 1978], pp 30-1.) A later and more generous assessment of a drawing made at Bellinzona is given in a letter to Reverend Daniel Moore, written when Ruskin presented the drawing to him in 1866. (Both the letter to Moore and the drawing are in the collection of Mr George Goyder.) A number of other letters fall within the category 'Advice to Women. ' Of these, the letter to an aspiring novelist and noblewoman, the Comtesse Maria Montemerli, is the most deliberate. In his letters to his father, Ruskin was severe about her, but his letter to her (published here from a copy in the Yale University collection) is an adroit mixture of flattery, hesitant approbation, and veiled criticism. The mixture was apparently to the Comtesse's taste. 'I have not told you,' John James wrote on 19 August, 'of a forenoon call made by Count & Countess Montemerli on Mama - to thank you for your very Kind Letter & advice. The Count had an appointment & went directly kissing Mama 's hand. The Countess remained to Lunch.' Two other women Ruskin corresponded with- Mrs Blackburn and Mrs Hewitt-were painters. Mrs Hewitt was a recent acquaintance, with whom he was rather uncertainly establishing an understanding. In an unpublished letter postmarked 17 March 1858, he displays a characteristically didactic attitude. 'I have often hurt my friends by too rough or awkward play in words with them,' he acknowledges. ' I don't want to argue you into anything. I want to show you something . ... There is no contempt whatever in my desire to be of service to you. '9 A couple of years later, he was apparently still searching for a proper mode of address. 'I'm not quite sure if you'll do,yet,' he remarks. 'You are a little bit too clever-too tender-too

xxvi hurtable. I want somebody to knock my head-or heart- againstwhom I can't hurt. ' 10 The relationship persisted, despite such doubts, and there are now ninety-nine letters of Ruskin to Mrs Hewitt at the Pierpont Morgan Library.1 1 Ruskin's relationship with Mrs Jemima Blackburn (1829-1909), the wife of Hugh Blackburn, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow, was more firmly established. Indeed, in 1853, Ruskin's wife had described her as' a great friend of]ohn's and the best Artist he knows. ' 12 Two years later Mrs Blackburn published Twenty Photo9raphs; bein9 illustrations of Scripture. By an Animal Painter ... , and Ruskin reviewed this work in Mornin9 Chronicle, 20 January, 1855. The review suggests that he was equally impressed by her ability to arouse 'the most solemn trains of thought' and her 'painful deficiency in ... drawing' ( Works, xxx1v, 484). In the letter of 12 July included here (Bern L25), he neatly side-steps criticism of her work and engages in offhand criticism of other artists. Perhaps Ruskin's most assured relationship at this time was that with Mr and Mrs Simon. He had first met them in 1854, and they later met again at Chamonix in 1856. In the interval, Simon had become Medical Officer of the General Board of Health, and he was subsequently much concerned with the pollution of the Thames by sewage. John James also took up this issue, as his letters in the Appendix indicate. (The letter of 29 June is taken from a typed transcript at Oxford: Bod c 34, pp94-5.) Ruskin's letters to the Simons deal with private feelings, rather than with public issues, and in them he admits to a listlessness and irresolution that he largely concealed from his father and mother. The letters of 20 June and 3 August are taken from the transcripts of Ruskin's letters (Bod c 34, pp 78-80, 82). The holograph of the letter of 14 July is at Princeton University (AM 13161). A seasoned traveller, Ruskin was not averse to providing guidance for others, and also included here is one of his letters to Henry Watson, his father's clerk, in which he outlines a tour in Switzerland. (Holograph: The John Rylands University Library of Manchester, ms 1254, no 93.) In preparing the text for publication, I have retained Ruskin's most common form of punctuation - the dash - except at the end of sentences where a full stop has been supplied. Foreign accents, apostrophes, quotation marks, and question marks have been added

xxvii where appropriate. Ruskin's inconsistent forms of contraction (eg 'could'nt') have been regularized, as have his various forms of 'today,' 'tomorrow,' and 'o'clock.' However, Ruskin's capitalization and all other features of his punctuation and spelling have been retained. All additions I have made to the text, notably in letterheads, are enclosed within square brackets. Angle brackets indicate Ruskin's significant cancellations. John James Ruskin's occasional notation of the dates when he received and answered letters is presented in notes. In adopting these practices, I have been influenced by Harold I. Shapiro's Ruskin in Italy. Letters to his Parents 1845 (Oxford 1972), an edition that is both eminently readable and painstaking. I Letter to Lady Trevelyan. 'Dover 26th September 1856,' Reflections of a Friendship, ed Virginia Surtees (London 1979). p 114. 2 Ruskin in Italy. Letters to his Parents 1845, ed Harold I. Shapiro (Oxford 1972), p 178. 3 Letter to Mrs Hewitt (The Pierpont Morgan Library. MAI940 v 11 8, no 93). 4 Bern ms 11, p 72. 5 Letter of 31 May 1858, in The Letters ofjohn Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton (Cambridge, Mass. 1904). 1, 62. 6 'Ruskin and his Books,' Strand Ma9azine xx1v (December 1902) , 714: cited in Works, xm, Iii. 7 Unpublished letter, 'Dresden 24June 1859' (The john Rylands University Library of Manchester, ms 1245, no 3) . Ruskin wrote letters on the Italian issue on 6 and 15 June and I August. The first two letters appeared in The Scotsman (20 and 23July). Ruskin later wrote to Mr and Mrs Browning ('11th December (1859)'): 'The third was declared by the able editor unprintable' ( Works, XXXVI, JJI).

8 Unpublished letter, ' Brantwood ... 31st Oct. 77' (holograph as in note 7 above, no 35). 9 The Pierpont Morgan Library : MA 1940 v 11 8, no 6. JO Ibid, unnumbered: postmarked, JO February 186o. 11 Mrs Hewitt's identity is obscure. In letter 118, Ruskin remarks: 'Mrs Hewitt was Miss Peel. • and it seems likely that she painted under her unmarried name. A Miss Florence Peel exhibited at the British Institution in 1858 (see Algernon Graves, The British Institution 18o6-1867 [reprint 1969], p 422, where Miss Peel's address is given as 16, Pelham Place, the address to which some of Ruskin's letters are addressed) . Miss Florence Peel also exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857, 1858, and 1859 (see Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts [London 1900], v, 95, where an address in Cork, Ireland, is given, to which some of Ruskin's letters are also addressed) . 12 Millais and the Ruskins, ed Mary Lutyens (London 1967). p 113.

1]ohn]ames Ruskin , photograph, probably 1863 The Ruskin Galleries, Bern bridge School. Isle of Wight

2 Rheinfelden: panorama of town, 1858, by John Ruskin pen and wash on blue, grey paper inscribed: 'Rheinfelden 1858. I never did nor shall do better. I think its violet carmine has faded. J Ruskin Brantwood 1879.' 140 x 495 mm/ 5½ x 19½ inches The Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight

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3 Facsimile ofletter 14 (27 May 1858) •withdrawing ofSackingen

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4 Bellinzona, 1858, by John Ruskin pencil, heightened with watercolour and bodycolour 313 x 513 mm/ 12½ x 2o¼ inches Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal

5 (opposite) Cure's Garden at Bellinzona, 1858, by John Ruskin pencil, heightened with watercolour and bodycolour 527 x 356 mm/ 20¾ x 14 inches Collection of George Goyder, u .K.

6 (above) Rochester, Stroud and Chatham, Medway, Kent, 1836-7 engraving after J.M. W. Turner for Picturesque Views in En9Iand and Wales ( 1838) watercolour destroyed by fire Trustees of the British Museum

7 Paolo Veronese ( 1528-88), Solomon and the Queen of Sheba Sabauda Gallery, Turin

8 Detail from Veronese's 'Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,' 1858,

by John Ruskin watercolour 570 x 447 mm/ 221 x 17½ inches Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

9 Detail from Veronese's 'Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,' 1858, by John Ruskin pencil, bodycolour, and opaque white 376 x 276 mm/ 14ij x IO! inches The Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge School, Isle of Wight

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