Last Words
The Diaries of John Ruskin, 1874-1889. Selected and edited by Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse. (O.U.P., 70s.)
RUSKIN began the composition of Prieterita, from a literary point of view probably the most valuable, and certainly the most enjoyable, of all the books that he was to leave behind him, during the first half of the year 1885. By the summer of 1889, with the issue of two further sections of his autobiography, he reached the end, so far as writing was concerned, of his adventurous journey in search of past times; for, although the story remained .unfinished, his powers of narration were rapidly melting away. That same year, the private journal that he had kept since 1835 also came to an abrupt close. 'It is no use [he recorded on September 27, 1888] any longer trying to keep any diary of days which fly like a weaver's shuttle.' And, two days later, he inscribed a single line : 'September 30th. Sunday—but I don't know what is going to become of me.' In 1889 he sum- moned up strength to jot down a paragraph, meant to supply a hint for the final volume of Pralerita, but concluded with an anecdote about one of Mrs. Severn's children : ' "Do you know, mother, look- ing at that beautiful picture of these melons is quite a feast to me." Baby waking, 12th May 1889, of Hunt's melons in his mother's room.'
Such were his last words as a writer and teacher, before he slipped back into the limbo of memories and dreams. But the little anecdote has a pathetic significance if we consider Ruskin's own life; for he, too, had loved nature no less passionately than he loved art, and had fed greedily on the miracu- lous feast that art and nature spread beneath his eyes. The great prophet was an :esthetic hedonist as well as a fierce critic and a stern moralist. Few men have been so deeply enamoured of the sensuous splendour of the natural world—the beauty of human bodies, of flowers and trees and landscapes and clouds; yet among these sensuous delights there always lurked a nest of serpents; and, as the years rushed by and a feeling of frustration increased, a serpent—symbol of 'permitted evil'—arose to torm.:nt him from every knot of leafage; until the conviction grew that nature itself was changing, and that the loveliest landscapes were becoming dark and blurred.
The closing volume of Ruskin's Diaries, edited with meticulous care by Dr. Joan Evans and the late John Howard Whitehouse, opens in January, 1874. Rose La Touche, the sickly and neurotic Irish girl on whom he had founded his last hopes of human happiness, had already slipped beyond his grasp. But Rose had not yet completely van- ished; and their final meeting took place in Feb- ruary, 1875. Then, on May 26. she died, and the page that no doubt recorded her death has been cut from the manuscript of Ruskin's journal. But, although his comments have now disappeared, the effect of that culminating blow colours many of the succeeding entries. Now that his illusions had entirely collapsed, he fell more and more under the sway of nightmares and perverse delusions. Rose had represented youth and purity and hope. Her death brought him face to face with a universe in which evil was the dominant principle; and that principle was making its mark even on the pros- pects he had most dearly loved. A radiant sunset was often 'impure'; a 'black wind' heralded the 'plague cloud,' which covered the landscape with a 'frantic yellow desolation' and reduced the celestial firmament to 'one blotch of filth.'
Simultaneously, he continued to be troubled by unnerving and repulsive dreams, which he recol- lected and described in detail—'a wonderful study
[he had noted shortly before Rose La Touche's death]: the various ingenuities of their unpleasant- ness.' And we observe the approach of the disastrous mental breakdown that overtook him during the early months of 1878, 'the first great phrenzied illness' that preluded a series of bouts of mania. For a while he recovered, if not the gift of full enjoyment, at least the gift of con- centration. The admirably vivid descriptive pas- sages that illuminate previous sections of his journal are much less numerous than in previous volumes; but here and there he still writes ecstati- cally of an ancient building or a clump of flowers —'studied dew on Sweet William yesterday; the divine crimson lighted by the fire of each minute lens. 1 never noticed this before . . .'—or pauses to portray an Alpine shepherdess—'Girl of eighteen or twenty in simple red handkerchief over head and violet gown, leading a beautiful goat, not by a cord but a long leafy sapling twined round its neck, the most beautiful pastoral figure lever saw.'
Ruskin had always been particularly sensitive to the charm of his fellow human beings, and had contrasted their freedom and strength and grace with his woeful lack of uninhibited vigour. Thus, in 1879, after a visit to the circus, he comments on 'the splendid fellows and girls and horses so humiliating to me in their own power and virtue.' At the same time, the author of Pra'terita was an extraordinarily self-centred man; and his journal shows the barriers of his tormented self gradually closing in around him. Apart from Carlyle whom he loved and revered, he seldom mentions a con- temporary writer, though C'arlyle's friend Mill is allowed a short and savage reference: 'John Stewart Mill has no more sap in him than a tooth- pick. and no more fancy than a toadstool.' Other- wise, he seems to suffer alone, an angry prophet whose comminations are not always devoid of self-righteousness, though his spiritual arrogance is accompanied and qualified by a self-destructive sense of sin. That sense of sin, derived from his childhood, grew stronger and more oppressive while he advanced throughout middle life; but, though it may perhaps have distorted his genius, it also engendered the inward conflict that, as necessary irritant and stimulus, every man of genius would appear to need. Ruskin's diaries should be read in conjunction with the huge mass of his previously published works. By illustrating the tragic downfall of his mind, they throw into sharp relief his magnificent creative qualities.
Previous page
