xl INTRODUCTION

his own hand was in October 1893; it was read to his aged friend, Miss Susan Beever-the “Susie” of Hortus Inclusus-on her death-bed. It is given in facsimile in a later volume; it took him three hours to write this little note of eight faltering lines. The last time he signed his name was, I believe, in 1897, when he added it to an address presented to his old friend Watts on the painter’s eightieth birthday. Mr. Allen went to see him about this time, and Ruskin talked a little of old days in Switzerland. Then he held out his finger and thumb, and said half regretfully that they would never hold pen again. “But, after all,” he added, with a smile, “they have brought me into so much trouble that perhaps it’s as well they should rest.”¹

On the death of Gladstone in 1898, Ruskin wanted to write to Mrs. Drew, and “sat an hour or more pen in hand, but could get no further than the words: ‘Dear Mary, I am grieved at the death of your father-’ and no more would come-to him who was a fountain of divine words once.”² The tongue was almost as silent as the pen. Mr. Walter Crane was at Brantwood in August 1897. “He looked,” we are told,

“the shadow of his former self-the real living man with all his energy and force had gone, and only the shadow remained. He was carefully dressed and scrupulously neat, having gloves on, which, seeing a visitor approach, he began to pull off rather absently, when Mrs. Severn said, ‘Never mind the gloves’; and I took his hand, but alas! he had nothing but monosyllables, and soon went off supported on the arm of his constant attendant.... Another time Mrs. Severn brought me into his room, where Ruskin sat in his arm-chair. He had a benign expression, and looked venerable and prophetic, with a long flowing beard, but he seemed disinclined to talk, and when I spoke of things which might have interested him he only said yes or no, or smiled, or bowed his head.”³

Even for children he had few words. “He just looked at us,” they reported, “and smiled, and we couldn’t think what to say.”⁴ He was alive, yet only waiting for the end. In 1891 his valued friend, the Bishop of Carlisle, was staying at Brantwood:-

“The Bishop was to leave Brantwood at an early hour. Mr. Ruskin expressed a strong wish to take leave of him and Mrs. Goodwin, if they would

¹ Daily News, January 31, 1899.

² Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. ii. p. 342.

³ An Artist’s Reminiscences, 1907, pp. 446-448.

⁴ W. G. Collingwood, Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 402.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]