Photographs of Christ Church, Oxford . Courtesy of George P. Landow. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
It was a family affair when John Ruskin went up to Christ Church in January 1837, and remained so throughout the three years of his undergraduate studies. Margaret Ruskin, his ever vigilant, overprotective mother, and his cousin Mary Richardson took lodgings in the High Street, Oxford, where they were joined by John James Ruskin at weekends.
Lodgings at Oxford (90 High Street) by John Ruskin. c. 1851-52. Pencil on paper Source: facing 35.199. Praeterita, Ruskin's autobiography, reveals that these were his mother's lodgings, not Ruskin's (199-200).
It was at Christ Church that Ruskin first met Osborne Gordon (or Gordon as he always called him); indeed, the whole family made his acquaintance. This was the beginning of a mutually enriching, lifelong friendship. The Ruskin family liked Gordon very much and judged that he was a most suitable person to invite to their home at Herne Hill. John James, himself a wine merchant, felt a particular affinity with the Broseley wine merchant's son. He may have traded with Gordon's father or with the prominent Broseley wine and spirit merchant Slaney & Son, established in 1780. He and Margaret reached out to this scholar who had been deprived of a father at the age of nine.
Gordon, "a pearl among tutors" (Feiling 175), was Ruskin's tutor at Christ Church. In a letter of 1837, Henry George Liddell (1811-1898), then a tutor at Christ Church, described Ruskin as "a very strange fellow, always dressing in a great-coat with a brown velvet collar, and a large neckcloth tied over his mouth, and living quite in his own way" (Quoted Hilton, Early Years, 48). The fact that Ruskin was chaperoned by his mother during all his Oxford studies would surely have been sufficient for him to be ragged, or at least teased by fellow students. But Ruskin did not seem to care. Gordon sensed Ruskin’s potential vulnerability and told William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), during the latter's Commemoration visit in 1852, that Ruskin "had been made the subject of a great deal of horse-play on account of his avoidance of sports" (35.lxiii). Ruskin in later life described Gordon at that time as "a man of curious intellectual power and simple virtue" (35.192), and on another occasion as an "entirely right-minded and accomplished scholar" (35.198). He emerged as a kindly, caring, almost paternal figure – a "midwife" according to Malcolm Hardman (personal communication) –, giving Ruskin reassurance about his examinations and helping the nervous undergraduate to overcome his apprehension (Burd II, 490). Ruskin passed and Gordon was singled out for praise in Margaret Ruskin's letter of 4 March 1838: "Mr Gordon was early with him [John Ruskin] in the morning and accompanied him to the door of School and afterwards run to secure his testamur [certificate for having passed an examination] as soon as possible showing himself all through much interested and very kind" (II, 500). By late autumn 1838, Gordon was giving Ruskin extra private tuition. "Mr Gordon now very frequently reads from nine till ten with John after he leaves us", Margaret informed her husband. This was a source of great enjoyment for she added: "John assures me he has never felt the slightest degree of head ake fatigue or weariness of Brain from what he does at present (II, 550). The following payments for tuition were by John James Ruskin, under the general heading of John's Oxford Expenses, to Gordon in 1838: in March, £13. 2s; in June, £26.5s; and in December £12.2s (Ms 28, Lancaster).
Christ Church, Oxford by John Ruskin (1819-1900). Watercolour. Source: Works, facing 35.188.
In January 1839, Ruskin attended lectures given by Robert Hussey, then Censor of Christ Church, the Rev. Edward Hill and Gordon. Gordon was by now on more intimate terms with Ruskin and confided to him that he had had to return to Shropshire as he had been worried about the health of his widowed mother, Elizabeth. He "came up yesterday" Margaret Ruskin wrote to her husband, "in great spirits, his mother quite well again" (II, 565). Occasionally, during vacations, Gordon also returned to his old school at Bridgnorth (Marshall 3). In late February, we learn that Ruskin has "gone to his rooms to study with Mr Gordon" (Burd II, 592). The details of Ruskin's performance at the end of term were relayed by Margaret Ruskin to her husband, on 5 June 1839: "Mr Brown told Gordon John had done very well indeed – he answered every divinity question – and the greater part of all in Mathematiks &c." (Burd II, 624).
Two Views of Herne Hill from the Library Edition of Works: The Front of the Ruskin Home and the Back Garden.
At some point in their conversations, it was agreed that Gordon would give Ruskin some extra tuition and coaching during vacations. Gordon recognised in the young student qualities and talents that could be developed and stretched even beyond what Oxford offered. Twenty-six-year-old Gordon stayed at the Ruskin family home at 28 Herne Hill (their home from March 1823 until 1842) in the Long Vacation or early autumn of 1839. He came, Ruskin recalled in Praeterita, "to be my private tutor, and read with me in our little nursery" (35.249). At the rear of the large house was an extensive garden with fruit trees and vegetables, and a stable at the end that also doubled as a kennel, sketched by Arthur Severn (facing 35.36). Ruskin described in detail the gardens front and back:
The front, richly set with old evergreens, and well-grown lilac and laburnum; the back, seventy yards long by twenty wide, renowned over all the hill for its pears and apples [...] 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 [...] 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. [35.35-36; I am indebted to Dearden's Camberwell p. 8, for this information about 28 Herne Hill.]
The house was situated on the brow of a hill. From the upper floor there were views over the countryside, the Norwood Hills and the Thames Valley, St Paul's Cathedral, Windsor, Harrow, Dulwich Valley, and open fields with cattle grazing. Ruskin's own room (his "nursery"), with an arched window, was at the very top of the house. The precise number of rooms is unknown, but the four-storeyed dwelling was large enough to accommodate guests as well as members of staff.
In 1839, John James Ruskin made at least three payments to Gordon for tuition, each of £17.10s, in February, June and December, recorded under the heading of "John's Oxford Expenses" (Ms 28, Lancaster). It is to be noted that under the same heading, the expenses for John's wine and spirits at Oxford, in 1838 and 1839, were considerable!
Gordon was preparing Ruskin for "the last push" (35.255), the twenty-year-old's Oxford finals due in 1840. Ruskin had been overworking and was under considerable pressure, not only from his parents but also from the effects of his unrequited and clumsy, unrealistic love affair with young Adèle-Clothilde Domecq, one of the daughters of his father's Spanish, Roman Catholic business partner. Gordon's first and urgent task was to make his charge relax and unwind. The rustic metaphor of ravelled ends of flax that need to be twisted and reshaped is Ruskin's own: "Taking up the ravelled ends of yet workable and spinnable flax in me, [Gordon] began to twist them, at first through much wholesome pain, into such tenor as they were really capable of" (35.249-250).
These could also have been symptoms of one of many breakdowns that plagued Ruskin with increasing intensity throughout his life. Gordon was an excellent teacher and his first advice to his pupil and protégé in order to relieve the pressure was: "When you have got too much to do, don't do it" (35.250). We know that Ruskin rarely followed this advice, but he certainly remembered it. It became almost a catch phrase, as Collingwood recalled many years later and gave an instance of Ruskin actually heeding what we know was Gordon's advice. When confronted by great difficulty in landing his boat on Coniston Water, Ruskin refused to struggle, as W. G. Collingwood observed: “Now Ruskin was a very practical man in some things. ‘When you have too much to do, don't do it,’ he used to say. So after a wild water-gallop, he simply landed and walked home. When the wind changed he could bring back his boat. There was no use in making a pain of a pleasure” (Ruskin Relics, 18-21).
Only six years in age separated Ruskin and Gordon, a divide that narrowed and eventually became unimportant as time passed. The relationship of tutor-student evolved and changed to that of two good friends who mutually respected each other. At Herne Hill, they walked, and talked about religion, about art, about Turner and his Richmond Bridge, Surrey that Ruskin had received as a present from his father. A second Turner painting, Gosport, was acquired during Gordon’s 1839 stay (35.254). It is difficult to find fault with Gordon: he was, wrote Ruskin, "a practical Englishman, of the shrewdest, yet gentlest type; keenly perceptive of folly, but disposed to pardon most human failings as little more" (35.251). The former University College Oxford student William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932), who became Ruskin's secretary, friend and biographer, described Gordon as "famous for his scholarship but still more for his tact [and] was always regarded with affectionate respect" (Life I, 82).
Gordon was a rigorous tutor whose questioning style of instruction and belief in grammatical analysis provided Ruskin with the realisation not only of its importance in literature and language but also its relevance to the technique or grammar of drawing. In a letter to Henry Acland (c. 1840), Ruskin recalled Gordon's method: "One day I was declaiming to Gordon on the poetical merits of a noble passage in one of the Dramatists, but could not construe the first line accurately, when requested so to do. In Drawing only, I learned by grammar thoroughly" (36.21). Ruskin's Elements of Drawing (1857) would demonstrate these principles: likewise, the grammar of architecture is a subject that permeates his writings.
Ruskin provided a perceptive and praiseworthy snapshot of his tutor in Praeterita:
In his proper work with me, no tutor could have been more diligent or patient. His own scholarly power was of the highest order; his memory (the necessary instrument of great scholarship) errorless and effortless; his judgment and feeling in literature sound; his interpretation of political events always rational, and founded on wide detail of well-balanced knowledge; and all this without in the least priding himself on his classic power, or wishing to check any of my impulses in other directions. He had taken his double first with the half of his strength, and would have taken a triple one without priding himself on it: he was amused by my facility in rhyming, recognized my instinct in painting, and sympathised with me in love of country life and picturesque towns, but always in a quieting and reposeful manner. [35.252]
In January 1840, Ruskin returned to Oxford, to lodgings in St Aldate's, where "very steady work" (35.255) continued under Gordon's "wholesome moderatorship" (35.259). A payment of £10 was made by John James to Gordon in January 1840 (Ms 28, Lancaster). In a letter of 24 January written from London, to his wife in Oxford, John James refers to having been with Gordon, but the circumstances are not clear: "I came in with Gordon & felt sorry at parting & the entire break up, but we never know our pleasures till they are gone" (Burd II, 634).
While the entire country was preoccupied with the forthcoming controversial royal wedding between Queen Victoria and her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Corburg-Gotha, John James and Margaret Ruskin were planning a party to celebrate their son's coming of age. It was held in Oxford on Saturday 8 February 1840, and guests included two much loved college tutors, Walter Lucas Brown, Reader in Rhetoric, and Osborne Gordon (Burd II, 635). Ruskin's father purchased a new set of clothes, ordered quantities of wine, gave his son Turner's drawing of Winchelsea, the ancient seaside town in Sussex about two miles south west of Rye, and shares valued at £7500 producing an annual interest of £315 (Burd II, 635). Although this grand occasion marked a legal threshold in Ruskin's life, it did not give him the much-needed psychological independence from his parents. He remained a boy in their eyes. Similarly, John James regarded Victoria and Albert as children – they were both aged twenty – and disapproved of their marriage. Of Queen Victoria he wrote that she "is but a silly child & seems to have no Character"; of Albert he expressed the wish that "the Boy may grow into something better" (Burd II, 640).
A recreational interest that Ruskin and Gordon shared was fencing. Ruskin's father paid for his son to have both fencing and archery lessons: in April 1840, the cost was recorded as being £2 for archery, and £5.13s for fencing (Ms 28, Lancaster). Gordon was a skilled fencer, and on one occasion in 1840 his opponent was Shropshire-born (from Clungunford) Charles Thomas Newton (1816-1894), a senior at Christ Church when Ruskin was a freshman; Newton later became an archaeologist, Keeper at the British Museum and a lifelong friend of Ruskin. John James comments on Gordon's prowess and agility: "I do not see that Mr Newton was foiled by Gordon who attacks in a fashion that no man however cunning in fence has learned to cope with. It is like having a man at one side to run you through Sideways" (Burd II, 655-56).
At the very beginning of March 1840, a glimpse of some acrimony, or at the very least a degree of tension between Gordon and the Ruskins became apparent, in connection with Ruskin's studies and the parents’ desire to travel during clement weather. In a letter of 3 March 1840, John James Ruskin informed W. H. Harrison that Ruskin was "not going up for Degree until later which is a great relief to us as he was Killing himself with reading" (Burd II, 661n). It appears that in view of Ruskin's superior intelligence, knowledge and capacity to work hard, it was decided, in consulation with his tutor Walter Brown, that Ruskin's time at Oxford could be reduced. He could aim for a high class degree by the end of the next term, but that naturally meant that he would be subject to intense pressure. Ruskin became the subject of conflicting pressures and victim of an impending nervous breakdown.
One can surmise that Gordon had formulated a plan to keep Ruskin in England, perhaps at Oxford, during the autumn of 1840, no doubt hoping that he could extend the period of his studies at a more leisurely pace. Mr and Mrs Ruskin had other plans for their precious child – to leave for the Continent while the weather was sufficiently clement for travelling. If Ruskin continued his Oxford studies at a more leisurely pace, as Gordon suggested, it "derange[d]" the travel habits of the Ruskin family. This was a most selfish reason and emphasised the rigidity of the habits of this close family unit. John James Ruskin asked his wife, still at Oxford, to clear up any misunderstanding:
Will you say distinctly to Mr Gordon that although it deranges our plan of going abroad by making us travel in depth of winter in place of in mild autumn – I mind nothing so much as Johns continuing a member of Ch Church & terminating Studies there with Credit. I wish this conveyed because I think G[ordon] expected me to be greatly annoyed & now tries to please us by saying it might have been worse. I am sorry for anything being done even by ignorance or omission against College rules. I am greatly obliged by so rigid an Enforcer of rules as the Dean treating my Son with lenity & consideration. [Burd II, 660]
The pressure of work was intense, "until twelve at night [and] from six in the morning, with little exercise, no cheerfulness, and no sense of any use in what I read", Ruskin recalled in Praeterita (35.259). Barely had the term started when, late one evening during the weekend of 18-19 April, after Gordon had left at about ten o'clock, Ruskin experienced "a short tickling cough [...] preceded by a curious sensation in the throat, and followed by a curious taste in the mouth" (35.259; Hewison, Art 4). It was blood. Margaret Ruskin attempted to minimise the severity of the situation, even though "doctors, almost uninimously, – Sir James Clark excepted – gave gloomier views" (35.260). Under the cloak of great secrecy, Ruskin was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a highly dangerous, contagious and often fatal lung disease, almost a death sentence. Not only was tuberculosis dangerous, it carried with it a dreadful social stigma, for it was associated with poverty, dirt and insalubrious conditions. It is thanks to the diligent research of Robert Brownell that we know the truth about Ruskin's mysterious illness and the meaning of the "gloomier views" expressed by nearly all the doctors consulted, views that must has terrified his parents (56-66). Armed with this inside information, we can better understand the constant parental concern about John's health. The court physician Sir James Clark (1788-1870) ordered wintering abroad, in Italy, and being "in open carriages as much as possible" (35.260). This advice would have suited Mr and Mrs Ruskin!
So Ruskin left Oxford, only returning some eighteen months later to complete his period of residence and receive a degree. That is a fairly bland statement that conceals much argument, discussion, and soul-searching. It was not crowning Ruskin in glory to leave his Oxford studies before completion and he remained bitter about having to depart in such circumstances. So the Ruskins left England on 15 September 1840 for a continental journey that lasted for nine months – an entire gap year. They went to Rouen, Chartres, the Loire Valley, the Auvergne, Nice, Rome and as far south as Naples "1651 miles from London", noted John James in his diary, returning via Venice, Turin, Chambéry, Geneva, Nancy, Châlons-sur-Marne, Rheims and Laon. They did not return to England until late June 1841.
However, Ruskin had still not recovered from his illness, and doctors advised a cure at the fashionable spa town of Leamington, in Warwickshire. Ruskin stayed there, first at the Bedford Hotel, then later in lodgings at 53 Russell Terrace – a blue plaque was erected in 2006 to mark his stay – for much of the summer and early autumn, apart from a short walking holiday with Richard Fall. He was under the care of physician Dr Henry Jephson who recommended a special diet, warm baths and spa water. The regime did not have the desired effect, and by early October Ruskin's health was again a cause of great concern to his father: "Your letter today causes me some anxiety. You do not say you are well" (Burd II, 691). The isolation Ruskin felt was also detrimental to his recovery. His solitary state was broken by a welcome visit from the Rev. Osborne Gordon (ordained priest in June 1840), on Wednesday, 6 October 1841. Far from being harmful, as John James Ruskin suggested, this contributed to Ruskin's intellectual wellbeing. They spent at least the evening together; it was a happy and stimulating occasion, as Ruskin records in his diary: “Gordon with me last night; very glad to see him again and looking well. I was sorry to find that in talking with him on philosophical subjects I seemed to be far less clear in my thoughts and language than I used to be. It may be want of practice” (Diaries, I, 214).
Ruskin was fascinated by spiritualism, and by dreams and their interpretation. So it is perhaps significant that what interested him in particular was Gordon's account, during his visit to Leamington, of an identical dream experienced by Earl Grey (possibly a reference to Charles, 2nd Earl (1764-1845), one time Whig Prime Minister, whose name is associated with a kind of China tea flavoured with bergamot that we know as Earl Grey tea), and his daughter:
Curious story he told me about Earl Grey and his daughter: That they saw the same head appear at the foot of their beds without a body; the daughter merely thought of it as a vivid and disagreeable dream, mentioned it to her sister in the morning as she was dressing. At breakfast Earl Grey mentioned his having seen it also, and his daughter fainted instantly. This Gordon had from a lady who heard it from his daughter's own lips. It is reported that Earl G. has since been haunted constantly by this head – Whitbread's, Gordon thought. [Diaries, I, 214-15]
The mention of "Whitbread's" may be a reference to the Venerable Thomas Whitbread, a Catholic martyr executed at Tyburn in 1679. Peel had fought against Catholic rights in Ireland for two decades, but had been forced to support the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Ruskin does not comment on the dream with its foreboding overtones. Unconsciously did he make a homonymic connection with Effie Gray, his wife-to-be? The teenager was at that time very much on his mind, for he was composing a fairy story, The King of the Golden River, to amuse her. Did the dream so terrify him that he conveyed his anxiety to his father? John James Ruskin expressed further concern, and went so far as to blame Gordon for his growing influence, saying: "I am afraid you have exposed yourself too much with Gordon." There were many unanswered questions in John James's mind, particularly about his son's health and studies: "Why not have said if Gordon Said anything of your appearance – [...] Has Gordon changed your Intention as to time of going to Oxford?" (Burd II, 691).
On the same day, 7 October, Margaret Ruskin was writing independently to her son expressing her confidence in Gordon and inviting the tutor to stay (again) with them at Herne Hill: "I am delighted to find your regard for Gordon unabated and that he has done something toward Removal of your difficulties – we would try and find means of accommodating him [...] if he would pay us a visit – you will see him when you go to Oxford" (Burd II, 694-95).
In a reply to his father on 8 October, Ruskin had mentioned Gordon's high praise of him at Oxford. But in a somewhat cursory and cutting response that must have angered his son, John James commented dismissively: "Gordon remembered you at your best at Oxford – if he remembered at all. People say something at times considered at other times unconsidered trifles" (Burd II, 700). These extracts are typical of the undercurrent of tension apparent between father and son, mother and son in much of the correspondence.
A month later, Ruskin was back at Herne Hill "with his wise tutor" (Collingwood, Life I, 96). It was an almost futile effort to catch up on eighteen months of missed tuition of an academic kind, particularly in Greek, Latin and Mathematics. Ruskin had already begun his education at the University of Life, sketching, writing, observing, criticising, studying geology, botany, history and geography during that nine-month tour of France and Italy in 1840-1841. Modern Painters, a seminal work that would hit the headlines in May 1843, was already germinating in his mind. Gordon guided Ruskin judiciously along the right path at this critical time. He was extremely sensitive to Ruskin's needs and knew how to get the best out of his student. He sensed that if he had forced him to study Greek at the level required for the Oxford honours examination, his protégé would most probably have had a complete nervous breakdown. Whereas other Oxford dons regarded Greek constructions as essential for life, Gordon simply replied, "with Delphic double-entendre", to Ruskin: "I think it would hardly be worth your while" (Collingwood, Life I, 96). Pressure was relieved by Gordon's steadying presence.
In April 1842, Ruskin was awarded an honorary degree, a Double Fourth. He could now legitimately call himself "A Graduate of Oxford", his signature on the first volume of Modern Painters. Soon after, the family departed on 24 May for another continental tour, returning on 19 August 1842. He was leaving behind an atmosphere of theological debate in Oxford. The question of Sundays, a subject of heated discussion between Ruskin and Gordon, left Gordon in a sorrowful state, dramatically described by John James as "troubled in Spirit for he looks like Niobe weeping for her Children" (Burd II, 732). This is an allusion to the Greek myth of Niobe whose seven sons and seven daughters were killed by Apollo and Artemis, as a punishment for her arrogance. Niobe in her grief was turned to stone, which continued to shed tears. John James's hyperbolic portrayal of Gordon suggests both the Shakespearean overtones of Hamlet's mother's grief at the death of her husband "Like Niobe, all tears" (I,2, l. 149), and the painting, The Destruction of Niobe and her Children, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, near the Ruskin family home.
In Chamonix 1842
The Glacier des Bossons, Chamouni by John Ruskin. Source: (21.35).
Planning for the tour abroad had started in the spring. Ruskin asked his father for permission for Gordon to join the family in Chamonix. John James Ruskin happily agreed and wrote to his son: "I shall be very glad to see Gordon at Chamouni." He added, with perhaps a reference to Gordon's dry humour: "Some of his dry things will be very agreeable in that wet & snowy Region" (Burd II, 727). So he was invited to join the party during some of his Long Vacation, partly as a recompense for his help and sound advice at a critical moment in Ruskin's life, but also as a congenial companion.
Gordon stayed on to honour his academic commitments at Christ Church and joined the Ruskin family in Chamonix in late June 1842. We do not know which route he took or whether he travelled alone. Chamonix at the time was under Sardinian rule and Savoy, in which it is situated, was not annexed to France until 1860. Savoy belonged to Piedmont from 1815 until 1860, with the administrative capital at Turin. Ruskin's long engagement with Savoy led him to believe that its annexation to France would "be an immense benefit to Savoy" (36.340). For it was a particularly poor region, one that Ruskin described in terms of "miasma" when writing to his friend Dr John Brown, the Edinburgh doctor and writer, on 6 August 1860: "A few million of francs judiciously spent will gain to Savoy as many millions of acres of fruitfullest land and healthy air instead of miasma" (36.340). When Ruskin had first discovered Chamonix – he usually preferred the old spelling of Chamouni – in 1833 it was a remote, isolated hamlet nestling in the great Alpine Valley. It remained one of his favourite places. He returned time and time again, until his last visit in 1888, and found there enjoyment, stimulation and solace. It satisfied so many of his needs. But over fifty years he witnessed dramatic and irreversible changes in landscape (the disappearance of the Glacier des Bois) and in society (the development of organised tourism and the construction of hotels and the railway).
Ruskin and Gordon were both vigorous, athletic young men. They went climbing in the Alps, scaling the Bréven – within 300 feet of the top – some 8284 feet above sea level, north-west of the village of Chamonix. The Bréven provided some of the finest views of Mont Blanc and its Massif. A registered, competent local guide, a member of the Compagnie des guides their regulatory and professional body, was always advisable and Ruskin engaged Jean-Michel Dévouassoud (1787-1864), one of the most renowned guides who had participated in several ascents of Mont Blanc. In 1825, he had escorted Victor and Adèle Hugo up the peaks. Dévouassoud was now fifty-five years old, and, according to the regulations for guides, would have to retire at sixty. Ruskin's recollections of him in Praeterita as a guide of "average standard [...] who knew his way to the show places, and little more" (35.315) are, to say the least, ungenerous.
Ruskin noted in his diary on Wednesday, 29 June 1842: "Up to within three hundred feet of top of Bréven, with Gordon, on a perfect day, cloudless and windless, and mistless till 12" (Diaries, I, 228). It was beautiful but dangerous, for Ruskin had spotted a threatening avalanche and had not, it seemed, drawn Gordon's attention to it. Writing his diary entry a few weeks later from Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, and now with a certain detachment, he reflected on its majesty:
I consider myself, looking back, as more fortunate in the single avalanche I saw from the Bréven with Gordon than even in all the fine weather I had at Chamouni. Its dense, symmetrical, globular, multitudinous masses of foamy smoke; their majestic yet lightning advance along the level field of the Glacier des Pèlerins; the sharp edges with which each volume was defined, and depth of shadow between them and the snow beneath, were all characteristics which I never saw approached – even in kind, much less in degree – by any of the numberless falls I saw in the rest of the month. That I saw on the morning of the 26th was remarkable for the height and extent of its rising vapour, but had no defined masses (Diaries, I, 231).
Ruskin's watercolour entitled Chamouni, sketched during his 1842 stay, captures some of the "foamy smoke" and threatening avalanches (35.plate XX, facing 328).
Against this backcloth, Ruskin was seething with concealed anger that was to goad him into action as an art critic and spring to the defence of Turner. The reason was the way in which critics had reviewed Turner’s paintings in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1842. Ruskin only read some of these reports when he arrived in Geneva on his tour. Many treated Turner’s works in a mocking, ribald and derisory way, seeming not to have any understanding of the great artist’s intentions. Nor did they make any attempt to understand. A reviewer in The Literary Gazette of 14 May 1842 wrote: "The Dogano and Campo Santo have a gorgeous ensemble, and produced by wonderful art, but they mean nothing. They are produced as if by throwing handfuls of white, and blue, and red, at the canvas, letting what chanced to stick, stick." That same reviewer’s hostility increased; Burial at Sea excited "ridicule" and War: the Exile and the Rock-Limpet (the subject was Napoleon) was "truly ludicrous" (3. xxiv).
Ruskin did not, at this stage, share these thoughts about the role of art and the artist with Gordon. It was not until March 1844 that he revealed to Gordon how incensed he had been in 1842 about the ignorance of the so-called art critics and how the idea for Modern Painters had germinated. His original idea was to respond in a pamphlet, but the deeper he reflected, the bigger the project became and grew like the heads on the mythological Hydra. It seemed almost out of control and Ruskin must have found it a daunting task, fearing that he would never complete it. He tried to delay writing but by so doing, the size of the task increased. He explained his dilemma to Gordon:
I put off my pamphlet till I got home. I meditated all the way down the Rhine, found that demonstration in matters of art was no such easy matter, and the pamphlet turned into a volume. Before the volume was half way dealt with it hydraized into three heads, and each head became a volume. Finding that nothing could be done except on such enormous scale, I determined to take the hydra by the horns, and produce a complete treatise on landscape art. [3.666]
That led on to questions; "what is the real end of landscape art?" and reflections as to whether art "might become an instrument of gigantic moral power" (3.666).
Last modified 12 March 2020