Page 22 - Studio International - December 1974

importance of games. During the eighteen- read him. From Ruskin as from no-one else owes its birth to Mr Ruskin, and which Mr
sixties, in public schools and universities alike, they derived the notion of art as a supreme Swinburne, and Mr Pater, and Mr Symonds, and
there had arisen the notion that sports could value. And some of his language became theirs. Mr Morris, and many others, are fostering and
develop — as Christianity, or the study of For instance, Ruskin would often use the phrase keeping alive ...' [24]. Pater had been a fellow
medieval art perhaps could not — manliness, `entirely precious' in his conversation, with of Brasenose since 1863. His important book
decency of gentlemanly behaviour and reference to some treasure he was showing, a 'The Renaissance' was published in 1873, though
corporate spirit [18]. However slight the missal, a gem or a Turner. This became an the separate essays that it contains had been
intellectual justifications for such a belief it had aesthetic catchphrase, and of course was later appearing in journals for some time before that.
nonetheless some purchase in Oxford. Green used to describe the aesthetes themselves [21]. His position in Oxford was rather the antithesis
spaces all around the centre of the city were now One would like to know more about Ruskin's of Ruskin's. Since his election to a fellowship
being turned into college sports grounds. Pitches friendship with Oscar Wilde. However, Wilde's he had been shunned by many people within
were marked out, goalposts erected; pavilions notoriety after his trial and imprisonment meant the university. Jowett, the Master of Balliol,
were built, a type of vernacular architecture not that Ruskin's literary executors and first suspected him to have been a harmful influence
pleasing to Ruskin. Organized rugby, cricket biographers simply cut him out of the record. on Oxford youth. When 'The Renaissance' was
and rowing could absorb much undergraduate There is no mention of him in all 39 volumes of published, with its conclusion that implicitly
energy, often enough with the approval of the Library Edition. This is how Wilde rejects Christianity and affirms that 'Not the
college fellows. All this 'mere athletics', as described the road-diggings in one of his fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the
Wedderburn called it, had replaced the sporting American lectures, not published until after his end', Pater's alienation from many people in
pursuits of the time when Ruskin was an death: 'One summer afternoon in Oxford we Oxford was complete. While thousands attended
undergraduate, which were simply aristocratic, were coming down the High Street — a troop of Ruskin's lectures, a few kindred spirits gathered
and agrarian too: riding, hunting, fishing, young men, some of them like myself only around Pater. Wilde seems to have been the only
shooting and so on [19]. Ruskin had little nineteen, going to river or tennis-court or person to have moved in the Pater circle and
enough sympathy for such pursuits, but he still cricket-field — when Ruskin, going up to lecture also to have been close to Ruskin [25]. The
found them more reasonable than kicking balls in cap and gown, met us. He seemed troubled, differences between Ruskin's tastes and Pater's
and running after them. He was bitterly and prayed us to go back with him to his lecture, were enormous. Pater's attraction to Roman
scornful of the idea that ball games could which a few of us did: and there he spoke to us, Catholicism was cynical, and indeed he made a
develop any real maturity of character. He had not on art this time, but on life, saying that it cult of the pagan.
much objected to Thomas Hughes's boxing seemed to him to be wrong that all the best His writings seemed to radiate, if not
classes at the Working Mens' College, and now physique and strength of the young men in precisely to extoll, an amoralism which would
he much objected to organized games within an England should be spent aimlessly on cricket- have been deeply shocking to Ruskin, who
ancient university where he was Professor of ground or river, without any result at all except would also have rejected Pater's worship of
Fine Art. that if one rowed well one got a pewter pot, and Greek culture, his dislike for the Middle Ages
The diggings were intended to show that if one made a good score a cane-handled bat ... and his feeling for the Renaissance as mediated
muscular effort could be directed towards useful I felt that if there was enough spirit among the by the classicist Winckelmann. There was also
and ennobling ends. They opposed muscular young men to go out to such work as road making the matter of his social behaviour.
Christianity and athleticism. They thus mark for the sake of a noble idea of life, I could from Homosexuality was not discussed in the 1870s
the beginning of an opposition within English them create an artistic movement that might except in the most veiled terms, but occasionally,
educational culture of aesthetic interests and change, as it has changed, the face of England' in private letters and diaries, we may find
the sporting ethos. One senses, in a letter which [22]. This is totally fanciful, since Wilde did not evidence of a distinct homosexual social group.
Ruskin wrote to James Reddie Anderson, one arrive in Oxford until October 1874, by which In May 1878, for instance, in the diary of Mark
of the Balliol undergraduates on the dig, the time Ruskin had returned from Italy and was Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, we
slightly exaggerated, arch style of the emerging supervising the paving of the road which had find this: `To Pater's to tea, where Oscar
aestheticism: 'You must appoint one among been excavated in the spring and summer; but Browning, who was more like Socrates than
you to be general guardian of innocent weeds there is no reason why Wilde should not have ever. He conversed in one corner with four
and moss. What shall we call him? You will been at the diggings later on, since they feminine-looking youths "paw dandlin" there in
find out some pretty Latin and dignified name continued well into the winter, and then one fivesome, while the Miss Paters and I sate
... you will each buy your spade and pickaxe sporadically until the next June. He would looking on in another corner. Presently Walter
of the weight you like, and take care of these certainly have gone to hear Ruskin lecture. Pater, who, I had been told, was "upstairs"
tools as you would of pet rifles. In time to In 1888 he sent Ruskin a copy of his book of appeared, attended by two more youths of similar
come, I hope to see them beautifully made with fairy stories, 'The Happy Prince', with a note appearance' [26]. Three years before this date
a little coquetry of iron work, etc ...' [20]. saying 'It was a great pleasure to me to meet Oscar Browning, an old friend of Pater's, had
Ruskin's personal relationship to the leaders of you again; the dearest memories of my Oxford been dismissed from his mastership at Eton.
aestheticism is a trifle obscure. He is not days are my walks and talks with you, and Browning had encouraged artistic interests in
himself at all clear about the subject. He was from you I learned nothing but what was good' the boys under his care, and had invited Ruskin
hostile to aestheticism, in so far as he ever [23]. One presumes that there had been a fair to lecture at the school. The dismissal was
considered it. He seems to have thought of it amount of social contact between them during made on a technicality and there was clearly
primarily as a matter of unified internal Wilde's undergraduate years. something behind it. Browning maintained that
decoration. And in any case, the phenomenon However, towards the end of Wilde's career it was his opposition to organized games; but of
of aestheticism and 'art for art's sake' was at Oxford his intellectual allegiances were swung course the suspicion amongst all who knew him
primarily a social style and a network of personal away from Ruskin by his reading of Walter was that the Provost of Eton had terminated
relationships rather than an artistic style in Pater. Wilde, as it were, applied for Pater's his mastership because of his pederasty [27].
itself; and Ruskin had very little to do with friendship by sending him a copy of his review The English philistine assumption that
these people, who were in general thirty or of one of the first public manifestations of the homosexuality and an appreciation of the more
forty years younger than himself. But there are aesthetic movement, the Grosvenor Gallery delicate aspects of art are closely allied was
ways in which Ruskin contributed to the social exhibition of 1877, which concludes with a confirmed, of course, by the Oscar Wilde trial,
style of aestheticism, and of course there was salute towards a new spirit in art, 'that revival of and maybe in large part created by that trial.
no aesthete of the new generation who had not culture and love of beauty which in great part But it is clear that in Oxford during the 1870s

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