There can be few figures from nineteenth-century Britain as perplexing as John Ruskin. So often a man of contradiction, it is easy to fall for his rich prose and deeply felt sentiment. Vicky Albritton and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson's Green Victorians is a thorough analysis of Ruskin's dream of returning to a simpler way of life. They argue that Ruskin's proposals for a more sustainable economic model than the consumption-driven, coal-powered, capitalist system has never been more relevant. His objection to the mechanized industries of mass production and pollution, with all their social evils, clearly resonates. This book explores Victorian efforts to escape the monotony of industrial life for the peace of nature. The authors examine the small network of Ruskin's closest devotees, who followed him in his retreat to the Lake District.
Focusing on such a small geographical area provides a clear analysis, while the work is enriched with wonderful anecdotes. Introducing us to Ruskin through his 1887 mental breakdown in Folkestone adds much poignancy. The outspoken critic of consumerism reduced to a Kent shopping spree, splashing out on champagne and flamboyant topcoats, draws out much of the sadness of Ruskin's life, as well as the challenges of conforming to his principles. This volume is held together by such accounts. The eccentric Albert Fleming, who slept every night next to his coffin to remind him of the ephemerality of his earthly existence, and the exacting Marian Twelves who designed the popular ‘Ruskin lace’, were both fascinating individuals, while the aged spinster and model of Ruskinian sufficiency, Susanna Beever, really left an impression. Apart from being Ruskin's trusted friend and a respected interpreter of his works, she was evidence of the merits of the simple life. Sustained by food from her garden, taking pleasure in innocent pastimes and adoring of nature, Beever was the embodiment of a ‘Green Victorian’. It is through such personal stories that we see the dilemmas of Ruskin's remedies for industrial society.
Green Victorians consists of six chapters which proceed neatly from Ruskin's ideas to attempts to enact them. Chapter 1 explores Ruskin's fears over pollution and climate change, and his economic vision of sufficiency. The subsequent chapters provide, in effect, a series of social experiments to realize Ruskin's teachings. What we see through these chapters is the tensions between Ruskin's prescriptions for salvation and the problems with putting them into practice. As much as Ruskin's writings might appear relevant to modern readers, Victorian experiences of living out a Ruskinian existence demonstrate their contradictions and impracticalities. Ventures such as Fleming's move to the Lake District to establish the Langdale Linen Industry highlight the challenges of sustainable production. His mill thrived despite using only natural bleaching agents and handcraft labour. Fleming recognized that any economic model required demand. Informing the public of the ethical value of hand-produced textiles was central to his success. Despite commercial viability and sustainability, social tensions remained in the project, with Fleming coming into conflict with his skilled mill director, Twelves. A core Ruskinian conviction was to provide opportunities for women, particularly through needlecraft. Yet the lines of authority between Fleming and his female colleague proved hard to manage in practice.
Likewise, schemes to prevent the building of the Thirlmere Reservoir and extension of railways into the Lake District revealed the social constraints of Ruskin's work. Protecting the rural wilderness of Cumbria was as much about protecting the region's people as its natural beauty. Such endeavours were paternalistic and riddled with contradictions. The local people of the Lake District failed to live up to Ruskinian expectations and did not appear to want protecting from modern transport and cheap mass-produced commodities. Their failure to be impressed by Romantic notions of nature and sufficiency marked a gulf between Ruskinian thought and the people his followers sought to protect. In the concluding chapters the efforts of William Gershom Collingwood are recorded. Once again, the problems of sustainability emerge. In attempting to live according to Ruskin's ideals, Collingwood took his young wife to live near Ruskin. Raising a family according to a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle was less than romantic. Rather than consumption, the Collingwoods embraced imagination, immersed in nature and surviving off home products including artworks and a monthly family magazine. Green Victorians reveals an idyllic, yet often isolating, existence.
From a purely historical point of view, it is possible that this volume might have paid greater attention to Ruskin's faith. Although religion does feature, a greater emphasis might have been placed on Ruskin's religious trials in Chapter 1. Ruskin's calls for non-mechanized artisan labour in The Stones of Venice (1851) were driven by a conviction that Christian Gothic architecture was morally superior to classical because of the freedoms allowed to workmen. The foundations of his alternative economic model were evangelical. Although Ruskin was plagued by doubts throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Francis O'Gorman has shown how from 1875 Ruskin's faith returned and projects such as the Guild of St George had a theological basis. This religious rejuvenation was explicit in Ruskin's 1882 The Bible of Amiens. At the same time, considering how much of Green Victorians focuses on the problem of waste, the broader context of evangelical business models driven by an urgency to avoid moral and material waste seems relevant. Religion seems doubly important because so much of the book's analysis revolves around Ruskin's fears for anthropogenic climatic change. This is interesting; however, its relevance appears somewhat diminished by Ruskin's bouts of mental illness. Most of Ruskin's closest friends doubted the rationality of his climatic prophesies.
A greater attention to Ruskin's faith would enhance this book, but its absence does not diminish it. The authors have produced an exceptionally informative work which shows why Ruskin matters, and why his ideas were so troublesome. As they so wisely conclude, in our age of concerns over climate change and the sustainability of capitalist consumption, Ruskin shows us that we have been here before. However, they also show us that Ruskin does not have a neatly packaged solution. Victorian schemes for sustainability and a return to nature were problematic and contradictory. The failings of the Ruskinian simple life in the Lake District are as informative as Ruskin's own writings. Green Victorians demonstrates that Ruskin and his friends were haunted by the same question which plagues modern society: ‘what makes a good life?’ (p. 178).
