The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 24

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 cla.s.ses.

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 a.s.serted dependent upon the wisdom of a period. The a.s.sertion 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-partners.h.i.+p, 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 n.o.bly or art perish.

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

A whimsical G.o.ddess, 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 n.o.ble 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociation, 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 mult.i.tude, 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 n.o.bility 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 ma.s.s, 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 G.o.ds 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"_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....