by George Moore
Then whither in her flight from England will art betake herself? Eastward there are the Russian and the German empires and behind them the Chinese. All Europe has been visited and art never returns to where she has once been; even Italy cannot be cited in disproof of this, for in Italy in Roman times art was a Greek importation, and all the Roman statues were the work of Greek artists. So whither will art go? In what country will art suddenly appear! In the Soudan, or in the Transvaal? Or will art rest for a space in this forlorn Atlantic island, re-knitting herself to the tradition which existed before England was, in gold ornaments, and scroll work, and in many tales of chivalry? Will there be a re-blossoming of the ancient language, or shall we save some accent of Shelleys tongue which has declined elsewhere into neologisms and archaisms. That art has left England there can be no doubt. Art has left France and Germany and Russia; it is still in Norway, and when it leaves Norway it must find another small nation, one which has not yet achieved its destiny — a nation such as Greece was before Marathon, such as England was before the Armada and again before Trafalgar. In the Western Hemisphere Ireland is the only place which seems to fulfil these conditions, but Ireland maybe is still too poor to nourish an art, for although art shuns wealth, art needs some ease of life. But Ireland is just beginning to find her way into easy subsistence; for the first time for centuries starvation and oppression seem fading from her face. The language is reviving, serious poetry is beginning again, and plays, written without desire of gain, for love of art, are offered to the Irish rather than to the English public.
It is impossible to write plays in England except for money, and all that is done for money is mediocre. It was with the Renaissance that money came into art. The Greeks did not build the Parthenon for money, nor did the French build Chartres Cathedral for money; the recompense in either case was the joy of art, and as money entered into art the work of the artist slipped out of his control into that of the mob. It took four centuries to accomplish this change; we had to wait four hundred years for a world fashioned according to the image and likeness of the mob, and now in all save the individual arts, such as lyric poetry and easel pictures, the face of the mob is plainly stamped. The decorative arts, architecture, and mural painting, inlaid furniture, painted porcelain, and metal work have so declined that no one buys them as they are made now; the most ordinary people have come to understand that they must buy eighteenth century furniture and old silver and china, and that a thousand pounds will not buy a design for a clock that is not an old one, or a copy of an old one, nor a design for a chair, or a sofa, or a pair of candlesticks. The mob has become rich; and it imposes its tastes; and those who are not of the mob retire more and more into the past. As life becomes numerous and rich, it becomes garish and vulgar. But though the modern handicrafts appeal to ten times as large a custom as did the beautiful work of the eighteenth century, still their custom is relatively small compared to that from which the dramatic writer suffers. So it is to dramatic writing we must look to discover the depths to which an art can sink when it is written and produced at the mutual dictation of the gallery boy, who for a shilling demands oblivion of his day’s work, and the stockbroker, who for 10s. 6d demands such amusement as will enable him to safely digest his dinner. Ail who write for the English stage must write practically at the dictation of these two. The same audience goes everywhere, and the same fare is consequently served everywhere at the same prices.
And to liberate the theatre from the thraldom of money is the truly great adventure which awaits the rich man. But the rich man does not choose a theatre for his charity — a hospital, a college, or a picture gallery is chosen in preference. The wisdom of leaving money to a hospital may not be questioned, but it may be asked if a fine performance of Shakespeare or Ibsen or Maeterlinck does not rouse the listener out of the lethargy of real life as effectively as a course of lectures on Shakespeare or Sophocles or Ibsen or Maeterlinck in which some learned professor expounds superficial opinions regarding these writers. Is it sure that the gift of pictures and the gift of a gallery stimulate intellectual enterprise as much as the gift of a theatre? Is not painting the most occult of all the arts? Are there not a hundred men who can distinguish between good literature for one who can distinguish between the National Gallery and the Royal Academy? Does not the ordinary man prefer a waxwork show or the work of the scene-painter, with limelight and dresses, to either? It has been said that villagers would prefer a circus to a Parish Council. This may be true, but how much more true it is that 90 per cent, of those who visit the Louvre or the National Gallery would find more amusement in the old Doré Gallery. Indeed, the old Doré Gallery not only pleased the public more than any other, but it provided the public with more intellectual stimulus than any other. The public is genuinely moved by Doré, and hardly at all by Titian; none except those who have given a large part of their lives to the study of painting can be moved by Holbein or Titian. We have only to look into our hearts to learn how true this is. Titian and Holbein convey little meaning to the youthful mind; Doré does; and my stages of comprehension were many before I understood why Ingres is a greater painter than Cabanel. But the aesthetic sense of the working man does not develop; he likes the same false, crude emotion at forty as he did at twenty. Nor are “women, ecclesiastics, and persons of quality” more erudite in art; and it is open to doubt if there are very many dukes in England who could tell a Titian from a Veronese. There are at the present moment two pictures attributed to Van Eyck on view in the New Gallery. They are not genuine pictures, but how many years does it take to see that they are not genuine, and he who cannot see at a glance that they are not Van Eyck’s has not advanced beyond Gustave Doré. Yet we, the most practical nation in the world, spend large sums of money upon an art about which 90 per cent, do not know the A B C.
The Luxembourg Museum is a flagrant example of how money is wasted upon the art of painting. This collection is chiefly composed of pictures which attracted attention at the Annual Exhibitions of painting in the Champs Elysées. Every year the State buys the picture which represents best the artistic interest of the moment, the picture which represents what is known in the studios as “the movement.” But works of genius are never in the movement, and we become aware of this if we look at Bastien Lepage’s picture of “The Haymakers,” a complete and excellent example of a picture typifying a movement. We see at once that it is a capable piece of work, as we should see, if we understood the art of embalming, that certain mummies are capably embalmed while others are not. The picture is dry, and faded, and tedious to look at as a mummy, and like a mummy has only an historical value. It tells us that in such a year the artistic question that occupied men’s minds was le plein air, and it demonstrates perfectly that le plein air was a will-o’-the-wisp. Then if we turn to the pictures which were bought because they appealed to the taste of the public the spectacle is still more forlorn. We pass along wondering. Seeing them is like reading through the popular songs of twenty or thirty years ago — songs which delighted our fathers, but do not delight us. The merit of the songs of yester year are not less than the merits of this year’s songs, but they have not been so lately printed, that is really all that can be said. And on the point of novelty the public never errs. Never is it in doubt which is the old and which is the new, and never does it hesitate. And for a reason which never has been explained, and which I fear never will be explained, the last picture painted, the last book published, and the last play produced, exercise, quite apart from any artistic value or any discernible charm, a fascination for the public, the mysterious fascination of novelty; and upon us too, only we do not yield ourselves to the charm of mere novelty so easily as the public. The public has no standard, it merely seeks amusement; and if this be granted, the question arises if an art should be entirely abandoned to the licentious (I use the word in its grammatical sense) taste of the public. Between the painter and the public there is the private patron; three or four picture-buyers kept the pre-Raphaeli
te movement alive, but between the dramatists and the public there is no one.
The majority decides what art shall live, but this majority is composed of the minorities of successive generations. So is it really open to doubt that Sir Henry Tate and Mr. Chantry would have conferred a lesser obligation upon this country if they had given the interest of their money, £12,000 a year, to a theatre, on conditions that it should produce Shakespeare (with a minimum of scenery and dresses), Ibsen, and Maeterlinck, and all acting plays of literary merit which did not seem to appeal to the crude taste of the passing moment? If Sir Richard Wallace had considered the impulse that an endowed theatre would give to London intellectual life, he might have decided to put up his collection of pictures and make such disposal of the three or four or five hundred thousand pounds which it would have fetched in the auction-room. London would thereby be poorer by many beautiful pictures, but London intellectual life would not have suffered — the National Gallery will be always a sufficient source of knowledge for those engaged in the study of the art of painting. Then, again, the desire of the giver would be better accomplished by the gift of a theatre than by the gift of a picture gallery. A theatre endowed with twelve thousand pounds a year, under the conditions indicated, would confer upon the giver a constant immortality; his name would be held for ever blessed by lovers of dramatic literature, for he would be the eternal life of the pure, impassioned dramatic aspiration of the nation. It is at once a joy and a sadness to think of the generations of young men who, if we had an endowed theatre, would walk into the night, exalted after a performance of some marvellous masterpiece, delighting in the memory of him who had given them the greatest of earthly joys — the joy of art.
The mistake began long ago, two hundred and fifty years ago, when the Puritan tried to suppress the theatre; that could not be done, for the theatre is inherent in man; it would have been better if the Puritan had applied himself to the redemption of the theatre, for in abandoning it to the taste of the licentious mob he aggravated the evil and now the Puritan joins hands with the artist in condemning the theatre. These two have always been represented as hostile forces, whereas when we look below the surface we find them to be in agreement, only expressing themselves differently. Their criticism of the theatre rests on the same ground — they both wish art to be serious, and the arguments for and against the theatre are held by the artist and the Puritan; the public merely seeks to be amused. The arguments by which the Puritan defends his hatred of the theatre are often weak, they are sometimes absurd, but he knows, as the artist knows, that the manager can only save himself from bankruptcy by offering to the public the amusement of scenery and dresses. Scenery is painting with the intellectual side of painting left out, just as modern dramatic writing is writing with the intellectual side, commonly called literature, left out; and modern acting is merely the personality of the actor and actress with the intellectual side of acting, the impersonation of character, left out. And as the theatre has identified itself with the life of the senses rather than that of the intellect, it has become popular, for the crowd desires the life of the senses: the senses are the life of the crowd, and the accusations of immorality that we have heard raised against Ibsen, against all who have sought the life of the intellect on the stage, are merely the voice of the crowd crying that its prescriptive right to the life of the senses in the theatre shall not be infringed upon. It is not the Puritan who cries out that “Ghosts” shall be forbidden, but the average man. It is the Puritan and the artist who cry out together against the sensualism of the variety entertainment, and it is the supporter of the variety entertainment who bans Sophocles’ noble poem. But the Puritans have had this play performed in their churches in America. The parable of the fire stolen from heaven is the eternal symbol of the persecution of the artist by the world. Immorality is never persecuted — the world cannot persecute itself; nothing is persecuted in this world except the intelligence.
Only sport has escaped the thraldom of money. In art the word “amateur” has been turned from its beautiful original significance, and is used as a term of reproach, being applied to those who do not make their living by the practice of their art. Only in sport does the amateur obtain a distinction. Lord Harris is not thought less of because he did not make a fortune out of cricket; nor is Lord de Grey reproached with not making pheasant shooting pay; nor was Lord Falmouth considered a fool because he ran his horses to please himself. Sport and religion retain in England the dignity of bringing their own reward; and it is our ambition, though we scarcely dare admit it, to contrive such theatrical conditions as will raise dramatic writing to the level of pheasant shooting. Our enterprise is, therefore, the very opposite of every other theatrical enterprise. We should like the Irish Literary Theatre to exist on the generosity of two or three individuals who would spend money upon it as they would upon their pheasant shooting. We want public enthusiasm, and we believe that we can obtain it more easily if we are independent of the public for support. We believe that in artistic enterprise there should be, if possible, a slight loss at the end of the year. Above all, we believe that we should make sacrifices for art as we do for religion, that part of the joy of art is the sacrifice. St. Teresa’s words that she would wish for a flame to burn up heaven, and water to quench hell, so that she might worship goodness for its own sake, are, with some modifications, as applicable to the artist as to the saint.
GEORGE MOORE.
ACT THE FIRST.
THE MEETING HALL of the Corporation. MACNEE sets down a large bucket in front and then begins leisurely to sweep the floor. JOHN CLORAN enters carrying some papers.
CLORAN (with importance).
What are you doing here, Macnee? I’m expecting the Corporation every minute.
MACNEE.
I’m sweeping the floor for the Corporation.
CLORAN.
You should have finished long ago.
MACNEE.
Has the Corporation never been behind with its work?
CLORAN.
The Corporation has never been more hard-worked; the Corporation will be engaged this morning with most important matters; and the most important resolutions will be passed.
MACNEE.
What are the resolutions about?
CLORAN.
I’m too busy now to explain.
MACNEE.
I think you’d find them hard to explain.
CLORAN.
That’ll do. It isn’t my business to argue with a man like you.
MACNEE.
Ah, you’re a proud man to be Town Clerk, but I can tell you this Corporation you think so fine isn’t respected much in the town.
CLORAN.
You are, no doubt, a sound authority as to the feeling of our town.
MACNEE.
I’m in the way of hearing the many, and, believe me, if you don’t begin to do the people some good, none of you will long remain where you are.
CLORAN.
Oh indeed! I suppose your associates, the proletariat, are discontented because there is not more unanimity among the members of our Corporation. Well, what do you expect? You don’t suppose that where there are so many men of equal intelligence, ability and push they will sink their individual opinions to follow the opinions of one of their number who is no better than anybody else.
MACNEE.
How long have they been tearing each other in pieces, I should like to know? When will they begin to think of the good of the town?
CLORAN.
All their opinions are for the good of our town.... But what we want is somebody who will offer a superior opinion. We want a leader — a man whose superiority will unite us in the best interests of our town.
MACNEE.
Maybe a leader would no longer think you worth leading, and maybe too the people would find a man for themselves.
CLORAN.
You mean Mr. Jasper Dean. He has been elected alderman for a ward, and takes his seat to-day for the first time. No;
he won’t do here. He has ruined his chances here by the speech he made the other day.
MACNEE.
Well, he has all the hillside men at his back now.
CLORAN.
But the members here are the representatives of the people. Hush! I hear the members coming in.
MACNEE.
I must be going. They don’t want to see the people here. — [Exit carrying his bucket.
CLORAN.
He is always trying to push himself forward! I am sure he would like to sit with the Corporation.
(Enter ALDERMAN JAMES POLLOCK and ALDERMAN MICHAEL LEECH.) POLLOCK.
A dangerous man. I tried to get the Corporation to give him the sack.
LEECH.
He was in quite a good position once; it was politics that brought him to this menial work. That’s so, isn’t it, Cloran?
POLLOCK.
Isn’t the Mayor here yet?
CLORAN.
No, Alderman Leech, he is very late to-day.
POLLOCK.
Any news, Cloran?
CLORAN.
Not a word, Alderman Pollock.
POLLOCK.
Nothing about our claim against Southhaven?
CLORAN.
Only a letter received this morning which I shall lay before the Corporation. But it leaves matters pretty nearly where they were, sir.
LEECH (to POLLOCK).
