Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

the professor; and the professor, with his oldworld, cavalier loyalty, readily returned the esteem and affection of his new pupil. A sincere friendship was formed, lasting until the prince's death, which nobody lamented more bitterly than the man who had found so much in him and hoped so much froni him.

At the end of the next summer term (June, 1875) Princess Alice and her husband, with Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, were at Oxford. Mr. Ruskin had just made arrangements completing his gifts to the university galleries and schools. The royal party showed great interest in the professor and his work. The princess, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and Prince Leopold acted as witnesses to the deed of gift; and Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold accepted the trusteeship.

With all the Slade professor's generosity, the Ruskin drawing school, founded in these fine galleries to which he had so largely contributed, in a palatial hall handsomely furnished, and hung with Tintoret and Luini, Burne-Jones and Rossetti, and other rare masters, ancient and modern; with the most interesting examples to copy, at the most convenient of desks, we may add, — in spite of it all, the drawing school was not a popular institution. When the professor was personally teaching, he got some fifteen or twenty if not to attend, at any rate to join. But whenever the chief attraction could not be counted on, the attendance sank to an average of two or three. The cause

[ocr errors]

was simple. An undergraduate is supposed to spend his morning in lectures, his afternoon in taking exercise, and his evening in college. There is simply no time in his scheme for going to a drawing school. If it were recognized as part of the curriculum, if it counted in any way along with other studies, or contributed to a "school" akin to that of music, practical art might become teachable at Oxford; and Professor Ruskin's gifts and endowments-to say nothing of his hopes and plans would not be wholly in vain.

It could not be hid, also, that Professor Ruskin's heart was elsewhere, though he put so much work and money into the foundation of a drawing school: as it were, to excuse his waning interest in art-teaching, and growing disbelief in the value of lectures. He found, as he said to a Glasgow man who invited him to hold forth there, that everybody wanted to hear, nobody to read, - nobody to think. "To be excited for an hour, and, if possible, amused; to get the knowledge it has cost a man half his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable, and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills,—and to swallow it homœopathically and be wise. It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given to a class on a book they are earnestly reading, this kind of lecture is eternally necessary and wholesome."

[ocr errors]

He really wanted to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of some of those "worth having in any

way, of temper to make good growth of;" and to attract, not the would-be amateurs and dilettanti, or the academically and professionally successful men, but those who were going to be the real thinkers and workers.

As he could not make the undergraduates draw, he made them dig. He had noticed a very bad bit of road on the Hinksey side, and heard that it was nobody's business to mend it; meanwhile the farmers' carts and casual pedestrians were bemired. He sent for his gardener Downs, who had been foreman of the street-sweepers; laid in a stock of picks and shovels; took lessons in stone-breaking himself, and called on his friends to spend their recreation times in doing something useful. In spite of a good deal of ridicule, something useful was actually done. More picks were broken and more time was lost than a regular business-contractor would have liked; but the men had their lesson and the cottagers their road. It was maliciously said that the "Hinksey diggings" were abandoned because the rustics jeered at the diggers. The work was stopped when the work was finished; it was no part of the scheme to take all the bad roads of the county off the surveyor's hands. Of jeers, none were offered that I remember; I recollect an oration of encouragement and thanks from one of the farmers, who explained the reason why the road was neglected, and described the rights accruing to us by law or by custom, for keeping it up. I believe we were

entitled to graze a cow on a common or some thing of the sort; at the time, however, we did not value the privilege as we ought, and I am afraid it was we who jeered at the rustic; the professor being absent, be it understood.

Many of the disciples met at the weekly open breakfasts at the professor's rooms in Corpus; and he was glad of a talk to them on other things beside drawing and digging. Some were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character. The cleverest of the circle was W. H. Mallock, known then as a nephew of Mr. Froude and a Newdigate-winner; afterwards more widely known as the author of "Is Life Worth Living?" He was the only man, Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him, — referring to "The New Republic." But while Mallock saw the reactionary and pessimistic side of his Oxford teacher, there was a progressist and optimistic side which does not appear in his "Mr. Herbert." That was discovered by another man, whose career, short as it was, proved even more influential. Arnold Toynbee was one of the professor's warmest admirers and ablest pupils; and in his philanthropic work the teaching of "Unto this Last" and "Fors" was illustrated, - not exclusively, but truly. "No true disciple of mine will ever be a Ruskinian" (to quote "St. Mark's Rest "); "he will follow,

not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator."

Like other energetic men, Mr. Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work.

One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books ("Bibliotheca Pastorum ") suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George's Company. The first book he chose was the "Economist" of Xenophon, which he asked two of his young friends to translate. I look back with astonishment at his patience in the midst of preoccupying labor and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing on the Alps at the London Institution, reading a paper to the Metaphysical Society, writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and "Proserpina," etc., as well as his regular work at " Fors," and the St. George's Company was then taking definite form, and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circumstances, and he forbidden to approach her.

[ocr errors]

In spite of sorrow, with strange firmness of mind, he would meet his pupils and give his afternoons to them; he would correct their blunders and discuss their readings, not like a tutor, but rather like a fellow-student; and bring all his wide knowledge to bear on the side issues of the story, so that it grew into the most fascinating of lessons.

On the 29th of May she died. On the 1st of June the royal party honored the Slade professor with their visit, - little knowing how valueless to

« AnkstesnisTęsti »