BRANTWOOD HARBOUR IN THE SEVENTIES
(Herbert Severn, Esq., photographer)
CONISTON HALL AND BOATHOUSE
So when he came to Coniston, and had his own house on his own lake, he could not be without boats. There was a landing-place on the shore beneath Brantwood, shown in our photograph as it was in the earlier stages of its development, with Mrs. Arthur Severn and Miss Constance Hilliard (Mrs. W. H. Churchill) on the first primitive breakwater, and Mr. Severn's sailboat in the distance. Ruskin did not care for lake-sailing; a busy man hardly has time to wait for the moving of the water; and he got one of the indigenous tubs for the diversion of rowing. He did not fish, and he had the greatest scorn for rowing as it is done at Oxford. "That's not rowing; that's galley-slaves' work!" he used to tell us. "To bend to the stroke, and time your oars to the beat of the waves," was his ideal: he liked going out when there was a little sea on, and white horses; and he would paddle away before the wind with great enjoyment. But when there is a little sea on, at Coniston, it means a good deal of wind; though the waves are not very high they gather a fair amount of force in their four or five miles' career up the long waterway; and the fun of riding with them is quite different from the struggle of getting your boat home again. Now Ruskin was a very practical man in some things. "When you have too much to do, don't do it," he used to say. So after a wild water-gallop, he simply landed and walked home. When the wind changed he could bring back his boat. There was no use in making a pain of a pleasure.
(From a Sketch by W. G. Collingwood)