_DRESS AND DECORATION_
DRESS
[Illustration: O]F all the many matters which require reform in this
world, I place the two above mentioned, and, while holding my own
opinions with respect, demand of everyone to reverence his or her
opinions with equal respect.
I think that we dress altogether wrongly, and would point out as an
artist to artists the ugliness of it: to the broad masses whom we
delight to serve, the folly and unwholesomeness of it.
I hold that we eat and drink altogether wrongly, and would like to point
out as an artist to artists the brain-clogging effect of it: to the
people, the expense and _unmanliness_ of our customs. I would fain,
while exposing my own follies, hold up a mirror to others, showing as a
warning where I cannot be a guide.
In decoration, my second subject, I would fain point you directly to
nature; look straight at her, each with the desiring eyes of a lover,
and she will satisfy you all.
I suppose, in spite of the melancholy groans of some and the cynical
snarls of other dyspeptic subjects, that we all agree, without
exception, to love this life when we can have it tolerably free from
pain, or the pinching of poverty, and find this much-abused world quite
good enough for us and our purposes.
The weather is never altogether just what we would like it to be: it is
either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold, to be exactly to our
taste; the direction of the wind bothers us--in fact, there is a happy
medium which we cannot strike; and yet, with all the shortcomings, I
doubt if there is a single sane Christian who would like to go to heaven
one second before his or her time. Of course, we except the unfortunate
insane, who rush away on the spur of an evil moment.
For my own part, I wish I could live a thousand years, and envy the
constitutions of the antediluvians, who could take time to do their work
properly, although I will confess to moments--neither few nor far
between--when I make myself as miserable and disagreeable as anyone
could imagine, and yet live.
The earth is all right about me, the weather is passable, the machinery
which moves me along would be perfection, if custom, and fashion, and
general _debility of will_ would only let it alone, and permit it to do
its work in its own way, and with its own conditions.
Nature endows us with tastes as simply correct as the horse's; and
custom teaches us to endure, with martyr persistence, habits that are
as difficult and dangerous to learn as they are hard to break from.
Nature bestows upon us skin all over our body, like that upon our face,
and custom covers up part of it, until it is so sensitive that it cannot
be exposed; and fashion bids us bare it at the wrong moment, or else
load it with all kinds of unwholesomenesses.
True Art stands by the side of Nature, both ridiculed, both lamenting;
while Fashion and Custom, ever capricious, ride on triumphant.
For example, take the feet: I prefer to raise my eyes from the earth--to
begin, as men begin to build houses, from the groundwork upwards. We
muffle them in wool or cotton, and cramp them inside the stiffest of
tanned skins--dead skins over living skins--and think that this can be
healthy; we shape them according to a fashion--square, round, or pointed
toes--never according to nature and the foot which we ought to imitate,
therefore not at all according to true art, which must follow after
nature, never after fashion, which must always be utterly false and ugly
until it emanates directly from nature, and then there can be no god
Fashion; for every man and woman will create their own ideal from
themselves, and not from any brainless _demi-monde_, and their modesty
will not run counter to the virtue which the great Creator planted
within the human mind, nor shame be created over what He said was well
done.
We hobble about within our wrappings with feet that swell and sweat and
steam unwholesomely, bathing them when they have become intolerable with
the exhalations from the living skin, and the impurities which they have
drawn out of the dead hides.
We hobble about with our raised heels and our square toes, admiring one
another, or envying one another, for the smallness and the tightness of
the cramping, never revealing, till some one tramps upon them, the
painful fact of bunions and corns, which, in silence and with Spartan
endurance, we are growing all to ourselves, in order to reach the ideal
that the world has set up for us to follow.
A host of other ailments are the lively produce of our efforts; but, as
beauty is my aim, I will pass them over, content to regard the ugly
abortion which that most lovely portion of a faultless machine has
become.
The overpowering influence of fashion even on well-balanced minds must
not be overlooked. When crinolines were in vogue, even men of taste were
weak enough to admire the fearsome abomination--at least, they admired
the creature inside that circumference, to which usage made them blind.
None of us admire the Chinese ideal of a foot, yet we are ready to grow
poetic over the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of a shoemaker; we sing to the boot,
for of course it would be impossible, not to say imprudent, to sing
about the foot.
Once I lived near a woman who had lost her nose. At first I thought this
a great disfigurement, and did not like to look in her face, but by
degrees I grew to lose the first horror, and I dare say might have grown
to think the want an improvement in the way of faces, had I lived near
her _long enough_.
We admire the Greek ideal, because the Greeks had perfect untrammelled
nature to copy. Their models were not curbed by stays or tight-lacings;
their training was severe, and their eyes were accustomed to flowers.
Luxury and sloth were crimes in Greece; in the high times of Greece, I
mean, when simplicity was admired, and slaves were the Sybarites, naked
men and women vied to show perfect limbs, not rich attire. The
barbarians were the fashion-mongers.
What so like the classic ideal as the Highland woman who puts on boots
at the church-door, and doffs them again with the benediction?--useless
to her amongst her native hills--an agony endured, because the poor
thing imagines that it looks respectable and religious-like.
What so unlike this idea as the fashionable votary, while she strangles
and strains to get out of the superfine, creaseless kid cages? Did they
look like mice peeping in and out as she tripped (limped) along
according to the poet? Who wants to see mice under petticoats? Who, with
poetry or taste, cares to see feet that can be compared to mice? And can
those long, splay, aristocratic, high-heeled, superbly-arched,
pointed-toed, tightly, so tightly-fitting, importations from tinsel
Paris be called feet? Alas! they are all that the envied, favoured one
has to represent what God Almighty was already pleased with. He gave her
roundness, which she has flattened--fulness, which she has
reduced--softness, which she has made hard; all that He did she has
attempted to undo, until what she is dipping into the tepid and aromatic
bath is neither useful for walking nor tempting to the eye. They are
white enough--almost white enough for leprosy, except when the boot has
been perchance extra hard; then they are red or horny, according to the
time the bruise has been endured. Soft underneath, where nature meant
them to be hard--so soft and useless that a crumb under the carpet
causes them to double up--hard and lumpy where nature intended them to
be soft! How modest fashion is to hide all the uglinesses she creates,
and what fools men are to rave about a piece of leather!
Our Highland girl, with her boots slung over her shoulders, and the
marks all washed away in the streamlet she has just passed, is springy
in her gait as a young stag, lithe in her movement as a young
panther--every fleshfold has its own room to move and make grace; the
heels are broad to meet emergencies, round where they rise, flat where
they press the earth; the soles hard, as they ought to be, to encounter
the roughnesses, with an instep just big enough to skim the ground, not
high enough to attract the eye--nature is far too subtle for that;
flexible and free, the toes are dimpled loves, each carrying his own
pink sea-shell, with blue veins that run over strong sinews, and appear
mellow under the gold of the sun-flush--an ankle that is godlike in its
concealed strength, and the portion of a leg that might serve the
painter as his model for the huntress Diana.
Fashion makes us bond-slaves. We put on boots to keep out the cold, and
they soak in the damp; stockings to help the absorbing process, and thus
confirm the risk of consumption. Nature makes us all beautiful, or would
do so if we gave her a fair chance; and we spend years in bringing
nature down to a level not to be described in any simile. Nature meant
to endow us with sinews and muscles to give and take a squeeze, and we
poultice them all over until they are flaccid, and shrink at the
slightest force.
Nature made the Greeks, and the Greeks owed what powers they possessed
to the restraint they displayed in letting nature alone. Art, having no
human nature now left unspoilt, points to the old Greeks. Taste admits
art to be right, yet yields to fashion, while that graven calf stands
with senseless hoof upon the roses and the lilies, calling itself the
God of Modesty, Purity, and Taste--a modesty which ordains the female to
cover her hands and feet, and lay bare her breast; purity which can
show a naked arm, and blush to show a naked foot.
We cannot improve upon the naked foot. The hand may wear rings, and to
degraded senses look improved (we who look straight to nature, and find
the finish of the Creator finish enough, doubt this--but let that pass);
the neck may have its chains, the ears, the arms, and ankles, even the
nose, rings, according to the fancy of the wearer or the taste of the
nation. I do not like rings, or anything that divides the lines of
symmetry, yet if one part be covered, gold may be worn with advantage on
other portions; but I defy any cover or ornament yet invented by man to
improve the foot which God has already so beautifully covered.
The world is all false--false aims, false motives, false pride, false
modesty, shame bred from impurity, blushing at what it should be proud
of.
If we dared, we would fain set up woman as she dawned upon primitive
man. Imagination pictures to us the first male and female, without a
physical flaw, in the perfection which the Creator considered costume
sufficient. Reason may bring forward scientific theories respecting the
origin of man, but the poetry of our natures will not permit us to
accept of them. We like to see that young man fresh from the hands of
his Creator, meeting his mate with her first blush of womanhood in those
spring-tinted glades of Paradise; we like to think of the child-minds
waking up, each drinking in the other's fascination, each unconscious of
its own perfection, filled with the new-breathed life, the joy of
existence, the lavishness of surrounding nature, alone in their joint
humanity, the centre of myriad wondering eyes, with the great Eye of
dawning Day laving them and all creation in that rosy light.
We like to see her standing breathless before the splendour of that
youthful manhood, soft mists wreathing from her like a bridal veil, her
blue eyes like the forget-me-nots, into which her tender feet are
sinking, pushing back with those shell-tipped, tapering fingers the
wealth of golden tresses which roll from the azure-veined, ivory
forehead, that she may be the better able to peer within those wells of
amber brown, all unknowing of the loveliness she is herself revealing.
But the world has fallen from that state of purity, and we have the
sordid substitute, shame, to warn us against any return; therefore we
must perforce drape our ideal before we can present her to the many
eyes. Yet in our draping we would consult nature with grace, rather than
fashion; cover our woman without losing her identity; imitate naught
except her own lines, in her drapery; let her breathe freely, move
easily, and appear before us as she ought to do, wide-waisted, a woman
with the look of a future matron, and not the rickety imitation of a
wasp.
Fashion is a mighty power, and yet, after all the periods and changes
with the world, we must return to our admiration of the ancients.
We must love our girls, no matter how they are costumed, and love will
make the costumes appear becoming; yet, can we compare the intricate
flounces of to-day with the grandeur and grace of those simple antique
folds, without deploring the influence of that 'Monster, Fashion,' which
compels _Love_ to make such an effort?
Think of our gigantic headpieces, and then of the classic plait and
coil; in the one case measuring four instead of the classic eight heads
to the figure.
Compare the gigantic hoop, with the clinging robe which revealed
sufficient for grace without offending modesty; the easy swing of the
antique, with the affected limp of the modern.
Although we know the story of the first body covering of foliage, it is
difficult to trace back to the first foot cramp. An old legend has it
that when Adam was forced from Eden he bruised his foot, in the hurry,
against a bar of the massy gate, and so, with the pain, thought upon a
bandage.
Pain is mostly our first, and most effectual, instructor. The red-hot
poker must be a pretty sight to the eye of innocent childhood; the touch
generally suggests the necessity of cultivating the organ of caution. So
with man, the ignorant; he covered his body because sin showed him it
was naked, and tied up the wound upon his bruised foot because it
smarted.
Granted that the roads are hard, and the feet of the wanderers unfit to
encounter the roughness, the sandal of the ancients comes nearest to our
ideal of a graceful protection. To those who must have luxury, who have
wealth to spend and like to spend it on themselves, what a glorious
opportunity is here!--straps inlaid with gold and gems, the poetry of
the jeweller expended in chaste designs and ornate extravagances--straps
that catch a thousand sun rays, and break them into prismatic splinters;
gems that get loosened from their elaborate settings, and, rolling
amongst the grey dust, attract the beggar's eye with their flashing, and
fire the hearts of the finders' friends with the fleeting joy of
possession; straps that leave the toes free room to move, and be seen,
open to the fresh airs of heaven, like the hands and face, with the same
advantages of getting dust-grimed, and the same chance of getting often
washed; straps that may cost a fortune, or be had at a quarter of the
price of boots.
What a delightful custom after the sandals were doffed, when the guest
entered, and the women of the household brought water and towel as the
welcome home! Think of it, on a summer march, with your feet sweltering
and blistering inside cramping boots--the comfort of it, the beauty of
it, when the tired feet were placed on the mat, or amongst the rushes,
rosy, fragrant, and purified!
In summer, ay, or in winter either, are we warmer gloved or ungloved on
a winter day? Which protects the nose most in a frost, a veil or a
handful of snow rubbed briskly over that organ? Which feels the cold
most, the Highlander with his kilt and bare legs, or the Sassenach with
his drawers and breeches? With the hands and the feet, habit solves the
problem; our summer is a Calcutta winter.
Fashion is for ever changing. Why? Because men and women cannot feel
satisfied with their inventions--because the instinct of the True is in
us all, and we are miserable when we attempt to beat it down. God gave
man a costume which man cannot rival, and man must come back to it
before he is satisfied. It is well to foster a taste for china or old
books, to rave of the quaintness of Queen Anne, the shepherdesses of
Watteau, the flowered vests and cocked hats of the beaux, the patches
and periwigs of the be-hooped and be-bustled belles, cracked plates with
fragile morals, manners of the stage--all that the idiots who get up the
forced ecstasies rave about; but the talk grows low-toned, and the
tinsel tongues are hushed, as the Apollo and Achilles, or the Venus and
Andromeda of the Greeks, loom up, with the grandeur of their God-beauty
clinging to them like an imperishable robe. Where is the mock modesty
that dares to blush before these perfections? Gaze upon them long, and
learn the secret of the changing fashions.
Men and women must yet learn to dress so as to move and breathe freely
and naturally before they reach the point where fashion will stand
still--having folds that fall simply, short for action, long for show.
Woman must appear yet before us as she should do, supple and free. The
world must yet wake up to the truth and purity of beauty, and to do so
must come back to its Creator--delicacy weighed in the scales with the
virtues of nature; the beauty of strength admired, before the whiteness
and softness of the drooping flower.
We must love all that is beautiful. The naked form of a woman is
beautiful, but the folds of a loosely-fitting, simply plain costume are
also beautiful, and perhaps the whiteness and softness gained, if it can
be gained without loss of strength, by shading it from the sun, is a
point gained; for it is lovely in its fragility--a loveliness which the
air of heaven would roughen, which the eye of day would cover as
thoroughly as a veil--subtle gradations which are never seen except by
the painter.
Cover it, if you will, with soft folds that will fit to the motions, not
with the snaky outer skin which reveals the shape completely, but
without a touch of the multitude of colour charms. We can never return
to the innocence of Eden until we fling off the clay portion of us, and
look upon life with spiritual eyes. Then the ugliness of sin and crime
will make us droop our eyes, but never the perfection of nature.
I have seen people turn with blushing faces at the sight of a naked
child, as if it was something to be guilty about. Education had debased
their minds. In the South Seas I have watched the sexes together plunge
into the coral-washed waves, and discourse on passing events ashore, and
they had no thought of shame. Nature had left them where education will
bring us all, if the time ever comes when knowledge can be surmounted.
Choose, while you must dress, each a fashion to suit yourselves. Begin
with the figure which your Maker has given you, and assimilate as nearly
as your material will permit your fashion to that figure. Consult the
hygiene of that form, and make your fashion subordinate to those laws.
Perfect health and perfect grace go together. Consult the colour which
nature has given to you, and place the colour of your costume in harmony
with that, to keep that colour, when dressed, exactly in the same
position as it is when you are nude; for depend upon it, if you are in
health, no heightening or lowering will ever become you so well.
Remember that fashionable colours may have suited the particular woman
who made the fashion; seldom anyone else.
Think you are as good a woman as any other, and bring pride to the
rescue. You have equal right, through the royalty of your perfect
womanhood, to make a fashion as any duchess or _demi-mondaine_ in the
land.
Banish false hair, which only heats your brains and wears away your own
hair, besides carrying dead impressions and nameless diseases into your
system.
Banish hats that hide or _kill_ faces, or weigh down heads. A light
cover for the sun, if fierce: _yet the hair was given to man for this
purpose_.
Banish stays, which murder not only yourselves, but the races coming
after you.
Banish waist-bands and petticoats, which are deforming your hips. Look
to the waist and hips of the Venus of Milo for my meaning.
Live for yourselves, and for the future. Be the founders of virtuous and
wise Titans. Saturn is not nearly dead yet, and Rhea is still kind, if
you will. But as Jove fought for life, so must you. On the milk of goats
he grew strong to defy Father Time, the devourer. Be strong to defy the
laughter and the sneers. Set up an Image of Life and worship this only,
for this is the earth-symbol of God.
DECORATION
Art, in the general acceptance of the term, is all that is apart from
mechanical dexterity; as the man is not his brain or heart or muscles,
but the immeasurable force which controls and moves all these parts, so
Art is that immeasurable force that appeals to and speaks through all
our senses. Truth is the primary principle of art; the lever of life,
the mainspring of society. If we are not true to ourselves, we cannot be
true to one another; therefore, our plans must come to naught. Madame
Modjeska, one of the greatest of living actresses, is said to be able to
do two things at once--to present to the public a face expressive of the
most intense agony, shedding tears, and _seemingly_ writing a letter
which is breaking her heart, and _actually_ making comic caricatures on
the sheet of note-paper. Admiring this gifted woman as I do, this is a
knowledge to shudder over. I hope it cannot be true, for if I thought of
art reaching this doubtful state of perfection, I could never again see
all the agony of that acting, only the mockery of the caricatures.
Falsehood is not power; it may impose, but unless the actor, or the
poet, or the painter, can lose himself or herself in the part with which
they are involved, all the rest is only nerve-twisting, meaning nothing,
conveying nothing.
Beauty is the embodiment of truth, as man palpable is the embodiment of
soul. Falsehood may come draped in the appearance of truth, which is
beauty, but that only testifies to the rigid impersonation of truth;
falsehood, being hideous, has to come like truth before it can impose.
Beauty being thus the incarnation of truth, and the mission of art being
to present this body to the senses, it becomes the stern duty of artists
to find out what she is before they attempt to reproduce her. Hence also
art takes its proper position in the world; hence its utility to
society.
Truth is the binder of society, the leader upwards; Beauty, the form of
that divine force; Art, the interpretation of that holy principle;
Honour, Faith, Trust, Love which casteth out fear--all are outsprings
from the spirit of Truth, which Art has to present to the people, and
teach them to see and love.
Beauty, therefore, is the chief quality of art, and while the standard
of beauty rests in our eyes--a perfectly formed face often appearing
repulsive, and a figure seemingly faultless devoid of grace, whilst the
expression and the action transform the plain face and common figure
into beauty and grace--so old age can be as beautiful as early youth,
and the ugliness of power made to embody rugged grandeur.
But although we create our own ideal of beauty, it is the mission of the
painter, poet, sculptor, novelist, and dramatist to educate the world,
and refine and elevate their creations and ideals; and this mission is
not fulfilled in the mind that merely reports the tittle-tattle of
everyday life and no more, or that relates the improbable adventures,
frivolities, and vices of a fashionable upper ten thousand, nor the
burlesque or comic opera, that turns to buffoonery all those sentiments
which tend to melt or ennoble in the language and moral of the tragedy,
from which they draw their ribald nonsense. Nor is it fulfilled in the
poem that only deals in mystery and new-forged words, that mean nothing
unless the suggestion of a harmonious sound--unless the reader fills it
up with his own suppositions; or, if meaning anything, only suggestions
which the writer is too cowardly to tell out openly and therefore
knavishly sends forth to engender its own poison under its specious and
subtle mufflings of musical jargon.
Nor is this mission fulfilled in the picture that speaks a soft, hazy
blending of harmonious tints, because a weaver can do and mean as much
with his loom, or the display of a dexterous manipulation learnt, as any
other dexterity in craft, by rule. Neither is it fulfilled in the scant
imitation of a bit of nature, although here more than in the meaningless
blendings, because any old stump lying by the roadside, with its moss
and time-dressing, must look beautiful, although with no great credit
because of no great effort of the imitator, and presenting none of his
mind, which is the vital force we look to for elevation.
We turn to the Greeks for our ideas of refinement. They have left nearly
perfect forms in ornament, architecture, and sculpture, and they have
also left examples, in their habits and mode of living, that they were
simple to severity. When I speak thus I except the debauched followers
of Bacchus and Venus; for these poets, like Anacreon, belong to the
decline of Greek life, and therefore must only be looked at as the foul
fungi and rotten growths bred from decay.
The early Greeks fulfilled their mission, because they gave us beautiful
forms to look upon, beautiful lines, beautiful curves; the Egyptians and
Assyrians fulfilled their mission, because they gave us massive forms
and gorgeous tints; the savage tribes fulfil their mission in their
fantastic images of terror; the early painters fulfilled their mission,
because they sought to raise up feelings of devotion, or pity, or horror
in the spectator; the modern painters, bowing down to the golden calf,
paint what will suit best, and sink their art into a trade and traffic.
Give painters commissions, is one suggestion to create high art; so far,
good for the buyer. Painters must live, as preachers must live, and the
labourer is worthy of his hire; but the painter who is also a preacher
ought not to think of the price of his picture. Robert Burns had the
true estimate of his poetry. We cannot judge a picture by its price. If
it is a true effort, it is part of the painter's soul, which cannot be
bought. Let him not say it is worth 400_l._ or 3_l._; rather say it is
not money-worth; take it and give me what I need to live: it is mine for
ever, because I made it, and I only give it up to hang on your walls, in
that I need your help to be able to live and work.
Ornament or decoration being one of the many outcomes of art-teaching
which can be applied to the continuance and comfort of ordinary life, we
take it up in its broadest meaning. To ornament our persons rightly,
first studying the laws of health, cleanliness, and sympathetic
attraction; to bring grace into our language, and actions, and morals;
after we have administered to the sense of sight and smell, that we may
always be lovers and ideals to our wives, banishing from us utterly all
habits and liberties that tend to destroy the lovely gloss of that first
love; words that may lower or corrupt; jests that may rub off the
modesty of first friendship; actions that may tend to deaden the finer
romance of the tender dream; all these come within the category of
Decoration, and require to be carefully studied.
To ornament our house discreetly, so that we may always find a pleasure
in the sitting down, a harmony all over that will soothe us after our
day's work; a quiet _colourless_ patterned paper will be as cheap as a
gaudy glaring, and will _comfort_ you where the other will not;--a
knowledge of how little is wanted to make life pleasant, a method to get
true style, and save money, an idea of the decoration or useful laws of
colour;--a taste in the way of books and dress and behaviour, a general
_blandness_, which etiquette aims at, improving the high _tone_, which
some aristocrats have, and some must pretend to learn, and which may be
acquired by any one studying the first law of Christianity, which
selfishness, and coarseness, and falseness cannot successfully imitate
or keep up for long, no matter what title comes before or after their
names, or the pedigree they may be able to tot up, or the appearance
their tailor or dressmaker may give to them;--which only require the
instincts of honour and truth to do it all to perfection. It does not
really matter whether you use your bread or fork or knife at the
orthodox moment; if you can keep down the scoff or the sneer where
another has tripped. The fork or knife mistakes only want a hint to
rectify, the sneer or scoff cannot be rectified, for the one has been
the want of knowledge, while the other has been the want of soul: the
one is a _novice_, to be trained; the other a _cad_, to be kicked.
That there are tastes acquired, and instincts born in us, we all have
hourly and abundant proofs.
But the love of ornament I take to be an instinct bred in the bone and
born with the breath. We have records when and how the world began, but
never a record of the beginning of ornament.
Adam saw that Eve was fair to look upon, and she, I doubt not, long
before the serpent tempted her, knew of a method to deck up her tresses
so as to increase the fascination.
In this world, and age, and short life, when science has taught us the
fallacy of our eyesight, and the imperfection of those organs which the
Creator gave to us and called good; when knowledge must be concentrated
and bottled into the mind like a quintessence, over-proof, we have no
time for wandering amongst words; with our girls, scientific and exact,
Cupid must learn to be brief with what he has to tell and not dally with
soft nothings. Language must be chosen for its directness rather than
for its elegance, if the speaker would not be flung aside like the
useless rubbish his weak flourishes have made him.
Pure ornament, like pure language, should be simple in its construction
and expression, clear in its meaning, with just sufficient embellishment
about it to interest the imagination, leaving the intention honestly
revealed to the passing glance. The truest lines of grace are the
plainest; the most majestic designs are those freest from detail; the
greatest charm about the disposal of drapery is in the fewest folds, big
folds, falling straight; the best dressed men or women are those
costumed the quietest. The sign of a lady and gentleman is simple,
unaffected ease--an ease which embraces the comfort of all round so
completely that the effort cannot be observed, only the effect, which is
kindness and equality. The cynic cannot be a lady or a gentleman, for
the province of a cynic is to wound, therefore what cynics gain through
being feared they must lose in one boon, that of being loved.
Culture or education does not make a lady or a gentleman; much oftener
it makes prigs and insufferable pedantic bores, by rendering the woman
and man--through her or his very surface _cramming_ of technical names
and scientific phrases, without the more complete training of restraint
or the polish of consideration--offensive by the air of utter knowledge
they put on during conversation, or worse than offensive by the
patronising leniency they assume towards the ignorance supposed to be
around them.
I have seen fearsome clowns whose boorishness raised all the brute
within me before I had talked to them five minutes, to whom Euclid was a
relaxation, and a volume of Tyndall or Huxley regarded in the form of
light literature.
The utility, or rather the necessity, for ornament runs like an artery
throughout our lives, not only in our houses, and dresses, and persons,
and possessions, but in our morals and manners; hence my passing
observation upon the latter, first:
The savage, with his tattoo and war instruments, attaches a religious
importance to it. The lines in the face of the Maori, which mean each
curve a grade in his knighthood, or caste dignity, until the face and
the body are covered with symmetrical designs, tell to the initiated a
family history of sustained honours and glory; and this is the utility
of the ornaments of the Maori: indeed, it ought to be the intention of
ornament, as of all arts, to serve another purpose than mere show, which
is only the flashing of a paste brilliant.
From the days when man, like Jacob, set up his immortal stone, to the
classic altars of gold which the Greeks and Romans set before the
statues of their gods, it marks an epoch, and points towards an aim.
I cannot conceive man content with his rough tanned skins, and his
knobbed branch club, or sharp stone fixed into an uncarved handle; void
of the instinct of decoration, his woman, like himself, squatting in the
sun, without any other intention than to eat, fight, and sleep. No race
on earth has been so low, no time so primitive, that love did not
lighten it--love the subduer, the purifier, the knight creator. And love
never yet shot his arrow where squalid contentment reigned.
The women wove their mats, and the men cut out the handles of their
tomahawks. The moist-eyed young Kotori listened to the pipe of the
stalwart Toa, and thought of flowers to adorn her braided locks. And the
warrior plucked the tendril from the tree as he passed through the
forest, and wound it round his brows that the maiden might like him all
the better. Cupid first, and afterwards Mars, breathed into the spirit
of man the stern necessity of ornament.
Primitive man then looked straight at nature in his adorning of his
surroundings. Inspired by love, he became more sympathetic in his
tendencies, courteous to the female, zealous of his self-constituted
rights, like the Count Falko in that matchless German poem-story of
Sintram, more appreciative of the beautiful about him. Fruit attracted
him by its colouring, and bloom, and shape, when before he had only
thought upon its taste; he fondled the dog which before he only noticed
by his rigid discipline; and from the twisting of the real leaves and
flowers round himself and his accoutrements, he grew to imitate them in
relief and colours, so that he might have the remembrance always with
him when the originals lay withered into dust; bringing to the wigwam,
wharè, hut, or palace, the green of June in the white sheet of December,
stamping on the icy heart of winter the glowing monogram of festive
summer.
So with his animals. The favourite dog was immortalised in this rude,
primitive way; the wild beast whom he had fought and conquered
single-handed, as David did the lion--boasting about it at
camp-meetings, taking it as his ensign, with the motto, 'I did it all.'
So every man became his own sculptor, historian, poet, and herald; and
when language failed, he attempted, by carved ornament and painted
symbol, to fill out the want.
I like a consistent boaster. He is honest if not modest, and honesty is
far to be preferred to that contemptible mock-modesty which inclines a
man to hide what he must have been proud to inherit. Hereward the Wake,
in Charles Kingsley's romance, is a fresh boisterous character whom we
must like better when he rode sarkless out to meet the foe than Hereward
the false lover and astute politician, who could forsake the woman who
had suffered by his side.
I cannot appreciate the poet who is so modest that he requires pressing
to read his manuscript. He must have felt that he was doing something
worthy of being read or listened to, or surely he would never have
wasted his time over the elaboration of the thought; and thinking this,
he is an impostor to pretend to cover that honest outcome of his pride
and not seek his reward.
Does not the painter paint his picture to be seen, and can anyone admire
the modesty that will not hold it up to the passer-by?
Give me the Hereward of the brush and pen; the man who button-holes you
like Coleridge, and, shutting his eyes, recites all the ideas which he
thinks are fine; the Swinburne who can see his own beauties and not be
ashamed to point them out; the Walt Whitman who sings about _himself_;
the man who works for praise and is not ashamed to ask for his reward.
Is it subtlety to mask over your meaning with words? Is it the mark of
high-toned education and refinement to pretend to comprehend this
category of manufactured and meaningless words, this jingling of
obscurities?
Is it a sign of ignorance to frankly confess that this sort of thing is
beyond you? Then I don't admire subtlety; I don't pretend to be
high-toned, I glory in my ignorance. 'Sartor Resartus' does not seem to
me to have any special mission. There are strong passages in it,
disconnected pieces that I look upon as a vocabulary, and use
accordingly; but the author to me represents neither a seer, a prophet,
nor a moral teacher, but only a used-up, tobacco-smoking, ill-natured
old man, who ill-used himself, his wife, his friends, and did nothing
beyond stringing together a few volumes of vivid expressions to
enlighten the nineteenth century. But he understood the ornamental part
of language, and for that I like him, if for nothing more.
To leave a modern savage and return to man the primitive. War taught him
the utility of ornament, how to make objects and curves to inspire the
foeman with horror; and in this we see the first departure from direct
nature watching, to invention; the lion or boar was not fearful enough,
so he combined their ferociousness and made a mixture.
Religion stepped in next with stiff rules and unalterable decrees, and
man no longer sought to imitate nature, but gazed beyond her to the
mystic symbol of the unseen. An error in the first instance, in the
ornamental expression of her imagery, became a fixed law, as in Egypt
and India, where century after century the lines were repeated without
the slightest variation, and a conventional false symbol served instead
of the clumsy but truthful imitation of the savage.
The Greeks stand the exception to all the barbarism of the world about
them; they rose to perfection by quick degrees, and that is about all we
can say of their art history. They were refined and simple in their
manners, rigid in their habits, before the Olympian court was arranged
into order or Homer had invented poetry. Hardy health was their aim and
stalwart beauty their standard. The flowing grace of their own
unfettered limbs taught them the purity of true art lines. Vintage time
was a joyous season to be remembered during winter, so they raised
pillars to mark their joy, and cut upon them memories of the vine leaves
and honeysuckle which they had watched clinging over their porches in
the golden hours.
Very early in the world's history man found the use of metals, and
learned by mingling to harden them. The first statues and ornaments were
formed by hammering the metals and beating them into plates and cords to
lay upon or twist round blocks of wood and stone--a slow, hard,
laborious process with little effect. These were the days when Vulcan
and his demons burrowed in the earth's vaults to forge the armour of
Mars.
Gods with glass eyes and the stiffest of limbs yet bore a resemblance to
human beings. Egypt was working away content with her foldless draperies
and indiscriminate finishing of detail, handing down from father to son
their arts and sciences--everything hereditary, from the many grades of
the priesthood to the low office of the accursed dissector of the sacred
body to be embalmed; building her mighty monuments and laying on her
rigid tyrannic colours--the harmony of law that was right by chance.
Phoenicia was waking up and gaining a name amongst nations; the dyed
stuffs and embossed golden cups and clean-cut coins of Tyre, Sidon, and
Carthage, which sent out laden ships and grew rich through industry.
Greece was striding on through wars and revolutions and conquests, art
and ornament grew strong and refined, and thus became daily a stricter
necessity. Their own habits were simple, but their gods were
extravagantly administered to. Homer taught them to sing, and to work
broadly and delicately.
Homer, the grand old man, the blind beggar who could look with those
spirit eyes into centuries, who assembled the gods in order, placed the
immortal stragglers in poetic arrangement, utilised the court of love to
his own imperial cadence, and became the father, not of his own tribes
only, but of all nations. What had their battles done but for his pen?
Helen were a forgotten sin, Troy a fleck of white dust--all the heroes
of that deathless romance only the vanished marshalling of an ant-hill;
for what are we after our lives have gone unless the poet or the
novelist creates us afresh and gives us actions that will not die? What
is our pain or our pleasure to the partner of it all? We cannot feel
theirs, they cannot know ours. My sorrow will not let me judge of yours,
for I look upon yours from the outside--a sight, the glimpse of a
covered volcano--while mine is here where I can see it no more than you
can, but my living soul is writhing in the flames. Will my pain give me
yours? No! and so the griefs and passions of two centuries dead and
unchronicled cannot stir a thought.
The writer lives and cries: 'Come out, O Lazarus! shake from you the
dead cerements, live as you lived, think again; and as you think so
shall your thoughts be fixed and roll through Time.'
Homer lived and sang, and heroes rose, and virtue became tangible, and
right was fixed, and wrong grew a thing. The painter and the worker in
stone and metal had a theory. Beauty was fixed by the Judgment of Paris,
mythology became a living creed; while he, the blind father, spake on,
sang on, unheeded, yet insensibly becoming the educating founder of a
school where the world must enter and learn till the end has come.
As Homer did to the Greeks, so the novelist does for us--presenting to
our eyes the world we have not seen, society we may not enter, manners
we could not know but for him; virtue gets the reward, vice gets the
punishment, the knight of chivalry inspires us with the desire to
emulate. The noble path of honour is pointed out, and we glow as we
read, with the desire to follow: what sermon could teach us more? The
theatre is a church of refinement and morality, teaching us how to act
in this world, which, as inhabitants, we require as much as the tenets
of the next, about which we know nothing: so the novel. I have read all
kinds of fiction: George Eliot, who tells us things as objectionable as
the author of 'The Lady of the Camellias'; Dumas, who points out the
virtue of fidelity even in a _demi-monde_, that false heroine; Zola, the
needful man with the muck-rake. I have seen the novel-reader world-wise,
and the philosophy-devourer a fool. Novels are the histories of
humanity: they teach us a wisdom that years of sorrow only could reveal;
through them we may look into the hearts of men and women and not be
deceived by the smiling mask of deceit; they bring to us a world we dare
not visit, telling us what we ought to know about sin and suffering;
they inculcate knowledge in a pleasant way, preaching to us virtue and
nobility, warning us of falsehood; in them we go out to the Valley of
the Shadow of Death and are able to conquer the Monster without any risk
of scars, to pass through the world and yet be pure, to know all things
without tasting of the forbidden tree: and can the preacher do more?
Ornament your houses, ornament your persons, your manners, and your
morals; even morality can be made very ugly if it is presented to us
gaunt and square--without the undulating lines of forethought and
forbearance, without the graceful folds of divine charity. I have seen
morality brought out and held up such a forbidding skeleton that the
soul artistically inclined shrank back aghast from the weird spectre.
Take one short half-hour to glance over your own faults of a morning,
and you will be astonished at the perfection you see around you. Think
but for a few moments upon the wisdom you have gained in your earth
sojourn, and I defy you to open your mouths when even ignorance boasts.
It is so nice to be sure of our subject, to sit down and listen to a
tinkle of babble and know what ought to be, to enter the room we have
decorated and feel that there is nothing wanted, to look into the mirror
and feel we are dressed, to clasp our friend by the hand and feel we are
united: that this is contrast sufficient, and harmony through it all.
I have said nearly all that is required about ornament, because I
intended to speak to you in a general way. True, I might tell you about
the rules of the Greeks regarding ornament; how they modelled,
punctured, painted, and fired their vases; how they preferred a cameo to
a costly stone, a bit of mind to a rare flash; but what would that avail
to what I want? I want my friends to be men and women, to have a reason
for all things, to know why the scarf goes round their neck or the boots
upon their feet.
I don't want them to like Henry Irving only because he is fashionable,
or to talk cant about pictures. I want them to be honest--to like, and
openly say so, in their ignorance the things of ignorance, and come from
the outer to the inner circle by degrees and openly. I want my friends
to eat, drink, dress, and sleep as they ought to, as creatures who have
inherited an immortality; who are all one (except by learning),
patrician or plebeian, and who aim at refinement; not to be dazzled like
weak moths by a glitter, but to enjoy the light if it is a good light,
yet not to mistake the farthing dip for the electric flame; to look past
the splendid expression in a poem or speech and see if the centre line
is straight; see what the motive is, for that is the soul of the poem or
picture.
I have met men and women with souls so colourless that, but for the
bodies which gave them a place, they would never be observed; souls
which could never reach a heaven or be carried the length of a hell,
but with the dissolution of the carcase; which might, through an outside
effort, be able to flicker up for a moment, but must eventually
collapse, and be blotted out as completely as the droppings of a meteor
on a midnight sky. The _reflection_ of a _religious_ or an _atheistic_
colour may pass over them, as the sky colour is cast upon a fragment of
jellyfish lying in a sea-side puddle, but they are no more than that
shugging mass; the colour goes or the tide leaves them, and they are
immediately rendered void. The Egyptian has a dog who sits waiting on
souls of this description, who repeat other people's words, who borrow
brains from books, and can neither feel wicked nor good of themselves.
The forty-two avengers relate their actions, the Judge weighs them in
the scales: there is no heaven for them, for the heaven wants
self-illuminated spirits; there is no hell for them, for they are not
bad enough; so the Judge scoops up the scales and the limp soul flops
into the watchdog's open jaws, is gobbled up at a gulp, and so there is
an end of that poor ghost.
The Hindoo, the Chinese, the Moor, and the Oriental like gorgeous
colouring and intricate lines and twistings in their ornament, because
they have been accustomed to see nature in her most lavish way. The sun
never blinks his eye, or seeks to cover his full strength where they
are; straight down he flings himself upon Rhea, and she, the earth,
responds with the fervency of a consuming passion, or the love fever of
a sea-voyage. There is no place for grey here--it must be white, yellow,
red, greens of the richest, russet of the most positive, purples that
are not disguised: the fumes of the panting mid-day may be pallid, yet
it is not the pallor of ashes, but the gas-haze which quivers above the
white intensity of the bloom. Jungles, and closely-knitted bush-tracks,
where the speckled adder swelters in the rayless fire; up, down,
over-laced, across, there is not an inch which is not covered with its
tendril patterns--not a patch where light can pierce that has not its
cluster of orange or vermilion blossoming. Life is a delirium in those
tropics, the night a fever, and the day a dream; and can we expect calm
thoughts to be displayed, or reposeful hues, when even the moonlight is
a golden thrill, and stars are shining globes of magnifying power?
Those who live in the north, where the skies are softened veils, and the
lakes are placid sheets--where the soul is braced by the north wind, and
subdued by the gently wafted west--may well be refined. They are classic
born, and to love the simple in ornament or life should only be the
effortless yielding of their wills to the instincts of our race.
Study comfort first when you plan your ornaments: if it is a garden or a
park, plant the trees that will shelter you best without hurting your
health or offending the eye. Build your houses for the sake of the
street, the street for the sake of the town, the town for the sake of
the land in which it is cast. Assimilate your taste with the taste of
other people, sacrificing a little yourself to get some things from
them, but not too much; for Jerusalem was kept clean (if it ever was
kept clean) by every man looking after his own doorstep.
Plan out your rooms for health: first must come cleanliness and fresh
air, next grace and comfort--be comfortable before you are beautified.
Get space first. Put out as much furniture and accessories as you can;
no more chairs than you want for visitors, no more tables than you
strictly need; look round your walls and relieve the blankness with a
picture, or a plate, or a vase, or a cast, just to fill up a bareness,
not to call attention. We cram on ornaments when we want to cover or
screen a defect.
Have your furniture consistent with your room. If you are Orientally
inclined, and like a glare, be Oriental to the uttermost--do not stop
short at a footstool or a tea-cup; but if you like to rest in your
houses, and to be able to think while you rest, have all things plain
and sober. Homer and Milton were both blind, and the great serenity of a
noble purpose shines like an unflickering alabaster lamp from both.
Do not mix things if you can avoid it; if it is a lion you are making,
never blend it with an ape. Observe the flowers and fruits of a season
when you plan out a scroll of flowers and fruits, and never bind winter
to summer; they cannot agree, and it is better never to join than have
to divorce.
Every ornament must have a backbone to start with, or it will fall to
pieces as surely as a society-girl would collapse without her whalebone
stays, the modern substitute for the backbone of Mother Eve.
Therefore, if you wish to exercise an influence on the world about you,
and raise the ideas of beauty, seek after health first, comfort next,
and beauty will follow of its own accord.
Every man and woman ought to be able to draw as well as see a straight
line; should be able to take down the impression of the place they visit
as well as they are able to write out descriptions of it in their
letters home; they ought to study painting, and know the reason for
certain colours being mixed and put on, because taste, although a
natural gift, is also an acquired habit up to a point. Imagination is a
universal power shared by the lower world as well as man: the dog
dreams and hunts or fights, thereby proving that his brain is repainting
a scene gone by.
I may describe a picture in words, and you will all see the image of it
vividly in your brains, thereby proving that you might reproduce it if
you had been trained. As I briefly describe some view in words, your
brains will have photographed the picture, for it is instantaneous work
with the brain; and the wondrous part of it all will be, that the
picture I describe and the picture I draw will not be as you think it is
going to be--at least, I cannot hope to be so vivid in my word-painting,
for every mind has its own way of calling up the pictures which we hear
or read about, each mind taking up its own standpoint, and seeing
differently the general aspect and self-constituted aspect.
In fancy I take up a piece of charcoal (the most delightful and freest
of all art work), and with a few dashes of my charred vine wand may
transport you to the balmy South, where ice the thickness of a sixpenny
piece is a sight to boast about, and mosquitoes are an incontestable
fact.
This piece of charcoal, which we take on faith to be the remains of a
vine stalk, even as I name it conjures up the vineyards I have seen, and
my memory is flung under avenues where the broad leaves and the purple
clusters hung down, and, interlacing, broke the intensity of the mid-day
glaring. I look down a clustering summit to a gleam of deep blue ocean
and snow-white strand beyond. This is what the word vine has done to me,
and something like this, or perhaps, if not so realistic, more
beautiful, would have been the mind-picture even if I had never actually
witnessed the vine lanes. Memory is brought into action in my case; in
yours, who may not have seen it all, it becomes the higher quality,
creation or imagination.
The human mind is the most perfect painter we can have, without a limit
to its invention or a stop to its rapidity--each word becomes a fixed
photograph, instantaneously drawn out in all its parts, and coloured to
the last hair-stroke.
You see it all, but take a pencil and try to make it corporeal. As you
sharpen the lead it is all there, vividly distinct; but while you are
thinking where to begin to reduce it into form, it becomes a slender
suggestion of dancing outlines--you dash in the first stroke, and it has
become an indefinite blurry mess.
That is our difficulty--the reader and myself--for I can see before me
just now a full round golden moon in the softest of green-grey hazes,
with the thrilling effect of the theatrical limelight all around it; not
a cloud in the misty atmosphere shows above that balloon-like ball; it
is lying light as a Chinese lantern on the exotic-freighted air;
floating over the dim film which represents a mountain in the mid
distance; pouring down a flood of white ripples on the river or lake;
making a mass of indistinct shadow under the tree roots--liquid shadow
where the water laps the winds, velvet shadow where the grasses and
plants are all mixed up; an ebony line of carving runs up the shafts of
the feathery-crowned palm and the bulby banana tree; a broad black fan
drops across the outer rim of that electric circle, as the banana leaf
quits the shelter of the broken shade-work and asserts its independence;
the tendrils are twisting about, but a pale sparkle alone reveals them;
the big spider is hanging from his lair, but a diamond point only shows
us where the dew is caught upon the gossamer web--all is breadth and
shadow, or glittering silver flame, but our hearts go into the shade
that is manifold, into the thickness of that impalpability, and our
nostrils drink in the swimming perfume of the lilies and trumpet tree;
and although it is but suggested, we can see the tracing of the palm
fringes overhead, we can feel the heat of that languid night.
To recapitulate. Dress for your own comfort, and you must please
everyone round about you. Eat for the sake of health--that is, eat to
live--and you will have sound teeth, sweet breath, and merry months.
Love will come to you early and stay long beside you, for years are only
grains of sand in the calculating glass of Cupid, if the hand which
holds it is steady and moist. Time limps, and an hour is lingering pain;
or else flies, and the brown locks change to silver in a song of joy.
[Illustration: THE AVENUE-HOBBEMA]