259: The Epilogue to Modern Painters

Good Friends,

Once again, the calendar has made its annual way ’round to the anniversary of Mr. Ruskin’s passing on 20 January, 1900. And so, although i am a day early in offering this tribute, I thought I might commemorate that notable moment of leaving by sharing one of his loveliest, if too much overlooked, later passages. It was composed as he neared the end of his final tour on what he called his “old road” in 1888. For months, he had been traveling on the Continent., visiting his beloved old haunts in Beauvais, Paris, Geneva, St. Martin’s, and Sallanches. At last, his little company–which included, in addition to himself, his ever-faithful valet, Peter Baxter, and a young aspiring architect they had met in Beauvais, Detmar Blow–reached Chamouni in the French Alps, his favorite place on this earth, It was there in Chamouni, on the mountain that towered above his regular hotel, the Union Inn, that he could revisit his most cherished resting place; a huge glacial erratic from the previous ice age. It was there he could go to gaze, in rapture,at the majesty of the Alps and nature unsullied.

The trip had been a mixed blessing For quite a long time before he began it, Ruskin’s mental health had been tenuous; he was constantly immersed in depression, in perpetual despair over what he regarded as the catastrophic “failure” of his life’s work, to escort a seriously transgressive world into a new age where a love of Nature and unshakable reverence for all living things would reign supreme. By the time the little entourage arrived in Chamouni, however, he was in pretty bad mental shape. Before he left, his former student and current publisher, George Allen, had asked him to compose a brief “Epilogue,” to his five volume masterpiece, Modern Painters, for which demand continued high despite his more recent “fall from grace” which had been occasioned by the almost universal condemnation of his works on political economy. All trip long he had avoided the charge, not feeling able to compose what was most needed because of his unforgiving angst. But now, in this lovely place, fueled and inspired by his delight ay being again in his most sacred haunt, he felt that he could, at last, complete the assignment.

On the afternoon before their departure for Italy, he sat, after lunch, at his old desk in his old room in the Union Inn – the very desk at which he had written the essays of Unto this Last, his first systematic work of political economy (and, he always believed, his best) nearly four decades earlier (Unto this Last was published in 1860), and composed his Epilogue, the few pages of which he posted to George Allen the next morning before departing over the Simplon Pass into Italy (where–although it is not a story for this Post–what remained of his hold on reality would collapse and he would be beset by a new and particularlyn virulent attack of “brain fever.”) What he wrote that afternoon is singularly lovely–at once a reflection on the intent of the entire Modern Painters series, an acknowledgement of his mental struggles, and a lament for what he believed to be the inadequacy of the series; his final paragraph remains one of the tenderest and most beautiful he ever put on paper. Because of these sweet qualities, I have included the entirety of the Epilogue below for your consideration. In his works, it can be found at the very end of the fifth volume of Modern Painters.

I am often grateful in composing some of these Posts for the generous help of Stephen Sas, a Ruskinian much more accomplished in the complexities of our brave new cyber-world than myself.

Here is the Epilogue. I do hope you admire it as much as I do.

The republication of this book may seem to break faith with persons who have bought the old editions at advanced prices, trusting my announced resolution that no other [edition] should be issued during my lifetime. Had I remained in active health, none could have been; for I should have employed the engravers otherwise (especially Mr. Allen himself); but I have permitted the re-issue of this early work, to be of what use it may, finding that my plans of better things in the same direction must be abandoned. For the rest, I never encourage the purchase at advanced prices, of books which their authors wish to withdraw from circulation; and finally, I believe the early editions will never lose their value in the book market, the original impressions of the plates by Mr. Armytage and Mr. Cousen being entirely beyond imitation by restored plates. Mr. Allen’s advertisements are trustworthy as to the cost and pains which have been given to bring the steels up to their first standard, and the adequacy of the impressions obtained to answer the general purposes of the first engraving. But no retouched plate is ever really worth the original one.

Although, as I have said, the book would not have been reprinted if I had been able to write a better to the same effect, I am glad, as matters stand, that the chapters in which I first eagerly and passionately said what, throughout life, I have been trying more earnestly and resolutely to say, should be put within the reach of readers who care to refer to them. For the divisions of religious tenet and school to which I attached mistaken importance in my youth [thr Evangelical creed in which he was raised], do not in the least affect the vital teaching and purpose of this book: the claim, namely, of the Personal relation of God to man as the source of all human, as distinguished from brutal, virtue and art. The assertion of this Personal character of God must be carefully and clearly distinguished by every reader who wishes to understand either Modern Painters or any of my more cautiously written subsequent books, from the statement of any Christian doctrine, as commonly accepted. I am always under the necessity of numbering with exactness, and frequently I can explain with sympathy, the articles of the Christian creed as it has been held by the various painters or writers of whose work I have to speak. But the religious faith on which my own art teaching is based never has been farther defined, nor have I wished to define it farther, than in the sentence beginning the theoretical part of Modern Painters:

“Man’s use and purpose—and let the reader who will not grant me this, follow me no farther, for this I purpose always to assume—is to be the witness of the glory of God and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness.” Nothing is here said of any tradition of Fall, or of any scheme of Redemption; nothing of Eternal Punishment, nothing of Immortal Life. It is assumed only that man can love and obey a living Spirit; and can be happy in the presence and guidance of a Personal Deity, otherwise than a mollusk, a beetle, or a baboon.

But I will ask the reflective reader to note besides, that it is said to be the use of man to advance God’s glory “by his obedience and happiness,”—not by lectures on the Divine wisdom, meant only to show his own. By his obedience, “reasonable,” in submission to the Greater Being because He is the greater; not because we are as wise as He, and vouchsafe to approve His methods of creation. By our happiness, following on that obedience; not by any happiness snatched or filched out of disobedience; lighting our lives with lightning instead of sunshine—or blackening them with smoke in the day,

Then, lastly, after the crowning of obedience, and fulfilment of joy, comes the joy of praise,—the “I will magnify Thee, O God my King” of the hundred and forty-fifth Psalm —the “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviur,” of the Magnificat;—the “Bless ye the Lord” of the three Holy Children;—the “We praise thee, O Lord” of the Archangels with all the Host of Heaven;—and in the hearts of all, the deepest joy still in the Madonna’s thought, For He hath regarded—the lowliness—of His handmaiden,—of His Archangel, or of His first-praying child;—and perfected praise on the lips of the Babe, as on the harp of David.

He hath regarded their lowliness. But not—their vileness! The horror and shame of the false Evangelical Religion is in its recommending its souls to God, not for their humility, but their sin! Not because they cast their crowns before God’s throne, but because they strew His earth with their ashes.

All that is involved in these passionate utterances of my youth was first expanded and then concentrated into the aphorism given twenty years afterwards in my inaugural Oxford lectures, “All great Art is Praise”; and on that aphorism, the yet bolder saying founded, “So far from Art’s being immoral, in the ultimate power of it, nothing but Art is moral: Life without Industry is sin, and Industry without Art, brutality” (I forget the words, but that is their purport): and now, in writing beneath the cloudless peace of the snows of Chamouni, what must be the really final words of the book which their beauty inspired and their strength guided, I am able, with yet happier and calmer heart than ever heretofore, to enforce its simplest assurance of Faith, that the knowledge of what is beautiful leads on, and is the first step, to the knowledge of the things which are lovely and of good report; and that the laws, the Life, and the joy of beauty in the material world of God, are as eternal and sacred parts of His creation as, in the world of angels, praise,

      View of Mont Blanc from “Ruskin’s Rock,” Chamouni, French Alps

Until next time, do please continue well out there!

🙂

Jim

And belated–but none the less heartfelt for that!–thanks to the good and talented Jennifer Webb for her kindly Assistance on our previous Post!