He knew then that his new book would not be Volume III of Modern Painters. He had always regarded architecture as an indivisible aspect of landscape. But now the subject demanded an independent study, and in a burst of insight he glimpsed the unifying structure under which to present his theory. They entered the cathedral, and as Effie wandered the aisles he sat on a rickety willow chair near the centre of the nave, notebook in lap, and dashed through sheet after sheet of paper jotting his opening propositions.
Architecture, he saw, was a distinctively political art––an art created by and for the polis, the people––and as thus was governed by laws. These laws––irrefragable, constant, and general––he termed Lamps.
The Lamp of Sacrifice dictated that architecture be created of the finest materials obtainable. If marble was at hand in abundance, marble should be used; but if beyond the budgetary means then Caen limestone, but from the best quarry; lacking that, let it be the best brick, preferring always the best examples of a lesser material than flawed stuffs from a costlier one, for what was architecture but the chance to present as Offering to God the handiwork of His greatest creation, man? The Lamp of Truth demanded the honesty of materials employed. No cheap wood painted like its better, no plaster masquerading as marble, no structural deceits in attempting to persuade the viewer that the building is constructed any way but what is obvious to the eye. When the imagination deceives, it becomes madness.
The Lamp of Power would deal with questions of massing and scale; the Lamp of Beauty, the recognition that the starting point of all that is visually pleasing spirals back to the organic beauties of Nature; the Lamp of Life, in which a healthy vitality of expression is demanded, and thus the satisfaction and happiness of the builders ensured; the Lamp of Memory, which insists that buildings be constructed to survive aeons of time, and convey the comforting solemnity of hills and sheltering mountains.
The Lamp of Obedience Ruskin saved for last. The wave of republicanism rampaging through Europe and threatening Britain terrified him with its potential for material and human destruction. Looking at history he thought Liberty a treacherous phantom. Loyalty instead was the noblest word in the catalogue of social virtues, loyalty to monarch and established social order. It followed that this Lamp called for an adherence to national schools of design expression, an architecture unique and responsive to the peoples of each individual nation.
Above all, he knew all true architecture must be, like all true art, a devotional act.
In the soaring nave of Abbeville, built to house Salome’s handiwork, the severed head of the Baptist, animal energy surged through him as he jotted down the armature for his thoughts.
He felt the need as immediate, for the Abbeville around them was under siege not by revolutionaries but by a subtler foe––the restorers. Throughout the town workmen were busy, charged by Church and commune officials to re-work and re-carve the ancient facades. One afternoon he came close to fisticuffs in a confrontation with a workman chiselling 14th century stone cabling from the front of a building. He felt tongue-tied and ludicrous in his fury, unable to penetrate the man’s Norman vernacular with his formal French.
All he could do, it seemed, was write. That night he wrote to his father at Denmark Hill a truth he had learnt about himself.
I seem born to conceive what I cannot execute, recommend what I cannot obtain, and mourn over what I cannot save.
It was Effie’s first trip abroad. She loved France from the first, even ravaged as it was by the recent bloodshed, and was grateful to be seeing it now with only one Ruskin. She knew through a steady round of letters from Perth that her father’s financial affairs were no better, and her brother George had still not found a position, yet she was happier here than at London. She took pleasure in drawing little sketches for John of architectural fragments he wanted record of, and was proud of her fluency in French. And although they stopped at a wigmaker’s in Paris and bought her a length of human hair, once they were alone her own had at last ceased dropping out.
Yet her husband was always occupied, and seemingly uncomprehending that spending hour after hour in even the most beautiful of churches began to wear on his bride. If John had nothing for her to sketch, or no inscriptions for her to copy down, Effie worked at her knitting in any chair that afforded decent light, or excused herself with his blessing and took a purposeful walk to a garden or shops. After dinner at their hotel they spent evenings drinking coffee together in local cafés.
Tonight they sat surrounded by murmuring French couples, and John read aloud to her from a days-old copy of The Times. Back home a nation-wide “railway time” was being instituted. The exact time of day would henceforth be keyed via electric telegraph to receivers at rail stations across Britain. For the first time in history every town would keep its clocks accurate with the time decreed at Greenwich. It was all driven by the fact that there were now over 6,000 miles of rail track cleaving the country.
“Time itself has now been standardized,” John said, folding the paper and tossing it down on the slatted chair. “Everything flattened into submission by the technologists and mechanists.” It was one more blow at the root of rural character, another assault on the natural rhythm and demands of season, sun- and moon-light.
Effie was not sure what to say about Time. She well knew John’s hatred of railways, he had been born before their advent and thought their noise and smoke barbaric. To her the railways were blissful conveniences. Casting about for a response she mentioned the Turner painting of a few years ago, of the locomotive speeding through the rain over Brunel’s bridge at Maidenhead.
She saw the exasperation on his face; his lip curled in a certain way when she was being stupid.
“The beauty of that painting is not the steaming monster hurtling itself headlong down the track,” he said, “it is in its colouration. The work is a commentary of the effects of rain upon an object travelling unnaturally fast, too rapidly for the eye to capture; a warning of sorts of life and experience rushing by us...” He sat looking at her, seated at his very elbow, and he felt alone. Turner’s painting confirmed his views, not hers, on the modern distortion of Time; couldn’t she see that?
A response seemed neither necessary nor appropriate. Yet Effie wished there was in fact a railway from England to France to save her from the discomfort of the Channel crossing. She looked into her empty coffee cup in acquiescence.
To rest his eyes from his drawing labours Ruskin walked alone into the countryside. After the cool and lulling dimness of the cathedral interior the golden greens of ripened wheat and unploughed meadows invigorated his senses. The mingling odour of wild tarragon and mint rose from the heated Gallic soil as he crossed the dry and grassy fields. Bees lifted and fell from the flowers they forced. He was soon grateful for the broad brim of his straw hat, and took off his jacket and swung it over one shoulder. The sun dazzled high overhead in a sky of unvarnished blue.
It was a landscape without destination, save for a large boulder at the edge of a copse of tamarisk trees. Ruskin made for the rock, in an ambling and desultory fashion; it was, he thought at a distance, limestone; in the harsh light he could not be sure. At the root of the boulder lay several smaller rocks, tufted round with long bleached grass. As he neared, a looping coil of erubescent muscle and scale arced and fell amongst the rocks. He started, blinked, and stopped. Two red snakes lay entangled in their mating dance. The creatures had twined with a firmness that made it impossible to discern the grasped from the held, beginning or end. Identical in ruby colour and checked pattern the two snakes became one, lashing with a single purpose. Ruskin stood repulsed and transfixed. He called all snakes by one name, that given them in the original Garden. And Serpents were the genitive nexus of all mystery and abhorrence. The knowledge of Good and Evil! How Man had paid for knowledge. It was the first Bible story he recalled and the one that still had power to make him weep. And yet how great the delight in knowledge!
The mas
s of straining muscle slapped against the rock and fell back into the sandy dust. If he had had a stick in hand he might have thrashed at them, but he stood hands at sides, gaping, rendered as incapable of movement as if he had encountered the horror of the snake-headed Gorgon Medusa’s gaze. At last the snakes separated in the tangled grasses to slide off soundlessly in opposite directions.
He felt weak in the knees and found himself laying back upon the hot and rounded curve of the limestone. He put his head back against the grained hardness and his hat rolled off into the grass. The sun beat down upon him and bee song filled his ears. His eyes closed, and purple images danced under his eyelids. He mastered his disgust enough to briefly speculate as to what physical sensation the serpents had experienced; if there had been pleasure or merely need. Recalling their writhing made his throat catch, and he could not calm himself. His breathing was noisy in the languid air. His hand rose to his throat to loosen his stock, and his fingers lingered to trace the line of his shirt buttons. They found the heavier edge of his waistcoat. The startle he had felt dropped from his chest to his loins. He was fingering the buttons of his trousers, the balls of his finger pads circling the bone disks. Heat and heaviness mounted beneath his touch. He knew the serpents could be near, or anywhere. Twined with a firmness that made it impossible to discern the grasped from the held, beginning or end. The serpent-headed woman who froze men in their tracks. The delight of knowledge. He was pulsing with desire, and his hands wrapped the root of his need. He did not want to, but he must. To gird himself he must hold himself. Limp snake to striking snake.
Denmark Hill
My dear Gray
The Society my Son and your Daughter are bound to move in, and the exclusiveness attached to it in relation to your son George might seem heartless but the facts are these. I happened to make my Son a Gentleman Commoner at Christ Church Oxford––partly to increase the comforts of a youth in delicate Health––partly to see during my own life how he would stand such an Ordeal––Partly from the vanity of showing I would give my Son the best quality of Education I could get for Money and lastly because the Dean of Christ Church said I ought to do so. He conducted himself well––he was resolute in moderation; he was at once introduced to the highest men by two young noblemen whom he had met on his Travels––he showed Talent and got the prize for English Verse. He was invited to the Duke of Leicester’s and many places he refused to go to––but I was gratified to find him admitted to Tables of Ministers, Ambassadors and Bishops––but I was aware this arose from him having shown some knowledge in the fine Arts a subject chiefly interesting to the higher Classes––He is not a Tuft hunter and values people only for Intellect and worth and associates only with people who have tastes like his own. He detests crowds and London Seasons, but the Men whose Intellects he desires to come into contact with, are only to be found in distinguished Circles or Coteries and hence he will be found in high Society just so far as is necessary. I deem this long history due to George, that he may comprehend my hinting at a divided Society. It is not George alone, but Mrs. Ruskin and myself are equally excluded...
George Gray the elder folded the letter and slid in back into its envelope. There was no reason to subject Phemy’s mother to its insult, and he merely summed up the import as best he could. He looked at his wife where she sat with her hand-work.
“Mr. Ruskin won’t help our George find a position at London. Being in trade himself he’s worked long and hard to assure his own son the privilege of being a gentleman. The fact that I, a professional man, must now stoop to place my son in business is nothing less than abhorrent to him.”
The couple didn’t return to England until October. While still in France Effie was crushed to learn that a beloved aunt at Perth had died in child-bed along with her newborn. Grieving for her young aunt gave her head-aches, and she was angered that John had learnt of the death first and, on his parents’ advice, delayed two days in telling her. She had not been sleeping well; perhaps it was the late night coffee they drank, and he had withheld the information until he deemed her stronger.
As they travelled through France their sleeping arrangements varied. Some nights John slept in a sitting room so as not to disturb her when he wrote late into the night, but most times they chastely shared a bed as they had on the night of their wedding. Effie was at last tired of travel, but reluctant to return to the senior Ruskins. She wanted nothing more than to move into their own home in Grosvenor Square, which was nearly ready.
The Park Street house was tall and narrow, only two rooms per floor, and in one of the most fashionable parts of London. The young couple had had no say in its decoration, and the crimson wallpaper in the dining room, chosen by the bride’s father-in-law, was not the happiest combination with her auburn hair. Still, Effie was delighted to have her own home in town; it felt a long way from suburban Denmark Hill, across the Thames in the south. And the couple’s new brougham was quite the smartest in London––dark blue, and lined with fawn coloured damask, with a window of actual rounded glass in front. When the perfectly matched pair of bays pulled up to her door Effie felt again like the luckiest of brides. The separate house, their own carriage; it was yet another fresh start.
Lady Davy, their new neighbour, was immediately charmed, and took the young couple under her wing. Within days they were being invited to dinners, receptions, and balls given by the same nobs Effie had once read of in the Perth papers. She had to stifle her laughter at distinguished old men, ambassadors and Lords and Dukes and admirals, almost shouldering each other away to be in her company. To be brought into dinner on the arms of such gentlemen was a signal honour, and yet the recipient seemed to bestow an even greater one on her escort. Smart hostesses in Portland Place and Grosvenor Square were assailed with requests from dignitaries desirous of taking in or sitting at the left of the vivacious newcomer. The close observer would have noted that John Ruskin had his own circle about him at these affairs, to be sure. Wherever he appeared he was bound to attract serious-minded men and women eager to discuss the philosophical underpinnings of art, as well as equal numbers of those he considered time-wasting dilettantes. Society was a distraction, but he was aware that a segment of it envied him as Effie’s husband, and admitted to himself that by her popularity he had been included in evenings at which he had been brought together with natural philosophers and connoisseurs whose acquaintanceship he valued.
The couple agreed to return to Denmark Hill over the Christmas holidays. When Effie awoke with a cold and a cough a few days after Christmas, she attributed it to sheer tiredness; since their return from France there had been party after party, even at Denmark Hill. To protect himself from contagion John had at his parent’s urging moved down to his old bedroom, but one morning he knocked at the door of their shared one on the top floor of the house. She was sitting up in bed, and he again took a chair and sat by her bedside.
“I hope you are well enough to bear some news,” he said. As Effie was not deemed well enough to receive her own letters, the Ruskins had learnt through those sent directly to them from the Grays of further sorrow in her family. John went on with his unfortunate duty without waiting for reply; he wished to get it out and over with. “I’m sorry to tell you your Aunt Lexy has died, being delivered of a son, who has survived. We had the news two days ago, but as you were in bed, I thought best to wait until you might feel stronger.”
She did not in fact feel stronger; she felt only grief at this new blow. First her Aunt Jessie and now Lexy. She was already crying when he added, “This is, sadly, another example of the risks of babies.”
What was to John a simple and cautionary fact––his cousin Mary Richardson, who had spent her adolescence with the Ruskins, had also recently died in childbed––was to Effie a thing extraordinarily hurtful and cruel to say.
“Risks?” she asked. “Will you make an object lesson of the loss of my aunts? It is what every woman risks––your own did––my own mother, who has
been safely delivered of 13 children––babies are a part of life, of marriage. How can you...” The sobs which racked her frame were for her lost aunts, and for herself.
Later that day he returned, bringing her a moving letter of condolence which he was about to post to Lexy’s young husband. Tears of gratitude sprang to her eyes in reading it. She was beginning to think she might never understand her husband.
The next two weeks were a misery to her. Her own mother was scheduled to visit in mid-January, and she yearned for her. Trapped as she was at Denmark Hill, Mrs. Ruskin insisted in taking over her “management,” and Effie found herself subjected to the visits of physicians who prescribed an array of tinctures each more disgusting than the last. She coughed so long her ribs ached, and was forced to take laudanum pills to ease her way to sleep. They left her vaguely nauseated and drowsy all day. Mrs. Ruskin allowed her nothing to drink but spa water, whose sulphurous smell and oily taste revolted her, and beef tea, the family panacea. She was given so little to eat, even when she felt hungry, that her already slender limbs became stick-like. She was desperate to feel well enough to return to Park Street, and more desperate for the arrival of her own mother from Perth.
“I should think, Phemy, a little more allowance for a mother’s feeling and anxiety for her son’s health is in order,” said Mr. Ruskin. She was standing with him in the room next to the bedroom at Park Street. John’s mother had already fled the room, but the residue of her shrieking hung in the air. John was downstairs and she guessed Mrs. Ruskin had headed down directly to him. Her own mother was thankfully out of the house at the moment.
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