In Ruskinʼs Plan,
the title “The Summit” is the fourth in what can be interpreted as a definable cluster,
which constructs the experience of crossing the Alps:
- “Passing the Alps”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS IA, g.2, “Passing the Alps”;
- “Via Mala”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “Via Mala”;
- “Splugen”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “Splugen”;
- “The Summit”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “The Summit”;
- “The Descent”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “The Descent”;
- “Italia, Italia”, for which the untitled poem about arrival in Chiavenna,
“Oh softly blew the morning breeze” [“Chiavenna”], may have been intended as beginning draft.
While
Ruskin did not subdivide his
Plan into clusters of titles,
his intention is evident in his drafting poems, with titles corresponding to those in the
Plan,
as an identically ordered sequence in
MS VIII. The poem corresponding to the first title in this conjectural cluster,
“Passing the Alps”,
was drafted elsewhere, in
MS IA, g.2, probably prior to the drafts of the other poems in
MS VIII; and
Ruskin based this poem on
Rogersʼs
“The Alps” in
Italy,
applying themes and structure in
Rogersʼs poem to his own cluster.
“I thought as, by the cross I past / Of far Helvellyns dreary waste / Mid my own hills, and legend strange”
(MS VIII; Works [1903])—The
Alpine memorial crosses, which were erected in memory of travelers who met with accidents, put
Ruskin in mind of a
Lake District tourist,
Charles Gough, who fell to his death in
1805,
when attempting to traverse
Mount Helvellyn. He apparently lost his footing when attempting to cross
Striding Edge,
and his body ended among the rocks below, near
Red Tarn, where his remains were found three months later,
still being watched over by his terrier,
Foxey. The incident achieved near legendary status owing to the dogʼs
perceived loyalty. Poems in the epitaph tradition were composed about the story by
William Wordsworth
(
“Fidelity”) and by
Walter Scott
(
“Hellvellyn”).
See
Ruskin, Works, 1:416 n. 2; 340.
Ruskinʼs contribution participates in the growing sentiment centered on the perceived fidelity of the dog. See the anthology of reactions to the incident
collected in
Morley, The Unfortunate Tourist of Helvellyn. Whereas letters and newspaper accounts
near in time to the discovery of
Goughʼs remains speculated about the circumstance of the accident—mentioning the dog
mainly to remark on the bizarre coincidence of her having given birth to a litter while remaining near the body, and to debate whether she or other scavengers had eaten
away the flesh of the corpse—
William Wordsworthʼs and
Walter Scottʼs poems
shifted responses to admiration of the dogʼs tenacious loyalty. In
1829,
Edwin Landseer (
1802–73)
painted
Attachment, a composition that mixes the pathos of the terrier pawing
at her fallen masterʼs breast (in the manner of the romantic image of a lover lying prostrate on the lifeless body of the beloved) and the sublime terror
of the looming heights from which
Gough fell (see
Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 102).
As an available source for
Scottʼs version of the story,
Ruskin could have found the poem
“Hellvellyn”
in volume six (
1833) of the twelve‐volume
Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (pp. 370–73),
published by Cadell, with illustrations by
Turner, as an extension of the
Magnum Opus edition
(see
Millgate, Scottʼs Last Edition, 47–48;
see also
Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 309 [no. 2428]).
Wordsworthʼs
“Fidelity” was available in volume four of the five‐volume
Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (pp. 254–56),
included among the
“Poems of Sentiment and Reflection”
(see
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 168;
see also
Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 366 [no. 2916]).
As for
Landseerʼs painting, while widely reviewed when shown at the Royal Academy
in
1830, apparently no engravings were made, so it is unlikely that
Ruskin was familiar with the image
(see
Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 102).
Unusually, in this case,
Ruskin shares octosyllabic couplets with
Wordsworth rather than with
Scott, whose lines are alexandrines,
rhymed in an octave pattern of ABABCCCB, a stanza more commonly credited to
Algernon Swinburne (e.g., in
“The Garden of Proserpine”;
I am grateful to my colleague,
Alison Pelegrin, for help identifying this verse form).
However,
Ruskinʼs narrator seems indebted less to
Wordsworth
than to
Scott, in swerving to a meditative voice (“I thought as, by the cross I past”).
Scottʼs
speaker similarly pauses atop
Helvellyn to contemplate the spot where the traveler fell:
“I climbʼd the dark brow of the mighty
Hellvellyn / . . . / When I markʼd the sad spot where the wanderer had died”
(
Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, 6:370).
Possible lexical borrowings from both
Scottʼs and
Wordsworthʼs poems are noted in the textual glosses.
In his version of the
“Account”,
W. G. Collingwood
omitted the entire second half of
Ruskinʼs holograph poem containing the story of
Gough
and his faithful
dog.
Collingwood neither acknowledged nor provided a rationale
for the omission, but one can infer that the presence of a story set in the English lakes would have jarred with the editorʼs conception of the
“Account”
as a poetic, topographical account of the
Tour of 1833.
Collingwood
omitted all prose except what he interpolated himself, in the form of epigraphs quoting
Ruskinʼs narrative version
of the tour written a half‐century later for
Praeterita. Given this emphasis,
Collingwood would have been particularly put off by the inclusion of a tale set in the
Lake District,
rather than in the
Alps. In this decision, however,
Collingwood eliminated evidence
of one of
Ruskinʼs most telling debts to the influence of
Samuel Rogersʼs
Italy, which uses narrative to plot emotions defining the stages of a mountain crossing.
See, in the apparatus for the
“Account”,
Sources and Influences—Rogersʼs Poetry;
and see the contextual glosses for
“Passing the Alps”.