Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Yet, as a rule, where green rises to the position of a decorative colour, I am inclined to think that we can usually trace a special reason in the circumstances of the particular race. Green forms the opposite pole from red, in that red is the pungent and stimulative colour, while green is the restful and reparative colour. Owing to the large amount of green in the natural environment, our eyes appear to be adapted for continuous languid stimulation by that gentle excitant, which forms the mean of the total spectrum. On the other hand, owing to the ancestral habits of our race, our eyes appear to be adapted for sudden and pleasurable excitation by red, which rapidly glides into fatigue. Accordingly, we desiderate green as a relief. In the normal circumstances of humanity, surrounded by trees and fields, this relief is abundantly present. But in the civilised cities, with their greys and stone-blues, green does not occur with sufficient frequency, and hence it is hailed as a fresh and pleasant change. Added to which, it is joined in the civilised mind with various associated emotions, either actually felt or dimly suggested. And as its pleasure is the least directly stimulating, the most gentle and modest of all, it naturally ranks highest of any colour in the hierarchy of the æsthetically cultivated.

  Now, it would seem as though the use of green in decoration were almost exclusively confined to those people who live an indoor life. It is among the civilised or semi-civilised nations that we see it most employed; and where it is found in the case of savages (as the Samoans and Hawaiians) it has generally been introduced from Europe or America. Moreover, it seems to be in special favour among the Persians; and it may perhaps be suggested that Persia is a peculiarly arid country, where green is decidedly wanting in the landscape. It also ranks high among the Arabs, and among many inhabitants of cold climates. Those who have seen a Canadian Christmas, with its monotonous field of snow outside, and its gay decorations of evergreens and red berries indoors, will thoroughly understand the rationale of this preference.

  To the last, the use of green remains chiefly supplementary. It is employed in bouquets as a relief, and in decorations as an element with red and blue; but by itself it must be regarded as the least efficient of all colours.

  It should be added, however, that from the beginning green seems to have been prized in such permanent forms as jewels or stones. Sea-green pebbles are mentioned among those buried in the barrows: and jade ranks as one of the commonest materials for polished hatchets. Greenstone, green jasper, and light green slate are also frequently employed for like purposes; and emeralds, malachite, or other similar minerals, have been universally prized for their beauty. The Central American and South American Indians seem to have had an extraordinary taste for green jewels, for which I confess I can see no sufficient reason. Perhaps it may have depended simply upon an accidental frequency of such stones in that tract of country. However, an explanation is here certainly desirable.

  On the other hand, children and savages take little notice of vegetal greens, and usually arrange red and blue flowers entirely by themselves, without that admixture of relieving foliage which a more refined taste imperatively demands.

  As regards the various mixed or intermediate colours — purple, orange, lilac, mauve, and so forth — their effectiveness depends mainly upon their similarity to red on the one hand or blue on the other. In proportion as they approach green they are less and less pleasurable: while, of course, those of the red end are, on the whole, greater favourites than those of the violet. Purple forms an intermediate term, being brilliant in the exact ratio of the red rays which it contains. Of course, among civilised people, such colours possess the additional charm of novelty and variety.

  A few more words must be added as to the mode in which the various colours are used. In the earliest stage they are merely daubed on in isolation, as by the Andamanese who plasters his head with ochre, or the ancient Welsh who stained their bodies with woad. A little higher up in the scale, the colours are used in bars or strips, of violent contrast. Black, white, and red are the favourite pigments, each being well pronounced and standing out boldly against its neighbour. Then comes the addition of blue, and finally that of green. Above this level we find the employment of intermediate hues, such as yellow, orange, and pink. Last of all, the colours are mixed in shades of varying intensity, and we get the whole wealth of the entire spectrum, as in modern European art.

  Again, the variety of form gives another element of evolution, into which, however, it would be improper to enter in the present volume, restricted as it is to the examination of the simple colour-sense. Here it must suffice briefly to point out the upward movement from the simple bars or strips of the savage, through the graceful curve lines of the Polynesians, to the arabesques and decorative harmonies of the Moors; or from the red and yellow imitative figures of the Hawaiians, through the bright primary wall-paintings of the Egyptians, to the landscapes and the figure-pieces which adorn the walls of our Salons and our Academies.

  Both these lines of evolution, however, suggest a further consideration of great importance. While primitive man cares only for the pungent and brilliant stimulation of the primary colours, in all their fullest intensity of light, and pays little attention to their darker shades or duller mixtures, the æsthetically cultivated have learnt to notice and appreciate the fainter pleasures which arise from these slighter and more delicate stimulations. They are thus enabled to vary and enlarge their means of visual gratification, and to dispose their various-coloured objects in far more numerous and more subtle combinations. While the Australian knows only two or three invariable arrangements of red, black, and white, the civilised decorator is able to ring the changes perpetually upon ever-varying harmonies and contrasts of faint yellows, pale blues, rich purple-greys, and dark olive-greens. By artfully devising here a stimulation, there a relief, here a mass of comparatively brilliant pungency, there a field of mild retiring neutral tints, he succeeds in sustaining and recruiting the sensuous pleasure of colour from moment to moment, without ever causing us fatigue or overtaxing a single sentient structure.

  And now we must pass on to a second point of view, that of the objects which are employed for the æsthetic gratification of the colour-sense. These, on the whole, afford a strong confirmation of the theory with regard to the origin of our æsthetic feeling which is here advocated, as the greater part of them consist of the very objects which owe their development to the colour-sense of animals.

  Fruits themselves, though their utilitarian associations prevent them from standing in the front rank of æsthetic objects, are yet undoubtedly beautiful in colour and shape. And when we survey them amid their native boughs, few lovelier sights can be found than the brighter and prettier among them. An orange tree laden with its golden spheres, an apple orchard weighed down with its ruddy pippins, a holly-bush covered with its crimson berries, are some of the most exquisite pictorial sights which can be seen on earth. Especially æsthetic do fruits become, when, as in the case of the rowan, the spindle-tree, and the solanum, they are incapable of being used as food, and so can only minister to the pure pleasure of sight. In most instances, however, the beauty of fruits falls a little short of the æsthetic limit in the actuality, at least when they have been picked and are ready for table. Yet even so, when decorated with green leaves, and interspersed with flowers, their falling short is very slight indeed, if not purely hypercritical. But as objects of pictorial imitation they have always been in high favour; while they enter largely into the composition of poetry, as ideal stimulants of æsthetic feeling.

  Nevertheless, it should be noted that fruits in the actuality are closely allied with the frugivorous instincts of our race, and that the origin of our whole taste for colour may still be clearly descried in the imprint which they have left upon our minds. Every child naturally puts a bright-coloured berry into its mouth; and it is difficult to keep the hands of urchins off the scarlet clusters of the arum or the brilliant crimson fruits of the yam. Even babies automatically strive to place every bright object whic
h they see between their lips; and the sweetmeats which are manufactured for their pleasure bear attractive strips of red, blue, and yellow colouring. These and fifty other minor indications show us from moment to moment that the developed love for colour is a transference of feeling from its original alliance with the common food-stuffs of the species.

  The æsthetic pre-eminence of flowers has never been doubted. In the actuality they form the commonest decoration of the savage home and the civilised garden, of the labourer’s cottage and the royal palace. In imitation, they have been barbarously travestied with paper, wax, or feathers, and parodied in cotton upon bonnets, hats, or dresses. In the direct pictorial representation they have been favourite subjects of artistic handling from the days of the Egyptians downward. And as elements of poetry, they have been celebrated from the rose of Sharon and the hyacinth of Homer to Wordsworth’s daisy and Tennyson’s lily. But we must not forget that herein we are practically confessing the identity of our own colour-tastes with those of the bees and butterflies, for whose attraction these floral gems were first developed.

  Fruits being, so to speak, the primitive and positive element in our love for colour, flowers may be regarded as one among the earliest classes to which the feeling is transferred. Even monkeys are not wholly insensible to their charms, though they display their affection, like our own little children, chiefly by pulling to pieces the objects of their regard. We have no evidence, of course, whether primitive man cared for flowers; but the presumption from the case of existing savages would certainly lead us to suppose that he did. I have already noted that the Tasmanians and Australians employ bright blossoms in their personal decorations; and the South Sea Islanders positively revel in garlands and nosegays. Even the stern American Indians show considerable love for these bright natural objects, and I find it noted of the Chibcha women that they wore flowers in their hair. A little plot of half-uncultivated garden commonly surrounds the very rudest huts. As to ourselves, so far as my observation goes, I am inclined to think that our children notice flowers as soon as they take note of anything which is not good to eat, while I had hard work in Jamaica to keep the hands of little negroes off the purple and crimson plants in my garden-plot. Finally, our own conservatories, flower-shows, and floral decorations show us the same taste pushed to its furthest extreme.

  It is worth while to observe, en passant, that though our children pick bunches of flowers they never pick bunches of leaves, a fact full of import as to the æsthetic value of green. Similarly, although adults intersperse their bouquets with foliage as a relief, they seldom arrange leaves by themselves. If they do, the leaves must present some special feature, like those of ferns, which attract us sometimes by their exquisite gloss, sometimes by their varied and minutely-symmetrical forms. So, too, when we place a flowerless plant in our gardens, it must either be recommended by such beauty of shape or gloss, as in the case of ferns, Palma Christi, and india-rubber trees, or by coloured foliage, as in the case of dracæna, coleus, caladium, sedum, and the other pretty plants at present so much in fashion. It is true a cultivated mind may derive as much pleasure from a green leaf as from a scarlet geranium or a purple hyacinth; but then the pleasure in the former case is much more indirect, complex, and emotional, and in the latter cases much more immediate, pungent, and sensuous. Moreover, the first pleasure is personal and restricted; the second is generic and universal.

  This is, perhaps, the fittest place to advert to another curious fact, the fact that all our æsthetic feelings seem most deeply bound up with the relics of our original outdoor, arboreal existence. Fruits and flowers, birds and butterflies, sweet perfumes and songs of nightingales, the green fields and the luscious forests, these are deep and resonant elements in our perennial love for beauty. Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed out that the pleasures of a day in the country, of wild scenery, and of free wandering over heath and moor, are largely due to unconscious recollections of the ante-civilised state. He even suggests that the enjoyment of a picnic, with all its unconventional delights, is mainly explicable as a sort of temporary reversion to a primitive state. Still more obvious does this become to those who have ever tried a fortnight of camping-out among the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence or the beautiful lakes of western New York. But it seems to me that we may go further, and ascribe our whole love of colour, perfume, and the more delicate taste of fruits, to half-remembered habits of our early ancestry. The acquired carnivorous mode of life sits loosely on the outer layer of our nature; but the hereditary frugivorous instincts seem to shape all our inmost feelings and sentiments. Bright hues, fragrant scents, sweet juices, these form the earliest pleasures of childhood, and remain throughout as the main sensuous factors of our æsthetic nature. The very fact of their comparative remoteness from our acquired and civilised habits seems to make them all the more distinctively beautiful and delicate. Thus, our modern dinner à la Russe, by removing from the table the coarse elements of meat and fish, while loading the white damask with flowers, with beautiful fruits, with coloured glass and porcelain dessert service, seems to recall whatever is loveliest and most æthereal in our ancestral traits. On a humbler scale, the mere decoration of dishes with parsley or water-cress, the bouquet placed in the centre of the dinner table, and the very addition of cochineal to the jellies, or of egg and beet-root to the salad, points dimly back to the same half-obliterated habits, asserting themselves strongly throughout our whole history.

  Both fruits and flowers are comparatively evanescent æsthetic objects. They soon fade and lose their beauty. But feathers, which perhaps rank next in order of historical occurrence, retain their brilliant hues for a considerable period. And just as our sense for the beauty of fruits and flowers is a proof of the community of taste which exists between frugivorous man and the fruit-eating and flower-feeding animals, — the parrots, toucans, humming-birds, bees, and butterflies, — so our sense for the beauty of feathers is an echo of the taste which originally produced them by sexual selection in the species to which they belong. Feathers form almost universal ornaments of savage or civilised humanity. The American Indians thrust them into their head-dress in the shape of a crest or crown. The Hawaiians wove from them their famous cloaks and idols. The Mexicans employed them for their beautiful mosaics. Eastern nations early prized the peacock for his splendid tail-plumes. And now, in our barbarous civilisation, millions of humming-birds from Trinidad and South America come yearly to Europe for the bonnets of our English ladies; ostrich-farms at the Cape supply our savage court-dress; and marabou plumes decorate the heads of our Belgravian beauties. The bird-of-paradise forms a regular article of commerce; grebe and swans’ down line our mantles and jackets; even our very funerals are surmounted with the black-dyed nodding plumage of tropical birds. Our military officials wear feathers as the mark of highest distinction; and the heir-apparent to the British crown uses them as his armorial cognisance. Is it not worth noting, too, as a symptom of the permanent character which marks governmental ceremonial, that the use of feathers is especially bound up with our military system and court etiquette? Have we not here a direct survival from the simple ornaments of the savage chief?

  Next, perhaps, in our conjectural order of transference might come the taste for shells, pearls, coral, and like organic substances. This taste we find almost universal among modern savages, and it extends far back into the prehistoric age. Mother-of-pearl is a favourite ornamental material, which has retained its popularity into modern times. Necklets of cowries or the turbo are common savage adornments, which have not yet died out in civilised lands. Coral still holds its ground in Europe, and large quantities are exported to China and Japan. On the whole, however, despite the few collections of shells on a cottager’s mantelpiece, the love of these marine productions has died out far more than the previous tastes.

  Coeval, doubtless, with the habit of gathering these treasures of the sea-shore is that of picking up bright-coloured pebbles or crystals. Of this we have already seen numerous ex
amples, and further repetition would only fatigue the reader. A mere brief list of some principal varieties must suffice — such as the diamond, ruby, sapphire, topaz, garnet, carbuncle, amethyst, jasper, emerald, beryl, jacinth, onyx, opal, and turquoise; marble, porphyry, granite, serpentine, malachite, jade, fluor-spar, amber, satin-stone, agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli, quartz, and blood-stone.

  The use of decorative metals is closely bound up with that of the preceding class. The brilliancy and the colour of gold and silver early attracted the attention of primitive man. Used in conjunction with the precious stones, they compose what we know as jewellery, which forms one of the chief decorative appliances of all savage and civilised races. The taste which begins with the gold neck ornaments of the barbaric king, culminates in our own jewellers’ shops, our regalia, our gold and silver plate, our city maces, our military uniforms, our ecclesiastical ornaments, and our Albert Memorials. Here, again, it is interesting to note the connection of state ceremonial and religious ritual with the earliest decorative devices of primitive chieftains.