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Page 32
Well, and as to the smoke Act itself: I don't know what heed you
pay to it in Birmingham, {7} but I have seen myself what heed is
paid to it in other places; Bradford for instance: though close by
them at Saltaire they have an example which I should have thought
might have shamed them; for the huge chimney there which serves the
acres of weaving and spinning sheds of Sir Titus Salt and his
brothers is as guiltless of smoke as an ordinary kitchen chimney.
Or Manchester: a gentleman of that city told me that the smoke Act
was a mere dead letter there: well, they buy pictures in Manchester
and profess to wish to further the arts: but you see it must be
idle pretence as far as their rich people are concerned: they only
want to talk about it, and have themselves talked of.
I don't know what you are doing about this matter here; but you must
forgive my saying, that unless you are beginning to think of some
way of dealing with it, you are not beginning yet to pave your way
to success in the arts.
Well, I have spoken of a huge nuisance, which is a type of the worst
nuisances of what an ill-tempered man might be excused for calling
the Century of Nuisances, rather than the Century of Commerce. I
will now leave it to the consciences of the rich and influential
among us, and speak of a minor nuisance which it is in the power of
every one of us to abate, and which, small as it is, is so
vexatious, that if I can prevail on a score of you to take heed to
it by what I am saying, I shall think my evening's work a good one.
Sandwich-papers I mean--of course you laugh: but come now, don't
you, civilised as you are in Birmingham, leave them all about the
Lickey hills and your public gardens and the like? If you don't I
really scarcely know with what words to praise you. When we
Londoners go to enjoy ourselves at Hampton Court, for instance, we
take special good care to let everybody know that we have had
something to eat: so that the park just outside the gates (and a
beautiful place it is) looks as if it had been snowing dirty paper.
I really think you might promise me one and all who are here present
to have done with this sluttish habit, which is the type of many
another in its way, just as the smoke nuisance is. I mean such
things as scrawling one's name on monuments, tearing down tree
boughs, and the like.
I suppose 'tis early days in the revival of the arts to express
one's disgust at the daily increasing hideousness of the posters
with which all our towns are daubed. Still we ought to be disgusted
at such horrors, and I think make up our minds never to buy any of
the articles so advertised. I can't believe they can be worth much
if they need all that shouting to sell them.
Again, I must ask what do you do with the trees on a site that is
going to be built over? do you try to save them, to adapt your
houses at all to them? do you understand what treasures they are in
a town or a suburb? or what a relief they will be to the hideous
dog-holes which (forgive me!) you are probably going to build in
their places? I ask this anxiously, and with grief in my soul, for
in London and its suburbs we always {8} begin by clearing a site
till it is as bare as the pavement: I really think that almost
anybody would have been shocked, if I could have shown him some of
the trees that have been wantonly murdered in the suburb in which I
live (Hammersmith to wit), amongst them some of those magnificent
cedars, for which we along the river used to be famous once.
But here again see how helpless those are who care about art or
nature amidst the hurry of the Century of Commerce.
Pray do not forget, that any one who cuts down a tree wantonly or
carelessly, especially in a great town or its suburbs, need make no
pretence of caring about art.
What else can we do to help to educate ourselves and others in the
path of art, to be on the road to attaining an ART MADE BY THE
PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE AS A JOY TO THE MAKER AND THE USER?
Why, having got to understand something of what art was, having got
to look upon its ancient monuments as friends that can tell us
something of times bygone, and whose faces we do not wish to alter,
even though they be worn by time and grief: having got to spend
money and trouble upon matters of decency, great and little; having
made it clear that we really do care about nature even in the
suburbs of a big town--having got so far, we shall begin to think of
the houses in which we live.
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