CHAPTER IX
THE BROKEN CHAIN (1840-1841)
That 8th of February, 1840, when John Ruskin came of age, it seemed as though all the gifts of fortune had been poured into his lap. What his father's wealth and influence could do for him had been supplemented by a personal charm, which found him friends among the best men of the best ranks. What his mother's care had done in fortifying his health and forming his character, native energy had turned to advantage. He had won a reputation already much wider and more appreciable, as an artist and student of science, and as a writer of prose and verse, than undergraduates are entitled to expect; and, for crowning mercy, his head was not turned. He was reading extremely hard—"in" for his degree examination next Easter term. His college tutor hoped he would get a First. From that it was an easy step to Holy Orders, and with his opportunities preferment was certain.
On his twenty-first birthday, his father, who had sympathized with his admiration for Turner enough to buy two pictures—the "Richmond Bridge" and the "Gosport"—for their Herne Hill drawing-room, now gave him a picture all to himself for his new rooms in St. Aldate's—the "Winchelsea," and settled on him a handsome allowance of pocket-money. The first use he made of his wealth was to buy another Turner. In the Easter vacation he met Mr. Griffith, the dealer, at the private view of the old Water-colour Society, and hearing that the "Harlech Castle" was for sale, he bought it there and then, with the characteristic disregard for money which has always made the vendors of pictures and books and minerals find him extremely pleasant to deal with. But as his love-affair had shown his mother how little he had taken to heart her chiefest care for him, so this first business transaction was a painful awakening to his father, the canny Scotch merchant, who had heaped up riches hoping that his son would gather them.
This "Harlech Castle" transaction, however, was not altogether unlucky. It brought him an introduction to the painter, whom he met when he was next in town, at Mr. Griffith's house. He knew well enough the popular idea of Turner as a morose and niggardly, inexplicable man. As he had seen faults in Turner's painting, so he was ready to acknowledge the faults in his character. But while the rest of the world, with a very few exceptions, dwelt upon the faults, Ruskin had penetration to discern the virtues which they hid. Few passages in his autobiography are more striking than the transcript from his journal of the same evening, recording his first impression:
"'I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded—gentleman; good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of the mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look.' Pretty close that," he adds later, "and full, to be set down at the first glimpse, and set down the same evening."
Turner was not a man to make an intimate of, all at once; the acquaintanceship continued, and it ripened into as close a confidence as the eccentric painter's habits of life permitted. He seems to have been more at home with the father than with the son; but even when the young man took to writing books about him, he did not, as Carlyle is reported to have done in a parallel case, show his exponent to the door.
The occasion of John Ruskin's coming to town this time was not a pleasant one—nothing less than the complete breakdown of his health. It is true that he was working very hard during this spring; but hard reading does not of itself kill people, only when it is combined with real and prolonged mental distress, acting upon a sensitive temperament. The case was thought serious; reading was stopped, and the patient was ordered abroad for the winter.