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PREFACE
I HAVE written these sketches of effort and incident in former years for my friends; and for those of the public who have been pleased by my books.
I have written them therefore, frankly, garrulously, and at ease; speaking, of what it gives me joy to remember, at any length I like - sometimes very carefully of what I think it may be useful for others to know; and passing in total silence things which I have no pleasure in reviewing, and which the reader would find no help in the account of. My described life has thus become more amusing than I expected to myself, as I summoned its long past scenes for present scrutiny: its main methods of study, and principles of work, I feel justified in commending to other students; and very certainly any habitual readers of my books will understand them better, for having knowledge as complete as I can give them of the personal character which, without endeavour to conceal, I yet have never taken pains to display, and even, now and then, felt some freakish pleasure in exposing to the chance of misinterpretation.1
I write these few prefatory words on my father’s birthday, in what was once my nursery in his old house, - to which he brought my mother and me, sixty - two years since, I being then four years old. What would otherwise in the following pages have been little more than an old
1 [On this subject, see a passage now printed in the Appendix; below, p. 628; and compare the Epilogue to Stones of Venice, Vol. XI. p. 232.]
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man’s recreation in gathering visionary flowers in fields of youth, has taken, as I wrote, the nobler aspect of a dutiful offering at the grave of parents who trained my childhood to all the good it could attain, and whose memory makes declining life cheerful in the hope of being soon again with them.
HERNE HILL, 10th May, 1885.
PRÆTERITA - I
CHAPTER I
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL
(The reader must be advised that the first two chapters are reprinted, with slight revision, from “Fors Clavigera,” having been written there chiefly for the political lessons, which appear now introduced somewhat violently.1)
I AM, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school; - Walter Scott’s school, that is to say, and Homer’s. I name these two out of the numberless great Tory writers, because they were my own two masters. I had Walter Scott’s novels, and the Iliad (Pope’s translation), for constant reading when I was a child, on week-days: on Sunday, their effect was tempered by Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim’s Progress; my mother having it deeply in her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more evangelical than my mother; and my aunt gave me cold mutton for Sunday’s dinner, which - as I much preferred it hot - greatly diminished the influence of the Pilgrim’s Progress; and the end of the matter was, that I got all the noble imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and yet - am not an evangelical clergyman.
2. I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that compulsorily, and every day of the week.
Walter Scott and Pope’s Homer were reading of my
1 [This chapter is a collection of slightly revised passages from Fors Clavigera, Letters 10 (1871), 46 (1874), 51, 52, 56 (1875), and 28 (1873). For particulars, and note of the revision, see the Bibliographical Note; above, p. xci.]
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own election, and my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year: and to that discipline - patient, accurate, and resolute - I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. From Walter Scott’s novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people’s novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson’s English, or Gibbon’s, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English;1 and the affectation of trying to write like Hooker2 and George Herbert was the most innocent I could have fallen into.
3. From my own chosen masters, then, Scott and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my best after - thought has only served to confirm.
That is to say, a most sincere love of kings,3 and dislike of everybody who attempted to disobey them. Only, both by Homer and Scott, I was taught strange ideas about kings, which I find for the present much obsolete; for, I perceived that both the author of the Iliad and the author of Waverley made their kings, or king - loving persons, do harder work than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus always killed twenty Trojans to other people’s one, and Redgauntlet speared more salmon than any of the Solway fishermen;4 and - which was particularly a subject of admiration
1 [Compare Vol. XXIV. p. 449.]
2 [Compare Vol. IV. pp. 334, and Vol. XVIII. p. 32.]
3 [Compare below, § 7.]
4 [See, for Diomed (son of Tydeus), such passages in Pope’s Iliad as x. 560; and for Idomeneus, xiii. 457 seq.; and for Redgauntlet, Letter 4 of Scott’s novel.]
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 15
to me - I observed that they not only did more, but in proportion to their doings got less, than other people - nay, that the best of them were even ready to govern for nothing! and let their followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. Of late it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly the contrary of this, and that it has been supposed the duty of superior persons generally to govern less, and get more, than anybody else.1 So that it was, perhaps, quite as well that in those early days my contemplation of existent kingship was a very distant one.
4. The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays was my father’s sister:2 she lived at Bridge - end, in the town of Perth, and had a garden full of gooseberry - bushes, sloping down to the Tay, with a door opening to the water, which ran past it, clear - brown over the pebbles three or four feet deep; swift - eddying, - an infinite thing for a child to look down into.
5. My father began business as a wine - merchant, with no capital, and a considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by my grandfather.3 He accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he began to lay by anything for himself, - for which his best friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite slab over his grave that he was “an entirely honest merchant.”4 As days went on he was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, No. 54,5 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, out of which
[j3]
1 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 22 (Vol. XXVII. p. 384), where Ruskin refers to this passage (which appeared originally in Fors, Letter 10, § 4).]
[note]2 [Jessie Ruskin, who married Peter Richardson, of Perth. The sisters both of Ruskin’s father and of his mother married Richardsons, no relations to each other: see ii. § 179). For further notice of Jessie of Perth, see below, chaps. iii. and iv.; pp. 62, 65, 70.]
3 [For this John Thomas Ruskin, of Edinburgh (1761 - 1817?), see the Introduction, above, p. lix.]
4 [The inscription is printed in Vol. XVII. p. lxxvii.]
5 [The house now bears a tablet recording Ruskin’s birth there.]
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Next PageJohn James Ruskin from the portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn, RA [f.p.16,r]
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the water - carts were filled through beautiful little trapdoors, by pipes like boa - constrictors; and I was never weary of contemplating that mystery, and the delicious dripping consequent);1 and as years went on, and I came to be four or five years old, he could command a postchaise and pair for two months in the summer, by help of which, with my mother and me, he went the round of his country customers (who liked to see the principal of the house his own traveller); so that, at a jog - trot pace, and through the panoramic opening of the four windows of a post - chaise, made more panoramic still to me because my seat was a little bracket in front, (for we used to hire the chaise regularly for the two months out of Long Acre, and so could have it bracketed and pocketed as we liked,) I saw all the high - roads, and most of the cross ones, of England and Wales; and great part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every other year we spent the whole summer: and I used to read the Abbot at Kinross, and the Monastery in Glen Farg, which I confused with “Glendearg,” and thought that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen of Scots in the island of Loch Leven.2
6. To my farther great benefit, as I grew older, I thus saw nearly all the noblemen’s houses in England; in reverent and healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, - perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle and have nothing to be astonished at;3 but that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick Castle down. And at this day, though
1 [Some further reminiscences of the “occupations of an exciting character in Hunter Street” are given in a passage of Fors, not embodied in Præterita: see Letter 53, § 1 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 316 - 317).]
2 [For another notice of these journeys, and the impressions left by them, see “Mending the Sieve,” § 1 (Vol. XXXIII. pp. 227 - 228).]
3 [For a reference to this passage, see Ruskin’s letter on Warwick Castle in Arrows of the Chace: Vol. XXXIV. p. 506.]
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 17
I have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.
7. Nevertheless, having formed my notion of kinghood chiefly from the FitzJames of the Lady of the Lake, and of noblesse from the Douglas there, and the Douglas in Marmion, a painful wonder soon arose in my child - mind, why the castles should now be always empty. Tantallon was there; but no Archibald of Angus: Stirling, but no Knight of Snowdoun. The galleries and gardens of England were beautiful to see - but his Lordship and her Ladyship were always in town, said the housekeepers and gardeners. Deep yearning took hold of me for a kind of “Restoration,” which I began slowly to feel that Charles the Second had not altogether effected, though I always wore a gilded oak - apple very piously in my button - hole on the 29th of May. It seemed to me that Charles the Second’s Restoration had been, as compared with the Restoration I wanted, much as that gilded oak - apple to a real apple. And as I grew wiser, the desire for sweet pippins instead of bitter ones, and Living Kings instead of dead ones, appeared to me rational as well as romantic; and gradually it has become the main purpose of my life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings.*
8. I have never been able to trace these prejudices to any royalty of descent: of my father’s ancestors I know nothing,1 nor of my mother’s more than that my maternal grandmother was the landlady of the Old King’s Head in Market Street, Croydon; and I wish she were alive again, and I could paint her Simone Memmi’s King’s Head,2 for a sign.
* The St. George’s Company was founded for the promotion of agricultural instead of town life: and my only hope of prosperity for England, or any other country, in whatever life they lead, is in their discovering and obeying men capable of Kinghood.
1 [For further particulars, traced after this passage appeared, see the Introduction, pp. lviii. - lxi.; and below, pp. 601 - 604.)]
2 [The head of the Emperor in the fresco in the “Spanish Chapel,” at S. Maria Novella, Florence: see Ruskin’s drawing in Vol. XXIII. (p. 458), and compare Fors, Letter 46 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 169, 170).]
XXXV. B
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My maternal grandfather was, as I have said,1, a sailor, who used to embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at Yarmouth, and come back at rare intervals, making himself very delightful at home. I have an idea he had something to do with the herring business, but am not clear on that point; my mother never being much communicative concerning it. He spoiled her, and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when he was at home; unless there appeared any tendency to equivocation, or imaginative statements, on the part of the children, which were always unforgiveable. My mother being once perceived by him to have distinctly told him a lie, he sent the servant out forthwith to buy an entire bundle of new broom twings to whip her with. “They did not hurt me so much as one” (twig) “would have done,” said my mother, “but I thought a good deal of it.”
9. My maternal grandfather was killed at two - and - thirty, by trying to ride, instead of walk, into Croydon; he got his leg crushed by his horse against a wall; and died of the hurt’s mortifying. My mother was then seven or eight years old, and, with her sister, was sent to quite a fashionable (for Croydon) day - school, Mrs. Rice’s: where my mother was taught evangelical principles, and became the pattern girl and best needlewoman in the school; and where my aunt absolutely refused evangelical principles, and became the plague and pet of it.
10. My mother, being a girl of great power, with not a little pride, grew more and more exemplary in her entirely conscientious career, much laughed at, though much beloved, by her sister; who had more wit, less pride, and no conscience. At last my mother, formed into a consummate housewife, was sent for to Scotland to take care of my paternal grandfather’s house;2 who was gradually ruining
1 [This is a slip. He has not said it before in Præterita; but the passage is reprinted from Fors, Letter 46, and there he had said it before in Letter 45 (see Vol. XXVIII. pp. 147, 170).]
2 [It will be remembered that Ruskin’s father and mother were first cousins; his mother being the daughter of his grandfather’s sister (see p. 603).]
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 19
himself; and who at last effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My father came up to London; was a clerk in a merchant’s house1 for nine years, without a holiday; then began business on his own account; paid his father’s debts; and married his exemplary Croydon cousin.
11. Meantime my aunt2 had remained in Croydon, and married a baker. By the time I was four years old, and beginning to recollect things, - my father rapidly taking higher commercial position in London, - there was traceable - though to me, as a child, wholly incomprehensible, - just the least possible shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, towards Market Street, Croydon. But whenever my father was ill, - and hard work and sorrow had already set their mark on him, - we all went down to Croydon to be petted by my homely aunt; and walk on Duppas Hill, and on the heather of Addington.
12. My aunt lived in the little house still standing - or which was so four months ago3 - the fashionablest in Market Street, having actually two windows over the shop, in the second story; but I never troubled myself about that superior part of the mansion, unless my father happened to be making drawings in Indian ink, when I would sit reverently by and watch; my chosen domains being, at all other times, the shop, the bakehouse, and the stones round the spring of crystal water at the back door (long since let down into the modern sewer); and my chief companion, my aunt’s dog, Towzer, whom she had taken pity on when he was a snappish, starved vagrant; and made a brave and affectionate dog of: which was the kind of thing she did for every living creature that came in her way, all her life long.
1 [See below, § 26, p. 27.]
2 [Bridget Cox (his mother’s sister), who married Mr. Richardson of Croydon.]
3 [That is, in 1874, when Ruskin wrote this passage for Fors Clavigera; subsequently demolished (compare p. 122 n.). The kind of house is shown in his coloured sketch, “Looking to end of Market Street from my aunt’s door,” given as frontispiece to Vol. I.]
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13. Contented, by help of these occasional glimpses of the rivers of Paradise, I lived until I was more than four years old in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the year; for a few weeks in the summer breathing country air by taking lodgings in small cottages (real cottages, not villas, so - called) either about Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at “Mrs. Ridley’s,” the last of a row in a lane which led out into the Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to hunter Street. My mother’s general principles of first treatment were, to guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger; and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first allowed; - and the pity of my Croydon aunt for my monastic poverty in this respect was boundless. On one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my mother’s resolution by splendour of temptation, she bought the most radiant Punch and Judy she could find in all the Soho bazaar - as big as a real Punch and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and gold, and that would dance, tied to the leg of a chair. I must have been greatly impressed, for I remember well the look of the two figures, as my aunt herself exhibited their virtues. My mother was obliged to accept them; but afterwards quietly told me it was not right that I should have them; and I never saw them again.1
14. Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy - shops. I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older,
1 [Compare Cestus of Aglaia, § 90 (Vol. XIX. p. 138). For a reference to Ruskin’s amusements as those of “a poor little Cockney wretch,” contrasted with the outdoor life of Scott, see Fors, Letter 67 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 645).]
trait of Ruskin at the age of 31/2 years. [f.p.21,v]
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 21
I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well - cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, entirely sufficient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion; and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colours of my carpet; - examining the knots in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the opposite houses; with rapturous intervals of excitement during the filling of the water - cart, through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement edge; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, and what patterns I could find in bed - covers, dresses, or wall - papers to be examined, were my chief resources, and my attention to the particulars in these was soon so accurate, that when at three and a half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet. The portrait in question1 represents a very pretty child with yellow hair, dressed in a white frock like a girl, with a broad light - blue sash and blue shoes to match; the feet of the child wholesomely large in proportion to its body; and the shoes still more wholesomely large in proportion to the feet.
15. These articles of my daily dress were all sent to the old painter for perfect realization; but they appear in the picture more remarkable than they were in my nursery, because I am represented as running in a field at the edge of a wood with the trunks of its trees striped across in the manner of Sir Joshua Reynolds; while two rounded hills, as blue as my shoes, appear in the distance, which were put in by the painter at my own request; for I had already been once, if not twice, taken to Scotland; and my
1 [Plate II.]
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Scottish nurse having always sung to me as we approached the Tweed or Esk, -
“For Scotland, my darling, lies full in thy view,
With her barefooted lassies, and mountains so blue,”1
the idea of distant hills was connected in my mind with approach to the extreme felicities of life, in my Scottish aunt’s garden of gooseberry bushes, sloping to the Tay. But that, when old Mr. Northcote asked me (little thinking, I fancy, to get any answer so explicit) what I would like to have in the distance of my picture, I should have said “blue hills” instead of “gooseberry bushes,” appears to me - and I think without any morbid tendency to think over - much of myself - a fact sufficiently curious, and not without promise, in a child of that age.
16. I think it should be related also that having, as aforesaid, been steadily whipped if I was troublesome, my formed habit of serenity was greatly pleasing to the old painter; for I sat contentedly motionless, counting the holes in his carpet, or watching him squeeze his paint out of its bladders, - a beautiful operation, indeed, to my thinking; - but I do not remember taking any interest in Mr. North - cotes application of the pigments to the canvas; my ideas of delightful art, in that respect, involving indispensably the possession of a large pot, filled with paint of the brightest green, and of a brush which would come out of it soppy. But my quietude was so pleasing to the old man that he begged my father and mother to let me sit to him for the face of a child which he was painting in a classical subject; where I was accordingly represented as reclining on a leopard skin, and having a thorn taken out of my foot by a wild man of the woods.2
17. In all these particulars, I think the treatment, or
1 [Quoted also in Fors, Letter 92: Vol. XXIX. p. 449.]
2 [Plate III. For another reference to Northcote, see below, § 240 (p. 214). Dr. Birkbeck Hill makes Northcote a link in “the chain of genius,” tracing an “apostolic succession” from Dryden to Ruskin. Pope, when a boy of eleven, persuaded
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 23
accidental conditions, of my childhood, entirely right, for a child of my temperament: but the mode of my introduction to literature appears to me questionable, and I am not prepared to carry it out in St. George’s schools, without much modification. I absolutely declined to learn to read by syllables; but would get an entire sentence by heart with great facility, and point with accuracy to every word in the page as I repeated it. As, however, when the words were once displaced, I had no more to say, my mother gave up, for the time, the endeavour to teach me to read, hoping only that I might consent, in process of years, to adopt the popular system of syllabic study. But I went on to amuse myself, in my own way, learnt whole words at a time, as I did patterns; and at five years old was sending for my “second volumes” to the circulating library.
18. This effort to learn the words in their collective aspect, was assisted by my real admiration of the look of printed type, which I began to copy for my pleasure, as other children draw dogs and horses. The following inscription,1 facsimile’d from the fly - leaf of my Seven Champions of Christendom2 (judging from the independent views taken in it of the character of the letter L, and the relative elevation of G,) I believe to be an extremely early art study of this class; and as by the will of Fors, the first lines of the note, written after an interval of fifty years, underneath my copy of it, in direction to Mr. Burgess,3 presented some notable points of correspondence with it, I thought it well he should engrave them together, as they stood.4
some friends to take him to the coffee - house which Dryden frequented. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when a youth, had touched the hand of Pope in a crowd. Northcote in 1762 touched the skirt of Sir Joshua’s coat, and lived to paint Ruskin’s portrait. (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, edited by G. B. Hill, 1887, vol. i. p. 377 n.).]
1 [See p. 24.]
2 [For this book, see Vol. XXIV. p. 246.]
3 [For Ruskin’s notice of his assistant, Arthur Burgess, see Vol. XIV. pp. 349 - 356.]
4 [For reflections on the character of the handwriting here displayed, see Fors, Letter 51 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 275).]
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19. My mother had, as she afterwards told me, solemnly “devoted me to God” before I was born; in imitation of Hannah.1
Very good women are remarkably apt to make away with their children prematurely, in this manner: the real meaning of the pious act being, that, as the sons of Zebedee are not (or at least they hope not), to sit on the right and left of Christ, in His kingdom, their own
1910V35.BMP
sons may perhaps, they think, in time be advanced to that respectable position in eternal life; especially if they ask Christ very humbly for it every day: and they always forget in the most naïve way that the position is not His to give!2
20. “Devoting me to God,” meant, as far as my mother knew herself what she meant, that she would try to send me to college, and make a clergyman of me: and I was accordingly bred for “the Church.” My father, who - rest be to his soul - had the exceedingly bad habit of yielding to my mother in large things and taking his own way
1 [1 Samuel i. 11.]
2 [Matthew xx. 20 - 23.]
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in little ones, allowed me, without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; not without some pardonable participation in my mother’s ultimate views for me. For, many and many a year afterwards, I remember, while he was speaking to one of our artist friends, who admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my endeavours to interfere with that popular taste, - while my father and he were condoling with each other on my having been impudent enough to think I could tell the public about Turner and Raphael, - instead of contenting myself, as I ought, with explaining the way of their souls’ salvation to them - and what an amiable clergyman was lost in me, - “Yes,” said my father, with tears in his eyes - (true and tender tears, as ever father shed,) “he would have been a Bishop.”
21. Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct impressions of her own duty, and with such latent hopes of my future eminence, took me very early to church; - where, in spite of my quiet habits, and my mother’s golden vinaigrette, always indulged to me there, and there only, with its lid unclasped that I might see the wreathed open pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet in, (my best story - books being also taken away from me in the morning,) that, as I have somewhere said before,1 the horror of Sunday used even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday - and all the glory of Monday, with church seven days removed again, was no equivalent for it.
22. Notwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell’s sermons;2 and occasionally, in imitation of him, preached a sermon at home over the red sofa cushions; - this performance being always called for by my mother’s dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my childhood. The sermon was, I
1 [Fors Clavigera, Letter 24, § 7 (Vol. XXVII. p. 421).]
2 [His church or chapel was, no doubt, near to Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, but this has not been ascertained.]
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believe, some eleven words long; very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect - and I still think must have been the purest gospel, for I know it began with, “People, be good.”
23. We seldom had company, even on week days; and I was never allowed to come down to dessert, until much later in life - when I was able to crack nuts neatly. I was then permitted to come down to crack other people’s nuts for them - (I hope they liked the ministration) - but never to have any myself; nor anything else of dainty kind, either then or at other times. Once at Hunter Street, I recollect my mother giving me three raisins, in the forenoon, out of the store cabinet; and I remember perfectly the first time I tasted custard, in our lodgings in Norfolk Street - where we had gone while the house was being painted, or cleaned, or something. My father was dining in the front room, and did not finish his custard; and my mother brought me the bottom of it into the back room.
24. But for the reader’s better understanding of such further progress of my poor little life as I may trespass on his patience in describing, it is now needful that I give some account of my father’s mercantile position in London.
The firm of which he was head partner may be yet remembered by some of the older city houses, as carrying on their business in a small counting - house on the first floor of narrow premises, in as narrow a thoroughfare of East London, - Billiter Street, the principal traverse from Leadenhall Street into Fenchurch Street.
The names of the three partners were given in full on their brass plate under the counting - house bell, - Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq.
25. Mr. Domecq’s name should have been the first, by rights, for my father and Mr. Telford were only his agents. He was the sole proprietor of the estate which was the main capital of the firm, - the vineyard of Macharnudo, the most precious hillside, for growth of white wine, in the
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Spanish peninsula. The quality of the Macharnudo vintage essentially fixed the standard of Xeres “sack,” or “dry” - secco - sherris, or sherry, from the days of Henry the Fifth1 to our own; - the unalterable and unrivalled chalk - marl of it putting a strength into the grape which age can only enrich and darken, - never impair.
26. Mr. Peter Domecq was, I believe, Spanish born; and partly French, partly English bred; a man of strictest honour, and kindly disposition; how descended, I do not know; how he became possessor of his vineyard, I do not know; what position he held, when young, in the firm of Gordon, Murphy, and Company, I do not know; but in their house he watched their head clerk, my father, during his nine years of duty, and when the house broke up, asked him to be his own agent in England. My father saw that he could fully trust Mr. Domecq’s honour, and feeling; - but not so fully either his sense, or his industry; and insisted, though taking only his agent’s commission, on being both nominally, and practically, the head - partner of the firm.
27. Mr. Domecq lived chiefly in Paris; rarely visiting his Spanish estate, but having perfect knowledge of the proper processes of its cultivation, and authority over its labourers almost like a chief’s over his clan. He kept the wines at the highest possible standard; and allowed my father to manage all matters concerning their sale, as he thought best. The second partner, Mr. Henry Telford, brought into the business what capital was necessary for its London branch. The premises in Billiter Street belonged to him; and he had a pleasant country house at Widmore, near Bromley; a quite far - away Kentish village in those days.
He was a perfect type of an English country gentleman of moderate fortune; unmarried, living with three unmarried sisters, - who, in the refinement of their highly educated,
1 [See Falstaff on the virtue of “sherris - sack”: 2 Henry IV., Act iv. sc. 3.]
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unpretending, benevolent, and felicitous lives, remain in my memory more like the figures in a beautiful story than realities. Neither in story, nor in reality, have I ever again heard of, or seen, anything like Mr. Henry Telford; - so gentle, so humble, so affectionate, so clear in common sense, so fond of horses, - and so entirely incapable of doing, thinking, or saying, anything that had the slightest taint in it of the racecourse or the stable.
28. Yet I believe he never missed any great race; passed the greater part of his life on horseback; and hunted during the whole Leicestershire season; but never made a bet, never had a serious fall, and never hurt a horse. Between him and my father there was absolute confidence, and the utmost friendship that could exist without community of pursuit. My father was greatly proud of Mr. Telford’s standing among the country gentlemen; and Mr. Telford was affectionately respectful to my father’s steady industry and infallible commercial instinct. Mr. Telford’s actual part in the conduct of the business was limited to attendance in the counting - house during two months at Midsummer, when my father took his holiday, and sometimes for a month at the beginning of the year, when he travelled for orders. At these times Mr. Telford rode into London daily from Widmore, signed what letters and bills needed signature, read the papers, and rode home again; any matters needing deliberation were referred to my father, or awaited his return. All the family at Widmore would have been limitlessly kind to my mother and me, if they had been permitted any opportunity; but my mother always felt, in cultivated society, - and was too proud to feel with patience, - the defects of her own early education; and therefore (which was the true and fatal sign of such defect) never familiarly visited any one whom she did not feel to be, in some sort, her inferior.
Nevertheless, Mr. Telford had a singularly important influence in my education. By, I believe, his sisters’ advice, he gave me, as soon as it was published, the illustrated
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 29
edition of Rogers’s Italy.1 This book was the first means I had of looking carefully at Turner’s work: and I might, not without some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the entire direction of my life’s energies. But it is the great error of thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which gave the accident importance. The essential point to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could understand Turner’s work, when I saw it; - not by what chance, or in what year, it was first seen. Poor Mr. Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma primarily responsible for my Turner insanities.
29. In a more direct, though less intended way, his help to me was important. For, before my father thought it right to hire a carriage for the above - mentioned Midsummer holiday, Mr. Telford always lent us his own travelling chariot.
Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious of travelling carriages, for two persons, or even for two persons and so much of third personage as I possessed at three years old. The one in question was hung high, so that we could see well over stone dykes and average hedges out of it; such elevation being attained by the old - fashioned folding steps, with a lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of the door, - steps which it was one of my chief travelling delights to see the hostlers fold up and down; though my delight was painfully alloyed by envious ambition to be allowed to do it myself: but I never was, - lest I should pinch my fingers.
30. The “dickey,” - (to think that I should never till this moment have asked myself the derivation of that word, and now be unable to get at it!)2 - being, typically, that
1 [See further, on this gift, below, p. 79. The book (1830) is preserved at Brantwood. It bears the inscription, “J. Ruskin, Junr., from his esteemed friend Henry Telford, Esq.”; and then (in Ruskin’s hand), “My Father’s writing - dateless, unusually with him (Brantwood, April 1887).” A copy of Rogers’s Poems (1834) is inscribed, “To John Ruskin, Esq., with the sincere regard of the author.”]
2 [For the derivation, see Dilecta, § 22; below, p. 585.]
30 PRÆTERITA - I
commanding seat in her Majesty’s mail, occupied by the Guard; and classical, even in modern literature, as the scene of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s arrangements with Sam,1 - was thrown far back in Mr. Telford’s chariot, so as to give perfectly comfortable room for the legs (if one chose to travel outside on fine days), and to afford beneath it spacious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward miscellaneous luggage. Over which - with all the rest of forward and superficial luggage - my nurse Anne presided, both as guard and packer; unrivalled, she, in the flatness and precision of her in - laying of dresses, as in turning of pancakes;2 the fine precision, observe, meaning also the easy wit and invention of her art; for, no more in packing a trunk than commanding a campaign, is precision possible without foresight.
31. Among the people whom one must miss out of one’s life, dead, or worse than dead, by the time one is past fifty, I can only say for my own part, that the one I practically and truly miss most next to father and mother, (and putting losses of imaginary good out of the question,) is this Anne, my father’s nurse, and mine. She was one of our “many”* (our many being always but few,) and from her girlhood to her old age, the entire ability of her life was given to serving us. She had a natural gift and speciality for doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of a sick room; so that she was never quite in her glory unless some of us were ill. She had also some parallel speciality for saying disagreeable things; and might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest view of any subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And she had a very creditable and republican aversion to doing immediately, or in set terms, as she was bid; so that when my mother and she got old
* Formerly “Meinie,” “attendant company.”3
1 [See Pickwick, ch. l.]
2 [See Vol. XXVIII. p. 317, where Ruskin gives some reminiscences of these delights.]
3 [See the note on Ruskin’s title Love’s Meinie, Vol. XXV. p. xxix.]
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 31
together, and my mother became very imperative and particular about having her teacup set on one side of her little round table, Anne would observantly and punctiliously put it always on the other; which caused my mother to state to me, every morning after breakfast, gravely, that if ever a woman in this world was possessed by the Devil, Anne was that woman.1 But in spite of these momentary and petulant aspirations to liberality and independence of character, poor Anne remained very servile in soul all her days; and was altogether occupied, from the age of fifteen to seventy - two, in doing other people’s wills instead of her own, and seeking other people’s good instead of her own: nor did I ever hear on any occasion of her doing harm to a human being, except by saving two hundred and some odd pounds for her relations; in consequence of which some of them, after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for several months.
32. The dickey then aforesaid, being indispensable for our guard Anne, was made wide enough for two, that my father might go outside also when the scenery and day were fine. The entire equipage was not a light one of its
1 [For a later reference to this passage, see ii. § 233 (
below, p. 465). In noting the death of Anne in his diary, Ruskin gives some characteristic sayings of his mother:
“31 March (1871). Coming home, find poor Annie dead. My mother’s epitaph upon her, ‘She always persecuted me. But one must hope there are intermediate kinds of places where people get better.’
“This morning (literal), ‘I think, of all the evil spirits I ever saw, she has acted worst to me. I blame myself entirely.’ (Pause, I wondering what was to come next.) ‘I ought to have sent her away three months after she came.’”
But, as we have seen, Mrs. Ruskin never sent away any servant (Vol. XIX. p. xxxvi.). For other references to Ruskin’s nurse, see Vol. XXII. p. xviii.; Vol. XXVIII. p. 317. Lady Burne - Jones, who saw Anne at Denmark Hill, thus describes her: “A white - haired, light - eyed, spare little figure, harsh and unattractive to our southern feeling. She had come as a bare - foot child into the service of the family, and was passionately devoted to her master and his son; but between her and her mistress relations were evidently strained, for I once heard Mrs. Ruskin address the aged dame in a tone such as one might use to a tiresome child, whilst Anne retorted with a want of deference that was certainly not the growth of the moment. But the best image to keep of the old nurse is that of her, having thrust all others aside, being first to mount the ladder reared in alarm against her old master’s window and to enter the locked room where he lay seized with mortal illness” (Memorials of Edward Burne - Jones, vol. i. pp. 300 - 301).]
32 PRÆTERITA - I
kind; but, the luggage being carefully limited, went gaily behind good horses on the then perfectly smooth mail roads; and posting, in those days, being universal, so that at the leading inns in every country town, the cry “Horses out!” down the yard, as one drove up, was answered, often instantly, always within five minutes, by the merry trot through the archway of the booted and bright - jacketed rider, with his caparisoned pair, - there was no driver’s seat in front: and the four large, admirably fitting and sliding windows, admitting no drop of rain when they were up, and never sticking as they were let down, formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw the country round, to the full half of the horizon. My own prospect was more extended still, for my seat was the little box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it; set upright in front (and well forward), between my father and mother. I was thus not the least in their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. When no object of particular interest presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with the postboy on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my father’s legs for horses; at first theoretically only, with dexterous motion of wrist; but ultimately in a quite practical and efficient manner, my father having presented me with a silver - mounted postillion’s whip.
33. The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the fifteenth of May, or thereabouts; - my father’s birthday was the tenth; on that day I was always allowed to gather the gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the Herne Hill garden; so that we could not leave before that festa. The holiday itself consisted in a tour for orders through half the English counties; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my aunt in Scotland.
34. The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of
I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 33
our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always early enough in the morning to arrive comfortably to four o’clock dinner. Generally, therefore, getting off at six o’clock, a stage or two were done before breakfast, with the dew on the grass, and first scent from the hawthorns; if in the course of the midday drive there were any gentleman’s house to be seen, - or, better still, a lord’s - or, best of all, a duke’s, - my father baited the horses, and took my mother and me reverently through the state rooms; always speaking a little under our breath to the housekeeper, major - domo, or other authority in charge; and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary illustrations of the history and domestic ways of the family might fall from their lips.
35. In analyzing above, page 16, the effect on my mind of all this, I have perhaps a little antedated the supposed resultant impression that it was probably happier to live in a small house than a large one. But assuredly, while I never to this day pass a lattice - windowed cottage without wishing to be its cottager, I never yet saw the castle which I envied to its lord; and although, in the course of these many worshipful pilgrimages, I gathered curiously extensive knowledge, both of art and natural scenery, afterwards infinitely useful, it is evident to me in retrospect that my own character and affections were little altered by them; and that the personal feeling and native instinct of me had been fastened, irrevocably, long before, to things modest, humble, and pure in peace, under the low red roofs of Croydon, and by the cress - set rivulets in which the sand danced and minnows darted above the Springs of Wandel.
xxxv. C
se at Herne Hill [f.p.34,r]
CHAPTER II1
HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS
36. WHEN I was about four years old my father found himself able to buy the lease of a house on Herne Hill, a rustic eminence four miles south of the “Standard in Cornhill”;2 of which the leafy seclusion remains, in all essential points of character, unchanged to this day:3 certain Gothic splendours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours, being the only serious innovations; and these are so graciously concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the passing viator remains unappalled by them; and I can still walk up and down the piece of road between the Fox tavern and the Herne Hill station, imagining myself four years old.
37. Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground is for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand,) on the dome of Mont Blanc; presently falling, however, in what may be, in the London clay formation,
1 [§§ 36 - 54 of this chapter are a collection of passages, slightly revised, from Fors Clavigera, Letters 54, 53 (1875), 33 (1873), and 42 (1874). For particulars and note of the revision, see the Bibliographical Note; above, p. xcii.]
2 [A water - standard, with four sprouts running at every tide four different ways, built in 1582 by Peter Morris, a Dutchman, the first person who conveyed Thames water into houses by pipes of lead. “The Standard stood near the junction of Cornhill with Leadenhall Street, and distances were formerly measured from it, as many of our suburban milestones still remain to prove” (Peter Cunningham’s Handbook of London, 1850, p. 141).]
3 [No longer so. Most of the old houses are now gone, and their gardens have been made into streets of small villas. Ruskin’s house (of which the front is shown on Plate IV. and the back on Plate V.) still remains (1908); Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn renewed the lease of it until September 1907, when they vacated it altogether. The window of Ruskin’s nursery (and during Mr. and Mrs. Severn’s tenancy, his bedroom) is on the top storey in front; the two windows of his old study are the one immediately below, and the one to the left. The top window most to the left on Plate V. is that of a little room from which Ruskin was fond of looking at the sunsets.]
II. HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 35
considered a precipitous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dulwich) on the east; and with a softer descent into Cold Harbour - lane* on the west: on the south, no less beautifully declining to the dale of the Effra, (doubtless shortened from Effrena, signifying the “Unbridled” river; recently, I regret to say, bricked over for the convenience of Mr. Biffin, chemist, and others); while on the north, prolonged indeed with slight depression some half mile or so, and receiving, in the parish of Lambeth, the chivalric title of “Champion Hill,” it plunges down at last to efface itself in the plains of Peckham, and the rural barbarism of Goose Green.
38. The group, of which our house was the quarter, consisted of two precisely similar partner - couples of houses, gardens and all to match; still the two highest blocks of buildings seen from Norwood on the crest of the ridge; so that the house itself, three - storied, with garrets above, commanded, in those comparatively smokeless days, a very notable view from its garret windows, of the Norwood hills on one side, and the winter sunrise over them; and of the valley of the Thames on the other, with Windsor telescopically clear in the distance, and Harrow, conspicuous always in fine weather to open vision against the summer sunset. It had front and back garden in sufficient proportion to its size; the front, richly set with old evergreens, and well - grown lilac and laburnum; the back, seventy
* Said in the History of Croydon to be a name which has long puzzled antiquaries, and nearly always found near Roman military stations.1
1 [“The hardships incident to travelling must have been much increased by the fewness of houses of entertainment along the roads. Where no religious house existed to receive the wayfarer, he would usually be compelled to content himself with the shelter of bare walls. The ruins of deserted Roman villas were no doubt often used by travellers who carried their own bedding and provisions, as is done by the frequenters of the khans and dak houses of the East. Such places seem commonly to have borne the name of COLD HARBOUR. (Compare the German Herberg, shelter, and the French auberge. See Notes and Queries, second series, vol. vi. pp. 143, 319.) In the neighbourhood of ancient lines of road we find no less than seventy places bearing this name, and about a dozen more bearing the analogous name of CALDICOT, or ‘cold cot.’” (Isaac Taylor’s Words and Places, 2nd edition, 1865, pp. 255 - 256.)]
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36 PRÆTERITA - I
yards long by twenty wide, renowned over all the hill for its pears and apples, which had been chosen with extreme care by our predecessor, (shame on me to forget the name of a man to whom I owe so much!)1 - and possessing also a strong old mulberry tree, a tall white - heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an almost unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and currant bush; decked, in due season, (for the ground was wholly beneficent,) with magical splendour of abundant fruit: fresh green, soft amber, and rough - bristled crimson bending the spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendant ruby joyfully discoverable under the large leaves that looked like vine.
39. The differences of primal importance which I observed between the nature of this garden, and that of Eden, as I had imagined it, were, that, in this one, all the fruit was forbidden;2 and there were no companionable beasts: in other respects the little domain answered every purpose of Paradise to me; and the climate, in that cycle of our years, allowed me to pass most of my life in it. My mother never gave me more to learn than she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set myself honestly to work, by twelve o’clock. She never allowed anything to disturb me when my task was set; if it was not said rightly by twelve o’clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in general, even when Latin Grammar came to supplement the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an hour before half - past one dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon.
40. My mother, herself finding her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, was often planting or pruning beside me, at least if I chose to stay beside her. I never thought of doing anything behind her back which I would not have done before her face; and her presence was therefore no restraint to me; but, also, no particular pleasure, for, from having always been left so much alone, I had generally my own little affairs to see after; and, on the whole, by
1 [The house was taken in 1823 from Mr. John Jones, a linen - draper in Cheapside.]
2 [See below, § 59 (p. 50).]
II. HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 37
the time I was seven years old, was already getting too independent, mentally, even of my father and mother; and, having nobody else to be dependent upon, began to lead a very small, perky, contented, conceited, Cock - Robinson - Crusoe sort of life, in the central point which it appeared to me, (as it must naturally appear to geometrical animals,) that I occupied in the universe.
41. This was partly the fault of my father’s modesty; and partly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my mother’s judgment as to such matters than in his own, that he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the conduct of my education; on the other hand, in the fixed purpose of making an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with the superfinest of manners, and access to the highest circles of fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, where I entirely loved my aunt, and young baker - cousins, became rarer and more rare: the society of our neighbours on the hill could not be had without breaking up our regular and sweetly selfish manner of living; and on the whole, I had nothing animate to care for, in a childish way, but myself, some nests of ants, which the gardener would never leave undisturbed for me, and a sociable bird or two; though I never had the sense or perseverance to make one really tame. But that was partly because, if ever I managed to bring one to be the least trustful of me, the cats got it.
Under these circumstances, what powers of imagination I possessed, either fastened themselves on inanimate things - the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, observable within the walls of Eden, - or caught at any opportunity of flight into regions of romance, compatible with the objective realities of existence in the nineteenth century, within a mile and a quarter of Camberwell Green.
42. Herein my father, happily, though with no definite intention other than of pleasing me, when he found he could do so without infringing any of my mother’s rules, became my guide. I was particularly fond of watching
38 PRÆTERITA - I
him shave; and was always allowed to come into his room in the morning (under the one in which I am now writing1), to be the motionless witness of that operation. Over his dressing - table hung one of his own water - colour drawings, made under the teaching of the elder Nasmyth; I believe, at the High School of Edinburgh. It was done in the early manner of tinting, which, just about the time when my father was at the High School, Dr. Monro was teaching Turner;2 namely, in grey under - tints of Prussian blue and British ink, washed with warm colour afterwards on the lights. It represented Conway Castle, with its Frith, and, in the foreground, a cottage, a fisherman, and a boat at the water’s edge.*
43. When my father had finished shaving, he always told me a story about this picture. The custom began without any initial purpose of his, in consequence of my troublesome curiosity whether the fisherman lived in the cottage, and where he was going to in the boat. It being settled, for peace’ sake, that he did live in the cottage, and was going in the boat to fish near the castle, the plot of the drama afterwards gradually thickened; and became, I believe, involved with that of the tragedy of Douglas, and of the Castle Spectre,3 in both of which pieces my father had performed in private theatricals, before my mother, and a select Edinburgh audience, when he was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave twenty, a model housekeeper, and very scornful and religiously suspicious of theatricals. But she was never weary of telling me, in later years, how
* This drawing is still over the chimney - piece of my bedroom at Brantwood.4
1 [That is, Ruskin’s old nursery; used by him as his study during Mr. and Mrs. Severn’s occupation of the house.]
2 [Thomas Monro (1759 - 1833), physician and connoisseur; Turner’s early patron: see Vol. XIII. pp. 255, 405.]
3 [Douglas, by John Home (1757), a Scottish minister; the play so offended the Presbytery, that its author left the ministry. The Castle Spectre, by “Monk” Lewis, brought out at Drury Lane in 1798.]
4 [It was shown by Ruskin at the Fine Art Society in 1878: see Vol. XIII. p. 489. For a further notice of it, see Fors, Letter 54 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 347).]
II. HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 39
beautiful my father looked in his Highland dress, with the high black feathers.
44. In the afternoons, when my father returned (always punctually) from his business, he dined, at half - past four, in the front parlour, my mother sitting beside him to hear the events of the day, and give counsel and encouragement with respect to the same; - chiefly the last, for my father was apt to be vexed if orders for sherry fell the least short of their due standard, even for a day or two. I was never present at this time, however, and only avouch what I relate by hearsay and probable conjecture; for between four and six it would have been a grave misdemeanour in me if I so much as approached the parlour door. After that, in summer time, we were all in the garden as long as the day lasted; tea under the white - heart cherry tree; or in winter and rough weather,1 at six o’clock in the drawing - room, - I having my cup of milk, and slice of bread - and - butter, in a little recess, with a table in front of it, wholly sacred to me; and in which I remained in the evenings as an Idol in a niche, while my mother knitted, and my father read to her, - and to me, so far as I chose to listen.
45. The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing towards its close, was still the chief source of delight in all households caring for literature; and I can no more recollect the time when I did not know them than when I did not know the Bible; but I have still a vivid remembrance of my father’s intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw down Count Robert of Paris, after reading three or four pages; and knew that the life of Scott was ended: the scorn being a very complex and bitter feeling in him, - partly, indeed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches who were tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and not a little, deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had essentially caused the ruin. My father never
1 [As You Like It, Act ii. sc. 5 (song).]
40 PRÆTERITA - I
could forgive Scott his concealment of the Ballantyne partnership.
46. Such being the salutary pleasures of Herne Hill, I have next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owe to my mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to my ear in habitual music, - yet in that familiarity reverenced, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.*
This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether; that she did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.
In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation, - if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience, - if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed, - none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs, - and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what
* Compare the 52nd paragraph of chapter iii. of The Bible of Amiens
[Vol. XXXIII. p. 119.]
II. HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 41
was already known; and, with the chapters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.
It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive - the 119th Psalm - has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His gospel.1
47. But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, - toil on both sides equal - by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one - try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the “of” in the lines
“Shall any following spring revive
The ashes of the urn?” - 2
I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and their contents,) on reciting it with an accented of. It was not, I say, till after three weeks’ labour, that my mother got the accent lightened on the “of” and laid on the ashes, to her mind. But had it taken three years she would have done it, having once
1 [Compare Fors, Letters 53 and 70 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 319, 719); and for Ruskin’s numerous references to the Psalm, see the General Index.]
2 [John Logan in one of the Scottish Church Paraphrases: see the note in Vol. XXVII. p. 617.]
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undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, - well, there’s no knowing what would have happened; but I’m very thankful she did.
48. I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible, - a small, closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age; and flexible, but not unclean, with much use; except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32nd Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost me much pains. My mother’s list of the chapters with which, thus learned, she established my soul in life,* has just fallen out of it. I will take what indulgence the incurious reader can give me, for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent:
Exodus,chapters15th and 20th.
2 Samuel”1st, from 17th verse to the end.
1 Kings”8th.
Psalms”23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 112th, 119th, 139th.
Proverbs”2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th.
Isaiah”58th.
Matthew”5th, 6th, 7th.
Acts”26th.
1 Corinthians”13th, 15th.
James”4th.
Revelation”5th, 6th.
And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further knowledge - in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after life, - and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this maternal installation of my mind
* This expression in Fors1 has naturally been supposed by some readers to mean that my mother at this time made me vitally and evangelically religious. The fact was far otherwise. I meant only that she gave me secure ground for all future life, practical or spiritual. See the paragraph next following.
1 [That is, in Letter 42, here embodied in Præterita: see Vol. XXVIII. p. 101.]
II. HERNE - HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 43
in that property of chapters I count very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my education.1
And it is perhaps already time to mark what advantage and mischief, by the chances of life up to seven years old, had been irrevocably determined for me.
I will first count my blessings (as a not unwise friend2 once recommended me to do, continually; whereas I have a bad trick of always numbering the thorns in my fingers and not the bones in them).
And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word.
I never had heard my father’s or mother’s voice once raised in any question with each other; nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or offended, glance in the eyes of either. I had never heard a servant scolded; nor even suddenly, passionately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had never seen a moment’s trouble or disorder in any household matter; nor anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due time.3 I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety; my father’s occasional vexation in the afternoons, when he had only got an order for twelve butts after expecting one for fifteen, as I have just stated, was never manifested to me; and itself related only to the question whether his name would be a step higher or lower in the year’s list of sherry exporters; for the never spent more than half his income, and therefore found himself little incommoded by occasional variations in the total of it. I had never done any wrong that I knew of - beyond occasionally delaying the commitment to heart of some
1 [See, again, Vol. XXVIII. p. 102, for a passage (not repeated in Præterita) in further illustration.]
2 [In his copy of Fors, Ruskin here made the following marginal note:
“Mr. S. C. Hall! when I saw the ferns shake with Home at Séance.” For the séances in question, see Vol. XVIII. p. xxxi.]
3 [Compare the account of the quietude in Scott’s house, in Fors, Letter 33 (Vol. XXVII. p. 612).]
etc etc
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