Читать книгу The Life of John Ruskin - W. G. Collingwood - Страница 21

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Devoted as she was to her husband, Mrs. Ruskin felt bound to watch over her son at Oxford. It was his health she was always anxious about; doctoring was her forte. He had suffered from pleurisy; caught cold easily; was feared to be weak in the lungs; and nobody but his mother understood him. So taking Mary Richardson, she went up with him (January, 1837), and settled in lodgings at Adams' in the High. Her plan was to make no intrusion on his college life, but to require him to report himself every day to her. She would not be dull; she could drive about and see the country, and to that end took her own carriage to Oxford, the "fly" which had been set up two years before. John had been rather sarcastic about its genteel appearance. "No one," he said, "would sit down to draw the form of it." However, she and Mary drove to Oxford, and reckoned that it would only mean fifteen months' absence from home altogether, great part of which deserted papa would spend in travelling.

John went into residence in Peckwater. At first he spent every evening with his mother and went to bed, as Mr. Dale had told him, at ten. After a few days Professor Powell asked him to a musical evening; he excused himself, and explained why. The Professor asked to be introduced, whereupon says his mother, "I shall return the call, but make no visiting acquaintances."

The "early-to-bed" plan was also impracticable. It was not long before somebody came hammering at his "oak" just as he was getting to sleep, and next morning he told his mother that he really ought to have a glass of wine to give. So she sent him a couple of bottles over, and that very night "Mr. Liddell and Mr. Gaisford" (junior) turned up. "John was glad he had wine to offer, but they would not take any; they had come to see sketches. John says Mr. Liddell looked at them with the eye of a judge and the delight of an artist, and swore they were the best sketches he had ever seen. John accused him of quizzing, but he answered that he really thought them excellent." John said that it was the scenes which made the pictures; Mr. Liddell knew better, and spread the fame of them over the college. Next morning "Lord Emlyn and Lord Ward called to look at the sketches," and when the undergraduates had dropped in one after another, the Dean himself, even the terrible Gaisford, sent for the portfolio, and returned it with august approval.

Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church; Newton, afterwards Sir Charles, of the British Museum; Acland, afterwards Sir Henry, the Professor of Medicine, thus became John Ruskin's friends: the first disputing with him on the burning question of Raphael's art, but from the outset an admirer of "Modern Painters," and always an advocate of its author; the second differing from him on the claims of Greek archæology, but nevertheless a close acquaintance through many long years; and the third for half a century the best of friends and counsellors.

The dons of his college he was less likely to attract. Dr. Buckland, the famous geologist, and still more famous lecturer and talker, took notice of him and employed him in drawing diagrams for lectures. The Rev. Walter Brown, his college tutor, afterwards Rector of Wendlebury, won his good-will and remained his friend. His private tutor, the Rev. Osborne Gordon, was always regarded with affectionate respect. But the rest seem to have looked upon him as a somewhat desultory and erratic young genius, who might or might not turn out well. For their immediate purpose, the Schools, and Church or State preferment, he seemed hardly the fittest man.

The gentlemen-commoners of Christ Church were a puzzle to Mrs. Ruskin; noblemen of sporting tastes, who rode and betted and drank, and got their impositions written "by men attached to the University for the purpose, at 1s.6d. to 2s.6d., so you have only to reckon how much you will give to avoid chapel." And yet they were very nice fellows. If they began by riding on John's back round the quad, they did not give him the cold shoulder—quite the reverse. He was asked everywhere to wine; he beat them all at chess; and they invaded him at all hours. "It does little good sporting his oak," wrote his mother, describing how Lord Desart and Grimston climbed in through his window while he was hard at work. "They say midshipmen and Oxonians have more lives than a cat, and they have need of them if they run such risks."

Once, but once only, he was guilty, as an innocent freshman, of a breach of the laws of his order. He wrote too good an essay. He tells his father:

"OXFORD, February, 1837.

"Yesterday (Saturday) forenoon the Sub-dean sent for me, took me up into his study, sat down with me, and read over my essay, pointing out a few verbal alterations and suggesting improvements; I, of course, expressed myself highly grateful for his condescension. Going out, I met Strangeways. 'So you're going to read out to-day, Ruskin. Do go it at a good rate, my good fellow. Why do you write such devilish good ones?' Went a little farther and met March. 'Mind you stand on the top of the desk, Ruskin; gentlemen-commoners never stand on the steps.' I asked him whether it would look more dignified to stand head or heels uppermost. He advised heels. Then met Desart. 'We must have a grand supper after this, Ruskin; gentlemen-commoners always have a flare-up after reading their themes.' I told him I supposed he wanted to 'pison my rum-and-water.'"

And though they teased him unmercifully, he seems to have given as good as he got. At a big wine after the event, they asked him whether his essay cost 2s.6d. or 5s. What he answered is not reported; but they proceeded to make a bonfire in Peckwater, while he judiciously escaped to bed.

So for a home-bred boy, thrown into rather difficult surroundings, his first appearance at Christ Church was distinctly a success. "Collections" in March, 1837, went off creditably for him. Hussey, Kynaston and the Dean said he had taken great pains with his work, and had been a pattern of regularity; and he ended his first term very well pleased with his college and with himself.

In his second term he had the honour of being elected to the Christ Church Club, a very small and very exclusive society of the best men in the college: "Simeon, Acland, and Mr. Denison proposed him; Lord Carew and Broadhurst supported." And he had the opportunity of meeting men of mark, as the following letter recounts. He writes on April 22, 1837:

"My Dearest Father,

"When I returned from hall yesterday—where a servitor read, or pretended to read, and Decanus growled at him, 'Speak out!'—I found a note on my table from Dr. Buckland, requesting the pleasure of my company to dinner, at six, to meet two celebrated geologists, Lord Cole and Sir Philip Egerton. I immediately sent a note of thanks and acceptance, dressed, and was there a minute after the last stroke of Tom. Alone for five minutes in Dr. B.'s drawing-room, who soon afterwards came in with Lord Cole, introduced me, and said that as we were both geologists he did not hesitate to leave us together while he did what he certainly very much required—brushed up a little. Lord Cole and I were talking about some fossils newly arrived from India. He remarked in the course of conversation that his friend Dr. B.'s room was cleaner and in better order than he remembered ever to have seen it. There was not a chair fit to sit upon, all covered with dust, broken alabaster candlesticks, withered flower-leaves, frogs cut out of serpentine, broken models of fallen temples, torn papers, old manuscripts, stuffed reptiles, deal boxes, brown paper, wool, tow and cotton, and a considerable variety of other articles. In came Mrs. Buckland, then Sir Philip Egerton and his brother, whom I had seen at Dr. B.'s lecture, though he is not an undergraduate. I was talking to him till dinner-time. While we were sitting over our wine after dinner, in came Dr. Daubeny, one of the most celebrated geologists of the day—a curious little animal, looking through its spectacles with an air very distinguée—and Mr. Darwin, whom I had heard read a paper at the Geological Society. He and I got together, and talked all the evening."

The long vacation of 1837 was passed in a tour through the North, during which his advanced knowledge of art was shown in a series of admirable drawings. Their subjects are chiefly architectural, though a few mountain drawings are found in his sketch-book for that summer.

The interest in ancient and picturesque buildings was no new thing, and it seems to have been the branch of art-study which was chiefly encouraged by his father. During this tour among Cumberland cottages and Yorkshire abbeys, a plan was formed for a series of papers on architecture, perhaps in answer to an invitation from his friend Mr. Loudon, who had started an architectural magazine. In the summer he began to write "The Poetry of Architecture; or, The Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character," and the papers were worked off month by month from Oxford, or wherever he might be, only terminating with the termination of the magazine in January, 1839. They parade a good deal of classical learning and travelled experience; readers of the magazine took their author for some dilettante Don at Oxford. The editor did not wish the illusion to be dispelled, so John Ruskin had to choose a nom de plume. He called himself "Kata Phusin" ("according to nature"), for he had begun to read some Aristotle. No phrase would have better expressed his point of view, that of commonsense extended by experience, and confirmed by the appeal to matters of fact, rather than to any authority, or tradition, or committee of taste, or abstract principles.

While these papers were in process of publication "Kata Phusin" plunged into his first controversy, as an opponent of "Parsey's Convergence of Perpendiculars," according to which vertical lines should have a vanishing point, even though they are assumed to be parallel to the plane of the picture.

During this controversy, and just before the summer tour of 1838 to Scotland, John Ruskin was introduced to Miss Charlotte Withers, a young lady who was as fond of music as he was of drawing. They discussed their favourite studies with eagerness, and, to settle the matter, he wrote a long essay on "The Comparative Advantages of the Studies of Music and Painting," in which he set painting as a means of recreation and of education far above music.

Already at nineteen, then, we see him a writer on art, not full-fledged, but attracting some notice. Towards the end of 1838 a question arose as to the best site for the proposed Scott memorial at Edinburgh, and a writer in the Architectural Magazine quoted "Kata Phusin" as the authority in such matters, saying that it was obvious, after those papers of his, that design and site should be simultaneously considered; on which the editor "begs the favour of 'Kata Phusin' to let our readers have his opinion on the subject, which we certainly think of considerable importance."

So he discussed the question of monuments in general, and of this one in particular, in a long paper, coming to no very decided opinion, but preferring, on the whole, a statue group with a colossal Scott on a rough pedestal, to be placed on Salisbury Crags, "where the range gets low and broken towards the north at about the height of St. Anthony's Chapel." His paper did not influence the Edinburgh Committee, but it was not without effect, as the following extract shows.