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Page 54
No, no, it can never be: believe me, if it were otherwise possible
that it should be an enduring condition of humanity that there must
be one class utterly refined and another utterly brutal, art would
bar the way and forbid the monstrosity to exist:- such refinement
would have to do as well as it might without the aid of Art: it may
be she will die, but it cannot be that she will live the slave of
the rich, and the token of the enduring slavery of the poor. If the
life of the world is to be brutalised by her death, the rich must
share that brutalisation with the poor.
I know that there are people of good-will now, as there have been in
all ages, who have conceived of art as going hand in hand with
luxury, nay, as being much the same thing; but it is an idea false
from the root up, and most hurtful to art, as I could demonstrate to
you by many examples if I had time, lacking which I will only meet
it with one, which I hope will be enough.
We are here in the richest city of the richest country of the
richest age of the world: no luxury of time past can compare with
our luxury; and yet if you could clear your eyes from habitual
blindness you would have to confess that there is no crime against
art, no ugliness, no vulgarity which is not shared with perfect
fairness and equality between the modern hovels of Bethnal Green and
the modern palaces of the West End: and then if you looked at the
matter deeply and seriously you would not regret it, but rejoice at
it, and as you went past some notable example of the aforesaid
palaces you would exult indeed as you said, 'So that is all that
luxury and money can do for refinement.'
For the rest, if of late there has been any change for the better in
the prospects of the arts; if there has been a struggle both to
throw off the chains of dead and powerless tradition, and to
understand the thoughts and aspirations of those among whom those
traditions were once alive powerful and beneficent; if there has
been abroad any spirit of resistance to the flood of sordid ugliness
that modern civilisation has created to make modern civilisation
miserable: in a word, if any of us have had the courage to be
discontented that art seems dying, and to hope for her new birth, it
is because others have been discontented and hopeful in other
matters than the arts; I believe most sincerely that the steady
progress of those whom the stupidity of language forces me to call
the lower classes in material, political, and social condition, has
been our real help in all that we have been able to do or to hope,
although both the helpers and the helped have been mostly
unconscious of it.
It is indeed in this belief, the belief in the beneficent progress
of civilisation, that I venture to face you and to entreat you to
strive to enter into the real meaning of the arts, which are surely
the expression of reverence for nature, and the crown of nature, the
life of man upon the earth.
With this intent in view I may, I think, hope to move you, I do not
say to agree to all I urge upon you, yet at least to think the
matter worth thinking about; and if you once do that, I believe I
shall have won you. Maybe indeed that many things which I think
beautiful you will deem of small account; nay, that even some things
I think base and ugly will not vex your eyes or your minds: but one
thing I know you will none of you like to plead guilty to; blindness
to the natural beauty of the earth; and of that beauty art is the
only possible guardian.
No one of you can fail to know what neglect of art has done to this
great treasure of mankind: the earth which was beautiful before man
lived on it, which for many ages grew in beauty as men grew in
numbers and power, is now growing uglier day by day, and there the
swiftest where civilisation is the mightiest: this is quite
certain; no one can deny it: are you contented that it should be
so?
Surely there must be few of us to whom this degrading change has not
been brought home personally. I think you will most of you
understand me but too well when I ask you to remember the pang of
dismay that comes on us when we revisit some spot of country which
has been specially sympathetic to us in times past; which has
refreshed us after toil, or soothed us after trouble; but where now
as we turn the corner of the road or crown the hill's brow we can
see first the inevitable blue slate roof, and then the blotched mud-
coloured stucco, or ill-built wall of ill-made bricks of the new
buildings; then as we come nearer and see the arid and pretentious
little gardens, and cast-iron horrors of railings, and miseries of
squalid out-houses breaking through the sweet meadows and abundant
hedge-rows of our old quiet hamlet, do not our hearts sink within
us, and are we not troubled with a perplexity not altogether
selfish, when we think what a little bit of carelessness it takes to
destroy a world of pleasure and delight, which now whatever happens
can never be recovered?
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