Milton's Cottage and A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes

 

Milton’s Cottage is the only surviving home of the visionary poet, parliamentarian and pamphleteer John Milton. He came to the cottage to escape the Great Plague of 1665, and complete his epic masterpiece Paradise Lost.

Milton came to Chalfont St. Giles in 1665, where a house had been secured for his family by Milton’s friend and former pupil, Thomas Ellwood – who famously referred to it as “that pretty box in St Giles Chalfonte.”

Although he lived here for less than 2 years, Milton’s Cottage was an important place in the writer’s life. It was here that he completed Paradise Lost and was inspired to write its sequel, Paradise Regained – the late, great works that ensured his enduring poetic legacy, and universal recognition as one of the world’s greatest writers.

Milton’s Cottage was secured for the nation after a public appeal to prevent it being dismantled and moved to the USA. Queen Victoria opened the subscription list to purchase of Milton’s Cottage in 1887 and it has been open to the public ever since – making it one of the oldest writer’s house museums in the world.

I visited to see A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes, a solo exhibition by Richard Kenton Webb which is at Milton’s Cottage from 3 July – 8 September 2024. 

This exhibition of drawings has been organised as we approach the 350th anniversary of Milton’s death, Seen in public for the first time, A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes is displayed throughout the historic rooms of Milton’s only surviving residence. Shown alongside a 1st edition of Milton’s final poems, published together in 1671, they speak to the place where he completed his epic masterpiece, Paradise Lost, and was inspired to write Paradise Regain’d.

In both Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton reflects on the Restoration of the Monarchy and the loss of the English republic, for which he had put aside his first love, poetry, to serve as Cromwell’s spin doctor. Milton’s rich verses, his vision of spirituality, and the forces of good and evil provide a framework for Webb’s own visual meditations into the act of creation.

Like Milton’s final poems, which continually reference and comment on each other as well as on their epic predecessor, Paradise Lost, this exhibition forms a set with Webb’s earlier works. In 2021 he completed his 10 year project A Conversation with Milton’s Paradise Lost – 128 drawings, 40 paintings and 12 relief prints. This led to a commission of 12 drawings in response to Milton’s pastoral elegy, Lycidas, for the Milton Society of America, and a chapter in Milton Across Borders and Media, published by Oxford University Press.

Responding to Milton’s universal themes of creation, destruction, temptation, love and loss, Webb’s drawings offer a way to navigate Milton’s poetry for contemporary audiences. They continue the museum’s practice of displaying contemporary art alongside its permanent collection to engage audiences with Milton’s legacy in new ways.

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John Milton - Paradise Regain'd.