Brantwood – Poppies

A window at Brantwood (above)
A spore print from a Brantwood fern (above)
Demeter - the Earth mother - Prosperina's mother (above)

We began to think more about the Poppy today – there are some real beauties in the lower garden, a wild, fragile, translucent red. We have also been enjoying Dinah Birch’s book on Ruskin’s myths. “Demeter, the “Earth Mother” as Ruskin calls her, is the mother of Proserpina and in the mythology of the Greeks is closely linked with her. The Poppy is her flower, and thus comes to be associated with Proserpina herself.” She quotes the following passage from Ruskin “Nearly all the flowers keep with them, all their lives, their nurse or tutor leaves, - the group which, in stronger and humbler temper, protected them in their first weakness, and formed them to the first laws of their being. But the poppy casts these tutorial leaves away. It is the finished picture of impatient and luxury-loving youth, - at first too severely restrained, then casting all restraint away – yet retaining to the end of life unseemly and illiberal signs of its once compelled submission to laws which were only pain, - not instruction.” Ruskin could be talking about his own childhood and probably is, but he could also be talking about Rose and he, and he is probably doing that too. But this image, of the Poppy leaf, when you look closely at it, its translucent petals are ever-rumpled from its containment. Yet, these “signs of its once compelled submission” serve to catch the shapes of light and reflection upon the petals like no other flower I know of. I have never seen such a fine texture of reflective red – and it is incredibly reflective. Yet, it makes us think of the way in which we bear the scars of our upbringing.

Proserpina of course has a whole chapter on the Poppy, and unlocking its depth of meaning is complex. He wonders, for instance, “whether poppy leaves themselves….are not too thin, im-properly thin?” I don’t know about the leaves; in fact I think he’s referring to the leaves of the flower, the petals. But the petals seem that way to me, there is something truly sensuous in their thin-ness and delicacy as they are moved by the gentlest of breezes, like the finest of fabrics, too delicate even to touch, though one longs to do so. That sensuousness would no doubt have unnerved Ruskin. When Ruskin says of the Poppy, that it is “robed in the purple of Caesars”, he goes on to say “what I meant was, first, that the poppy leaf looks dyed through and through, like glass, or Tyrian tissue; and not merely painted; secondly, that the splendour of it is proud, - almost insolently so. Augustus, in his glory, might have been clothed like one of these; and Saul; but not David, nor Solomon; still less the teacher of Solomon, when he puts on ‘glorious apparel.’ ” There’s loads more about poppies – the heads drooping like those of dying soldiers, “the specific sense of men’s drooping under weight, or towards death, under the burden of fortune which they have no more strength to sustain… the poppy became in the heathen mind the type once of power, or pride, and it’s loss”. He likens the poppy head also to the Pomegranate fruit, saying “the cause of Proserpine’s eternal captivity – her having tasted a pomegranate seed… Demeter, associated with the Poppy by a multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be gathered out of Greek art and literature… the fullness of seed in the Poppy, as an image of life.”

I am minded to think, in reading Proserpina, and trying to get to the true meaning of plants, of all the problems of nomenclature and classification, which Ruskin (and in fact anyone who gets interested in botany) gets mistakenly seduced into. So, the Herb Robert – a good English name – apparently it’s really a geranium. Only it’s not a Geranium is it? In fact it’s nothing like a Geranium. This business of grouping things into plant families, whether scientifically botanical, or mythalogically Ruskinian, seems to me to be useless. There are no families of plants, there are just plants, with definite characters. Ruskin is right that the true meaning of botany is in the biography of plants, but in many ways he would have been better off just exploring that idea in Proserpina, rather than trying to create a whole new classification system.

So Alex made cyanotypes of the poppy, and cyanotypes of posies of flowers with complex meanings in language. And he had some spore prints which I photographed - there's a real challenge in fixing them to the paper. I filmed the Poppy in the studio. But I want to do more with it yet, to capture the delicate way it’s petals move so gently in the wind. So little time left to us, and I also have a plan to shoot the Vervain in one of Brantwood’s Ruskinian gothic arched windows (above), in mind of Carpaccio’s St Ursula, with double exposure. Tomorrow morning I have first to dig some Vervain, pot it, then hope for an interesting pattern of clouds through the window, or rain drops upon the glass. Vervain looks nothing like Ruskin’s Vervain, or Carpaccio’s, but I don’t really care about that. It has become, for me, the light through which Carpaccio’s St Ursula is illuminated.

Late afternoon we met with Howard Hull, as ever a wonderful and enlightening talk ensued. We showed some of the work we have created so far to Sally and he, discussing also how we might show the final work here. The rooms in Brantwood, quite coincidentally we discovered, are themed with the seven lamps – Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience. We are quite keen to put one screen in each room, making these correspondences with the rooms in the language of flowers. The whole idea of the language of flowers is worthy of so much more than we have been able to get to yet. We’re very aware of how our time here, or with this subject, is woefully incomplete. Further to that, we may use the exhibition space in the house for some cyanotypes and Ruskin’s flora drawings, plus books, like his pressed Alpine flower book, or some of his botanical books. And we all got quite excited about doing something that connects the exhibition with the living truth of the garden here – the real and beautiful world from which everything we have done, and much of what Ruskin did, stems. Sally Beamish, the head gardener here, is its inspiring and dedicated custodian.

Finally, went to see a copy of the ‘Library Edition’ which was for sale in Coniston, the whole 39 volumes of Ruskin’s work… which we have had the intense pleasure of perusing here for several hours each day, these last few days. There are very few things in life I covet, but this set of books is one of them.

It has been wonderful being here – I woke this morning anxious to appreciate every moment of the day ahead - an opening of mind and heart, and there is much that both of us will continue to learn from it, long after we have left. Above all, the separation we have experienced from the usual realities of life, to sink into creative thought as the sole and true basis for life, even if temporary - this is a most rare and powerful thing.

Brantwood – Roses and Foxgloves

Ruskin - Study of a Wild Rose (above)
Brantwood - Wild Rose (above)
Sally Beamish - 'Locked out'!

We are very aware today that our time here is coming to and end (today is Wednesday and we leave on Friday) and this has a peculiar affect. In many ways, we’re very aware of only just having begun here. Every day, some aspect of Brantwood’s secret plant life comes into focus, grows and becomes meaningful. This leads us to enquire into Ruskin’s mythology about a particular plant, which is always an incredibly rewarding journey. But we have but two more days. Proserpina is unlocked to us, but that is all. To really enter into it, to go through it and back out into one’s own life, requires much more time. So pressure of time leads to an urge to get on with things, to get a lot of stuff done. This is always at the expense of truth, and we are consciously resisting it.

We have both been very aware of the Rose, of the Dog Rose in particular. Interestingly, Ruskin has little really to say about the Rose in writing – it is simply present, as a given form of complete perfection, everywhere within and beneath his writing. We have looked several times at his portrait of Rose La Touche, downstairs – it is quite unlike anything else Ruskin has drawn. It has this quality of whiteness, of fragility, ethereality and subtlety, or dare I say it, love of a higher order, coupled with a strange degree of uncertainty, which quite overwhelms me in its poignancy. She has flowers in her hair – wood sorrel leaves and its flower perhaps, or is it clover (being Irish)? And Dog Rose I am sure of. I wanted to capture this somehow, to respect it, in dealing with the Dog Rose. For any artist, this is a kind of terrifying responsibility. He did a most wonderful drawing of the Dog Rose too, in 1871, which is just like the portrait of Rose in so many ways (above). Ruskin chose this drawing as part of a display for the teaching collection at Oxford, “the choice almost certainly had a very private significance for Ruskin, for on the 26th May 1875, Rose La Touche dies after a long illness.” Says Robert Hewison. Ruskin describes the drawing (in colour, and one if his very best), thus: “A sketch made expressively for these schools to show the degree of attention with which rapid studies should be made for landscape foliage. It will be seen that the leaves are almost in every case laid first with a single wash of colour and never retouched more than once. It is impossible to get a true study of a complex branch of Rose unless done at this pace, for the buds always open or the leaves of the open flower drop in the course of an hour. Exertion of attention in doing this piece of work, as this is to me the hardest task of any in art-practice, and in this particular case the exhaustion brought on by doing this drawing before breakfast, I believe, was the beginning of my Matlock illness.”

Matlock is often cited as his first episode of madness. But I don’t believe in madness at all.

I approached the Dog Rose with apprehension, not just for the brevity of its life, but because in many ways the Rose is Proserpina, the true deity of the book, never directly addressed, but assumed. The book is devotional in tone, though this devotion is shrouded in some kind of spurious educational intent. She is his greatest life-love, but also, somehow, the highest of all flowers. A god-like plant – though nothing like the christian god – essentially fragile, kind, wild and unruly, yet so subtle and full of love. Searching first of all for a sprig of Dog Rose that would do, and would not be missed if cut - rejecting those few in the garden here (pitifully), I eventually found a very old plant growing by the wall, across the road, between the house and the meadow which leads to the water. A small sprig cut, just like the one he drew, which I took back to the studio and carefully filmed, against white, for its purity.

Now, this Dog Rose, it doesn’t last an hour, as Ruskin states, but less than half an hour, before it loses its subtle glory. How anyone ever managed to draw it when picked I do not know. This fragility is quite unique, shared perhaps only by the poppy. Fragility, subtlety and purity (of both colour and form) are the essence of this plant. Though it’s petals fall quickly, you will find they are perfectly heart shaped, like the violet’s leaf, but white and pink and translucent in gradations.

Further, today, I finally captured, in the studio, the tumbling fall of the Erba Della Madonna (Ivy leaved Toadflax), with much better result. I believe Rose loved Ruskin when she saw this plant. When she looked at it, she thought of how he loved it as it tumbled from the ruins of the Venice architecture he loved. But maybe, though it was fair, he did not love it quite as she supposed, but loved the Rose far more.

There are so many plants we cannot reach in the time we have – the Milkwort (Giulietta), Butterwort (Pinguicula), Self-Heal (Brunella), Red Rattle (Monacha), the Poppy (Papaver Rhoeus), Cyclamen (the plant, with it’s petals turned out, it’s associations with spirals, circularity and death, that precipitated his abandonment of Proserpina). Salvia Silvarum (what’s that?), Hawthorn blossom (ever now associated with the death-day of Rose La Touche). Then there are those in a Proserpina passage, where he imagines a walk with Proserpina to gather flowers at Brantwood – The Foxglove, the Eyebright, Common and Spiked Speedwell, a crimson Snapdragon, Figwort and Teucrium Scorodonia (what’s that too?). The Vervain and Dianthus, of St Ursula and Carpaccio – we haven’t worked yet with those even. And what about the Whortleberry, the Anagallis Tenella (Pimpernell), Contorta Purpurea, the Buttercup leaf, the Bramble, the Wood Sorrel, Saxifrage, Herb Bennet, Herb Robert, Bog Myrtle? Oh yes, and the marvellous Agrimony? Or Ivy? And Moss… the moss is beneath all, in almost everywhere we might look.

The Vervain here… it should be in a big clump, alone, in a way that we can see its similarity to the clump of Vervain in St Ursula’s window. It has a wonderful sculptural form. I know little about this plant, but have always been intrigued by it.

But together Alex and I filmed the Foxglove today, in the garden, blowing in clumps naturally in the breeze off the lake. It was a wonderfully sunny day, made all the better for the fact that my shoes finally actually fell apart, which necessitated a trip to Consiton to buy some new ones – and new shoes made me cheerful all day. We locked ourselves out too.. but we were rescued by the warm and wonderful Sally Beamish… it was she who is responsible for the note you see today above. By chance after our daily late afternoon coffee, we at last met Pamela – who informed us that Proserpina was in fact written for children. She runs guided tours here, and we hope to join her on one.

Reading also; the library here is an (almost) endless joy. And conversations about India and Ghandi and the idea of passive resistance and Ruskin’s influence on Gandhi. A bust of Gandhi sits on the shelves - sent here, it appears, by the High Commissioner of India, to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Gandhi. We’ve also been especially drawn to the letters between Ruskin and Susie Beever (unusually for Ruskin, a woman14 years his senior), over the last two days. The letters reveal a quiet, loving tenderness – she lived just across the lake here, at the Thwaite. In an early one, Ruskin says gently “and above all, you’re to write me just what comes into your head”… Think about it – it’s an incredibly beautiful thing to say to anybody.

Brantwood - Violet, Selfless Love, Obedience

Sometimes it seems strange, two mature men as we are, obsessing about flowers. Ruskin quoted Gerard (who was writing about the Violet), which about sums it up. “For flowers, through their beautie, varietie of colour, and exquisite form, do bring to a liberall and gentle manly minde the remembrance of honestie, comeliness, and all kinds of virtues.”

Today, after reading ‘Viola’ in Proserpina and feeling lost and out of my depth with the text, I then spent some frustrating time in the morning trying to film the Erba della Madonna as it hung on the wall outside the door. I wanted to capture it as so often Ruskin saw and drew it – hanging in microcosmic tufts from the masonry and crevices. Try as I might, I just didn’t feel I had managed to capture the plant at all. This plant is proving elusive in its way. I kept wanting to strip away the context of the rock to get at the form of the plant, but at the same time, I really wanted it’s context to be there, part of its somewhat uncomplicated associations.

Alex had a better time with it, experimenting with the conjunction of different plants, as a kind of pictorial language within the cyanotype. A kind of Tussie Mussie for Ruskinians. Putting the Honeysuckle (The Serpent, Lacerta, Maria La Touche), with the Dog Rose, and the Erba Della Madonna (“My plant in Harristown”), he created a slightly warped kind of family portrait. He says he’s enjoying thinking about plants beyond their form, as a kind of narrative. Alex also started a ‘cyanotype journal’ (pictured), in a leather bound book he bought in Venice on our first trip there together, to the dreadful and soul-less 2003 Biennale. Being here – thankfully we have nothing whatsoever to do with that kind of art - the Venice Biennale is almost solely the art of impenetrable vacuity.

Later, I turned to the Violet, a plant increasingly in my consciousness, for it’s profusion here at Brantwood, the amazingly architectural, yet truly beautiful heart-shaped leaves – the way it grows in the quiet, darker places here. The scentless Dog Violet particularly – it’s flowers are now all done and it has but its leaves and seed pods now, though still strong and full of vigour. It was again a complex plant for Ruskin, and unlocking it’s meaning, visually and metaphorically has taken time. I filmed it all afternoon in the studio, against black, revolving in a kind of sculptural form-dance. I felt in tune with it, happy with the results and really in love with the plant-form - started editing it into some kind of shape. Then re-read Viola, not realising that someone had locked Alex in the upstairs studio – I didn’t realise for two and a half hours, digesting and making notes on Viola. Finally, feeling hungry and thinking he’d abandoned me, I went to check the studio and saw a wonderful note sticking under the door (pictured). I felt a bit bad about it, but I smiled as well. So I cooked the dinner…

So, the Violet… a whole chapter in Proserpina. Boringly, I’m going to put some notes here about it. Firstly, I noticed several references to the ‘hidden structure’ of the flower, which he didn’t like. In fact, I believe it disturbed him in a sexual manner – “the great malice of the botanists” leads to “obscene processes and prurient apparitions” in their analyses…. “the extremely ugly arrangements of its stamens and style, invisible unless by vexatious and vicious peeping. You are to think of the Violet only in its green leaves, and purple and golden petals”… “the Viola, grotesque and inexplicable in its hidden structure, but the most sacred of all flowers to Earthly and daily love, both in scent and glow” ….”I must again solemnly warn my girl-readers against all study of floral genesis and digestion..” I think Ruskin had some kind of issue here, the result of which only made me want to look inside the forbidden heart of the flower, like a curious adolescent.

But onwards and we find a real delight in the form of the Viola. Ruskin describes it, in its various species as “No other single flower of the same quiet colour lights up the ground near it as a Violet will. The bright Hounds-tongue looks merely like a spot of paint, but a young violet glows like painted glass.”… “the subdued and quiet hue of the flower as an actual tint of colour, and the strange force and life of it as a part of light”… “Quite one of the most lovely things that Heaven has made….”One of the bravest, brightest and dearest of little flowers”… “I never saw such a lovely perspective line as the pure front leaf profile”… “It’s grace of form is too much despised, and we owe much more of the beauty of spring to it”… Clearly he loved it, as long as you didn’t look into the depth of the flower, and he has done some wonderful drawings of it – two drawings in Prosperpina of the Dog Violet, and another beautiful study elsewhere of a violet leaf in profile.

But, beyond it’s form, Ruskin reveals a complex web of association and meaning. He appears to associate the plant with selfless love – the kind of constant, devoted, earthly love that seeks no reward for itself. Ideas of obedience and sacrifice seem to form part of these associations. “None of the botanists ever think of asking why Perdita calls the violet ‘dim’ and Milton ‘glowing’… Perdita.. in thinking of her own love, and the hidden passion of it, unspeakable; nor is Milton without some purpose in using it as an emblem of love, mourning.” He goes on “Shakespeare shows… the violet is sweet with Love’s hidden life, and sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes.” The Shakespeare passage he refers to is from A Winter’s Tale “violets dim / But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes / Or Cytherea’s breath”. Now, I have to admit couldn’t really and truly fathom all his explanation of Juno’s eyelids and Cytherea’s breath, other than some clues, one in a note “Meaning – the dim look of love, beyond all others in sweetness”. We really found that to be a compelling notion to meditate upon, the ‘dim look of love’, the ‘dim violet’, the idea of the selfless love, unpassionate, without fire, but steady and life-long. And then, in reference to Cytherea, he says “Oh Cytherea’s breath – the two thoughts, of softest glance, and softest kiss, being thus together associated with the flower….but note especially that the island of Cytherea was dedicated to Venus…” Naturally, he renamed this order of plants ‘Cytherides’. Futhermore, he associates the plant with Shakespeare’s Viola, while discussing the love-virtues of Shakespeare’s women “Lastly, you are to remember the names Viola and Giuletta, it’s two limiting families, as those of Shakespeare’s two most loving maids – the two who love simply, and to the death”… “Viola and Juliet… Love is the ruling power in the entire character: wholly virginal and pure, but quite earthly, and recognising no other life than his own. Viola is, however, by far the noblest. Juliet will die unless Romeo loves her… but Viola is ready to die for the happiness of the man who does not love her; faithfully doing his messages to her rival, whom she examines strictly for his sake.” Undoubted echoes of Ruskin’s love for Rose here, but here there are deeper truths for us also. This book may be a homage to Rose La Touche, even a letter to her – but if so, it is improved and heightened by this fact, not diminished by it.

There was also this deeply unfashionable passage, which I was going to leave out, but cannot quite "But, as sure as the sun does sever day from night, it will be found always that the noblest and loveliest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature; and their passions are trained to obey them, like their dogs." It's a bit disturbing, a dubious ideal of womanhood that noone could ever meet. But there are other, less sexist thoughts within it too, associated with the spirit of this plant in Ruskin's mind, of thankless devotion, unrequited (or at least unacknowledged) love, sacrifice, obedience even. We're going to look into the lamp of obedience, and see what he means by it.

Finally, a beautiful passage in the Viola chapter “What the colours of flower, or of birds, or of precious stones, or of the sea and air, and the blue mountains, and the evening and morning, and the clouds of Heaven, were given for – they only know who can see them and can feel, and who pray that the sight and the love of them may be prolonged, where cheeks will not fade, nor sunsets die.”

Interestingly, Joan Severn named one of her children Violet. Violet was the last of the Severn’s to live at Brantwood.

Brantwood - Cyanotypes and Erba Della Madonna

Alex prepared the studio space for making cyanotypes, a fascinating process of exposing plants directly onto paper, registering only the non-translucent aspects of the plants shape. I know nothing about it – but it’s a fascinating and wonderfully tactile process. We worked late, me watching, Alex producing the first cyanotype images – Spiked Speedwell and Hedge Woundwort, then Woodruff, Wild Strawberry and an Ivy Leaved Toadflax leaf.

Exploring today the significance of ‘Erba della Madonna’ in Ruskin’s life. But first, after our discovery last night that this plant was in fact the ‘Ivy leaved toadflax’, I realised I had photographed this plant several times already. It grows in relative profusion in the cracks on the wall directly outside Ruskin’s front door, the site of so many photographic portraits of Ruskin. Speaking to Sally, the head gardener here, she tells me she has never planted it there, though they had planted it down near what is now the entrance. I like to believe Ruskin originally planted ‘Erba della Madonna’ in this wall, opposite his front door, transporting it from Oxford. He frequently also referred to this plant as ‘Oxford weed’. It doesn’t grow naturally anywhere else here at Brantwood – just this one precious patch outside his front door. The references to this plant ‘having been known is Harristown as my plant’ (ie by Rose and Maria La Touche) are added to in a letter to Lady Mount Temple on 3rd May 1876… “Little Bignall churchyard with it’s ruined chapel.. and the window so overgrown with my own Madonna herb that one would think the little ghost had been at work planting them all the spring”. Was Rose his little ghost?

The plant is indeed a marvel in miniature – it seems a microcosm of perfection – it’s beautiful and delicate falling form, a tiny ivy-like leaf in miniature, the modesty of it’s snake-like flower. Though it can grow as a kind of ground ivy, it seems most at home growing in crevices between stone and masonry – it tumbles down, or ventures upwards as it decides. Ruskin seems first to have drawn the plant in 1845, in mention he makes of a “study of the marble inlaying on the front of Casa Loredan, Venice”. Ruskin says of this drawing “the lovely wild weeds being allowed to root themselves in the sculptures, the bit of Oxford weed below…”. In Modern Painters, in praising various painters for their truth in finish, he says “how Bellini fills the rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters of the Erba della Madonna”. Most often, the plant is associated with Venice, in drawings he did of ruinous buildings – on top of the columns of St Mark’s in 1876 “I am weary this morning, with vainly trying to draw the Madonna herb clustered on the capital’s of St Mark’s porch; and mingling it’s fresh life with the marble Acanthus leaves…”, or a cluster of it “drawn in a nook behind one of the shafts of the destroyed cloister of San Zaccaria”, or drawing it’s presence on the ruinous ‘Stilted Archivolts’, in Rio di Ca’Foscari “set off by the dark and delicate leaves of the Erba della Mandonna, the only pure piece of modern addition to the old design, all else being foul plaster and withering wood.”

Though he grouped this plant with his ‘Draconidae’ in Proserpina, meaning it had dark qualities – a serpent or dragon-like nature, or an evil spirit, he clearly loved it. “in the fairest of them, the erba della Madonna of Venice descends from the ruins it delights in to the herbage at their feet, and touches it, and behold, instantly, a vast group of herbs for healing…” He goes on later “Indeed Linaria and several other Draconid forms are entirely beautiful.”

I think for Ruskin, it’s a plant of his early years, which he encountered many times while drawing in Venice, perhaps also in Oxford – it formed a kind of natural decoration for ruinous buildings to him – never a weed to be uprooted, never a symptom of decay, but a lovely and natural embellishment. Rose La Touche clearly associated it with Ruskin, sending him a bouquet of it after his Dublin lecture. It’s a very unusual and humble plant to make a bouquet of. I think this plant, unusually, was an almost entirely beneficent presence in Ruskin’s life. It’s one of these small and subtle wonders that emerge slowly into one’s mind, a small jewel of time spent here.

We had a wonderful walk, and found the wonderful Vervain growing in the lower garden, but then went up to the highest of Ruskin’s ponds, passing his old water channel and stopping often to look at little patches of Wild Strawberry, Whortleberry, Wood Sorrel, Herb Robert, Violet, growing within the rocks, ferns and moss. By the high 'reservoir' an ancient and twisted Honeysuckle had formed a huge bush high in one of the trees. It was a beauty of a serpent, an old one, a survivor, which seemed to have achieved a kind of harmony with its host tree. We picked some honeysuckle flowers, taking in huge drafts of it’s incredibly heady scent, and wondering whether it might indeed induce erotic dreams.

Brantwood - don't read this - go look at flowers

Dwelled long upon the Sparrowhawk feather of yesterday, which has a peculiar personal power for me – a special bond I once had with this bird. Spent some hours filming the feather this morning. Ruskin of course wrote a lot about feathers, and the fine falcon feather from his drawing is here at Brantwood in a display cabinet. I came across a wonderful chapter in The Laws of Fesole, which is a very fine example of his astonishing powers of observation, though here he does to the feather what he doesn’t like the botanist to do to flowers. It’s an aesthetic passage, but it’s almost scientific in the systematic way he breaks the structure of the feather down. I think feathers held an intellectual fascination for him, and a unique beauty, but did not connect to his personal mythology in the powerful way that flowers do. There’s a fine passage in which he compares and contrasts the structure of the leaf with that of the feather. And he was quite enthusiastic about the capacity of the feather to put its structure back in order when disturbed… “for truly it is woven thing, with a warp and woof, beautiful as Penelope’s and Arachne’s tapestry; but with this marvel beyond beauty in it, that it is a web which re-weaves itself when you tear it! Closes itself as perfectly as a sea-wave torn by the winds, being indeed nothing else than a wave of silken sea, which the winds trouble enough and fret along the edge of it, like a fretful Benacus at its shore, but which, tear it as they will, closes into its unruffled strength again in an instant.”

Alas, my poor honeysuckle grows more menacing every time I look at it. Studying it in all its profusion today in the Brantwood garden, I noticed another dark thing, beyond its serpent qualities, and that is that wherever it grows, it has an alarming quantity of deformed and misshapen leaves. This is much more pronounced in the honeysuckle than in other plants. And again I am reminded of a dreadful Ruskin passage, I cannot remember where it was, where he rails against ‘malignancy’ in leaf growth, and how it indicates a plant of a devilish order. So I collected and filmed the honeysuckle today, and loved it still. The serpent stem, twisting and writhing, gives birth to the beautiful balletic grace of the flower. But I need to think now of other plants, before I start dreaming of serpents.

Alex was away with his family most of the day and spent some time with his brother and their children. He was reminded of when Ruskin went to see his publisher, George Allen, in May 1885. They wanted Ruskin to see the books they had been preparing, but he didn’t want to do this – “he said he didn’t believe anybody really wanted to read all those books, he preferred us to go with him to the flowers and woods” said George Allen’s son, William.

We had a walk along the road toward Coniston this evening. In the dusky gloom of damp overhanging trees, two young badgers came out onto the road. Standing dead still, they paid no mind to us, shuffling along toward us, within a few feet, before disappearing into the undergrowth with a snort. A wonderful moment.

Feeling a need to see a good reproduction of Carpaccio’s St Ursula (above), and wondering where the copy that Ruskin made now resides. Six months spent copying someone else’s painting, when you are Ruskin, seems like a long time. We keep coming back to the significance the Dianthus and Vervain gained because Carpaccio put them in his picture, which we’ll seek tomorrow in the garden here. The garden, after several days here now, is only just starting to become familiar. We both feel as if we are only just beginning to understand what we are seeing here.

Brantwood - Honeysuckle, Serpents and feathers

Honeysuckle shoot, as serpent

Last night I dreamed there was a ‘green man’ on the wall inside this house, the shape of a portrait, made in relief, of red clay. The face had leaves for hair and leafy branches sprouting from his mouth. As I walked past looking, I recognised the clay relief as Ruskin, a Green Man, and the relief started trying to talk to me, but I could not hear what he was saying, for his words were muffled by the vegetation sprouting from his mouth.

Though I like the honeysuckle, Ruskin didn’t seem to. In The Stones of Venice, he first singles out the Greek ‘so-called honeysuckle ornaments’ as mistaken and impertinent, for their lack of truth in representation I think. Later, the honeysuckle seems to take on an altogether darker meaning. In Deucalion, he goes further than simply describing the honeysuckle as a plant of caprice, but likens it to a serpent. “nothing is more mysterious in the compass of creation than the relation of flower to the serpent tribe” he begins… “seven hundred years ago, to the Florentine, and three thousand years ago, to the Egyptian and the Greek, the mystery of that bond was told in the dedication of the ivy to Dionysus and of the dragon to Triptolemus. Giotto, in the lovely design, which is tonight the only relief to your eyes, thought the story of temptation enough symbolised by the spray of ivy around the hazel trunk, and I have substituted, in my definition, the honeysuckle…is an ‘anguis’ – a strangling thing.” He goes on… “That there is any essential difference in the spirit of life which gives power to the tormenting tendrils, from that which animates the strangling coils (ie of the serpent), your recent philosophy denies, and I do not take upon me to assert. The serpent is a honeysuckle with a head put on, and perhaps some day, in the zenith of development, you may see a honeysuckle getting so much done for it.” Of course, the association with feminine caprice Ruskin made in Proserpina, coupled with the serpent association in Deucalion (the serpent is associated with strangulation, temptation, and the fall of man), leads us into strange territory. Serpents formed a frequent and very dark theme of Ruskin’s dreams. And, of course, his pet name for Rose La Touche’s mother, for some time, was ‘Lacerta’, or serpent.

Everywhere I looked today, the beautiful honeysuckle begins now to look like a strangling serpent. Did Ruskin never look to the flower to forgive the stem? Or did the associations of the stem innevitably lead to the associations of flower? According to an (uncited) note on the honeysuckle in wikipedia, in Victorian times "teenage girls were forbidden to bring honeysuckle home because it was thought to induce erotic dreams." Ruskin never wrote about the flower.

Wives and children visited us here today, my daughters loved it and did some wonderful drawings. Bridie found a wonderful gift in the upper garden, a sparrowhawk feather, which put me in mind of Ruskin’s wonderful feather drawing. One could search for weeks to find such a feather. Ruskin’s drawing was a ‘falcon’s feather’, from a longer-winged hawk. But you would not see falcons in the Brantwood garden – the territory belongs to shortwinged hawks such as the sparrowhawk, able to navigate the dense woodland at speed. I wonder where his falcon’s feather came from?

Alex is reading ‘John Ruskin and Rose La Touche’ by Van Akin Burd. Ruskin spent nearly six months in Venice studying and copying Carpaccio’s St Ursula during the winter of 1876/1877. This painting began to take on huge symbolic meaning for him and St Ursula came to forever be associated with Rose La Touche. Two incidents occurred during the Christmas period in Venice – he was delivered some Dianthus (the pink, or carnation), the flower of Zeus, a plant painted into the windows of St Ursula’s sleeping chamber. This was sent by Lady Castletown, with a note which read “from St Ursula out of her bedroom window, with love” He was also sent a sprig of Vervain by a botanist friend, a sacred plant symbolising domestic purity – also painted into St Ursula’s windows by Carpaccio. These two gifts of plants had profound symbolic meaning for Ruskin, and precipitated a series of spiritual lessons or teachings – Ruskin believed he was receiving supernatural guidance from St Ursula. The Vervain and the Dianthus.

There is also the bouquet he received after his lecture in Ireland, presumably from Rose, a bouquet of Erba della Madonna (the Ivy Leaved Toadflax), which he first observed on the capitals of St Mark’s porch in Venice and “was always considered as my plant, at Harristown”. Within the bouquet were two other bouquets, “one a rose half open, with lilies of the valley, and a sweet scented geranium leaf”. Van Akin Burd goes on to say “A year later he was to classify these flowers as the fairest of a group whose spots suggest that they have been touched by poison, beautiful but capable of an ‘evil serpentry’.” The serpent, again.

On a note of trivia, or typical Ruskinian perlexity, the Erba Della Madonna, as is the common name in Italy, variously refers to Sedum dasyphyllum L., or Sedum telephium L. (Orpine/Livelong) But of course, neither of these plants look anything like the Ruskin Erba Della Madonna drawing reproduced in the Library Edition of The Queen of the Air. Ruskin calls the the 'Erba Della Madonna' Linaria Cymbalaria, which is in fact the Ivy Leaved Toadflax. A picture here, looks more like Ruskin's drawing. So his Erba Della Madonna is a different plat to contemporary references to it. I like the Ivy Leaved Toadflax much more.

Brantwood - the first lamp - sacrifice

In the Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin defines the first lamp, Sacrifice, as “It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more costly, because it was so and of two kinds of decoration, equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in the same compass present more cost and more thought. It is therefore the most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps negatively defined as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the largest results at the least cost”. He concludes the chapter with “But of them (ie the builders of gothic cathedrals) and their life and their toil upon the Earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those grey heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors – but they have left us their adoration.”

We’ve been considering the seven lamps as a model, a grouping or a limitation to impose upon our engagement with the language of plants here – Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience. Last night we talked late about the language of plants, about Ruskin’s power when he gave us his direct experience of a plant, yet how loaded this always was with his personal mythology. Ruskin’s penetratingly complex description of the Hawthorn flower on the day he heard of Rose La Touche’s death is an example. We were reminded also of Edward Bach, who roamed the countryside to find plants that somehow ‘answered his condition’. This sensitivity, though it may be rooted in what we may know of a plant in botanical, gardening or medicinal terms, or memories of times and places when we have encountered it, allows us to develop our own, personal symbolic meanings.

Taking the first lamp, Sacrifice, we independently walked the Brantwood gardens today, each of us keeping in mind this spirit, the idea and ideal of sacrifice, as it was to ourselves personally. Various flowers particularly spoke to us variously – Alex was drawn to the Rose, representing as it does here an incredible complexity of meaning – and Ruskin’s uncontrollable sacrifice of his irrational devotional love for Rose La Touche. “I am so sick already for the sight of her, that – if it were not that it would plague herself – I would go to Ireland now, and lie down at their gate.” Here he describes a sacrifice. For me, I was strongly dawn, in pure response, mostly to the wild honeysuckle growing wild in the upper wooded garden – a flowerhead often in disarray within itself – yet for its sleekness of form and delicate feminine sadness of its individual flowers. Ruskin considered the plant capricious, a quality he appears to associate with feminine changefulness, unpredictability and independent wilfulness.

Proserpina exerts its ever increasing influence. Yet it’s hard to escape the presence of Rose La Touche in its pages. Reading today that Ruskin first associates the word Proserpina with Rose La Touche in a letter to Edward Burne Jones on the day after he asked her to marry him. She was eighteen. He first spoke of writing a botanical book called Proserpina three years later. He pointed out the first two letters stood for ‘pet’ and ‘rose’, and sometimes he removed the first ‘P’ and the second ‘r’, to give ‘Rosepina’. In one, something of their own language of flowers is revealed – in the ‘Veronica’ chapter, where Ruskin first outlines the scientific dissemblage of the Foxglove flower, then stating “None of which particulars concern any reasonable mortal, looking at a Foxglove, in the smallest degree” he goes on in a wonderful and mysterious passage to describe the flowers he and Rose (“any pretty young Proserpina”) would gather, and those they would not gather, together in a bouquet from his Brantwood garden.

Brantwood - overwhelming imperfection everywhere

Reading Proserpina some more "Botany is not so much the description of plants as their biography", intrigued by Ruskin's personal mythology of plants. And further, "I have drawn the faded beside the full branch and know not which is more beautiful." To capture something, in anything like a truthful representation, has to involve all its cycles of change - birth, flowering, dying. There is something very eastern about this view.

Also, for us, a comment from James Dearden about Ruskin's Glenfinlas portrait - in the top left corner there is a small flower growing on rocks, which neither Ruskin nor Millais could identify. Ruskin picked it and sent it to his friend, Lady Trevelyan for identification. The flower is still with the letter, but where is the letter we wonder?

Spoke some more with Howard Hull - very interested in the associations he drew for us around the language of plants. How little seems to be known about the important private language of plants exchanged between Rose La Touche and Ruskin. Yet existing in a context where the 'language of plants' was not an unusual way to communicate secret meanings between people - the fascinating Tussie Mussie (?) - the posy of flowers commonly put together with the specific aim of communicating a symbolic meaning. How quickly we seem to have lost this tradition, this comfort in the naming and symbolic meanings of flowers.

The Acanthus leaf - so very fundamental to Ruskin's understanding of gothic architecture in the Stones of Venice. The Wild Strawberry (and the drawing), the Bilberry (Whortleberry), Milkwort (which he first most fondly encountered on the foothills of the Alps at Jura), Violet, the Thistle and its more tormented mythology for Ruskin - the agony of mother earth (worth exploring and very Celtic and Beuysian), the Foxglove which in a single stem contains both nascent buds, full flower, seed and decay - birth old age and death all co-existing. The red Poppy and it's tortured escape into translucent finest bloom, Moss, wild Daffodils and his associations with his alpine journeys. Ruskin's book of pressed flowers and notes on them from his Alpine journeys at Lancaster. The idea of uniformity and its association with manufacturing and the death of personal creativity - as Howard said "imperfection is a sign of life."

But of ferns and foxgloves, really so prevalent here now, there is really little. Linton, the previous owner of Brantwood, wrote a book on Ferns. Sally showed us brambles - "three when young, five when adult". She thought Ruskin did or would have liked Teasel, Goat's Beard, Herb Bennet, Bog Myrtle, Milk Thistle, the Orange Lily. The Orchard, interestingly, is positioned as part of a flower garden - the orchard is there for the flowers, not the fruit, in a Ruskinian way. We enjoyed the Thistles, Royal fern, Monkshood, and the Hart's Tongue.

We took a walk in the fern garden, rising up to the Cragg through endless ferns and foxgloves, where upon the top the grass was softly seeding and blowing in a gentle breeze. Some moments of pure peace felt up there, listening to this breeze as it passed through the grass. The boggy areas were a wonder, the scent of bog myrtle crushed between the fingers puts one in mind of some churches - francincense amd myrrh. And the humble Billberry, which Ruskin decribed in such rapture. Some wonderful thistles - with their increasingly architectural qualities of leaf.

Descending, we called in on Lawson park, an artists residency place spun off from the old Grizedale forest sculpture park. A workman was scratching his head in bewilderment at some sheets of heavy plywood. "I'm building a garden shed for them, this wood is apparently left over from some art installation or other" he said. "It'll not be exterior grade ply then" we ventured. "That's right, so it'll just fall apart in a few weeks" he said. "I've told them that, but they want me to build it anyway." That, we thought, just about sums up the profound wastefulness (spiritually and physically) of contemporary art. But this experience was trumped when we went on to see an installation by Graham Fagen, which, as far as we could see, consisted of some trees planted in a field, some of which were dead. You'd never know it was art of course, but we had been given a nice catalogue about it, so we knew it was art. However, we spent ten bemused minutes before we found Fagen's trees thinking that the pig pen before it was in fact his art piece... maybe it was? Vacousness triumphs.

Slowly, some things are coming into increasing focus, mainly around this world of plants. But it's overwhelming here in its richness of impressions and possibilities. One feels it's all in the very small things, the very small observations, but these are infinite in number. Every foxglove flower is different and there are millions of them. The naming of plants is forever tied up with their meanings to us as human beings - Ruskin took great liberties with naming, we're thinking we should all perhaps name our plants to reflect our own direct and personal responses to them. Something about the seven lamps of architecture, seven flowers, seven screens. The seven lamps of - Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience.

Finally we enjoyed a small deluge and got quite gloriously wet.

First day at Brantwood - A land of ferns and foxgloves

Milkwort on Yewdale

First day of a ten day residency at Brantwood, John Ruskin's Home. Sleeping in the room that Ruskin died in... we both dreamed about Ruskin. On rising, we wondered about Ruskin's relationship with Darwin - both such towering Victorian intellects, but at odds always, somehow. Yet they shared such a similar spirit of enquiry into the natural world. We met Sally Beamish, the gardener here, as we're interested to explore the plants that were so significant to Ruskin. Proserpina an source of enquiry, a strange and rambling work, in which he attempted to reclassify plants in human terms, opposing the clinical classifications of Linnaeus. Enjoyed a passage in Proserpina in which Ruskin translates Rousseau, in discussing the business of botany and the mixed value in the learning of names for plants "Before teaching them to name what they see, let us begin by teaching them to see it."

Had a wonderful converstaion with Howard Hull about Prosperina, Love's Meinie and Deucalion - Ruskin's works on the natural world. A walk around the garden, the amazing unfolding of fern leaves. Ruskin's stone seat, with the view of the rivulet totally obscured by fern growth - not what we expected, hoping for moss and stone and tumbling water. Did Ruskin actually sit there much? Did he keep the view of it open? We encountered a lovely drawing Ruskin did at Brantwood, of wild strawberries and moss in a stone crevice.

Later, we went to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston. Some wonderful Ruskin drawings. Connecting his enthusiasms for geology, cloud studies, mountains, flowers. Again the 'moss and wild strawberries' drawing - wondering where exactly it was drawn. How incredibly engaged Ruskin was, really, with Coniston as his local community - the institute, wood carving, the lace industry. Vicky Slowe, the curator, a passionately interested individual - her interest in Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Beuys alongside Ruskin. Ruskin had a local man make a tool for coppicing - he said coppicing was his favourite 'gumnastics'.

Then, a marvellous walk up to Yewdale, where Ruskin walked many times. Amazing plant life - a world of June ferns. And finding, toward the top, Butterwort, the amazingly subtle blue fowers of Milkwort (which Ruskin called Guliana in Proserpina) and the mysterious fly-eating Sundew. On the top, a marvellous boggy plateau, some wonderful reflections in the water, and the movement of white heads of Cottongrass in the wind, and mosses. Photographing emerging fern leaf heads, in different stages of unfoldment, so much earlier in development than the ferns in the valley. The views over Coniston must have changed a lot. Neither of us had ever seen such a profusion of twisted old Juniper trees before - a wonder to behold. We cracked the seeds, which smelled, unsurprisingly, of Gin. A drip falling, with unceasing regularity, from a fern leaf sticking out from the moss.

And the library here, all these words and words about his words. An interesting collection of essays, among much else, from 'John Ruskin- The Brantwood Years', a coference in 2000. In an essay by Rachel Dickinson, the idea of changefulness - the way Ruskin continually rearranged his paintings here according to the gothic principle of 'changefulness', and how we might use that idea of the ever-changing exhibition. Wondering very much about the last 10 years, the 'silent' years, of Ruskin's life. And of Joan Severn and the true nature of Ruskin's relationship with her. And did they keep him sedated for ten years to avoid any more incidents of lunacy, or just to avoid inconvenience? His creativity and his 'madness' are so closely, inextricably related. And did sedation, rather than his own mind, also destroy his ability to write, or even draw creatively?