Christmas, 1859.
To Miss Baumgartner.
On Friday I was shown into Ruskin’s study. One window had the shutters shut; the table was covered with books and papers; the fire burned brightly; at one window Ruskin sat drawing from a Turner, all squared over that it might be reduced. With his own exquisite elegance and ease, which enables him to do the oddest things in a way that one can’t feel rude, instead of rising, he threw himself back in his chair and shook hands with me, as I stood behind; then he rose and giving me his chair walked to the fire—and then, Emma, he produced the loveliest drawings of boughs of oak to show me, one beautifully foreshortened, and explained the growth of it to me; how every leaf sends down a little rib that thickens the stems—how the leaves grow in spirals of five. He got a bit, and showed me the section. They were lovely. Then he told me that he wanted me to do an example of good work for “Modern Painters,” one he had meant to do himself but for which he will not now have time—a bit of the fir boughs in Turner’s “Crossing the Brook,” now at South Kensington.
I told him about you, about my visit, about your work among the men—how lovely I thought it, and how fresh. He was very much pleased, and told me about the daughter of a friend of his, who does much the same—to whom it seems he has sent several of my drawings for her men to use.
We got at last upon the subject of the education of working women; and he asked much about it, seemed greatly interested. I told him many anecdotes, and something of what I said in my article on the subject. He was much interested about the question of fiction. He hopes to publish the fifth volume in the spring. I was with him an hour and a quarter. When I came away he said, “We’d quite a nice chat”; he “wasn’t so horridly busy as usual.”
January 8th, 1860.
To Miss Baumgartner.
In a description of a gathering at the Working Men’s College she says: “I was much interested in an earnest young countryman of the name of Cooke, who had presented a collection of butterflies and moths, etc., to the College. As every scrap of natural history is eagerly learnt by me, to be repeated wherever I go, and lovingly remembered, I got him to tell me some of their names and habits....
“I was delighted to hear Mr. Dickinson (whose portrait of Mr. Maurice you may remember) praising Mr. Ward’s drawings.... It was very nice to see old faces back again and to feel as if I never should have done shaking hands ... its joy consisted so much in the momentary grasp of a hand, in the sudden sight of a face which owed all its preciousness to the thought of natures I had learnt to know in sad moments or hard-working days.... Does it not seem to you one of the main things we long for in heaven that every strong affection for visible things will have some answer?... I often feel so sure that the love of places, employments, books, as well as people, is not to perish, but to be justified.”
RUSKIN AND MR. BUNNEY