LOVE IN OLD AGE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 755, 8 January 1954, Page 13

LOVE IN OLD AGE

THE GULF OF YEARS, Love Letters from John Ruskin to Kathleen Olander; Allen and Unwin, English price 9/6. SUPPOSE a book like this is evidence that the Victorians are coming back. Ruskin was a giant figure in his time, pontificating on purity and litera-, ture and the Things Worth Seeing in the Palazzo Vecchio and along the Grand Canal. English tourists to Italy ploughed through The Seven Lamps of Architecture as pre-requisite required reading, and carried with them The Stones of Venice as their portable text-book. But though he was a considerable don in his time, all in all he was a horrid fellow. The recent publication of The Order of Release, the story of his incredible marriage and its almost as incredible conclusion (husband goes back to mother, the reverse of the usual procedure) has not shown Ruskin in any pleasant light, and more recent defénces by his supporters have done little to make him a palatable figure. The present volume continues, in my opinion, the presentation of Ruskin as. a horrid old man, though apparently the | editors think of the incident it enshrines as rather a touching love affair. In 1887 | Ruskin, who was then getting on seventy, met a young art student (still under twenty) copying Turner in the National Gallery, He was so pleased with her work he offered to tutor her, and both she and her parents were equally thrilled at the attention of the great man. From then for about a year he sent her a series of letters, which are reprinted in this volume. They begin with incredibly elementary art instruction (bring a well-hinged two-foot rule, compasses, pen, pencil and a measuring tape!), but within a few weeks he is signing himself "Ever your loving J.R.," and the girl has become My Darling Kathleen and Kathleen Dear. A few more weeks and he is proposing marriage, and passionate letters fly to and fro. But alas, it could never be. Father and Mother put a stop to the young lady. Ruskin’s sister fenced in the old dotard, who had by then fallen into one of the recurring fits of madness of his later years. And the book concludes with Kathleen’s last visit, Ruskin lost’ to the world behind an unapproachable French window, she kissing her hand to him from the garden. This sort of story can be played either as a sardonic comedy or a tragedy of horrors, Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Cenci. Played as Romeo and Juliet

it is revolting.

I.A.

G.