Charles A. Schumacher (1868

is small book, an essay really, came as a gift from my lovely wife, Jenn Morris, on the Christmas just past. She found it in a local bookstore and knowing (how could she not?) of my great admiration for the Brantwood master, she bought it. It is a treasure (as we shall shortly see), and, as a result of that quality, its few (22) pages now hold one of the premier places in my cache of favorite Ruskin items.

The full title of the piece is John Ruskin: A Study in Genius. On the reverse side of the title page, we learn that the essay printed in 1929, but, since no publisher is indicated, we have to assume that it was self-published. As in the case of the good Reverend Tighe-Gregory's letters, however, it did not prove very easy to find anything particularly useful to know about this fine essay's author until David Valenta found an obituary of this graduate of Yale who taught a wide variety of subjects at Oneonta Normal School and Oneonta State Teachers College.

Perhaps Mr. Schumacher's very elusiveness is a good and important thing, for his lovely words take on an even more special sheen, a sheen which informs us of the reverential thoughts of yet one more among those thousands who once read and loved Ruskin. Here are some of the words:

I. What manner of man was Ruskin...? He...was cast in no ordinary mold. He was tall, graceful, inspiring... His eyes were blue, wistful, penetrating. Those who heard him lecture said of him that, in the deeper moments, when beauty and truth were sweeping through him, those eyes were full of heavenly fire. When they rested on someone, the thrill was like a flash of lightning. His voice was soft as the wind and full as the sea, and could touch all the stops of a rich and rare instrument. After an inspired lecture at Oxford, when his thought came flooding like the tide, and his words were colored like the clouds, the audience sat, at its conclusion, in absolute silence. That is the perfect tribute to eloquence--a thing so beautiful, so majestic, so sublime, that noise thereafter would be sacrilege.

II. [When he was thirteen, and on a trip with his parents through Europe] he saw the Alps for the first time and, best of all, he saw the eternal beauty of the Valley of Chamouni. It seemed to him on that day that the Gates of Heaven had opened before him, and he had a vision of immortal loveliness. Thereafter, whenever he was weary in body and soul, he went to Chamouni for healing and divine consolation. Without Chamouni, [the five books of his] Modern Painters [series] would lose half their charm...Chamouni never failed to lift his eyes to heaven, and lift his soul in gratitude to God.

III.

IV. [It was awful experience] that turned Ruskin from art to life. He saw sun and stars and moon and free sky blotted out by the smoke of industry. He saw the blessed beauty of Nature trampled under the feet of modern progress. He saw the priceless treasures of art left in neglect and decay. He saw men spending their lives at low levels with small purpose. He saw nations even, bent on vain pursuits and wrecked in the ravages of war... Beauty of Nature, beauty of art, beauty of Life were, he thought, in danger from indifference, greed, and barbarity. How could he rest in peace, how could his soul be joyful, when he was increasingly conscious that man had fallen on evil days? Like [the poet, Robert] Browning, he was ever a fighter, and so the best and the last [of his days] he gave for the welfare of man.