“And this way your own health and beauty is preserved,” he went on.
Preserved? Like one of his botanizing specimens? She wished he would stop.
The newlyweds’ return to Denmark Hill after Scotland was met with a handsome reception. The entire staff lined up outside the door to greet them, with Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin at the head, and the gardener placed into the bride’s hands a splendid bouquet of cineraria, orange blossoms, and heath, wrapped round in ornamental paper and tied with satin ribbon. When they dressed and came down to dinner Effie was amazed, and then delighted, to see a German band appear on the lawns outside the open dining room windows; John’s father laughed in approval at her response. They played throughout the dinner hour. Afterwards she took up her old position at the drawing room piano to the acclaim of all three Ruskins. Their new home on Park Street was not yet ready for their occupancy, and the couple had been given the top floor of Denmark Hill as a suite of rooms. Upon retiring they went up the stairs together, but John paused at his study door. “I’d like to look over a few of my papers. You don’t mind, my pet, do you?” he asked. Effie continued up the next flight alone.
The next day John and Mr. Ruskin took Effie to the private view at the Royal Academy, on a card sent specially from Turner himself. The elder Mrs. Ruskin never went out into society, even on such an honoured invitation; thus it was up to the younger to represent the distaff side of the family. The crush of people and dresses made it hard to see many of the actual paintings, but as the majority of those invited were there not to view art, but each other, this limitation was of slight consequence. The brightest lights of British society, hailing both from its glittering capital and rich young manufacturing cities, milled about in a fashionable mob, as did all the great lions and hungry cubs of the art world. Young Mrs. Ruskin was an admired ornament circulating the rooms between her new husband and father-in-law. Dressed in a white silk dress with black mantilla she made a fine impression, and had to repress her smile as gentleman after gentleman came over to her father-in-law, begging to be introduced. There was a Mr. Blake of Portland Place, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord John Russell––all buzzing, and all, it appeared, because of her.
When they had returned home Mr. Ruskin came up to her alone in the little side parlour. “I’m glad to see your effect in society, my dear,” he told her. “John would rather be in Switzerland, with his mountains––doesn’t see the importance of it all. A few months ago he refused an invitation from Mr. Blake––one of the first men in London––you brought them together again. And a card inviting you for dinner from the Marchioness of Lansdowne is sure to follow.” The old gentleman still looked slightly flushed from these triumphs and gave Effie cause for pride in knowing she was the cause.
“You’re much better calculated for society than John is,” he finished. “He is best in print.”
The political unrest in France drew out over the months, and finally in July John determined he must begin his new work on architecture right here at home. London, he claimed, lacked the requisite subject matter, and he proposed a tour of certain medieval cathedrals around England. It did not surprise his new wife that he wanted his parents along, but that he simply announced they were going with them did.
The four of them, with George Hobbs and the elderly maid Anne in attendance, set out for Salisbury and its cathedral by rail in a warm summer’s rain. They continued the journey by coach, and took lodgings in the town at the best inn. John had tried to make it clear this was to be a working trip for him. After the first morning spent inside the damp and poorly lit cathedral both the elder Ruskins were struggling to stifle their boredom. Their son saw this, yet they insisted on staying within sight. His bride found it amusing and rather exciting to see her husband in action, crossing the transept with a measuring line, or procuring a ladder from the sexton that he might raise himself to the level of a carving upon a crocket. It was easy to admire his concentration, and his moments of exhilaration at making a little discovery that proved a premise. She took pleasure in assisting, too; John wrangled two coaching lamps from the inn and she held one and George Hobbs the other when he needed light to sketch in dim recesses.
Then Mrs. Ruskin came down with a head-cold, which her son immediately caught.
“Don’t sit by those towels, John, they’re damp,” warned Mrs. Ruskin when she saw him take a seat near his wash stand in their bedroom. “Let George take your clothes to the kitchen to be warmed.”
“I don’t like the sound of that cough,” his father would judge, after hearing the slightest throat clearing from John. “I wish you would take care.”
John continued to go to the cathedral each morning over his parents’ protests, and each afternoon on his return the harangue grew. He had a stuffed nose and they wanted to send for a doctor. Effie had before observed the Ruskins’ excessive caution over John’s health, but had never seen anything approaching this. He was cosseted and coshered up like an infant. Finally he succumbed to their ceaseless entreaties and stayed in bed one morning; the cold had gotten worse and he saw no cause to tempt Fate. Mrs. Ruskin had a predilection for potions, and she began dosing her son with vile smelling salt-solutions, and ordering tea-papers for application to his chest. Beef tea was sent up by the gallon.
“Really, it’s nothing but the simplest of colds,” Effie made the mistake of saying at noon. “I haven’t even caught it.”
Mrs. Ruskin turned to her, pop-eyed. “A simple cold? I think a mother who’s cared for her boy all his life knows when he’s in danger!”
Effie almost laughed, but if she had it would have been rooted in scorn. Five of her little brothers and sisters had died from scarlet fever. She knew danger. And she also knew a simple cold.
“I’ve a great deal more history caring for him than you, my child,” ended Mrs. Ruskin, returning to the measuring of her potion.
Effie received this declaration in silence, and ceded her ground. “Well, if I’m truly not needed, I’ll go out for a walk.” For the sake of propriety Mr. Ruskin did not like her walking alone; at his insistence George or Anne must always accompany her, trailing at a distance. And as Anne was busy nursing John, George would go with her, though Effie privately found it absurd to have a young man loitering behind her as if she were a pick-up or suspected cut-purse.
The next morning Effie went in to read to John. He was smiling. When she asked why he said, “Father thinks my cold worsened due to some recent––connexion––with you, and that’s why he asked you to leave the bedroom until I’m better.”
She laughed in spite of herself.
Chapter Seven
The Lamp of Life
London: August 1848
“Christ, of course, heads the list,” dictated William Holman Hunt.
John Everett Millais turned where he was pacing his studio floor. “Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Any list of Immortals would have to be headed by Christ himself.”
At a studio table Dante Gabriel Rossetti sat, pen in hand, before a sheet of paper and wrote in large flourishing letters, Christ.
“And then next––” prompted Hunt.
“The author of Job, whoever that may be,” said Millais. “Chaucer. And Shakespeare.”
“Dante,” said Rossetti, who was working on a new translation of the Vita Nuova.
“Yes, Gabriel––the original Dante,” laughed Millais.
“Homer,” said Hunt.
“A minute,” answered Gabriel, scratching away with his pen. When he looked up he said, “Browning, don’t you think––of modern men? Mrs. Browning, of course. And Tennyson, certainly.” The other two nodded their assent.
“But it’s not only the great writers we take as our exemplars,” Hunt noted. “You write more than you paint, Gabriel, and we’re all inspired by the likes of these. But our Immortals should embrace every worthy discipline, every worthy mind––”
“King Alfred,” interjected Millais.
“Ye
s, Alfred,” said Hunt nodding. “The perfect philosopher-king. And Jeanne d’ Arc.”
“Hogarth,” said Gabriel. “Let’s have an artist get his oar in.” He had been working away over his paper and now Millais and Hunt neared him and spied the result. By each name Gabriel was drawing a small, expressive portrait of the nominated Immortal. Christ was shown in profile with faint nimbus, Dante with his characteristic cap and prominent nose, blank-eyed Homer clutching a lyre, the Maid of Orléans in her breastplate. Millais clapped him on the shoulder in appreciation.
“And for a name? To distinguish ourselves as really new men, doing new work––” began Millais.
“But it’s not new,” claimed Hunt. “That’s just the point of our Immortals, isn’t it? That painting and literature have lost their way.”
“We can be ‘Early Christians’, decided Gabriel. “Like the Brotherhood of St. Luke in Rome, we strive to look back in our art to the work of the primitive Italians––art as pure devotion, illustrative of the greatest aspirations of the heart and soul. Strong colour, bold outlines, worthy subjects.”
Hunt wasn’t convinced. He’d seen more of the works of the aforementioned German and Austrian devotional painters, sometimes called The Nazarenes, than his two younger friends. “But the mere parroting of the early Italian monk-painters––it’s the imitation we want to get away from––”
Millais chimed in. “Yes––the endless regurgitation of tired techniques and hackneyed themes and conventions; mistake and exaggeration and trick piled one on another, from Raphael on down––”
“To Sir ‘Sloshua’ Reynolds!” interjected Gabriel. “Mindless and sloppy canvases asking nothing, saying nothing, offering nothing. Mere slosh.”
“But not “Early Christians,” said Hunt, returning to the earlier point. “Too Papist.”
Millais thought aloud. “We revere, we emulate, painters unspoiled by “artistic” affectation. Painters before Raphael.”
“Pre-Raphaelite,” affirmed Hunt.
“And what are we,” asked Gabriel, “but a band, secret if need be, to spare us from the attacks of the critics? We’re the Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites.”
“A Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” said Hunt.
“Put that down, Gabriel,” said Millais. “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood we are.”
Before the newly minted Brothers parted that day, Hunt took two volumes from his satchel and pressed them into the hands of Millais. “I’ve just finished this,” he said, indicating one of the volumes. “Reading it I had the uncanny impression that it was written expressly for me. You must read them, we all must. It’s this chap Ruskin’s Modern Painters, parts one and two. He says, ‘Go to Nature in all singleness of heart.’”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti turned from the entrance hall window where he was watching for his friends. On this Sunday afternoon Casa Rossetti was vibrating with voices. The house on Charlotte Street, Portland Place was home to not only Rossetti’s family, but a rifugio for revolutionary ideals. Gabriele Rossetti, the pater familias, Italian poet, librettist, patriot and exile of Abruzzi, was holding court in the crowded drawing room, his black cap flopping upon his head and battered snuff box balanced precariously upon his knee. The elder Rossetti’s wife, daughter of a Polidori and an Englishwoman, was superintending the delivery of dinner to the sideboard. The younger Gabriel returned to the drawing room where his brother William Michael, a year his junior, and their two sisters, Maria and Christina, were attending to their father’s wants and participating in the conversation. Seated around Gabriele Rossetti were three countrymen, gesticulating as they discussed Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Bomba in rapid-fire Italian, their voices rising and falling in condemnation or respect.
John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt soon arrived and joined the circle. After paying their respects to Mrs. Rossetti and the delicately pretty Rossetti sisters, they excused themselves, and following Gabriel and Michael took their plates of macaroni up the stairs with them.
“Meet the newest member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” announced Gabriel, as they seated themselves as best they could in his brother’s small bedroom. He waved his hand at William.
The heads of Millais and Hunt turned in unison to look at William. He was not a painter, nor a writer; in fact he held an appointment at Inland Revenue. A tax collector as a member of the PRB? And was not their society a secret one? Why did Gabriel go ahead and invite his brother without consulting the other two original members?
“He’ll write about us,” Gabriel continued in anticipation of these doubts. “And he may paint, one day; he must have talent, like father, and me.”
“I thought we were to work in secret; that the PRB would be a secret trust,” said Millais. He was aware that William was looking on, discomfited, but the presumptions of Gabriel took him aback.
“I’ve asked Woolner too; he’ll be along directly––and James Collinson.” Gabriel was blithe and smiling.
Thomas Woolner was a sculptor, and former assistant to the portrait-medallion maker Alexander Munro, but Millais had never met him. Collinson was a meek, somnolent little chap, and a Roman Catholic; Millais knew him from the Royal Academy Schools.
“And I think we ought to ask Ford Madox Brown, as well,” Gabriel concluded.
“Brown?” repeated Hunt. “Too old––he’s twenty-seven! He’ll be bound by academic strictures. If Brown’s in, I’m out.”
“Seven is the number of power, dear Hunt––a mystical number,” Gabriel answered, not meeting the charge. “There must be seven Brothers in our Brotherhood.”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake––anyone but Brown,” Hunt said. “Freddy Stephens, there’s a chap. He’ll make your blasted seven.”
Millais had never heard of Stephens, and wondered if like William Michael Rossetti he neither painted nor wrote poetry. This was not what he and Hunt had originally conceived. Gabriel, once invited, had taken the bit in his merry teeth and had run away with the society. If Millais could have his druthers all the Brothers would be painters, and fine ones too––or at least with the hope of fineness. He had received, at age ten, the Gold Medal from the Royal Academy in their drawing competition––his friends called him their boy genius, from that and the fact that he was still younger than they––and everyone, including himself, believed he had a future as an important, if not great, painter. Young as he was he knew he carried the staff for the group. If he said No, the thing would fall apart before it ever began.
He looked again at William, sitting with an expression on his face between embarrassment and plaintiveness. He was just the same age as himself, nineteen.
“Yes, we’ll ask Stephens, too,” said Millais. He swept his hand before him. “The seven Brothers it is.”
Chapter Eight
The Lamp of Life
Abbeville, 9 August 1848
Dearest Mama and Papa, and all the little bairns
We went on board the steamer at three and though it was a lovely day I went down stairs and, the Ladies Cabin being full, I went into the General Cabin and laid down all my length with a gentleman ditto at each end, and so on all round, with one or two on the floor; in about ten minutes all the Ladies were ill, and when two or three heavy lurches came in the middle of the Channel the whole assembly rose en masse from their reclining position dreadfully sick. I was very ill about eight times and Mr. Ruskin coming down once said it was like a scene of the plague or something. The Stewards however were very attentive and brought me some nice eau de cologne which revived me a little...At half past five we landed and were ushered into a custom house where our passports were looked at by some soldiers in green, and after that we took a fly and went to the Hotel des Bains, Boulogne, where John and Mr. Ruskin immediately broke into raptures at being in France and the inferiority of England, which amused me very much...They were unloading cannon from the ships in the harbour. They say this morning that the French have declared war with Austria and gone over
the Alps but we have not seen a paper yet. John is out sketching a cathedral from a café opposite...He is quite in his element here and very happy...
Four months married, and the newlyweds had at last gotten abroad. The revolution in Paris had kept them away week after week. Now France was deemed safe again, and they had set off. They were in fact a party of three, the two male Ruskins and the younger’s new wife. Old Mrs. Ruskin stayed behind at Denmark Hill with neuralgia. But starting at last seemed no little triumph to the travellers.
Paris still showed signs of the bloody street-fighting, and remnants of burnt barricades lay piled at street corners as they drove into the city. At the final coaching stop their baggage was searched for weapons. Yet for Effie there was a taste of expected Parisian gaiety in a few parties and receptions they were asked to. Paris held little for John’s work, though, and on they went to Abbeville. There Mr. Ruskin––brusque as always, though his eyes were filled with tears––left them for his return to England. The young couple were finally alone.
John had been at Abbeville before, with his parents. As a youth he had drawn the old buildings, and had admired the porch of the 13th century cathedral. He had been a child in his knowledge and appreciation, and to again see Abbeville cathedral after much reflection on the art and ends of architecture was like confronting it anew. He brought Effie early the first morning to the cathedral square, and in a state of mounting excitement walked her around the complex of mouldering yellow stone.
“It has,” he stopped to tell her, “a luscious richness about it all––so full, so fantastic, so exquisitely picturesque...I see it now.” He thrust his hands in his tailpockets and stood with her so she might see it too, rocking forward on his toes in the excitement of discovery. The native populace began clattering over the cobblestones as they stood there looking. They saw old women vanishing through the blackened cathedral portal, fingers to foreheads in self-blessing; young women setting up flower stalls against the peeling sanctuary walls; cassocked priests moving in file from the chapter house; heard cart drovers’ warnings and bird sellers’ calls and the flapping of tavern awnings being rolled up for the day’s customers. They stood in the ever-filling square, Effie’s hand shading her eyes against the sharply rising sun. He saw the cathedral as essential and overlapped in the lives of these Bretons as were the ancient pantiles to the integrity of the roof.
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