One point emerges very clearly from the murky chaos of the industrial
situation to-day; and that is that the brain-worker will not for ever
be content to be merely a brain-worker, thinking and thinking, hour
after hour, day after day. He is beginning to realise his latent
capacity for manual labour; and he demands as his right a larger
opportunity for self-development, so that he too may escape from the
drudgery of brain-work and rise at last to the higher, freer life of
muscular exertion. There must already be many brain-workers who are
well-fitted to take their place in the ranks of manual labour; and the
cry goes up with increasing force that, given only that _opportunity_
which is every man's due, millions of their fellows are capable of
lifting themselves to the same standard.
In my house the cry goes up with peculiar force about Easter-time,
when I repaint as much of the house as I am allowed and whitewash the
rest, and can appreciate what I am missing in my everyday calling. It
is astonishing to think that one used actually to pay people money to
paint and whitewash, and looked on with meek wonder, for six weeks,
while they did it. Bourgeois I may be, but I have put aside that
folly. The Easter holidays now are to me the best holidays of
the year, because for four whole days I can do almost unlimited
decorating. I begin with the conservatory; I do it a delicate pale
blue, and it looks very lovely. The vine in the conservatory no longer
yields her increase as she used to do, but I can't help that. After
the conservatory I start on the basement, and the opportunities in the
basement are endless. It is a curious thing that brain-workers who do
much decorating in their spare time do most of it in the basement and
not in the rooms they have to occupy themselves. The basement is fair
game. Another curious thing is that the people who do have to occupy
the basement never seem to appreciate what you are doing for them.
They appear to think you are merely amusing yourself.
The best day for doing the basement therefore is Easter Monday, when
you can legitimately send the whole staff (if any) away for a holiday,
and commandeer the entire kitchen equipment. This point is more
important than you may suppose; since if the staff are at home and you
want to use the basement bucket or the soft broom (both of which are
essential for efficient whitewashing) it is almost certain that they
will at the same time want to put them to some preposterous use of
their own; and this causes either delay or friction, probably both.
Besides, they keep bustling about behind you and saying, "'T't, 't't,"
or "_Busy_ to-day!" in a surprised voice. This is most irritating, and
an irritated painter always goes over the edges.
When you have got rid of the staff (if any) you can get to work on the
scullery and whitewash the ceiling. Whitewashing is much superior to
painting. Painting looks lovely while you are doing it, but is very
horrible when it is dry, being streaky or blistery or covered with
long hairs. Whitewash looks horrible while you are doing it, but
marvellous when it is dry, which is much more satisfactory. In a life
of average prosperity and no small public distinction, including an
intimacy with a professional tenor and two or three free lunches with
noblemen, I can recall few moments of such genuine rapture as the one
when you creep down to the basement to find the whitewash dry at last
and brilliant as the driven snow.
The other thing about whitewashing is that it is done with a broom,
not with a finicking brush and a small pot, but a good fat bucket
and the housemaid's soft-broom. In this way you can really get some
_bravura_ into your work. And, except perhaps for watering the garden
with a hose, there is no quicker way of making a really good mess.
Whitewashing by this method, I find that it takes much longer to
remove the whitewash from the floors and other places where it is not
intended to go than it does to put the whitewash on the places where
it is intended to go; but the charwoman does the removing on Easter
Tuesday, and I still think that that method is the best. Especially,
perhaps, for outside walls, because in one's artistic frenzy it is
usual to cover most of the rose-trees with whitewash; they look
then like those whitewashed orchards, and visitors think you are a
scientific gardener, combating Plant Pests.
Personally I don't pay too much attention to the rather arbitrary
rules on painting laid down by the Painters' Union. Life is too
short. For instance, I don't put my brushes in turpentine when I
have finished for the day; and if I do I put the green brush and the
light-blue brush and the black brush and the white brush in the same
pot, and terrible things happen. I don't like my art to be hampered by
petty notions of economy, and if brushes persist in crystallising into
tooth-brushes when left to themselves for an hour or two I simply use
a new brush.
Nor do I insist on "cleaning thoroughly the surface before the paint
is applied." Anyone who sets out in practice to clean thoroughly the
surface of the basement before applying the paint will find that the
Easter holidays have slipped away long before any paint is applied at
all. Besides, one of the main objects of paint is to hide the dirt, so
why waste time in removing it?
On the other hand, I am not content with mere painting; I go in
thoroughly for all the refinements like driers and varnishes and
gold-size. Driers and gold-size are extremely necessary when painting
the basement, because if there is one thing the staff enjoy more than
tea-cups coming away in the 'and, it is really rubbing themselves
against wet paint and wandering round muttering complaints about it.
Without a driers or some drier or whatever it is, the basement
remains wet for ever, and all work ceases while the staff amble about,
ecstatically rubbing themselves against the doorposts and saying
"T'tt, t'tt," in a meaning way.
It is a sad quality of oil-paint that when it is dry it no longer
looks so lovely and shiny as it looks when it is wet. It was found
that the sense of disappointment which this produced was greater
than the Painters' Union could bear; so someone, in order to prevent
industrial strife, invented some stuff called varnish, by which, at
the very moment of disillusion, the maximum of shininess can be again
produced with the minimum of effort. It is one of the few inventions
which make a man grateful for the advance of science.
Well, that is all there is about painting. The only difficulty, once
you have begun, is to know when to stop. Painting is a kind of fever.
The painting of a single chair makes the whole room look dirty; so
the whole room has to be painted. Then, of course, the outside of the
windows has to be brought up to the same standard; and if once you
have painted the outside of a window you are practically committed to
painting the whole house.
The only thing that stops me painting is a turpentine crisis, which
usually occurs just before church on Sunday morning, when one has
three workmanlike coats of glossy enamel or pale-green on one's hands.
Week-end painters should keep a close eye on the situation, and
cease work while there is yet sufficient turpentine to cope with the
workmanlike coats; for I find that in these days the churchwardens
look askance at you if you put in a penny with a pale-green hand.
The extraordinary thing is that this painting fever doesn't seem to
afflict professional painters; they know exactly when to stop. But
then they don't appreciate the luxury of their lot. They don't realise
that theirs is one of the few forms of labour in which a man has some
tangible result (well, not tangible, perhaps) to show for his work at
the end of the day. There is nothing more satisfactory than that. It
is true, no doubt, that the professional painter would rather have a
windy article like this to show; all I can say is I would rather have
a bright-blue basement or a middle-green conservatory.