For the enjoyment of art it is first of all necessary to have a full belly.
May I inquire, too, of any painter, if such chances to light on these pages, whether he would consider it likely to encourage a love of art merely to hang a picture on a wall? whether he has not known even well educated and wealthy people who possessed scores of valuable pictures without the least love of art? whether, in short, even he, a painter of pictures, considered pictures the whole end and aim of art?
Is not art rather in the man than on the wall?
Once now and then I have been into the cottages of farm labourers (who had the good fortune to possess security of tenure) and found old oak furniture; curious grotesque crockery, generally much coloured—the favourite colour red; ancient brazen-faced upright clocks ticking slowly, as the stars go slowly past in the quiet hours of night; odd things on the mantelpiece; an old gun with brass fittings, polished brass ornaments; two or three old books with leather bindings; on the walls quaint smoke-tinted pictures threescore years old.
Outside, trees in the garden—plums, pears, damsons—trees planted by the owner for fruit and shade, but mostly for solace, since it is a pleasant thing to see a tree grow. These people, having no fear of being turned out of doors, had accumulated such treasures, a chair at a time, making the interior homelike. And out of doors they had planted trees; without love of trees, I doubt if there be any art. Of art itself in itself they had had no thought; not one had ever tried to draw or paint. They had coloured their strips of flower-garden or bordering with bright yellow flowers; that was all the paint they knew.
Yet I think this home-life in itself was something like true art. There was a sense of the fitness of things, and good instinctive taste in the selection of interior fittings, furniture, and even of colour.
Oak is our national wood, old oak, dark and deep-shaded—Rembrandt oak—oak is part of our national art. Brass polishes and gleams in sunlight through the window, or glows in the sparkle from winter’s fire. It sets off the black oak. Red-coloured chinaware (perhaps it is a shade of pink) is gay and bright under low-pitched ceilings with dark wood beams and no white ceiling. Yellow flowers light up the brown mould. Altogether a realistic picture painted in actual dark oak, actual brass, actual red china, and actual yellow flowers.
Here then there was art in the man. Can you put that taste in by hanging a picture on the wall? Letitia’s pictures were chiefly of the pre-Raphaelite ecclesiastical order—saints, saints’ lives and deaths, such as were painted in the fourteenth century, and with which life at the present day has no sort of sympathy.
There was not a cottage-tenant on the estate of Cornleigh Cornleigh who could call his cottage his own securely for more than six months. How then was it possible for taste to grow up, or to exercise itself if it was there?
There can be no art in a people who know that at any moment they may be thrust out of doors. Art is of slow growth.
Up in the north they say there is a district where the labourers spend their idle hours in cutting out and sticking together fiddles. I do not care twopence for a fiddle as a fiddle; but still I think if a labouring man coming home from plough, and exposure to rough wind, and living on coarse fare, can still have spirit enough left to sit down and patiently carve out bits of maple wood and fit them together into a complete and tunable fiddle, then he must have within him some of the true idea of art, and that fiddle is in itself a work of art.
Nothing of the sort will ever be possible in our cottage homes till the people in them know that they can live therein as long as they please provided they pay the rent, and are not liable to be ordered off into the next county or anywhere because they have displeased someone.
However, the movement in Maasbury had proved a social success; it was already well patronized; there were many amateurs up in the gallery who had begun to study for the honour of exhibiting in the house of Cornleigh Cornleigh.
Looking down upon the crowd in the hall from the gallery, it did not appear to care much for art—which is quiet. The hubbub increased, and the jostling was renewed at short intervals; the meeting was impatient and wanted things to begin.
The first speakers in nowise concern us; they were heard sometimes with cheers, and now and then with hoots; they explained the general organization of the Society.
XXIII
At length Cornleigh Cornleigh rose and said:
“Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen—Upon this very important occasion, I—I—hum—ha [‘think,’ whispered the family solicitor behind him]—I think—the—ah—the [‘sympathies,’ whisper] sympathies of all right-minded persons, to whichever party they [hear, hear!—hoo, hoo! ‘Hoo, hoo!’ will do for groans—modern meetings do not groan, they ‘hoo, hoo!’] There is no doubt that in the future of this great country [hear, hear!]—textile fabrics very important—commercial interest—depend on knowledge of colour—education of the eye—practical value—I—I think—hum—ha—ha—that is [‘competition,’ whisper]—enable us to compete successfully with foreign artists, traders—manufacturers—they should be able to choose the right form, the right hue, and the right place. [Hear, hear!] Connection between agriculture and commerce now—now [‘admitted,’ whisper]—admitted, and the depression of farming [hear, hear!] seen to be injurious, and to—to [‘react,’ whisper]—react upon trade as in this town no doubt [hear, hear! from the tradesmen]—most sincerely hope the worst time past—the spending classes restricted—money—circulation, disastrous—disastrous to working men. [Hoo, hoo, hoo!] The object of
