t is 1888. Ruskin, living at Brantwood, is in serious, much publicized, decline. His attacks of mental illness—the first of which occurred in 1878 – have not gone away. Indeed, they have, at approximately two-year intervals, recurred, with equal or even greater intensity. His writing, once a veritable river of words flowing into the estuary of print every year, has slowed to a trickle. There is very good reason to think that his time as one of the most significant players on the stage of Britain’s remarkable nineteenth century will soon end. Sensing that the curtain is already on its way down, even as he still lives on in his much reduced state, those who have known him are being solicited by publishers for reflections of the great man. Stillman is one.
Almost three decades before, during the Spring and Summer of 1860, Stillman accompanied the world-famous art critic on a tour of Switzerland and the Alps. They had met, early in that year by chance, in a London gallery where both had gone to admire some Turner paintings that were for sale. Quickly taking the 32-year old’s measure, Ruskin, then 39, finds the younger man to be intelligent, sensitive, and intensely committed to finding out if he has the talent to become a great artist, much influenced in this hope by his close readings of Ruskin’s Modern Painters books. What better then, the writer thinks, than to take this American with him as a companion on his upcoming tour of the Continent? He can bring Stillman to all the most beautiful places and let him have his chance at painting them. He can even advise him on how he might refine his technique as their weeks together pass.
On another level, however, the Ruskin who meets Stillman in the early months of 1860 is in crisis, having recently concluded that all his books, all his art and architectural criticism, all his captivating passages lauding the beauties of nature, have failed – and that utterly – to accomplish the end he intended: to transform an insensitive, industrializing-at-breakneck-speed world into a place much more humane and capable of living in joy and harmony with each other and with nature. By the time the pair arrive in Chamouni in the French Alps in late May, the place Ruskin loves most in the world, he is in constant turmoil, in perpetual, excruciating debate with himself about what he should do next, his days as a "useless" art critic, he knows, being over.
Mostly, he is considering taking up social criticism, within which frame he can attack the economic and social systems he believes are devastating the world and creating, in their brutal wake, the rampant social ills (poverty, overcrowding, extensive, untended sickness in the lower classes, environmental devastation and pollution) plaguing the industrializing world. As he circles toward a decision, he shares with Stillman his ruminations. Finally, having been asked to do "something" by the editor, his friend, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, he determines that he will write a series of short essays for Thackeray's Cornhill Magazine, a new London monthly. He will call the essays Unto this Last. Their thrust will be an exposing and repudiation of the uncriticized assumptions lying at the core of the theory of laissez-faire, the “scientific” argument used to legitimate the "me first, and devil take the hindmost" form of capitalism which, while making a tiny few rich, is wreaking harmful havoc everywhere else (Posts 81, 106).
Every night, before posting his essays to Thackeray in London for type-setting, he solicits Stillman's reactions, reading aloud what he has written in the guests' sitting room of the Union Inn where they are staying. The experience all but overwhelms Stillman. Recalling those evenings nearly thirty years later, fully aware of the extensive, additional social criticism Ruskin has published after Unto this Last (the collective response to which has not been applause but, rather, what Ruskin termed a “violent reprobation”), Stillman, writing an essay on his time with and assessment of Ruskin which would appear in the January 1888 issues of London's Century Magazine, concluded the following:
Ruskin’s true position is higher than that of art critic in any possible [sense]. It is as a moralist and a reformer; [it is] in his passionate love of humanity…that we must recognize him. His place is in the pulpit, speaking [always] largely and in the unsectarian sense. Truth is multiform but of one essence, and, such as he sees it, he is always faithful to it… I retain the personal affection for him of those years which are dear to memory, and reverence the man as I know him and because I most desire that he should be judged rightly: as a man whose moral greatness has few equals in this day, and who deserves an honor and distinction which he has not received (and, in a selfish and sordid world, will not receive, but which I believe time will give him); [namely,] as one who gave his whole life and substance to the furtherance of what he believed to be the true happiness and elevation of his fellow men.
Note
Regarding Stillman: I should note that Ruskin learned fairly quickly that his younger American friend did not have the talent required to become a great artist. Always honest, at various times during their tour, he informed Stillman of the fact. (The few Stillman paintings that survive confirm the judgment.) The consequence was that, after their Chamouni sojourn, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Stillman would disavow Ruskin’s legitimacy as an art critic, even while, as we have read, never denying his status as one of the great sages of the age. The art criticism appears in the same essay cited.
Created 11 February 2018
Last modified 1 May 2024