Ruskin-a-thon

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I had never heard of John Ruskin until today, and I’m convinced that was a huge oversight in my literary education. I loved what we read of his writing, and his life was equally amazing.

We took a coach from Grasmere over to Conniston, where Ruskin spent the last 30 years or so of his life. We met with Mike Humphries, the curator of the Ruskin Museum and coincidentally also the president of the branch where we’ll be going to church on Sunday. He gave us an interesting lecture on Ruskin’s life—Ruskin started out as an artist and an art critic, with a firm dedication to social welfare and religion. After gaining fame for his philosophy, Ruskin became a great advocate of socialism, imagining most of the systems that are in place today in Britain, although none of the reforms he imagined happened in his lifetime. After Ruskin’s grave, we looked at Ruskin’s art in the museum, as well as some pieces of local history. The man’s eye for detail both in architecture and nature was amazing!

We then walked down to the docks and took a ferry across the lake to Brantwood, Ruskin’s estate. The gardens were even more extensive than at Rydal Mount—I wandered around in them for an hour and a half and still didn’t see everything! There’s a really cool chair there made out of rocks and a tree which Ruskin used to sit in—I think I’m going to start collecting pictures of natural chairs and garden benches here. The English really have a knack for good resting places. There was also this rather creepy garden called the "Zig Zaggy garden" (no, I didn't ask) which is apparently based on Dante's Inferno. I've never read it, so I can't be a judge, but all I know is it was the weirdest thing I ever saw. I mean, who puts sheepskins on the ground in their garden? Anyway, I took lots of pictures so judge for yourself.

After we were done exploring Brantwood, we hiked over the mountain (hill, really) into this great forest/park called Grizedale. The people who owe it have set up tons of random sculptures and toys over acres of forest preserve. It’s great, because you can actually find all the cool stuff you thought would be out in the woods when you were a kid—little houses, wooden sculptures of sheep, musical instruments. It was a little more pedestrian than the other things we’ve been doing, but I loved it and I would definitely go back and see more of it.

By the time we got back to our hostel, it was about 6 pm and we were starving! Unfortunately, we were mostly out of food, so we had to wait for John to go to the next town with a grocery store and buy food. Then the cooking of dinner took until about 8:30 because Kendal (the KBYU producer working on the documentary) was making us something fancy and filling. (The last few days, we’d kept not having nearly enough food to eat for dinner, so everyone was a little grumbly.) But when the food was finally done, nothing ever tasted so good! We had this amazing chicken marinated in lemon-lime marmalade and who knows what else, more pasta salad than you could want, and enough French bread to feed an army. It was amazing, and it felt so good to be full again.

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Comments

[Pete McCabe]

Glad you found Ruskin
John Ruskin was a great man who is now largely forgotten in our post-modern world. If you want to find out more, go to Lancaster University. I am currently studying there for an MA in Ruskin and the Cultural Tour.