THE ARTS IN ENGLAND
That the English are an "inartistic" people, without true appreciation of
pictures, music, the drama, is a statement commonly made and commonly
accepted without any very serious examination of the evidence for and
against. A just judge giving the benefit of a close and impartial inquiry
to the case of Madam England, indicted for that she is a Philistine without
any true taste in, or proper love of, the arts, would be able to go no
further than the Scottish verdict of "not proven." But few of those people
who find England guilty without leaving the box have attempted to make any
sound examination of the evidence available. They have heard of a
Hanoverian monarch of past days, who despised "boetry und bainting," and
have come to a settled conviction that that represented the English mind
then and represents it now.
Elsewhere I have maintained that a nation which has such a noble taste in
parks and gardens as have the English must be "aesthetic" at heart; and
"aesthetic" and "inartistic" are not compatible. But apart from Nature love
and delight in gardening, there is a great deal of evidence to be cited in
the Englishman's favour as a lover of the arts.
It could certainly have been said with truth a few years ago, and probably
could be said now, in spite of the recent rush of American buyers into the
picture market, that the finest collection of Italian Masters of painting
outside of Italy could be made from English galleries and English houses,
and also the finest collection of Spanish Masters outside of Spain, of
Flemish Masters outside the Low Countries, of French Masters outside of
France. In short, one might get the finest and most complete collection
representative of all the painting schools of the world from English
collections.
One ungracious explanation is easy: that the English have been the rich
people and have been able to buy. But a rich nation does not buy pictures
without some national love and appreciation of pictures. I hesitate to
write that in these days when one hears of a _nouveau riche_ commissioning
a friend "to buy him L10,000 worth of pictures by those old jossers"; and
in any well-regulated fashionable furniture shop you may buy with the pots
and the pans and the indubitably old worm-eaten antique furniture, pictures
of the right age; and even books in the proper tone of binding for your old
oak book-shelves. Still, taking a view by centuries and disregarding the
crazes of a season or a generation, it is fair to conclude that a nation
which consistently buys pictures, and good pictures at that, has some love
of and taste in painting.
The lordly young Englishmen of past generations who, "doing the grand
tour," came home with examples of the great continental Masters of painting
for their halls, had not the motive of a blind and vulgar obedience to a
passing craze. They must have known good pictures and liked good pictures.
Year by year, generation by generation, they carried on their work until
English collections came to have representative examples of all the great
schools of the world. The while, there was no lack of English painters of
distinction, and though the English schools of painting may not claim the
same degree of achievement as English schools of prose and verse, they have
done enough to rescue their country from the reproach of being careless as
a nation of the art of painting. There are, let it be agreed, "Philistine"
classes in England; and these "Philistines" have had more authority and
opportunities of rule in England than in most European countries, a fact
which has carried with it artistic disadvantages to weigh something in the
balance against advantages in other directions. But it is absurd to attempt
to represent England as a lost country artistically. The visitor who is
interested chiefly in art will find in the various public galleries (not
alone in London, but also in the provincial cities) many great examples of
painting. If he chooses to carry his curiosity further he will find most of
the private collections open to the inspection of any one who will take the
trouble to ask courteously for permission to visit them.
In regard to music, it is probably just as easy to clear England of the
charge of ignorance and want of sympathy. But I cannot undertake the task
with any skill, for I know little of the musical world, not enough even to
distinguish surely in Simonetti, the famous Italian conductor of the
Athanasian orchestra (the names are laboriously fictitious), the excellent
Simpson of Brixton, S.W. But the evidence (I plead always for a judgment on
evidence, not on the hasty impression founded on a prejudice) would seem to
show that England at one time was musical enough in a sweet wholesome way,
producing a music of the open-air and the green fields. Then there came the
great industrial epoch, and the people turned from the fields to the
factories, and dug under the soil instead of tilling its surface; and that
stream of thrush-melody was choked, and there came nothing notable to take
its place, with no prompting to madrigal and pastoral, with not enough of
neurasthenia to produce anything notable in the music of morbidity.
But the charge against musical England is carried further. Not only does
she produce nothing, but she appreciates nothing. Dumb herself, she is
resolutely deaf also to the song of others. I find it difficult to believe
this in view of the fact that the hall-mark of London is still sought
eagerly by the singers of the world, and is regarded as the final stamp of
approval. If England were such a barbarian of the musical world as some
would have us believe, why this eagerness for an English verdict of
approval, an eagerness which is to be met with all over Europe, America,
and Australia?
To record concrete facts, there is a great deal that is of musical interest
to be explored in England. The capital has many excellent concert halls,
where all the world's music from the classics to the latest frenzies of
neo-Impressionism can be heard. In the provinces, too, there are many fine
musical organisations, and when the "Celtic fringe" comes to be
encountered, as in Wales, there is a musical fervour to match that of the
most ardent of the Latin races. So--even though opera in London is of
social rather than of musical importance--the English cannot be condemned
at the present day as musically careless and ignorant; and in past times
they have produced some worthy music and show signs in the present time of
a revival of native music.
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY FROM THE END OF THE EMBANKMENT]
As to the art of the theatre, England, proud in a magnificent past, which
is still the only rival in Christian times of the days of the ancient Greek
drama, can with more good content than most nations submit to the present
phase which makes production and scenery and not the play "the thing." But
in dramatic as in musical art it is the fashion to represent England as
sunk in a Slough of Despond, whilst other nations march gloriously forward
on the upper heights. I take leave to dispute the truth of that picture. It
is not a Golden Age anywhere for the drama. Our time seems to be capable of
very little else than going over the tailing-heaps of past workers,
searching for a little grain of gold here and there, and, after finding it,
beating it out thin with infinite labour to make it appear as impressive as
possible. There are no great nuggets being turned up; no one is pouring out
a golden stream. But of what little pottering work there is being done,
England is responsible for a fair share.
Perhaps her surviving instinct of Puritanism stands in the way of slightly
increasing a small success. There are only two stories, says some one:
there is the story of one man and two women, and there is the story of one
woman and two men. English custom has insisted for a century or so upon a
certain reserve in the treatment of any one of the infinite variations on
these two themes; and there is a Censor to enforce some unwritten and
poorly-understood Rules of the Game. Censors of the Censor say that his
main rule is that you may not be "sexey" and serious, though you may go far
on the path of being "sexey" and frivolous. A fairly faithful study of the
London theatres has suggested to me that whatever primness there was about
the censorship is rapidly breaking down, and there is not an undue amount
of it nowadays.
The present (1912-13) fashion in London is for spectacle plays--in which
the mounting is of at least equal importance to the play--and "atmosphere
plays," the scene of which must be pitched in some unfamiliar, preferably
some slightly uncouth phase of life, which is reproduced with meticulous
accuracy. I suppose that Sir Herbert Tree may be accepted as the leader of
theatrical London of the day: and when I sought to get an impression of
theatrical London "behind the scenes," I obtained permission to watch him
at work in the shaping of a big "production," _False Gods_, from the
French, a philosophical treatise in the form of a play, which was to be
launched upon London with the adventitious aid of impressive "production."
"No! No!! No!!! You must go mad, go mad! Think of a French Revolution--be
just that! Dance, leap, shriek. Go mad!"
That was what I heard at the first dress rehearsal of _False Gods_, Sir
Herbert Beerbohm Tree speaking with gesture to match his speaking. He had
been watching the rehearsal with obvious satisfaction up to that. All had
gone well and smoothly. In the first stage-setting his certain eye took in
the fact that there was one false god too many on the terrace of the great
Egyptian house. The bulk of that god spoiled the sky and the beautiful
vista of the Nile. With a brief iconoclastic phrase that god was abolished.
Then the races of Egypt took Sir Herbert Tree's attention. "Too pale, too
pale! Something more of the Nile mud in your faces!" The crowd of "supers"
were prompt with grease-paint to make their colour more Egyptian. But the
producer was not quite satisfied, and mounting the stage took himself a
stick of paint and, working on their faces like an artist at a canvas,
tinted two "supers" to the proper shade of Egyptian darkness.
Having so arranged the gods and the faces of men, Sir Herbert Tree turned
to the firmament. The sky must have more light here, less light there. "It
must get the burnished effect." In time, after many experiments in
limelight, it does.
But those are only details, which the chief of the theatre attends to
between snatches of conversation, never dropping for a moment his air, a
little that of a philosopher, a little that of a Beau Nash. When, however,
in the great scene where the images of the false gods are torn down, the
mob on the stage tears with but little noise and no rage, Sir Herbert Tree
is moved out of himself. In a moment he is on the stage with the command,
"You must go mad!" and giving a workmanlike imitation of what he wants. The
"supers" accordingly go mad and all is peace again, and there is assurance
that the big scene will "go" as it should.
A curious study it was--the finishing touches being put on to a great
London production. The final result must be such art as imitates Nature and
yet creates illusion. Every detail has to be most carefully considered and
revised again and again to fit harmoniously in with the whole scheme. The
colour of a dress, the tint of a face, the shape of an eye, the placing of
a flower or an ornament is changed and changed again until there is the
harmony which apes perfection. Above all, the lights must be schemed--a
little more purple, or green, or grey, or rose-red, or yellow; a softening
here, a heightening there. A thousand-and-one combinations of light are
tested until the right one is hit upon to suggest mystery, joy, sorrow,
dawn, evening, superstition, cruelty, as the case may be. Much of the story
the audience will read so clearly on the stage on the first night is
written by the lights. The greatest trouble of the producer has been to get
those lights right, not only for each scene, but for each minute of the
scene, for with every phase of the play the lights must change.
It seems a monstrous task to the uninitiated. But during it all the
producer at work is, as a rule (there are exceptional moments when the
"supers" must go mad), quiet, chatty, willing and able to show the other
side of his personality as a philosophical critic of the drama, its aims,
its ethics.
"Yes, I work in a large frame.... Problem plays would not suit my canvas.
(More purple now in that evening sky.) The object of the drama? Of course,
to be amusing and to make people happy. That does not exclude tragedy.
There is pleasure in tragedy, if it is lofty and not repulsive. We arrive
at the same physical result through weeping and through laughing. (Those
hands _must_ all be held in the same way in the invocation. Remember it is
a ritual!) Torture scenes on the stage? No, not if they are repulsive. But
there are ways and ways. You can put blood trickling down the steps of a
scene to suggest tragedy, and you can put blood trickling down the steps so
as to suggest nausea. That second thing must not be. There must be nothing
repulsive. (Give more of a pause there. And don't go near her. She must
hold the stage for fifteen seconds.)
"Yes, I think the drama is growing in influence in England. We have a
stronger drama than a decade ago. To-day the theatre is stronger in England
than in any other part of the world. I say it deliberately. Stronger than
in France, stronger than in America. And its influence grows. It is partly
due, I think, to the decline of dogma. (Please, please, that music a little
softer; but quicker too, brighter!) The stage's influence grows
as dogma declines. What do I mean by dogma? Well, faith of the
open-your-mouth-and-shut-your-eyes brand. But the stage must not have a
pose nor a preach. We must be unconsciously ethical and proud of our craft.
There's not enough pride in craftsmanship these days, not enough of the
artist's spirit either in the artisan or in the artiste.
"Above all, if we are to be artistes we must be tolerant."
Then the time had come for Sir Herbert Tree to dress as the High Priest of
Egypt. The two concluding acts of _False Gods_ are coming, and in those two
acts Sir Herbert Tree has to take part. The rehearsal afterwards misses the
stimulus of his running comment and his suave sagacities. But it is still
absorbingly interesting. Five minutes of high, emotional tragedy are
sandwiched between discussions of lights, of dresses, of positions. When
anything is not quite right the play is stopped, and voices fall from
intensity to commonplace. Midnight approaches. Here and there a super, who
has not quite enough of the artist's spirit to be able to take a pride and
joy in doing his super's service of standing by and waiting, yawns. But the
producer hammers and hammers away like a metal-worker fashioning a
beautiful gate. With infinite multiplication of touches the production
begins to take its shape.
At 1 A.M. the rehearsal is over. "Things are fairly satisfactory." It has
lasted since 5 P.M. For three more days and nights the same task will be
gone through, so that the "first night" may be perfect and the first-night
audience may have no hint of the labour that perfection has cost.
It is all very fine; in a good producer's hands very artistic. But is it
"dramatic art" in the full sense of the word? The question arises more
insistently when the "production" is not that of a philosophical treatise
in the form of a drama, which must be freely and splendidly illustrated if
it is to "sell" at all, but of a Shakespeare play. Sir Herbert Tree is a
great producer of Shakespeare; and he illustrates dramas of noble passion
and lofty thought with the same elaborate care as he lavishes on a play
like _False Gods_, or some "patriotic spectacle" of snippets and fustian.
There is another school of "producers" in London, aiming at strangeness,
perhaps a little more than at simplicity. It is, in a sense, a school of
revolt against elaborate production. I do not think that either school is
destined to save or to condemn dramatic art.
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER AND THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT]
Meanwhile, the theatres in London (and in the provinces which reproduce
London successes, and also bring, with the aid of their Repertory Theatres,
a valuable addition to the current of dramatic life) can be always trusted
to offer something amusing to all tastes, from the serious to the gay and
the raffish. A very well-defined type of London theatrical entertainment is
the "musical comedy," a taste for which has spread to America, and is now
invading France. It grew out of French _opera-bouffe_ by way of burlesque,
and of the "comic opera" type which Gilbert and Sullivan made famous.
"Musical comedy" has to be bright, tuneful, inconsequential, and
illustrated by charming women in charming costumes. Its aid to the happy
digestion of dinner is one of its chief claims to popularity, and it
strives to amuse without making undue demands on the intelligence.
The explorer in the theatrical life of England must not miss the music
halls--the smaller ones usually owing part of their attraction to the fact
that they are the resort of people whose chief business in life it is to
be gay, the larger ones much more regardful of British Puritanism.
Yes, perhaps in reviewing the whole situation in painting, music, drama,
Art is not so kind to England as Nature; or rather the Englishman does not
give so much loving care to the arts as he does to his gardens and parks.
Nevertheless, England is not a land altogether of Philistines.