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Page 65
I feel sure that many a man is longing to set his hand to this if he
only durst; I believe that there are simple people who think that
they are dull to art, and who are really only perplexed and wearied
by finery and rubbish: if not from these, 'tis at least from the
children of these that we may look for the beginnings of the
building up of the art that is to be.
Meanwhile, I say, till the beginning of new construction is obvious,
let us be at least destructive of the sham art: it is full surely
one of the curses of modern life, that if people have not time and
eyes to discern or money to buy the real object of their desire,
they must needs have its mechanical substitute. On this lazy and
cowardly habit feeds and grows and flourishes mechanical toil and
all the slavery of mind and body it brings with it: from this
stupidity are born the itch of the public to over-reach the
tradesmen they deal with, the determination (usually successful) of
the tradesmen to over-reach them, and all the mockery and flouting
that has been cast of late (not without reason) on the British
tradesman and the British workman,--men just as honest as ourselves,
if we would not compel them to cheat us, and reward them for doing
it.
Now if the public knew anything of art, that is excellence in things
made by man, they would not abide the shams of it; and if the real
thing were not to be had, they would learn to do without, nor think
their gentility injured by the forbearance.
Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very
foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and
the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a
grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always
working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed;
which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman
of those two dwellings?
So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to
hate sham art and reject it. It is not so much because the wretched
thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it
from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols
of the poison that lies within them: look through them and see all
that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour,
and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first,-
-and all this for trifles that no man really needs!
Learn to do without; there is virtue in those words; a force that
rightly used would choke both demand and supply of Mechanical Toil:
would make it stick to its last: the making of machines.
And then from simplicity of life would rise up the longing for
beauty, which cannot yet be dead in men's souls, and we know that
nothing can satisfy that demand but Intelligent work rising
gradually into Imaginative work; which will turn all 'operatives'
into workmen, into artists, into men.
Now, I have been trying to show you how the hurry of modern
Civilisation, accompanied by the tyrannous Organisation of labour
which was a necessity to the full development of Competitive
Commerce, has taken from the people at large, gentle and simple, the
eyes to discern and the hands to fashion that popular art which was
once the chief solace and joy of the world: I have asked you to
think of that as no light matter, but a grievous mishap: I have
prayed you to strive to remedy this evil: first by guarding
jealously what is left, and by trying earnestly to win back what is
lost of the Fairness of the Earth; and next by rejecting luxury,
that you may embrace art, if you can, or if indeed you in your short
lives cannot learn what art means, that you may at least live a
simple life fit for men.
And in all I have been saying, what I have been really urging on you
is this--Reverence for the life of Man upon the Earth: let the past
be past, every whit of it that is not still living in us: let the
dead bury their dead, but let us turn to the living, and with
boundless courage and what hope we may, refuse to let the Earth be
joyless in the days to come.
What lies before us of hope or fear for this? Well, let us remember
that those past days whose art was so worthy, did nevertheless
forget much of what was due to the Life of Man upon the Earth; and
so belike it was to revenge this neglect that art was delivered to
our hands for maiming: to us, who were blinded by our eager chase
of those things which our forefathers had neglected, and by the
chase of other things which seemed revealed to us on our hurried
way, not seldom, it may be for our beguiling.
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