This energetic letter-writing made people stare; but a more serious result of these periods between strength and helplessness was the tendency to misunderstanding with old friends.  Ruskin had spoiled many of them, if I may say so, by too uniform forbearance and unselfishness:  and now that he was not always strong enough to be patient, difficulties ensued which they had not always the tact to avert.  “The moment I have to scold people they say I’m crazy,” he said, piteously, one day.  And so, one hardly knows how, he found himself at strife on all sides.  Before he was fully recovered from the attack of 1886 there were troubles about the Oxford drawing school; and he withdrew most of the pictures he had there on loan.  How little animosity he really felt against Oxford is shown from the fact that early in the next year (February, 1887) he was planning with his cousin, Wm. Richardson, to give L5,000 to the drawing school, as a joint gift in memory of their two mothers.  Mr. Richardson’s death, and Ruskin’s want of means—­for he had already spent all his capital—­put an end to the scheme.  But the remaining loans, including important and valuable drawings by himself, he did not withdraw, and it is to be hoped they may stay there to show not only the artist’s hand but the friendly heart of the founder and benefactor.

In April, 1887, came the news of Laurence Hilliard’s death in the Aegean, with a shock that intensified the tendency to another recurrence of illness.  For months the situation caused great anxiety.  In August he posted with Mrs. A. Severn towards the south, and took up his quarters at Folkestone, moving soon after to Sandgate, where he remained, with short visits to town, until the following summer—­better, or worse, from week to week—­sometimes writing a little for “Praeterita,” or preparing material for the continuation of unfinished books; but bringing on his malady with each new effort.  In June, 1888, he went with Mr. Arthur Severn to Abbeville, and made his headquarters for nearly a month at the Tete de Boeuf.  Here he was arrested for sketching the fortifications and examined at the police station, much to his amusement.  At Abbeville, too, he met Mr. Detmar Blow, a young architect, whom he asked to accompany him to Italy.  They stayed awhile at Paris,—­drove, as in 1882, over the Jura, and up to Chamouni, where Ruskin wrote the epilogue to the reprint of “Modern Painters”; then, by Martigny and the Simplon, they went to visit Mrs. and Miss Alexander at Bassano; and thence to Venice.  They returned by the St. Gothard, reaching Herne Hill early in December.

But this journey did not, as it had been hoped, put him in possession of his strength like the journey of 1882.  Then, he had returned to public life with new vigour; now, his best hours were hours of feebleness and depression; and he came home to Brantwood in the last days of the year, wearied to death, to wait for the end.

CHAPTER X