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Page 33
For I must tell you that unless you are resolved to have good and
rational architecture, it is, once again, useless your thinking
about art at all.
I have spoken of the popular arts, but they might all be summed up
in that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that great
whole, and the art of house-building begins it all: if we did not
know how to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold, nor silver, nor
silk; and no pigments to paint with, but half-a-dozen ochres and
umbers, we might yet frame a worthy art that would lead to
everything, if we had but timber, stone, and lime, and a few cutting
tools to make these common things not only shelter us from wind and
weather, but also express the thoughts and aspirations that stir in
us.
Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier
men: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed,
the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.
Now I do not think the greatest of optimists would deny that, taking
us one and all, we are at present housed in a perfectly shameful
way, and since the greatest part of us have to live in houses
already built for us, it must be admitted that it is rather hard to
know what to do, beyond waiting till they tumble about our ears.
Only we must not lay the fault upon the builders, as some people
seem inclined to do: they are our very humble servants, and will
build what we ask for; remember, that rich men are not obliged to
live in ugly houses, and yet you see they do; which the builders may
be well excused for taking as a sign of what is wanted.
Well, the point is, we must do what we can, and make people
understand what we want them to do for us, by letting them see what
we do for ourselves.
Hitherto, judging us by that standard, the builders may well say,
that we want the pretence of a thing rather than the thing itself;
that we want a show of petty luxury if we are unrich, a show of
insulting stupidity if we are rich: and they are quite clear that
as a rule we want to get something that shall look as if it cost
twice as much as it really did.
You cannot have Architecture on those terms: simplicity and
solidity are the very first requisites of it: just think if it is
not so: How we please ourselves with an old building by thinking of
all the generations of men that have passed through it! do we not
remember how it has received their joy, and borne their sorrow, and
not even their folly has left sourness upon it? it still looks as
kind to us as it did to them. And the converse of this we ought to
feel when we look at a newly-built house if it were as it should be:
we should feel a pleasure in thinking how he who had built it had
left a piece of his soul behind him to greet the new-comers one
after another long and long after he was gone:- but what sentiment
can an ordinary modern house move in us, or what thought--save a
hope that we may speedily forget its base ugliness?
But if you ask me how we are to pay for this solidity and extra
expense, that seems to me a reasonable question; for you must
dismiss at once as a delusion the hope that has been sometimes
cherished, that you can have a building which is a work of art, and
is therefore above all things properly built, at the same price as a
building which only pretends to be this: never forget when people
talk about cheap art in general, by the way, that all art costs
time, trouble, and thought, and that money is only a counter to
represent these things.
However, I must try to answer the question I have supposed put, how
are we to pay for decent houses?
It seems to me that, by a great piece of good luck, the way to pay
for them is by doing that which alone can produce popular art among
us: living a simple life, I mean. Once more I say that the
greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.
When you hear of the luxuries of the ancients, you must remember
that they were not like our luxuries, they were rather indulgence in
pieces of extravagant folly than what we to-day call luxury; which
perhaps you would rather call comfort: well I accept the word, and
say that a Greek or Roman of the luxurious time would stare
astonished could he be brought back again, and shown the comforts of
a well-to-do middle-class house.
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