4895. John Ruskin to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 125–128.
Denmark Hill
13th May. [1861] [1]
Dear Mrs Browning
I have your letter this morning & answer it before I do anything else, it being a great comfort to me. I am fighting through all kinds of doubt and wonder, and have no strength—cannot look things in the face—they come instead, & grimace at me. What a strange thing that was of Newman to say– I wonder it “struck” you– [2] To me it seems very weak and foolish in this respect. That if a man has seen no hand of God on nations till he is (fifty?) years old—that which he sees and supposes to be such, in the last two years, must logically bear only the character of a coincidence: not of an evidence. If any person had treated him unkindly, or neglected him—for forty years, and suddenly appeared to observe: or be kind to him in the last two—would he not assume—either that the character was changed—or since in the case before us that is impossible—that the last appearances were deceptive? But the idea of looking for God’s hand in that sense in dealing with nations—or with anything—is in the very outset absurd; immeasurably—infinitely absurd. You cannot tell why God acts, unless you could see not only the Hearts and minds of every man in the nation—hear every one of their prayers,—know all their temptations—and—much more—know all God[’]s final purposes respecting them. What seems to you good may be evil—& vice versa! What seems to you the punishment or reward of this or that, is in reality the punishment and reward of things you never knew nor heard of[.] Things that happened in the Abyss of time. God[’]s laws you can Trace. His Providence Never: If you could—you would share in that Providence—you would be seeing with God’s eyes. But His laws—that courage, & chastity and honesty—and patience—bring out good—and cowardice, and luxury, & folly—and impatience—evil—in their exact & unfailingly measured measure. This is written in letters of Gold and Blood, and Tombstone-moss,—on the foreheads—and the Skull-foreheads of all nations that march—or moulder, on the earth– I am stunned—palsied—utterly helpless—under the weight of the finding out the myriad errors that I have been taught about these things: every reed that I have leant on shattering itself joint from joint– I stand, not so much Melancholy as Amazed– I am not hopeless—but I don’t know what to hope for. I have that bitter verse pressing me– “I am a worm, and no man” [3] —what is a worm to hope for?—to keep out of the spade’s edge-way—and crawl its time in the twilight—while the great Providence lights all the stars in their Courses– [4] Many a year ago I wrote this verse– [5]
God guides the stars their wandering way
He seems to cast their courses free,
Yet binds them to Himself for aye,
And all their chains are charity!
—I saw the terrible Seeming then; the charity I see still—but not the Form of it in this time or that;—for this person or that. And you can’t conceive how lonely I am in all this—and in more than this—all my old religious friends are casting me off—or if they speak, their words are as the brass & the cymbal; [6] —I am ill—and can’t work at things. I have fallen back into the physical sciences—but they are hard & cold—and I don’t care about them—but am resolved to master my geology thoroughly,—and I’m thinking of buying a little bit of ground enough to grow currant bushes & red daisies in, somewhere in Switzerland—and going and living cottage life, walking and digging, till I’ve recovered tone of mind: or making it my home: for I’ve a horrible feeling just now of having no home. I should’nt mind though it were ever so little a one, if only I had one.
So you are hopeful about Italy. I neither hope nor fear. I don’t know what God means to do for Europe—for India—for America: Italy is but sounding a solitary trumpet tone– I know not—whether she be “Death[’]s angel[”]—the trump an inch from off his lips—which the next moment shall put out the Sun– Sun indeed! much sun spiritual we have on this earth to put out! an Iron Sun. You know they’ve just found out that the Sun’s made half of iron—the greatest physical science discovery—out and out—since Newton[’]s time—perhaps the greatest of all time in its issues. [7]
Photograph of me indeed. You shan’t have anything of the kind. I can’t conceive why I’m so ugly, but I am so ugly—the sun says so– If I get a little strong again, I’ll let Munro or some other falsifying friend make me in clay, and put in the little good which that tiresome iron sun won’t, though I know it’s there,* in spite of the ugliness—but the ugliness must be razed down a little before it can be seen,—* it must be there, because I know that—not merely in great human causes—but even to make anybody else very happy—I should’nt mind anything that happened to myself–
And so Robert has made Cytherea in clay– I’ve been trying to draw her—so hard—but could’nt—it’s very odd we—(& there’s conceit for you!) should take the same fancy together—but alas—I’ve astonished no learned people—no one but poor myself, to find how little I can do. I’ve given up in despair for the time & gone back to the stones. [8]
Tell me always where to write to you[.]
I’m going to write often now. Dear love to you both. My father & mother send all thanks & regards—but—there’s actually not a word of Penini for my mother?
Ever affectionately yours,
J R–
Address: Registered & Posted / Mrs Robt Browning / 126. Via Felice / Rome.
Publication: Cook, pp. 363–365.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by postmark.
3. Psalm 22:6.
4. Judges 5:20.
5. Cf. the third stanza of Ruskin’s “Charitie” ([1842]), which first appeared in the privately printed Poems (1850). See The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (1903–12), 2, 212.
6. Cf. I Corinthians 13:1.
7. The chemical composition of the sun was little understood until the appearance of a 1925 doctoral thesis in astronomy, in which the author, Cecilia Payne (afterwards Gaposchkin, 1900–79), proved that stellar material consisted mainly of hydrogen (74%) and helium (24%).
8. Ruskin facetiously alludes to The Stones of Venice (3 vols., 1851–53) but has in mind his interest in geology, mentioned above.
___________________
