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THE W H ITEH O USE EDITION OF JO HN RUSKIN
PR^ETERITA
T H E W H IT E H O U S E E D IT IO N OF JO H N R U SK IN
GENERAL EDITORS: JAMES S. DEARDEN AND MICHAEL WHEELER
PR^TERITA
Edited by
A. O. J. Cockshut
RYBURN PUBLISHING
K E E LE U N IV E R SIT Y PR E SS
Prt£terita first published 1885-89
and Dilecta 1886-1900
published by
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Copyright contributions
© respective contributors
INTRODUCTION xxv
PRiETERITA.
VOLUME I.
I. OF AGE. 187
III. CU M ^. 215
X. CROSSMOUNT. 324
VOLUME III.
DILECTA. 451
* See James S. Dearden, Ruskin, Bembridge and Brantwood: The Growth o f the
Whitehouse Collection (Keele, Ryburn Publishing, 1994), for a detailed illus
trated history.
IX
X PRyETERITA
XI
xii P R ^TE RITA
Meanwhile, once the whole of the first and second volumes of the
first edition had been published in Parts, each was issued as a bound
volume: I in 1886 (second edition in two forms, 1886 and 1900), II in
1887 (second edition 1900). Volume III was not issued bound until after
Ruskin’s death in 1900, and it included Dilecta.
Dilecta: Correspondence, Diary Notes, and Extracts fro m Books,
illustrating P rater it a, was planned on an extensive scale by Ruskin as a
supplementary volume, but only two Parts (in similar format to
P raterita) were originally issued (1886 and 1887, 2,000 copies). A third
Part was published in 1900 after Ruskin’s death, although it was
prepared for the press by him. This Part included an Index to P raterita
and Dilecta. Large-paper copies of Dilecta were also issued in 1900, so
that purchasers of the large-paper Praterita could complete their sets of
the combined book.
Further editions and foreign language translations of Praterita have
been published in the twentieth century, but despite being one of
Ruskin’s most popular books it has gone through fewer editions than
many of his other books. The major edition is volume XXXV (1908) of
Cook and Wedderburn’s Library Edition (q.v.). Cook and Wedderburn’s
policy was to base their edition on the last version of the text that Ruskin
saw. Cook states in his Introduction that the ‘Text of P raterita has been
carefully revised for this edition, and some passages, of which the
meaning has hitherto been obscured by misprints or mistakes, have been
made intelligible’ (p. lxxvii; cf. pp. xc-xci). They provide a list of ‘Variae
Lectiones’, explaining that ‘the variations in the text between editions of
P raterita hitherto published are very few’. Ruskin himself made a few
corrections as follows (page references are to the present edition):
maternal grandfather, ‘maternal’ inserted before ‘grandfather’. This suggests
that it may have been editorially removed from an intermediate edition,
since it is present in the first edition (page 8).
molestat: replaced with ‘molesta est’ (page 219).
insight: ‘even’ inserted after ‘insight’ (page 290).
fortune: Ruskin struck out the ‘and’ which followed ‘fortune’ (page 425).
Of Cook and Wedderburn’s other variants, the most significant are:
Munro: corrected to ‘Monro’ (page 25).
a helpful law: was a misprint for ‘and helpful law’ (page 30).
Tweeddale: ‘Tweedale’ corrected to ‘Tweddale’. Neither actually corresponds
to ‘Tweeddale’ as found in the original edition (page 45).
Elspeth: corrected to ‘Elizabeth’ (page 47).
D. Andrews: the ‘D.’ corrected to ‘E.’ (page 53).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xiii
The Whitehouse Edition P m terita follows the first edition, including all
misprints. A dagger (f) indicates an editorial explanatory note. Ruskin’s
own notes appear as footnotes.
M. D.W.
CHRONOLOGY*
XIV
CHRONOLOGY
1824 Byron d.
1825 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection; Fuseli d.; Furnivall b.
1826 Flaxmand.
1827 Blake d.; W. Holman Hunt b.; University of London founded;
Keble, The Christian Year
1828 D. G. Rossetti b.; Howley Archbishop of Canterbury; Euphemia
(‘Effie’) Gray b.; Jan., Wellington (Cons.) PM
1829 Roman Catholic emancipation legislation; J. E. Millais b.; Turner,
Ulysses D eriding Polyphemus (P)
1830 Accession of William IV; Liverpool and Manchester Railway;
French ‘Revolution of July’; Tennyson, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,
Lyell, Principles o f Geology (-1833); A. Hughes, C. Rossetti,
Inchbold b.; Nov., Grey (Whig) PM
1831 Darwin’s voyage on Beagle (-1836); Brett b.
1832 Reform Act; Morse invents telegraph; Scott, Goethe d.; George
Allen b.
1833 Factory Act (‘Children’s Charter’); Oxford Movement launched;
Great Western Railway begins; Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (-1834);
Burne-Jones b.
1834 Abolition of slavery in British dominions; Poor Law Amendment
Act; Coleridge d.; Morris b.; Jul, Melbourne (Whig) PM; Nov.,
Wellington (Cons.) PM; Dec., Peel (Cons.) PM
1835 Fox Talbot’s first photographs; Turner, The B urning o f the Houses
o f Lords and Commons (P); Apr., Melbourne (Whig) PM
1836 First railway in London; Pugin, Contrasts', Rio, De la Poesie
Chretienne; Dickens, Pickwick Papers (-1837); Turner, Ju liet and
h er Nurse (P)
XV
XVI PR ^TE RITA
1841 takes cure at Leamington Spa; writes The K ing o f the Golden R iver
for Euphemia (‘Effie’) Gray
1842 honorary double fourth at Oxford; family moves to 163 Denmark
Hill, near Camberwell
1843 term at Oxford; drops plan to take Holy Orders; M odem Painters
vol.I
1844 Switzerland, France
1845 France, Switzerland and Italy without parents; first sees Tinto
rettos
1846 repeats tour with parents; M odem Painters vol. II
1851 The Stones o f Venice vol. I; Examples o f the A rchitecture o f Venice; P re-
Raphaelitism; The K ing o f the Golden R iver; Notes on the Construction
o f Sheepfolds; long winter in Venice (-1852)
1852 in summer settles at 30 Herne Hill
1852 Dickens, Bleak House (-1853); Martin, The Great Day o f His Wrath
(P); Pugin d.; Derby (Cons.), Dec, Aberdeen (Coalition) PM
1853 W. Holman Hunt, The Light o f the World (P); Maurice, Theological
Essays
1854 Crimean War (-1856); Pius IX defines Immaculate Conception
of BVM; Working M en’s College, London, founded; Gaskell,
xviii PR ^TE RITA
1855 Notes on the Royal Academy (annually, -1859, and 1875); takes cure
at Tunbridge Wells; meets C. E. Norton
1856 M odem Painters vols III and IV; The Harbours o f England', France,
Switzerland; meets John Simon
1857 The Political Economy o f A n; The Elements o f D rawing; arranges
Turner Bequest (-1858)
1860 M odem Painters vol. V; Savoy; Unto this Last serialization stopped
in Com hill (book, 1862); friendship with Carlyle deepens
1861 several tours; suffers from depression; thinks of settling in Savoy
1864 death of father, John James, who leaves him a fortune; cousin
Joan Agnew (later Severn) to Denmark Hill
1865 member of Governor Eyre defence committee; Sesame and Lilies;
Cestus o f Aglaia (-1866)
1869 The Flamboyant A rchitecture o f the Somme; The Queen o f the Air;
Switzerland, Italy; ‘discovers’ Carpaccio; elected first Slade Pro
fessor of Fine Art, Oxford
1870 lectures on ‘Verona and its Rivers’ (pub. 1894); (Oxford) Lectures
on Art; Switzerland, Italy
It was fortunate for Ewen that the sorrel horse on which he was tied
had easy paces, and that the troopers did not ride fast; fortunate too
that his arms had been bound to his sides and not behind his back,
as had at first been proposed when, limping badly, and shielding his
eyes against the unaccustomed daylight, he was brought out into the
courtyard of the fort to be mounted. For by midday so many hours in
the saddle, under a July sun, were making heavy demands on a man
come straight from close confinement and not long recovered of a
severe wound.
But from Ewen’s spirit a much heavier toll was being exacted; not
by the prospect of the death which was in all likelihood awaiting him,
not even by the remembrance of his lost Alison, but by the pain
which was actually tearing at him now, this taking leave of what he
loved better than life, the lakes and mountains of his home. This was
the real death, and he kept his lips locked lest he should cry out at its
sharpness.
The picture which had been tormenting Keith Windham he could
look at without undue shrinking; or rather, he did not trouble to look
at it any more now. Like the man who had saved him, he could not
avoid the thought that Guthrie’s musket balls had been more
merciful, but the choice had not lain in his hands; and for the last two
months it had been more important to try to keep his equanimity day
after day in the cold and darkness of his prison than to think what he
should do or feel when he came to stand in the hangman’s cart. And
the parting with Alison was over; and because he had known that the
kiss in the cabin of the brig might be their last, it had held the
solemnity which had enwrapped their hurried marriage and the bridal
night whose memory was so holy to him. Alison had been his,
though for so brief a space; and one day, as he firmly believed, they
would meet again. But Beinn Tigh . . . would he ever see again, in
that world, his beloved sentinel of the stars?
Ever since its peak had appeared, all flushed by the morning sun,
as they began to ride by Loch Oich, he had kept his eyes hungrily
upon it, praying that the horses might go slower, or that one might
cast a shoe; watching it like a lover as it revealed more of its
shapeliness and dominated the shoulder, between it and the loch,
behind which, as they went farther, it would inevitably sink. And Loch
na h-Iolaire, his loch, away behind there, invisible, secluded by its
own mountains! If only he could get free of these cords, swim the
water between, climb those intervening miles of scree and heather,
and see the Eagle’s Lake once more! No, never again; neither in this
world nor the next. For Loch na h-Iolaire was not like Alison and him;
it had not a soul free of time and space. Loch na h-Iolaire existed
over there, only there, on that one spot of earth, and in all the fields
of heaven there would be no lake so lovely, and in heaven the grey
mists would never swoop down on one who ambushed the deer.
At Laggan-ach-drum they had halted and rested and eaten. It
was Glengarry’s country, yet on the border of the Cameron, and
Ardroy was known there; but in the burnt and ravaged clachan there
seemed to be no man left, and no risk of a rescue. The troopers of
Kingston’s Horse had shown themselves rough but not unkindly, and
the sergeant, probably thinking that unless they gave the prisoner
some attention they would hardly get him to Fort William at the end
of the day, had him unfastened and taken off the sorrel and set down
amongst them by the roadside with food and drink. But they were
very careful of him, tying his ankles together, and putting a cord from
one wrist to the belt of the next man. And Ewen had eaten and drunk
in silence, looking at the sunlit desolation. This was what had been
done in the Glen . . . done in all the countryside . . .
A young girl had passed once or twice to a half-burnt croft
carrying a bucket of water, and presently the sergeant, wanting some
for the horses, called to ask where the water came from, since here
they were no longer by a lake side. Setting down the heavy bucket,
she came and stood before him, looking on the troopers with eyes
like coals, and only once at their prisoner. (But the softness of
evening was in them then.) The sergeant, without harshness, put his
question, but the girl shook her head, and Ewen knew that she had
not the English. Already he had seen a sight that set his heart
beating, for as she stooped to put down the bucket he had caught a
glimpse of the black handle of a sgian dubh in her bosom.
“Shall I ask her for you?” he suggested to the sergeant, and,
hardly waiting for the answer, he spoke rapidly to her in Gaelic,
putting the question about water indeed, but adding at the end of it,
“Try to give me your knife when I am on the horse again—if you have
another for yourself!”
The girl gave him a glance of comprehension, and turned away to
show where to fetch the water; and the sergeant had no inkling that
another question besides his had been put and answered. He even
threw a word of thanks to the interpreter.
But while they were tying Ewen on again the girl came among
them, as if curiosity had brought her to see the sight, and, heedless
of the jests which she did not understand, slipped nearer and nearer
among the horses until she seemed to be jostled against the sorrel’s
shoulder. And Ewen felt the little knife, warm from its hiding-place,
slide into his right stocking; it was only with an effort that he kept his
eyes averted and seemed unaware of her presence. But he turned
his head as they rode away, and saw her standing at gaze with her
hands joined, as though she were praying.
That was an hour agone and more. How he should ever get at,
much less use, the blade against his leg he had no idea, seeing that
his arms were immovably pinioned, but to know it there made a
world of difference. His thoughts reverted to Major Windham, to that
interview yesterday. They might have been friends had Fate willed it
otherwise; indeed he could not but think of him already as a friend,
and with wonder at what he had done for him. But why had Angus’s
heron brought them together to so little purpose, to meet, and meet,
and then to part for ever, as they had met at first, ‘by the side of
water’—Loch Oich and Loch Ness? Yet he owed his life to one of
those encounters; there was no possible doubt of that. But it was still
a mystery to him why the Englishman should have cared so much for
his fate as to wreck his own career over it. He had really behaved to
Loudoun and (as far as he could make out) to Cumberland—all
honour to him for it—as if he were fey. And he had seemed at the
outset of their acquaintance of so mocking a temper, so lightly
contemptuous as scarcely even to be hostile. One saw him with
different eyes now.
But Keith Windham was swept from his thoughts again, as he
realised afresh that he was going for the last time along Loch Lochy
side. It was bright pain to look at it, but Ewen looked greedily, trying
to burn those high green slopes for ever on his memory, to be
imaged there as long as that memory itself was undissolved. There
was the steep corrie and the wall shutting out his home. What
though the house of Ardroy were ashes now, like Achnacarry and a
score of others, there were things the marauders could not touch,
things dearer even than the old house—the sweeps of fern and
heather, the hundred little burns sliding and tinkling among stones
and mosses, the dark pine-trees, the birches stepping delicately
down the torrent side, the mist and the wind, the very mountain air
itself. But these, though they would remain, were not for him any
more.
And then Ewen bit his lip hard, for, to his horror, his eyes had
begun to fill, and, since he could not move a hand, all that was left
was to bow his head and pray desperately that the troopers on either
side might not observe his weakness. But they were just then
absorbed in heartfelt complaints at the detour which they were
obliged to make on his account, instead of setting out with the rest of
Kingston’s Horse, in two days’ time, for Edinburgh; and Ewen quickly
swallowed the salt upon his lips, thinking, ‘Since I am so little of a
man, I must fix my mind on something else.’ Yet here, in this dear
and familiar neighbourhood, he could think of nothing else but what
was before his eyes; and his eyes told him now that the radiance of
the morning was gone, and that clouds were coming up the Glen
from the south-west, from Loch Linnhe, with that rapidity which he
knew so well of old. In an hour it would very likely be raining hard; in
less, for beyond the Loch Arkaig break he could see that it was
raining . . .
Here he was, looking just as intently at the hills as before! So he
shut his eyes, afraid lest moisture should spring into them again; and
also a little because the waters of Loch Lochy, still bright, despite the
advancing clouds, were beginning queerly to dazzle him. And when
his eyes were shut he realised with increasing clearness that
physically too he was nearing the boundary-line of endurance. He
had wondered himself how he should ever accomplish the thirty-mile
ride, but the problem had not troubled him much, and the untying
and rest at Laggan had been a relief. Now—and they still had a long
way to go—it was astonishing how this sea of faintness seemed to
be gaining upon him. He reopened his eyes as he felt himself give a
great lurch in the saddle.
“Hold up!” said the trooper who had the reins. “Were ye asleep?”
Ewen shook his head. But what curious specks were floating over
the darkening landscape! He fixed his eyes on his horse’s ears; but
once or twice the whole head of the animal disappeared from his
sight altogether; and the second time that this phenomenon occurred
he felt a grip on his arm, and found the soldier on the other side
looking at him curiously. However, the man released him, saying
nothing, and Ewen, mute also, tried to straighten himself in the
saddle, and looked ahead in the direction of Ben Nevis, since
perhaps it was a mistake to look at anything close at hand. The
mountain’s top was veiled. The last time that he had seen it . . . with
Lochiel . . .
But that memory had poison in it now. Oh, to have speech with
Lochiel once before he went hence! Ewen set his teeth, as waves of
faintness and of mental pain broke on him together. If he could only
say to Donald . . .
And there followed on that, surprisingly, a period in which he
thought he was speaking to Lochiel; but it must have been by some
waterfall—the waterfall near the hiding-place, perhaps—and through
the noise of the rushing water he could not make Lochiel hear what
he was saying to him. He tried and tried . . . Then all at once
someone was holding him round the body, and a voice called out,
miles away, yet close, “He was near off that time, Sergeant!”
Ewen left the waterfall and became conscious, to his
astonishment, that they were away from Lochy and within full sight of
Ben Nevis and all his brethren. Also that the whole escort had
stopped. Landscape and horses then whirled violently round. His
head fell on a trooper’s shoulder.
“The prisoner’s swounding, Sergeant! What are we to do?”
Swearing under his breath, the sergeant brought his horse
alongside. “Shamming? No, he ain’t shamming. Here,” he brought
out something from his holster, “give him a drink of his own Highland
whisky—nasty stuff it is!”
They held up Ewen’s head and put the spirit to his lips. It revived
him a little, and he tried to say something, but he himself did not
know what it was. The sergeant eyed him doubtfully.
“I’ll tell you what,” he remarked to his men, “we’ll untie his arms—
not his feet, mind you—and maybe then he can help himself by
taking a holt of the mane.—Can ye do that?”
Ewen nodded, too sick and dizzy to realise what possibilities
would thus be put within his reach.
The dragoons unfastened the cords round his arms and body,
gave him some more spirit, rubbed his cramped arms, and in a little
while he was able to do what the sergeant suggested; and presently,
he leaning hard upon the sorrel’s crest, his fingers twined in the
mane, they were going slowly down the moorland slope towards the
Spean. Ewen felt less faint now, after the whisky and the release of
his arms; the fine misty rain which had now set in was refreshing,
too, so, although the landscape showed a disposition to swim at
times, he could certainly keep in the saddle—indeed, how could he
fall off, he thought, with this rope passing from ankle to ankle
beneath the horse’s belly? And he began to think about High Bridge,
still unseen, which they were approaching, and of the part which it
had played in this great and ill-fated adventure—and in his own
private fortunes, too. For down there the first spark of revolt had
flashed out; down there Keith Windham had been turned back by
MacDonald of Tiendrish and his men; and because he had been
turned back, Ewen himself was alive to-day, and not mouldering by
Neil MacMartin’s side on Beinn Laoigh.
But he was none the less on his way to death, and there was no
one to stay the redcoats from passing High Bridge now. Tiendrish,
marked for the scaffold, lay already in Edinburgh Castle; Keppoch,
his chief, slept with his broken heart among the heather on Culloden
Moor; Lochiel was a wounded outlaw with a price on his head. The
gods had taken rigorous dues from all who had been concerned in
the doings of that August day here by the Spean. Yes, strangely
enough, even from Keith Windham, who was on the other side. They