263: Praeterita and the Decision to Write Modern Painters

Ruskin suffered his first full-blown attack of what, at the time, was called “brain fever” in 1878. Over a period of months, he slowly recovered his faculties and began writing again. The attack was a harbinger. Subsequently, at roughly two year intervals, the assaults recurred, followed by similar recovery periods. His friends, well-aware that he was no longer at his peak, and knowing, too, that he was hardly capable of sitting still, urged him to begin work on his long-planned autobiography. And so, in the early 1880s, he began publishing a series of monthly installments with his publisher George Allen. Excepting only The Bible of Amiens, a volume detailing the history and artistic treasures of a spectacular Gothic cathedral in Northern France. Praeterita was to be his last major work–and what an accomplishment it was!–the applause it generated from readers and reviewers rivaling the most enthusiastic he had received over the course of more than four decades of work; praise not only widespread at the time but which has continued for nearly a century and a half, during which span his story is regularly celebrated as as an almost perfect instance of the autobiographic genre. His subtitle gives a clue a clue to its appeal, with Ruskin (see first edition cover below) characterizing it as a collection of “scenes and thoughts perhaps worthy of memory in my Past Life.”

Knowing his mental state to be delicate, Ruskin decided that his recollections would only chronicle those memories of his life he found pleasant. He had many grievances still – particularly with the political economists of his day, and then there were the residues of his unhappy marriage, decades before, to Effie Gray and the loss by death of the true love of his life, Rose La Touche in 1875, but he chose to hold his tongue on these and other rankling matters. Everyone who reads Praeterita today finds it delightful. Indeed, the descriptive word that is repeatedly voiced by those who peruse its pages is that the book is “charming.” As, indeed, it is! Although the recurring mental assaults continued to disturb, Ruskin found ways and strength to keep their sorry effects in check. Praeterita begins with some recollections of his earliest years at the family’s Herne Hill home in South London and continues, episodically, until the moment when its final installment published in 1889, the year following his last, calamitous, trip on his “Old Road” through Europe, when, nearing tour’s end, he suffered another mental attack, one so severe he never fully repaired. The book’s “last scene” was composed at Brantwood, his lovely home overlooking Coniston Water in the English Lake District. To it, Ruskin gave the title, “Joanna’s Care,” a paean of praise lauding his cousin, Joan Severn, who, by that time, had been his companion and housekeeper at Brantwood for over two decades. Although plans for at least a dozen more “scenes” for Praeterita existed, they were never composed.

To give today’s readers a sense of how lovely the autobiography is – and I highly recommend it to anyone reading! – I offer a single passage for your delectation. Ruskin is recounting his decision to write a book to which he will give the title, Modern Painters. It was to be a championing of the much underappreciated (he fervently believed) work of the British landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, whom Ruskin regarded as the greatest master with a brush since the greatest painters of the Renaissance. He was only 24 when the book was published to wide acclaim, its eloquence and arguments propelling him almost immediately into the ranks of the greatest writers of his age (and it was quite an age for writers!). Almost 20 years later, in 1860, he brought the series to its conclusion (by then Modern Painters had transformed into four hefty, lyrical tomes). For its final, fifth, iteration, he wrote a “Preface” designed to inform his audience that, throughout all of the book’s volumes, his intent – to show why art, particularly painting, at its best, was an essential and particularly beautiful form of human expression–never wavered, and that even then, 17 years after the first volume appeared, he remained as convinced as ever of Turner’s transcendent genius. What he wrote in his explanation of why he had undertaken the task of writing such a book in the first place was not only truthful and eloquent but a perfect instance of what the readers of Praeterita referred to as its “charming style.” It may serve as an example not only of the sweetness of the book as a whole but as a summary of Ruskin’s approach to his writing over the whole course of his career.:

The oscillations of temper and progressions of discovery, extending over a period of 17 years, ought not to diminish [the] readers’ confidence in this book as a whole. Let him be assured of this–that, unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually, all his life long, not one of those opinions can be, on any questionable subject, true. All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment–therefore of change. But their changes are those of a tree, not a cloud.

In the main aim and principle of the book there is no variation from its first syllable to its last. It declares the perfectness and eternal work of God; and tests all work of man by [its] concurrence with–or subjection to–that. And it differs from most books, and has a chance of being in some respects better for that difference, in that it was not been written for fame, money, or for conscience’s sake. [It was written] of necessity.

It was not written, I say, for praise. Had I wish to gain reputation–by a little flattery adroitly used in some places, or a sharp word or two withheld in others, and the substitution of verbiage generally for investigation, I could’ve made the circulation of these volumes tenfold what it has been in modern society. Had I wished for future fame, I would’ve written one volume, not five. Also, it was not written for money. In this wealth-producing country, seventeen years labor could hardly have been invested with less chance of equivalent return.

Also, it has not been written for conscience’s sake. I had no definite hope in writing–still less any sense of it being required of me as a duty. It seemed to me always probable that I might have done much more good in some other way. But it was written [as noted, out] of necessity. I saw an injustice done and tried to remedy it; I heard a falsehood taught and was compelled to deny it. Nothing else was possible to me. I knew not how little or how much might come of the business, or whether I was fit for it; but here were the [contentious issues set] in front of me, and there was no other way around it, only over it. So that, as the work changed like a tree, it also rooted like a tree – not where it would, but where the need was; on which, if any fruit grow such as you can like, you are welcome to gather it without thanks–and in so far as it is sweet or bitter, it will be your justice to accept it without reviling.

Until next time, good friends, please do continue well out there.

🙂

Jim