XIV
RUSKIN'S "ISOLA"

"I gave her that name," he said once, "because she is so unapproachable."

When he was a very young man he saw her first in Rome. He had been sent there for the winter because it was supposed he was going into a consumption. He had certainly been working very hard at Oxford—not only doing the necessary reading for honours, which need kill nobody, but all manner of literature, art, antiquities and science into the bargain, as his manner was; and he had taken terribly to heart the loss of the pretty French girl, on whom his boyish affections had been set for years. So he was in Rome as an invalid, restless and discontented; and he didn't like Raphael, and he didn't like the other things people ought to like. It must have been a difficult time for his parents; but then one can't expect to bring up a genius without a certain amount of trouble.

In a while he took a turn, and condescended to go with them to musical services. They were energetic anti-Romanists; but they went to St. Peter's to see the show, and to hear the singing. They thought he was beginning to develop an interest in music. But it was just the old story.

There was a beautiful Miss Tollemache in Rome that winter; "a fair English girl," he says, "who was not only the admitted Queen of beauty in the English circle of that winter in Rome, but was so, in the kind of beauty which I had only hitherto dreamed of as possible, but never yet seen living; statuesque severity with womanly sweetness joined. I don't think I ever succeeded in getting nearer than within fifty yards of her; but she was the light and solace of all the Roman winter to me, in the mere chance glimpses of her far away, and the hope of them."

It was very like Ruskin, and it says very much for the reality of the romantic ideal he preached, that a few glimpses of a far-away beauty, whom he had neither the chance nor the intention of approaching, should have made a man of him, out of a pining, love-sick boy. Open-air sketching helped him out of his consumption, or whatever the disease was; but the moral stimulus and reawakening of healthy imagination and power to work were given him by this pure enthusiasm for a beautiful face, fifty yards away.

He never saw her again for about ten years, not until she was a wedded wife. She had married a younger son of Earl Cowper and his wife, daughter of Lord and Lady Melbourne, and by second marriage wife of Lord Palmerston. The Hon. William Cowper was one of the most shining examples of the type—one does not see much about it in newspapers or histories, but private memoirs describe it in all ages, and no doubt it exists even in this—the type of good men in great positions, men who are in the world and very actively engaged in it, but quite unspotted. He began life as aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1830, and went into Parliament in 1835; he was a Lord of the Treasury in 1845, then a Lord of the Admiralty, then President of the Board of Health, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Paymaster-General, Chief Commissioner of Works, Vice-President of the Education Department of the Privy Council, Chairman of Mr. Fawcett's Committee on the Enclosure Acts; it was he who saved Epping Forest in 1871, and was prime mover in the preservation of open spaces and in granting allotments to the poor; he passed the Medical Bill in 1858, the Thames Embankment Bill in 1862-3, and the Courts of Justice Building Bill in 1863; the "Cowper-Temple Clause," to secure the reading of the Bible in Board Schools, was his; he was the great reconstructor of the London Parks and inventor of the scheme for distributing the Park flowers to hospitals, work-houses and schools. It would be long to tell how he made politics philanthropic and brought art into the public service. After 45 years in Parliament he was raised to the peerage as Lord Mount Temple, and died in 1888.

All these things are known, or knowable, to the public; but what is more to the point, Histories of Our Own Times don't tell us: how the lively Eton boy, always in scrapes, occasionally flogged, had according to Gladstone's reminiscence "the stamp of purity, modesty, gentleness upon him in a peculiar degree": how the dandy officer in the Blues wanted to go into the Church "as a means of escaping," he wrote, "the imminent dominion of the sins which it seemed so difficult to avoid": how the busy M.P. and official, Palmerston's step-son and favourite, kept through all distractions a perfectly holy and saintly life, a sense of nearness to God and devotion to His will, that should put much professional piety to shame.

For instance, in his diary he noted Queen Victoria's coronation, which, of course, he had attended—he had dined with the Queen a couple of days before—and continued, "The main object to be pursued in life is communion with God. It is a good method of testing any way of spending my time to ask, does it render me more ready for communion with God?" At twenty-seven he had long known all that evangelical piety at its best can teach; and he always kept the faith. Ten years later, his young wife—the Miss Tollemache of Ruskin's admiration, and the Lady Mount Temple laid in 1901 to rest by her husband's side—asked him, at a large party at the Palmerston's, what interested him most. "Oh, nothing," he answered, "compares in interest with communion with my Master, and work for Him." "This," she added, in her privately printed volume of Memorials, "this was the spirit of his life, through all the blessed years I lived with him."

So after a long interval during which Ruskin had become a famous writer, and the girl at Rome had become the true helpmate of such a man, they met once more. It is rather curious to compare their two separate accounts of the meeting. The lady says, referring to the earlier part of her married life, in the 'fifties and 'sixties, "Another great delight to us at this time was going up occasionally to Denmark Hill for a happy day with Mr. Ruskin. It seems that, quite unknown to myself, he had noticed me when we were in Rome together in 1840! I was then eighteen. It was rather humiliating that when we met again, after about ten years, he did not recognise me. We became great friends: I was fond of his cousin Joan"—Mrs. Arthur Severn. Ruskin's way of putting it was rather different, and the mere man doesn't quite see where the humiliation comes in. He hated going to parties, he says; but one evening was introduced to a lady who was "too pretty to be looked at and yet keep one's wits about one"—that is very characteristic of him: so he talked a little with his eyes on the ground. "Presently, in some reference to Raphael or Michael Angelo, or the musical glasses, the word 'Rome' occurred; and a minute afterwards, something about Christmas in 1840. I looked up with a start; and saw that the face was oval—fair—the hair, light brown. After a pause I was rude enough to repeat her words, 'Christmas in 1840!—were you in Rome then?' 'Yes,' she said, a little surprised, and now meeting my eyes with hers, inquiringly. Another tenth of a minute passed before I spoke again. 'Why, I lost all that winter in Rome in hunting you!' It was Egeria herself! then Mrs. Cowper-Temple. She was not angry; and became from that time forward a tutelary power, of the brightest and happiest. Egeria always had her own way everywhere, thought that I also should have mine, and generally got it for me."

By the kindness of Mrs. Arthur Severn I have by me the long series of Ruskin's letters to Lord and Lady Mount Temple. To any one who knew the people and circumstances touched upon, they would be most interesting; delightfully amusing for the most part, but sometimes intensely painful, where the fiery genius poured out his woes and disappointments, public and private, into their kindly ears. She was his confidant in all that unhappy love-story which ended so tragically for his later life: she was his sympathetic adviser in much of his work. Mr. Cowper-Temple, too, was a kindly and helpful friend. In the early days he introduced Ruskin to Palmerston, and smoothed the way for various plans connected with the National Gallery and public art-works, many of which owed their promotion to Ruskin in the first instance. I cannot trace his direct influence in the philanthropic labours of Mr. Cowper-Temple and the politicians of his circle; but Ruskin was personally admired and loved by many of them, and certainly had an indirect share in much that was done for the help of the people. When he attempted to found his Guild of St. George, Mr. Cowper-Temple was one of the Trustees; not with great faith in the scheme, but with much affection for the schemer.

After some years of "Mr. and Mrs. Cowper" the acquaintance warmed into a closer friendship. They became Ruskin's "f????" and "f???", for he always nicknamed his intimates, and often so whimsically that his letters are quite ludicrously unprintable. To them he was "St. C."—Saint Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed"; and sometimes, he liked to think, St. Christopher. When he was very ill at Matlock in 1871 Mrs. Cowper-Temple came to nurse him, and from that time he was her "Loving little boy," and his friends were his "Dearest Mama" and "Dear Papa." His view of life was that he grew younger as the years went on—and so from being "Dearest Mama" she became "Darling Grannie," and he signed "Ever your poor, grateful little boy." It is perhaps all very absurd; but one certainly does not understand Ruskin without knowing this queer side of his character, part sentimental, part grotesque, which creeps out even in his most serious writing, and makes it so impossible to take his every word for gospel message. But very often he wrote to her and of her as Isola—the island—"Isola Bella" standing alone and unapproachable by all ordinary roads, and yet open on all sides to the waifs of the waves, claiming haven and rest in her sympathy. Here is the whole of a little note written in a dark time in his later years: "Is there no Isola indeed, where we can find refuge—and give it? I have never yet been so hopeless of doing anything more in this wide-wasting and wasted earth, unless—we seize and fortify with love—a new Atlantis. Ever your devoted St. C."

There are very few bits in the letters of general interest. Of somebody's sketches sent for him to look at he wrote: "Alas, there's no genius in these drawings. Genius never exists without intense industry. Industry is not genius, but is the vital element of it." In Bible reading—"I noticed, curiously for the first time, two most important mistranslations. Fancy never having noticed before that 'Sufficient unto the day is its evil,' ought to be 'Let the day's evil suffice for it.' And 'chasteneth' ought in several cases to be merely 'bringeth up, teacheth!'" Here is what he urged upon his friends in all seriousness, and most strangely if you think who the friends were: "You are compromising somehow between God and Satan, and therefore don't see your way. Satan appears to you as an angel of the most exquisite light—I can see that well enough; but how many real angels he has got himself mixed up with I don't know. However, for the three and fortieth time—in Ireland or England or France, or under the Ara coeli perhaps best of all, take an acre of ground, make it lovely, give what food comes of it to people who need it—and take no rent of it yourselves. 'But that strikes at the very foundations of Society?' It does; and therefore, do it. For the Foundations of Society are rotten with every imaginable plague, and must be struck at and swept away, and others built in Christ, instead of on the back of the Leviathan of the Northern Foam. Ever your affectionate St. C.—not the Professor." It was to Lady Mount Temple he wrote the pretty letter telling her to arrange her party just as if Christ were coming to dinner—it is printed in "Fors Clavigera"—"I suppose Him to have just sent Gabriel to tell you He's coming, but that you're not to make any alterations in your company on His account."

Perhaps she hardly needed a Ruskin to tell her that: but she kept the letter, and did what it bade. Those who know anything about the Broadlands Conferences, those remarkable meetings of men and women in all ranks and of every shade of religious belief, come together "for the deepening of spiritual life," know what singular influence was wielded by Lady Mount Temple, and how far-reaching that influence has become.

Ruskin used sometimes to visit at Broadlands. One winter he spent several weeks there, and Lady Mount Temple says in the volume already quoted: "We found him, as always, most delightful and instructive company; his talk full and brilliant, and his kindness increasing to all the house, giving a halo to life. He set us all to manual work! He himself undertook to clean out the fountain in the garden, and made us all, from Juliet (Madame Deschamps, Lady Mount Temple's adopted daughter) to Mr. Russell Gurney, pick up the fallen wood and make it up into bundles of faggots for the poor!"

His friends also came to see him at Brantwood. Mrs. Arthur Severn has a lively story of an excursion with them to the Monk Coniston Tarn, a pretty bit of water on the hills, with a fine panorama of mountains all round, the show-place of Coniston. It was a foggy morning, but he hoped it would clear; and they drove up through the woods in expectation, but it was still foggy. They got out of the carriage and walked to the finest point of view; still the fog would not lift. Then Ruskin waved his hand and pointed to the scene they ought to see; and in his best eloquence, and with growing warmth described the lakelet embosomed in its woods and moors, Helvellyn and the Pikes, Bow Fell and Wetherlam, and the Coniston Old Man. For a moment it seemed as if the whole was before their eyes; and then they burst out laughing. "After all," said Lady Mount Temple, "is not this the best treat we could have?" "And to me," said Ruskin, with his old-fashioned courtliness, "what view could be so entirely delightful?"