From Fantasy to Reality: Ruskin's King of the Golden River, St. George's Guild, and Ruskin, Tennessee

Biographers have noted that Ruskin's childhood copying of Cruikshank's illustrations to Grimms' fairy tales stimulated Ruskin's later interest in art and that Ruskin's childhood reading of Grimm influenced the form and content of Ruskin's own fantasy, The King of the Golden River.¹ But could it not be that this early familiarity with Grimm extends even further into Ruskin's career? One can see Ruskin's early fascination with the poor and simple folk of Grimms' tales reflected not only in the economic allegory of The King of the Golden River, but also in his real-life experiments with St. George's Guild and even in the writings late in his life. These writings, such as Fors Clavigera, have poor folk as their theme, wholly or in part, and stylistically very often border on fantasy. Further, Ruskin's imaginative projections of an ideal society for the poor became reality, at least temporarily, in tiny "Ruskin" settlements established in the United States. When these failed, the ideas which emanated from Ruskin's creative imagination can be traced into later economic movements. Just as the puppet show of Faust may have influenced Goethe's long literary life, so Grimm may have partially influenced Ruskin's long literary life, and through Ruskin, other people.

The King of the Golden River was written in 1841 as a gift for Euphemia Chalmers Gray, then twelve, whom Ruskin was to marry seven years later. Published in 1851, the story "attained an immediate popularity which it has ever since retained, both in England and in America." ² Perhaps as a result of this popularity, copies are scarce, as children soon wear books out. By 1937, Charles Good-speed, in Yankee Bookseller, reported copies of King as difficult to find.³ Ruskin's manuscript, from which the following quotations are taken, is in Yale University Library. It seems to vary in no significant respect from published versions of the story.⁴

Briefly, it will be recalled, the story has to do with three brothers who lived in a fertile valley watered by a pure stream. Unfortunately Hans and Schwartz, the two older brothers, were selfish:

They killed everything which did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds because they pecked the fruit, and killed the hedgehogs lest they should suck the cows—they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen, and smothered the cicadas which used to sing all summer in the limetrees.

They worked their servants without any wages till they would not work any more and then quarreled with them and turned them out of doors without paying them. It would have been very odd if with such a farm and such a system of farming they hadn't got very rich and very rich they did get. They generally contrived to keep their corn by them till it was very dear and sell it for twice its value—they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors, yet it was never known that they had given as much as a penny or a crust to charity.⁵

In contrast to these two exploiters of the land and labor, there was little Gluck, only twelve (Euphemia's age) . Gluck was their tool and was forced to do their dirty work, such as cleaning their shoes, floors, and plates. Things went along like this until there was a bad depression—"a very wet summer and everything went wrong in the country round." Needless to say, Hans and Schwartz took full advantage of the situation:

They asked what they liked and got it except from the poor people, who could only beg, several of whom were starved at their very doors, without the slightest regard or notice.⁶

At this point, while the older brothers were out, an "extraordinary looking little gentleman" appeared, with curling moustaches, and asked Gluck for shelter and food. Gluck was reluctant to help because, as he told the little man, he knew he would be beaten for it...