and as if I should have life and time to stay with you, but I have "I hope it will make you very happy to be there, as far as any outward thing can make you and Georgie happier than you always are; but I like so much to think of you there, and I can't bear to think of you in London. It is the only quite pleasant thing I have to think of in all the world. So stay as long as you can, that I may have it to think of." 1 Mrs. Burne-Jones had also written to Ruskin's father, who replied as follows: "I am happy to think of my Son possessing so much of your and Mr. Jones' regard, and to hear of so many excellent people desiring to keep him at home; my own earnest wishes are, and, since his visits to Winnington, to Thirsk, and to Wallington, my hopes are, that my Son may ultimately settle in England; but these hopes would not be strengthened by his too suddenly changing his mind, throwing up his Engagements. breaking his Appointments, or at all acting on the whim of the moment He so far proceeded towards a settlement in Savoy as to have begun treat ing with a Commune about a purchase of Land. His duty is, therefore to go to Savoy and honourably withdraw from the Affair, by paying for al Trouble occasioned, and I fully expect the Savoyards will afford him som ground for declining a purchase by the exorbitant prices they will ask fo 1 Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. i. pp. 266-267. their Land. As for the ground he has bought at Chamouni, it will be a pleasure to him to keep it though he saw it not once in seven years. It is the Building Plan near Bonneville that I should rejoice to see resigned --but not suddenly abandoned for a momentary Indulgence among the Delights of Winnington, but deliberately, and after some goings and comings and Comparisons, between Weeks spent abroad, and Weeks spent at home. He has made a short engagement to go to Switzerland with the Rev. Osborne Gordon, which I hope he will keep, and I shall endeavour to hope that his Engagements abroad may in future be confined to a Tour with a friend, and that Home Influences may in the end prevail. Tell Mr. Jones that I know enough of him not to be jealous of any Influence he may have with my Son-I cannot be jealous of the Influence of Any one on this subject, because I do not attempt to exercise any-I want my Son to find out for himself where he is likely to be most happy, and am ready to acquiesce in any plan, Swiss or English, that shall most thoroughly secure this end. "My Son's fellow Traveller now is the best he could possibly go with. Being rather cynical in his views generally, and not over enthusiastic upon Alps, he is not likely to much approve of the middle heights of the Brezon for a Building Site." ני The quiet humour and practical wisdom of this letter, and, discernible beneath them, the affectionate tenderness for his son, are very characteristic of the father whom Ruskin was soon to lose. The old man's shrewdness was justified by the event. Ruskin went to Geneva with his "cynical" tutor, who walked up to the proposed hermitage and, "with his usual sagacity, calculated the daily expense of getting anything to eat, up those 4000 feet from the plain.” Having successfully accomplished the climb, and remembering that the return journey would be of the same length, Gordon remarked drily, "If you ask your friends to dinner, it will be a nice walk home for them, at night.” Ruskin feared that if they came to call and found him "not at home," they would not come again; to which Gordon added, "and I don't think they would come again anyhow."2 Perhaps these quiet criticisms had their effect, but the determining factor was the conduct of the Commune of Bonneville, who raised their price on Ruskin exorbitantly. "Unable to see why anybody should want to buy a waste of barren rock, with pasturage only for a few goats in the summer," they concluded that he had found a gold mine or a coal-bed in it 3-a suspicion to which Ruskin's frequent visits with his geological hammer, and 1 Præterita, ii. § 206. Ruskin's letter to his father from Bonneville, September 11, 1863. 3 Præterita, ii. § 206. Mr. Allen or Couttet carrying baskets for the collection of mineralogical specimens, no doubt afforded additional ground. The land at Chamouni, at the foot of the Tapia, had been duly bought; but Ruskin never built upon it, and presently sold it, "perceiving what ruin was inevitable in the valley after it became a tourist rendezvous.”1 The top of the Brezon he left on the Commune's hands; and after spending a few weeks at Chamouni-busy mainly with geology-Ruskin went off to Northern Switzerland, to sketch at Baden and Lauffenbourg and Schaffhausen, and returned to Mornex no more. His interest in economical questions was unabated, and from various places on his travels he fired in "arrows of the chace" to the newspapers. Thus from Chamouni on October 2 he wrote a letter to the Times on the Gold Discoveries then being made in Australia (see below, p. 489); and this in turn led to the Dialogue on Gold which has already been mentioned (p. lxix.), and which begins with a reference to his visit to Schaffhausen. His visit to Zurich at this same time is referred to in Time and Tide.2 In the middle of November he returned to England, and after a few days with his parents he went North-making Winnington again his headquarters, and paying visits to Manchester and to Lord Somers at Eastnor. At this time he had an idea of adding a little to his papers in Fraser's Magazine and publishing them in a volume. He explains the scheme in a letter to Burne-Jones: "I want you to do me a set of simple line illustrations of mythology and figurative creatures, to be engraved and to make a lovely book of my four Political Economy papers in Fraser, with a bit I'm just adding. I want to print it beautifully, and make it a book everybody must have. And I want a Ceres for it, and a Proserpine, and a Plutus, and a Pluto, and a Circe, and an Helen, and a Tisiphone, and an 'Avάyêŋ, and a Prudentia, and a Sapientia, and a Temperantia, and a Fortitudo, and a JUSTITIA, and a CHARITAS, and a FIDES, and a Charybdis, and a Scylla, and a Leucothea, and a Portia, and a Miranda, and an 'Apηr, and an Ophelia, and a Lady Poverty, and ever so many people more, and I'll have them all engraved so beautifully, you can't think-and then I'll cut up my text into little bits, and put it all about them, so that people must swallow at once, and it will do them so much good. Please think of it directly."4 1 Præterita, ii. § 206. 2 In § 45; see below, p. 355. 3 For whom, see Vol. I. pp. xxxv., 409, 463, and Vol. XV. p. xvii. |