John Ruskin, Praeterita (and Dilecta). Everyman’s Library 279, hb, Alfred A. Knopf (2005). 564 pp.

John Harvey’s novel The Subject of a Portrait (2014) casts vivid fictional light on the complex psychological condition and problematic sexual proclivities of the eminent Victorian polymath, art critic and socio-political commentator and philanthropist John Ruskin (1819-1900). I posted about this novel when it was published, with guest posts relating to it by the author himself, and by Michael Flay (links at the end of this post).

The novel is about Ruskin’s courtship of and marriage to Effie Gray, who he’d met in Scotland when he was 21 and she was 12. They married in 1848, but the marriage was annulled six years later, on the grounds, more or less, that he was incapable of (or not interested in) consummating it. The Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, who painted his portrait – hence the novel’s title – when the three of them travelled to Scotland together, fell in love with her on that trip, and they married in 1855.

I wanted to see if Praeterita sheds any further light on Ruskin’s strange, disturbing personality and behaviours, as well as for an insight into his otherwise brilliant and hugely influential cultural-critical sensibility and oeuvre.

The book’s Latin title means ‘past things’. As the introduction by his biographer Tim Hilton says, it was put together in his house by Lake Coniston using as source material his large collection of journals and letters. He rightly describes it as having no ‘narrative drive’, and is as bizarre as his life story: some chapters were carefully prepared, others dashed off impromptu. It isn’t a conventional autobiography; it has some affinity with the religious ‘confession’ literature that he was immersed in from childhood. His evangelical Christian mother ensured that he knew the Bible intimately, and he wrestled with his faith throughout his life, veering from deeply devout to what he described as his ‘unconversion’.

It doesn’t reveal much at all. He begins in vol. 1 with reminiscences of his childhood, then in vols. 2 and 3 proceeds chronologically through to adulthood. There’s a lot of stuff about his family, his father’s partnership in the Domecq wine business, frequent and extensive travels in England and Europe (especially the Alps, Italy, including of course what he calls ‘the enchanted world of Venice’, about which he was to write one of his best-known works; he also names Rouen, Geneva and Pisa as ‘the centres of my life’s thought’, the ‘tutresses of all I know, and…mistresses of all I did’), and his love of books.

His ‘first masters’ were Scott and Homer, and he started composing poetry and prose of his own very early on. His mother wanted him to enter the church, and his father later regretted that the famous author Ruskin became had failed to become a bishop!

From an early age he developed a passionate love of nature. Art and drawing also became important aspects of his life – which of course he went on to make one of his key adult preoccupations.

At the age of 17 his father’s partner’s four Paris-based daughters stayed at his family home in Herne Hill (S. London) for a while. Ruskin amusingly describes how within four days in this ‘fiery furnace’ of female pulchritude (what a great Victorian expression – mine, not Ruskin’s) he’d been ‘reduced…to a mere heap of ashes’ by the charms of 15-year-old Adèle Domecq – an infatuation that was to last several years, until she married someone else. There’s no sign here, then, of his later preference for very young girls. Is there also a hint of retrospective self-recrimination in this mocking attitude to his teenage/young adult crush? There are no further references in Praeterita to his being attracted to physically mature women.

Interestingly there’s not a single mention in Praeterita of Effie Gray. He does mention Rose la Touche. He met her in 1858 when she was just turning 10 and he was almost 39. She was to replace Effie (his marriage to her was annulled four years earlier) as his ideal female (ie pre-pubescent). At p. 269 he says he wrote a fairy story ‘to amuse a little girl’ (this was Rose), but doesn’t name her. Instead he makes a joke about his story’s being ‘totally valueless…I can no more write a story than compose a picture’. This evasion or elision is revealing.

It’s not until p. 467 that he describes being taken on as Rose’s art tutor. He describes her appearance in a restrained, factual way. But he does say she had ‘Lips perfectly lovely in profile – a little too wide’, etc. Although there’s nothing particularly salacious here, it’s interesting that he goes into such detail about her looks.

He goes on to say a good deal more about her prowess as an artist, but the only real hint at the growing intimacy between them is his revelation that she had a pet name for him: St Crumpet. This short section ends, however, with this revealing passage:

Some wise, and prettily mannered, people have told me I shouldn’t say anything about Rosie at all. But I am too old now to take advice…

And he goes on to include at great length the first of her many letters to him, in which she innocently describes her European travels. He says that there’s nothing particularly precocious in the letter, but he (over)states her ‘sympathy’: ‘She knows exactly what I am feeling, and thinks only of that’. He fails to mention that he asked her parents’ permission when she was 18 for her to marry him, and they refused. They cut off all connection between him and Rose. According to Wikipedia, Effie Gray intervened to warn them of his nature, and this helped them to make this decision. I haven’t been able to verify this.

So there’s a great deal of charming, discursive material in this book, and Ruskin’s writing is often witty, self-deprecating and interesting. There are some dull, repetitive sections, for example about the beauties of alpine scenery, and I skipped much of these, but it’s worth a look for anyone with an interest in Victorian art, literature and culture.

I can’t help feeling some disquiet, though, at these omissions about his personal life, and the breezy avoidance of anything untoward about his sexual inclinations. In this respect it’s not exactly a whitewash job, but it’s definitely a very partial portrait of an artist and his psyche.

[An apologetic footnote reflecting my preoccupation with hagiographical and iconographical matters: at p.444 Ruskin mourns the death of one of his favourite dogs, Wisie, ‘a white Spitz, exactly like Carpaccio’s dog in the picture of St Jerome.’ He tells a lovely anecdote of this dog getting lost when playing on the beach on the Venice Lido, spending three days there alone, ‘living by petty larceny’, evading all attempts to capture him, then he swam back across the lagoon to the city and was brought back to his sad owner, ‘the Madonna della Salute having been propitious to his repentant striving with the sea’.

But it’s usually a lion that’s depicted in the iconography of St Jerome; what’s going on? A quick online search (thank you Wikipedia) revealed that the painting by Venetian artist Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460-c.1526) long known as ‘St Jerome in his study’ was correctly identified in 1959 as actually depicting ‘St Augustine’s vision’. The confraternity of the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni – one of many Venetian religious charitable guilds, founded in the 15C by Dalmatian immigrants when Dalmatia was part of the Venetian empire (schiavoni is the dialect word for ‘Slavs’) – was dedicated to Sts George, Tryphon and Jerome.

Around 1502 they commissioned Carpaccio to produce a cycle of nine paintings portraying scenes from the lives of these saints. Three illustrate scenes from the life of St Jerome (who was born in a province of Dalmatia). Augustine’s letters relate a story of a time when he was sitting in his study writing a letter to Jerome when he was interrupted by a vision. He was bathed in divine light, and the study was filled by a heavenly aroma. Jerome’s voice filled the room, chastising Augustine for his intellectual pride. It later turns out that this was the very moment Jerome died.

The painting (link to the Wikipedia article, with several lovely illustrations from it HERE) shows Augustine at this moment, pen poised in the air, peering at the miraculous light streaming through the window. His little white dog sits nearby, looking up at this scene, also seemingly transfixed. Augustine’s cabinet of curiosities displays a formidable array of fashionable and exotic Renaissance artifacts – maybe his pride extended beyond the intellect (but it’s probably more to do with the artist’s own preoccupations).

The Wikipedia article identifies the dog as a ‘Volpino Italiano’ (which translates as ‘Pomeranian’, although ‘volpo’ means ‘fox’ – hence Jonson’s eponymous character Volpone), ‘similar to a German Spitz’.

So I hope, if you’ve got this far, that you’re now gratified to have that detail cleared up.]

My post (from 2014) on Harvey’s novel Subject of a Portrait HERE

John Harvey’s guest post (later in 2014) on his novel, and thoughts about the (at that time not yet released) film ‘Effie Gray’, scripted by Emma Thompson, HERE.

Another guest post on the novel and its depiction of Ruskin’s ‘sexual thoughts and behaviours’ by Michael Flay HERE. He discusses the psychology and pathology of Ruskin’s preference for pre-adolescent girls: ‘the age where beauty dwells, we spoil as we grow big’.