“There are no ‘buts’ about it except the fool who butts his head against the barrier you have erected. A people that tolerates such a law has no love for art,—their protestation is mere pretence.”
That a great nation should deliberately discourage the importation of beautiful things, should wallow in the mire of ugliness and refuse to be cleansed by art, was to him a mystery,—for what difference does it make whether painting, poetry, and music come out of the East or out of the West, so long as they add to the happiness of a people? And why should painting and sculpture find the gate closed when poetry and music are admitted?
He did not know the petty commercial considerations which control certain of the painters and sculptors and some of the institutions supposed to be devoted to art.
For is not art the most “infant” of all the “infant industries” of this great commercial nation? And should not the brush-worker at home be given his meed of protection against the pauper brush-workers of Europe—even against Rembrandt and Velasquez and all the glorious Italians?
Beethoven and Mendelssohn and Mozart, Shakespeare and Milton,—their works, even their original manuscripts, if in existence, though costly beyond many paintings, come in without let or hinderance; but the work of the painter, the original manuscript of the poet in line, of the composer of harmonies in color, may not cross the border without tribute.
A symphony in sound is welcomed; a symphony in color is rejected. Why this discrimination in favor of the ear and against the eye?
There is no reason, but an inordinate amount of selfishness, in it all. The wire-pulling painter at home, backed up by the commercially-managed art institution, makes himself felt in the chambers at Washington where tariffs are arranged, and painting and sculpture are removed from the free list and placed among the pots and kettles of commerce.
Where is the poet and where is the musician in this distribution of advantages? Why should American poetry and American music be left to compete with the whole world while American painting and American sculpture are suitably encouraged by a tariff of twenty per cent.?—a figure fixed, no doubt, as is the plea, to make good the difference in wages,—pauper labor of Europe,—pauper artists. Alas! too true; shut the vagabonds out that their aristocratic American confrères residing at home may maintain their “standard of living.”
Of all the peoples on the face of the globe, high and low, civilized and savage, there is just one that discourages the importation of the beautiful, and that one happens to be the youngest and the richest of all—the one most in need of what it wilfully excludes.
Notwithstanding all these reasons for not coming, he had a great desire to visit this country, and in letters to friends on this side he would again and again express his firm intention to come the following summer or winter, as the season might be. The death of Mrs. Whistler, some six years ago, and his own ill health prevented,—but there was no lack of desire.