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.