The Life of John Ruskin

by W. G. Collingwood

"Nice thing to get over; quite a joke, as everybody says when they've got through with the feathers on. It's a kind of emancipation from freshness—a thing unpleasant in an egg, but dignified in an Oxonian—very. Lowe very kind; Kynaston ditto—nice fellows—urbane. How they do frighten people! There was one man all but crying with mere fear. Kynaston had to coax him like a child. Poor fellow! he had some reason to be afraid; did his logic shockingly. People always take up logic because they fancy it doesn't require a good memory, and there is nothing half so productive of pluck; they never know it. I was very cool when I got into it; found the degree of excitement agreeable; nibbled the end of my pen and grinned at Kynaston over the table as if I had been going to pluck him. They always smile when they mean pluck."

The Newdigate for 1838, for all his care and pains, was won by Dart. He was, at any rate, beaten by a friend, and with a poem which his own honourable sympathy and assistance had helped to perfect.

Another trifling incident lets us get a glimpse of the family life of our young poet. The Queen's coronation in June, 1838, was a great event to all the world, and Mr. Ruskin was anxious for his son to see it. Much correspondence ensued between the parents, arranging everything for him, as they always did—which of the available tickets should be accepted, and whether he could stand the fatigue of the long waiting, and so forth. Mrs. Ruskin did not like the notion of her boy sitting perched on rickety scaffolding at dizzy altitudes in the Abbey. Mr. Ruskin, evidently determined to carry his point, went to Westminster, bribed the carpenters, climbed the structure, and reported all safe to stand a century, "though," said he, "the gold and scarlet of the decorations appeared very paltry compared with the Wengern Alp." But he could not find No. 447, and wrote to the Heralds' Office to know if it was a place from which a good view could be got. Blue-mantle replied that it was a very good place, and Lord Brownlow had just taken tickets for his sons close by. Then there was the great question of dress. He went to Owen's and ordered a white satin waistcoat with gold sprigs, and a high dress-coat with bright buttons, and asked his wife to see about white gloves at Oxford—a Court white neck-cloth or a black satin would do.

Picture, then, the young Ruskin in those dressy days. A portrait was once sent to Brantwood of a dandy in a green coat of wonderful cut, supposed to represent him in his youth, but suggesting Lord Lytton's "Pelham" rather than the homespun-suited seer of Coniston. "Did you ever wear a coat like that?" I asked. "I'm not so sure that I didn't," said he.

After that, they went to Scotland and the North of England for the summer, and more fine sketches were made, some of which hang now in his drawing-room, and compare not unfavourably with the Prouts beside them. In firmness of line and fulness of insight they are masterly, and mark a rapid progress, all the more astonishing when it is recollected how little time could have been spared for practice. The subjects are chiefly architectural—castles and churches and Gothic details—and one is not surprised to find him soon concerned with the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture. "They were all reverends," says a letter of the time, "and wanted somebody to rouse them."

Science, too, progressed this year. We read of geological excursions to Shotover with Lord Carew and Lord Kildare—one carrying the hammer and another the umbrella—and actual discoveries of saurian remains; and many a merry meeting at Dr. Buckland's, in which, at intervals of scientific talk, John romped with the youngsters of the family. After a while the Dean took the opportunity of a walk through Oxford to the Clarendon to warn him not to spend too much time on science. It did not pay in the Schools nor in the Church, and he had too many irons in the fire.

Drawing, and science, and the prose essays mentioned in the last chapter, and poetry, all these were his by-play. Of the poetry, the Newdigate was but a little part. In "Friendship's Offering" this autumn he published "Remembrance," one of many poems to Adèle, "Christ Church," and the "Scythian Grave." In this last he gave free rein to the morbid imaginations to which his unhappy affaire de coeur and the mental excitement of the period predisposed him. Harrison, his literary Mentor, approved these poems, and inserted them in "Friendship's Offering," along with love-songs and other exercises in verse. One had a great success and was freely copied—the sincerest flattery—and the preface to the annual for 1840 publicly thanked the "gifted writer" for his "valuable aid."

At the beginning of 1839 he went into new rooms vacated by Mr. Meux, and set to work finally on "Salsette and Elephanta." He ransacked all sources of information, coached himself in Eastern scenery and mythology, threw in the Aristotelian ingredients of terror and pity, and wound up with an appeal to the orthodoxy of the examiners, of whom Keble was the chief, by prophesying the prompt extermination of Brahminism under the teaching of the missionaries.

This third try won the prize. Keble sent for him, to make the usual emendations before the great work could be given to the world with the seal of Oxford upon it. John Ruskin seems to have been somewhat refractory under Keble's hands, though he would let his fellow-students, or his father, or Harrison, work their will on his MSS. or proofs; being always easier to lead than to drive. Somehow he came to terms with the Professor, and then the Dean, taking an unexpected interest, was at pains to see that his printed copy was flawless, and to coach him for the recitation of it at the great day in the Sheldonian (June 12, 1839).

And now that friends and strangers, publishers in London and professors in Oxford, concurred in their applause, it surely seemed that he had found his vocation, and was well on the high-road to fame as a poet.