INTRODUCTION cili of those to other correspondents which had to be included. Both Sir John and Lady Simon survived him. Sir John died in July 1904, in his 88th year; and Lady Simon rather less than two years before her husband. Another old friend-included in the list of "the old and tried ones" in Fors Clavigera-was the Rev. William Kingsley, rector of South Kilvington, and probably now (1908) the oldest rector in England, for he is ninety-four. There are many references to him in Ruskin's books, and one or two letters are included in this Collection.1 A new friendship which filled a large part in Ruskin's later life was that of Miss Kate Greenaway. It sprung from his admiration of her "fancy, unrivalled in its range," which was "re-establishing throughout gentle Europe the manners and customs of fairyland.” 2 There was something of fairyland-with its idealising grace and its pretty play-in their friendship. In person, indeed, Miss Greenaway was the least "Kate Greenawayish" of mortals, and she was already thirty-seven when Ruskin first saw her. But in character-"mixed child and woman," as he said of her-she appealed strongly to him, and a friendship, founded on mutual admiration, ripened rapidly. Ruskin had been captivated by the original drawings for Under the Window, which were exhibited at the Fine Art Society. He expressed his admiration to Miss Greenaway's friend, Stacy Marks, who encouraged him to write to her. This he did at the beginning of 1880 in a letter of charming fantasy, behind which some shrewd advice may already be discerned.3 In her reply she disclosed the admiration which she had long cherished for Ruskin's work. She had written to another friend of "the holiness" she found in Ruskin's "words and ideas." 4 The book she mentioned to Ruskin himself was his favourite Fors Clavigera; and of this she once wrote to another friend: "Never shall I forget what I felt in reading Fors for the first time, and it was the first book of his I had ever read. I longed for each evening to come that I might lose myself in that new wonderful world." So, then, the stranger whom Ruskin thought he was addressing turned out to be a devoted disciple. The teacher was quick to seize his opportunity. He began at once to amplify the hints 1 Some slight reminiscences of Ruskin are contained in an interview with Mr. Kingsley which appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post, March 15, 1906. 2 Art of England, § 112 (Vol. XXXIII. p. 342). Vol. XXXVII. p. 307. The preceding reference is to p. 508. See the letter from Mr. Locker-Lampson in Kate Greenaway, p. 93. contained in the first letter, and to pour in letters of advice upon methods of study and directions by which she might improve her technique. She responded eagerly, submitted drawings for his inspection, and presently asked him to come to her studio. On December 29, 1882, her diary contained the entry, "Mr. Ruskin came. First time I ever saw him." He and Mrs. Severn alike were delighted with her, and in the following May she went to stay with them at Brantwood. There, as her biographers say, she was "plunged into an atmosphere of thought, art, and literature, which was to her alike new and exhilarating." Letters to old friends record her rapture: "After breakfast I am allowed (which is a great favour) to go into the study and see all sorts of beautiful things, with little talks and remarks from Mr. Ruskin as he writes; then we go drives, walks, or on the lake till tea-time. Then it is dinner-time; then he reads us something nice, or talks in the most beautiful manner. Words can hardly say the sort of man he is-perfect-simply." "Everything is confused, I never know day or date. I'm always looking at books or pictures. I am absorbed into a new world altogether. Miss Greenaway became at once a dear friend of Mrs. Severn and her daughters, and the visit to Brantwood was often repeated. Ruskin, for his part, was never so pleased as in attaching a new pupil, and the pleasure was not diminished if the pupil was an affectionate woman. In Miss Greenaway he found at once a devoted admirer and a disciple of the rarest gifts and richest promise. The correspondence shows how rapidly the friendship ripened into affection. "Dear Miss Greenaway" became "Dearest," "Darling," or "Sweetest Kate," and he was her "loving Dinie "-a signature which he explained as short for "Demonie," meaning that he was to be her artistic conscience. Such endearments are not infrequent in Ruskin's letters to other correspondents; and he was fond of teasing and playing. It was a standing jest, for instance, to assume that "Kate" was consumed with jealousy of "Francesca"; just as Mr. Locker-Lampson 2 affected jealousy of other friends of Miss Greenaway. Ruskin works the same vein when he talks of wreaking his jealousy on M. Chesneau, who had become possessed of Kate's photograph; and when she tells him of a present from one of the Princesses, he wishes he were a Prince and could send her pearls and 1 Kate Greenaway, pp. 112-113. 2 See his letters of 1884 and 1885: "I daresay that Ruskin is sunning his unworthy self in your smiles." "You must let me be one of your first visitors to the new house. What will you call it? The Villa Ruskin, or Dobson Lodge, or what ?" (Kate Greenaway, p. 91). INTRODUCTION CV rubies.1 There was a genuine affection underneath Ruskin's words, but they should not be taken too seriously. Let us "know what we're about," he wrote once, "and not think truths teasing, but enjoy each other's sympathy and admiration—and think always-how nice we are!" 2 The volume of correspondence between Ruskin and Kate Greenaway is very great. Many hundreds of his notes to her have passed through the editors' hands; and of hers to him more than 1000 are in existence. He himself kept none of her letters up to 1887; it is only those which came to Brantwood in later years that were preserved. Ruskin's letters were one of Miss Greenaway's greatest pleasures. In order that they might come the more regularly, she used to furnish him with envelopes already addressed; and her disappointment was great when they did not arrive. Even we, who are now admitted into the circle, can understand something of Miss Greenaway's pleasure; for the letters to her are fragrant with much of Ruskin's charm. Also they are intimate, and reveal all his passing moods. He scolds and praises; he passes from grave to gay, like an April sky; fun and sadness are mingled by turns. But what strikes me most in the letters is their good sense. Behind much good-humoured chaff, and in many a serious lecture, the advice which he gives is eminently sound and judicious. No one was more appreciative than Ruskin of the genius of Miss Greenaway; and his Oxford lecture upon her work, in which he praised it with insight and felicity, did much to confirm her vogue. But he was conscious from the first of her faults and limitations. Perhaps Mr. Locker-Lampson was right, indeed, when, on hearing that Ruskin was urging her to higher flights, he wrote laconically "Beware." But Ruskin was assuredly right in begging her to give to the play of her fancy a firmer foundation in study of nature, and to keep her style from degenerating into mannerism. He asked, with gentle irony, for "flowers that won't look as if their leaves had been in curl-papers all night"; for children for once without mittens; for "shoes that weren't quite so like mussel-shells”; for a "sun not like a drop of sealing-wax"; for girls that should be drawn with limbs, as well as frocks." He sent her written lessons 1 See Vol. XXXVII. (31, 15, 5). Vol. XXXVII. p. (520). Lady Dorothy Nevill says: "I have good reason to believe that at one time the great art critic would not have been at all adverse to marry her, had she felt disposed to think favourably of such an alliance" (The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, edited by her son, 1906, p. 247). There was, however, no "good reason "for such a belief. It is a piece of gossip which altogether misjudged the situation. Kate Greenaway, p. 143. Vol. XXXIII. • Vol. XXXVII. pp. 453, 454, 427, 490, 555. Kate Greenaway, p. 89. in perspective;1 he told her what pictures to copy at the National Gallery; he ordered her to the seaside to study ankles. "Practise," he said, "from things as they are," "and you will find strength and ease and new fancy and new right coming all together."2 Of the studies from nature which he set her to do at Brantwood, we have heard already; and when she left, he sent her on one occasion some sods of grass and flowers to paint from.3 He amused himself with many schemes for their co-operation. He proposed to use some of her designs for stained glass for "halls in fairyland." She seems to have asked, where and when? "In fairyland,” and "the moment I'm sure of my workman,” he replied. But other "lovely plans" came next; among them, "a book on botany for you and me to do together-you to do the plates and I the text-a handbook of field botany. It will be such a rest for you and such a help foreverybody! chiefly me."4 Another plan was to paint with her " some things at Brantwood like Luca and the Old Masters-and cut out those dab and dash people. I felt when I came out of the Academy as if my coat must be all splashes."5 At a later date the idea was to set up a girls' drawing-school in London, with Kate as chief of the "Dons, or Donnas." Miss Greenaway was delighted at any prospect of artistic co-operation with Ruskin, and perhaps sometimes took his proposals a little too seriously. She designed a cover for "The Peace of Polissena," one of the chapters in Miss Alexander's Christ's Folk in the Apennine, which, however, was not used; but this may have been due only to Ruskin's illness at the time. She offered to illustrate Præterita for him, and he delicately declined the suggestion; the book, he said, might not be "graceful" or "Katish" enough for her pencil. The actual instances of co-operation are slight. She drew some cats to illustrate his rhymes supplementary to Dame Wiggins of Lee, and he included in Fors Clavigera a few of her drawings. Another scheme which he had much at heart, and which he mentioned in the Oxford lecture, was to substitute hand-colouring for the colour-blocks by which her designs were reproduced. "We must get her," he had said, "to organise a school of colourists by hand, who can absolutely facsimile her own 1 One of these is included in the present collection of letters: Vol. XXXVII. p. 583. 1 Vol. XXXVII. pp. 485, 483, 506. 3 See Vol. XXX. p. 239, Vol. XXXVII. pp. 488, 489. Kate Greenaway, p. 136 (No. 47 in the conspectus in Vol. XXXVII. p. 657). For the preceding references, see Vol. XXXVII. pp. 455, 459. Kate Greenaway, pp. 136-137 (No. 49). For the next reference, see Vol. XXXVII. p. 572. 6 Vol. XXXV. pp. lii.-liii. 7 Vol. I. INTRODUCTION cvii first drawing.' He trained a young student to do some work in this kind, but the examples were not issued to the public. Of Miss Greenaway's letters to Ruskin many are printed in her Life. One of these is reprinted in this edition,2 as explaining a passage in the text. The letters were often accompanied by little sketches, of which, again, several examples are given in her Life. Often, too, she sent him drawings; and though he bought several, he had to devise some reciprocity in giving. So he took to sending her bundles of his own sketches, nominally for her criticism, but making it a condition that she or her brother should keep for themselves one out of every ten. He continued to write to her even in his days of failing health. "The only person I am sorry to disappoint," he said in one of his illnesses, "is poor Miss Greenaway," and letters to her are among the last he ever wrote. Sometimes he was unable to send any written response, but he took a keen pleasure in hearing what she had to say or in looking at the little pictures she enclosed. "Your lovely letter," wrote Mrs. Severn, "with the sweet little people looking from the ridge of the hill at the rising sun, so delighted Di Pa. He looked at it long and lovingly, and kept repeating, 'Beautiful! beautiful! and beautiful!"" 5 And so, when the clouds gathered round him, Miss Greenaway continued to write to him almost daily, to the end; seeking to interest him, as she hoped, in any books, or sights, or doings which pleased her, and making no mention of the bodily weakness which was gradually coming upon her. versary of his birthday, in the year following his death, day for her. "How I always wish," she wrote to Mrs. Severn, "I had done so much, much more. And I should have, if life had not been so difficult to me of late years." Nine months later she passed away. 66 The anniwas a sad Another very dear friend of Ruskin's later years was Miss Francesca Alexander, one or two letters to whom are included in the present Collection. She is the "Sorel" or "Sorella," and her mother the 'Mammina," mentioned sometimes in his books. We have heard already of the impression which mother and daughter made upon him, when he was introduced to them at Florence in 1882. Admiration for their "vivid goodness" and for the artistic gifts of Miss Alexander grew, as he came to know them better, into warm affection, and their letters were one of the principal delights and solaces of his closing years. An old 1 Art of England, §§ 116, 117 (Vol. XXXIII. p. 345); Vol. XXXVII. p. 470. 2 Vol. XXXVII. p. 575. Kate Greenaway, p. 154. 4 Ruskin's pet name at Brantwood: see above, p. lxv. n. 5 Kate Greenaway, p. 166. • Ibid., p. 251. 7 Vol. XXXII. p. xxii. |