Peter Russet

“ They 'ad it all over agin next morning, and at last, as nobody would agree to keep quiet and let the others 'ave a fair chance, they made up their minds to let the best man win. Ginger Dick bought a necktie that took all the colour out o' Sam's, and Peter Russet went in for a collar so big that 'e was lost in it. ”

“ Then, agin, some relations are partikler about appearances, and they don't like it if a chap don't wear a collar and tidy 'imself up. Dress is everything nowadays; put me in a top 'at and a tail-coat, with a twopenny smoke stuck in my mouth, and who would know the difference between me and a lord? Put a bishop in my clothes, and you'd ask 'im to 'ave a 'arf-pint as soon as you would me—sooner, p'r'aps.
Talking of relations reminds me of Peter Russet's uncle. It's some years ago now, and Peter and old Sam Small and Ginger Dick 'ad just come back arter being away for nearly ten months. ”

“ His teachings in the course of a few years well-nigh revolutionized art opinion in England. The sum and substance of it was Nature against conventionality. People must look at Nature with their own eyes and judge art by the help of Nature. This seems simple enough to-day, but it was a new doctrine in Ruskin's youth.
Ruskin has always been an extremest in everything, and he went so far as to denounce Raphael's "Charge to Peter" on the grounds that the Apostles are not dressed as men of that time and place would have been when going out fishing. ”

“ God bless her!"
"Ay," nodded Ruth, and a faint smile of pleasure flitted across her grave face.
"And poor old Maudlin," slyly went on the old nurse, "would a'most be finding it in her heart to be jealous of her, if she wasn't quite sure—"
"Only she is," smiled Ruth, turning and twining her arms round her friend's neck. Then she drew down the old face, as brown and shrivelled as any russet apple, and kissed it. "She knows that I love her best in all the wide, wide world."
"Ay, ay, for sure. Does she now?" contentedly laughed the old woman. "Well, well, Maudlin'll do to count with maybe. ”

“ And his faith in Monck—his wariness, his discretion—was unbounded.
She did question Peter with regard to Rustam Karin, but she elicited scant satisfaction from him. Peter went but little to the native bazaar, and like herself had never seen the man. He appeared so seldom and then only by night. There was a rumour that he was leprous. This was all that Peter knew.
And so it seemed useless to pursue the matter. She could only wait and watch. Some day the man might emerge from his lair, and she would be able to identify him beyond all dispute. Peter could help her then. ”

“ They had almost given up all hope of seeing Dave return that night, when Peter slowly and deliberately removed his pipe and grunted:
“He's a-comin'.”
He then replaced the pipe, and smoked on as before.
All listened, but not one of them could hear a sound.
“Yer ears must be pretty sharp for yer age, Peter. We can't hear him,” remarked Jimmy Nowlett.
“His dog ken,” said Peter. ”

“ Peter's goldmining ventures were not successful. He sank three duffers in succession on Gulgong, and the fourth shaft, after paying expenses, left a little over a hundred to each party, and Peter had to send the bulk of his share home. He lived in a tent (or in a hut when he could get one) after the manner of diggers, and he “did for himself”, even to washing his own clothes. He never drank nor “played”, and he took little enjoyment of any kind, yet there was not a digger on the field who would dream of calling old Peter McKenzie “a mean man”. ”

“ Peter is of so much finer clay than Sam. Just thinking about clay made me remember those unspeakable boots of Sam's I had encountered out on the road, and again I determinedly turned my thoughts back to that wonderful afternoon with Peter at the Astor a few short days ago. Miss Greenough kept telling Mabel and me all over Europe to look at everything as material to build nests of pleasant thoughts for our souls to rest in, as Ruskin directed in the book she had. I've made one that will last me for life of Peter, who is the most beautiful man in the whole wide world ”

“ Peter concludes with these vigorous sentences—
"You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker [43] and a second-rate lawyer. [44] Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could see good measures pursued, I care not who is in power ”

“ The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over the white wooden paling which skirts the garden by the water's edge, and cast such bewildering shadows in the now fast gathering darkness, that Ruth cannot be certain of the precise number of figures all wearing broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks, which rise, as she looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot haste to the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard. ”

“ This illustrious champion of liberty was born in Roxbury, near Boston, in the year 1741. His father was a respectable farmer, and employed much of his time in raising fruit. He was the person that produced that species of apple called the Warren Russet. ”

“ It may be granted that the subject is an impossible one for human art to realise, yet when all allowance has been made for a lamentable amount of drying and blackening, it is difficult to agree that Ruskin was all wrong in his admiration of that thronging multitude, ordered and disciplined by the tides of light and shadow, which roll in and out of the masses, resolving them into groups and single figures of almost matchless beauty and melting away into a sea of radiant ether, which tells us of the boundless space which surrounds the serried ranks of the Blessed. ”

“ Sometimes the Rusalky appear as girls seven years old, sometimes as maidens in the full bloom of youth. They cover their beautiful bodies with green leaves, or with a white shirt without a belt; and at Whitsuntide they sit on trees, asking women for a frock and girls for a shirt, whence women hang on the branches strips of linen or little shreds torn from their dresses, this being meant as a sacrifice to propitiate these water-nymphs. ”

“ Indeed, few men have lived at any time who could color a landscape as Ruskin colors it, or who have so delicate an eye for the shyest and most sequestered beauties, as has this poet-painter. Probably Wordsworth comes nearer to Ruskin than any other modern writer in his love of the natural world, and he has given us the finest descriptions we have of some phases of Nature; but there is a glow and a depth of feeling about Ruskin's descriptions which even Wordsworth lacks. A real worship of Nature runs through all that he has written. ”

“ The Rusalky are extremely fond of music and singing; and their fine voices lure swimmers to deep places, where they drown. The water-nymphs also divert themselves by dancing in the pale moonlight, and they inveigle shepherds to play with them, the places where they dance being marked by circles in which the grass is particularly luxuriant and green. Fond of spinning, they hang their yarn on trees; and after washing the linen which they weave, they spread it on the banks to dry. If a man treads on such linen, he becomes weak and lame. ”

“ Russel has become so familiar with the objects of interest in his adopted city, that he imagines his strangers to be equally familiar with them, and in no need of being enlightened. He is so far gone in the loss of his faculties, if he ever had any great quantity to lose, that a question must be proposed to him often and in many forms, before he comprehends it, and when he answers, you are not sure that he understood you, or that he knows any thing about the matter. ”

“ The thing, he felt with increasing force, had to be done. 'It is the vainest of affectations,' he wrote, 'to try and put beauty into shadows, while all real things that cast them are left in deformity and pain.' With such thoughts surging in his brain Ruskin went off to Switzerland so soon as 'Modern Painters' was fairly out of hand, busied himself in 'the mountain gloom,' and for the next ten years was silent, except for a few occasional papers and lectures upon merely artistic matters. ”

“ For Ruskin is a great literary artist and a great ethical teacher, and we admire one page for its style, and the next for its message to humanity. The best of his prose, which one may find in the descriptive passages of Præterita and Modern Painters, is written in a richly ornate style, with a wealth of figures and allusions, and at times a rhythmic, melodious quality which makes it almost equal to poetry. Ruskin had a rare sensitiveness to beauty in every form, and more, perhaps, than any other writer in our language, he has helped us to see and appreciate the beauty of the world around us. ”

“ Rossetti's partial deliverance from his embarrassments was owing to the munificence of a man as richly endowed with genius as he himself, and much more richly provided with the gifts of fortune. In spite of some prevalent misconceptions, it may be confidently affirmed that Mr. Ruskin had nothing whatever to do with initiating the pre-Raphaelite movement, and that even his subsequent influence upon its representatives was slight. ”

“ It encouraged the painters themselves, confirmed patrons and picture-dealers, and caused many of the critics to reconsider their opinions. Ruskin's personal connection with Rossetti, the third of the pre-Raphaelite group, came somewhat later. In 1853 he had been in correspondence with McCracken (aBelfast packing-agent, and one of Rossetti's first buyers) , highly extolling the artist's work, and in April 1854 he made Rossetti's acquaintance. He admired Rossetti greatly, and helped him liberally, agreeing to buy, if he happened to like it, whatever Rossetti produced. ”

“ When Rossetti found the interpretation of love in Beauty, he failed to explain, from his vagueness of mind or baffling cleverness, what was that Beauty; and he, like John Keats before him of course, misled the small poets, indeed thousands of them, making them believe in Beauty (whatever it was) as their guiding star. I think that Ruskin was more sane in using it as the revealer of the defects of our commonplace life; what defects, I should like to know, we have in our life! ”

“ Peter erred in life and in doctrine. Paul might have dismissed Peter's error as a matter of no consequence. But Paul saw that Peter's error would lead to the damage of the whole Church unless it were corrected. Therefore he withstood Peter to his face. The Church, Peter, the apostles, angels from heaven, are not to be heard unless they teach the genuine Word of God. ”

“ On the other hand, if we are not to credit the "Pre-Raphaelites" with all the fine sentiments attributed to them in Ruskin's inspired defence, it is absurd to imagine, as some have done, that they failed to take themselves or their work seriously because Rossetti in his family letters used to speak flippantly of his unlucky little picture, which, like a curse, had come home to roost. Men often enough speak lightly to friends of things which have lain at the heart ”

“ Ruxton was a true outdoor man, loving the wilderness for itself alone, accepting whatever of toil, exposure, or hardship might come to him, feeling amply repaid for these annoyances by the joy of independence, of the beauties that surrounded him, and of the absolute physical well-being which was a part of this life. ”

“ And yet after all, a very little bit, for Ruth was no coward. The chief difficulty was to avoid disturbing Maudlin. It would be such a shame to do that. The old woman lay so comfortable—leagues away in the land of dreams. Ruth could see that, as she peeped at her through the half-open door. So soundly sleeping that she gathered courage, and stepped tiptoe across the floor, out into the corridors beyond, till she could see the sacks away at its furthermost end in the storeroom, all huddled together like hunchbacks under the dim starlight, or—like those cloaked men who had got out of the barge! ”

“ At the same time he had by now engaged himself to marry Miss Siddal, whose companionship and whose health became, for the next eight years, the most absorbing facts in his private life. To speak of Ruskin first, his was no ordinary friendship, but a curious combination of patron, friend, and mentor. If Rossetti had been a common man, living an ordinary life and working on regular lines, such a connection would have been, as he jocularly described it once, "in a way to make his fortune." For Ruskin was willing to buy within certain limits almost everything that Rossetti produced. ”

“ It was sad to see Ruskin leave Oxford estranged from many of his friends, dissatisfied with his work, which nevertheless was most valuable and highly appreciated by young and old, perhaps by the young even more than by the old. His spirit still dwells in the body, and if any one may look back with pride and satisfaction upon the work which he has achieved it is surely Ruskin. ”

“ Among the "Beacon Lights" of the age there can be no question that Ruskin is worthy of an exalted place, since few men of our modern time, rich as it is in eminent thinkers and writers, has done more than he to illumine the many subjects with which he has so fascinatingly dealt,--and that not only in art and its cult of the Beautiful, but in ethics, education, and political economy. ”