4261. John Ruskin to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 258–260.
[London]
October 24th 1858
Dear Mrs Browning
You must, of course, be quite sure by this time that something has been the matter with me. Well, it is quite true. I have had cloud upon me this year—and don’t quite know the meaning of it—only I’ve had no heart to write to anybody– I suppose the real gist of it is that next year I shall be 40: [1] and begin to see what life and this world mean, seen from the middle of them—& the middle inclining to the dustward end— I believe there is something owing to the violent reaction after the excitement of the arrangement of Turner’s sketches: Something to my ascertaining, in the course of that work—how the old man’s soul had been gradually crushed within him—leaving him at the close of his life—weak—sinful—desolate—nothing but his generosity and kindness of heart left. [2] Something to my having enjoyed too much of lovely things—till they almost cease to be lovely to me—and because I have no monotonous or disagreeable work—by way of foil to them: but, however it may be—I am not able to write as I used to do—nor to feel—and can only make up my mind to the state of one that was to be gone through, and from which I hope some day to come out on the other side.
The year stole away without my knowing how, nevertheless. I went to the north of Switzerland to sketch—Habsburg—Konigsfeld—Morgarten—& Grutli. None of them, I’m sorry to say—much worth drawing– Habsburg has only a window or two and a rent or two of old wall left: Morgarten is beside the ugliest and dullest lake in all Switzerland. [3] I went on to Bellinzona, & stayed there long,——six weeks—but got tired of the Hills & began to think life in the City square was the real thing. [4] Away I went to Turin! of all places:—found drums and fifes [5] —Operas, and Paul Veroneses. [6] Stayed another six weeks, and got a little better, and I begin to think nobody can be a great painter who is’nt rather wicked—in a noble sort of way.
I merely write this—not by way of a letter—but just that you may know there is something the matter with me—and that it is’nt that I don’t think of you, nor love you.
—Don’t answer this till I send you another .. perhaps I shall be in a better humour. I had nearly come to see you at Havre—but could’nt– They wanted me so much at home after I had been four months away.
Ever affectionately Robert’s & yours,
J Ruskin
Address, on cover sheet: Mrs Robert Browning / Care of Miss Browning / 151. Rue de Grenelle, / St Germain. / Paris.
Publication: Cook, pp. 291–292 (as 14 October 1858).
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. On 8 February 1859.
2. From February 1857 to May 1858, Ruskin catalogued, arranged, and otherwise prepared for the National Gallery the voluminous collection of J.M.W. Turner’s drawings and sketches that he had bequeathed to the nation and that had remained in the painter’s London house since his death in 1851. In the “Preface” to volume five of Modern Painters (1860), Ruskin writes, “The manual labour would not have hurt me; but the excitement involved in seeing unfolded the whole career of Turner’s mind during his life, joined with much sorrow at the state in which nearly all his most precious work had been left, and with great anxiety, and heavy sense of responsibility besides, were very trying; and I have never in my life felt so much exhausted as when I locked the last box, and gave the keys to Mr. Wornum, in May, 1858” (V, vii). What Ruskin considered “weak” and “sinful” were the numerous erotic drawings he found among Turner’s papers. The Turner collection is now at the Tate Gallery, London.
3. Morgarten is a mountain slope in north central Switzerland, just to the southeast of Lake Aegeri (or Ägerisee).
4. Cf. RB, “Up at a Villa—Down in the City” (1855), lines 2–3 and 64.
5. Cf. “Up at a Villa—Down in the City,” lines 53 and 63.
6. In a letter of 20 July 1858, Ruskin wrote of “three grand Paul Veroneses” that were keeping him in Turin (Cook, p. 286). One of these was “Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,” which he was copying when he wrote his father on 4 August 1858 (Cook, p. 287). The other two paintings by Paolo Veronese (1528–88) were “Pharoah’s Daughter finding Moses” and “Magdalene washing our Lord’s Feet,” which, along with “Solomon” were at this time exhibited in the Royal Gallery of Pictures (see Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, 1858, part I, pp. 20–21).
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