IV
RUSKIN'S OLD ROAD
In the Life of Ruskin three pages are given to his tour abroad in 1882, a journey of importance to him, because at a critical moment it gave him a new lease of life, and of unusual interest to his biographer, who accompanied him as secretary, which is to say "man-jack-of-all-trades." In such companionship much personality comes out; and the gossip of this period, at greater length than the proportions of a biography allowed, may help to fill in some of the details of his portrait.
Very much broken down in health, despairing of himself and his mission, he left London on Thursday, August 10, 1882. Calais Tower roused none of the old enthusiasm; he said rather bitterly, "I wonder how I came to write about it." But even in his depression the habit of work made him sketch once more the tracery of the Hôtel de Ville. He found out the trick of its geometrical pattern, and explained it, delighted. Then the old chef at the Hôtel Dessein was still in the flesh, and remembered former visits and sent up a capital dinner; so the first day on foreign soil augured hopefully.
On the Saturday he woke up to sunshine at Laon, and took me round the town, setting me to work on various points. He began a drawing of the cathedral front, which he finished on the Monday before leaving. It was always rather wonderful how he would make use of every moment, even when ill-health and the fatigue of travelling might seem a good reason for idling. At once on arriving anywhere he was ready to sketch, and up to the minute of departure he went on with his drawing unperturbed. In the afternoons he usually dropped the harder work of the morning, and went for a ramble out into the country; at Laon the hayfields and pear orchards south of the town gave him, it seemed, just as much pleasure as Chamouni.
Reims bored him; the cathedral he called confectioner's Gothic, and he could not get rid of the idea of champagne and all the vanities and vulgarities which hang on to the very word. There was an ugly prison, too, put up next the cathedral; and even St. Remi did not make amends. So he hastened on to Troyes, spending a few hours between trains at Châlons, where we "did" the town in the regular tourist fashion, finding, however, beautiful features of early Gothic at Nôtre Dame and the Madeleine.
At Troyes he spent the 17th, sketching hard at St. Urbain and the cathedral, and next morning reached Sens, a place loved of old for associations with parents and friends, and not less for its little gutter-brooks in the streets, which he pointed out with a sort of boyish glee. The afternoon walk in the valley of the Yonne and up the chalk hills brought much talk of the geology of flints and the especial charm of coteau scenery, which he said had never been cared for until Turner saw it and glorified this comparatively humble aspect of mountains in the "Rivers of France." He set me to draw the defaced statues on the porch of the cathedral, the "finest north of Alps" he declared; but we were getting on rather too fast, and he began to feel the reaction of fatigue. The weather was sultry, and on the 19th our journey to Avallon was followed by distant thunder-storms.
At Avallon he stayed till the end of the month. The place was new to him, but I think he was attracted to it by one of those obscure associations which so often ran in his mind—it must be interesting because it was named Avallon—Avalon he called it always, dominated by the idea of the island-valley of repose where King Arthur found the immortality of fairyland. The first morning's work at the early church of St. Ladre, and the first afternoon's walk down the valley of the Cousin, with brilliant ling in blossom among bold red granite rocks, fully justified his choice. The town, on its Durham-like hill, swept round by the deep river-course, and unspoilt by modernisms, and the wooded, flowery, rocky neighbourhood, full of all that is most charming in French scenery—there are Roman remains, too, but of these he took less note—and the curious details of the twelfth-century church all attracted him mightily. The only drawback was the weather, which broke down with the thunder and gave us cold east winds and dark haze, in which sketching was a penance. This told upon him at once; he even dined alone, wearied out of evenings, and still trying to fix his mind on the writing work he always took with him—in this instance the new edition of "Sesame and Lilies" and the "Bible of Amiens." He burned the candle at both ends; out early to draw elusive detail of battered sculptures, walking far in the afternoon, and writing hard at night, impatient of remonstrance even from those who were much better qualified to order him about than a secretary.
To meet him here came Mr. Frank Randal, who was employed on drawings for "St. George's Work," and making bright, sunny sketches in which the neatest of outline was reconciled with the freshest of colouring. Also came his friend, Mr. Maundrell, to whom I take this chance of offering an apology which makes me blush to record. Among Ruskin's drawings was one, much in his Proutesque style, of a chapel at Rue, near Abbeville. It had been passed as his, when Mrs. Severn went through the portfolios with him, noting the subjects on the back of the mounts; and—with some hesitation, I confess, and neglect of the good rule "When in doubt, don't"—it was shown at both Ruskin Exhibitions as a work by the master, and greatly admired. Too late for correction, it was found to be Mr. Maundrell's. Others have nearly caught Ruskin's style at times—"Bunney's, not mine," he has written on sketches by an assistant, for this very reason; but for all the more important drawings there is a good pedigree, and most of the smaller bits which have been shown or published have come from his sketch-books.
One good excursion from Avallon was to the church of Vézelay, the twelfth-century place elaborately restored by Viollet-le-Duc, and interesting for the meeting of Richard Cœur-de-Lion with the other leaders of the Crusade famous in "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman." To Ruskin any restoration meant ruin; but as he went round the aisles, disdainful at first but gradually warming to the intelligence and skill of the great modern architect, he confessed that if restoration might be done at all it could not be better done. What pleased him much more was a hunt, on the way back, for the exact spot where the Avallon granite joined the limestone; he found the two rocks side by side in a hummock near the road, and was triumphant.
Montréal was another place of pilgrimage, and there the church with quaint wood-carvings and the picturesque village gave him a happy day. In his diary (on which see the next chapter) he scolded himself, after this excursion, for forgetting the good times; of a walk in the rain to the little oratory of St. Jean des Bons Hommes he said: "I ought to vignette it for a title to my books!" and of the Avallon neighbourhood he notes: "Altogether lovely, and like Dovedale and the Meuse and the glens of Fribourg in all that each has of best, and like Chamouni in granite cleavage, and like—itself, in sweet French looks and ways.... The miraculous fairy valley ... one of the sweetest ever made by heaven. The Cyclopean walls, of blocks seven and eight feet long, and three feet thick—the largest—all averaging two and a half (feet) cube, at a guess, laid with their smooth cleavages to the outside, fitted like mosaic—the chinks filled with smaller stones, altogether peculiar to this district of cleaving, and little twisting, granite." It was not only the scenery that he cared for, but the evidences of happy pastoral life, adapting Nature's gifts to human needs. But when, off the kindly granite and on the cold, grey limestone country, we passed a forlorn homestead, ruinous and dirty, he shrank back in the carriage, as if some one had thrown a stone at him.