Chapter 7

That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back at old reviews upon past exhibitions, and reading the flatteries lavished upon men who have since been forgotten altogether--but, upon whose works, the language has been exhausted, in rhapsodies--that left nothing for the National Gallery.

* * * * *

A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of these gentlemen, is the accepted vocabulary of poetic symbolism, that helps them, by habit, in dealing with Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with height--a lake, with depth--the ocean, with vastness--the sun, with glory.

So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an ocean--however poor in paint--is inevitably "lofty," "vast," "infinite," and "glorious"--on paper.

* * * * *

There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with the wisdom of books, who frequent museums and burrow in crypts; collecting--comparing--compiling--classifying--contradicting.

Experts these--for whom a date is an accomplishment--a hall mark, success!

Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of judgment--establishing, with due weight, unimportant reputations--discovering the picture, by the stain on the back--testing the torso, by the leg that is missing--filling folios with doubts on the way of that limb--disputatious and dictatorial, concerning the birthplace of inferior persons--speculating, in much writing, upon the great worth of bad work.

True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda with ambition, and, reducing Art to statistics, they "file" the fifteenth century, and "pigeon-hole" the antique!

* * * * *

Then the Preacher "appointed"!

He stands in high places--harangues and holds forth.

Sage of the Universities--learned in many matters, and of much experience in all, save his subject.

Exhorting--denouncing--directing.

Filled with wrath and earnestness.

Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language, to prove--nothing.

Torn with much teaching--having naught to impart.

Impressive--important--shallow.

Defiant--distressed--desperate.

Crying out, and cutting himself--while the gods hear not.

Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he ambles pleasantly from all point, and through many volumes, escaping scientific assertion--"babbles of green fields."

* * * * *

So Art has become foolishly confounded with education--that all should be equally qualified.

Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and breeding, are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C minor Symphony."

Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof of inferiority.

Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce.

This is as it should be--and all attempts to make it otherwise are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.

The boundary line is clear. Far from me to propose to bridge it over--that the pestered people be pushed across. No! I would save them from further fatigue. I would come to their relief, and would lift from their shoulders this incubus of Art.

Why, after centuries of freedom from it, and indifference to it, should it now be thrust upon them by the blind--until wearied and puzzled, they know no longer how they shall eat or drink--how they shall sit or stand--or wherewithal they shall clothe themselves--without afflicting Art.

But, lo! there is much talk without!

Triumphantly they cry, "Beware! This matter does indeed concern us. We also have our part in all true Art!--for, remember the 'one touch of Nature' that 'makes the whole world kin.'"

True, indeed. But let not the unwary jauntily suppose that Shakespeare herewith hands him his passport to Paradise, and thus permits him speech among the chosen. Rather, learn that, in this very sentence, he is condemned to remain without--to continue with the common.

This one chord that vibrates with all--this "one touch of Nature" that calls aloud to the response of each--that explains the popularity of the "Bull" of Paul Potter--that excuses the price of Murillo's "Conception"--this one unspoken sympathy that pervades humanity, is--Vulgarity!

Vulgarity--under whose fascinating influence "the many" have elbowed "the few," and the gentle circle of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the Gods once spoke in whisper!

And now from their midst the Dilettante stalks abroad. The amateur is loosed. The voice of the æsthete is heard in the land, and catastrophe is upon us.

The meddler beckons the vengeance of the Gods, and ridicule threatens the fair daughters of the land.

And there are curious converts to a weird _culte_, in which all instinct for attractiveness--all freshness and sparkle--all woman's winsomeness--is to give way to a strange vocation for the unlovely--and this desecration in the name of the Graces!

Shall this gaunt, ill-at-ease, distressed, abashed mixture of _mauvaise honte_ and desperate assertion call itself artistic, and claim cousinship with the artist--who delights in the dainty, the sharp, bright gaiety of beauty?

No!--a thousand times no! Here are no connections of ours.

We will have nothing to do with them.

Forced to seriousness, that emptiness may be hidden, they dare not smile--

While the artist, in fulness of heart and head, is glad, and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous pretension--the solemn silliness that surrounds him.

For Art and Joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand--fearing naught, and dreading no exposure.

Know, then, all beautiful women, that we are with you. Pay no heed, we pray you, to this outcry of the unbecoming--this last plea for the plain.

It concerns you not.

Your own instinct is near the truth--your own wit far surer guide than the untaught ventures of thick heeled Apollos.

What! will you up and follow the first piper that leads you down Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath, to gather, for the week, from the dull rags of ages wherewith to bedeck yourselves? that, beneath your travestied awkwardness, we have trouble to find your own dainty selves? Oh, fie! Is the world, then, exhausted? and must we go back because the thumb of the mountebank jerks the other way?

Costume is not dress.

And the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of taste!

For by what authority shall these be pretty masters? Look well, and nothing have they invented--nothing put together for comeliness' sake.

Haphazard from their shoulders hang the garments of the hawker--combining in their person the motley of many manners with the medley of the mummers' closet.

Set up as a warning, and a finger-post of danger, they point to the disastrous effect of Art upon the middle classes.

* * * * *

Why this lifting of the brow in deprecation of the present--this pathos in reference to the past?

If Art be rare to-day, it was seldom heretofore.

It is false, this teaching of decay.

The master stands in no relation to the moment at which he occurs--a monument of isolation--hinting at sadness--having no part in the progress of his fellow men.

He is also no more the product of civilisation than is the scientific truth asserted dependent upon the wisdom of a period. The assertion itself requires the _man_ to make it. The truth was from the beginning.

So Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

A silent indication of its wayward independence from all extraneous advance, is in the absolutely unchanged condition and form of implement since the beginning of things.

The painter has but the same pencil--the sculptor the chisel of centuries.

Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of night were first drawn aside, and the loveliness of light revealed.

Neither chemist nor engineer can offer new elements of the masterpiece.

* * * * *

False again, the fabled link between the grandeur of Art and the glories and virtues of the State, for Art feeds not upon nations, and peoples may be wiped from the face of the earth, but Art _is_.

It is indeed high time that we cast aside the weary weight of responsibility and co-partnership, and know that, in no way, do our virtues minister to its worth, in no way do our vices impede its triumph!

How irksome! how hopeless! how superhuman the self-imposed task of the nation! How sublimely vain the belief that it shall live nobly or art perish.

Let us reassure ourselves, at our own option is our virtue. Art we in no way affect.

A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so spotlessly, still may she turn her back upon us.

As, from time immemorial, she has done upon the Swiss in their mountains.

What more worthy people! Whose every Alpine gap yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble story; yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of it, and the sons of patriots are left with the clock that turns the mill, and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty restrained in its box!

For this was Tell a hero! For this did Gessler die!

Art, the cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart, and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium-eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers fondly--caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks of choice--indifferent in her companionship with him, to all save the virtue of his refinement!

He it is who calls her--he who holds her!

And again to the West, that her next lover may bring together the Gallery at Madrid, and show to the world how the Master towers above all; and in their intimacy they revel, he and she, in this knowledge; and he knows the happiness untasted by other mortal.

She is proud of her comrade, and promises that in after-years, others shall pass that way, and understand.

So in all time does this superb one cast about for the man worthy her love--and Art seeks the Artist alone.

Where he is, there she appears, and remains with him--loving and fruitful--turning never aside in moments of hope deferred--of insult--and of ribald misunderstanding; and when he dies she sadly takes her flight, though loitering yet in the land, from fond association, but refusing to be consoled.[33]

[Note 33: And so have we the ephemeral influence of the Master's memory--the afterglow, in which are warmed, for a while, the worker and disciple.]

With the man, then, and not with the multitude, are her intimacies; and in the book of her life the names inscribed are few--scant, indeed, the list of those who have helped to write her story of love and beauty.

From the sunny morning, when, with her glorious Greek relenting, she yielded up the secret of repeated line, as, with his hand in hers, together they marked in marble, the measured rhyme of lovely limb and draperies flowing in unison, to the day when she dipped the Spaniard's brush in light and air, and made his people live within their frames, and _stand upon their legs_, that all nobility and sweetness, and tenderness, and magnificence should be theirs by right, ages had gone by, and few had been her choice.

Countless, indeed, the horde of pretenders! But she knew them not.

A teeming, seething, busy mass, whose virtue was industry, and whose industry was vice!

Their names go to fill the catalogue of the collection at home, of the gallery abroad, for the delectation of the bagman and the critic.

* * * * *

Therefore have we cause to be merry!--and to cast away all care--resolved that all is well--as it ever was--and that it is not meet that we should be cried at, and urged to take measures!

Enough have we endured of dulness! Surely are we weary of weeping, and our tears have been cozened from us falsely, for they have called out woe! when there was no grief--and, alas! where all is fair!

We have then but to wait--until, with the mark of the Gods upon him--there come among us again the chosen--who shall continue what has gone before. Satisfied that, even were he never to appear, the story of the beautiful is already complete--hewn in the marbles of the Parthenon--and broidered, with the birds, upon the fan of Hokusai--at the foot of Fusi-yama.

"_Rengaines!_"

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, Feb. 21, 1885.]

Last night, at Prince's Hall, Mr. Whistler made his first public appearance as a lecturer on Art.... There were some arrows ... shot off ... and (O, _mea culpa!_) at dress reformers most of all.... That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, _le beau dans l'horrible_, is now a commonplace of the schools.... I differ entirely from Mr. Whistler. An Artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain _milieu_ and a certain _entourage_, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle.... The poet is the supreme Artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known; to Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, not to Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche....

OSCAR WILDE.

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

It is not enough that our simple Sunflower thrive on his "thistle"--he has now grafted Edgar Poe on the "rose" tree of the early American Market in "a certain milieu" of dry goods and sympathy; and "a certain entourage" of worship and wooden nutmegs.

Born of a Nation, not absolutely "devoid of any sense of beauty"--Their idol--cherished--listened to--and understood!

Foolish Baudelaire!--Mistaken Mallarmé!

_Tenderness in Tite Street_

_TO THE POET:_

[Sidenote: _The World._]

Oscar--I have read your exquisite article in the _Pall Mall_. Nothing is more delicate, in the flattery of "the Poet" to "the Painter," than the _naïveté_ of "the Poet," in the choice of his Painters--Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche!

You have pointed out that "the Painter's" mission is to find "_le beau dans l'horrible_," and have left to "the Poet" the discovery of _"l'horrible" dans "le beau"_!

Chelsea.

_TO THE PAINTER:_

[Sidenote: _The World._]

Dear Butterfly--By the aid of a biographical dictionary, I made the discovery that there were once two painters, called Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche, who rashly lectured upon Art. As of their works nothing at all remains, I conclude that they explained themselves away.

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

I do know a bird, who, like Oscar, with his head in the sand, still believes in the undiscovered!

If to be misunderstood is to be great, it was rash in Oscar to reveal the source of his inspirations: the "_Biographical Dictionary_!"

Be warned in time, James; and remain, as I do, incomprehensible. To be great is to be misunderstood.--_Tout à vous_,

OSCAR WILDE.

_To the Committee of the "National Art Exhibition"_

[Sidenote: Letter read at a meeting of this Society, associated for purposes of Art reform.]

[Sidenote: _The World_, Nov. 17, 1888.]

Gentlemen--I am naturally interested in any effort made among Painters to prove that they are alive--but when I find, thrust in the van of your leaders, the body of my dead 'Arry, I know that putrefaction alone can result. When, following 'Arry, there comes on Oscar, you finish in farce, and bring upon yourselves the scorn and ridicule of your _confrères_ in Europe.

What has Oscar in common with Art? except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces. Oscar--the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar--with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of the opinions ... of others!

[Sidenote: Enclosed to the Poet, with a line: "Oscar, you must really keep outside 'the radius'!"

With 'Arry and Oscar you have avenged the Academy.

I am, Gentlemen, yours obediently,

_Quand même!_

[Sidenote: _The World_, Nov. 24, 1886.]

Atlas, this is very sad! With our James vulgarity begins at home, and should be allowed to stay there.--_À vous_,

OSCAR WILDE

TO WHOM:

"A poor thing," Oscar!--"but," for once, I suppose "your own."

_Philanthropy and Art_

The _Saturday Review_ has not thought it disgraceful to once more justify its title to be called the "Saturday Reviler." This time it is not to break upon the wheel some poor butterfly of a lady traveller or novelist, but to scoff at an aged painter of the highest repute--Mr. Herbert--upon his retirement to the rank of "Honorary Academician," after a career such as few, if any, painters living can boast. This it pleases the "Reviler" to congratulate artists upon as "good news," without a word or a thought of what the retiring Academician has done in art, except to utter the contemptible untruth that "his resignation means that he has found out that he is beaten," _not_ by the natural failing of old age, but because he failed to impress such a writer as this with the special exhibition of the works of his long life, that was made some few years back to mark the completion of his last great picture for the House of Lords, "The Judgment of Daniel." That exhibition, which most people, who know anything about painting in its highest style of religious and monumental art, thought a most interesting display of a painter's career, is described by this most genial of critics as "acres of pallid purple canvases, with wizened saints and virgins in attitudinizing groups."

Whether that collection of Mr. Herbert's works had merit or not is matter of opinion which I am not concerned to dispute; but, as a matter of fact, there were only _three_ small pictures in which the virgin or any saints appeared; the other pictures, besides the two large works of "The Delivery of the Law" and "The Judgment of Daniel," painted for the nation, being historical subjects, such as the "Lear Disinheriting Cordelia," a fresco of which is in the House of Lords; "The Acquittal of the Seven Bishops," which the Corporation of Salford purchased for their gallery of art; and several fine works of his youth, such as the "Brides of Venice," a "Procession in Venice, 1528," and others, which won for him his election to the Academy forty-five years ago, when he had to compete with such men as are, unfortunately, not to be found now among the candidates--Etty--Maclise--Dyce--Egg--and Elmore.

But the "_Saturday's_" art critic, if he ever saw this exhibition at all, didn't go to see these pictures. As Goethe says, "the eye sees what it came to see," and he went to see the "acres of purple canvases, with their wizened saints," which were not there. No matter--it suits his purpose to declare that they were, just as it does to cram into a paragraph more ignorance, insolence, and false assertions combined than is often to be met with even in this locality of literature, where the editor seems to be surrounded with all the prigs, and the pumps, and the snobs of the literary profession.

_Truth_, Aug. 19, 1886.

"_Nous avons changé tout cela!_"

[Sidenote: _Truth_, Sept. 2, 1886.]

Hoity-toity! my dear Henry!--What is all this? How can you startle the "Constant Reader," of this cold world, by these sudden dashes into the unexpected?

Perceive also what happens.

Sweet in the security of my own sense of things, and looking upon you surely as the typical "_Sapem_" of modern progress and civilization, here do I, in full Paris, _à l'heure de l'absinthe_, upon mischievous discussion intent, call aloud for "_Truth_."

"_Vous allez voir_," I say to the brilliant brethren gathered about my table, "you shall hear the latest beautiful thing and bold, said by our great Henry--'_capable de tout_,' beside whom '_ce coquin d'Habacuc_' was mild indeed and usual!" And straightway to my stultification, I find myself translating paragraphs of pathos and indignation, in which a colourless old gentleman of the Academy is sympathized with, and made a doddering hero of, for no better reason than that he _is_ old--and those who would point out the wisdom and comfort of his withdrawal into the wigwam of private life, sternly reproved and anathematized and threatened with shame--until they might well expect to find themselves come upon by the bears of the aged and irascible, though bald-headed, Prophet, whom the children had thoughtfully urged to "go up."

Fancy the Frenchmen's astonishment as I read, and their placid amusement as I attempted to point out that it was "meant drolly--that _enfin_ you were a _mystificateur_!"

Henry, why should I thus be mortified? Also, why this new _pose_, this cheap championship of senility?

How, in the name of all that is incompetent, do you find much virtue in work spreading over more time! What means this affectation of _naïveté_?

We all know that work excuses itself only by reason of its quality.

If the work be foolish, it surely is not less foolish because an honest and misspent lifetime has been passed in producing it.

What matters it that the offending worker has grown old among us, and has endeared himself to many by his caprices as ratepayer and neighbour?

Personally, he may have claims upon his surroundings; but, as the painter of poor pictures, he is damned for ever.

You see, my Henry, that it is not sufficient to be, as you are in wit and wisdom, among us, amazing and astute; a very Daniel in your judgment of many vexed questions; of a frankness and loyalty withal in your crusade against abuses, that makes of the keen litigator a most dangerous Quixote.

This peculiar temperament gives you that superb sense of right, _outside the realms of art_, that amounts to genius, and carries with it continued success and triumph in the warfare you wage.

But here it helps you not. And so you find yourself, for instance, pleasantly prattling in print of "English Art."

Learn, then, O! Henry, that there is no such thing as English Art. You might as well talk of English Mathematics. Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics.

What you call English Art, is not Art at all, but produce, of which there is, and always has been, and always will be, a plenty, whether the men producing it are dead and called ----, or (I refer you to your own selection, far be it from me to choose)--or alive and called ----, whosoever you like as you turn over the Academy catalogue.

The great truth, you have to understand, is that it matters not at all whom you prefer in this long list. They all belong to the excellent army of mediocrity; the differences between them being infinitely small--merely microscopic--as compared to the vast distance between any one of them and the Great.

They are the commercial travellers of Art, whose works are their wares, and whose exchange is the Academy.

They pass and are forgotten, or remain for a while in the memory of the worthies who knew them, and who cling to their faith in them, as it flatters their own place in history--famous themselves--the friends of the famous!