exactly interprets the dejection and oppression certain to fall upon
one who seriously considers and personally investigates, however
superficially, the condition of the poor in great cities. He writes
from Philpott Street, Commercial Road, East London, and he says: 'My
wits are getting blunted by the monotony and ugliness of the place. I
can almost imagine the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing
anything but the meanest and vilest of men and man's work, and of
complete exclusion from the sight of God's works.' The very
exaggeration of these words shows the profound dejection of the
writer, at a moment when his resolution to continue living in a place
where there was neither nature nor art, nor beauty anywhere, weighed
upon him like a penal sentence, so that the vileness of the
surroundings entered into his soul and made him feel as if the men and
women in the place, as well as their works, were all alike, mean,
vile, and sordid. Edward Denison wrote these words seventeen years
ago. The place in which he lived is still ugly and monotonous, a small
cross-street leading from the back of the London Hospital into the
Commercial Road, about as far from green fields and parks or gardens
as can be found anywhere in London; there are still a good many of the
vilest of man's works carried on in the neighbourhood, especially the
making of clothes for Government contractors, and the making of shirts
for private sweaters. But something has been attempted since Denison
came here--the pioneer of a great invasion. Many others have followed
his example, and are now, like him, living among the people. Clubs
have been established, concerts and readings have been given, and
excursions into the country, convalescent homes and a thousand
different things have grown up for the amelioration of the poor.
Better than all, there are now thousands of educated and cultivated
men and women who are perpetually considering how existing evils may
be remedied and new evils prevented. With philanthropic efforts, with
the social questions connected with them, I have now nothing to do. We
are at present only concerned with a question of Art: we are to
inquire how the love and desire for Art may be introduced and
developed, and to ask what has already been attempted In this
direction.
I would first desire to explain that I know absolutely nothing about
the state of things in any other great city of Great Britain than one.
What I say is based upon such small knowledge that I may have gained
concerning London, and especially East London. As regards Birmingham,
Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, and any other place where there is a
great industrial population, I know nothing. If, therefore, exception
be taken to any expressions of mine as applied to some other city, I
beg it to be remembered that East London alone is in my mind. Even
concerning East London exception may be taken to anything I may
advance. That is because it is impossible to make any general
proposition whatever of humanity considered in the mass except the
elementary ones, such as that all must eat and sleep, to which
objection may not be raised. Thus, I know that it is true, and I am
prepared to maintain the assertion, that the lower classes in London
care nothing about Art, and know nothing about Art, and have only an
elementary appreciation of things beautiful. It is equally true, on
the other hand, that there are everywhere some whose hearts are
yearning and whose hands are stretched out in prayer for greater
beauty and fulness of life. It is also, as a general statement, true
that there are no amusements in East London, which contains two and a
half millions of people, has no municipality, and is the biggest,
ugliest, and meanest city in the whole world. Yet it is equally true
that there are in it institutes for education and science, art, and
literature, mutual improvement societies, clubs at which there are
evenings for singing, dancing, and private theatricals, and rowing,
swimming, and cricket clubs. It is again, as a general rule, true that
the lower classes are ignorant of science, yet there are everywhere
scattered among the working men single cases of earnest devotion to
science. And it is painfully true that they do not seem to feel the
ugliness of their own streets and houses; yet no one who has been
among the holiday folks in the country on a Bank Holiday or a fine
Sunday in the summer can deny their profound appreciation of field and
forest, flowers and green leaves, sunshine and shade. It is, lastly,
perfectly true that their lives, compared with those of the more
cultivated classes, do seem horribly dull, monotonous, and poor. Yet
the dulness is more apparent than real: ugly houses and mean streets
do not necessarily imply mean and ugly lives. Their days may be
enlivened in a thousand ways which to the outsider are invisible.
Among these are some which directly or indirectly make for the
appreciation of Art.
It seems safe, however, to advance one proposition. There is a class
in and below which it is impossible that there can exist a feeling for
Art of ally kind, or, indeed, for religion, for virtue, for knowledge
of any kind, or for anything beyond the necessity of providing for the
next day's food and shelter. Those miserable women who work from early
morning to late night, condemned to a slavery worse than any we have
abolished; those hungry men who besiege the dock-gates for a day's
work, and have nothing in the whole world but a pair of hands; that
vast class which is separated from starvation by a single day--what
thought, interest, or care can they have for anything in the world but
the procuring of food? When the physical condition of English men and
women is worse, as Professor Huxley has declared it to be, than the
condition of naked savages in the Southern Seas, how can we look for
the virtues and the aspirations which belong essentially to the level
of comparative ease? Until we have mastered the problem of finding
steady work for all, with adequate wages and decent homes, we need not
look for Art in these lowest ranks. We have to do, therefore, not with
the very poor at all, but with the respectable poor--the families of
skilled mechanics, _employés_ in regular work, workmen in breweries,
ship-yards, and factories independent handicraftsmen, clerks,
cashiers, accountants, writers, small shopkeepers, and all that great
host which is perpetually occupied in increasing the wealth of the
country by labour which, at least, permits them to live in comfort.
All these people have leisure; most of them, except the shop
assistants, have no work in the evening; they are all possessed of
some education. There is no reason at all why they should not, if they
could be only got to desire it, become students in some of the
branches of Art.
Let us, then, always with reference to this one city and this one
class of its inhabitants, ascertain what has been done already to
create a love of Art. The most important thing as yet attempted is the
Bethnal Green Museum. It is, for our purposes, also the most
instructive, because it has hitherto been, I consider, a complete and
ignominious failure. That is to say, it was established and is
maintained as an educational museum, it was especially designed to
create and develop a knowledge of Art and it has not done so. It was
opened in 1872 with, among other things, the magnificent collection of
pictures lent by Sir Richard Wallace; during the twelve years of its
existence it has exhibited other collections of considerable interest:
but the education, the free library, and the classrooms promised at
the outset have never been forthcoming. It is, in fact, a dumb and
silent gallery. One may compare it to a Board School newly built,
provided with all the latest appliances for education--with books,
desks, seats, blackboards, and everything, including crowds of pupils,
but left without a teaching staff, the pupils being expected to teach
themselves. Why not? There are the books and there are the desks, So
with this museum. You cannot learn anything of Art without the study
of artistic work. Here is the artistic work. Why do not the people
study it? They certainly come to the place; they come in large
numbers; on free days when it is open until ten at night they average
over two thousand a day all the year round. And if you take the
trouble to watch them, to follow them about, and to listen to their
conversation, you will presently discover with how much intelligence
they are studying the artistic work before them.
The failure of Bethnal Green should teach us what to avoid. Let us
therefore walk round the halls and galleries of this museum. In the
central hall there is placed, each object with a ticket containing a
brief description of it, a really noble collection of cabinets, carved
and painted; with these are rare and costly vases, of English,
Russian, Danish, and German workmanship; there are a few statuettes,
some paintings on china, things in glazed earthenware, and glass cases
containing Syrian and Albanian necklaces and jewellery. In the lower
side galleries there is, first, a collection of food products, showing
specimens of wheat, rice, starch, salt, and so forth, with models of
vegetables and fruit executed in wax; and next, a collection of
woollen stuff and fabrics of all kinds, with feathers, stags' heads,
antlers, and so forth. In the upper galleries there is a collection of
paintings and engravings. Here and there are suspended tablets which
are inscribed with bits of information, chiefly statistical. On my
last visit to the place I could not observe that anyone was studying
these tablets. This is, roughly speaking, all that the Bethnal Green
Museum contains. The directors of this institution, opened with so
much promise, which was going to educate the people and endow them
with a sense of Art and a love of beauty, think they have done all
they promised when they show a collection of cabinets and vases, a few
bottles containing rice and wheat, a few turnips in wax, a few cases
with pretty fabrics, and collection of pictures. There is no music;
there is no sculpture; none of the small arts are represented at all;
there is not the slightest attempt made to educate anybody. If you
want any other information or help besides that given by the tablets
you will not get it, because there is nobody to give it. A policeman
mounts guard over the cases, a woman sells the publications of the
South Kensington Department, and you can rend on a board the number of
visitors for every day in the year. But there is no one to go round
with you and talk about the things on exhibition. There are no
lectures nor any classes, there are no handbooks to teach the history
of the Fine Arts and to illustrate the collection in the museum. There
is not, incredible to say, even a catalogue. _There is no catalogue_.
Imagine an exhibition without even an official guide to its contents.
Here, says the Department, is the Bethnal Green Museum with its doors
wide open: let the people walk in and inspect the contents.
So, if we invited the people to inspect a collection of cuneiform
inscriptions, we might just as well expect them to carry away a
knowledge of Assyrian history; or by exhibiting an electrical machine
we might as well expect them to understand the appliances of
electricity. It is not enough, in fact, to exhibit pictures: they must
be explained. It is with paintings and drawings as with everything
else, those who come to see them having no knowledge carry none away
with them. The visitors to a museum are like travellers in a foreign
country, of whom Emerson truly says that when they leave it they take
nothing away but what they brought with them. The finest wood carving,
the most beautiful vase, the richest classic painting, produces on the
uncultivated eye no more valuable or lasting impression than the sight
of a sailing ship for the first time produces on the mind of a savage.
That is to say, the impression at the best is of wonder, not of
delight or curiosity at all. In the picture galleries, it is true, the
dull eyes are lifted and the weary faces brighten, because here, if
you plea, we touch upon that art which every human being all over the
world can appreciate. It is the art of story-telling. The visitors go
from picture to picture and they read the stories. As for landscapes,
figures, portraits, or slabs, they pass them by. What they love is a
picture of life in action, a picture that tells a story and quicken
their pulses. You may observe this in every picture gallery--even at
the Grosvenor and the Royal Academy--even among the classes who are
supposed to know something of Art: for one who studies a portrait by
Millsis, or a head by Leighton, there are crowds who stand before a
picture which tells a story. At the Royal Academy the story is
generally, but not always, read in silence; at Bethnal Green it is
read aloud. You will perhaps observe the importance of this
difference. It is because at the Royal Academy everybody has the
feeling that he is present in the character of a critic, and must
therefore affect, at least, to be considering the workmanship, and
passing a judgment on the artist. But at Bethnal Green the visitors
feel that they have been invited to be pleased, to wonder, and to
admire the beautiful stories represented on the canvas by clever men
who have learnt this trade. As for how a story may be told on canvas,
the way in which the conception of the artist has been executed, the
truth of the drawing, the fidelity of colouring--on these points no
questions are asked and no curiosity is expressed. Why should they?
Painting they regard as one of the arts which may be learned for a
trade, like matchmaking or shoemaking. Remember that it never occurs
to people to learn the mysteries of any trade beside their own. On my
last visit to this museum, for instance, I chanced upon two women who
were standing before a vase. It was a large and very beautiful vase,
of admirable form and proportions, and it was decorated on the top by
a group representing three captives chained to the rock. Their comment
on this work of art was as follows: 'Look,' said one, 'look at those
poor men chained to the rock.' 'Yes,' replied the other, 'poor
fellows! ain't it shocking?'
To their eyes the only thing to be looked at was the group of figures,
and the only suggestion made to their minds by the vase related to the
story, thus half told, of the captives. As for the vase itself, it was
nothing; the workmanship and painting were nothing; the sculpturing of
the figures was nothing.
It is constantly argued that the mere contemplation of things
beautiful creates this artistic sense--the sense of beauty. This is
undoubtedly true if one were to dwell entirely among beautiful things.
But how if for one thing which is beautiful you are made to
contemplate a hundred which are not? Suppose you offer a girl of
untrained eye a choice of costumes, of which one is artistic and the
rest are all hideous, how can you expect her to know the one--the only
one--which she sought to choose? Or, again, if you allow a boy to read
and learn as much bad poetry as good, what can you expect of his
standard of taste? In other words, when the surroundings of life are
wholly without Art, an occasional visit to a collection of paintings
cannot create an intelligent appreciation of Art.
Again, there are many branches and diverse forms or Art. For Instance,
there is music, there is singing there is acting, there is sculpture,
poetry, fiction; and besides these there are working in metals,
engraving in wood and copper, leather work, brass work, fret work, and
decoration. None of these arts are illustrated and recognised in the
Bethnal Green Museum, Yet, when we speak of the spreading of Art among
the poor, surely we do not mean only drawing, design, and painting.
The popularity of this museum has been argued as a proof of its
efficiency. It attracts, as I have stated already, over 2,000 on every
free day all the year round. On the one day in the week when an
entrance fee of sixpence is required it attracts from twenty to forty.
This means that out of two millions of people in East London there is
so little enthusiasm for Art that only forty can be found each week to
pay sixpence in order to enjoy quiet galleries and undisturbed study.
Remember that East London is not altogether 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.