number of sempstresses for a given time, in making a given number of
simple and serviceable dresses--suppose, seven; of which you can wear
one yourself for half the winter, and give six away to poor girls who
have none, you are spending your money unselfishly. But if you
employ the same number of sempstresses for the same number of days,
in making four, or five, or six beautiful flounces for your own
ball-dress--flounces which will clothe no one but yourself, and which
you will yourself be unable to wear at more than one ball--you are
employing your money selfishly. You have maintained, indeed, in each
case, the same number of people; but in the one case you have directed
their labour to the service of the community; in the other case you have
consumed it wholly upon yourself. I don't say you are never to do so; I
don't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only, and to
make yourselves as pretty as you can; only do not confuse coquettishness
with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the finery
you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you:
it is not so; it is what you yourselves, whether you will or no, must
sometimes instinctively feel it to be--it is what those who stand
shivering in the streets, forming a line to watch you as you step out of
your carriages, _know_ it to be; those fine dresses do not mean that so
much has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been taken out
of their mouths.
51. The real politico-economical signification of every one of those
beautiful toilettes, is just this: that you have had a certain number of
people put for a certain number of days wholly under your authority, by
the sternest of slave-masters--hunger and cold; and you have said to
them, "I will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so
many days; but during those days you shall work for me only: your little
brothers need clothes, but you shall make none for them: your sick
friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her: you yourself will
soon need another and a warmer dress, but you shall make none for
yourself. You shall make nothing but lace and roses for me; for this
fortnight to come, you shall work at the patterns and petals, and then I
will crush and consume them away in an hour." You will perhaps
answer--"It may not be particularly benevolent to do this, and we won't
call it so; but at any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour when
we pay them their wages: if we pay for their work, we have a right to
it."
52. No;--a thousand times no. The labour which you have paid for, does
indeed become, by the act of purchase, your own labour: you have bought
the hands and the time of those workers; they are, by right and justice,
your own hands, your own time. But have you a right to spend your own
time, to work with your own hands, only for your own advantage?--much
more, when, by purchase, you have invested your own person with the
strength of others; and added to your own life, a part of the life of
others? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use their labour for your
delight: remember, I am making no general assertions against splendour
of dress, or pomp of accessories of life; on the contrary, there are
many reasons for thinking that we do not at present attach enough
importance to beautiful dress, as one of the means of influencing
general taste and character. But I _do_ say, that you must weigh the
value of what you ask these workers to produce for you in its own
distinct balance; that on its own worthiness or desirableness rests the
question of your kindness, and not merely on the fact of your having
employed people in producing it: and I say further, that as long as
there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long there can
be no question at all but that splendour of dress is a crime. In due
time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be
right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any
who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so
long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work
at--not lace.
53. And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while it
dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler hearts that
beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation of luxurious
benevolence--as if by all that they wore in waywardness of beauty,
comfort had been first given to the distressed, and aid to the indigent;
it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment, the spirits of Truth and
of Terror, which walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, would
lift the dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us how--inasmuch as
the sums exhausted for that magnificence would have given back the
failing breath to many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street--they
who wear it have literally entered into partnership with Death; and
dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not
only from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see--the
angels do see--on those gay white dresses of yours, strange dark spots,
and crimson patterns that you knew not of--spots of the inextinguishable
red that all the seas cannot wash away; yes, and among the pleasant
flowers that crown your fair heads, and glow on your wreathed hair, you
would see that one weed was always twisted which no one thought of--the
grass that grows on graves.
54. It was not, however, this last, this clearest and most appalling
view of our subject, that I intended to ask you to take this evening;
only it is impossible to set any part of the matter in its true light,
until we go to the root of it. But the point which it is our special
business to consider is, not whether costliness of dress is contrary to
charity; but whether it is not contrary to mere worldly wisdom: whether,
even supposing we knew that splendour of dress did not cost suffering or
hunger, we might not put the splendour better in other things than
dress. And, supposing our mode of dress were really graceful or
beautiful, this might be a very doubtful question; for I believe true
nobleness of dress to be an important means of education, as it
certainly is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living
art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historical
painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the
people of the time are not beautiful: and had it not been for the lovely
and fantastic dressing of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries,
neither French, nor Florentine, nor Venetian art could have risen to
anything like the rank it reached. Still, even then, the best dressing
was never the costliest; and its effect depended much more on its
beautiful and, in early times, modest, arrangement, and on the simple
and lovely masses of its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or
embroidery.
55. Whether we can ever return to any of those more perfect types of
form, is questionable; but there can be no more question that all the
money we spend on the forms of dress at present worn, is, so far as any
good purpose is concerned, wholly lost. Mind, in saying this, I reckon
among good purposes the purpose which young ladies are said sometimes
to entertain--of being married; but they would be married quite as soon
(and probably to wiser and better husbands) by dressing quietly, as by
dressing brilliantly: and I believe it would only be needed to lay
fairly and largely before them the real good which might be effected by
the sums they spend in toilettes, to make them trust at once only to
their bright eyes and braided hair for all the mischief they have a
mind to. I wish we could, for once, get the statistics of a London
season. There was much complaining talk in Parliament, last week,
of the vast sum the nation has given for the best Paul Veronese in
Venice--14,000_l._: I wonder what the nation meanwhile has given for its
ball-dresses! Suppose we could see the London milliners' bills, simply
for unnecessary breadths of slip and flounce, from April to July; I
wonder whether 14,000_l._ would cover _them_. But the breadths of slip
and flounce are by this time as much lost and vanished as last year's
snow; only they have done less good: but the Paul Veronese will last for
centuries, if we take care of it; and yet, we grumble at the price given
for the painting, while no one grumbles at the price of pride.
56. Time does not permit me to go into any farther illustration of the
various modes in which we build our statue out of snow, and waste our
labour on things that vanish. I must leave you to follow out the subject
for yourselves, as I said I should, and proceed, in our next lecture, to
examine the two other branches of our subject--namely, how to accumulate
our art, and how to distribute it. But, in closing, as we have been much
on the topic of good government, both of ourselves and others, let me
just give you one more illustration of what it means, from that old art
of which, next evening, I shall try to convince you that the value, both
moral and mercantile, is greater than we usually suppose.
57. One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, in the town-hall of
Siena, represents, by means of symbolical figures, the principles of
Good Civic Government and of Good Government in general. The figure
representing this noble Civic Government is enthroned, and surrounded by
figures representing the Virtues, variously supporting or administering
its authority. Now, observe what work is given to each of these
virtues. Three winged ones--Faith, Hope, and Charity--surround the head
of the figure; not in mere compliance with the common and heraldic laws
of precedence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, but
with peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus
represented ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not mean
merely religious faith, understood in those times to be necessary to all
persons--governed no less than governors--but it means the faith which
enables work to be carried out steadily, in spite of adverse appearances
and expediencies; the faith in great principles, by which a civic ruler
looks past all the immediate checks and shadows that would daunt a
common man, knowing that what is rightly done will have a right issue,
and holding his way in spite of pullings at his cloak and whisperings in
his ear, enduring, as having in him a faith which is evidence of things
unseen.
58. And Hope, in like manner, is here not the heavenward hope which
ought to animate the hearts of all men; but she attends upon Good
Government, to show that all such government is _expectant_ as well as
_conservative_; that if it ceases to be hopeful of better things, it
ceases to be a wise guardian of present things: that it ought never, as
long as the world lasts, to be wholly content with any existing state of
institution or possession, but to be hopeful still of more wisdom and
power; not clutching at it restlessly or hastily, but feeling that its
real life consists in steady ascent from high to higher: conservative,
indeed, and jealously conservative of old things, but conservative of
them as pillars, not as pinnacles--as aids, but not as idols; and
hopeful chiefly, and active, in times of national trial or distress,
according to those first and notable words describing the queenly
nation: "She riseth, _while it is yet night_."
59. And again, the winged Charity which is attendant on Good Government
has, in this fresco, a peculiar office. Can you guess what? If you
consider the character of contest which so often takes place among kings
for their crowns, and the selfish and tyrannous means they commonly take
to aggrandize or secure their power, you will, perhaps, be surprised to
hear that the office of Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if you
think of it a little, you will see the beauty of the thought which sets
her in this function: since, in the first place, all the authority of a
good governor should be desired by him only for the good of his people,
so that it is only Love that makes him accept or guard his crown: in the
second place, his chief greatness consists in the exercise of this love,
and he is truly to be revered only so far as his acts and thoughts are
those of kindness; so that Love is the light of his crown, as well as
the giver of it: lastly, because his strength depends on the affections
of his people, and it is only their love which can securely crown him,
and for ever. So that Love is the strength of his crown as well as the
light of it.
60. Then, surrounding the King, or in various obedience to him, appear
the dependent virtues, as Fortitude, Temperance, Truth, and other
attendant spirits, of all which I cannot now give account, wishing you
only to notice the one to whom are entrusted the guidance and
administration of the public revenues. Can you guess which it is likely
to be? Charity, you would have thought, should have something to do with
the business; but not so, for she is too hot to attend carefully to it.
Prudence, perhaps, you think of in the next place. No, she is too timid,
and loses opportunities in making up her mind. Can it be Liberality
then? No: Liberality is entrusted with some small sums; but she is a bad
accountant, and is allowed no important place in the exchequer. But the
treasures are given in charge to a virtue of which we hear too little in
modern times, as distinct from others; Magnanimity: largeness of heart:
not softness or weakness of heart, mind you--but capacity of heart--the
great _measuring_ virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may
be given, and all that may be gained; and sees how to do noblest things
in noblest ways: which of two goods comprehends and therefore chooses
the greater: which of two personal sacrifices dares and accepts the
larger: which, out of the avenues of beneficence, treads always that
which opens farthest into the blue fields of futurity: that character,
in fine, which, in those words taken by us at first for the description
of a Queen among the nations, looks less to the present power than to
the distant promise; "Strength and honour are in her clothing,--and she
shall rejoice IN TIME TO COME."
LECTURE II.
THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART.
_Continuation of the previous Lecture; delivered July 13, 1857._
61. The heads of our subject which remain for our consideration this
evening are, you will remember, the accumulation and the distribution of
works of art. Our complete inquiry fell into four divisions--first, how
to get our genius; then, how to apply our genius; then, how to
accumulate its results; and lastly, how to distribute them. We
considered, last evening, how to discover and apply it;--we have
to-night to examine the modes of its preservation and distribution.
62. III. ACCUMULATION.--And now, in the outset, it will be well to face
that objection which we put aside a little while ago; namely, that
perhaps it is not well to have a great deal of good art; and that it
should not be made too cheap.
"Nay," I can imagine some of the more generous among you exclaiming, "we
will not trouble you to disprove that objection; of course it is a
selfish and base one: good art, as well as other good things, ought to
be made as cheap as possible, and put as far as we can within the reach
of everybody."
63. Pardon me, I am not prepared to admit that. I rather side with the
selfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be made cheap,
beyond a certain point; for the amount of pleasure that you can receive
from any great work, depends wholly on the quantity of attention and
energy of mind you can bring to bear upon it. Now, that attention and
energy depend much more on the freshness of the thing than you would at
all suppose; unless you very carefully studied the movements of your own
minds. If you see things of the same kind and of equal value very
frequently, your reverence for them is infallibly diminished, your
powers of attention get gradually wearied, and your interest and
enthusiasm worn out; and you cannot in that state bring to any given
work the energy necessary to enjoy it. If, indeed, the question were
only between enjoying a great many pictures each a little, or one
picture very much, the sum of enjoyment being in each case the same, you
might rationally desire to possess rather the larger quantity than the
small; both because one work of art always in some sort illustrates
another, and because quantity diminishes the chances of destruction.
64. But the question is not a merely arithmetical one of this kind. Your
fragments of broken admirations will not, when they are put together,
make up one whole admiration; two and two, in this case, do not make
four, nor anything like four. Your good picture, or book, or work of art
of any kind, is always in some degree fenced and closed about with
difficulty. You may think of it as of a kind of cocoanut, with very
often rather an unseemly shell, but good milk and kernel inside. Now, if
you possess twenty cocoanuts, and being thirsty, go impatiently from one
to the other, giving only a single scratch with the point of your knife
to the shell of each, you will get no milk from all the twenty. But if
you leave nineteen of them alone, and give twenty cuts to the shell of
one, you will get through it, and at the milk of it. And the tendency of
the human mind is always to get tired before it has made its twenty
cuts; and to try another nut: and moreover, even if it has perseverance
enough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too many, and to
choke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us that few of the
things we desire can be had without considerable labour, and at
considerable intervals of time. We cannot generally get our dinner
without working for it, and that gives us appetite for it, we cannot get
our holiday without waiting for it, and that gives us zest for it; and
we ought not to get our picture without paying for it, and that gives us
a mind to look at it.
65. Nay, I will even go so far as to say that we ought not to get books
too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to its
reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, and
bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting.
That's the way to get at the cream of a book. And I should say more on
this matter, and protest as energetically as I could against the plague
of cheap literature, with which we are just now afflicted, but that I
fear your calling me to order, as being unpractical, because I don't
quite see my way at present to making everybody fast for their books.
But one may see that a thing is desirable and possible, even though one
may not at once know the best way to it,--and in my island of Barataria,
when I get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold for
less than a pound sterling; if it can be published cheaper than that,
the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxation
in other directions; only people really poor, who cannot pay the pound,
shall be supplied with the books they want for nothing, in a certain
limited quantity. I haven't made up my mind about the number yet, and
there are several other points in the system yet unsettled; when they
are all determined, if you will allow me, I will come and give you
another lecture, on the political economy of literature.[10]
[Note 10: See note 6th, in Addenda.]
66. Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my generous
hearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners upon us, like falling
leaves, "Pictures ought not to be too cheap;" but in much stronger tone
I would say to those who want to keep up the prices of pictorial
property, that pictures ought not to be too dear--that is to say, not as
dear as they are. For, as matters at present stand, it is wholly
impossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to
possess himself of a piece of great art. A modern drawing of average
merit, or a first-class engraving, may, perhaps, not without some
self-reproach, be purchased out of his savings by a man of narrow
income; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art--masterhands'
work--is wholly out of his reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon
this as the natural course and necessity of things, that we never set
ourselves in any wise to diminish the evil; and yet it is an evil
perfectly capable of diminution.
67. It is an evil precisely similar in kind to that which existed in the
Middle Ages, respecting good books, and which everybody then, I suppose,
thought as natural as we do now our small supply of good pictures. You
could not then study the work of a great historian, or great poet, any
more than you can now study that of a great painter, but at heavy cost.
If you wanted a book, you had to get it written out for you, or to write
it out for yourself. But printing came, and the poor man may read his
Dante and his Homer; and Dante and Homer are none the worse for that.
But it is only in literature that private persons of moderate fortune
can possess and study greatness: they can study at home no greatness in
art; and the object of that accumulation which we are at present aiming
at, as our third object in political economy, is to bring great art in
some degree within the reach of the multitude; and, both in larger and
more numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution,
according to his wealth and wish, in each man's home, to render the
influence of art somewhat correspondent in extent to that of literature.
Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist has to strike: to
accumulate so much art as to be able to give the whole nation a supply
of it, according to its need, and yet to regulate its distribution so
that there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt.
68. A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely
to our skill to poise; but the just point between poverty and profusion
has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Providence. If you
carefully watch for all the genius you can detect, apply it to good
service, and then reverently preserve what it produces, you will never
have too little art; and if, on the other hand, you never force an
artist to work hurriedly, for daily bread, nor imperfectly, because you
would rather have showy works than complete ones, you will never have
too much. Do not force the multiplication of art, and you will not have
it too cheap; do not wantonly destroy it, and you will not have it too
dear.
69. "But who wantonly destroys it?" you will ask. Why, we all do.
Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our subject,
corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy by the
"keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going to tell you
only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean them, and varnish
them, and where to put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah,
not at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not pull
them to pieces, and trample them under your feet. "What!" you will say,
"when do we do such things? Haven't we built a perfectly beautiful
gallery for all the pictures we have to take care of?" Yes, you have,
for the pictures which are definitely sent to Manchester to be taken
care of. But there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which it
is your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of these,
and which we are at this moment employing ourselves in pulling to pieces
by deputy. I will tell you what they are, and where they are, in a
minute; only first let me state one more of those main principles of
political economy on which the matter hinges.
70. I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask you to
reflect if there is any way in which we waste money more in England than
in building fine tombs? Our respect for the dead, when they are _just_
dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful
still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with
black dresses and bright heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and
sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals.
We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone,
in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by
permitting ourselves to tell any number of lies we think amiable or
credible, in the epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as
the rich; and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin
themselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in his
coffin, whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and how
often it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death, in
order that she may be respectably buried.