Last year, the Ruskin Research Blog published Ruskin’s Faithful Stewards, Stuart Eagles’s prize-winning biography of Henry and Emily Swan, the curators of Ruskin’s museum in Walkley, Sheffield. In the next few blog entries, our attention turns to the Swans’ successor, William White (1855-1932), an even more obscure figure in the story of Ruskin’s legacy and Sheffield’s cultural heritage.

In the first part of this new series, we learn that before White was appointed curator of the newly styled Ruskin Museum at Meersbrook Hall, he was a man of business who had developed a broad and deep knowledge of art, science, and literature. He had grown up in what is now a National Trust property, Morden Hall Park. In White’s day it was a private school run by his father.

As we shall see in subsequent blogs,  White was never fully comfortable in Sheffield. He did not sufficiently engage with the local community and, in the end, local officials took against him. Despite his hard work and sincere dedication to Ruskin’s objectives, his curatorship ended in acrimony. Scholars, appearing to know little or nothing of his background, have unjustly dismissed him as a ‘professional’ museum man who had little regard for the Ruskinian associations so idiosyncratically observed at Walkley. It is time to delve deeper into White’s background and to reassess his contribution to the Ruskin world.

41. WILLIAM WHITE, CURATOR OF THE RUSKIN MUSEUM:
    (I) THE ROAD TO MEERSBROOK
    

    Stuart Eagles

In April 1890, the art-treasures Ruskin had collected under the auspices of the Guild of St George were removed from Walkley, where they had been in the care of Henry and Emily Swan, and placed in Meersbrook Hall, a modest Georgian mansion which had been purchased by Sheffield Town Council in 1886. The newly re-branded Ruskin Museum at Meersbrook had effectively incorporated the Ruskin Collection (which remained in the trust of the Guild of St George) and made it into a de facto municipal resource. In reality, the collection was only ever on loan for periods of 20 years at a time. As curator, White was an employee of the council, as was his assistant, the caretaker, and the gardeners who took care of the grounds which was maintained as a public park.

Moreover, the museum would be managed by the Ruskin Museum Committee. This was a council sub-committee which was made up of representatives of the Guild and the town council (from 1893, the city council). It would increasingly be weighted towards the council, however, with the number of councillors (most of whom were also businessmen) outnumbering the Guild’s representatives, which in the 1890s only ever consisted of two trustees, the future Guild Masters, George Baker and George Thomson. They were themselves men of business who were, or had been, councillors and even Mayors themselves (of Birmingham and Huddersfield respectively). The Guild’s voice steadily but surely became weaker. Increasingly, the museum’s new curator, William White, found himself caught between loyalty to the Guild and Ruskin’s ideas on the one hand, and the dominant force of his employer, the town council.

White was a complex and conflicted character, gifted but, in several important ways, flawed. He was not blameless in the controversies that came to surround him and ultimately to define his curatorship. Yet, he did not deserve the treatment meted out to him. Hitherto, his contribution has been mischaracterised and underestimated by Ruskin scholars.

TOUGH ACTS TO FOLLOW

White had his work cut out from the start of his curatorship. On the death of Henry Swan, the Pall Mall Gazette had remarked,

“Whatever arrangement Mr Ruskin may make for the future guardianship of St George’s Museum, it can safely be said that in ardour and culture he will find it extremely difficult to engage anyone who will be able adequately to take the position so honourably and so zealously filled by poor Henry Swan.” (2 April 1889)

Nevertheless, as the man entrusted with that formidable task, White was — as we shall see — capable, skilled, dedicated, serious, hard-working, and generous. He was — or at least became — a sensitive and knowledgeable scholar of both Ruskin and Turner. He was a skilled draughtsman. He was keenly interested in the sciences, especially geology and entomology, but also ornithology and botany. As we shall see, a significant number of letters he wrote to scientific journals were published, and he joined several scientific organisations. He was also a keen collector, and frequently donated items of interest to the Ruskin Collection.

And yet, his curatorship ended acrimoniously. He was dismissed from the job by the council and he didn’t go quietly. Partly as a result of the controversy that ensued, White has been reduced to little more than a footnote in Ruskin Studies. In particular, he has been criticized by Ruskin scholars for being a “professional” museum-man who was unsympathetic to Ruskin’s idiosyncratic museological approach. Items were displayed and arranged at Meersbrook in a manner that emphasized obvious and superficial similarities and differences, with individual rooms dedicated to pictures, minerals, and books, which were thus segregated, obscuring the relationships between them. Consequently, the argument goes, Ruskin’s fundamental belief in the interconnectedness of things — specifically, his mission to explain the significance of the multiple connections that exist between different objects in the collection — was disrupted and even undermined.

It is certainly true that the curatorial approach adopted at the Ruskin Museum lost much of the Ruskinian character of its predecessor in Walkley, but these blogs will argue that it is unfair to place the blame for that solely, or even primarily, on White himself. The process of “professionalization”, or — more accurately— standardization — had much more to do with the museum becoming a local amenity for which Sheffield Council was responsible. It had more to do with the bureaucratic mindset of the members of the managing Ruskin Museum Committee. And it was influenced, too, by the emergence of the Museums Association, which owed its creation to key Sheffield figures. Another regrettable complication was that Ruskin was living in virtual silence and isolation at Brantwood, totally cut-off from the museum’s affairs. His representatives on the committee — Guild trustees, Baker and Thomson — were more sympathetic to the demands of bureaucracy than Ruskin. By contrast, White was quite the opposite.

Rather than drive the changes that distinguished the museum in Meersbrook from what had gone before, White found himself at odds with his bosses. But although he was not chiefly responsible for the changed curatorial approach, he was temperamentally ill-suited to the role of a museum curator in a provincial northern town. At heart, White was a scholar. He focused his energies on studying Ruskin and the collection, sharing that knowledge with other intelligent and sympathetic readers and audiences around the country. He had no roots in Sheffield, exerted little effort in making them,  and seemed, frankly, not to like the place. Fatally, he had little sympathy for casual visitors to the museum and reserved little time to accommodate low levels of knowledge and interest.

This chronic failure to engage with the local community made him increasingly vulnerable. He seems to have had few local friends. Some local councillors on the museum’s management committee found him remote, unco-operative, surly, and snobbish. In turn, he thought them bureaucratic, unsympathetic and ignorant. Both sides had a point, but the animosity got out of hand. The personality clashes that developed were symptomatic of deeper, ideological differences. Tensions boiled over and when open conflict broke out, White’s fate was sealed.

First, though, let us scrutinise White’s appointment as curator and look at his background to understand the man he was. Next time, we will examine his achievements in office, and consider his limitations. Lastly, we will examine his departure from the museum, and trace what he did with the rest of his life.

WHITE’S APPOINTMENT

White’s appointment as curator at the Ruskin Museum was recommended by George Baker and George Thomson, then the sole trustees of the Guild of St George. His name was put forward at a meeting of the Ruskin Museum Committee held on 2 January 1890, just three-and-a-half months prior to the opening of the museum.

The proposal was unanimously approved. A motion to that effect was advanced by the Mayor of Sheffield, the high-end steel tool manufacturer Alderman Joseph Burdekin Jackson (1827-1895), and seconded by another senior Sheffield councillor, William Henry Brittain (1835-1922), a former Mayor, and a file and steel manufacturer, both of whom had formerly served as Master Cutler in Sheffield. Brittain, in particular, had a long association with Sheffield’s public libraries and museums.

The curator’s salary, which had been fixed at a meeting of the RMC on 18 September 1889, was £150 per annum, with “residence at Meersbrook Hall, coal, and gas” thrown in (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 January 1890).

Several newspapers reported the fact that, at the time of White’s appointment, he lived at 5 Mecklenburgh Square, in Bloomsbury — a fine property near London’s King’s Cross which is suggestive of a comfortable lifestyle. (It should, however, be noted that published letters and membership lists that appeared between 1887 and 1889 gave his address as 4 Mecklenburgh Square.)

The last of the museum visitor books at Walkley — kept by Emily Swan who, in her widowhood, ran St George’s Museum alone for a year from March 1889 — shows that White visited on 18 December 1889. This was probably a part of the recruitment process. Intriguingly, the same visitors book reveals that on 12 September, more than two months before White’s visit, one of his neighbours visited the museum, namely the architect, John Henry Eastwood (1843–1913) of 17 Mecklenburgh Square. Born in Leeds, perhaps Eastwood’s most notable professional achievement was St Oswald’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Leeds, which he designed in the Gothic Revival style. The celebrated barrister, Sir Edward Clarke (1841-1911), among whose many famous clients was Oscar Wilde (whom he represented in Wilde’s disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensbury), was Eastwood’s brother-in-law (see Yorkshire Evening Post, 28 January 1913). The fact of Eastwood’s visit raises the possibility that he returned to London with an account of the museum that piqued Whie’s interest; or perhaps White sent him there on some kind of a reconnaissance mission: or it might yet have been a more or less uncomplicated coincidence — we will probably never know.

Eastwood was accompanied on his visit to the museum by another London-based architect, Frederic Richard Farrow (1856-1918), a prominent member of the Architectural Association,  of which he was then honorary secretary (1887-91) and later Vice-President (1891-92). Farrowe frequently lectured for the association. In 1898, he published Specifications for Building Works and How to Write Them and was well-regarded as an authority on architectural questions, serving for many years as editor of the journal, Architect.

The widely held impression of White among Ruskin scholars is that he was a professional museum curator, or even that he had been professionally trained as a curator prior to his appointment in Sheffield. There does not appear to be any evidence to support either claim. Rather, White told Ruskin’s friend, the Guild Companion and donor Fanny Talbot that he “gave up business to devote [him]self entirely to [Ruskin’s] cause”(letter dated 1 November 1892). A report in the Pall Mall Gazette, which was subsequently quoted in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, supports White’s account.

“Mr William White, who has recently been appointed curator of the Ruskin Museum, though an amateur of the arts and an accomplished ‘Ruskinian’, has had commercial experience in the City, and is determined to organise the museum in a thoroughly practical and businesslike way. […] Mr White, who is a gentleman of some 35 years, leaves London this week to take over his duties at Sheffield, and to superintend the removal of the museum from Walkley.” (Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 28 January 1900)

Here we have an instance of a report that has apparently only ever been partially digested until now. The resonant phrase about his being “determined to organise the museum in a thoroughly practical and businesslike way” has undoubtedly added to, and may perhaps even have first suggested, the notion that the Ruskinian associations emphasised by the idiosyncratic display of the collection at Walkley were largely lost as a result of White’s disruptive influence. Yet what it says of White’s “amateur” status as “an accomplished ‘Ruskinian’” with an improbable background in City commerce has been forgotten or ignored.

William Sinclair, a prominent member of the Ruskin Society of Glasgow who was a loyal friend of White’s, would later describe him in these terms:

“Mr White was an enthusiastic student of art and nature, and a staunch believer in Mr Ruskin’s philosophy, and I question if a more suitable Curator could have been found. Not only did he superintend the removal of the treasures from Walklev, but he devised the method of arrangement for the better study of the many very beautiful objects under his care which had previously been impossible.” (William Sinclair, “The Ruskin Museum at Sheffield: What It Is, and What It Might Be”, in Saint George, vol. 5, no 20 (October 1902) pp. 263-282, specifically p. 268)

Sympathetic as this account undoubtedly was to White, it too seems to have been taken as evidence that White was responsible for disrupting the Ruskinian associations so carefully preserved by the Swans at Walkley. But, as we shall see next time, the reality was more nuanced and complex. In any case, devising a “method of arrangement for the better study” of the collection, even if this is an accurate account of what White did, does not convict him of being responsible for all the unfortunate differences between the museums at Walkley and Meersbrook. Nor can White take credit for the main advantage his museum had over its predecessor — something Sinclair hints at but does not spell out — namely, the fact that there was much more space in which to accommodate, display and study the collection. Far fewer of the treasures had to lie hidden in store.

White was reportedly in residence at Sheffield by 7 February 1890, and lived somewhere in Walkley until the removal of the collection to Meersbrook had been completed. A report in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph sheds further light on that process, White’s role in it, and his suitability for the task.

“The removal of the collection from Walkley to Meersbrook, which was commenced a short time ago, has been brought to [a] successful conclusion. For this the trustees are indebted to Mr Wm White, the recently appointed curator of the Museum, who, since he came to Sheffield, has thrown his heart and soul into the work. This gentleman, who is an enthusiastic disciple of Mr Ruskin and an ardent lover of art, has shown his inborn capacity for organisation in the laborious duties that have devolved upon him on the threshold of his career as the custodian of St George’s Museum. He personally superintended every detail of the difficult and responsible task. Many days were spent in careful preparation. Fragile casts, priceless paintings, and precious stones had to be safely and securely packed. One great work of art — the Verrocchio Madonna — had to be carried in a specially constructed tressel [sic] by two men all the way from Walkley to Meersbrook, and similar care had to be observed with other objects, in order to preserve them from injury. In this work Mr White had the assistance of the curator and staff of the Weston [Park] Museum, and it is worthy of note that the only breakage which occurred during the operations was a small pane of glass under the value of sixpence.” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1890: my emphasis. The budget agreed in February for the removal from Walkley to Meersbrook was around £50.)

It is apparent that White was not a professional curator before his employment at the Ruskin Museum, though he was nothing less than a thoroughly knowledgeable student of art in general and Ruskin in particular. Moreover, as we shall see, his new arrangement of the exhibits at Meersbrook was not the result of some professional but unRuskinian approach to museology, though White’s business-like attitude and commercial background probably did explain some of the changes. Far more important a factor in the curatorial decisions at the Ruskin Museum, though, was the management committee, even that part of it which represented Ruskin and the Guild. The RMC consisted solely of men steeped in the political and administrative bureaucracy of local government.

But, next, let us focus on William White’s background and the path that led him to take up the curatorial reins at Meersbrook and to play such a pivotal role in disseminating Ruskin’s message and influence in the final decade of the nineteenth century.

WHITE’S CAREER IN LONDON

There is a substantial eight-and-a-half-year gap between White’s acceptance of the curatorship of the Ruskin Museum and the last definite record of his employment. The UK census of 3 April 1881 notes that White, then in his mid-20s, was working as a clerk at an iron works. He was still living at home with his parents at Morden House, 55 Highbury Hill, Islington, which had been the family home since at least the mid-1870s.

White’s connection with an iron works may seem significant given his later association with the town of Sheffield, but there is no evidence of a significant link. It is probable that the firm was in or near Morden, in Surrey, where White grew up, and where, according to the census of 1871, his two eldest brothers, Thomas and Ernest, had served as clerks in an iron works during their teenage years. By 1881 Ernest was a cashier at an iron works — presumably, but not certainly, the same place he’d worked at ten years earlier.  Later, Thomas White became an electrical engineer and Ernest a company secretary and director. A younger brother, Sidney, became a solicitor.

William White’s association with an iron works, whether it was nearer to Morden or Islington, would not appear to justify the claim to ‘commercial experience in the City’ made by the Pall Mall Gazette and Sheffield’s local press. In the absence of any direct evidence either confirming or contradicting that assertion, we are confined to speculation. In this respect, though, it is worth noting a connection between White and the London Stock Exchange. The evidence is fragmentary, but the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together with suggestive neatness.

White married on 11 December 1895. The wedding, which occurred during the period of his Ruskin curatorship, took place at St Pancras Church, London. White’s bride, Hester Ada Lean (1860-1950), was the daughter of John Lean, a Cornish mining engineer. The facts that bride and groom were aged 35 and 40 respectively, that Hester grew up in Truro (260 miles from London and 340 from Sheffield), and that the marriage took place near White’s former residence in Mecklenburgh Square, all suggest that the couple had known each other in London before White’s appointment as curator in Sheffield in 1890. It is possible that the question of how they came to meet is answered by a Lean family association which may also supply evidence of White’s “commercial experience in the City”.

Hester’s sister, Emma, had married Henry Aveling Baker (1857­1935) in Cornwall in 1879. Baker was a dealer on the London Stock Exchange. Baker’s closeness to William and Hester White is suggested by the fact that he was one of two witnesses to sign their marriage certificate, and he is also listed as a visitor to the Whites at their home in Lambeth in the census of 31 March 1901. Baker worked on the London Stock Exchange for over 40 years, following in the footsteps of George Burnard, his maternal grandfather, who was the founder of the brokerage firm, George Burnard & Co. Ltd, where Baker worked. Baker cuts a rather unorthodox figure, strikingly at odds with today’s typical image of an equities manager or stockbroker. He was described in an obituary as having frequently walked around in public sporting posters proclaiming his Christianity. It must surely be a possibility that White and Baker were business colleagues in the City in the 1880s and that Baker played some role in introducing his sister-in-law to White.

Why White should have changed his career so drastically must also be a matter of speculation. A man described as “an accomplished ‘Ruskinian’” might reasonably be presumed to have derived limited satisfaction from an administrative position at an iron works or from financial trading connected with the Stock Exchange. What can be said with certainty, however, is that White and his brothers inherited between them a large sum of money on the death of their parents in the 1880s. Their father, Thomas, died in 1882, and their mother, Eliza, in 1887. The couple left an estate of a combined value of nearly £30,000 (approximately £2.6m by today’s value). This fortune was shared equally between the couple’s four sons.

The comfortable circumstances in which William White thus found himself might well have afforded him the financial freedom and associated confidence to indulge his passions. It is probably how he came increasingly to explore his love of art, to indulge his admiration of Ruskin and, ultimately, to accept the modestly remunerated post of museum curator in Sheffield. To put his personal inheritance in perspective, it is worth noting that, before tax, it would have been worth in the region of 50-times his annual salary in Sheffield.

WILLIAM WHITE’S BACKGROUND AND UPBRINGING

White’s background explains how such a fortune had been amassed. He was a member of an educated and cultured family of professional, private school teachers. His upbringing was both financially comfortable and intellectually stimulating, even refined and privileged. He grew up at Morden Hall, where in 1827 his paternal grandfather, then in his 40s, had founded a school for “young gentlemen”. This was the Rev. John White, an evangelical associated with the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.

Morden Hall Academy was set in beautiful grounds, with a lawn to the north of the hall separated by water from the Island Meadow which was part of the school, and to the south was a garden, also bordered by water. “To the west near the road to Mitcham, the ancillary buildings comprised coachhouses, coachman’s rooms, stables, brewhouse, cowhouse, granary, woodhouse, hothouse and greenhouse. One building was later adapted as a piggery.” (W. J. Rudd, Morden Hall (Merton Historical Society, 1996), not paginated.) The estate is now known as Morden Hall Park and is open to the public, cared for by the National Trust.

White spent a childhood surrounded by the beauties of nature that nestle on the banks of the River Wandle, that tributary of the Thames so beloved of John Ruskin, which flows through Morden Hall’s ten acres. Ruskin, in the first chapter of his autobiographical work, Praeterita (1885-89) — in a chapter called “The Springs of Wandel” (my emphasis and Ruskin’s characteristically disobliging spelling) — described his own “days by Wandel streams” in the 1820s when he visited his maternal aunt in Croydon. In The Crown of Wild Olive (1873 edn) Ruskin wrote:

“Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic, in the world, by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the streams of the Wandel. No cleaner or diviner water ever sang with constant lips of the hand which ‘giveth rain from heaven’.” (Ruskin, Works, 18:384)

Concerned that the sources of the Wandle were polluted, Ruskin initiated a project in late 1871 — partly as a memorial to his mother who had died that year — to cleanse and beautify the ponds and streams of the Wandle Basin in Carshalton, from whence it flowed a few miles downstream to Morden. The project to create what became known locally as Margaret’s Pond (and to Ruskin as Margaret’s Well), named after Ruskin’s mother, was under way before the Whites left the area in the summer of 1873. Whether they were aware of the Ruskinian project, however, is not known.

That great disciple of Ruskin’s, William Morris, also wanted to improve the banks of the Wandle when he moved his business partnership (“The Firm”) to Merton Abbey in the early 1880s, undertaking fabric, carpet and tapestry weaving, fabric printing and dyeing, and producing stained-glass there. The river water was used both to power the enterprise, by means of a waterwheel, and to supply clean water with which to dye fabrics and wash them after printing, eliminating excess dye. Morris wrote to Ruskin in 1883:

“I need not say that I should be very glad to see you at our place at Merton Abbey: though I fear it would be a grief to you to see the banks of the pretty Wandle so beset with the horrors of the Jerry-builders: there is still some beauty left about the place however, and the stream itself is not much befouled: I am doing my best to keep the place decent, and can do so in the seven acres our works command; but as to the rest can do but little.” (Norman Kelvin, The Collected Letters of William Morris, 4 vols. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984-1996) vol. 2, pp. 186-187.)

Thomas Nickalls White (1812-1882), William’s father, assisted his own father in the classroom from the early days of the Academy’s existence, though the Westminster Rate Books record that he also had some unexplained connections with two properties in Covent Garden (30 Long Acre, from 1834 to 1855, and  33 Hart Street, from 1851 to 1855) which might further explain the not inconsiderable fortune he accrued. Though born in Southwark, Thomas White had been baptized at Adelphi Chapel, St Martin-in-the-Fields at the age of four in 1816, suggesting a long association with Covent Garden.  By 1841, Thomas’s younger brother, Edward, was also helping in the classroom at Morden Hall Academy, together with two other teaching assistants.

There appear to have been five classes run simultaneously by the different teachers. Subjects included Classics, Mathematics, English, Modern Languages, and Art. In 1841 the school roll totalled 64 boys, aged between eight and 17. By 1846, the Rev. John White had retired. He and his wife Mary (d. 1846) moved to Surbiton Terrace, Kingston, and Thomas took over as headmaster at Morden Hall.

On Christmas Eve 1850 Thomas married Eliza Lee (c.1816-1887) of Southwark, the daughter of the late Captain Lee. By 1851, the Academy boasted 73 pupils aged between seven and 15, and Thomas retained the support of four teaching assistants, including another brother, Cornelius White, who remained in the teaching profession all his life, going on from Morden to be a schoolmaster in Upper Edmonton and later in Eastbourne. (Another sibling became a schoolmaster, too, namely Darius James White (1808-1878), who also taught in Edmonton, )

A flavour of what the school offered the young gentlemen entrusted to its care is furnished by this advertisement published in 1870:

“EDUCATION. — Morden Hall, Morden, Surrey, nine miles from London, standing within ten acres of its own grounds, is accessible from Victoria, Waterloo, or London bridge Terminal to Morden Station. This old-established School (1827), conducted upon improved modern principles, offers very considerable educational and residential advantages. In recent years it has passed, in public competitive examination, a larger proportion of its numbers than almost any other educational establishment. Terms, 36 guineas per annum. Inspection of the School is invited. — Address the Principal, Mr. T. N. White LCP. The next Term will commence on the 24th of January.” (London Evening Standard, 13 January 1870)

The acronym LCP indicates that Thomas was a Licentiate of the College of Preceptors (now the Chartered College of Teaching), an institution founded in 1846 to standardise best teaching practice across the many and highly varied private schools, and to uphold the highest professional standards. This involved examining teachers and pupils alike. The influential periodical, the Education Times, effectively served as the College’s house journal. White’s appointment as a Licentiate was noted therein on 1 February 1854.

In June 1873, Thomas Nickalls White retired, and the White family moved to Highbury Hill, Islignton, as we have seen. A notice advertising the auction of the school’s contents affords us a glimpse of what William White’s upbringing must have been like.

“HOUSEHOLD and SCHOOL FURNITURE, comprising about 70 iron bedsteads and bedding, bed-room requisites, carpets, pianoforte, large cabinet, sofa, pair of large globes on stands, finger organ with six stops, desks, tables and chairs, dairy and kitchen utensils, china, glass, &c.; also out-door effects including two shorthorn cows (in profit), a dappled brown gelding, quiet to ride or drive, nine pigs, bees, double Brougham by Hooper & Co. [of Camberwell], in good condition, a phaeton by Horris, large spring cart by Houlditch, manure and water carts, iron land roller, chaff and turnip cutters, harness, lawn mowers, iron garden roller, garden engine and tools, three two-light frames, bedding and other plants in pots, iron flower-stands, ladders, iron hurdles, and various effects.” (Croydon Advertiser and East Surrey Reporter, 7 June 1873)

To have been brought up and educated in the family’s private school as William White was, and in a place as grand as Morden Hall with its beautiful surroundings, was a rare and privileged experience.

Whilst relatively little is known about day-to-day life at the Academy, one connection provides a distant link to Ruskin and the Guild’s collections at Sheffield. George Adolphus Storey RA (1834-1919) was a pupil at Morden Hall Academy in the 1840s. He was taught to paint there by Henry Pollard Ashby (1809-1892). Like William Morris, Storey decided to give up a career in architecture to devote his life to visual art. His early paintings were strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, though later he was notable as a portraitist and illustrator, and in 1900 he became the Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. He was a member of the St John’s Wood Clique which included Henry Stacy Marks (1829-1898), a friend of Ruskin’s whose paintings of birds the art critic considered among the best he had ever seen — paintings he occasionally used to illustrate his Oxford lectures, and some of which he deposited in the Guild’s museum at Sheffield. Millais was also on the fringes of the group. Storey was on friendly terms with Whistler. His autobiography, Sketches from Memory (1899), though it contains only a couple of incidental references to Ruskin, hints neither at intimacy nor hostility. But the short yet charming account he gives of his schooldays is worth quoting in full.

“EVENTS link themselves together so strangely in our memories that the least important seem to crop up unbidden and force themselves upon us. I was debating whether to say anything about my school-days, when the name of [Dickens’s] Sam Weller called to mind a character who was somewhat akin to him; indeed, he might have been a distant relation, for he had something of the same kind of humour, and his occupation was a similar only on a larger scale, for the individual I am reminded of was the boots and general serving-man of the establishment as Morden Hall, in Surrey, where I received the first rudiments of my education.

“He was always at work, for he had to clean the knives and forks used by seventy boys, wait at their meals, carry in pails of water to the washing-room, clean all the boots, and look after the horse and trap kept by the headmaster. Still, he was cheerful. I can just remember he had light curly hair, a round, reddish, good-tempered face, and invariably appeared to be in a hurry. When he handed round the bread-and-scrape, great thick hunks, which were piled in heaps on his wooden tray, he ran down the tables as fast as he could, telling the boys he had no time for them to pick and choose. They made darts and grabs at the hunks, and a sort of scramble for their daily bread was the result. At dinner the boys were allowed to choose their meat, either fat or lean, well-done or under-done, and our humorous waiter would constantly bring well-done fat to those who wanted under-done lean, and under-done lean to those who wanted well-done fat. He told me one day, with a very serious countenance, that he was going to leave. When I asked him the reason, he said it was because he had no more ‘spit’ left to clean the boots with. Polly, as he called the housekeeper or mistress, was, he said, so economical that she wouldn’t buy blacking, and the consequence was that he was dried up. If the bell rang, he would sing out to a kind of chant or hymn tune, ‘Coming,’ skip over the forms, and dance out of the room.

“To think, that out of all the inmates of Morden Hall, my memory should only single out the boots, whose very name I forget; especially as the headmaster, Mr T. N. White, was one of the kindest of men. And I ought, certainly, to pay a tribute to the memory of Mr H. P. Ashby, who was not only a clever artist, but my first instructor in painting. It was he who, at the giving away of the prizes at the end of a term, made me supremely happy. After all had been distributed, and I was lamenting that there was not one for me, he stepped forward and asked to be allowed to say one or two words. He had what appeared to be a little jewel-case in his hand. and when he held it up I could see it contained a silver palette. After a short speech, which I forget, but which made my heart beat violently, he called me by name and presented the palette to me, amidst the deafening shouts and hoorays of my schoolfellows, which still ring in my ears.” (G. A. Storey, Sketches from Memory (1899), pp. 9-11)

This evidence, testifying to the importance of art in the curriculum at Morden Hall Academy, perhaps helps to explain why William White, a fine draughtsman himself and knowledgeable about art, should decide, shortly after received his inheritance, to give up an apparently lucrative career in the City in order to become the modestly paid Curator of the Ruskin Museum at Meersbrook, Sheffield.

SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS

White’s education and upbringing also evidently instilled in him a love of natural science. In the 1880s — the decade leading up to his appointment as Curator of the Ruskin Museum — these intellectual interests expressed themselves in institutional affiliations and revelatory public letters.

White was an active member of the Essex Field Club. In 1885 he was the Club’s Recorders’ Secretary, and by the end of the decade he was Secretary to the Field Meeting Committee. In 1885, he co-authored with his friend, Raphael Meldola (1849-1915), a chemist and entomologist, and the Club’s first President, a comprehensive report on the East Anglian earthquake of 22 April 1884. It was published as Essex Field Club’s “Special Memoir, No. 1”.

White wrote several serious and interesting letters that appeared in the correspondence pages of the scientific journal, Nature:

• a letter about wasps, mentioning Darwin and referring to correspondence in the journal from four years earlier (28 August 1884)
• “Earthquakes in England, and their Study” (25 December 1884)
• “Heredity in Abnormal-Toed Cats” (9 December 1886)
• “The Use of Flowers by Birds” (23 June 1887) and
• “The Supposed Connection between Distant Earthquake Shocks” (22 August 1889)

His principal interest, though, was in insects. White was a member of the South London (now the British) Entomological and Natural History Society. On 7 May 1884 he was also elected a member of the Entomological Society of London (the forerunner of today’s Royal Entomological Society) and quickly became a Fellow of the organisation. A note of his on “‘Mimicry’ and ‘Protective Resemblance’ in Insects” appeared in The Entomologist in 1889 (vol. 22, no. 811, April 1889, pp. 116-117).

By 1884, he had also become an Associate of the Society for Psychical Research which had been founded in 1882; Ruskin was an honorary member. White certainly remained in the Society for several years, though by 1889 he was listed under his old Highbury Hill address, perhaps suggesting that he had failed to keep his membership record updated.

In the second part of this series we will re-examine his curatorship at the Ruskin Museum and reassess his achievements and limitations in the role.

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