As We Are and As We May Be - Walter Besant (most recommended books txt) 📗

a poor place; there are whole districts which are full of villa residences as good as any in the southern suburb; there are many people who are wealthy; but all the wealth and all the Art enthusiasm of the place will not bring more than forty every week to pay their sixpence. As for copying the pictures, I do not know if any facilities are afforded for the purpose, but I have never seen anyone in the place copying at all.

The throng of visitors on free days may partly be explained on other grounds than the love of Art. It is a place where one can pleasantly lounge, or sit down to rest, or lazily look at pleasant things, or talk with one's friends, or take refuge from bad weather. This is as it should be; the place is regarded as a pleasant place. Yet the number of visitors has fallen off. In the first year of its existence nearly a million entered the gates; four years later an equal number was registered; for the last three years the number has fallen to less than half a million. Its popularity, therefore, is on the decline.

It is, again, a great place for children. They are sent here just as they are sent to the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum, in order to be out of the way. You will always see children in these places, strolling listlessly among the rooms and corridors. Once, for instance, on a certain Easter Monday, I encountered, in the South Kensington Museum, a miserable little pair, who were crying in a corner by themselves. Beside the cases full of splendid embroideries and golden lace, among which they had strayed, they looked curiously incongruous, and somewhat like the unfortunate pair led to their destruction by the wicked uncle. They had, in fact, been sent to the museum by their mother, with a piece of bread-and-butter for their dinner, and told to stay there all day long. By this time the bread-and-butter had long since been eaten up, and they were hungry again, and there was a long afternoon before them. What to these hungry children would have been a whole Field of the Cloth of Gold? We must, therefore, make very large deductions indeed when we consider the popularity of Bethnal Green. Doubtless it is pleasant to read the stories of the pictures; but the light, the warmth, the society of the place are also pleasant. And as for Art education, why, as none is given, so none is desired.

I have dwelt upon Bethnal Green Museum at some length, not because I wished to attack the place, but because it seems to me an example of what ought not to be done, and because it illustrates most admirably two propositions which I have to offer. These are--(1) That the lower classes have no instinctive desire for Art; (2) that they will not teach themselves.

We may also learn from considering what this museum is what an educational and popular museum ought to be; and to this I will immediately return. Meantime, let us go on to consider a few minor agencies at work in the East of London, directly or indirectly working in favour of Art. And, first, I should like to call attention to the annual exhibition of pictures which the indefatigable Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel--the Rev. Samuel Barnett--gets together every Easter for his people. The point is not so much that he holds this exhibition as that he engages the services of volunteer lecturers, who go round the show with the visitors and explain the pictures, so that they may learn what it is they should admire and something of what they should look for in a drawing or painting. In other words, Mr. Barnett's visitors are instructed in the first elements of Art criticism. There are, next, certain institutes, educational and social, such as the Bow and Bromley and the Beaumont, which might be used to advantage for Art purposes. Then there are the Church organizations, with their services, their clubs, their social, gatherings, and their schools; there are the chapels, each with its own set of similar institutions; there are the working men's clubs, which might also lend themselves and their rooms for the development of Art; there are such societies as the Kyrle Society, which give free concerts of good music, and are therefore already working for us; lastly, there are the schools of Art--there are five in East London, working under the South Kensington Department. All these are agencies which either are already working in the interests of Art, or could be easily induced to do so.

To sum up, at the exhibition of the Bethnal Green Museum the people walk round the pictures, are pleased to read their stories, and go away; at the concerts they listen, are satisfied, and go away; at the readings and recitations they applaud, and go away. They are not, in fact, stimulated by these exhibitions and performances in the slightest degree to draw, paint, carve, play an instrument, sing, recite, or act for themselves. But observe that directly they form clubs of their own, although they may develop many reprehensible tendencies, and especially that of gambling, they do at once begin to act, sing, recite, and dance for themselves. What we want them to do, then, is to begin for themselves, or to fall in willingly with those who begin for them, the pursuit of Art in its more difficult and higher branches. What we desire is that they should realize what we know, that to teach a lad or a girl one of these Fine Arts is to confer upon him an inestimable boon; that no life can be wholly unhappy which is cheered by the power of playing an instrument, dancing, painting, carving, modelling, singing, making fiction, or writing poetry, that it is not necessary to do these things so well as to be able to live by them; but that every man who practises one of these arts is, during his work, drawn out of himself and away from the bad conditions of his life. If, I say, the people can be got to understand something of this, the rest will be easy. A few examples in their midst would be enough to show them that it wants little to be an artist, that the practice of Art is a lifelong delight, and that in the exercise and improvement of the faculties of observation, comparison, and selection, in the daily consideration of beauty in its various forms, the years roll by easily and are spent in a continual dream of happiness. You know that it has been observed especially of actors, that they never grow old. The thing is true with artists of every kind--they never grow old. Their hair may become gray and may fall off, they may be afflicted with the same weaknesses as other men, but their hearts remain always young to the very end. But this is not an inducement, I am afraid, that we can put forth in an appeal to the people to follow Art. I am sure, moreover, that it is the desire of all to include the encouragement of every kind of Art, not that of drawing and painting only. We wish that every boy and every girl shall learn something--and it matters little whether we make him draw, design, paint, decorate, carve, work in brass or leather, whether we make him a musician, a painter, a sculptor, a poet, or a novelist, provided he be instructed in the true principles of Art. Imagine, if you can, a time when in every family of boys and girls one shall be a musician, and another a carver of wood, and a third a painter; when every home shall be full of artistic and beautiful things, and the Present ugliness be only remembered as a kind of bad dream. This may appear to some impossible, but it is, on the other hand, very possible and sure to come in the immediate future. It is true that, as a nation, we are not artistic, but we might change our character in a single generation. It has taken less than a single generation to develop the enormous increase of Art which we now see around us in the upper classes. Think of such a thing as house decoration and furniture. We have to extend this development into regions where it is as yet unfelt, and among a class which have, as yet, shown no willingness or desire for such extension.

All this has been said by way of apology for the practical scheme which I venture now to lay before you. You have already heard from Mr. Leland's own lips what has been for five years his work in Philadelphia, you have heard how he has brought the small arts into hundreds of homes, and has given purpose and brightness to hundreds of lives. I have followed this work of his from the beginning with the greatest interest. Before he began it, he told me what he was going to try, and how he meant to try. But I think that, courageous and self-reliant as he is, he did not and could not, at tho outset, anticipate such a magnificent success as he has obtained. You have also heard something of the society called the Cottage Arts Association, founded by Mrs. Jebb, by which the villagers are taught some of the minor arts.

This Association is, I am convinced, going to do a great work, and I am very glad to be able to read you Mrs. Jebb's own testimony, the fruit of her long experience. She says, 'We must give the people--children of course included--opportunities of unofficial intercourse with those who already love Art, and who can help them to see and to discriminate. We must teach them to use their own hands and eyes in doing actual Art work; even if the work done does not count for much, it will develop their observation and quicken their appreciation in a way which I believe nothing else will do--no mere looking or explaining. They must be helped to make their own homes and the things they use beautiful. They must not be helped only to learn to do Art work, but also given ideas as to its application, shown how and where to get materials, etc. Further, it has been resolved that prizes shall be given to the pupils for the best copies drawn, modelled, carved, or repousse of the casts and designs circulated among the various classes.'

I propose, therefore, that, with such modifications as suit our own way of working, we should initiate on a more extended scale the example set us by Mrs. Jebb and Mr. Leland. I think that it would not be difficult, while retaining the machinery and the help afforded by the South Kensington Department in painting and drawing, to establish local clubs, classes, and societies, or, which I think much better, a central society with local branches, either for the whole of England or for each county or for each great city, for the purpose of teaching, encouraging, and advancing all the Fine Arts, both small and great. We do the whole of our collective work in this country by means of societies: it is an Englishman's instinct, if he ardently desires to bring about a thing, to recognise that, though he cannot get what he wants by his own effort, he may get it by associating other people with him and forming a society. Everything is done by societies. One need not, therefore, make any apology for desiring to see another society established. That of which I dream would be, to begin with, independent of all politics, controversies, or theories whatever; it would not be a society requiring an immense income--in fact, with a