We had been expecting his release from the frail body of this death any time in the past three or four years.  The Master whose fire and fervor and restless energy of brain and tireless hand had done the work of three men for St. George and Merrie England, had been all this while sitting at Brantwood, as it were, with folded hands, waiting, with calm serenity, for his angel friend.  And very kindly and with tenderness of approach had Death at last come. (p. 511)

A little touch of feverish cold, a retiring to his bed for a single day, and then a sinking into that “golden slumber” spoken of in the song whose music last fell upon his willing ears; and so his eyes, with their memory of St. Gothard, as Turner saw it, still undimmed, closed, and he went beyond the pass that is so cold, and sometimes so full of storm and pain, into the land of life and peace and endless spring. (p. 511)

Almost it would seem as if the heavens built their gates of gold and opened doors of glory for his bright spirit’s welcoming.  The day had been a day of cloud and storm.  The hills, purple black, had stood in gloom above a leaden lake, when, on Friday, January 19, the call came.  Ruskin sank to rest, and sudden radiance seemed showered out of heaven.  A great light lay upon the water-flood, cloud-bastions of fire reared themselves above the hills, and such splendor fell on Coniston and Wetherlam and the russet crags of Tilberthwaite and Yewdale that the shepherd stared and the yeoman wondered, and the mourners took it for a sign.  On Saturday, the 20th of January, within a few weeks of fulfilling the eighty-first year—for John Ruskin was born on the 8th of February, 1819—the laborious life of art criticism, of thought for the helping of the world, of high ideals, of noble philosophy, of impassioned utterance, of continual benevolence, was laid down without a sigh. (pp. 511-12)

The funeral was fixed for the following Thursday.  Westminster opened its portals to receive him, but Mrs. Arthur Severn was firm; she knew her cousin’s wish, and she respected it.  Writing to me after the funeral, she said: “I knew he deserved to rest in the Abbey, but my conscience does not reproach me for letting him rest in the shadow of the mountains he daily delighted to look upon; and he hated towns!” (p. 512)

Those who gazed upon him in his last sleep spoke of the gentleness of the face, and of the yellow-whiteness of his hair, like snow washed with gold.  I could not reach Coniston in time to see it, for we were busy at Keswick preparing a pall to be laid upon the coffin.  It was just such a pall as we knew he would have wished for.  He much disliked the gloom of ordinary funeral trappings.  He had his own mother’s coffin painted sky-blue, in protest against prevailing custom, when, in the quiet Shirley churchyard, he laid to earth “the dearest earth” he knew.  So we designed a pall of simple unbleached linen, spun by hand and woven by hand under the eyes of a true disciple of the Master, who had been the first for his sake to revive spinning as a home industry in the dales.  We had that pall lined with the richest, rosiest silk we could obtain, and on the surface of the pall were sprinkled by swift embroiderers the wild rose—his favorite flower—in bud, full bloom, or in shredded petal.  At the center was embroidered a fair wreath of these same flowers of St. George.  Within the wild-rose wreath were written, by craft of the needle, the words “Unto the last,” and beneath, bordered with gold thread, the initials J. R.  It was fitting that this offering should come from members of the Keswick School of Industrial Arts and the Ruskin Linen Industry.  These simple experiments of how to bring together joy and beauty in labor of the hands had been inspired by Ruskin’s teaching and carried on in the Master’s spirit. (p. 512)….

There were many beautiful wreaths with tender inscriptions, but my eye fell on one which seemed to have character and originality about it: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”  It was a gift from the village tailor, and was meant in all deep earnestness to express the thought uppermost in the heart of a true disciple.  It may have seemed at first sight to lack a little of the sense of humor, but, in all seriousness, the tailor was right; if ever man had been a voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” that man had been John Ruskin. (p. 517)

The service was simple and impressive.  The special hymn I had written in loving memory of one to whom I owe so much was taken up with heart.  Miss Wakefield, an old friend of the Professor, sang the song, “Comes at time a stillness as of even,” and sang it with all her soul.  And one of Ruskin’s friends, son of the painter Richmond, read very impressively the lesson.  Then the pall-bearers advanced, took the pall from the altar where it had been temporarily placed in order that all the congregation might see the Master’s simple coffin, and, replacing the wreath of the Princess and the painter, they followed the coffin swathed in its rose embroidery away into the gray light of the solemn afternoon.  Away through the gusts and the slight rain-sprinkle to the corner of the churchyard they went, bearing the dead Master to where his friends for so many years, the ladies of the Thwaite, the Misses Beever, were laid before him.  When I last saw the coffin in its white-lined cell, it was covered with the rose-red silk of the underlining of the pall.  It seemed to me as if all Oxford had shed its masters’ hoods upon him in token of honor, as there he lay in his last resting-place. (p. 517)

As I turned away from the grave, I noted that all round about his rest were growing pines and deodars, and I remember how he had written that “the first thing as an event in his life” that he remembered was “the being taken by his nurse to the brow of Friar’s Crag on Derwentwater,” and how he had left it on record that the mossy roots of the Scotch firs that clasp that crag with their crooked hands had given him “intense joy, mingled with awe,” that had associated itself in his mind with all twining roots of trees ever since. (p. 517)

He was now laid at the foot of the pine-trees he had so loved and honored in his life by his close observation and marvellous description.  It seemed fitting that the roots of such trees should weave themselves about his sleep, and take his dust to their tender keeping. (p. 517)

(Outlook, 64 (3 March 1900), 511-17)

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Cumberland Poet and Schoolmaster, St. John’s Vale. April 30th, 1886

Oh, never clad in Academic gown,
        To wisdom led the simpler cottage way;
    By nature tended till thy hairs were grey,—
The heart of nature grew into thine own;
And, whether ’neath Helvellyn’s moorland brown,
    Or, as by glittering Bure thy steps would stray,
    A poet-angler; or, on market-day,
Mixed with the yeomen of our village town,

Above they estate thy soul did ever soar,
    Beyond thy mortal sight thine eyes could see
        And the poor scholars at their upland school
        Learned of thee this—the Poet’s golden rule—
    That eyes and hearts were given to man, to be
On earth the gatherers of a heavenly lore.

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 8 May 1886, p. 5)

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February 25th, 1893

No more that veteran figure shall we know,
      Nor hear th’ industrious hammer rap and rap,
    Nor see him fashion heel or mould the cap,
And set the beaded nails in shining row,
Nor watch the alder wood to fashion grow
    By knife upon his leathern-aproned lap;
    Death, that doth sometimes come with shoulder-tap,
Smote down the clogger with a cruel blow.

No more his hand will fill the village street
With music of the children’s pattering feet,
      But they who follow where his footsteps trod
    Will find that on the mountains never cease
    His song of sweet preparedness and peace,
      Who walked in simple piety with God.

(Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, p. 143)

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The English Discoverer of the Planet Neptune, Died at Cambridge, January 21st, 1892

God stretched His jewelled splendour far and wide
      Above the Cornish moorlands, there He met
    A boy, and from dark fallows dewy-wet
Bade him look up.  He, scholar grown, espied
The wandering of lobe Uranus, and plied
    Star-quest in heights abysmal, till his net
    Of calculations intricate had set
Sure, but unseen, far Neptune at the side
Of that perturbéd planet.  Then was hurled
    Space from its throne, and distance was enchained,
      And mind flung back the gates of ultimate gloom—
    But little said the seeker, he who gained
      Glory for England in his narrow room,
Wherein he searched the Heavens and found a world.

(Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, p. 116)

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As a rule in our Lakeland the snow falls towards the end of the month, and the lengthening day and strengthening sunshine upon the silver heights makes rare atonement for the hint that winter will not yet be unthroned, and may yet rule lake and vale with his rod of steel. (p. 2)

But the glory of January is, after all, the wonder of its pure white light of dawn which passes slowly into saffron, and then, whilst fleecy clouds high up like flocks of giant birds change from white to rose-pink and fly towards the west, fade slowly from saffron to lemon yellow, from yellow to the common light of day. (p. 2)

Owing to the peculiar temperature it will be generally noticed that in January the cloud-pack settles low upon the hills and does not lift to break the clearness of the upper air.  To-day, as I watched the daystar rise, the feature of the landscape was the heavy grey hoar-frost and dew that coloured the whole valley, meadow, and grove with monotone of grey, the feature of the sunscape was the exquisite clarity of smokeless air as white as silver above Helvellyn to the zenith.  Deep purple and brown run together was the colour of the vast blanket of cloud that lay unmoved above the mountain ranges, and over this the sun came gloriously, filling the air with light and kindling the snowy cones on Skiddaw till they shone like burnished ivory. (p. 2)

Very slowly as it seemed did the mists rise from field or waterflood to veil the lower lawns and western hills, and all this while the steady cloud-pack above the eastern range was motionless.  But suddenly, as if the giant beneath had turned in slumber and would rouse himself, the mighty blanket tossed and heaved and sent itself a thousand ways, and there Helvellyn lay, a great white wall from which the dazzling sun already sent the little angel choirs of golden cloud to follow in the wake of the riven cloud-pack and mount to Heaven. (pp. 2-3)….

Yet that January has two moods even the mosses testify.  Sometimes there comes a January rime, and lo! when it passes away the  beauty of the moss has vanished.  Not till next year will the emerald brighten and the ten thousand elves of the moss shake their golden spears with gladness.  Yet let the Frost King keep away and then the wanderer at the English Lakes, whether by roadside well or in the sunlit woods, shall have such beauty for his eyes’ delight, as makes him feel that even without the snowdrop spring is here. (p. 4)….

It is a grey month this month of January.  The copses are grey, the meadows are grey, the hedgerows are grey, the waters are grey and the skies and the hills are grey, and if snow is not on the hills it is a dark month too.  One hardly realises how much we have to thank the snow upon ‘the tops’ for adding brightness to the daylight till suddenly a warm wind brings us a warm rain and the fells are seen in their sombrest Januarian dress.  Sombrest, for the bracken has had its colour washed out of it and the bents and grasses have been blanched to death paleness, while except for the sunny southern fields there would seem to be no thought of returning green.  But it is a month of marvellous slate blues and grey lilac at eventide.  Many a time when the sun has sunk beyond the western hills, when only one white star has swum to sight, there comes upon the hills a colour such as one sees at no other time in the year.  They rise to Heaven not as if they were mountain masses so much as if they were thick veils of drapery in mountain shape falling straight from some invisible hand to earth, and stand in clear silhouette against the sky, no longer range beyond range but as if they were all merged into one grey blue lilac wall of delicate lawn. (pp. 5-6)

If down in breezy Lincolnshire during this month one may hear the buzz and humming of the steam threshing machine, may see by the diminishing stack, as Tennyson Turner wrote,

            The endless ladder and the booming wheel,

here in the Lake Country a sound more rare with its old world associations falls upon the ear.  The pat pat, thud thud of the old-fashioned flail echoes from barn to barn.  It is a month when one other sound strikes one because of the rainfall, the sound of the becks that hurry to the vale.  And few sounds are sweeter when on some moonlit night one passes homeward ’neath the stars.  If one wished for solitary walks this is the month for them.  Our main roads are, except on market days, deserted.  One may walk twenty miles and not meet mankind or wheel-kind.  Think of it, oh ye ‘scorchers’!  What ‘record’ times could ye not attempt.  Without dust and without police-traps, what motor distances could ye not in comfort cover!  Happy are we that ye know it not! (p. 6)

But it is a merry month—a month of pleasant social life.  The Christmas card parties at the farm are over, but in the villages’ ‘socials,’ as they are called, and concerts, and lectures are in fashion, while at such centres of dramatic life as Grasmere, the village play gives work enough and to spare for any leisure moments, and crowns a whole year’s expectancy of winter pleasure. (p. 7)

(Months at the Lakes, pp. 1-7)

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