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In spite of strictest precautions it invaded Brantwood. On the 18th of January he was remarkably well, as people often are before an illness "fey," as the old Northern folk-lore has it. Towards evening, when Mrs. Severn went to him for the usual reading it was Edna Lyall's "In the Golden Days" his throat was irritable and he "ached all over." They put him to bed and sent for Dr.
George's Guild, who had put Mr. Ruskin's name to cheques. The bank authorities were long in tracing the crime. They even sent a detective to Brantwood to watch one of the assistants, who never knew nor will ever know that he was honoured with such attentions; and none of his friends for a moment believed him guilty. He had sometimes imitated Mr. Ruskin's hand; a dangerous jest.
Shall I take you for a visit there, to Brantwood as it was in those old times? It is a weary way to Coniston, whatever road you choose. The inconvenience of the railway route was perhaps one reason of Ruskin's preference for driving on so many occasions.
George, a tea room, and a road-making enterprise were other examples in practical economics. After the death of his mother in 1871 he purchased a small property, Brantwood, in the Lake district, where he lived for the remainder of his life, and here he brought out in monthly parts his last work, Præterita, an autobiography, 24 parts of which appeared, bringing down the story to 1864.
If bishops were still unenlightened, there was yet work to do. He gave up Venice, and resumed his crusade. Brantwood life was occasionally interrupted by short excursions to London or elsewhere. He was not merely an amateur zoologist and F.Z.S., but a devoted lover and keen observer of animals.
But this journey did not, as it had been hoped, put him in possession of his strength like the journey of 1882. Then, he had returned to public life with new vigour; now, his best hours were hours of feebleness and depression; and he came home to Brantwood in the last days of the year, wearied to death, to wait for the end.
He went north and met his translators at Brantwood to finish the Xenophon, and to help dig his harbour and cut coppice in his wood. He prepared a preface; but the next term was one of greater pressure, with the twelve lectures on Sir Joshua Reynolds to deliver.
You know the Cathedral of Oxford is the chapel of Christ Church College, and I have my high seat in the chancel, as an honorary student, besides being bred there, and so one is ever so proud and ever so pious all at once, which is ever so nice you know: and my own dean, that's the Dean of Christ Church, who is as big as any bishop, read the services, and the psalms and anthems were lovely; and then I dined with Henry Acland and his family ... but I do wish I could be at Brantwood too."
So many clever artists, he says, have been ruined by not acting on your principles. I got a piece of advice from Hunt, never to commission a picture. He could not have done my pigeon so well had he felt he was doing it for anybody." The pigeon was a drawing he had just bought; in later years at Brantwood.
At this time he used to take the family prayers himself at Brantwood: preparing careful notes for a Bible-reading, which sometimes, indeed, lasted longer than was convenient to the household; and writing collects for the occasion, still existing in manuscript, and deeply interesting as the prayers of a man who had passed through so many wildernesses of thought and doubt, and had returned at last not to the fold of the Church, but to the footstool of the Father.
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