By John Ruskin (about 1850)
The model upon which Ruskin's usual handwriting was at last formed was his mother's. It is perhaps a commonplace to say that we all betray in our writing the greatest personal influence of our earlier years. While penning this very page, a letter has just been brought to me which at first glance put me in mind of a friend long since dead: it is from his school-master. Not Ruskin's father nor any of his teachers appear to have influenced him like his mother. Her more deliberate writing was extremely elegant; rather small, moderately sloping, with a pretty combination of curve and angle, and capitals carefully formed. In the note-book in which he composed verses from 1831 to 1838 you can see the development of his hand from a spiky and cramped boyish scribble to the more open and slightly more upright style of 1835 and 1836, the year of his matriculation at Oxford; a neat and educated penmanship, easy to read and regular, though differing slightly from day to day in size and slope. The backward switch of his y and forward toss of the tail to his angular t are already there; and the dainty shaping of capitals, based on Italic or Elzevir print, like his mother's, with suggestion of the sérif in a little elegant curl to H and F. Instead of spasmodic reform, as earlier, there is perfect steadiness for page after page.
At Oxford his writing became rather larger and looser, perhaps from Latin exercises, in which indubitable distinctness is required. The "Poetry of Architecture" fair copy can be seen in a facsimile in the new Library Edition; the draft scribbled in a sketch-book during Oxford vacation is reproduced ([p. 141]); you note the tendency to round the foot of the down-stroke and the length of the greater limbs of the letters. He used to tell his secretary to take no notice of a letter in which h and l looked like n and e.
Leaving Oxford and writing hard at "Modern Painters" earlier volumes, which cost a great deal of pen-work, he went back to the smaller hand of voluminous authors, and the constant attention to one subject gave it regularity. But the letters of the time are naturally more impulsive; indeed, in 1849 there are bits which prefigure his latest style in its upright and loose sketchiness. From 1849 or 1850 for some years the chief work was "Stones of Venice," and the note-books and studies for this are fairly represented by the page on "Sta. Maria dell' Orto." This is the earlier "Modern Painters" manner. You see the growing freedom, but it is not yet wild and whirling.
RUSKIN'S HANDWRITING IN 1875
The difference is shown at a glance in comparing this with the sample of his well-known later hand. It was by the end of the 'fifties that the regular and tight spikiness began finally to disappear and give place to far-flung curves. The great turn in his life which took place about 1860 showed itself in his penmanship as well as in his thought, and the final style became formed, which, with merely the differences of better or worse, lasted until all writing was over. After the summer of 1889 it was at very rare intervals that he took pen in hand. For some time before his death by mere disuse he seemed to have lost the very power of writing at all. At last, one day, being asked for his signature, he set down with shaking fingers the first few letters of it, and broke off with "Dear me! I seem to have forgotten how to write my own name!" And he wrote no more.
There have been authors and journalists whose printed work, no doubt, exceeds his in quantity; but in reckoning the sum total of his penmanship we must not forget that every printed page meant, for him, several written pages, especially in earlier books; also, that he was a conscientious correspondent, and every day wrote many letters. It may be set off against this that he sometimes used the help of an amanuensis, though he rarely dictated, and it was only when he had hammered his subject into shape that he had it copied for the printer. Occasionally in late years he let it be type-written, but most of his work was done before the age of type-writers. He would use the most unlikely copyists, as when he got the little girls of his Brantwood class to write out his notes. All he asked was a distinct hand and a docile scribe. His secretary, like the secretary in "Gil Blas," did everything but write, and sometimes was packing parcels or sweeping leaves while the valet was copying lectures on Greek art. Some early MSS. are in the hand of George Hobbs; many of the later were written by Crawley; none by Baxter. At other times he requisitioned the young ladies; it was for this that Mrs. Severn formed her large, round, upright hand, and Miss Anderson had many a copying task, as well as others whose work will be valued by collectors for its corrections from the master's pen, like the quartz which holds the sparkle of gold.
But he taught them to write distinctly—that was his great requirement. Once, on a sleepless night, he called me, with many apologies, to write from dictation. Naturally I wrote fast to get my job done and return to my slumbers; but he continually pulled me up with, "I'm sure you're scribbling. Let me see if I can read it." Out on the fells, taking the dip and strike of strata, or among the cathedrals making notes and measurements, he would often warn his assistant of the folly of hasty scrawling. "I've lost so much time and trouble by my now bad writing," he used to say.