John Ruskin: Præterita John Ruskin

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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

This edition first published in 1994

by Ryburn Publishing
an imprint of
Keele University Press
Keele, Staffordshire

published by
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh

Copyright contributions
© respective contributors

Transferred to digital print 2012

Composed by KUP Services

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Paperback ISBN 1 85331 050 6

Cased ISBN 1 85331 045 X

 CONTENTS

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE vii

A NOTE ON JOHN HOWARD WHITEHOUSE ix

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xi
CHRONOLOGY xiv

INTRODUCTION xxv

PRiETERITA.
VOLUME I.

I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 5

II. HERNE-HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 22

III. THE BANKS OF TAY. 36

IV. UNDER NEW TUTO RSH IPS. 52
V. PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON. 65
VI. SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. 79

VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. 92

VIII. VESTER, CAMEN2E. 109

IX. THE COL DE LA FAUCILLE. 121

X. QUEM T U , MELPOMENE. 134

XI. CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 150

XII. ROSLYN CHAPEL. 168

 VOLUME II.

I. OF AGE. 187

II. ROME. 201

III. CU M ^. 215

IV. FONTAINEBLEAU. 230

V. THE SIMPLON. 246

VI. THE CAMPO SANTO. 262

VII. MACUGNAGA. 278

VIII. THE STATE OF DENMARK. 294

IX. THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 308

X. CROSSMOUNT. 324

XI. L’ HOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 340

XII. OTTERBURN. 360

VOLUME III.

I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 373

II. MONT VELAN. 393

III. l’e st e r e l l e . 412

IV. JOANNA’ S CARE. 425

DILECTA. 451

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 493

EDITOR’ S EXPLANATORY NOTES 495

TABLES OF CONTENTS 571

 GENERAL E D IT O R S ’ PREFACE

The Whitehouse Edition of John Ruskin aims to make available to a

wide readership the major works of a writer who is generally recognized
as one of the greatest of the Victorian Age, and yet whose writings are
largely out of print.
This new edition also responds to the recent revival of interest in
Ruskin. One reason for this is that Ruskin is once again ‘relevant’, a
term from which the scholarly community tends to shy away. His
powerful critique of industrialization and materialism, his ideas on
architectural heritage and restoration, his refusal to separate aesthetics
from ethics, his passionate interest in and defence of what we now call
‘the natural environment’ - these are just some of the areas in which
Ruskin speaks not only to his generation, but also to our own.
There has also occurred a resurgence of scholarly interest in Ruskin,
and the Ruskin bibliography has not only lengthened in recent years but
has also become more sophisticated. Ruskin is being closely examined
and animatedly discussed as a fascinating polymath - thinker, prophet,
teacher, reformer, artist, collector and, in George Eliot’s view, the finest
writer of his generation. He wrote on art, architecture, sculpture,
political economy, religion, mythology, cultural history, museology,
mineralogy, geology, botany, ornithology, and many other subjects. He
seems to have lived out in his own intellectual life all the cross-currents
of Victorian cultural and social debate, and he demands to be read as
both representative of his Age (in certain ways the epitome of Vic-
torianism) and unique (brilliant, eccentric and, at the end of his career,
tragically deranged).
The Whitehouse Edition of John Ruskin is designed to provide in an
attractive format sound texts based on the first published version of the
work or works in question, so that modern readers can read Ruskin as
his contemporaries first received him. This emphasis on reading Ruskin
viii PRiETERITA

in his Victorian context is also reflected in the detailed comparative

Chronology provided in each volume, the critical Introductions by the
volume’s editor, and the editor’s Explanatory Notes which follow the
main text. Each volume also includes a Bibliographical Note, a Note on
Further Reading, and, where they feature in the original, black and
white plates.
J am es S. D e a r d e n M ic h a e l W h eeler

Curator o f the Ruskin Galleries, Professor of English Literature and

Bembridge School, Isle o f Wight, Director o f the Ruskin Programme,
and Brantwood, Coniston Lancaster University
 JOHN HOWARD WHITEHOUSE

J. Howard Whitehouse was born in Birmingham on 8 June 1873. He

left school at about the age of fourteen, but continued his education in
the evenings at the Midland Institute and Mason’s College, obtaining
in one year both the History and the English Prizes - an unprecedented
achievement.
In his early twenties he ‘discovered’ Ruskin. To spread the good news
about Ruskin and his teaching, in 1896 Whitehouse founded the Ruskin
Society of Birmingham and in 1899 he represented the Society when he
and William Wardle visited Ruskin at Brantwood to present to him an
illuminated address of congratulation on his eightieth birthday.
Interest in Ruskin and a dedication to his teaching were to influence
the whole of Whitehouse’s life. During his years as a Member of
Parliament, he was much involved with education, particularly for the
underprivileged. He established an annual secondary schoolboys’ camp
and he fostered craftsmanship and art in schools.
In 1919, the centenary of Ruskin’s birth, he arranged the Ruskin
Centenary Exhibition at the Royal Academy and edited a number of
related publications. He also founded Bembridge School in the Isle of
Wight - a boarding school for boys - where he put some of Ruskin’s and
some of his own pioneering educational theories to the test. At
Bembridge creative education - art, woodwork, printing and music -
were considered to be as important as the more academic subjects.
From the time of his discovery of Ruskin, Whitehouse collected
books, letters, manuscripts, drawings - anything that he could - by or
about Ruskin.* He established a national Ruskin Society in 1932, and
The Friends of Brantwood in 1935; he held annual luncheons or dinners
to celebrate Ruskin’s birthday, often publishing volumes containing
addresses given there.

* 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

In 1929 he built the Ruskin Galleries at Bembridge School to house

his ever-growing Ruskin collection, some of which was moved to
Brantwood when he bought the house in 1932 to open it to the public
as an international memorial to Ruskin. As a result of the Brantwood
dispersal sales of 1930-31, his collection grew into the world’s largest
Ruskin collection.
Whitehouse was a Companion of Ruskin’s Guild of St George from
1902 until his death in 1955, and a Trustee of the Guild from 1918. He
devoted his life to keeping Ruskin’s message alive during a long period
of neglect, and we are delighted to name this series of publications in
his honour.
J. S. D.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Some portions of P rater it a first appeared in Fors Clavigera, Letters 10,

28, 33, 46, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 63, 65. (For a collation of these passages
see the Library Edition of The Works o f John Ruskin, edited by
E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London, Allen; New
York, Longmans, 1903-12), XXXV, xci-ii; this collation is part of Cook
and Wedderburn’s extensive Bibliographical Note (pp. lxxxiii-xcii) on
which much of the following data are based.)
Praterita was published in twenty-eight chapters divided into three
volumes, the first two of which each contained twelve chapters; the third
volume was not completed as Ruskin had originally planned, through ill
health. Each chapter was published as a separate ‘Part’ in paper form
and at the price of one shilling; 4,000 of the first eleven parts were
printed, after which production went up to 5,000. 600 large-paper
quarto copies were also issued, to subscribers only, at the price of two
shillings. The appearance of Parts was uneven over the four-year
publication period, again owing to periods of ill health: 1-12 appeared
between July 1885 and April 1886; 13-24 between M ay 1886 and
November 1887; 25-28 between May 1888 and July 1889. The title-
page of Part 1 read as follows:
Praeterita. / Outlines of / Scenes and Thoughts / perhaps / worthy of
Memory / in my past Life. / By / John Ruskin, LL.D., / Honorary
Student of Christ Church, Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christd /
College, and Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford. / Chapter I. / The
Springs of Wandel. / With Steel Engraving of my Two Aunts. /
George Allen, / Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. / 1885.
(In fact Ruskin had resigned his Slade Professorship, and the title-page
was changed accordingly after Part 4.)
George Allen, whom Ruskin had trained as his publisher, issued a
second edition of Part 1 in 1885 and of Parts 2-12 in 1886 (3,000 copies
of each); of Parts 13 and 14 in 1899 (300 copies); of Part 15 in 1900 (275
copies); and of Part 16 in 1903 (250 copies). A third edition of Part 1 was
issued in 1898 (1400 copies).

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

impression: corrected to ‘impressions’ as found in the MS (page 60).

Balstall: ‘Balstal’ corrected to ‘Balsthal’. Neither corresponds to ‘Balstall’ as
found in the original edition (page 88).
epilogue: corrected to ‘preface’ (page 89).
Adams: corrected to ‘Adam’ (page 95).
better: corrected to ‘bitter’ as found in the MS (page 193).
Griffith'. ‘Griffiths’ corrected to ‘Griffith’. In the original edition on all but
the last two occasions (where ‘Griffiths’ is used) it is spelt correctly as
‘Griffith’ (page 197-8).
Clarke\ corrected to ‘Clark’ (page 199).
motion ... figu re: corrected to ‘notion ... figures’ (page 206).
course: corrected to ‘courses’ as found in the MS (page 284).
1851: corrected to ‘1867’ (page 306).
element: corrected to ‘elements’ as found in the MS (page 322).
brother-in-law', corrected to ‘brother’s brother-in-law’ (page 341).
Face: Cook and Wedderbum noted that the lines following the quotation
from Guy M annering ‘were altered in the text from the MS. and not very
clearly patched together’. They stated that their own reading ‘mends the
sense and the construction’ of the passage (page 367).
Henry I: corrected to ‘Henry II’ (page 381).
drowsy camel-bells: corrected to ‘browsing camels’ bells’ (page 394).
Painter: ‘M odem Painters’ substituted for ‘Modern Painter’ (page 401).
Rots: corrected to ‘Couronnes’ (page 409).
Charles: corrected to ‘James’ (page 436).
and o f every country: ‘and’ corrected to ‘I am’ (page 438).
M. La Comte, De Came: corrected to ‘M. le Comte de Carne’ (page 466).
W. E. Cooke: corrected to ‘W. B. Cooke’ (page 475).
Rev. W. Tweddale: corrected to ‘Rev. James Tweddale’ (page 481).

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*

1819 John Ruskin born 8 February at 54 Hunter Street, London

1823 family moves to 28 Herne Hill, near Camberwell

1825 tour of France and Belgium

1829 first poem published; lessons from private tutor begin

1830 tour of Lake District

1831 lessons in drawing begin

1832 given Rogers’s Italy, with vignettes after Turner

1833 Germany, Switzerland, Italy; meets Adele Domecq

1834 attends Dr Dale’s school; first scientific papers published

1835 France, Switzerland, Italy - first sight of Venice

1836 writes unpublished letter in defence of Turner*

* Key to abbreviations: b. = born; d. = dies; m. = marries; P = painting;

PM = Prime Minister

XIV
 CHRONOLOGY

1819 George III on throne, son George Prince Regent; Manners-

Sutton Archbishop of Canterbury; Pius VII Pope; Liverpool
(Cons.) PM; Princess Victoria, Charles Kingsley, George Eliot,
Arthur Hugh Clough b.; Peterloo massacre; Scott, The Bride o f
Lammermoor
1820 Accession of George IV; Shelley, Prometheus Unbound; Malthus,
Principles o f Political Economy
1821 De Quincey, Confessions o f an Opium Eater, Keats, Napoleon d.;
F. M. Brown b.
1822 Rogers, Italy (-1830); Shelley d.; M. Arnold b.; Turner, Hornby
Castle (P; r. 1822)

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

1837 in residence at Christ Church, Oxford; meets Henry Acland;

Lake District; The Poetry o f A rchitecture serialized (-1838)

1838 continues studies at Oxford; Lake District, Scotland

1839 begins to collect Turners; wins Newdigate Prize at Oxford; intro­
duced to Wordsworth
1840 tuberculosis, leaves Oxford; France, Italy (-1841)

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

1847 takes cure at Leamington Spa; Scotland

1848 marries Effie in Perth, 10 April; illness; Normandy

1849 The Seven Lamps o f A rchitecture; Switzerland, Italy, France;

returns with Effie for long winter in Venice (-1850)

1850 Poems; Essay on Baptism (-1851)

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

1853 holiday at Glenfinlas with Effie, J. E. Millais and W. Millais;

Stones vols II and III; Giotto, and his Works in Padua (-1860)
1854 Lectures on A rchitecture and Painting; The Opening o f the Crystal
Palace-, marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation
 CHRONOLOGY xvii

1837 Accession of Queen Victoria; Carlyle, French Revolution; Stanfield,

On the Scheldt (P); Landseer, The Old Shepherd’s C hief M ourner (P);
Constable d.
1838 ‘People’s Charter’; Brunei’s Great Western crosses Atlantic
1839 Chartist riots; Eglinton Tournament; Turner, The F ighting
‘T em eraire’ (P)
1840 Marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; Penny Post;
Barry and Pugin, Houses of Parliament (-1869); Turner, Slavers
Throwing Overboard the Dead and D ying (P)
1841 Punch founded; Macaulay, Lays o f Ancient Rome; Aug., Peel
(Cons.) PM
1842 Mudie’s Lending Library opens; Turner, Peace: Burial at Sea (P);
Mulready, Crossing the Ford (P); Cotman d.
1843 Southey d.; Wordsworth Poet Laureate; Carlyle, Past and Present;
Turner, Light and Colour (Goethe’s theory){P)
1844 Chambers, Vestiges o f the Natural History o f Creation; Turner, Rain,
Steam, and Speed (P)
1845 Newman converts to Roman Catholicism; Irish potato famine;
Disraeli, Sybil
1846 Corn Laws repealed; railway boom begins; Pius IX elected Pope;
Strauss, Life o f Jesu s (trans. George Eliot); Turner, The A ngel
Standing in the Sun (P); Haydon d.; Joan Agnew (later Severn) b.;
Jun., Russell (Whig) PM
1847 C. Bronte, Ja n e Eyre\ E. Bronte, W uthering H eights; Thackeray,
Vanity Fair (-1848)
1848 Revolutions in Europe; Communist Manifesto; collapse of
Chartism; J. S. Mill, Principles o f Political Economy; Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood formed; Sumner Archbishop of Canterbury
1849 Macaulay, History o f England (-1861); Mayhew, London Labour and
the London Poor, D. G. Rossetti, The Girlhood o f M aty Virgin (P);
Millais, Christ in the House o f his Parents (P); David Scott d.;
Spurgeon b.
1850 Roman Catholic hierarchy restored in England; Wiseman Arch­
bishop of Westminster; Wordsworth d.; Tennyson Poet Laureate;
Wordsworth, The Prelude; Tennyson, In M emoriam; The Germ
(PRB); Butterfield, All Saints’, Margaret Street, London (-1859)
1851 Great Exhibition in Paxton’s Crystal Palace, London; Turner d.;
W. Holman Hunt, The H ireling Shepherd (P)

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

(Effie m. J. E. Millais, 1855); France, Switzerland, Italy; teaches

at Working Men’s College, London (-1858; 1860)

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)

1858 Inaugural Address at the Cambridge School o f An; France,

Switzerland, Italy; studies Veronese, Turin; ‘unconversion ’ from
Evangelicalism, Turin; meets Rose La Touche (aged nine),
London; discusses Bible with Spurgeon
1859 first visit to Winnington School; The Two Paths; The Elements o f
Perspective; The Oxford M useum; The Unity o f An; Germany,
Switzerland

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

1862 France, Italy; Essays on Political Economy serialized (stopped in

Fraser's, 1863; later in M unera Pulveris, 1872)

1863 Mornex; summer in England; buys land at Chamonix

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)

1866 proposes to Rose La Touche (aged eighteen); France, Switzer­

land; death of Lady Trevelyan on journey; The Ethics o f the Dust;
The Crown o f Wild Olive
1867 Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne; rest-cure at Norwood

1868 Dublin lecture; northern France

 CHRONOLOGY xix

North and South’, W. Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience (P);

Smirke, Round Reading Room, British Museum, London (-1857);
Martin d.
1855 Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls; Copley Fielding d.; Wood­
ward and Deane, Oxford Museum (-1860); Leighton, Cimabue’s
celebrated Madonna (P); Street, Brick and M arble in the M iddle Ages’,
Trollope, The Warden’, R. Browning, M en and Women; Feb.,
Palmerston (Lib.) PM
1856 Perkin invents aniline dyes; Millais, Autumn Leaves (P); J. A.
Froude, History o f England (-1870)
1857 Indian Mutiny (-1859); Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition;
Acland Professor of Medicine, Oxford; Hugh Miller, The Testi­
mony o f the Rocks’, E.B. Browning, Aurora Leigh
1858 Brunei’s Great Eastern launched; Frith, Derby Day (P); Wallis, The
Stonebreaker (P); G. G. Scott, Remarks on Secular and Domestic
A rchitecture; George MacDonald, Phantastes; Feb., Derby (Cons.)
PM
1859 Darwin, On the Origin o f Species’, J. S.M ill, On Liberty; George
Eliot, Adam Bede; Wagner, Tristan and Isolde; Brett, Val dAosta
(P); Philip Webb, The Red House, Bexleyheath; Jun.,
Palmerston (Lib.) PM
1860 Italian unification; Huxley-Wilberforce debate, Oxford; Cornhill
founded; Dyce, P egw ell Bay (P); Essays and Reviews
1861 American Civil War (-1865); Prince Albert d.; Hymns Ancient and
M odem ; Palgrave, The Golden Treasury; E. B. Browning d.
1862 First cricket tour to Australia; Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1
(P); Colenso, The Pentateuch Examined (-1879); C. Rossetti, Goblin
Market; J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism; G. G. Scott, Foreign Office
(-1873); Longley Archbishop of Canterbury
1863 Huxley, M an’s Place in Nature; G. G. Scott, Albert Memorial,
London; Thackeray, Mulready d.
1864 Pasteurisation invented; Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua; Dyce d.

1865 Lister introduces antiseptic surgery; President Lincoln assassi­

nated; Governor Eyre controversy; Dodgson (Lewis Carroll),
A lice’s A dventures in Wonderland; F. M. Brown, Work (P); Manning
Archbishop of Westminster; Paxton d.; Oct., Russell (Lib.) PM
1866 Nobel invents dynamite; Swinburne, Poems and Ballads; Jun.,
Derby (Cons.) PM

1867 Second Reform Act; typewriter invented; Carlyle, Shooting Niagara;

Marx, Das Kapital, I; Butterfield, Keble College, Oxford (-1883)
1868 Public executions abolished; British Trades Union Congress
formed; Morris, The Eanhly Paradise; G. G. Scott, St Pancras
(-1874); Tait Archbishop of Canterbury; Feb., Disraeli (Cons.)
XX PRyETERITA

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

1871 Fors C lavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers o f Great

Britain (monthly -1880, and 1883-84); donates large sum to St
George’s Fund; serious illness at Madock; acquires Brantwood,
near Coniston; death of mother, Margaret; sells Denmark Hill;
gives 28 Herne Hill to Joan and Arthur Severn as wedding
present; street sweeping experiments, London; endows Drawing
Mastership, Oxford
1872 Aratra Pentelici; Lectures on Landscape; The Eagles Nest; France,
Italy; opens tea shop, London; residence at Brantwood begins
1873 Ariadne Florentina (-1876); Love's M einie (-1881); George Allen
becomes sole publisher
1874 Val d'Amo; Hinksey Road diggings; France, Italy - works in
sacristan’s cell, Aissisi

1875 death of Rose La Touche; M ornings in Florence (-1877); Deucalion

(-1883); Proserpina (-1886); founds St George’s Museum, Sheffield;
Spiritualist experiences at Broadlands (Cowper-Temples’)
1876 (ed.) Bibliotheca Pastorum (-1877); supports Defence of Lake
District against railways; Switzerland, Venice (-1877); suffers
delirium
1877 studies Carpaccio; Guide to the Academy at Venice; The Laws o f
Fesole (-1879); St Mark's Rest (-1884)
1878 visits Gladstone; first madness; W hisder v Ruskin libel case;
arranges Turner Exhibition at The Fine Art Society, London
1879 resigns Slade Professorship; Notes on Prout a?id Hunt
1880 Elements o f English Prosody; northern France; The Bible o f Amiens
(-1885); Fiction, Fair and Foul (-1881); Letters to the Clergy on the
Lord's P rayer and the Church; Arrows o f the Chace; A J o y fo r Ever
1881 second madness

1882 third madness; France, Italy with W. G. Collingwood

1883 resumes Slade Professorship; meets Kate Greenaway, Francesca

Alexander; The Art o f England (-1884)

1884 The Storm-Cloud o f the Nineteenth Century; The Pleasures o f

England (-1885)
 CHRONOLOGY xxi

PM; Dec., Gladstone (Lib.) PM

1869 Suez Canal opened; Metaphysical Society founded; Girton
College, Cambridge, founded; M. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy

1870 Franco-Prussian War (-1871); Vatican Council defines Papal

Infallibility; Forster’s Education Act; Dickens d.; D. G. Rossetti,
Beat a Beatrix (P)
1871 Religious tests abolished at Oxford and Cambridge; trades
unions legalised; Darwin, The Descent o f Man; Hardy, Desperate
Remedies; Verdi, A ida

1872 (Secret) Ballot Act; Butler, Erewhon; Maurice d.

1873 Pater, Studies in the Renaissance; Waterhouse, Natural History

Museum, London (-1881)
1874 Impressionist Exhibition, Paris; Moody and Sankey Evangelical
revival (-1875); Fildes, Applications fo r Admission to a Casual Ward
(P); Feb., Disraeli (Cons.) PM
1875 Russo-Turkish War; Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by J u ry

1876 Queen Victoria Empress of India; Bell invents telephone; Edison

invents phonograph; Henry James, Roderick Hudson

1877 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings founded;

Mallock, The New Republic
1878 Salvation Army founded; G. G. Scott d.

1879 Electric bulb invented; Afghan and Zulu wars; Ibsen, A Doll's House
1880 Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs (P); Shorthouse, John Inglesant;
George Eliot d.; Apr., Gladstone (Lib.) PM

1881 W. Hale White, Autobiography o f Mark Rutherford; Stevenson,

Treasure Island (-1882); Wilde, Poems; Carlyle, S. Palmer d.
1882 Married Women’s Property Act; Phoenix Park Murders; Society
for Psychical Research founded; J. A. Froude, Carlyle: The First
Forty Years; Jeffries, Bevis; D. G. Rossetti d.
1883 Royal College of Music founded; G. A. Henty, Under Drake's
Flag; Alma-Tadema, In the Tepidarium (P); Benson Archbishop of
Canterbury; Colenso d.
1884 Third Reform Act; Fabian Society formed; Oxford English
Dictionary, ed. Murray (-1928); Gissing, The Unclassed
xxii PR^ETERITA

1885 resigns Slade Professorship; fourth madness; Praeterita (-1889);

On the Old Road

1886 fifth madness; Dilecta (-1900)

1887 Hortus Inclusus

1888 last tour - France, Switzerland, Italy; proposes to Kathleen

Olander

1889 mental incapacity ends career; lives in retirement at Brantwood,

cared for by Joan Severn

1900 dies 20 January at Brantwood, buried in Coniston churchyard

 CHRONOLOGY xxiii

1885 Fall of Khartoum; Daimler invents internal combustion engine;

Arabian Nights, trans. Burton (-1888); Dictionary o f National
Biography, vol. I, ed. Stephen; Pinero, The M agistrate; Jun.,
Salisbury (Cons.) PM
1886 Repeal of Contagious Diseases Act; Trafalgar Square riots;
Home Rule Bill defeated; Haggard, She; Kipling, D epartmental
Ditties; Feb., Gladstone (Lib.) PM; Jul., Salisbury (Cons.) PM
1887 Victoria’s Golden Jubilee; Verdi, Otello; Conan Doyle, A Study in
Scarlet
1888 County Councils introduced; Kodak box camera invented;
accession of Kaiser Wilhelm II; Morris, A Dream ofJoh?i Ball;
Mrs Humphry Ward, Robe?~t Elsmere; Inchbold d.
1889 International Congress of Psychology, Paris; Prevention of
Cruelty to Children Act; Pater, Appreciations; R. Browning d.
1890 First underground railway in London; fall of Parnell; Stanley, In
Darkest Africa; William Booth, In Darkest England; Frazer, The
Golden Bough (-1915); Morris founds Kelmscott Press; Morris,
News fro m Nowhere; Newman, W. Bell Scott d.
1891 Renewal of triple alliance Germany, Austria, Italy; Yeats, The
Countess Cathleen
1892 Franco-Russian alliance; Shaw, Widowers' Houses; Aug., Glad­
stone (Lib.) PM; Manning, Tennyson d.; Vaughan Archbishop of
Westminster
1893 Independent Labour Party founded; Dreyfus trial; Dvorak, ‘New
World’ symphony; Jowett d.
1894 J. A.Froude, C. Rossetti d.; Beardsley, et al., The Yellow Book;
George Moore , Esther Waters; Mar., Rosebery (Lib.) PM
1895 Jameson Raid; first Promenade Concert, London; cinematog­
raphy invented; Conrad, Almayer's Folly; Wells, The Time Machine;
Huxley d.; Jun., Salisbury (Cons.) PM
1896 Morrison, A Child o f the J ago; Morris, Millais d.; Mackintosh,
Glasgow School of Art (-1899)
1897 Victoria’s Golden Jubilee; Klondike gold rush; Tate Gallery,
London, opens; Temple Archbishop of Canterbury; Lady Millais
d.
1898 German naval expansion begins; Curies discover radium; Bennett,
A Man fro m the North; Acland, Burne-Jones, Gladstone, Dodgson
d.
1899 Boer War (-1900); Elgar, ‘Enigma Variations’
1900 Relief of Ladysmith and Mafeking; Freud, The Interpretation o f
Dreams; Wilde d.
1901 Queen Victoria d.
M. D.W.
 INTRODUCTION

‘No, it is not for Praterita that I leave the clouds. That gave me no
trouble; though now I have no heart to go on with it - what is already
written may be printed as it stands.’ 1 So Ruskin wrote on 25 September
1885, unaware that he would complete twenty-five further chapters of
his fragmentary autobiography. He was already subject to violent
oscillations of feeling, afraid of madness, while writing pages that the
reader finds lucid and methodical. The first three chapters were issued
in the month (July 1885) when he suffered severe, though intermittent,
attacks of madness; and as J. D. Rosenberg finely says: ‘The resolution
of tension achieved in Pr<eterita was, paradoxically, the product of the
very madness which forced Ruskin to abandon the book’.2 In his middle
years he had become ever more passionate, and more extreme and
provocative in writing. But now he feared himself; and he was
determined to be calm.
The luxuriance of his style, the dazzling grandeur of his imagery, had
impressed his readers ever since the publication of M odem Painters
(1843-60), The Seven Lamps o f A rchitecture (1849) and The Stones o f Venice
(1851-53). Frederic Harrison spoke for them all when he wrote:
When he bursts the bounds of fine taste, and pelts us with perfumed
flowers till we almost faint under their odour and their blaze of
colour, it is because he is himself intoxicated with the joy of his
blossoming thoughts, and would force some of his divine afflatus into
our souls.3
But now he curbed his Asiatic prose, and wrote in short, simple
sentences. Naturally, the first readers, seeing this, were slow to notice
exceptions. Passages of calm narrative may be interrupted with imagina­
tive phrases like, ‘the pines swept round the horizon with the dark
infinitude of ocean’4 or with brief reversions to an earlier ornate style:
I had all Rome before me; towers, cupolas, cypresses, and palaces
mingled in every possible grouping; a light Decemberish mist, mixed
with the slightest vestige of wood smoke, hovering between the

XXV
Another random document with
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 “You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have
penetrated the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t
tell her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond
of me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in me, the poor fish?” cried the high-
spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing grasshopper. “I
can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless he gives some
sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I
wanted him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers
begging him to marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come
Ferdinand Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the
head kept rigid and the right leg firmly braced and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble
would cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who—” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
 “It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their game.
But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to
become morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success
at the game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which
keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs
he may achieve in other walks of life; but in all things there is a
happy mean, and with Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has
taken all the spirit out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is
grateful to caddies when they accept a tip instead of drawing
themselves up to their full height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for
ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers—I used the term in its broadest
sense, to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed
—whom even he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis
Bay, the hotel links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had
drifted all the pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things
done on that course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes—
and I am not a weak man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as
to go round in a fairly steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope.
But I understand he is not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with
him.”
 And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.

It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as the
lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity of
summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of
play was rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for
some days after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man
who cannot believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this
summer resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of
stout, middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to
making money, had taken to a game at which real proficiency can
only be acquired by those who start playing in their cradles and keep
their weight down. Out on the course each morning you could see
representatives of every nightmare style that was ever invented.
There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball
and lull it into a false security by looking away from it and then
making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its
guard. There was the man who wielded his mid-iron like one killing
snakes. There was the man who addressed his ball as if he were
stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were cracking a whip, the
man who brooded over each shot like one whose heart is bowed
down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with his
mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He
had gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream
puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their
faces with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local
amateurs, whose prowess the octogenarians and the men who went
round in bath-chairs vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was
faced on the eighth morning of his visit by the startling fact that he
had no more worlds to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed,
and, what is more, had won his first trophy, the prize in the great
medal-play handicap tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of
the field by two strokes, edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old
gentleman, by means of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last
hole. The prize was a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the
old oaken bucket, and Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately
after dinner to croon over it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did
not take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a
sick parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a
couple of weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the
daily letters which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started
writing, he found that he used up so much space describing his best
shots on the links that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a
declaration of undying passion. After all, you can hardly cram that
sort of thing into a postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile
pursued his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in
one way, for every morning and afternoon that passed was adding
new layers to his self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew
chestier and chestier.

Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen

mutterings were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the
spirit of revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not
escaped the notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty
as a normally unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I
am sorry to say that the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand
was the aggressive type of chestiness which breeds enemies. He
had developed a habit of holding the game up in order to give his
opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker had not forgiven, and never
would forgive, his well-meant but galling criticism of his back-swing.
The Scooper, who had always scooped since the day when, at the
age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the Correspondence Course
which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by mail, resented
being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke should be a
smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer—But I need not weary
you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is enough to
say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night, after dinner,
they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the
Scooper. “Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I?
Well, what more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer.
It is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the
man had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this
last remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And
there was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office—young Parsloe—who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him
on this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer,
anxiously. “It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once
went round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of
these motor-cars then, tearing about and killing—”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the
remaining conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent
brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean
counting every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time
to give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand,
kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
 “Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.

It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good

time and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of
the day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind
the opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve
that night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was
proceeding over the smooth turf without a care in the world, when
there was a sudden cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball,
missing him by inches, sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty
yards from where he stood. He looked round and observed a figure
coming towards him from the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards.
Add fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such
drive had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation,
and such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the
hum of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had
been permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only
when the other man came up that there began to steal over him a
sickening apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on
the hotel course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was
a stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the
man he had agreed to play.
 “Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth,
with brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er—do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local
champion, or something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the
best man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to
happen, he nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe.
The magic had gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a
silly, feeble way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For
Ferdinand’s inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever,
was back again, doing business at the old stand.

How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on
his lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would
unleash his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her
only worry was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the
sacred scene by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
 The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his
peculiar manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet
resultant upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The
interpretation which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to
see her. If he had behaved like this before, she would, of course,
have put it down to ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written
statements to prove that for the last ten days his golf had been one
long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it
all now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew
how quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an
instant she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as
to let him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in
wrath, and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on
the point of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell
and conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a
certain level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said
yes, it was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water,
and Barbara said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand
said he hoped it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would
be a pity if it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as
the Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at
Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying
with him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest
his heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not
have supposed that anything could have added to his existing
depression, but he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs
farther down the ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful
ring in her voice. Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all
was! We never know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a
good patch and are beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and
along comes a George Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch
George Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s
fevered eye he looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex
began to exhibit symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete
at love or golf with a fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of
the movies and considered himself off his drive when he did a
hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung
miserably about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society
was not essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it
was with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after
dinner. Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went
early to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his
cup, could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely
into his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.

Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room.
Coming down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the
hotel. It was her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day
like this one was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the
lounge, shut all the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute
industry. To her surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a
cloudless sky, the only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian
with the ear-trumpet. She observed that he was chuckling to himself
in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his
acquaintance on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and
getting his trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio
outfit and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
 “What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a
crumb the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she
should have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble—” Here the octogenarian
choked again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t
know that Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist
she appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink.
Then her eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at
the back of the chair. She understood now. She realised why
Ferdinand had been so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him
in a spasm of maternal pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was
mumbling, and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man.
For two pins she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the
need for action roused her. What action? She did not know. All she
knew was that she must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
 But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee. In
spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did not
wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the
second nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and
now she could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill
that shook her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So
he must have won one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not
going altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the
direction of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing
right on the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble had
managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth green,
but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient to
cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation—to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives,
never chipped his chip so shrewdly.
 About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the ball.
But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the
way round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness
and the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like
a young lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of
dejection to be elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of
clear vision, he perceived the reason why he had been playing so
well to-day. It was just because he was not elated. It was simply
because he was so profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the
sixteenth, after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway,
and I am convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent
golfers, Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for
himself by thinking too much. He was a deep student of the works of
the masters, and whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a
complete mental list of all the mistakes which it was possible to
make. He would remember how Taylor had warned against dipping
the right shoulder, how Vardon had inveighed against any movement
of the head; he would recall how Ray had mentioned the tendency to
snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken sadly of those who sin
against their better selves by stiffening the muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen
manner till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of
action, he eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right
shoulder, stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the
same time raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some
Frequent Faults of Beginners—No. 3—Lifting the Bean”) facing page
thirty-four of James Braid’s Golf Without Tears. To-day he had been
so preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots
absently, almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every
three had been a lallapaloosa.
 Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was
progressing. George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had
been given to understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-
best man, and all the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives
in great profusion, and had once actually got a four. True, there had
been an occasional six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the
main fact that the man was making the dickens of a game of it. With
the haughty spirit of one who had once done a ninety-four, George
Parsloe had anticipated being at least three up at the turn. Instead of
which he had been two down, and had to fight strenuously to draw
level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have
won the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The
same defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in
two, with Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the
green with his fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a
distance of seven yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts
just enabled him to equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first
she had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she
approached the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath.
Ferdinand held his breath. And all around one could see their
respective breaths being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the
enthralled crowd of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest
tension, and it was broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it
met the ball and sent it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty
yards. At this supreme crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had
topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and
gave it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the
happy ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before.
He would so drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots
to catch up with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution,
poised it at the top of the swing—
 “I always wonder—” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway—” said George Parsloe, in a
small, flat voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees
are called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest
opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called
greens, may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are
green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth.
His fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he
picked it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been
something venomous.
 “Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.

Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried

off the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had
spoken those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that
he had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to
sink again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could
hold nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to
his feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man
with whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight
beside this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same
water,” persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played
together as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
 “No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged
to be married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was
thinking tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If
Parsloe’s engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with
you.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.

“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,

thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows,
while in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just discovered
the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game unless
you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take the
case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you don’t
care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to see.
Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the
top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll
be fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.
 CHAPTER II
HIGH STAKES

The summer day was drawing to a close. Over the terrace outside
the club-house the chestnut trees threw long shadows, and such
bees as still lingered in the flower-beds had the air of tired business
men who are about ready to shut up the office and go off to dinner
and a musical comedy. The Oldest Member, stirring in his favourite
chair, glanced at his watch and yawned.
As he did so, from the neighbourhood of the eighteenth green,
hidden from his view by the slope of the ground, there came
suddenly a medley of shrill animal cries, and he deduced that some
belated match must just have reached a finish. His surmise was
correct. The babble of voices drew nearer, and over the brow of the
hill came a little group of men. Two, who appeared to be the
ringleaders in the affair, were short and stout. One was cheerful and
the other dejected. The rest of the company consisted of friends and
adherents; and one of these, a young man who seemed to be
amused, strolled to where the Oldest Member sat.
“What,” inquired the Sage, “was all the shouting for?”
The young man sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Perkins and Broster,” he said, “were all square at the
seventeenth, and they raised the stakes to fifty pounds. They were
both on the green in seven, and Perkins had a two-foot putt to halve
the match. He missed it by six inches. They play pretty high, those
two.”
“It is a curious thing,” said the Oldest Member, “that men whose
golf is of a kind that makes hardened caddies wince always do. The
more competent a player, the smaller the stake that contents him. It
is only when you get down into the submerged tenth of the golfing
world that you find the big gambling. However, I would not call fifty