[V]
RUSKIN'S "CASHBOOK"
V
RUSKIN'S "CASHBOOK"
So it is lettered on the back; but his titles, as every one knows, are far-fetched. There are some accounts in this volume, but most of it is filled with a diary of the tour abroad in 1882, and subsequent entries, very neatly written; the red lines for £ s. d. serving to keep the manuscript within margins, just like print.
Ruskin's journals, I understand, are not to be published. The bulk of their contents—landscape descriptions and various notes on natural history, architecture, and many different subjects—have been worked into his books. The remainder consists of daily jottings about the weather, always important to one whose chief pleasure was in scenery, with fragmentary hints of his occupations or travels, and still more fragmentary mention of persons. They are not exactly memoranda; still less the memoirs of a literary man, written with one eye on the public. They are mere soliloquies of the moment, gossip of himself to himself before breakfast.
While he lived, though I had often occasion to refer to these journals, I never felt quite at liberty to open this "Cashbook," with its private notes on a period when I was practically alone with him; his valet, Baxter, was also of the party, but at meals and at work, on walks and drives, he had usually to put up with my company. He was exceedingly and unfailingly kind, but exacting; it would have needed great self-confidence to be sure of his good opinion. But now that these papers require it, to paint his portrait as he was at that time, I have taken advantage of Mrs. Severn's kind leave; and in continuing the story of the tour I can sometimes add to my reminiscences Ruskin's impressions on the spot as recorded by himself.
From Geneva we went up to Sallenches (September 9, 1882), hoping to see the Alps, in spite of the smoke-cloud. He was at the moment thinking and talking chiefly of "artistic geology," if one may coin a parallel to "artistic anatomy"—the old subject of his "Modern Painters," vol. iv. In the chapter on the Old Road I said healthily interested, for any work on Nature was good for him personally, and this tour was for the sake of health after long and recurrent attacks of illness.
In those days, and to the few who cared much more for himself than his mission, St. George and St. Benedict were the enemies; his Guild and all the worries connected with it, and his ethico-socio-political meditations, mixed with much wandering into Greek and mediæval mythology, always meant mischief to him. So after the visit to Cîteaux and the birthplace of St. Bernard, it was good to see him eager for the mountains, and looking out for well-known twists in the limestone strata, and clefts and cascades, points of view and distant glimpses, all the way up the valley. If only the smoke-cloud would lift, and a spell of fair weather would tempt him to linger among the Alps, hammering rocks and sketching cottages, the object of the journey would be gained.