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Page 8
You see, sirs, we cannot quite imagine it; any more, perhaps, than
our forefathers of ancient London, living in the pretty, carefully
whitened houses, with the famous church and its huge spire rising
above them,--than they, passing about the fair gardens running down
to the broad river, could have imagined a whole county or more
covered over with hideous hovels, big, middle-sized, and little,
which should one day be called London.
Sirs, I say that this dead blank of the arts that I more than dread
is difficult even now to imagine; yet I fear that I must say that if
it does not come about, it will be owing to some turn of events
which we cannot at present foresee: but I hold that if it does
happen, it will only last for a time, that it will be but a burning
up of the gathered weeds, so that the field may bear more
abundantly. I hold that men would wake up after a while, and look
round and find the dulness unbearable, and begin once more
inventing, imitating, and imagining, as in earlier days.
That faith comforts me, and I can say calmly if the blank space must
happen, it must, and amidst its darkness the new seed must sprout.
So it has been before: first comes birth, and hope scarcely
conscious of itself; then the flower and fruit of mastery, with hope
more than conscious enough, passing into insolence, as decay follows
ripeness; and then--the new birth again.
Meantime it is the plain duty of all who look seriously on the arts
to do their best to save the world from what at the best will be a
loss, the result of ignorance and unwisdom; to prevent, in fact,
that most discouraging of all changes, the supplying the place of an
extinct brutality by a new one; nay, even if those who really care
for the arts are so weak and few that they can do nothing else, it
may be their business to keep alive some tradition, some memory of
the past, so that the new life when it comes may not waste itself
more than enough in fashioning wholly new forms for its new spirit.
To what side then shall those turn for help, who really understand
the gain of a great art in the world, and the loss of peace and good
life that must follow from the lack of it? I think that they must
begin by acknowledging that the ancient art, the art of unconscious
intelligence, as one should call it, which began without a date, at
least so long ago as those strange and masterly scratchings on
mammoth-bones and the like found but the other day in the drift--
that this art of unconscious intelligence is all but dead; that what
little of it is left lingers among half-civilised nations, and is
growing coarser, feebler, less intelligent year by year; nay, it is
mostly at the mercy of some commercial accident, such as the arrival
of a few shiploads of European dye-stuffs or a few dozen orders from
European merchants: this they must recognise, and must hope to see
in time its place filled by a new art of conscious intelligence, the
birth of wiser, simpler, freer ways of life than the world leads
now, than the world has ever led.
I said, TO SEE this in time; I do not mean to say that our own eyes
will look upon it: it may be so far off, as indeed it seems to
some, that many would scarcely think it worth while thinking of:
but there are some of us who cannot turn our faces to the wall, or
sit deedless because our hope seems somewhat dim; and, indeed, I
think that while the signs of the last decay of the old art with all
the evils that must follow in its train are only too obvious about
us, so on the other hand there are not wanting signs of the new dawn
beyond that possible night of the arts, of which I have before
spoken; this sign chiefly, that there are some few at least who are
heartily discontented with things as they are, and crave for
something better, or at least some promise of it--this best of
signs: for I suppose that if some half-dozen men at any time
earnestly set their hearts on something coming about which is not
discordant with nature, it will come to pass one day or other;
because it is not by accident that an idea comes into the heads of a
few; rather they are pushed on, and forced to speak or act by
something stirring in the heart of the world which would otherwise
be left without expression.
By what means then shall those work who long for reform in the arts,
and who shall they seek to kindle into eager desire for possession
of beauty, and better still, for the development of the faculty that
creates beauty?
People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeed
and flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I
confess annoys me; for they mean by it that I should spend one day
over my work to two days in trying to convince rich, and supposed
influential people, that they care very much for what they really do
not care in the least, so that it may happen according to the
proverb: Bell-wether took the leap, and we all went over. Well,
such advisers are right if they are content with the thing lasting
but a little while; say till you can make a little money--if you
don't get pinched by the door shutting too quickly: otherwise they
are wrong: the people they are thinking of have too many strings to
their bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing that
fails, for it to be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not
their fault, they cannot help it, but they have no chance of
spending time enough over the arts to know anything practical of
them, and they must of necessity be in the hands of those who spend
their time in pushing fashion this way and that for their own
advantage.
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