‘—the horrible doctrine that this universe is a Cockney
Nightmare—which no creature ought for a moment to believe or listen
to.’—THOMAS CARLYLE.
THE word Architecture has, I suppose, to most of you the meaning of the
art of building nobly and ornamentally. Now I believe the practice of
this art to be one of the most important things which man can turn his
hand to, and the consideration of it to be worth the attention of serious
people, not for an hour only, but for a good part of their lives, even
though they may not have to do with it professionally.
But, noble as that art is by itself, and though it is specially the art
of civilisation, it neither ever has existed nor never can exist alive
and progressive by itself, but must cherish and be cherished by all the
crafts whereby men make the things which they intend shall be beautiful,
and shall last somewhat beyond the passing day.
It is this union of the arts, mutually helpful and harmoniously
subordinated one to another, which I have learned to think of as
Architecture, and when I use the word to-night, that is what I shall mean
by it and nothing narrower.
A great subject truly, for it embraces the consideration of the whole
external surroundings of the life of man; we cannot escape from it if we
would so long as we are part of civilisation, for it means the moulding
and altering to human needs of the very face of the earth itself, except
in the outermost desert.
Neither can we hand over our interests in it to a little band of learned
men, and bid them seek and discover, and fashion, that we may at last
stand by and wonder at the work, and learn a little of how ’twas all
done: ’tis we ourselves, each one of us, who must keep watch and ward
over the fairness of the earth, and each with his own soul and hand do
his due share therein, lest we deliver to our sons a lesser treasure than
our fathers left to us. Nor, again, is there time enough and to spare
that we may leave this matter alone till our latter days or let our sons
deal with it: for so busy and eager is mankind, that the desire of to-day
makes us utterly forget the desire of yesterday and the gain it brought;
and whensoever in any object of pursuit we cease to long for perfection,
corruption sure and speedy leads from life to death and all is soon over
and forgotten: time enough there may be for many things: for peopling the
desert; for breaking down the walls between nation and nation; for
learning the innermost secrets of the fashion of our souls and bodies,
the air we breathe, and the earth we tread on: time enough for subduing
all the forces of nature to our material wants: but no time to spare
before we turn our eyes and our longing to the fairness of the earth;
lest the wave of human need sweep over it and make it not a hopeful
desert as it once was, but a hopeless prison; lest man should find at
last that he has toiled and striven, and conquered, and set all things on
the earth under his feet, that he might live thereon himself unhappy.
Most true it is that when any spot of earth’s surface has been marred by
the haste or carelessness of civilisation, it is heavy work to seek a
remedy, nay a work scarce conceivable; for the desire to live on any
terms which nature has implanted in us, and the terrible swift
multiplication of the race which is the result of it, thrusts out of
men’s minds all thought of other hopes, and bars the way before us as
with a wall of iron: no force but a force equal to that which marred can
ever mend, or give back those ruined places to hope and civilisation.
Therefore I entreat you to turn your minds to thinking of what is to come
of Architecture, that is to say, the fairness of the earth amidst the
habitations of men: for the hope and the fear of it will follow us though
we try to escape it; it concerns us all, and needs the help of all; and
what we do herein must be done at once, since every day of our neglect
adds to the heap of troubles a blind force is making for us; till it may
come to this if we do not look to it, that we shall one day have to call,
not on peace and prosperity, but on violence and ruin to rid us of them.
In making this appeal to you, I will not suppose that I am speaking to
any who refuse to admit that we who are part of civilisation are
responsible to posterity for what may befall the fairness of the earth in
our own days, for what we have done, in other words, towards the progress
of Architecture;—if any such exists among cultivated people, I need not
trouble myself about them; for they would not listen to me, nor should I
know what to say to them.
On the other hand, there may be some here who have a knowledge of their
responsibility in this matter, but to whom the duty that it involves
seems an easy one, since they are fairly satisfied with the state of
Architecture as it now is: I do not suppose that they fail to note the
strange contrast which exists between the beauty that still clings to
some habitations of men and the ugliness which is the rule in others, but
it seems to them natural and inevitable, and therefore does not trouble
them: and they fulfil their duties to civilisation and the arts by
sometimes going to see the beautiful places, and gathering together a few
matters to remind them of these for the adornment of the ugly dwellings
in which their homes are enshrined: for the rest they have no doubt that
it is natural and not wrong that while all ancient towns, I mean towns
whose houses are largely ancient, should be beautiful and romantic, all
modern ones should be ugly and commonplace: it does not seem to them that
this contrast is of any import to civilisation, or that it expresses
anything save that one town _is_ ancient as to its buildings and the
other modern. If their thoughts carry them into looking any farther into
the contrasts between ancient art and modern, they are not dissatisfied
with the result: they may see things to reform here and there, but they
suppose, or, let me say, take for granted, that art is alive and healthy,
is on the right road, and that following that road, it will go on living
for ever, much as it is now.
It is not unfair to say that this languid complacency is the general
attitude of cultivated people towards the arts: of course if they were
ever to think seriously of them, they would be startled into discomfort
by the thought that civilisation as it now is brings inevitable ugliness
with it: surely if they thought this, they would begin to think that this
was not natural and right; they would see that this was not what
civilisation aimed at in its struggling days: but they do not think
seriously of the arts because they have been hitherto defended by a law
of nature which forbids men to see evils which they are not ready to
redress.
Hitherto: but there are not wanting signs that that defence may fail them
one day, and it has become the duty of all true artists, and all men who
love life though it be troublous better than death though it be peaceful,
to strive to pierce that defence and sting the world, cultivated and
uncultivated, into discontent and struggle.
Therefore I will say that the contrast between past art and present, the
universal beauty of men’s habitations as they _were_ fashioned, and the
universal ugliness of them as they _are_ fashioned, is of the utmost
import to civilisation, and that it expresses much; it expresses no less
than a blind brutality which will destroy art at least, whatever else it
may leave alive: art is not healthy, it even scarcely lives; it is on the
wrong road, and if it follow that road will speedily meet its death on
it.
Now perhaps you will say that by asserting that the general attitude of
cultivated people towards the arts is a languid complacency with this
unhealthy state of things, I am admitting that cultivated people
generally do not care about the arts, and that therefore this threatened
death of them will not frighten people much, even if the threat be
founded on truth: so that those are but beating the air who strive to
rouse people into discontent and struggle.
Well, I will run the risk of offending you by speaking plainly, and
saying, that to me it seems over true that cultivated people in general
do _not_ care about the arts: nevertheless I will answer any possible
challenge as to the usefulness of trying to rouse them to thought about
the matter, by saying that they do not care about the arts because they
do not know what they mean, or what they lose in lacking them:
cultivated, that is rich, as they are, they are also under that harrow of
hard necessity which is driven onward so remorselessly by the competitive
commerce of the latter days; a system which is drawing near now I hope to
its perfection, and therefore to its death and change: the many millions
of civilisation, as labour is now organised, can scarce think seriously
of anything but the means of earning their daily bread; they do not know
of art, it does not touch their lives at all: the few thousands of
cultivated people whom Fate, not always as kind to them as she looks, has
placed above the material necessity for this hard struggle, are
nevertheless bound by it in spirit: the reflex of the grinding trouble of
those who toil to live that they may live to toil weighs upon them also,
and forbids them to look upon art as a matter of importance: they know it
but as a toy, not as a serious help to life: as they know it, it can no
more lift the burden from the conscience of the rich, than it can from
the weariness of the poor. They do not know what art means: as I have
said, they think that as labour is now organised art can go indefinitely
as it is now organised, practised by a few for a few, adding a little
interest, a little refinement to the lives of those who have come to look
upon intellectual interest and spiritual refinement as their birthright.
No, no, it can never be: believe me, if it were otherwise possible that
it should be an enduring condition of humanity that there must be one
class utterly refined and another utterly brutal, art would bar the way
and forbid the monstrosity to exist:—such refinement would have to do as
well as it might without the aid of Art: it may be she will die, but it
cannot be that she will live the slave of the rich, and the token of the
enduring slavery of the poor. If the life of the world is to be
brutalised by her death, the rich must share that brutalisation with the
poor.
I know that there are people of good-will now, as there have been in all
ages, who have conceived of art as going hand in hand with luxury, nay,
as being much the same thing; but it is an idea false from the root up,
and most hurtful to art, as I could demonstrate to you by many examples
if I had time, lacking which I will only meet it with one, which I hope
will be enough.
We are here in the richest city of the richest country of the richest age
of the world: no luxury of time past can compare with our luxury; and yet
if you could clear your eyes from habitual blindness you would have to
confess that there is no crime against art, no ugliness, no vulgarity
which is not shared with perfect fairness and equality between the modern
hovels of Bethnal Green and the modern palaces of the West End: and then
if you looked at the matter deeply and seriously you would not regret it,
but rejoice at it, and as you went past some notable example of the
aforesaid palaces you would exult indeed as you said, ‘So that is all
that luxury and money can do for refinement.’
For the rest, if of late there has been any change for the better in the
prospects of the arts; if there has been a struggle both to throw off the
chains of dead and powerless tradition, and to understand the thoughts
and aspirations of those among whom those traditions were once alive
powerful and beneficent; if there has been abroad any spirit of
resistance to the flood of sordid ugliness that modern civilisation has
created to make modern civilisation miserable: in a word, if any of us
have had the courage to be discontented that art seems dying, and to hope
for her new birth, it is because others have been discontented and
hopeful in other matters than the arts; I believe most sincerely that the
steady progress of those whom the stupidity of language forces me to call
the lower classes in material, political, and social condition, has been
our real help in all that we have been able to do or to hope, although
both the helpers and the helped have been mostly unconscious of it.
It is indeed in this belief, the belief in the beneficent progress of
civilisation, that I venture to face you and to entreat you to strive to
enter into the real meaning of the arts, which are surely the expression
of reverence for nature, and the crown of nature, the life of man upon
the earth.
With this intent in view I may, I think, hope to move you, I do not say
to agree to all I urge upon you, yet at least to think the matter worth
thinking about; and if you once do that, I believe I shall have won you.
Maybe indeed that many things which I think beautiful you will deem of
small account; nay, that even some things I think base and ugly will not
vex your eyes or your minds: but one thing I know you will none of you
like to plead guilty to; blindness to the natural beauty of the earth;
and of that beauty art is the only possible guardian.
No one of you can fail to know what neglect of art has done to this great
treasure of mankind: the earth which was beautiful before man lived on
it, which for many ages grew in beauty as men grew in numbers and power,
is now growing uglier day by day, and there the swiftest where
civilisation is the mightiest: this is quite certain; no one can deny it:
are you contented that it should be so?
Surely there must be few of us to whom this degrading change has not been
brought home personally. I think you will most of you understand me but
too well when I ask you to remember the pang of dismay that comes on us
when we revisit some spot of country which has been specially sympathetic
to us in times past; which has refreshed us after toil, or soothed us
after trouble; but where now as we turn the corner of the road or crown
the hill’s brow we can see first the inevitable blue slate roof, and then
the blotched mud-coloured stucco, or ill-built wall of ill-made bricks of
the new buildings; then as we come nearer and see the arid and
pretentious little gardens, and cast-iron horrors of railings, and
miseries of squalid out-houses breaking through the sweet meadows and
abundant hedge-rows of our old quiet hamlet, do not our hearts sink
within us, and are we not troubled with a perplexity not altogether
selfish, when we think what a little bit of carelessness it takes to
destroy a world of pleasure and delight, which now whatever happens can
never be recovered?
Well may we feel the perplexity and sickness of heart, which some day the
whole world shall feel to find its hopes disappointed, if we do not look
to it; for this is not what civilisation looked for: a new house added to
the old village, where is the harm of that? Should it not have been a
gain and not a loss; a sign of growth and prosperity which should have
rejoiced the eye of an old friend? a new family come in health and hope
to share the modest pleasures and labours of the place we loved; that
should have been no grief, but a fresh pleasure to us.
Yes, and time was that it would have been so; the new house indeed would
have taken away a little piece of the flowery green sward, a few yards of
the teeming hedge-row; but a new order, a new beauty would have taken the
place of the old: the very flowers of the field would have but given
place to flowers fashioned by man’s hand and mind: the hedge-row oak
would have blossomed into fresh beauty in roof-tree and lintel and
door-post: and though the new house would have looked young and trim
beside the older houses and the ancient church; ancient even in those
days; yet it would have a piece of history for the time to come, and its
dear and dainty cream-white walls would have been a genuine link among
the numberless links of that long chain, whose beginnings we know not of,
but on whose mighty length even the many-pillared garth of Pallas, and
the stately dome of the Eternal Wisdom, are but single links, wondrous
and resplendent though they be.
Such I say can a new house be, such it has been: for ’tis no ideal house
I am thinking of: no rare marvel of art, of which but few can ever be
vouchsafed to the best times and countries; no palace either, not even a
manor-house, but a yeoman’s steading at grandest, or even his shepherd’s
cottage: there they stand at this day, dozens of them yet, in some parts
of England: such an one, and of the smallest, is before my eyes as I
speak to you, standing by the roadside on one of the western slopes of
the Cotswolds: the tops of the great trees near it can see a long way off
the mountains of the Welsh border, and between a great county of hill,
and waving woodland, and meadow and plain where lies hidden many a famous
battlefield of our stout forefathers: there to the right a wavering patch
of blue is the smoke of Worcester town, but Evesham smoke, though near,
is unseen, so small it is: then a long line of haze just traceable shows
where the Avon wends its way thence towards Severn, till Bredon Hill
hides the sight both of it and Tewkesbury smoke: just below on either
side the Broadway lie the grey houses of the village street ending with a
lovely house of the fourteenth century; above the road winds serpentine
up the steep hill-side, whose crest looking westward sees the glorious
map I have been telling of spread before it, but eastward strains to look
on Oxfordshire, and thence all waters run towards Thames: all about lie
the sunny slopes, lovely of outline, flowery and sweetly grassed, dotted
with the best-grown and most graceful of trees: ’tis a beautiful
countryside indeed, not undignified, not unromantic, but most familiar.
And there stands the little house that was new once, a labourer’s cottage
built of the Cotswold limestone, and grown now, walls and roof, a lovely
warm grey, though it was creamy white in its earliest day; no line of it
could ever have marred the Cotswold beauty; everything about it is solid
and well wrought: it is skilfully planned and well proportioned: there is
a little sharp and delicate carving about its arched doorway, and every
part of it is well cared for: ’tis in fact beautiful, a work of art and a
piece of nature—no less: there is no man who could have done it better
considering its use and its place.
Who built it then? No strange race of men, but just the mason of
Broadway village: even such a man as is now running up down yonder three
or four cottages of the wretched type we know too well: nor did he get an
architect from London, or even Worcester, to design it: I believe ’tis
but two hundred years old, and at that time, though beauty still lingered
among the peasants’ houses, your learned architects were building houses
for the high gentry that were ugly enough, though solid and well built;
nor are its materials far-fetched; from the neighbouring field came its
walling stones; and at the top of the hill they are quarrying now as good
freestone as ever.
No, there was no effort or wonder about it when it was built, though its
beauty makes it strange now.
And are you contented that we should lose all this; this simple, harmless
beauty that was no hindrance or trouble to any man, and that added to the
natural beauty of the earth instead of marring it?
You cannot be contented with it; all you can do is to try to forget it,
and to say that such things are the necessary and inevitable consequences
of civilisation. Is it so indeed? The loss of suchlike beauty is an
undoubted evil: but civilisation cannot mean at heart to produce evils
for mankind: such losses therefore must be accidents of civilisation,
produced by its carelessness, not its malice; and we, if we be men and
not machines, must try to amend them: or civilisation itself will be
undone.
But, now let us leave the sunny slopes of the Cotswolds, and their little
grey houses, lest we fall a-dreaming over past time, and let us think
about the suburbs of London, neither dull nor unpleasant once, where
surely we ought to have some power to do something: let me remind you how
it fares with the beauty of the earth when some big house near our
dwelling-place, which has passed through many vicissitudes of rich
merchant’s dwelling, school, hospital, or what not, is at last to be
turned into ready money, and is sold to A, who lets it to B, who is going
to build houses on it which he will sell to C, who will let them to D,
and the other letters of the alphabet: well, the old house comes down;
that was to be looked for, and perhaps you don’t much mind it; it was
never a work of art, was stupid and unimaginative enough, though
creditably built, and without pretence; but even while it is being pulled
down, you hear the axe falling on the trees of its generous garden, which
it was such a pleasure even to pass by, and where man and nature together
have worked so long and patiently for the blessing of the neighbours: so
you see the boys dragging about the streets great boughs of the flowering
may-trees covered with blossom, and you know what is going to happen.
Next morning when you get up you look towards that great plane-tree which
has been such a friend to you so long through sun and rain and wind,
which was a world in itself of incident and beauty: but now there is a
gap and no plane-tree; next morning ’tis the turn of the great sweeping
layers of darkness that the ancient cedars thrust out from them, very
treasures of loveliness and romance; they are gone too: you may have a
faint hope left that the thick bank of lilac next your house may be
spared, since the newcomers may like lilac; but ’tis gone in the
afternoon, and the next day when you look in with a sore heart, you see
that once fair great garden turned into a petty miserable clay-trampled
yard, and everything is ready for the latest development of Victorian
architecture—which in due time (two months) arises from the wreck.
Do you like it? You I mean, who have not studied art and do not think
you care about it?
Look at the houses (there are plenty to choose from)! I will not say,
are they beautiful, for you say you don’t care whether they are or not:
but just look at the wretched pennyworths of material, of accommodation,
of ornament doled out to you! if there were one touch of generosity, of
honest pride, of wish to please about them, I would forgive them in the
lump. But there is none—not one.
It is for this that you have sacrificed your cedars and planes and
may-trees, which I do believe you really liked—are you satisfied?
Indeed you cannot be: all you can do is to go to your business, converse
with your family, eat, drink, and sleep, and try to forget it, but
whenever you think of it, you will admit that a loss without compensation
has befallen you and your neighbours.
Once more neglect of art has done it; for though it is conceivable that
the loss of your neighbouring open space might in any case have been a
loss to you, still the building of a new quarter of a town ought not to
be an unmixed calamity to the neighbours: nor would it have been once:
for first, the builder doesn’t now murder the trees (at any rate not all
of them) for the trifling sum of money their corpses will bring him, but
because it will take him too much trouble to fit them into the planning
of his houses: so to begin with you would have saved the more part of
your trees; and I say your trees, advisedly, for they were at least as
much your trees, who loved them and would have saved them, as they were
the trees of the man who neglected and murdered them. And next, for any
space you would have lost, and for any unavoidable destruction of natural
growth, you would in the times of art have been compensated by orderly
beauty, by visible signs of the ingenuity of man and his delight both in
the works of nature and the works of his own hands.
Yes indeed, if we had lived in Venice in early days, as islet after islet
was built upon, we should have grudged it but little, I think, though we
had been merchants and rich men, that the Greek shafted work, and the
carving of the Lombards was drawn nearer and nearer to us and blocked us
out a little from the sight of the blue Euganean hills or the Northern
mountains. Nay, to come nearer home, much as I know I should have loved
the willowy meadows between the network of the streams of Thames and
Cherwell; yet I should not have been ill content as Oxford crept
northward from its early home of Oseney, and Rewley, and the Castle, as
townsman’s house, and scholar’s hall, and the great College and the noble
church hid year by year more and more of the grass and flowers of
Oxfordshire. {186}
That was the natural course of things then; men could do no otherwise
when they built than give some gift of beauty to the world: but all is
turned inside out now, and when men build they cannot but take away some
gift of beauty, which nature or their own forefathers have given to the
world.
Wonderful it is indeed, and perplexing, that the course of civilisation
towards perfection should have brought this about: so perplexing, that to
some it seems as if civilisation were eating her own children, and the
arts first of all.
I will not say that; time is big with so many a change; surely there must
be some remedy, and whether there be or no, at least it is better to die
seeking one, than to leave it alone and do nothing.
I have said, are you satisfied? and assumed that you are not, though to
many you may seem to be at least helpless: yet indeed it is something or
even a great deal that I can reasonably assume that you are discontented:
fifty years ago, thirty years ago, nay perhaps twenty years ago, it would
have been useless to have asked such a question, it could only have been
answered in one way: We are perfectly satisfied: whereas now we may at
least hope that discontent will grow till some remedy will be sought for.
And if sought for, should it not, in England at least, be as good as
found already, and acted upon? At first sight it seems so truly; for I
may say without fear of contradiction that we of the English middle
classes are the most powerful body of men that the world has yet seen,
and that anything we have set our heart upon we will have: and yet when
we come to look the matter in the face, we cannot fail to see that even
for us with all our strength it will be a hard matter to bring about that
birth of the new art: for between us and that which is to be, if art is
not to perish utterly, there is something alive and devouring; something
as it were a river of fire that will put all that tries to swim across to
a hard proof indeed, and scare from the plunge every soul that is not
made fearless by desire of truth and insight of the happy days to come
beyond.
That fire is the hurry of life bred by the gradual perfection of
competitive commerce which we, the English middle classes, when we had
won our political liberty, set ourselves to further with an energy, an
eagerness, a single-heartedness that has no parallel in history; we would
suffer none to bar the way to us, we called on none to help us, we
thought of that one thing and forgot all else, and so attained to our
desire, and fashioned a terrible thing indeed from the very hearts of the
strongest of mankind.
Indeed I don’t suppose that the feeble discontent with our own creation
that I have noted before can deal with such a force as this—not yet—not
till it swells to very strong discontent: nevertheless as we were blind
to its destructive power, and have not even yet learned all about that,
so we may well be blind to what it has of constructive force in it, and
that one day may give us a chance to deal with it again and turn it
toward accomplishing our new and worthier desire: in that day at least
when we have at last learned what we want, let us work no less
strenuously and fearlessly, I will not say to quench it, but to force it
to burn itself out, as we once did to quicken and sustain it.
Meantime if we could but get ourselves ready by casting off certain old
prejudices and delusions in this matter of the arts, we should the sooner
reach the pitch of discontent which would drive us into action: such a
one I mean as the aforesaid idea that luxury fosters art, and especially
the Architectural arts; or its companion one, that the arts flourish best
in a rich country, _i.e._ a country where the contrast between rich and
poor is greatest; or this, the worst because the most plausible, the
assertion of the hierarchy of intellect in the arts: an old foe with a
new face indeed: born out of the times that gave the death-blow to the
political and social hierarchies, and waxing as they waned, it proclaimed
from a new side the divinity of the few and the subjugation of the many,
and cries out, like they did, that it is expedient, not that one man
should die for the people, but that the people should die for one man.
Now perhaps these three things, though they have different forms, are in
fact but one thing; tyranny to wit: but however that may be, they are to
be met by one answer, and there is no other: if art which is now sick is
to live and not die, it must in the future be of the people for the
people, and by the people; it must understand all and be understood by
all: equality must be the answer to tyranny: if that be not attained, art
will die.
The past art of what has grown to be civilised Europe from the time of
the decline of the ancient classical peoples, was the outcome of instinct
working on an unbroken chain of tradition: it was fed not by knowledge
but by hope, and though many a strange and wild illusion mingled with
that hope, yet was it human and fruitful ever: many a man it solaced,
many a slave in body it freed in soul; boundless pleasure it gave to
those who wrought it and those who used it: long and long it lived,
passing that torch of hope from hand to hand, while it kept but little
record of its best and noblest; for least of all things could it abide to
make for itself kings and tyrants: every man’s hand and soul it used, the
lowest as the highest, and in its bosom at least were all men free: it
did its work, not creating an art more perfect than itself, but rather
other things than art, freedom of thought and speech, and the longing for
light and knowledge and the coming days that should slay it: and so at
last it died in the hour of its highest hope, almost before the greatest
men that came of it had passed away from the world. It is dead now; no
longing will bring it back to us; no echo of it is left among the peoples
whom it once made happy.
Of the art that is to come who may prophesy? But this at least seems to
follow from comparing that past with the confusion in which we are now
struggling and the light which glimmers through it; that that art will no
longer be an art of instinct, of ignorance which is hopeful to learn and
strives to see; since ignorance is now no longer hopeful. In this and in
many other ways it may differ from the past art, but in one thing it must
needs be like it; it will not be an esoteric mystery shared by a little
band of superior beings; it will be no more hierarchical than the art of
past time was, but like it will be a gift of the people to the people, a
thing which everybody can understand, and every one surround with love;
it will be a part of every life, and a hindrance to none.
For this is the essence of art, and the thing that is eternal to it,
whatever else may be passing and accidental.
Here it is, you see, wherein the art of to-day is so far astray, would
that I could say wherein it _has been_ astray; it has been sick because
of this packing and peeling with tyranny, and now with what of life it
has it must struggle back towards equality.
There is the hard business for us! to get all simple people to care about
art, to get them to insist on making it part of their lives, whatever
becomes of systems of commerce and labour held perfect by some of us.
This is henceforward for a long time to come the real business of art:
and—yes I will say it since I think it—of civilisation too for that
matter: but how shall we set to work about it? How shall we give people
without traditions of art eyes with which to see the works we do to move
them? How shall we give them leisure from toil, and truce with anxiety,
so that they may have time to brood over the longing for beauty which men
are born with, as ’tis said, even in London streets? And chiefly, for
this will breed the others swiftly and certainly, how shall we give them
hope and pleasure in their daily work?
How shall we give them this soul of art without which men are worse than
savages? If they would but drive us to it! But what and where are the
forces that shall drive them to drive us? Where is the lever and the
standpoint?
Hard questions indeed! but unless we are prepared to seek an answer for
them, our art is a mere toy, which may amuse us for a little, but which
will not sustain us at our need: the cultivated classes, as they are
called, will feel it slipping away from under them: till some of them
will but mock it as a worthless thing; and some will stand by and look at
it as a curious exercise of the intellect, useless when done, though
amusing to watch a-doing. How long will art live on those terms? Yet
such were even now the state of art were it not for that hope which I am
here to set forth to you, the hope of an art that shall express the soul
of the people.
Therefore, I say, that in these days we men of civilisation have to
choose if we will cast art aside or not; if we choose to do so I have no
more to say, save that we _may_ find something to take its place for the
solace and joy of mankind, but I scarce think we shall: but if we refuse
to cast art aside, then must we seek an answer for those hard questions
aforesaid, of which this is the first.
How shall we set about giving people without traditions of art eyes with
which to see works of art? It will doubtless take many years of striving
and success, before we can think of answering that question fully: and if
we strive to do our duty herein, long before it is answered fully there
will be some kind of a popular art abiding among us: but meantime, and
setting aside the answer which every artist must make to his own share of
the question, there is one duty obvious to us all; it is that we should
set ourselves, each one of us, to doing our best to guard the natural
beauty of the earth: we ought to look upon it as a crime, an injury to
our fellows, only excusable because of ignorance, to mar the natural
beauty, which is the property of all men; and scarce less than a crime to
look on and do nothing while others are marring it, if we can no longer
plead this ignorance.
Now this duty, as it is the most obvious to us, and the first and
readiest way of giving people back their eyes, so happily it is the
easiest to set about; up to a certain point you will have all people of
good will to the public good on your side: nay, small as the beginning
is, something has actually been begun in this direction, and we may well
say, considering how hopeless things looked twenty years ago, that it is
marvellous in our eyes! Yet if we ever get out of the troubles that we
are now wallowing in, it will seem perhaps more marvellous still to those
that come after us that the dwellers in the richest city in the world
were at one time rather proud that the members of a small, humble, and
rather obscure, though I will say it, a beneficent society, should have
felt it their duty to shut their eyes to the apparent hopelessness of
attacking with their feeble means the stupendous evils they had become
alive to, so that they might be able to make some small beginnings
towards awakening the general public to a due sense of those evils.
I say, that though I ask your earnest support for such associations as
the Kyrle and the Commons Preservation Societies, and though I feel sure
that they have begun at the right end, since neither gods nor governments
will help those who don’t help themselves; though we are bound to wait
for nobody’s help than our own in dealing with the devouring hideousness
and squalor of our great towns, and especially of London, for which the
whole country is responsible; yet it would be idle not to acknowledge
that the difficulties in our way are far too huge and wide-spreading to
be grappled by private or semi-private efforts only.
All we can do in this way we must look on not as palliatives of an
unendurable state of things, but as tokens of what we desire; which is in
short the giving back to our country of the natural beauty of the earth,
which we are so ashamed of having taken away from it: and our chief duty
herein will be to quicken this shame and the pain that comes from it in
the hearts of our fellows: this I say is one of the chief duties of all
those who have any right to the title of cultivated men: and I believe
that if we are faithful to it, we may help to further a great impulse
towards beauty among us, which will be so irresistible that it will
fashion for itself a national machinery which will sweep away all
difficulties between us and a decent life, though they may have increased
a thousand-fold meantime, as is only too like to be the case.
Surely that light will arise, though neither we nor our children’s
children see it, though civilisation may have to go down into dark places
enough meantime: surely one day making will be thought more honourable,
more worthy the majesty of a great nation than destruction.
It is strange indeed, it is woeful, it is scarcely comprehensible, if we
come to think of it as men, and not as machines, that, after all the
progress of civilisation, it should be so easy for a little official
talk, a few lines on a sheet of paper, to set a terrible engine to work,
which without any trouble on our part will slay us ten thousand men, and
ruin who can say how many thousand of families; and it lies light enough
on the conscience of _all_ of us; while, if it is a question of striking
a blow at grievous and crushing evils which lie at our own doors, evils
which every thoughtful man feels and laments, and for which we alone are
responsible, not only is there no national machinery for dealing with
them, though they grow ranker and ranker every year, but any hint that
such a thing may be possible is received with laughter or with terror, or
with severe and heavy blame. The rights of property, the necessities of
morality, the interests of religion—these are the sacramental words of
cowardice that silence us!
Sirs, I have spoken of thoughtful men who feel these evils: but think of
all the millions of men whom our civilisation has bred, who are not
thoughtful, and have had no chance of being so; how can you fail then to
acknowledge the duty of defending the fairness of the Earth? and what is
the use of our cultivation if it is to cultivate us into cowards? Let us
answer those feeble counsels of despair and say, We also have a property
which your tyranny of squalor cheats us of; we also have a morality which
its baseness crushes; we also have a religion which its injustice makes a
mock of.
Well, whatever lesser helps there may be to our endeavour of giving
people back the eyes we have robbed them of, we may pass them by at
present, for they are chiefly of use to people who are beginning to get
their eyesight again; to people who, though they have no traditions of
art, can study those mighty impulses that once led nations and races: it
is to such that museums and art education are of service; but it is clear
they cannot get at the great mass of people, who will at present stare at
them in unintelligent wonder.
Until our streets are decent and orderly, and our town gardens break the
bricks and mortar every here and there, and are open to all people; until
our meadows even near our towns become fair and sweet, and are unspoiled
by patches of hideousness: until we have clear sky above our heads and
green grass beneath our feet; until the great drama of the seasons can
touch our workmen with other feelings than the misery of winter and the
weariness of summer; till all this happens our museums and art schools
will be but amusements of the rich; and they will soon cease to be of any
use to them also, unless they make up their minds that they will do their
best to give us back the fairness of the Earth.
In what I have been saying on this last point I have been thinking of our
own special duties as cultivated people; but in our endeavours towards
this end, as in all others, cultivated people cannot stand alone; nor can
we do much to open people’s eyes till they cry out to us to have them
opened. Now I cannot doubt that the longing to attack and overcome the
sordidness of the city life of to-day still dwells in the minds of
workmen, as well as in ours, but it can scarcely be otherwise than vague
and lacking guidance with men who have so little leisure, and are so
hemmed in with hideousness as they are. So this brings us to our second
question. How shall people in general get leisure enough from toil, and
truce enough with anxiety to give scope to their inborn longing for
beauty?
Now the part of this question that is not involved in the next one, How
shall they get proper work to do? is I think in a fair way to be
answered.
The mighty change which the success of competitive commerce has wrought
in the world, whatever it may have destroyed, has at least unwittingly
made one thing,—from out of it has been born the increasing power of the
working-class. The determination which this power has bred in it to
raise their class as a class will I doubt not make way and prosper with
our goodwill, or even in spite of it; but it seems to me that both to the
working-class and especially to ourselves it is important that it should
have our abundant goodwill, and also what help we may be able otherwise
to give it, by our determination to deal fairly with workmen, even when
that justice may seem to involve our own loss. The time of unreasonable
and blind outcry against the Trades Unions is, I am happy to think, gone
by; and has given place to the hope of a time when these great
Associations, well organised, well served, and earnestly supported, as I
_know_ them to be, will find other work before them than the temporary
support of their members and the adjustment of due wages for their
crafts: when that hope begins to be realised, and they find they can make
use of the help of us scattered units of the cultivated classes, I feel
sure that the claims of art, as we and they will then understand the
word, will by no means be disregarded by them.
Meantime with us who are called artists, since most unhappily that word
means at present another thing than artisan: with us who either practise
the arts with our own hands, or who love them so wholly that we can enter
into the inmost feelings of those who do,—with us it lies to deal with
our last question, to stir up others to think of answering this: How
shall we give people in general hope and pleasure in their daily work in
such a way that in those days to come the word art _shall_ be rightly
understood?
Of all that I have to say to you this seems to me the most important,
that our daily and necessary work, which we could not escape if we would,
which we would not forego if we could, should be human, serious, and
pleasurable, not machine-like, trivial, or grievous. I call this not
only the very foundation of Architecture in all senses of the word, but
of happiness also in all conditions of life.
Let me say before I go further, that though I am nowise ashamed of
repeating the words of men who have been before me in both senses, of
time and insight, I mean, I should be ashamed of letting you think that I
forget their labours on which mine are founded. I know that the pith of
what I am saying on this subject was set forth years ago, and for the
first time by Mr. Ruskin in that chapter of the Stones of Venice, which
is entitled, ‘On the Nature of Gothic,’ in words more clear and eloquent
than any man else now living could use. So important do they seem to me,
that to my mind they should have been posted up in every school of art
throughout the country; nay, in every association of English-speaking
people which professes in any way to further the culture of mankind. But
I am sorry to have to say it, my excuse for doing little more now than
repeating those words is that they have been less heeded than most things
which Mr. Ruskin has said: I suppose because people have been afraid of
them, lest they should find the truth they express sticking so fast in
their minds that it would either compel them to act on it or confess
themselves slothful and cowardly.
Nor can I pretend to wonder at that: for if people were once to accept it
as true, that it is nothing but just and fair that every man’s work
should have some hope and pleasure always present in it, they must try to
bring the change about that would make it so: and all history tells of no
greater change in man’s life than that would be.
Nevertheless, great as the change may be, Architecture has no prospects
in civilisation unless the change be brought about: and ’tis my business
to-day, I will not say to convince you of this, but to send some of you
away uneasy lest perhaps it may be true; if I can manage that I shall
have spoken to some purpose.
Let us see however in what light cultivated people, men not without
serious thoughts about life, look to this matter, lest perchance we may
seem to be beating the air only: when I have given you an example of this
way of thinking, I will answer it to the best of my power in the hopes of
making some of you uneasy, discontented, and revolutionary.
Some few months ago I read in a paper the report of a speech made to the
assembled work-people of a famous firm of manufacturers (as they are
called). The speech was a very humane and thoughtful one, spoken by one
of the leaders of modern thought: the firm to whose people it was
addressed was and is famous not only for successful commerce, but also
for the consideration and goodwill with which it treats its work-people,
men and women. No wonder, therefore, that the speech was pleasant
reading; for the tone of it was that of a man speaking to his friends who
could well understand him and from whom he need hide nothing; but towards
the end of it I came across a sentence, which set me a-thinking so hard,
that I forgot all that had gone before. It was to this effect, and I
think nearly in these very words, ‘Since no man would work if it were not
that he hoped by working to earn leisure:’ and the context showed that
this was assumed as a self-evident truth.
Well, for many years I have had my mind fixed on what I in my turn
regarded as an axiom which may be worded thus: No work which cannot be
done without pleasure in the doing is worth doing; so you may think I was
much disturbed at a grave and learned man taking such a completely
different view of it with such calmness of certainty. What a little way,
I thought, has all Ruskin’s fire and eloquence made in driving into
people so great a truth, a truth so fertile of consequences!
Then I turned the intrusive sentence over again in my mind: ‘No man would
work unless he hoped by working to earn leisure:’ and I saw that this was
another way of putting it: first, all the work of the world is done
against the grain: second, what a man does in his ‘leisure’ is not work.
A poor bribe the hope of such leisure to supplement the other inducement
to toil, which I take to be the fear of death by starvation: a poor
bribe; for the most of men, like those Yorkshire weavers and spinners
(and the more part far worse than they), work for such a very small share
of leisure that, one must needs say that if all their hope be in that,
they are pretty much beguiled of their hope!
So I thought, and this next, that if it were indeed true and beyond
remedy, that no man would work unless he hoped by working to earn
leisure, the hell of theologians was but little needed; for a thickly
populated civilised country, where, you know, after all people must work
at something, would serve their turn well enough. Yet again I knew that
this theory of the general and necessary hatefulness of work was indeed
the common one, and that all sorts of people held it, who without being
monsters of insensibility grew fat and jolly nevertheless.
So to explain this puzzle, I fell to thinking of the one life of which I
knew something—my own to wit—and out tumbled the bottom of the theory.
For I tried to think what would happen to me if I were forbidden my
ordinary daily work; and I knew that I should die of despair and
weariness, unless I could straightway take to something else which I
could make my daily work: and it was clear to me that I worked not in the
least in the world for the sake of earning leisure by it, but partly
driven by the fear of starvation or disgrace, and partly, and even a very
great deal, because I love the work itself: and as for my leisure: well I
had to confess that part of it I do indeed spend as a dog does—in
contemplation, let us say; and like it well enough: but part of it also I
spend in work: which work gives me just as much pleasure as my
bread-earning work—neither more nor less; and therefore could be no bribe
or hope for my work-a-day hours.
Then next I turned my thought to my friends: mere artists, and therefore,
you know, lazy people by prescriptive right: I found that the one thing
they enjoyed was their work, and that their only idea of happy leisure
was other work, just as valuable to the world as their work-a-day work:
they only differed from me in liking the dog-like leisure less and the
man-like labour more than I do.
I got no further when I turned from mere artists, to important men—public
men: I could see no signs of their working merely to earn leisure: they
all worked for the work and the deeds’ sake. Do rich gentlemen sit up
all night in the House of Commons for the sake of earning leisure? if so,
’tis a sad waste of labour. Or Mr. Gladstone? he doesn’t seem to have
succeeded in winning much leisure by tolerably strenuous work; what he
does get he might have got on much easier terms, I am sure.
Does it then come to this, that there are men, say a class of men, whose
daily work, though maybe they cannot escape from doing it, is chiefly
pleasure to them; and other classes of men whose daily work is wholly
irksome to them, and only endurable because they hope while they are
about it to earn thereby a little leisure at the day’s end?
If that were wholly true the contrast between the two kinds of lives
would be greater than the contrast between the utmost delicacy of life
and the utmost hardship could show, or between the utmost calm and utmost
trouble. The difference would be literally immeasurable.
But I dare not, if I would, in so serious a matter overstate the evils I
call on you to attack: it is not wholly true that such immeasurable
difference exists between the lives of divers classes of men, or the
world would scarce have got through to past the middle of this century:
misery, grudging, and tyranny would have destroyed us all.
The inequality even at the worst is not really so great as that: any
employment in which a thing can be done better or worse has some pleasure
in it, for all men more or less like doing what they can do well: even
mechanical labour is pleasant to some people (to me amongst others) if it
be not too mechanical.
Nevertheless though it be not wholly true that the daily work of some men
is merely pleasant and of others merely grievous; yet it is over true
both that things are not very far short of this, and also that if people
do not open their eyes in time they will speedily worsen. Some work,
nay, almost all the work done by artisans _is_ too mechanical; and those
that work at it must either abstract their thoughts from it altogether,
in which case they are but machines while they are at work; or else they
must suffer such dreadful weariness in getting through it, as one can
scarcely bear to think of. Nature desires that we shall at least live,
but seldom, I suppose, allows this latter misery to happen; and the
workmen who do purely mechanical work do as a rule become mere machines
as far as their work is concerned. Now as I am quite sure that no art,
not even the feeblest, rudest, or least intelligent, can come of such
work, so also I am sure that such work makes the workman less than a man
and degrades him grievously and unjustly, and that nothing can compensate
him or us for such degradation: and I want you specially to note that
this was instinctively felt in the very earliest days of what are called
the industrial arts.
When a man turned the wheel, or threw the shuttle, or hammered the iron,
he was expected to make something more than a water-pot, a cloth, or a
knife: he was expected to make a work of art also: he could scarcely
altogether fail in this, he might attain to making a work of the greatest
beauty: this was felt to be positively necessary to the peace of mind
both of the maker and the user; and this is it which I have called
Architecture: the turning of necessary articles of daily use into works
of art.
Certainly, when we come to think of it thus, there does seem to be little
less than that immeasurable contrast above mentioned between such work
and mechanical work: and most assuredly do I believe that the crafts
which fashion our familiar wares need this enlightenment of happiness no
less now than they did in the days of the early Pharaohs: but we have
forgotten this necessity, and in consequence have reduced handicraft to
such degradation, that a learned, thoughtful, and humane man can set
forth as an axiom that no man will work except to earn leisure thereby.
But now let us forget any conventional ways of looking at the labour
which produces the matters of our daily life, which ways come partly from
the wretched state of the arts in modern times, and partly I suppose from
that repulsion to handicraft which seems to have beset some minds in all
ages: let us forget this, and try to think how it really fares with the
divers ways of work in handicrafts.
I think one may divide the work with which Architecture is conversant
into three classes: first there is the purely mechanical: those who do
this are machines only, and the less they think of what they are doing
the better for the purpose, supposing they are properly drilled: the
purpose of this work, to speak plainly, is not the making of wares of any
kind, but what on the one hand is called employment, on the other what is
called money-making: that is to say, in other words, the multiplication
of the species of the mechanical workman, and the increase of the riches
of the man who sets him to work, called in our modern jargon by a strange
perversion of language, a manufacturer: {208} Let us call this kind of
work Mechanical Toil.
The second kind is more or less mechanical as the case may be; but it can
always be done better or worse: if it is to be well done, it claims
attention from the workman, and he must leave on it signs of his
individuality: there will be more or less of art in it, over which the
workman has at least some control; and he will work on it partly to earn
his bread in not too toilsome or disgusting a way, but in a way which
makes even his work-hours pass pleasantly to him, and partly to make
wares, which when made will be a distinct gain to the world; things that
will be praised and delighted in. This work I would call Intelligent
Work.
The third kind of work has but little if anything mechanical about it; it
is altogether individual; that is to say, that what any man does by means
of it could never have been done by any other man. Properly speaking,
this work is all pleasure: true, there are pains and perplexities and
weariness in it, but they are like the troubles of a beautiful life; the
dark places that make the bright ones brighter: they are the romance of
the work and do but elevate the workman, not depress him: I would call
this Imaginative Work.
Now I can fancy that at first sight it may seem to you as if there were
more difference between this last and Intelligent Work, than between
Intelligent Work and Mechanical Toil: but ’tis not so. The difference
between these two is the difference between light and darkness, between
Ormuzd and Ahriman: whereas the difference between Intelligent work and
what for want of a better word I am calling Imaginative work, is a matter
of degree only; and in times when art is abundant and noble there is no
break in the chain from the humblest of the lower to the greatest of the
higher class; from the poor weaver’s who chuckles as the bright colour
comes round again, to the great painter anxious and doubtful if he can
give to the world the whole of his thought or only nine-tenths of it,
they are all artists—that is men; while the mechanical workman, who does
not note the difference between bright and dull in his colours, but only
knows them by numbers, is, while he is at his work, no man, but a
machine. Indeed when Intelligent work coexists with Imaginative, there
is no hard and fast line between them; in the very best and happiest
times of art, there is scarce any Intelligent work which is not
Imaginative also; and there is but little of effort or doubt, or sign of
unexpressed desires even in the highest of the Imaginative work: the
blessing of Equality elevates the lesser, and calms the greater, art.
Now further, Mechanical Toil is bred of that hurry and thoughtfulness of
civilisation of which, as aforesaid, the middle classes of this country
have been such powerful furtherers: on the face of it it is hostile to
civilisation, a curse that civilisation has made for itself and can no
longer think of abolishing or controlling: such it seems, I say; but
since it bears with it change and tremendous change, it may well be that
there is something more than mere loss in it: it will full surely destroy
art as we know art, unless art newborn destroy it: yet belike at the
worst it will destroy other things beside which are the poison of art,
and in the long run itself also, and thus make way for the new art, of
whose form we know nothing.
Intelligent work is the child of struggling, hopeful, progressive
civilisation: and its office is to add fresh interest to simple and
uneventful lives, to soothe discontent with innocent pleasure fertile of
deeds gainful to mankind; to bless the many toiling millions with hope
daily recurring, and which it will by no means disappoint.
Imaginative work is the very blossom of civilisation triumphant and
hopeful; it would fain lead men to aspire towards perfection: each hope
that it fulfils gives birth to yet another hope: it bears in its bosom
the worth and the meaning of life and the counsel to strive to understand
everything; to fear nothing and to hate nothing: in a word, ’tis the
symbol and sacrament of the Courage of the World.
Now thus it stands to-day with these three kinds of work; Mechanical Toil
has swallowed Intelligent Work and all the lower part of Imaginative
Work, and the enormous mass of the very worst now confronts the slender
but still bright array of the very best: what is left of art is rallied
to its citadel of the highest intellectual art, and stands at bay there.
At first sight its hope of victory is slender indeed: yet to us now
living it seems as if man had not yet lost all that part of his soul
which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying.
If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come
alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century,
it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of
intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes
it may go through, it will at the last be victorious, and bring abundant
content to mankind. On the other hand, if, as some think, it be but the
reflection and feeble ghost of that glorious autumn which ended the good
days of the mighty art of the Middle Ages, it will take but little
killing: Mechanical Toil will sweep over all the handiwork of man, and
art will be gone.
I myself am too busy a man to trouble myself much as to what may happen
after that: I can only say that if you do not like the thought of that
dull blank, even if you know or care little for art, do not cast the
thought of it aside, but think of it again and again, and cherish the
trouble it breeds till such a future seems unendurable to you; and then
make up your minds that you will not bear it; and even if you distrust
the artists that now are, set yourself to clear the way for the artists
that are to come. We shall not count you among our enemies then, however
hardly you deal with us.
I have spoken of one most important part of that task; I have prayed you
to set yourselves earnestly to protecting what is left, and recovering
what is lost of the Natural Fairness of the Earth: no less I pray you to
do what you may to raise up some firm ground amid the great flood of
mechanical toil, to make an effort to win human and hopeful work for
yourselves and your fellows.
But if our first task of guarding the beauty of the Earth was hard, this
is far harder, nor can I pretend to think that we can attack our enemy
directly; yet indirectly surely something may be done, or at least the
foundations laid for something.
For Art breeds Art, and every worthy work done and delighted in by maker
and user begets a longing for more: and since art cannot be fashioned by
mechanical toil, the demand for real art will mean a demand for
intelligent work, which if persisted in will in time create its due
supply—at least I hope so.
I believe that what I am now saying will be well understood by those who
really care about art, but to speak plainly I know that these are rarely
to be found even among the cultivated classes: it must be confessed that
the middle classes of our civilisation have embraced luxury instead of
art, and that we are even so blindly base as to hug ourselves on it, and
to insult the memory of valiant people of past times and to mock at them
because they were not encumbered with the nuisances that foolish habit
has made us look on as necessaries. Be sure that we are not beginning to
prepare for the art that is to be, till we have swept all that out of our
minds, and are setting to work to rid ourselves of all the useless
luxuries (by some called comforts) that make our stuffy art-stifling
houses more truly savage than a Zulu’s kraal or an East Greenlander’s
snow hut.
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.
And of that to which we were blinded, not all was unworthy: nay the most
of it was deep-rooted in men’s souls, and was a necessary part of their
Life upon the Earth, and claims our reverence still: let us add this
knowledge to our other knowledge: and there will still be a future for
the arts. Let us remember this, and amid simplicity of life turn our
eyes to real beauty that can be shared by all: and then though the days
worsen, and no rag of the elder art be left for our teaching, yet the new
art may yet arise among us, and even if it have the hands of a child
together with the heart of a troubled man, still it may bear on for us to
better times the tokens of our reverence for the Life of Man upon the
Earth. For we indeed freed from the bondage of foolish habit and dulling
luxury might at last have eyes wherewith to see: and should have to
babble to one another many things of our joy in the life around us: the
faces of people in the streets bearing the tokens of mirth and sorrow and
hope, and all the tale of their lives: the scraps of nature the busiest
of us would come across; birds and beasts and the little worlds they live
in; and even in the very town the sky above us and the drift of the
clouds across it; the wind’s hand on the slim trees, and its voice amid
their branches, and all the ever-recurring deeds of nature; nor would the
road or the river winding past our homes fail to tell us stories of the
country-side, and men’s doings in field and fell. And whiles we should
fall to muse on the times when all the ways of nature were mere wonders
to men, yet so well beloved of them that they called them by men’s names
and gave them deeds of men to do; and many a time there would come before
us memories of the deed of past times, and of the aspirations of those
mighty peoples whose deaths have made our lives, and their sorrows our
joys.
How could we keep silence of all this? and what voice could tell it but
the voice of art: and what audience for such a tale would content us but
all men living on the Earth?
This is what Architecture hopes to be: it will have this life, or else
death; and it is for us now living between the past and the future to say
whether it shall live or die.