For his thoughts on music there is that book to read; but for Ruskin's quest of music, for his lifelong attempts to qualify as a musician, there is nothing to show. The story has not yet been told, because it has little bearing on his life's main work, and—to put it roughly—it is the story of a failure. Perhaps there are admirers who would rather not know about the failure; and yet—you shall judge when you have heard it!
There are still in existence the bound volumes of piano-pieces and operatic songs which he learnt when he was an undergraduate at Oxford. One of these volumes is open on the piano, in our photograph of the Brantwood drawing-room, arranged as it used to be when he strummed a little before dinner and read at the four candles after dinner. Each piece is inscribed by the Oxford music-master with the usual vague respect of Town to Gown in the formula, "— Ruskin, Esq., Ch.Ch." The master does not seem to have known his Christian name, but he evidently dragged him through a great deal of Bellini, and Donizetti, and Mozart; and "forty years on—shorter in wind, though in memory long" Ruskin had a keen recollection of these pieces, and liked to go over them with any young friend, showing how they used to sing "Non più andrai" or "Prendero quel brunettino," with all the flourishes. There are his fingering exercises, as elaborately annotated as all his old books are; he must have spent much time and taken great pains, in those early days, over his music. It was not for want of opportunity, nor for lack of intention, that he did not become a musician.
When he left Oxford he still continued his lessons, especially the singing. I have never heard of his singing in company, but I can hardly doubt that the lessons did much for his voice. Any one who has heard him lecture, or read, or even talk, knows how resonant and flexible it was, and how thoroughly under his command. He had naturally a weak chest; he caught cold easily, and his throat was often affected; but he always, I think, was able to lecture, and his voice was the first thing that attracted an audience. The singing lessons were not without result.
(Photograph by A. E. Brickhill)
RUSKIN'S PIANO IN BRANTWOOD DRAWING-ROOM
(Before Recent Alterations)
In later years his music-master was George Frederick West, who taught him—or tried to teach him—something of composition. I can remember Mr. West coming to give him a lesson at Herne Hill, but I don't think I was ever present at the ordeal. You can imagine that "Dr. Ruskin," as Mr. West always called him, was a most difficult pupil, wanting at every turn to know why; incredulous of the best authority; impatient of the compromises and conventions, the "wohl-temperirtes Klavier"; and eager to upset everything and start afresh. It is Mrs. Severn who can describe these droll interviews and Mr. West's despairing appeal, "But you wouldn't be ungrammatical, Doctor Ruskin?"