BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
RICHARD WAGNER: MODERN MUSIC.
BY HENRY T. FINCK.
If the Dresden schoolboys who attended the Kreuzschule in the years 1823-1827 could have been told that one of them was destined to be the greatest opera composer of all times, and to influence the musicians of all countries throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, they would, no doubt, have been very much surprised. Nor is it likely that they could have guessed which of them was the chosen one. For Richard Wagner--or Richard Geyer, as he was then called, after his stepfather--was by no means a youthful prodigy, like Mozart or Liszt. It is related that Beethoven shed tears of displeasure over his first music lessons; nevertheless, it was obvious from the beginning that he had a special gift for music. Richard Wagner, on the other hand, apparently had none. When he was eight years old his stepfather, shortly before his death, heard him play on the piano two pieces from one of Weber's operas, which made him wonder if Richard might "perhaps" have talent for music. His piano teacher did not believe even in that "perhaps," but told him bluntly he would "never amount to anything" as a musician.
For poetry, however, young Richard had a decided inclination in his school years; and this was significant, inasmuch as it afterwards became his cardinal maxim that in an opera "the play's the thing," and the music merely a means of intensifying the emotional expression. Before his time the music, or rather the singing of florid tunes, had been "the thing," and the libretto merely a peg to hang these tunes on. In this respect, therefore, the child was father to the man. At the age of eleven he received a prize for the best poem on the death of a schoolmate. At thirteen he translated the first twelve books of Homer's Odyssey. He studied English for the sole purpose of being able to read Shakspeare. Then he projected a stupendous tragedy, in the course of which he killed off forty-two persons, many of whom had to be brought back as ghosts to enable him to finish the play.
This extravagance also characterized his first efforts as a composer, when he at last turned to music, at the age of sixteen. One of his first tasks, when he had barely mastered the rudiments of composition, was to write an overture which he intended to be more complicated than Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Heinrich Dorn, who recognized his talent amid all the bombast, conducted this piece at a concert. At the rehearsal the musicians were convulsed with laughter, and at the performance the audience was at first surprised and then disgusted at the persistence of the drum-player, who made himself heard loudly every fourth bar. Finally there was a general outburst of hilarity which taught the young man a needed lesson.
Undoubtedly the germs of his musical genius had been in Wagner's brain in his childhood,--for genius is not a thing that can be acquired. They had simply lain dormant, and it required a special influence to develop them. This influence was supplied by Weber and his operas. In 1815, two years after Wagner's birth, the King of Saxony founded a German opera in Dresden, where theretofore Italian opera had ruled alone. Weber was chosen as conductor, and thus it happened that Wagner's earliest and deepest impressions came from the composer of the "Freischütz." In his autobiographic sketch Wagner writes: "Nothing gave me so much pleasure as the 'Freischütz.' I often saw Weber pass by our house when he came from rehearsals. I always looked upon him with a holy awe." It was lucky for young Richard that his stepfather, Geyer, besides being a portrait-painter, an actor, and a playwright, was also one of Weber's tenors at the opera. This enabled the boy, in spite of the family's poverty, to hear many of the performances. In fact, Wagner, like Weber, owes a considerable part of his success as a writer for the stage to the fact that he belonged to a theatrical family, and thus gradually learned "how the wheels go round." Such practical experience is worth more than years of academic study.
While Wagner cordially acknowledged the fascination which Weber's music exerted on him in his boyhood, he was hardly fair to Weber in his later writings. In these he tries to prove that his own music-dramas are an outgrowth of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. When Beethoven wrote that work, Wagner argues, he had come to the conclusion that purely instrumental music had reached a point beyond which it could not go alone, wherefore he called in the aid of poetry (sung by soloists and chorus), and thus intimated that the art-work of the future was the musical drama,--a combination of poetry and music.
This is a purely fantastic notion on Wagner's part. There is no evidence that Beethoven had any such purpose; he merely called in the aid of the human voice to secure variety of sound and expression. Poetry and music had been combined centuries before Beethoven in the opera and in lyric song.
No, the roots of Wagner's music-dramas are not to be found in Beethoven, but in Weber. His "Freischütz" and "Euryanthe" are the prototypes of Wagner's operas. The "Freischütz" is the first masterwork, as Wagner's operas are the last, up to date, of the romantic school; and it embodies admirably two of the principal characteristics of that school: one, a delight in the demoniac, the supernatural--what the Germans call gruseln; the other, the use of certain instruments, alone or in combination, for the sake of securing peculiar emotional effects. In both these respects Wagner followed in Weber's footsteps. With the exception of "Rienzi" and "Die Meistersinger," all of his operas, from the "Flying Dutchman" to "Parsifal," embody supernatural, mythical, romantic elements; and in the use of novel tone colors for special emotional effects he opened a new wonder-world of sound, to which Weber, however, had given him the key.
"Lohengrin," the last one of what are usually called Wagner's "operas," as distinguished from his "music-dramas" (comprising the last seven of his works), betrays very strongly the influence of Weber's other masterwork, "Euryanthe." This opera, indeed, may also be called the direct precursor of Wagner's music-dramas. It contains eight "leading motives," which recur thirty times in course of the opera; and the dramatic recitatives are sometimes quite in the "Wagnerian" manner. But the most remarkable thing is that Weber uses language which practically sums up Wagner's idea of the music-drama. "'Euryanthe,'" he says, "is a purely dramatic work, which depends for its success solely on the co-operation of the united sister-arts, and is certain to lose its effect if deprived of their assistance."
When Wagner wrote his essay on "The Music of the Future" for the Parisians (1860) he remembered his obligations to the Dresden idol of his boyhood by calling attention to "the still very noticeable connection" of his early work, "Tannhäuser," with "the operas of my predecessors, among whom I name especially Weber," He might have mentioned others,--Gluck, for instance, who curbed the vanity of the singers, and taught them that they were not "the whole show;" Marschner, whose grewsome "Hans Heiling" Wagner had in mind when he wrote his "Flying Dutchman;" Auber, whose "Masaniello," with its dumb heroine, taught Wagner the importance and expressiveness of pantomimic music, of which there are such eloquent examples in all his operas. During his three and a half years' sojourn in Paris, just at the opening of his career as an opera composer (1839-1842), he learned many things regarding operatic scenery, machinery, processions, and details, which he subsequently turned to good account. Even Meyerbeer, the ruler of the musical world in Paris at that time, was not without influence on him, though he had cause to disapprove of him because of his submission to the demands of the fashionable taste of the day, which contrasted so strongly with Wagner's own courageous defiance of everything inconsistent with his ideals of art. The result to-day--Meyerbeer's fall and Wagner's triumph--shows that courage, like honesty, is, in the long run, the best policy, and, like virtue, its own reward.
It is important to bear in mind all these lessons that Wagner learned from his predecessors, as it helps to explain the enormous influence he exerted on his contemporaries. Wonderful as was the power and originality of his genius, even he could not have achieved such results had he not had truth on his side,--truth, as hinted at, in moments of inspiration, by many of his predecessors.
Wagner was most shamefully misrepresented by his enemies during his lifetime. A thousand times they wrote unblushingly that he despised and abused the great masters, whereas in truth no one ever spoke of them more enthusiastically than he, or was more eager to learn of them, though, to be sure, he was honest and courageous enough also to call attention to their shortcomings. In all his autobiographic writings there is not a more luminous passage than the following, in which he relates his experiences as conductor at the Riga Opera in 1838, when he was at work on "Rienzi":--
"The peculiar gnawing melancholy which habitually overpowered me when I conducted one of our ordinary operas was interrupted by an inexpressible, enthusiastic delight, when, here and there, during the performance of nobler works, I became conscious of the incomparable effects that can be produced by musico-dramatic combinations on the stage,--effects of a depth, sincerity, and direct realistic vivacity, such as no other art can produce. I felt quite elated and ennobled during the time that I was rehearsing Méhul's enchanting 'Joseph' with my little opera company." "Such impressions," he continues, "like flashes of lightning" revealed to him "unsuspected possibilities." It was by utilizing these "possibilities" and hints, and at the same time avoiding the errors and blemishes of his predecessors, that his superlative genius was enabled to create such unapproachable masterworks as "Siegfried" and "Tristan and Isolde."
The way up to those peaks was, however, slow and toilsome. For years he groped in darkness, and light came but gradually. It has already been intimated that his genius was slow in developing. A brief review of his romantic career will bring out this and other interesting points.
At the time when Richard Wagner was born (May 22, 1813), Leipzig was in such a state of commotion on account of the war to liberate Germany from the Napoleonic yoke that the child's baptism was deferred several months. To his schooldays reference has been made already, and we may therefore pass on to the time when he tried to make his living as an operatic conductor. Although he was then only twenty-one years old, he showed remarkable aptitude for this kind of work from the beginning, and it was through no fault of his that misfortune overtook every opera company with which he had anything to do. The bankruptcy, in 1836, of the manager of the Magdeburg Opera, affected him most disastrously, for it came at the moment when he had arranged for the first performance of an opera he had written, entitled, "Das Liebesverbot," or "The Novice of Palermo," and which therefore was given only once. Many years later an attempt was made to revive this juvenile work at Munich, but the project was abandoned because, as the famous Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Vogl, informed the writer of this article, "Its arias and other numbers were such ludicrous and undisguised imitations of Donizetti and other popular composers of that time that we all burst out laughing, and kept up the merriment throughout the rehearsal." This is of interest because it shows that Wagner, like that other great reformer, Gluck, began his career by writing fashionable operas in the Italian style. A still earlier opera of his, "The Fairies,"--the first one he completed,--was not produced till 1888, fifty-five years after it had been written, and five years after Wagner's death. This has been performed a number of times in Munich, but it is so weak and uninteresting in itself that it required a splendid stage setting, and the "historic" curiosity of Wagner's admirers to make it palatable. It is significant that already in these early works, Wagner wrote his own librettos,--a policy which he pursued to the end.
Königsberg was the next city where the opera company with which he was connected, failed. This was the more embarrassing to him, as he had in the meantime been so unwise as to marry a pretty actress, Minna Planer, who was destined, for a quarter of a century, to faithfully share his experiences,--chiefly disappointments. The pittance he got as conductor of these small German opera companies did not pay his expenses, all the less as he was fond of luxurious living, and, like most artists, the world over, foolishly squandered his money when he happened to have any.
At Riga, where Wagner next attempted to establish himself, the opera company again got into trouble, and his financial straits became such that, relying on his future ability to meet his obligations, he resolved to leave that part of the world altogether and seek his fortune in Paris. He knew that the Prussian Meyerbeer had won fame and fortune there,--why should not he have the same good luck? He had unbounded confidence in his own ability, and what increased his hopes of a Parisian success, was that he had already completed two acts of a grand historic opera, "Rienzi," based on Bulwer's novel, and written in the sensational and spectacular style of Meyerbeer. He supposed that all he had to do was to go to Paris, finish this opera, get it accepted through the influence of his countryman and colleague, Meyerbeer, and--wake up some morning famous and wealthy. He was not the first man who built castles in Spain.
To-day a trip from Riga to Paris is a very simple affair. You get into a train, and in about twenty-four hours are at your goal. In 1839 there were no such conveniences. Wagner had to go to the Prussian seaport of Pillau, and there board a sailing vessel which took him to London in three weeks and a half. His journey, however, was a much more romantic affair than a railway trip would have been. In the first place, it was a real flight--from his creditors whom he had to evade. Next he had to dodge the Russian sentries, whose boxes were placed on the boundary line only a thousand yards apart. A friend discovered a way of accomplishing this feat, and Wagner presently found himself on the ship, with his wife and his enormous Newfoundland dog. In his trunk he had what he hoped would help him to begin a brilliant career in Paris: one opera completed,--"The Novice of Palermo;" two acts of another,--"Rienzi;" and in his head he had the plot and some of the musical themes for a third,--"The Flying Dutchman."
The sea voyage came just in time to give him local color for this weird nautical opera. Three times the vessel was tossed by violent storms, and once the captain was obliged to seek safety in a Norwegian harbor. The sailors told Wagner their version of the "Flying Dutchman" legend, and altogether these adventures were the very thing he wanted at the time, and aided him in making his opera realistic, both in its text and its music, which imitates the howling of the storm winds and "smells of the salt breezes."
So for once our young musician had a streak of luck. But it did not last long. He found Paris a very large city, and with very little use for him. He made the most diverse efforts to support himself, nearly always without success. Once it seemed as if his hopes were to be fulfilled. The Théâtre de la Renaissance accepted his "Novice of Palermo;" but at the last moment there was the usual bankruptcy of the management,--the fourth that affected him! Then he wrote a Parisian Vaudeville, but it had to be given up because the actors declared it could not be executed. The Grand Opera, on which he had fixed his eye, was absolutely out of the question. He was brought to such straits that he offered to sing in the chorus of a small Boulevard theatre, but was rejected. His wife pawned her jewels; on several occasions it is said that she even went into the street to beg a few pennies for their supper. It was doubtless during these years of starvation that Wagner acquired those gastric troubles which in later years often prevented him from working more than an hour or two a day.
A few German friends occasionally gave a little pecuniary aid, but the only regular source of income was musical hackwork for the publisher Schlesinger, who gladly availed himself of Wagner's skill in having him make vocal scores of operas, or arrange popular melodies for the piano and other instruments. Wagner also wrote stories and essays for musical periodicals, for which he received fair remuneration; but his attempt to compose romances and become a parlor favorite failed. Nobody wanted his songs, and he finally offered them to the editor of a periodical in Germany for two dollars and a half to four dollars apiece. This may seem ludicrously pathetic; but then had not poor Schubert, a little more than a decade before this, sold much better songs for twenty cents each!
Meyerbeer no doubt aided Wagner, but considering his very great influence in Paris, he achieved surprisingly little for him. The score of "Rienzi" had been completed in 1840, and in the spring of the next year, Wagner went to Meudon, near Paris, and there composed the music of "The Flying Dutchman," in seven weeks, but neither of these operas seemed to have the least chance to appear on the boards of the Grand Opera. The best their author could do was to sell the libretto of "The Flying Dutchman" for one hundred dollars, reserving the right to set it to music himself.
The outcome of all these disappointments was that he finally lost hope so far as Paris was concerned, and sent his "Rienzi" to Dresden and his "Flying Dutchman" to Berlin. The "Novice of Palermo" he had given up entirely after the bankruptcy of the Renaissance Théâtre, because, as he wrote, "I felt that I could no longer respect myself as its composer." Meyerbeer had, at his request, kindly sent a note to the intendant of the Dresden Opera, in which he said, among other things, that he had found the selections from "Rienzi," which Wagner had played for him, "highly imaginative and of great dramatic effect." Tichatschek, the famous Dresden tenor, examined the score, and liked the title role; the chorus director, Fischer, also pleaded for the acceptance of the opera; and so at last Wagner got word in Paris that it would be produced in Dresden. As Berlin, too, retained the manuscript of his other opera, there was reason enough for him to end his Parisian sojourn and return to his native country. He went overland this time, and, to cite his own words, "For the first time I saw the Rhine; with tears in my eyes I, the poor artist, swore eternal allegiance to my German fatherland."
It was fortunate in every way that he went to Dresden. His opera required many alterations and improvements, which he alone could make. He was permitted to superintend the rehearsals, which was, of course, a great advantage to the opera. The singers grew more and more enthusiastic over the music, and when the first public performance was given, on October 20, 1842, the audience also was delighted and remained to the very end, although the performance lasted six hours. The composer immediately applied the pruning-knife and reduced the duration to four hours and a half (from 6 to 10.30,--opera hours were early in those days); but the tenor, Tichatschek, declared with tears in his eyes, "I shall not permit any cuts in my part! It is too heavenly."
Those were proud and happy days for Wagner. "I, who had hitherto been lonely, deserted, homeless," he wrote, "suddenly found myself loved, admired, by many even regarded with wonderment." "Rienzi" was repeated a number of times to overcrowded houses, though the prices had been put up. It was regarded as "a fabulous success," and the management was eager to follow it up with another. So the score of "The Flying Dutchman" was demanded of Berlin (where they seemed in no hurry to use it), and at once put into rehearsal. It was produced in Dresden on January 2, 1843, only about ten weeks after "Rienzi,"--an almost unprecedented event in the life of an opera composer. Wagner conducted the second opera himself (also "Rienzi," after the first few performances), and gave so much satisfaction that he was shortly afterwards appointed to the position of royal conductor (which he held about six years).
So far, all seemed well. But disappointments soon began to overshadow his seeming good luck. The first production of the "Flying Dutchman" can hardly be called a success. Wagner himself characterized the performance as being, in its main features, "a complete failure," and the stage setting "incredibly awkward and wooden" (very different from what it is in Dresden to-day). Mme. Schroeder-Devrient was an admirable "Senta," and received enthusiastic applause; but the opera itself puzzled the audience rather than pleased it.
The music-lovers of Dresden had expected another opera à la Meyerbeer, like "Rienzi," with its arias and duos, its din and its dances, its pomps and processions, its scenic and musical splendors. Instead of that, they heard a work utterly unlike any opera ever before written; an opera without arias, duets, and dances, without any of the glitter that had theretofore entertained the public; an opera that simply related a legend in one breath, as it were,--like a dramatic ballad; an opera that indulged in weird chromatic scales, and harsh but expressive harmonies, with an unprecedented license. Here was the real Wagner, but even in this early and comparatively crude and simple phase, Wagner was too novel and revolutionary to be appreciated by his contemporaries; hence it is not to be wondered at that the "Flying Dutchman," after four performances in Dresden, and a few in Cassel and Berlin, disappeared from the stage for ten years.
Although Wagner was now royal conductor, he did not succeed in securing a revival of this opera at Dresden. His next work, "Tannhäuser," was nevertheless promptly accepted. The score was completed on April 13, 1845, and six, months later (October 19), the first performance was given. Wagner had thrown himself with all his soul into the composition of this score. To a friend in Berlin he wrote: "This opera must be good, or else I never shall be able to do anything worth while." The public at first seemed to agree with him. Seven performances were given before the end of the season, and it was resumed the following year; yet Wagner came to the conclusion that he had written the opera "for a few intimate friends, but not for the public," to cite his own words. What the public had expected and desired was shown by its enthusiastic reception of "Rienzi," and its colder treatment of the "Dutchman." But "Tannhäuser" was like the second opera; in fact, even "more so." Wagner had outlived the time when he was willing to make concessions to current taste and fashion; thenceforth he went his own way, eager, indeed, for approval, but stubbornly refusing to win it by sacrificing his high art ideals.
Here was true heroism, genuine manliness! Had he been willing to write more operas like "Rienzi," he might have revelled in wealth (he loved wealth!) and basked in the sunshine of popularity, like Meyerbeer. But not one inch of concession did he make for the sake of the much-coveted riches and popular favor.
Yet was not his next work, "Lohengrin," of a popular character? Popular to-day, yes; but in the days of his Dresden conductorship he could not even get it accepted for performance at his own opera-house! It was completed in August, 1847 (the last act having been written first and the second last), but although he remained in Dresden two years longer, all his efforts to get it staged failed, for various reasons. And when, at last, Liszt gave it for the first time, on August 28, 1850, at Weimar, whence it gradually made its way to other opera-houses, its reception everywhere showed that it was very far from being considered a "popular" work. The critics, especially, vied with one another in abusing this same "Lohengrin," which at present is sung more frequently than any other opera; and they continued to abuse it until about twenty years ago. "An abyss of ennui," "void of all melody," "an insult to the very essence of music," "a caricature of music," "algebraic harmonies," "no tangible ideas," "not a dozen bars of melody," "an opera without music," "an incoherent mass of rubbish,"--are a few of the "critical" opinions passed on this opera, which is now regarded in all countries as a very wonderland of beautiful melodies and expressive harmonies.
The non-acceptance in Dresden of this glorious opera, concerning which Wagner wrote, "It is the best thing I have done so far," was only one of many trials and disappointments which daily harassed him. He was over head and ears in debt, because, in his confidence in the immediate success of his operas, he had had them printed at once, at his own expense. The opera-houses were very slow in accepting them, and this left him in a sad predicament. There were, moreover, enemies everywhere,--ignorant, old-fashioned professionals, who objected to his way of interpreting the masters (though it was afterwards admitted that he was epoch-making as an interpreter of their deepest thoughts). All this galled him; and, furthermore, no attention whatever was paid to his pet plans for reforming the Dresden Opera, and theatrical matters in general.
In the state of mind brought about by this condition of affairs, it needed but a firebrand to start an explosion. This firebrand was supplied by the revolutionary uprising of 1849. Now, although Wagner had never really cared much for politics (to his friend Fischer he once wrote: "I do not consider true art possible until politics cease to exist"), he was foolish enough to believe that a general overturning of affairs would benefit art-matters, too, and facilitate his operatic reforms; so he became, as he himself admits, "a revolutionist in behalf of the theatre." He actively assisted the insurgents, and the consequence was that, when the rebellion failed, he had to leave Dresden and seek safety in flight.
Three of the leaders of the insurrection--Roeckel, Bakunin, and Heubner; personal friends of Wagner--were captured and imprisoned; he himself was so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist (though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhäuser," to which Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited as a matter of course. He was now there, but as a political fugitive, wherefore it was not deemed advisable to have him attend the public performance; but he did secretly witness a rehearsal, and was delighted to find that Liszt's genius had enabled him to penetrate into the innermost recesses of this music. It was impossible, however, for him to stay any longer. The Dresden police had issued a warrant for the arrest of "the royal Kapellmeister Richard Wagner," who was to be "placed on trial for active participation in the riots which have taken place here." No time was, therefore, to be lost. Late in the evening of May 18, Liszt's noble patroness, the Princess Wittgenstein, received this note from him: "Can you give the bearer sixty thalers? Wagner is obliged to fly, and I cannot help him at this moment."
Early the next morning Wagner, provided with a false pass, left Weimar and headed for Switzerland, which was to be his home for the greater part of the following twelve years of his exile from Germany. Had he been caught, like his friends, and, like them, imprisoned during these years, it is not likely that the world would now possess those seven monuments of his ripest genius, "Rheingold," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," "Tristan and Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," and "Parsifal." Even as it was, the world has undoubtedly lost an immortal opera or two through his unfortunate participation in the rebellion. For during the first four years of his exile, he did not compose any music. He reasoned that he had written four good operas and nobody seemed to want them; why, therefore, should he compose any more?
At the same time, he realized that there were natural reasons why his operas were not understood. They were written in such a novel style, both vocal and instrumental, that the singers, players, and conductors found it difficult to perform them correctly, the consequence being that they did not specially impress the audiences, which, moreover, were bewildered by finding themselves listening to works so radically different from what they had been accustomed to in the opera-houses. In the hope of remedying this state of affairs Wagner devoted several years to writing essays, in which he explained his aims and ideals for the benefit both of performers and listeners. Little attention was, however, paid to these essays, and although they are valuable aesthetic treatises, most lovers of Wagner would gladly give them for the operas he might have written in the same time,--operas uniting the characteristics of "Lohengrin" and "The Valkyrie."
Wagner's letters to Liszt and other friends show that he suffered tortures, and was often brought to the verge of suicide by the thought that, as a political refugee, he was unable to go to Germany to superintend the production of his works. His one consolation was that, as he put it, through the friendship of Liszt his art had found a home at Weimar at the moment when he himself became homeless. Weimar became, as it were, a sort of preliminary Bayreuth, to which pilgrimages were made to hear Wagner's operas. Liszt not only produced the "Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin," but wrote eloquent essays on them, and in every possible way advanced the good cause. It has been justly said that by his efforts he accelerated the vogue of Wagner's operas fully ten years. He also helped him pecuniarily, and induced others to do the same. Never in the world's history has one artist done so much for another as Liszt did for Wagner during all the years of his exile in Switzerland.
Few persons would consider residence in Switzerland (the usual home in those days of political refugees) a special hardship; nor would Wagner have considered it in that light except for the solicitude he felt for the children of his brain. Otherwise he greatly enjoyed life in that glorious country, and the Alpine ozone nourished and stimulated his brain. Moreover, from the creative point of view, it was an actual advantage for him to be away from the opera-houses of the great capitals. In Switzerland, except for a short time when he was connected with the Zurich opera, he heard no operatic music except such as his own brain created. Undoubtedly this helps to account for the astounding originality of the music-dramas he wrote in Switzerland.
These music-dramas go as far beyond "Lohengrin" in certain directions as "Lohengrin" goes beyond the operas of Wagner's predecessors. It was a reckless thing to do, to make another such giant stride before the world had caught up with his first, and he had to suffer the consequences; but genius disregards prudence, and looks to the future alone. What he was now writing was what his enemies tauntingly called "the music of the future," because, as they said, nobody liked it at present; but what he himself called the "art work of the future," in which all the fine arts are inseparably united.
The biggest of his works, the "Nibelung Tetralogy," was conceived and for the most part written in Switzerland. Before leaving Dresden he had already written the poem of an opera which he called "Siegfried's Death." Returning to this in his exile he came to the conclusion, gradually, that the legend on which it is based, and which he had sketched out in prose at the beginning, contained the material for two, three, nay, four operas. Accordingly, he wrote the poems of these: first, "Götterdämmerung," then "Siegfried," "Die Walküre," and "Rheingold." The music to these four dramas was, however, composed in the reverse order, in which they were to be performed.
Wagner indulged in no illusions regarding these music-dramas. He knew that they were beyond the capacity of even the best royal opera-houses of that time, and that they could be performed only under exceptional conditions, such as he finally succeeded, after herculean efforts and many disappointments, in securing at Bayreuth in 1876. It is of great interest to note that the germs of a sort of "Bayreuth festival plan" can be found in his letters as early as 1850,--the year when "Lohengrin" had its first hearing. Thus a full quarter of a century elapsed between the conception of this festival plan and its execution. But Wagner had the patience of Job, as well as his capacity for suffering.
Amid privations of all sorts, he wrote the sublime music of these dramas, beginning with "Rheingold," on Nov. 1, 1853,--the first time he had put new operatic melodies on paper since the completion of "Lohengrin," in August, 1847. In his head, to be sure, he had been carrying much of the Nibelung music for some time, for he habitually created his leading melodies at the same time as the verse; and the four Nibelung poems were in print in 1853. On May 28, 1854, the score of "Rheingold" was completed, and four weeks later he began the sketches of "The Valkyrie," the completed score of which was in his desk by the end of March, 1856.
In the meantime his poverty had compelled him, much against his wishes, to accept an offer from the London Philharmonic Society to conduct their concerts for a season (March to June, 1855). He had reason to bitterly regret this action. With the limited number of rehearsals at his command it was impossible for him to make the orchestra follow his intentions and reveal his greatness as a conductor. He was not allowed to make the programmes, and the directors, ignorant of the fact that they had engaged the greatest musical genius of the century, gave no Wagner concert, and put only a few short selections from his early operas on the programs. Thus his hopes of creating a desire for the hearing of his complete operas, which had been one of his motives in going to London, were frustrated. He was, moreover, constantly abused for doing things differently from Mendelssohn, and the leading critics referred to his best music as "senseless discord," "inflated display of extravagance and noise," and so on. Almost the only pleasant episode was the sympathy and interest of Queen Victoria, who had a long talk with him, and informed him that his music had enraptured her.
For all this trouble and loss of time (he found himself unable in London to do any satisfactory work on the uncompleted "Valkyrie" score), he received the munificent sum of $1,000,--considerably less than many Wagner singers to-day get for one evening's work. Shortly before leaving London he wrote to a friend that he would bring home about 200 francs,--$40! For this he had wasted four months of precious time and endured endless "contrarieties and vulgar animosities," to use his own words.
Equally unsuccessful were his efforts, a few years later, to better himself financially by a series of concerts in Paris (1860). They resulted in a large deficit. Nor was he benefited by the performances of his "Tannhäuser," which were given at the grand opera in March, 1861, by order of Napoleon, at the request of the influential Princess Metternich. He had refused to interpolate a vulgar ballet in the second act for the benefit of the members of the aristocratic Jockey Club, who dined late and insisted on having a ballet on entering the opera-house. They took their revenge by creating such a disturbance every evening that after the third performance Wagner refused to allow any further repetitions, although the house on the third night had been completely sold out. He was to receive $50 for each performance. The result was $150, or less than 50 cents a day, for a year's hard work and no end of worry in connection with the rehearsals.
How many men are there in the annals of art who would have refused, after all these disappointments and bitter lessons, to make some concessions? Wagner was writing a gigantic work, the Nibelung Tetralogy, which, he was convinced, would never yield a penny's profit during his lifetime. Sometimes despair seized him. In one of his letters he exclaims: "Why should I, poor devil, burden and torture myself with such terrible tasks, if the present generation refuses to let me have even a workshop?" Yet the only deviation he made from his plan was that when he had reached the second act of the third of the Nibelung dramas, the poetic "Siegfried," in June, 1857, he made up his mind to abandon the Tetralogy for the time being, and compose an opera which might be performed separately and once more bring him into contact with the stage.
This opera was "Tristan and Isolde;" but instead of being a concession, it turned out to be the most difficult and Wagnerian of all his works,--an opera with much emotion but little action, no processions or choruses such as "Lohengrin" still had, and, of course, no arias or tunes whatever. "Tristan and Isolde" was completed in 1859, and Wagner would have much preferred to have its performance in Paris commanded by Napoleon in place of "Tannhäuser." What the Jockey Club would have done in that case is inconceivable, for, compared with "Tristan," "Tannhäuser" is almost Meyerbeerian, if not Donizettian. No singers, moreover, could have been found in Paris able to interpret this work, with its new vocal style,--"speech-song," as the Germans call it. Even Germany could do nothing, at first, with this opera. In Vienna, after fifty-four rehearsals, it was abandoned, in 1863, as "impossible," and that city did not produce it till after Wagner's death. Instead of bringing him into immediate contact with the stage, it was not heard anywhere till seven years after its completion.
There was one more card for him to play. All his operas, so far, had been tragedies. What if he were to write a comic opera? Would not that be likely to get him access to the stage again, and help him financially? He had the plan for a comic opera; indeed, he had sketched it as early as 1845, at the same time as the plot of "Lohengrin." Sixteen years it lay dormant in his brain. At last he wrote out the poem in Paris, immediately after the "Tannhäuser" disaster there. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call "Die Meistersinger" a humorous opera; for while the story of the mediaeval knight who wins the goldsmith's daughter has comic features, its chief characteristic is humor, with that undercurrent of seriousness that belongs to all masterpieces of humor. To a certain extent, it is a musical and poetic autobiography, the victorious young Knight Walter, who sings as he pleases, without regard to pedantic rules, representing Wagner himself and the "music of the future," while the vain and malicious Beckmesser stands for the critics, and Hans Sachs for enlightened public opinion.
It was during the time that he wrote the gloriously melodious and spontaneous music to this poem that the most important event of his life happened. Work on the score was repeatedly interrupted by the necessity of making some money. Most of his concerts in German cities, undertaken for this purpose, did not yield him any profits. In Russia, however, he was very successful, and as he had the promise of a repetition of his success, he rented a fine villa at Penzing, near Vienna, and proceeded to enjoy life for a change. Who can blame him for this? As he said to a friend not long after this, "I am differently organized from others, have sensitive nerves, must have beauty, splendor, and light. Is it really such an outrageous thing if I lay claim to the little bit of luxury which I like,--I, who am preparing enjoyment for the world and for thousands?"
Unfortunately the second Russian project failed, through no fault of his own, and as he had borrowed money at usurious rates on his expected profits, he found himself compelled to fly once more from his creditors. After spending a short time in Switzerland, he went to Stuttgart, where he persuaded his friend Weissheimer to go with him into the Suabian Alps, where he intended to hide for half a year, until he could finish his "Meistersinger," and with the score raise money for his creditors. The wagon had already been ordered for the next morning, May 3, 1864, and Wagner was packing his trunk, when a card was brought up to him with the inscription: "von Pfistenmeister, Secrétaire aulique de S.M. le roi de Bavière," and the message that the Baron came by order of the King of Bavaria, and was very anxious to see him.
King Ludwig II. of Bavaria had declared, while he was still crown prince, that as soon as he became king he would show the world how highly he held the genius of Wagner in honor. He kept his word. One of his first acts was to despatch Baron von Pfistenmeister to search for Wagner, and not to return without him. He was to tell him that the king was his most ardent admirer; that he wanted him to come at once to Munich, to live there in comfort, at the king's expense, to complete his Nibelung operas, and produce them forthwith. Was it a wonder that when the Baron had left, Wagner, who was thus suddenly raised from the depth of despair (he had even meditated suicide) to the height of happiness, fell on Weissheimer's neck, and wept for joy.
Surely the brain of a Dumas could not have conceived a more romantic event than this sudden transformation of one who was a fugitive from debtor's prison into the favorite of a young and enthusiastic king. At last Wagner had an opportunity to bring forward his music-dramas. "Tristan and Isolde" was sung at the Munich Opera on June 10, 1865, with an excellent cast, and Hans von Bülow as conductor. "Die Meistersinger" followed on June 21,1868. Both these works were received with enthusiasm by the ever-growing band of Wagner-lovers. His plan of building a special theatre in Munich for the performance of his Nibelung operas could not be carried out, however, even with the king's aid; for his great influence with the king (he was rumored to be even his political and religious adviser, though this was not true), aroused so much hostile feeling that Wagner finally decided to have his Nibelung festival at the old secluded town of Bayreuth.
At the suggestion of the eminent pianist, Carl Taussig, Wagner societies were formed in the cities of Europe and America to raise funds for this festival and give Wagner a chance to establish a tradition by showing the world how his operas should be performed. With the aid of these and liberal contributions by his ever-devoted king, Wagner was able, after many trials, tribulations, and postponements, to bring out, at last, his great Tetralogy, on August 13, 14,16, and 17, of the year 1876. It was beyond comparison the most interesting and important event in the whole history of music. Wagner had personally visited the opera-houses throughout the land and selected the best singers. The audience included the Emperors of Germany and Brazil, King Ludwig, the Grand Dukes of Weimar and Baden, eminent composers like Liszt, Grieg, Saint-Saëns, and many other notable persons. The impression made by the great work was the deeper because of the unusual circumstances: the theatre specially constructed after Wagner's novel plan; the amphitheatric seats; the concealed orchestra; the stereoscopic clearness and nearness of the stage scenes, etc.
The necessity of charging very high rates ($225 for the four dramas) naturally prevented the audiences from being large, and the result was that Wagner had a deficit of $37,000 on his hands as the reward for his genius and years of business worries. When, however, his last work, the sublime, semi-religious "Parsifal," was produced in 1882, there was a balance in his favor. He was then in his sixty-ninth year, and the exertion of producing this final masterpiece was too great for him. To recuperate, he went to Venice, where he died on Feb. 13, 1882. King Ludwig sent a special train to convey his body to Bayreuth, where it was buried in the garden behind his villa Wahnfried.
Since Wagner's death the Bayreuth festivals have been kept up with ever-increasing success, under the guidance of his widow Cosima, the daughter of Liszt (whom he married in 1870, four years after the death of his first wife), and their son, Siegfried, who has in recent years also won some success as an opera composer. The performances at Bayreuth are no longer what they were during Wagner's lifetime,--models for all the world; but they are still of unique interest. In truth, headquarters like Bayreuth are no longer needed, for all the German cities now vie with one another in their efforts to interpret the Wagner operas according to the composer's intentions; and his influence on other musicians, which began with the performance of "Lohengrin" under Liszt, in 1850, is to-day greater than ever,--more powerful, perhaps, than that ever exerted by any other master.
But while an eminent German critic wrote not long ago that "the music-drama of Wagner constitutes modern opera," it would be a huge mistake to make Wagnerism synonymous with modern music in general. Apart from the opera, there are several other very powerful currents, and while most of them can be traced to the first half of the nineteenth century, they are none the less modern. Their principal sources are Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin, to whom we must add, in the second half of the century, Liszt.
The symphonies of Haydn and Mozart are like toy-houses compared with the massive architecture of Beethoven's. He not only elaborated the forms, but varied the rhythms, broadened the melody, and deepened the expression of orchestral music. In his works, too, are to be found the germs of romanticism, which others, notably Mendelssohn and Schumann, developed so fascinatingly in their best works. Most of Mendelssohn's compositions have had their day; but Schumann is still a force in modern music and will long remain so.
Brahms, the musical Browning, is, musically speaking, a son of Schumann and a grandson of Beethoven. While even Brahms did not escape the influence of Wagner, nor that of the romanticists Schubert and Chopin, still, in his essence, he represents reaction against modern romanticism and an atavistic return to the spirit of Beethoven. He has been, for decades, the idol of Wagner's enemies; yet, in truth, there was no occasion for opposing these two men, since they worked in entirely different fields. Brahms wrote no operas, while Wagner wrote little but operas. The real antagonist of Brahms is Liszt, who also worked only for the concert hall and who represents poetic or pictorial music (programme music), while Brahms stands for absolute music, or music per se, without any poetic affiliations.
While Schubert in his youth also came under the influence of his great contemporary, Beethoven, he soon emancipated himself completely from him, even in the symphony, in which, as Schumann pointed out, he opened up "an entirely new world" of melody, color, and emotion. His orchestration is more varied, euphonious, and enchanting than Beethoven's, and in this direction he did for the symphony what Weber did for the opera. By using the brass instruments pianissimo, for color instead of for loudness, he opened a path in which later masters, including Wagner, eagerly followed him. Schubert was also the first composer who revealed the exquisite beauty and the great emotional power of the freest modulation from key to key. His poetic impromptus for piano became the model for Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," and the multitudinous forms of modern short pieces, while his melodious, dainty, graceful valses were the forerunners of the exquisite dance-music which subsequently made Vienna famous, and which reached its climax in Johann Strauss the younger, universally known as "the waltz king."
In all these respects, Schubert was epoch-making; and if the beautiful details he suggested to his successors up to the present day could be taken out of their works there would be some surprising blanks. Especially also is this true in the realm of lyric song, for, as everybody knows, he practically created the art song as we know and love it. The greatest of his immediate successors, Schumann and Franz, cheerfully admitted that they could never have written such songs as they gave the world but for Schubert, and the same confession might be made by the latest of the great songwriters, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and our American MacDowell. Schubert's best songs have never been equalled. They belong in the realm of modern music quite as much as Wagner's music-dramas and Liszt's symphonic poems.
Chopin is another composer who, although he died in 1849 (Schubert died in 1828), is as modern as the masters just named. He was as boldly original as Schubert, and as great a magician in the art of arousing deep emotion by means of novel, unexpected modulations. As an originator of new harmonic progressions he has had only three equals,--Bach, Schubert, and Wagner. Harmonies as ultra-modern as those of Wagner's "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still in the same direction, but he showed the way, and most of his pieces are as delightful and as modern now as they were on the day when they were written. He wrote a few sonatas, but the majority of his works are short pieces such as are characteristic of the modern romantic school.
Before Chopin modernized pianoforte music the world's greatest composers had been Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. Chopin's father was a Frenchman, but his mother was a native of Poland, and he was born in that country. While his music has the French qualities of elegance and clearness (which every one admires in the works of Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, and other Parisian masters), in its essence it is Polish--a fact of special significance, for from this time on other nations than the three mentioned--especially the Slavic and Scandinavian--begin to play a prominent role in music. In this brief sketch only the greatest names can be considered,--such names as Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Dvorák, Grieg.
Rubinstein was not only one of the greatest pianists, but one of the most spontaneous and fertile melodists of all times. His frequently careless workmanship and his foolish, savage hostility to the dominant Wagner movement prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his rare genius. He felt that, had it not been for the all-absorbing Wagner, he himself might have been as popular as Mendelssohn. Although a Russian, there is little local color in his music, for the enchanting exotic melodic intervals in his "Persian" songs are Oriental in general, rather than Russian in particular. Similar exotic intervals may be found in the "Aïda" of Verdi, a pure Italian. Rubinstein, like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, was a Hebrew. His day will yet come, for his Dramatic and Ocean symphonies are among the grandest orchestral works in existence.
His countryman, Tschaikowsky, also was neglected during his lifetime; but since his death he has become, especially in London, almost as popular as Wagner; and deservedly so, for he was a genius of the highest type, less in his songs and pianoforte works than in his symphonies and symphonic poems, which include some of the most inspired pages in modern music. In some of his compositions there is a barbaric splendor which proclaims the Russian and delights those who like exotic novelty in music. Like all the Russians, Tschaikowsky was strongly influenced by Liszt; indeed, it may be said that in Russia Liszt was more potent in shaping the course of modern music than even Wagner.
Another Slavic composer, the Bohemian Dvorák, is of special interest to Americans not only because he is one of the greatest of modern orchestral writers (a colorist of rare charm), but because he presided for several years over Mrs. Thurber's National Conservatory of Music in New York, and there wrote that truly melodious and deeply emotional work, "From the New World," which has become almost as popular as Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique." His Bohemian rhythms have a unique charm.
Among the Scandinavian composers the greatest, by far, is Grieg, one of the most original melodists and harmonists of all times. His songs, in particular, are destined to immortality; they are among the very best written since Schubert. Of his pianoforte and chamber music, too, it can be said that everything is new, free from commonplace, and ultra-modern. He has written mostly short pieces, and for that reason has had to wait (like Chopin in his day) a long time for full recognition of his genius, the critics not having yet got over the foolish habit of measuring art-works with a yardstick. Like Chopin, moreover, Grieg has had the ill-fortune of having his most original and individual traits accredited to his nation and described as "national peculiarities." His music does contain such peculiarities; but it is necessary to distinguish between what is Norwegian and what is Griegian. Grieg's little pieces and songs are big with genius.
The Hungarian Liszt is another immortal master who, beside the fruits of his individual genius, contributed to the current of modern music some of those exotic national traits which distinguish it from that of earlier epochs when it was almost exclusively Italian, French, and German. His fifteen Hungarian rhapsodies constitute, however, only a small part of the invaluable legacy he has left the world. He was the most many-sided of all musicians,--the greatest of all pianists, and one of the best composers of oratorios, songs, orchestral, and pianoforte works,--everything, in short, except operas and chamber music. He was also the greatest of teachers and (with the exception of Wagner) the greatest of conductors; as such, he carried out both his own and Wagner's new and revolutionary principles of interpretation, which have gradually made the orchestral conductor a personage of even greater importance, in concert hall and opera-house, than the prima donna, travelling, like her, from city to city, to delight lovers of music.
One might have expected that the prince of pianists, being at the same time a composer, would do for the pianoforte what Bach had done for choral and organ music, Beethoven for the symphony, Schubert for the art song, and Wagner for the opera. But he could not, for Chopin had anticipated him. In only one direction was it possible to go beyond Chopin,--in that of making the piano capable of reproducing orchestral effects. This, Liszt achieved in his own works and his transcriptions. But, after all, the grandest pianoforte, while delightful as such, is but a poor substitute for an orchestra. Hence it was natural that Liszt should give up the pianoforte as his specialty and devote himself particularly to the orchestra.
In this domain he was destined to achieve reforms similar to those of Wagner in the opera. The "classical" symphony, like the old-fashioned opera, consists of detached numbers, or movements, that have no organic connection with one another. For the detached numbers of the opera Wagner substituted his "continuous melody;" and he provided an organic connection of all the parts by means of the "leading motives" or characteristic melodies and chords which recur whenever the situation calls for them. In the same spirit Liszt transformed the symphony into the symphonic poem, which is continuous and has a leading motive uniting all its parts.
There is another aspect to the symphonic poem, in which Liszt deviated from Wagner. In Wagner's operas there is plenty of descriptive or pictorial music, but no program music, properly speaking; for even in such things as the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Magic Fire Scene, the music does not depend on a programme, but is explained by the scenery. In programme music, on the other hand, the scene or the poetic idea is simply explained in the programme, or else merely hinted at in the title of the piece. Crude attempts in this direction were made centuries ago, but programme music as an important branch of music is a modern phenomenon. Beethoven encouraged it by his "Pastoral Symphony," and the French Berlioz did some very remarkable things in this line in his dramatic symphonies; but it remained for Liszt to hit the nail on the head in his symphonic poems. The French Saint-Saëns followed him, rather than his countryman Berlioz; so did Tschaikowsky, Dvorak, and most modern composers, up to Richard Strauss, whose symphonic poems are the most widely discussed, praised, and abused compositions of our time.
To the great names contained in the preceding paragraphs another must be added,--that of an Italian. By an odd coincidence, Verdi was born in the same year as Wagner, 1813. But what is far more remarkable is that at the close of their careers, so different otherwise, these two great composers met again--in their music, Verdi as a Wagnerian convert. Up to his fifty-eighth year Verdi had written two dozen operas, all made up of strings of arias in the old-fashioned way,--superb arias, many of them, especially in "Il Trovatore" and "Aïda," but still arias. Then he rested from his labors sixteen years; and when he appeared on the stage again, with his "Otello" and "Falstaff," he had adopted Wagner's maxims that arias are out of place in a music-drama; that "the play's the thing," and that the music should follow the text word for word.
Surely, this was the most remarkable of Wagner's triumphs and conquests. He who had been denounced for decades as being unable to write properly for the voice was actually taken up as a model by the greatest composer of Italy, the land of song. Moreover, all the young composers of Italy have turned their backs on the traditions of Italian opera. The chief ambition of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, and all the others has been to be called "the Italian Wagner;" and their operas are much more like Wagner's than like Rossini's and Donizetti's, being free from arias and the vocal embroideries that formerly were the essence of Italian opera. The same is true of the operas written in recent decades in France, Germany, and other countries. Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Humperdinck, Goldmark, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, and all the others have followed in Wagner's footsteps.
Such, briefly told, is the story of Richard Wagner and Modern Music. The "music of the future" has become the music of the present. What the future will bring no one can tell. Croakers say, as they have always said, that the race of giants has died out. But who knew, fifty years ago, that Wagner and Liszt, or even their predecessors, Chopin and Schumann, and the song specialist, Robert Franz, were giants? We know it now, and future generations will know whether we have giants among us. Things of beauty that will be a joy forever have been created by men of genius now living in Europe; such men as the Norwegian Grieg, the Bohemian Dvorák, the French Saint-Saëns and Massenet, the Hungarian Goldmark, the German Humperdinck and Richard Strauss, the Polish Paderewski. England has more good composers and listeners than it ever had before; and the same is true of America. We have no school of opera yet, but the best operettas of Victor Herbert and De Koven deserve mention by the side of those of the French. Offenbach, Lecocq, and Audran, the Viennese Strauss, Suppé, and Milloecker, the English Sullivan. The orchestral compositions of our John K. Paine are masterworks, and the songs and pianoforte pieces of MacDowell are equal to anything produced in Europe since Chopin and Franz. We have several other men of great promise, and altogether the outlook for America, as well as for Europe, is bright.
AUTHORITIES.
The books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles on Wagner would fill a library. He has been more written about than any writers except Shakspere, Goethe, and Dante. He was also fond of writing about himself. His autobiography (extending only to 1865) has not yet been given to the public; but there are many autobiographic pages in the ten volumes of his literary works, which have been Englished by Ellis. Of great value are Wagner's letters to Liszt and to other friends. These were utilized for the first time in "Wagner and His Works," the most elaborate biography in the English language, by the author of the foregoing article. Shorter American and English books on Wagner have been written by Kobbé, Krehbiel, Henderson, Hueffer, Newman, &c. Of French writers Lavignac, Jullien, Mendès, Servières, Schuré, may be mentioned. Of great value are Kufferath's monographs on the Wagner operas and Liszt's analyses. In Germany the standard work of reference is the third edition of Glasenopp, in six volumes, four of which are now (1902) in print. Other German writers are Porges, Wolzogen, Pohl, Nohl, Tappert, Chamberlain, &c. The best histories of Modern Music in general are Langhaus's larger work and Riemann's "Geschichte der Musik seit Beethoven." The best general work for reference is "Great Composers and Their Works," edited by Professor Paine of Harvard. References to about 10,000 articles on Wagner may be found in Oesterlein's "Katalog Einer Richard Wagner Bibliothek," 3 vols.
JOHN RUSKIN.
1819-1900.
MODERN ART.
BY G. MERCER ADAM.
What John Ruskin has done in a prosaic, commercial, and Philistine age, in teaching the world to love and study the Beautiful, in opening to it the hidden mysteries and delights of art, and in inciting the passion for taking pleasure in and even possessing embodiments of it, that age owes to the great prose-poet and enthusiastic author of "Modern Painters." Neither before nor since his day has literature known such a passionate and luminous exponent of Nature's beauties, such an inculcator in men's minds of the art of observing her ways and methods, or one who has given the world such deep insight into what constitutes the true and the beautiful in art. For these things, and for opening new worlds of instruction and delight to his age in the realm of art, heightened by the charm of his marvellous prose, we can readily pardon Ruskin for his weaknesses and perverseness,--for his dogmatisms, his fervors, and ecstasies, his exaggerations of praise and blame, and even for the missionary propagation of his often unsound economic gospel, valuable though it may be in illustrating and enforcing morality in its aesthetic aspect. Despite his enemies, and all that the critics have said contradicting his theories, Ruskin was a surprise and a revelation to his time. In not a little of all that he said and did, it is true, we cannot concur; nor can we fail to see the errors he fell into through his want of reserve and his headlong haste to say and do the things he said and did; nevertheless, he was a great and inspiring teacher in things that appeal to our sense of the beautiful, and earnest in his zeal to raise men's intellectual and moral standard of life. Like most enthusiasts and geniuses, he had, now and then, his hours of reaction, waywardness, and gloom; but there was much that was noble and ennobling in the man, as well as rich and fructifying in his thought. Even in his social and moral exhortations, tinctured as they are with medievalism, and however much we may here again disagree with him, he had much that was uplifting and inspiring to say to his time,--a time that had great need of his apostolic counsellings and his fervent inculcations of morality, industry, religion, and humanity.
Throughout Mr. Ruskin's works--and they are amazingly manifold--a strong and intense purpose runs, given to the highest and noblest ends; and though their author at times wearies his reader by his diffuseness and his digressions, and to some is almost fanatical in his reverence for art, he is ever imaginative and eloquent, and has created for us a new, instructive, and uniquely fresh and thoughtful body of art-literature. The truth of infinite value he teaches is "realism,"--the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a reverent and faithful study of nature, and not, as a reviewer expresses it, "by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality. The thorough acceptance of this doctrine would remould our life; and he who teaches its application, even to any single department of human activity, and with such power as Mr. Ruskin's, is a prophet for his generation." In all his various labors and aims, Mr. Ruskin set before himself a high, if somewhat quixotic, ideal of life, and with great earnestness did much, not only for the elevation of his fellow-men, but for the development of sound artistic taste and the enriching and spiritualizing of life by seeking to surround it at all times with the true and the beautiful, and with the old-time virtues of purity, manliness, and courage.
Among the "Beacon Lights" of the age there can be no question that Ruskin is worthy of an exalted place, since few men of our modern time, rich as it is in eminent thinkers and writers, has done more than he to illumine the many subjects with which he has so fascinatingly dealt,--and that not only in art and its cult of the Beautiful, but in ethics, education, and political economy. The energies, activities, and impulses he constantly put forth, as well as the high principles that ever guided him in his earnest endeavor to improve the intellectual and moral condition of his kind, mark his era as a great artistic epoch in the onward and upward progress of the race. By stimulus, suggestion, and inspiration he has powerfully influenced his time, though manifestly not a little of the seed he abundantly and hopefully scattered has fallen upon barren ground. Nevertheless, where the seed has fallen and germinated, the yield has been large: "his spirit has passed far wider than he ever knew or conceived; and his words, flung to the winds, have borne fruit a hundredfold in lands that he never thought of or designed to reach." With what pride and gratitude should not the age regard him and his memory,--one who has quickened the sensibilities of men in looking upon nature; opened our dull eyes to its manifold beauties; made plain to the average intelligence what Art is and stands for; implanted in our souls worship of the beautiful; shown workingmen how to use their tools in the highest interests of their craft, and taught maidens what and how to read as well as how and in what spirit to sew and cook. The world too often acknowledges its true teachers and prophets only when it begins to build them some belated tomb. "This, at any rate," gratefully exclaims Frederic Harrison,[[1]] "we will not suffer to be done to John Ruskin."
Written by Mr. F.H. on Professor Ruskin's eightieth birthday (February 8, 1899).
"We may all of us recall to-day with love and gratitude the enormous mass of stirring thoughts and melodious speech about a thousand things, divine and human, beautiful and good, which for a whole half-century the author of 'Modern Painters' has given to the world. They cover every phase of nature, every type of art, of history, society, economics, religion; the past and the future; all rules of human duty, whether personal or social, domestic or national.... He spake to us of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon unto the hyssop on the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. He has put new beauty for us into the sky and the clouds and the rainbow, into the seas at rest or in storm, into the mountains and into the lakes, into the flowers and the grass, into crystals and gems, into the mightiest ruins of past ages, and into the humblest rose upon a cottage wall. He has done for the Alps and the cathedrals of Italy and France, for Venice and Florence, what Byron did for Greece. We look upon them all now with new and more searching eyes. Whole schools of art, entire ages of old workmanship, the very soul of the Middle Age, have been revealed with a new inspiration and transfigured in a more mysterious light. Poetry, Greek sculpture, mediaeval worship, commercial morality, the training of the young, the nobility of industry, the purity of the home,--a thousand things that make up the joy and soundness of human life have been irradiated by the flashing searchlight of one ardent soul: irradiated, let us say, as this dazzling ray shot round the horizon, glancing from heaven to earth, and touching the gloom with fire. We need not, even today, be tempted from truth, or pretend that the light is permanent or complete. It has long ceased to flash round the welkin, and its very scintillations have disturbed our true vision. But we remember still its dazzling power and its revelation of things that our eyes had not seen.
"What we especially love to dwell on to-day is this: that in all this unrivalled volume of printed thoughts, in this encyclopaedic range of topic by this most voluminous and most versatile of modern writers [may we not say of all English writers?] there is not one line that is base, or coarse, or frivolous; not a sentence that was framed in envy, malice, wantonness, or cruelty; not one piece that was written to win money, or popularity, or promotion; not a line composed for any selfish end or in any trivial mood. Think what we may of this enormous library of print, we know that every word of it was put forth of set purpose without any hidden aim, utterly without fear, and wholly without guile; to make the world a little better, to guide, inspire, and teach men, come what might, scoff as they would, turn from him as they chose, though they left him alone, a broken old man crying in the wilderness, with none to hear or to care. They might think it all utterly vain; we may think much of it was in vain: but it was always the very heart's blood of a rare genius and a noble soul."
Before entering, somewhat in detail, into Ruskin's vast and varied labors, let us briefly outline the scope and character of the work which gave the art critic and prophet of his time his chief fame. The personal incidents in his life need not detain us at the outset, as they are not specially eventful, and may be more fully gathered from the excellent "Life" of Ruskin, by his friend and some-time secretary, W.G. Collingwood, or from the delightfully interesting reminiscences by the master himself in his autobiographic "Praeterita," published near the close of his long, arduous, and fruitful career. John Ruskin was born in London on the 8th of February, 1819. He was of Scotch ancestry, his father being a prosperous wine merchant in London, who acquired considerable wealth in trade, which the son in time inherited, and nobly used in his many private benevolences and philanthropic enterprises. The comfortable circumstances in which he was born, coupled with his father's own love of pictures and books, were helpful in giving encouragement and direction to the young student's studies and tastes. His mother, a deeply religious woman, was, moreover, influential in implanting the serious element in Ruskin's character and life, and in familiarizing him with the Bible, whose noble English, in King James' version, manifestly entered early into the youth's ardent, prophetic soul, and, as a writer, had much to do in forming his magnificent prose style. Ruskin was in early years--indeed, far on in his manhood--in delicate health, and consequently he was educated privately till he passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he won the Newdigate prize for verse, and graduated in 1842. His taste for art was manifested at an early age, and after passing from the university he studied painting under J.D. Harding and Copley Fielding; but his masters, as he tells us in "Praeterita," were Rubens and Rembrandt.
At the outset of his career Ruskin, as is well known, was led to take up a defence of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and the contemporary school of English landscape-painting against the foreign trammels, which had fastened themselves upon modern art, and especially to prove the superiority of modern landscape-painters over the old masters. This revolutionary opinion, though at first it was hotly contested, established the new critic's position as a writer on art, and the defence, or exposition rather, grew into the famous work called "Modern Painters" (5 vols., 1843-60). This elaborate work deals with general aesthetic principles, and, notwithstanding its occasional extravagances, alike of praise and censure, its charm is irresistible, presenting us with its brilliant and original author's ideas of beauty, to which he freshly and powerfully awakened the world, while enshrining throughout the work the most enchanting word-poems on mountain, leaf, cloud, and sea, which, it is not too much to say, will live forever in English literature. In the second volume Mr. Ruskin takes up the Italian painters, and discusses at length the merits of their respective schools; in the others, as well as in the work as a whole, we have a body of principles which should govern high art-work, as well as new ideas as to what should constitute the equipment of the painter, and that not only as regards the technique of his art, but in the effect to be produced on the onlooker in viewing the skilled work of one who, above all accomplishments, should be lovingly and intimately in contact with nature.
From the study of painting Mr. Ruskin passed for a time to that of architecture. In this department we have from his pen "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" (1849) and "The Stones of Venice" (1851-53). In these two complementary works their author sets forth as in an impressive sermon the new and admonitory lesson that architecture is the exponent of the national characteristics of a people,--the higher and nobler sort exemplifying the religious life and moral virtue in a nation, the debased variety, on the other hand, expressing the ignoble qualities of national vice and shame. The text of "The Stones" is Venice, and the design of the volumes, in the author's words, is to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice "had arisen out of, and indicated, a state of pure domestic faith and national virtue;" while its renaissance architecture "had arisen out of and indicated a state of concealed national infidelity and domestic corruption." The earlier work, "The Seven Lamps,"--the Lamp of Sacrifice, of Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience,--looks upon architecture "as the revealing medium or lamp through which flame a people's passions,--the embodiment of their polity, life, history, and religious faith in temple and palace, mart and home." Akin to these two eloquent works, in which their author thoughtfully sets forth the civic virtues and moral tone, as well as the debased characteristics, by which architecture is produced at certain eras in a people's life, is the earlier volume on "The Poetry of Architecture" (1837), which discusses the relation between architecture and its setting of landscape or other environment, illustrated by examples drawn from regions he had visited,--the English Lakeland, France, Switzerland, Spain, and northern Italy.
After these works followed lectures on drawing, perspective, decoration, and manufacture, with later theories (crotchets, some have impiously called them) on political economy, Pre-Raphaelitism, et cetera, with a flood of opinions on social, ethical, and art subjects, enriched by rare intellectual gifts and much religious fervor. Ruskin's whole writings form a body of literature unique of its kind, pervaded with great charm of literary style, and inspired by a high moral purpose. Ruskin's excursions into non-aesthetic fields, and the strange jumble of Christian communism to which, late in life, he gave vehement expression, it must be honestly admitted, have detracted much from his early fame. In everything he wrote the Ruskinian spirit comes strongly out, colored with an amiable egotism and enforced by great assurance of conviction. The moral purpose he had in view, and the charm and elevated tone of his writings, lead us to forget the wholly ideal state of society he sought to introduce, while we are won to the man by the passion of his noble enthusiasms.
Like Carlyle and Emerson, Ruskin was by his parents intended for the ministry; but for the ministry he had himself no inclination. The broadening out early of his mind and the freeing of his thought on doctrinal subjects, which took him far from the narrow evangelicalism of his youth, made the ministry of the church repugnant to him, though he was always a deeply religious man and a force ever making for righteousness. At the same time, he numbered many divines among his most cherished friends, and he frequently, and with admitted edification, was to be found in chapel and church. Meanwhile he continued busily to educate himself for whatever profession he might choose or drift into, supplemented by such fitful periods of schooling as his delicate health permitted, as well as by many jaunts with his parents to the English lakes and other parts of the kingdom, and by frequent tours on the Continent, especially in Italy and Switzerland. Before he arrived at his teens, young Ruskin had composed much, both in prose and verse, and he early manifested an aptitude for drawing, as well as a decided taste for art, which, it is said, was in some measure incited by the gift, from a partner of his father, of a copy of the poet Rogers' "Italy," with engravings by Turner. Nor, early in manhood, did he escape a youth's fond dream of love, for as a worshipper of beauty, and an enthusiast of the "Wizard of the North," we find him drawn tenderly to a daughter of Lockhart, editor of the "Quarterly Review," a grandchild of his famous countryman, Sir Walter Scott. The affair, however, though encouraged by his parents, who longed to see their son settled in life, came to nought, chiefly owing to the young lover's weak physical frame and uncertain health. Later on, unhappily, he was caught in the toils of another Scottish lass, for whom, it is related, he had written "The King of the Golden River" (1841), and whose rare beauty had readily attracted him. With her, in 1848, he made an ill-assorted marriage, only to find, some years afterwards, his heart riven and a bitter ingredient dropped into his life's chalice by a fatal defection on the wife's part, she having become enamoured of the then rising young painter, Millais, whom Ruskin had trustingly invited to his house to paint her portrait. The sequel of the affair is a pitiful one, which Ruskin ever afterward hid deep in his heart, though at the time, finding that the woman was unable to live at the intellectual and spiritual altitude of her loyal husband, the latter, with a magnanimity beyond parallel, pardoned both Millais and the erring one, consented to a divorce, and actually stood by her at the altar as the faithless one took upon herself new vows unto a new husband. The estrangement and loss of a wife gave Ruskin afresh to Art,--his true and fondly cherished bride.
At this period, as we know, English painting was at a low ebb, mediocre and conventional, though with a show of artificial brilliance. Ruskin, with his scorn of the artificial and scholastic, threw himself into the work of overturning the established, complacent school of the time, and with splendid enthusiasm and an unfailing belief in himself and his ideas he undertook to reform what had been, and to raise current conceptions of art to a more exalted and lofty plane. We have seen what he had already achieved in his first dashing period of literary activity, in the production of the early volumes of "Modern Painters," and in his "Seven Lamps" and "Stones of Venice." While he was at work on the concluding volumes of the first and last of these great books there arose in England the somewhat fantastic movement in art, launched by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included such Ruskinites and other devotees of early Christian and mediaeval painting as Rossetti, Millais, Morris, Burne-Jones, and Holman Hunt. Towards this new school of symbolists and affectationists Ruskin was not at first drawn, since it seemed to him unduly idealistic, if not mystic, and smacked not a little, as he thought, of popery. Later, however, he saw good in it, as a breaking away from academic trammels; while he recognized the earnest enthusiasm of the little band of artists and artist-poets, as well as their technical dexterity and brilliance. With ready decision as well as with his accustomed zeal for art, Ruskin ended by defending and applauding the new innovators, particularly as their chief motive was the one the master had always strenuously pled for,--adherence to the simplicity of nature. Their scrupulous attention to detail, characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelites, later on bore good results, even after the Brotherhood fell apart, especially in William Morris's application of their art-principles to household decoration and furnishings. But for the time the movement was loudly mocked and decried, and perhaps all the more because of Ruskin's espousal of the fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry, Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder, while expanding himself over almost the whole world of art.
We have said that Pre-Raphaelitism, as a movement in art, was contemporaneously jeered at; while to-day, among superficial or inappreciative students of the period, seriously to mention it or any of its cultured brotherhood is to provoke a smile. Nevertheless, there was not a little high merit in the movement, which Ruskin was keen-eyed and friendly enough to recognize, while much that is worthy afterwards came out of it in the later work of the more notable of its members as well as in that of their unenrolled associates and the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite method. What the movement owed to Ruskin is now frankly conceded, in the lesson the brotherhood took to heart from his counsellings,--to divest art of conventionality, and to work with scrupulous fidelity and sincerity of purpose. Nor was contemporary art alone the gainer by the movement; it also had its influence on poetry, though this has been obscured--so far as any beneficial influence can be traced at all--by the tendency manifested in some of the more amorous poetic swains of the period, who professed to derive their inspiration from the Brotherhood, to identify themselves with what has been styled the "Fleshly School" of verse. Of the latter number, Swinburne, in his early "Poems and Ballads," was perhaps the greatest sinner, though atoned for in part by the lyrical art and ardor of his verse, and much more by the higher qualities and scholarly characteristics of his later dramatic Work. Nor is Dante Rossetti himself, in some of his poems, free from the same taint, despite the fact of his interesting individuality as the chief inspirer and laborer among the Brotherhood. Yet the movement owed much to both his brush and his pen of other and nobler, because reverential, work, as those will admit who know "The Blessed Damozel," "Sister Helen," and his fine collection of sonnets, "The House of Life," as well as his famous paintings, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and his Annunciation picture, "Ecce Ancilla Domini." Of the product of other Pre-Raphaelites of note,--such as Ford Madox Brown, Millais, Morris, Woolner the sculptor, Coventry Patmore, and Holman Hunt,--much that is commendable as well as finely imaginative came from their hands, and justified Ruskin in his gallant advocacy of the movement, its founders, and their work.
By this time, of which we have been writing, Ruskin had reached the early meridian of his powers, and, as we have hinted, had wrested from the unwilling many a juster recognition of his amazing industry and genius. To his fond and indulgent parents this was a great source of pride and satisfaction, and the practical evidence of it was the throng of visitors to the family seats of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, in the then London suburbs, where Ruskin long had his home, and by the attentions and honor paid to their son by universities, academies, and public bodies, as well as by many eminent personages and the intellectual élite of the nation. Among those with whom the young celebrity was then ultimate and reckoned among his admiring correspondents were, besides Turner (who died in 1851) and the chief artists of the time, the Carlyles and the Brownings, Mary Russell Mitford, Charlotte Bronté, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Charles Eliot Norton, Lady Trevelyan (Macaulay's sister), Whewell, Maurice, Kingsley, Dr. John Brown (author of "Rab and his Friends"), Tennyson, and Dean Milman. To these might be added many notable foreigners whom he either met with in his continental travels or who were attracted to him by a lively interest in his writings. In his home, thanks to a wealthy and indulgent father, he was surrounded with every comfort, short of luxury, if we except under the latter the large sums expended on the purchase of "Turners" and many famous foreign pictures, and a vast and increasing collection of favorite books and other treasures and curios.
Of the author's home-life we get many delightful reminiscences in "Praeterita," with entertaining talks of his childhood days, his youthful companions, his toys and animate pets, his early playful adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled the weariness and feebleness of old age. But we are anticipating, for we are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life's arduous work was yet before him. At this era, no brain could well have been more active or fuller of philanthropies than his, for we approach the second period of his life's grand activities,--the era of a new departure in the interests that occupied him and the herculean tasks he set himself to do.
Before recording some of the achievements of this time and glancing at the inciting causes of the transition which marks the era we have now reached, let us note the demands made upon Mr. Ruskin's thought and labor by universities and public institutions, whose audiences desired to have him appear before them in person and address them upon topics in which he and they were interested. These appearances on the lecture platform were now numerous, since many throughout the kingdom were eager to see and know the man whose art criticisms, principles that govern the beautiful, and stimulating thought on all subjects, had made so deep an impression on the reflecting minds of the age. His earliest appearance on the rostrum was at Edinburgh, where he delivered four lectures before the Philosophical Institution, chiefly on landscape-painters and on Christian art, with a plea for the use of Gothic in domestic architecture. Subsequent appearances were at Manchester, where he spoke on the Political Economy of Art and the relation of art to manufactures; at the South Kensington Museum, London, which had just been opened; and later at Oxford, where further on in his career he became Slade Professor of Art in his own University. From the accounts of these public lectures we get opinions as to the personal appearance of Ruskin at the period which add to our knowledge of him from paintings, drawings, and photographs, though not a few of these accounts vary from those given us in books, chiefly sketched by his lady friends and correspondents. The more trusty of the contemporary pictures speak of him as having "light, sand-colored hair; his face more red than pale; the mouth well cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose; his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well bound together; the eye [says the observer from whom we are quoting] we could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his [Ruskin's] countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features must be concentrated here." Miss Mitford speaks of him at this time as "eloquent and distinguished-looking, fair and slender, with a gentle playfulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming." Another, a visitor at his London home, characterizes him as "emotional and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth thin and severe, and a voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a plaintive and hopeless tone." Later on in years we have this verbal portrait from a disciple of the great art-teacher, occurring in an inaugural address delivered before the Ruskin Society of Glasgow: "That spare, stooping figure, the rough-hewn, kindly face, with its mobile, sensitive mouth, and clear deep eyes, so sweet and honest in repose, so keen and earnest and eloquent in debate!"
When the fifth and last volume of "Modern Painters" was finally off his hands, Mr. Ruskin not only engaged, as we have seen, in occasional lecturing, but began (1861) to add a prolific series of brochures--many of them with quaint but significant titles--to his already stupendous mass of writing. Their subjects were not alone aesthetics, but now treated of ethical, social, and political questions, the prophetic declarations and earnest appeals of a man of wide and varied culture, deep thought, and large experience. The attempted alliance of political economy with art was a novel undertaking in that sixth lustrum of the past century, even by a man of Mr. Ruskin's eminence and fame in the world of letters. But Mr. Ruskin was a bold and earnest man, as well as a genius; and he had too much to tell his heedless, laissez-faire age to keep silent on themes, remote as they were from those he had hitherto taught, and of which he desired to deliver his soul, whatever ridicule it might provoke and however adverse the criticism levelled against him. His humanity and moral sense were outraged by the manner in which the mass of his countrymen lived, and trenchant was his castigation of this and eager as well as righteous his desire to amend their condition and elevate and inspire their minds. As an economist, it is true, there was not a little that was false as well as eccentric in what he preached; moreover, much of his counsel was directly socialistic in its trend, repugnant in large degree to his English readers and hearers; but all this was atoned for by the honesty and philanthropy of his motives, by his phenomenal fervor and eloquence, and by the literary beauty and charm of every page he wrote. Nevertheless, as in Carlyle--for in these depreciations the style of the seer of Chelsea was deeply upon him--the note of calamity and the wail of despair are too much in evidence in Ruskin's writings at this period, while, like Carlyle also, he was equally precipitate and impulsive in his attacks on things as they were. Yet in the economic condition just then of England, and in the circumstances environing the labor world, there was, possibly, justification for the rebukes and objurgations of onlookers of the type of both of these men, and very humanitarian as well as practically helpful were Ruskin's counsel and aid to labor and to all who sought to raise and expand their outlook and better their condition in life. Towards politics Ruskin was never drawn, but had he been more prosaic and less given to anathematizing, most valuable would have been his aid in legislation at this era of political and moral reform. But if political science, or science in any other of its branches or departments, did not come within his purview, great was the revolution he wrought in the working-man's surroundings, and immense the illumination he shed upon industry and on the spirit in which the laborer should think and work.
Referring to Ruskin at this period of his career, and to his influence as a social and moral exhorter, Frederic Harrison, from whom we have already quoted, has an admirable passage on "Ruskin as Prophet," [[2]] which, as it is presumably too little known, we take pleasure in embodying in these pages.
"Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates," by Frederic Harrison; London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1900.
"The influence of Ruskin," says Mr. Harrison, "has been part of the great romantic, historical, catholic, and poetic revival of which Scott, Carlyle, Coleridge, Freeman, Newman, and Tennyson in our own country have been leading spirits within the last two generations in England. There is no need to compare him with any one of these as a source of original intellectual force. He owns Scott and Carlyle as his masters, and he might vehemently repudiate certain of the others altogether. His work has been to put this romantic, historical, and genuine sympathy inspired by Scott, Wordsworth, and Carlyle into a new understanding of the arts of form. The philosophic impulse assuredly was not his own. It is a compound of Scott, Carlyle, Dante, and the Bible. The compound is strange, for it makes him talk sometimes like a Puritan father, and sometimes like a Cistercian monk. At times he talks as Flora MacIvor talked to young Waverley; at other times like Thomas Carlyle inditing a Latter-day Pamphlet. But to transfuse into this modern generation of Englishmen this romantic, catholic, historical, and social sympathy as applied to the arts of form, needed gifts that neither Scott, nor Carlyle, nor Newman, nor Tennyson possessed--the eye, if not the hand, of a consummate landscape painter, a torrent of ready eloquence on every imaginable topic, a fierce and desperate courage that feared neither man nor devil, neither failure nor ridicule, and above all things an exquisite tenderness that is akin to St. Francis or St. Vincent de Paul....
"Here is a man who, laboring for fifty years, has scattered broadcast a thousand fine ideas to all who practise the arts, and all who care for art. He has roused in the cultured world an interest in things of art such as a legion of painters and ten royal academies could never have done. He has poured out a torrent of words, some right, some wrong, but such as have raised the level of art into a new world, which have adorned English literature for centuries, and have inspired the English race for generations; he has cast his bread upon the waste and muddy waters with a lavish hand, and has not waited to find it again, though it has been the seed of abundant harvest to others."
Again, speaking of what Ruskin sought to accomplish in the regeneration of modern society, and the reformation of our social ideals, and of that "heroic piece of Quixotism" he founded, "the Guild of St. George," Mr. Harrison remarks:--
"The first life of John Ruskin was the life of a consummate teacher of art and master of style; the second life was the life of priest and evangelist.... Here is the greatest living master [the passage was written while Mr. Ruskin was yet alive] of the English tongue, one of the most splendid lights of our noble literature, one to whom a dozen paths of ambition and power lay open, who had everything that could be offered by genius, fame, wealth, social popularity, and intense sensitiveness to all lovely things--and this man, after thirty years of untiring labor, devotes himself to train, teach, delight, and inspire a band of young men, girls, workmen, children,--all who choose to come around him. He lavishes the whole of his fortune on them; he brings to their door his treasures of art, science, literature, and poetry; he founds and endows museums; he offers these costly and precious collections to the people; he wears out his life in teaching them the elements of art, the elements of manufacture, the elements of science; he shows workmen how to work, girls how to draw, to sing, to play; he gives up to them his wealth, his genius, his peace, his whole life. He is not content with writing books in his study, with enjoying art at home or abroad; he must carry his message into the streets. He gives himself up--not to write beautiful thoughts: he seeks to build up a beautiful world.... When I see this author of 'Modern Painters' and the 'Stones of Venice,' the man who has exhausted almost all that Europe contains of the beautiful, who has thought and spoken of almost every phase of human life, and has entered so deeply into the highest mysteries of the greatest poets--when I see him surrounding himself in his old age with lads and lasses, schoolgirls and workmen, teaching them the elements of science and art, reading to them poems and tales, arranging for them games and holidays, ornaments and dresses, lavishing on these young people his genius and his wealth, his fame and his future--I confess my memory goes back instinctively to a fresco I saw in Italy years ago--was it Luini's?--wherein the Master sat in a crowd of children and forbade them to be removed, saying that 'of such is the kingdom of heaven.'"
With this generous tribute to and appreciation of Ruskin, despite the economic vagaries into which the great critic and teacher of his time fell, we may more confidently approach the busy era of his later and self-sacrificing labors, and with less apology take space to deal--as compactly and intelligently as we can--with some of the more notable of the many books and brochures of the period. Difficult as would be the task, fortunately there is little need to epitomize these works, as many of them are better known, and perhaps more attentively read, than his earlier, bulkier, and more ambitious writings. A few of them lie outside the economic gospel of their apostolic author, and these we will first and briefly deal with. A number of them are instructive and inspiring lay sermons on the mystical union between nature and art, beauty and utility, and their reflex in the reverential homage for the beautiful and the worthy in the mind and character of the English-speaking race. The whole form a great body of fine and thoughtful work, which is as enchaining as its meaning is often profound. The best-known of these lay sermons is: "The Queen of the Air" (1869), a splendid blending of his fancy with the Greek nature-myths of cloud and storm, represented by Athena, goddess of the heavens, of the earth, and of the heart. The parable drawn is that "the air is given us for our life, the rain for our thirst and baptism, the fire for our warmth, the sun for our light, and the earth for our meat and rest." Related to the work is "Ethics of the Dust" (1865), lectures to little housewives on mineralogy and crystallography, nature's work in crystallization being the text for a diatribe against sordid living. "Sesame and Lilies," which belongs also to this period of the writer's work, consists of three addresses, delivered at Manchester and at Dublin, designed specially for young girls, and treating in the main of good and improving literature. The first of them, "Of Kings' Treasuries," deals with the treasures hidden in books, the writings of the world's great men; its sequel, "Of Queens' Gardens," deals with the function and sphere of woman, and, by way of application, with the how and the what to read; the third lecture, on "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," is a discursive but inspiring consideration of what life is and how most successfully to battle with it in the way of our work and of our appointed duty. All three lectures, observes a commentator, "tell men and women of the ideals they should set before them; how to read and to build character under the inspiration of the nobility of the past, fitting one's self for such great society; how to develop noble womanhood; how to bear one's self toward the wonder of life, toward one's work in the world, and toward one's duty to others."
Other lectures and brochures of or about this period are "Hortus Inclusus" (The Enclosed Garden), being "Messages from the Wood to the Garden sent in happy days to two sister ladies," residing at Coniston, and collected in 1887; "Arrows of the Chace," letters on various subjects to newspapers, gathered and edited in 1880; "The Two Paths," lectures on art and its application to Decoration and Manufacture (1859); "Ariadne Florentina" (1873), a monograph on Italian wood and metal engraving; "Aratra Pentelici" (1872), on the elements and principles of sculpture; and "The Eagle's Nest" (1872), on the relation of natural science to art. Still pursuing his delightful methods of interpreting nature and teaching the world instructive lessons, even from the common things of mother earth, we have a series of three eloquent discourses, entitled (1) "Proserpina," studies of Alpine and other wayside flowers, dwelling on the mystery of growth in plants and the tender beauty of their form; (2) "Deucalion," a sort of glorified geological text-book, treating of stones and their life-history, and showing the wearing effect upon them of waves and the action of water; and (3) "Love's Meinie" (1873), a rapture about birds and their feathered plumage, delivered at Eton and at Oxford. This trilogy, dealing with botany, geology, and ornithology, was presented to his audiences with illustrative drawings, representing the flora met with in his travels or found in the neighborhood of his new home in the Lancashire lakes, with sketches of regions, including the characteristics of the soil, in which he had been reared, and talks of the note and habit of all birds that were wont to warble over him their morning song. "The Pleasures of England," the "Harbours of England," and the "Art of England" further treat of his loved native land, the first of these being talks on the pleasures of learning, of faith, and of deed, illustrated by examples drawn from early English history, and the last treating of representative modern English artists, chiefly of the Pre-Raphaelite school. "The Laws of Fésole" (1878) deals with the principles of Florentine draughtsmanship; "St. Mark's Rest," with the art and architecture of Venice; and "Val d'Arno," with early Tuscan art, interspersed with the author's accustomed ethical reflections. "Mornings in Florence," intended for the use of visitors to the art galleries of the beautiful city on the Arno, deals in the true artist-spirit with its famous examples of Christian art, giving prominence here also to the ethical side of the city's history. "In Montibus Sanctis," and "Coeli Enarrant," the one comprising studies of mountain form, and the other of cloud form and their visible causes, though separately published, are only reprints of the author's larger and nobler embodiment of his views on art, in "Modern Painters." "The King of the Golden River," of which we have previously spoken, is a fairy tale of much beauty, which he wrote for the "Fair Maid of Perth" whom he married, and who separated herself from him on the plea of "incompatibility." Playful as is the style of the story, it is not without a moral, on what constitutes true wealth and happiness. "The Crown of Wild Olive" (1866) consists of lectures on work, traffic, and war; the latter lecture, delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution at Woolwich, was also separately published under the title of "The Future of England." The two former, being addressed to working-men, laborers, and traders, discuss economic problems, and set forth tentatively their author's antagonized political ethics, with which, in drawing this essay to a close, we now venture to deal.
After the magnificent work done by Ruskin in art up to his fortieth year, that he should turn, for practically the remainder of his life, to the seemingly vain and profitless task of a social reformer and regenerator of modern society, has to most men been a riddle too elusive and enigmatic to solve. And yet, in his earlier career, had he not himself prepared us for just such a departure as he took in the sixties, for in art was he not equally revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? Moreover, had not Mother Nature endowed him with the gifts of a seer and made him chivalrous as well as intensely sympathetic, while his early training inclined him to be serious, and even ascetic? Nor were the rebuffs he met with throughout his career calculated at this stage to make him court the applause of his fellow-men or be mindful of the world's censure or approval. Nor can one well quarrel with what he had now to say on many a subject, visionary and enthusiast as he always was, and given over to mediaeval views and preachments, and to abounding moral and ethical exhortation. Like Carlyle's, his voice was that of one crying in the wilderness, and yet in the industrial and social condition of Britain at the era there was need of just such appeals for regeneration and reform as Ruskin strenuously uttered, accompanied by indignant rebukes of grossness, vulgarity, and meanness, as manifested in masses of the people. If in his strivings after amelioration he was too denunciatory as well as too radical, we must remember the temper and manner of the man, and recognize how difficult it was in him, or in any iconoclast who scorned modern science as Ruskin scorned it, to reconcile the age of steam and industrial machinery, which he spurned and would have none of, with the views he held of Christianity, morals, and faith. His views on political economy, which he treated neither as an art nor a science, might be perverse and wrong-headed, and his method of adapting prophetic and apostolic principles to the practice of every-day life utterly impracticable; but the virtues he counselled the nation to manifest, and the graces he enjoined of truthfulness, justice, temperance, bravery, and obedience, were qualities needed to be cultivated in his time, with a fuller recognition of and firmer trust in God and His right of sway in the world He had created.
What Ruskin's economic views were, and what his relations to the industrial and social problems of his time, most readers of our author know, are mainly to be found in "Fors Clavigera," a series of letters to working-men, covering the years 1871-84, and in his early essays on political economy, "Unto this Last" (1860), and "Munera Pulveris" (1863). "Unto this Last" appeared in its original form in the pages of the "Cornhill Magazine," then edited by Thackeray, and our author speaks confidently of it as embodying his maturest and worthiest thoughts on social science. The work, which will be found the key to Ruskin's economic gospel, embraces four essays, treating successively of the responsibilities and duties of those called to fill all offices of national trust and service; of the true sources of a nation's riches; of the right distribution of such riches; and of what is meant by the economic terms,--value, wealth, price, and produce. Under these several heads, Ruskin expresses his conviction that co-operation and government are in all things the law of life, while the deadly things are competition and anarchy. Whatever errors the book[[3]] contains--and the author's unconscious arrogance and dogmatism made him blind to them--his views were set forth with his accustomed vigor and eloquence, and in the honest belief that he was more than fundamentally right. It was for such helpful work as this, and what he accomplished in the kindred volume, "Munera Pulveris," which first appeared in "Fraser's Magazine," that Ruskin for the time dropped his revelations in art to let a new world of thought into the "dismal science" of political economy, confound its old-time instructors, and gird at the evils of the age,--the greed, selfishness, and petty bargaining spirit of industrial and commercial life. Nor in conducting such a crusade as this was Ruskin abandoning his old and less controverted gospel of art. He was but carrying into new and barren fields the high ideals he had hitherto counselled his age to emulate and heed, and in his sympathy with labor seeking to bring into its world the comeliness of beauty and the cheer of prosperity, comfort, and happiness. In "Time and Tide" (1867), and more at length in "Fors Clavigera," Ruskin reiterates his message to labor, to get rid of ever-environing misery by realizing what are the true sources of happiness,--pleasure in sincere and honest work, inspired by intelligence, culture, religion, and right living. What he desires for the working-man he desires also for his family, and consequently he urges parents to train their sons and daughters to see and love the beautiful, to cultivate their higher instincts, and call forth and feed their souls. In all this there is much helpful, tonic thought, which the church or the nation, roused to zeal and earnest activity, might fittingly teach, and so advance the material weal of the people, extend the area of public enlightenment and morality, and herald the dawn of a new and higher civilization.
Alluding to the quaint title under which these "Cornhill" essays afterwards appeared,--a title that hints at the gist of the work,--Mr. Ruskin's biographer tells us that the motto was taken from Christ's parable of the husbandman and the laborers: "Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give UNTO THIS LAST even as unto thee."--Matt. xx. 14.
Other aspects of Mr. Ruskin's economic gospel are, unfortunately, not so sane and beneficent. His altruism knows no bounds, as his philanthropy and zeal have but few restraints. After the fashion of his mentor, Carlyle, he is carried away by his humanitarianism and his unreserved acceptance of the doctrine of the equality and brotherhood of man. Hence come his economic heresies in regard to rent and interest, and capital and usury, his denunciations of the division of labor, his Tolstoian impoverishment of himself for the benefit of his fellow-man, and his dictum that the wealth of the nation should be its own, and not accrue to the individual. Hence, also, the wholly ideal state of society he attempted to realize in his communal Guild of St. George, with its rigid government and restraints upon the personal liberty of its members. Ideally beautiful, admittedly, was the plan and scheme of the little state, with its disciplinings, exactions, and devout selective creed. But the age is a practical, unimaginative one, and whatever compacts men make, even for their highest welfare, there are, it is to be feared, few so loyal, tractable, and docile as to place themselves for long under such tutoring and one-patterned, fashioning forms of co-operative living. Into whatever millennial state Ruskin sought to usher his little band of English followers and disciples, one must speak appreciatively of his motives in projecting the scheme, and of the money and labor he personally lavished upon the Utopian project. Reverently also must one speak of the catholic creed to which its members were asked to subscribe: namely, to trust in God, recognize the nobleness of human nature, labor faithfully with one's might, be loyal to one's common country, its laws, and its monarch's or ruler's orders, so far as they are consistent with the higher law of God; while exacting obedience, and a pledge that one will not deceive, either for gain or other motive; will not rob; will not hurt any living creature nor destroy any beautiful thing; and will honor one's own body by proper care for it, for the joy and peace of life. All this is very exemplary and beautiful, and not over-hard to live up to, though the working-men of Sheffield in time wearied of the organization, and the Guild and its noble ideals is now, we believe, but a memory, if we except the art museum and library of the Order taken over and still maintained by the town.
More practical, may we not say, than this imitation of the Florentine arti of the Middle Ages was the Working Men's College, founded in London in the fifties by that other earnest Christian Socialist, F.D. Maurice, in which Ruskin lectured gratuitously, took charge of the drawing classes, and hied off to the country with its members to sketch from nature and otherwise instruct and entertain them. Yet good in many respects came of the Guild of St. George, in the impulse it gave to the revival of the then dormant industries, such as the hand-spinning of linen, hand-weaving of carpets and woollen fabrics, lace-making, wood-carving, and metal-working, besides the stimulus it gave, with the infusion of higher ideals of workmanship, to the decorative arts, and the improvement in the sightliness of factories, and in the homes and surroundings of labor. Here Ruskin's philanthropy and reform zeal showed themselves most worthily in the financial aid he gave in the pulling down, in crowded districts of the British metropolis, of poor tenements, and the building up in their place of clean, attractive, and wholesome habitations. In such benevolences and well-doings, and in this life of renunciation and self-sacrifice, Ruskin spent himself, and made serious inroads into his bodily health and strength, as well as scattered the fortune--about a million dollars--left him by his now deceased father. But this was the manner and character of Ruskin, and this the mode of expressing his love for his fellow-man, which in myriad ways showed itself throughout a long and strenuous career of devotion to high ideals, and of practical, tender help in all good works. In all his philanthropies he was true to his own preachings and counsellings, spending and being spent in the spirit of his Divine Master, his whole soul aglow with reverence and adoration and tender with a profound moral emotion. Besides his rare endowments as a lover of the beautiful, he had that other precious gift, of golden speech, which threw a mantle of loveliness over every book he wrote and perpetual lustre over the domain of letters.
Ruskin's declining years, while hallowed by suffering, were cheered by many tender attentions and unexpected kindnesses, and by the recognition, by many notable public bodies and eminent contemporaries, of his long life of great service and devotion to his kind. In our modern age, from which, in his loved Coniston home, he passed from life Jan. 20, 1900, no one more reverently than he has looked deeper into the mystery of life, thought more concernedly of its problems, shed more passionately and eloquently about him love for the beautiful, or practically and helpfully done more--layman only though he was--for religion and humanity. At his death the nation paid honor to his memory by offering his remains a resting-place in the great fane of England's illustrious dead, Westminster Abbey; but Ruskin had himself otherwise ordered the disposal of his body. "Bury me," he said, "at Coniston." And there, on the fifth day after his falling softly asleep, amid a concourse of loving friends, the earthly tenement of the great art critic and lover of righteousness was laid to rest, his grave strewn with myriad wreaths, garlands, and crosses of beautiful, bright flowers.
Here, after his long, strenuous, militant career, do we leave this inspiring teacher and "consecrated priest of the Ideal," his gentle soul finding rest and peace after the myriad troubles and tumults of life. Still now is the once active, fertile, stimulating mind of the man who so effectively roused his generation from its complacent smugness and indifference in its appreciation of the beautiful, and with ardent boldness challenged established beliefs in art and defied the conventionality and authority of his time. His has been a powerful force in innumerable departments of human thought, and epoch-making the influence he has exerted in giving to the world new ideals of the beautiful and in shaping modern opinion and taste in art. How great is the work he has done, and what a library of stimulating, inspiring books he has left us, comparatively few realize, as they little realize what the age owes to him for his noble activities in well-doing and his many and impressive lessons and influence. In a commonplace, commercial time, how stimulating as well as ardent have been his appeals for sensitiveness of perception in regard to art, and of the tone and spirit in which it ought to be viewed and valued! And with what tender, reverent feeling has he not opened our hearts to compassion and to consideration for the welfare of our fellow-man, and how potent have been his counsellings pointing to the true and abiding sources of pleasure in life! Long must his formative opinions and influence extend, and in the minds of all who think and reflect abiding must be the charm as well as the power of his imaginative, glowing thought. That he met with opposition and hostility in his day was but the price to be paid for the disturbing, correcting, disciplining, yet inspiring part he played in the work he so impulsively set himself to do. One smiles now at the epithets of scorn and contumely once hurled at him, at the man who, little understood as he has been, has done so much to uplift and purify the thought of his time and do battle with the forces opposed to reform and arrayed against those of light and truth. And how great were the weapons with which he was armed, and how varied as well as marvellous the talents he brought into play in the onslaught upon shallowness, convention, and ignorance! Truly, he has done much for his time, and great has been the gain Modern Art has won from his inspiring lessons and thought. The coming of such a man, and at the time that was his, one cannot help reflecting, was one of the providences of an overruling Power, and adequately to estimate his influence and work, and the tone and temper in which he wrought, we have but to consider what the age would have been, in countless departments of thought and activity, had the century now passed possessed no John Ruskin.
AUTHORITIES.
Collingwood, W. G. Life of Ruskin.
Harrison, Frederic. Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Estimates.
Mather, Marshall. John Ruskin, his Life and Teaching.
Bayne, Peter. Lessons from my Masters--Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.
Japp, Alex. H. Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.
Spielmann, M.H. John Ruskin.
Waldstein, Charles. Work of John Ruskin.
Ward, May Alden. Prophets of the Nineteenth Century: Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tolstoi.
Bates, Herbert. Annotated edition, with Introduction, of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" and "The King of the Golden River."
Ruskin's "Praeterita": An Autobiography.
HERBERT SPENCER.
1820-
THE EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY.
BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.
Herbert Spencer occupies a unique place in the history of human thought, because he has been the first to attempt the construction of a philosophical system in harmony with the theory of Evolution and with the results of modern science. To his contemporaries he is known almost exclusively as the author of the colossal work which he has chosen to call the "Synthetic Philosophy." Concerning his personality very little information has been published, and it is doubtful whether he will deem it worth while to leave behind him the materials for a detailed biography. About his private life we know even less than we know about that of Kant. The very few facts obtainable may be summed up in a score of sentences.