Herne Hill, 3rd October, 1875.
The day before yesterday I went with a young English girl to see her
nurse; who was sick of a lingering illness during which, with kindliest
intent, and sufficient success, (as she told me,) in pleasing her,
books had been chosen for her from the circulating library, by those of
her pious friends whose age and experience qualified them for such
task.
One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked
into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could
make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of
Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I
strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with
her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described
the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a
solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end
of an advanced chapter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any
more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.” [68]
The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern
enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it
would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark
Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius
rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except
Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology;
and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song,
which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable
trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be
used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel
substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply,
with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has
redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from
darkness to light.
My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the
Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions
of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this
celestially Utopian strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the
sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational
legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this
resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books
any more, and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”
“Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for
I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature
of all the three:—and your music and drawing,—that is to say, all music
and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or
amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever
become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing.
For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned,
or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or
teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb
leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are
not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in
capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW
WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS
GRACIOUS TO BESTOW. [69]
“A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture,
but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be,
sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these
stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther
and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive
pant.
This, so far as the Arts are concerned, is ‘entering in at the Strait
gate,’ of which entrance, and its porter’s lodge, you will find farther
account given in my fourth morning in Florence, which I should like you
to read, as a preparation for the work more explicitly now to be
directed under St. George. The immediate gist of it, for those who do
not care to read of Florence, I must be irksome enough again to give
here; namely, that the word Strait, applied to the entrance into Life,
and the word Narrow, applied to the road of Life, do not mean that the
road is so fenced that few can travel it, however much they wish, (like
the entrance to the pit of a theatre,) [70] but that, for each person,
it is at first so stringent, so difficult, and so dull, being between
close hedges, that few will enter it, though all may. In a second
sense, and an equally vital one, it is not merely a Strait, or narrow,
but a straight, or right road; only, in this rightness of it, not at
all traced by hedges, wall, or telegraph wire, or even marked by posts
higher than winter’s snow; but, on the contrary, often difficult to
trace among morasses and mounds of desert, even by skilful sight; and
by blind persons, entirely untenable, unless by help of a guide,
director, rector, or rex: which you may conjecture to be the reason
why, when St Paul’s eyes were to be opened, out of the darkness which
meant only the consciousness of utter mistake, to seeing what way he
should go, his director was ordered to come to him in the “street which
is called Straight.”
Now, bringing these universal and eternal facts down to this narrow,
straight, and present piece of business we have in hand, the first
thing we have to learn to draw is an extremely narrow, and an extremely
direct, line. Only, observe, true and vital direction does not mean
that, without any deflection or warp by antagonist force, we can fly,
or walk, or creep at once to our mark; but that, whatever the
antagonist force may be, we so know and mean our mark, that we shall at
last precisely arrive at it, just as surely, and it may be in some
cases more quickly, than if we had been unaffected by lateral or
opposing force. And this higher order of contending and victorious
rightness, which in our present business is best represented by the
track of an arrow, or rifle-shot, affected in its course both by
gravity and the wind, is the more beautiful rightness or directness of
the two, and the one which all fine art sets itself principally to
achieve. But its quite first step must nevertheless be in the simple
production of the mathematical Right line, as far as the hand can draw
it; joining two points, that is to say, with a straight visible track,
which shall as nearly as possible fulfil the mathematical definition of
a line, “length without breadth.”
And the two points had better at first be placed at the small distance
of an inch from each other, both because it is easy to draw so short a
line, and because it is well for us to know, early in life, the look of
the length of an inch. And when we have learned the look of our own
English inch, we will proceed to learn the look of that which will
probably be our currency measure of length, the French inch, for that
is a better standard than ours, for European acceptance.
Here, I had made arrangements for the production of a plate, and
woodcut, to illustrate the first steps of elementary design; but the
black-plague of cloud already more than once spoken of (as connected
probably with the diminution of snow on the Alps), has rendered it
impossible for my assistants to finish their work in time. This
disappointment I accept thankfully as the ordinance of my careful and
prudent mistress, Atropos,—the third Fors; and am indeed quickly enough
apprehensive of her lesson in it. She wishes me, I doubt not, to
recognize that I was foolish in designing the intrusion of technical
advice into my political letters; and to understand that the giving of
clear and separate directions for elementary art-practice is now an
imperative duty for me, and that these art-lessons must be in
companionship with my other school books on the Earth and its Flowers.
I must needs do her bidding; and as I gather my past work on rocks and
plants together, so I must, day by day, gather what I now know to be
right of my past work on art together; and, not in sudden thought, but
in the resumption of purpose which I humbly and sincerely entreat my
mistress to pardon me for having abandoned under pressure of extreme
fatigue, I will publish, in the same form as the geology and botany,
what I desire to ratify, and fasten with nails in a sure place, with
instant applicability to school and university exercises, of my former
writings on art. [71]
But this, I beg my readers to observe, will be the seventh large book I
have actually at this time passing through the press; [72] besides
having written and published four volumes of university lectures [73]
in the last six years; every word of them weighed with care. This is
what I observe the ‘Daily Telegraph’ calls giving ‘utterances few and
far between.’ But it is as much certainly as I am able at present to
manage; and I must beg my correspondents, therefore, to have generally
patience with me when I don’t answer their letters by return of post;
and above all things, to write them clear, and in a round hand, with
all the ms and ns well distinguished from us.
The woodcut, indeed, prepared for this Fors was to have been a lesson
in writing; but that must wait till next year, now; meantime you may
best prepare yourself for that, and all other lessons to be given in my
new edition of the Elements of Drawing, by beginning to form your own
cherished and orderly treasures of beautiful art. For although the
greatest treasury in that kind, belonging to St. George’s Company, will
be as often aforesaid public property, in our museums, every
householder of any standing whatever among us will also have his own
domestic treasury, becoming hereditary as accumulative; and accurately
catalogued, so that others may know what peculiar or separate good
things are to be found in his house, and have graciously permitted use
of them if true necessity be.
The basis, however, of such domestic treasury will of course be common
to all; every household having its proper books for religious and
economic service, and its classic authors, and engravings.
With the last we must at present class, and largely use, the more
perishable treasure of good photographs; these, however, I do not doubt
but that modern science will succeed, (if it has not already done so,)
in rendering permanent; and, at all events, permanent copies of many
may soon be placed in all our schools. Of such domestic treasure we
will begin with a photograph of the picture by Fra Filippo Lippi,
representing the Madonna; which picture last year had its place over
the door of the inner room of the Uffizii of Florence, beyond the
Tribune. This photograph can of course eventually be procured in any
numbers; and, assuming that my readers will get one, I shall endeavour
in this and future numbers of Fors, to make it useful to them, and
therefore a treasure. [74]
The first thing you are to observe in it is that the figures are
represented as projecting in front of a frame or window-sill. The
picture belongs, therefore, to the class meant to be, as far as
possible, deceptively like reality; and is in this respect entirely
companionable with one long known in our picture-shops, and greatly
popular with the British innkeeper, of a smuggler on the look-out, with
his hand and pistol projecting over the window-sill. The only
differences in purpose between the painter of this Anglican subject and
the Florentine’s, are, first, that the Florentine wishes to give the
impression, not of a smuggler’s being in the same room with you, but of
the Virgin and Child’s being so; and, secondly, that in this
representation he wishes not merely to attain deceptive reality; but to
concentrate all the skill and thought that his hand and mind possess,
in making that reality noble.
Next, you are to observe that with this unusually positive realism of
representation, there is also an unusually mystic spiritualism of
conception. Nearly all the Madonnas, even of the most strictly
devotional schools, themselves support the child, either on their knees
or in their arms. But here, the Christ is miraculously borne by
angels;—the Madonna, though seated on her throne, worships with both
hands lifted.
Thirdly, you will at first be pained by the decision of line, and, in
the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which are
characteristic, the first, of purely-descended Etruscan work; the
second, of the Florentine school headed afterwards by Donatello. But it
is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you
begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider
dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature.
Remember also that a photograph necessarily loses the most subtle
beauty of all things, because it cannot represent blue or grey colours,
[75] and darkens red ones; so that all glowing and warm shadows become
too dark. Be assured, nevertheless, that you have in this photograph,
imperfect as it is, a most precious shadow and image of one of the
greatest works ever produced by hand of man: and begin the study of it
piece by piece. If you fancy yourself able to draw at all, you may
begin by practice over and over again the little angular band on the
forehead, with its studs, and the connected chain of pearls. There are
seven pearls and fourteen studs; the fifteenth, a little larger, at the
angle of the transparent cap; and four more, retiring. They are to be
drawn with a fine brush and sepia, measuring the exact length of the
band first; then marking its double curve, depressed in the centre, and
rising over the hair, and then the studs and pearls in their various
magnitudes. If you can’t manage these, try the spiral of the chair; if
not that, buy a penny’s worth of marbles and draw them in a row, and
pick up a snail shell, and meditate upon it, if you have any time for
meditation. And in my Christmas Fors I will tell you something about
marbles, and beads, and coral, and pearls, and shells; and in time—it
is quite possible—you may be able to draw a boy’s marble and a snail’s
shell; and a sea urchin; and a Doric capital; and an Ionic capital; and
a Parthenon, and a Virgin in it; and a Solomon’s Temple, and a Spirit
of Wisdom in it; and a Nehemiah’s Temple, and a Madonna in it.
This photograph, then, is to be our first domestic possession in works
of art; if any difficulty or improper cost occur in attaining it, I
will name another to answer its purpose; but this will be No. 1 in our
household catalogue of reference: which will never be altered, so that
the pieces may always be referred to merely by their numbers.
Of public, or museum property in art, I have this month laid also the
minute foundation, by the purchase, for our schools, of the engravings
named in the annexed printseller’s account. [76]
And respecting the general operation of these schools and of the
museums connected with them, the conclusion, which I am happy to
announce, of the purchase of a piece of ground for the first of them,
for six hundred pounds, requires some small special commentary.
Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with
husbandry, (see Note a, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily
acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need
still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and
armour.
Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and
labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I
suppose, originally Sheaf-field; but do not at all rest on that
etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)
Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the
farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of
craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this
actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English
hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he
knows, by that of any living nation.
For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction
from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my
purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at
Sheffield.
Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr.
Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever
I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this
would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most
immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private)
communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which
letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public
dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my
health.
Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not
welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad
this letter was read aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr.
Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in
the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the
letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous
terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and
apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press,
since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as
“setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”
I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism
reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all
acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very
retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist
complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his
own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far
as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly
antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking
shillings at the doors.
Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist
that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals
for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore
in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful
answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a
place of entertainment, but a place of Education. And a museum is, be
it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for
that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same
thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or
even—the Brighton Aquarium.
Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means
‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’
and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they
claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the
persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the
work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside
world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded
laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom,
which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and
which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it
continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working
men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they
work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in
drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule,
when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled
to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the
same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short,
that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an
equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by
some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British
clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their
immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the
works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history
which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall,
rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded
generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.
The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will
also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been
set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of
a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her
apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically
instructive, and practically sanitary.