The Life of John Ruskin

by W. G. Collingwood

One evening before dinner he brought back to the hotel at Florence a drawing of a lovely girl lying dead in the sunset; and a little note-book. "I want you to look over this," he said, in the way, but not quite in the tone, with which the usual MS. "submitted for criticism" was tossed to a secretary to taste. It was "The True Story of Ida; written by her Friend."

An appointment to meet Mr. E.R. Robson, who was making plans for an intended Sheffield museum, took him back to Lucca, to discuss Romanesque mouldings and marble facings. Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray also came to Lucca with drawings commissioned for St. George's Guild. But Ruskin soon returned to his new friends, and did not leave Florence finally until he had purchased the wonderful collection of 110 drawings, with beautifully written text, in which Miss Alexander had enshrined "The Roadside Songs of Tuscany."

Returning homewards by the Mont Cenis he stayed a while at Talloires, a favourite haunt, extremely content to be among romantic scenery, and able to work steadily at a new edition of his books in a much cheaper form, of which the first volumes were at this time in hand. He had been making further studies also, in history and Alpine geology; but at last the snow drove him away from the mountains. So he handed over the geology to his assistant, who compiled "The Limestone Alps of Savoy" (supplementary to "Deucalion") "as he could, not as he would," while Ruskin wrote out the new ideas suggested by his visit to Cîteaux and St. Bernard's birthplace. These notes he completed on the journey home, and gave as a lecture on "Cistercian Architecture" (London Institution, December 4th, 1882), in place of the previously advertised lecture on crystallography.

He seemed now to have quite recovered his health, and to be ready for re-entry into public life. What was more, he had many new things to say. The attacks of brain fever had passed over him like passing storms, leaving a clear sky.

After his retirement from the Oxford Professorship, a subscription had been opened for a bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, in memorial of a University benefactor; and the model (now in the Sheffield Museum) was placed in the Drawing School pending the collection of the necessary £220. The Oxford University Herald, in its article of June 5th, 1880, no doubt expressed the general feeling in reciting his benefactions to the University with becoming appreciation.

It was natural, therefore, that on recovering his health he should resume his post. Professor (now Sir) W.B. Richmond, the son of his old friend Mr. George Richmond, gracefully retired, and the Oxford University Gazette of January 16th, 1883, announced the re-election. On March 2nd he wrote that he was "up the Old Man yesterday"; as much as to say that he defied catechism, now, about his health; and a week later he gave his first lecture. The St. James's Budget of March 16th gave an account of it in these terms:

"Mr. Ruskin's first lecture at Oxford attracted so large an audience that, half-an-hour before the time fixed for its delivery, a greater number of persons were collected about the doors than the lecture-room could hold. Immediately after the doors were opened the room was so densely packed that some undergraduates found it convenient to climb into the windows and on to the cupboards. The audience was composed almost equally of undergraduates and ladies; with the exception of the vice-chancellor, heads of houses, fellows, and tutors were chiefly conspicuous by their absence."

I omit an abstract of the lecture, which can be read in full in the "Art of England." The reporter continued:

"He had made some discoveries: two lads and two lasses, who[⁴⁸] ... could draw in a way to please even him. He used to say that, except in a pretty graceful way, no woman can draw; he had now almost come to think that no one else can. (This statement the undergraduates received with gallant, if undiscriminating, applause.) To many of his prejudices, Mr. Ruskin said, in the last few years the axe had been laid. He had positively found an American, a young lady, whose life and drawing were in every way admirable. (Again great and generous applause on the part of the undergraduates, stimulated, no doubt, by the knowledge that there were then in the room two fair Americans, who have lately graced Oxford by their presence.) At the end of his lecture Mr. Ruskin committed himself to a somewhat perilous statement. He had found two young Italian artists in whom the true spirit of old Italian art had yet lived. No hand like theirs had been put to paper since Lippi and Leonardo."

Three more lectures of the course were given in May, and each repeated to a second audience. Coming to London, he gave a private lecture on June 5th to some two hundred hearers at the house of Mrs. W.H. Bishop, in Kensington, on Miss Kate Greenaway and Miss Alexander. The Spectator shared his enthusiasm for the pen and ink drawings of Miss Alexander's "Roadside Songs of Tuscany," and concluded a glowing account of the lecture by saying: "All Professor Ruskin's friends must be glad to see how well his Oxford work has agreed with him. He has gifts of insight and power of reaching the best feelings and highest hopes of our too indifferent generation which are very rare."