Chapter 34

VERONA AND OXFORD (1869-1870)

The main object of this journey was, however, not to study mythology, but to continue the revision of old estimates of architecture, and after seventeen years to look with a fresh eye at the subjects of "Stones of Venice."

The churches and monuments of Verona had been less thoroughly studied than those of Venice, and now they were threatened with imminent restoration. On May 25th he wrote:--"It is very strange that I have just been in time--after 17 years' delay--to get the remainder of what I wanted from the red tomb of which my old drawing hangs in the passage"--(the Castelbarco monument). "To-morrow they put up scaffolding to retouch, and I doubt not, spoil it for evermore." He succeeded in getting a delay of ten days, to enable him to paint the tomb in its original state; but before he went home it "had its new white cap on and looked like a Venetian gentleman in a pantaloon's mask." He brought away one of the actual stones of the old roof.

On June 3 he wrote:

"I am getting on well with all my own work; and much pleased with some that Mr. Bunney is doing for me; so that really I expect to carry off a great deal of Verona.... The only mischief of the place is its being too rich. Stones, flowers, mountains--all equally asking one to look at them; a history to every foot of ground, and a picture on every foot of wall; frescoes fading away in the neglected streets--like the colours of the dolphin."

As assistants in this enterprise of recording the monuments of Venice and Verona, and of recording them more fully and in a more interesting way than by photography, he took with him Arthur Burgess and John Bunney, his former pupils. Mr. Burgess was the subject of a memoir by Ruskin in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_ (April, 1887), appreciating his talents and lamenting his loss. Mr. Bunney, who had travelled with Ruskin in Switzerland in 1863, and had lately lived near Florence, thenceforward settled in Venice, where he died in 1882, after completing his great work, the St. Mark's now in the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield. A memoir of him by Mr. Wedderburn appeared in the catalogue of the Venice Exhibition, at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in November, 1882.

At Venice Ruskin had met his old friend Rawdon Brown[17], and Count Giberto Borromeo, whom he visited at Milan on his way home, with deep interest in the Luinis and in the authentic bust of St. Carlo; so closely resembling Ruskin himself. Another noteworthy encounter is recorded in a letter of May 4th.[18]

[Footnote 17: Whose book on the English in Italy (from Venetian documents) was shortly to be published, with funds supplied by Ruskin.]

[Footnote 18: This date ought to be "June 4th," as Mr. E.T. Cook notices (Library Edn. XIX., p. liv.).]

"As I was drawing in the square this morning, in a lovely, quiet, Italian, light, there came up the poet Longfellow with his little daughter--a girl of 12, or 13, with _springy_-curled flaxen hair,--curls, or waves, that wouldn't come out in damp, I mean. They stayed talking beside me some time. I don't think it was a very vain thought that came over me, that if a photograph could have been taken of the beautiful square of Verona, in that soft light, with Longfellow and his daughter talking to me at my work--some people both in England and America would have liked copies of it."

Readers of "Fors" will recognise an incident noted on the 18th of June.

"Yesterday, it being quite cool, I went for a walk; and as I came down from a rather quiet hillside, a mile or two out of town, I past a house where the women were at work spinning the silk off the cocoons. There was a sort of whirring sound as in an English mill; but at intervals they sang a long sweet chant, all together, lasting about two minutes--then pausing a minute and then beginning again. It was good and tender music, and the multitude of voices prevented any sense of failure, so that it was very lovely and sweet, and like the things that I mean to try to bring to pass."

For he was already meditating on the thoughts that issued in the proposals of St. George's Guild, and the daily letters of this summer are full of allusions to a scheme for a great social movement, as well as to his plans for the control of Alpine torrents and the better irrigation of their valleys. On the 2nd of June he wrote:--"I see more and more clearly every day my power of showing how the Alpine torrents may be--not subdued--but 'educated.' A torrent is just like a human creature. Left to gain full strength in wantonness and rage, no power can any more redeem it: but watch the channels of every early impulse, and fence _them_, and your torrent becomes the gentlest and most blessing of servants."

His mother was anxious for him to come home, being persuaded that he was overworking himself in the continued heat which his letters reported. But he was loath to leave Italy, in which, he said, his work for the future lay. He made two more visits to Venice, to draw some of the sculptured details, now quickly perishing, and to make studies of Tintoret and Carpaccio. Among other friends who met him there was Mr. Holman Hunt, with whom he went round his favourite Scuola di San Rocco (1st July). Two days later he wrote:

"You will never believe it; but I have actually been trying to draw--a baby. _The_ baby which the priest is holding in the little copy of Tintoret by Edward Jones which my father liked so much, over the basin stand in his bedroom.[19] All the knowledge I have gained in these 17 years only makes me more full of awe and wonder at Tintoret. But it _is_ so sad--so sad;--no one to care for him but me, and all going so fast to ruin. He has done that infant Christ in about five minutes--and I worked for two hours in vain, and could not tell _why_ in vain--the mystery of his touch is so great."

[Footnote 19: Mr. and Mrs Burne-Jones had been in Venice in June, 1862; the artist, then young and comparatively unknown, with a commission to copy for Ruskin.]

Final farewell was said to Verona on the 10th August, for the homeward journey by the St. Gothard, and Giessbach, where he found the young friend of 1866 now near her end--and Thun, where he met Professor C.E. Norton. On the way he wrote:

"Lugano, _Saturday, 14th August_, 1869.

"My Dearest Mother,

"Yesterday--exactly three months from the day on which I entered Verona to begin work, I made a concluding sketch of the old Broletto of Como, which I drew first for the 7 lamps[20]--I know not how many years ago,--and left Italy, for this time--having been entirely well and strong every day of my quarter of a year's sojourn there.

[Footnote 20: "Stones of Venice," Vol. I., plate 5.]

"This morning, before breakfast, I was sitting for the first time before Luini's Crucifixion: for all religious-art qualities the greatest picture south of the Alps--or rather, in Europe.

"And just after breakfast I got a telegram from my cousin George announcing that I am Professor of Art--the first--at the University of Oxford.

"Which will give me as much power as I can well use--and would have given pleasure to my poor father--and therefore to me--once.... It will make no difference in my general plans, about travel, etc. I shall think quietly of it as I drive up towards St. Gothard to-day.

"Ever, my dearest mother, ever your loving son,

"J. Ruskin."

Six years earlier, while being examined before the Royal Academy commission, he had been asked: "Has it ever struck you that it would be advantageous to art if there were at the universities professors of art who might give lectures and give instruction to young men who might desire to avail themselves of it, as you have lectures on geology and botany?" To which he had replied: "Yes, assuredly. The want of interest on the part of the upper classes in art has been very much at the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of education connected with it. If the upper classes could only be interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement might be looked for, therefore I feel the expediency of such an addition to the education of our universities." His interest in the first phase of University Extension, and his gifts of Turners to Oxford and Cambridge, had shown that he was ready to go out of his way to help in the cause he had promoted. His former works on art, and reputation as a critic, pointed to him as the best qualified man in the country for such a post. He had been asked by his Oxford friends, who were many and influential, to stand for the Professorship of Poetry, three years earlier. There was no doubt that the election would be a popular one, and creditable to the University. On the other hand, Ruskin as Professor would have a certain sanction for his teaching, he believed; the title and the salary of £358 a year were hardly an object to him; but the position, as accredited lecturer and authorised instructor of youth, opened up new vistas of usefulness, new worlds of work to conquer; and he accepted the invitation. On August 10th he was elected Slade Professor.

He returned home by the end of August to prepare himself for his new duties. During the last period he had been giving, on an average, half a dozen lectures a year, which amply filled his annual volume. Twelve lectures were required of the professor. Many another man would have read his twelve lectures and gone his way; but he was not going to work in that perfunctory manner. He undertook to revise his whole teaching; to write for his hearers a completely new series of treatises on art, beginning with first principles and broad generalisations, and proceeding to the different departments of sculpture, engraving, landscape-painting and so on; then taking up the history of art:--an encyclopædic scheme. He took this Oxford work not as a substitute for other occupation, exonerating him from further claims upon his energy and time; nor as a bye-play that could be slurred. He tried to do it thoroughly, and to do it in addition to the various work already in hand, under which, as it was, he used to break down, yearly, after each climax of effort.

This autumn and winter, with his first and most important course in preparation, he was still writing letters to the _Daily Telegraph_; being begged by Carlyle to come--"the sight of your face will be a comfort," says the poor old man--and undertaking lectures at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, and at the Royal Institution, London. The Woolwich lecture, given on December 14th, was that added to later editions of the "Crown of Wild Olive," under the title of "The Future of England." The other, February 4th, 1870, on "Verona and its Rivers," involved not only a lecture on art and history and contemporary political economy, but an exhibition of the drawings which he and his assistants had made during the preceding summer.

Four days later he opened a new period in his career with his inaugural Lecture in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford.