THE HEAD OF THE LAKE OF ANNECY
Sketched with Ruskin at Talloires, September 1882
Letters, however, were expected at Geneva, and with many plans for Sixt and Chamouni he turned his back on Sallenches for the time and had a "marvellous drive through the valley of Cluse; C—— sectionising (making notes of limestone strata) all the way. Divine walk to old spring under Brezon." Then he reproves himself for his annoyance at the "plague-wind" and tiresome letters at Geneva, "for I shall try to remember the Aiguille de Bionassay of the 13th at evening and the Nant d'Arpenaz looked back at yesterday morning—with my morning walk once more among the dew above Sallenches—for ever and a day."
Without keeping constantly before one's mind his passionate love of scenery it is impossible to put a right estimate on much that he has written. There are comparatively few people whose chief pleasure is in taking a walk and looking at the country, without any notion of sport or games to eke out the interest. It is true that he sketched and wrote, but his pleasure was in seeing. It was his admiration of Nature that had brought him to admire Art in his youth, and I think it is not too much to say that Art was always a secondary thing to him personally. The desire to see Art healthily and nobly practised made him study the life of the craftsman and the craftsman's surroundings, spiritual and material. The material needs of Victorian society pressed upon him "Unto this Last" and "St. George"; the spiritual needs drove him back upon ancient religious ideals, "The Queen of the Air" and "St. Benedict." All these various strands of thought were closely woven together in his life, but from the beginning to the end the love for natural scenery was the core of the cable. You gather already from this "Cashbook" that a few days among the Alps had quite restored him to physical strength, and given him hopes and happiness.
On Saturday, September 16, we left Geneva for Annecy, intending more limestone geology, and thenceforward had many days' driving with the "Mephistopheles coachman and the Black Dog," as he put it at first. Later on he became enthusiastic over the same coachman for his capital driving and care of his horses, and because of the story of the dog Tom, whom, the man said, he had rescued from death at the hands of an American owner at Nice. Tom, with his spiked fur collar, was usually absent at the start. The driver said he was shut up so that he might not annoy Messieurs; but he always appeared, was scolded, and forgiven, and petted for the rest of the way. Affection for animals appealed to Ruskin, and in France one sees much of it. On one of these drives we stopped for lunch out of doors before a wayside inn. To this lunch there came a little dog, two cats, and a pet sheep, and shared our wine, bread, and Savoy sponge-cakes. The sheep at last got to putting its feet on the table, and the landlady rushed out and carried him off in her arms into the house; but Ruskin, I think, would quite as soon have let the creature stay. At Annecy the landlord told me stories of his big St. Bernard dog, how he was defended from other dogs by the cat, and how sometimes they quarrelled, and then the dog had to go and sit on the mat out of doors until the cat had forgiven him; how the cat also was in the habit of catching swallows on the wing, and bringing them in to show—as, certainly, cats do with the mice they catch—and then she would let them go uninjured. This delighted Ruskin at dinner, and may have suggested the dream which I see he records in his "Cashbook"—"dreamt of a fine old lion who was quite good if he wasn't kept prisoner; but when I had got him out, I didn't know what to do with him." The parting with Tom and his master I have mentioned elsewhere—how he gave the man twenty francs for a bonne main and two francs over for a bonne patte, he said, to the dog!