Highways and Byways in London

by Emily Constance Baird Cook

"Great are your privileges. For you is collected in the public palaces of London all that human genius has ever achieved, all that power and wealth can procure. For you has been dug from the earth all that remains of mighty empires and long-vanished civilisations. The arts of Greece and Rome, and Egypt and Assyria, and the not less wonderful arts of India, are all contributory to your pleasures. The whole art and mystery of painting is unfolded for you on the walls of our National Gallery.... You are rich indeed, for you are the heirs of all the Ages."

Are picture-galleries, museums, and such-like treasures of the metropolis, to be described as London's Highways, or as its Byways? That they ought to be the former, is certain; as certain as that they are but too often used as the latter, or are, at any rate, regarded as refuges and shelters from the inclemency of the outer air. For Art, like Religion, has a tendency in this respect, to serve not so much as a cloak, as in the capacity of an umbrella. And it is sometimes conveniently adapted to yet other profane uses: "This 'ere ain't a gymnasium, nor yet a refreshment room," I have heard a much-enduring officer of the law remark, more in sorrow than in anger, to a too-presuming visitor, who, seated opposite the Ansidei Madonna, was placidly feeding such of her offspring as were not engaged in playing leap-frog over the chairs, with crumbly bath-buns.

A Sketch in Trafalgar Square.

These, however, are varieties in the human species that are ever with us. "Fear not to Sow because of the Birds," says the Koran; and the widespread sowing of culture has so far shown results, that every year the British Museum, the National Gallery, and other kindred institutions, are growing more popular and more frequented. In Art and Knowledge, as in other directions, it takes time for "the People" to appreciate fully their oldest, much less their newest, heritage. Such treasures in our vast metropolis are still too much hidden, still undiscovered by the majority. Even the educated visitor fresh from the country does not immediately realise the fact that he is free at any time to walk the marble halls of the National Gallery, to hear the fountain plashing in the Pompeian hall of the riverside palace raised by Sir Henry Tate to modern British Art, or to follow the strange instincts and laws of Nature in the beautifully arranged Natural History Museum of Kensington. The recent movement for "Sunday opening," now more or less widespread, has tended greatly to the popularisation of the national collections, and does a good deal, also, to the mitigation of the too utter gloom of the stranger's "Sunday in London." Even M. Taine, who in the "sixties" compared the metropolis of his day to "a well-ordered cemetery," or "a large manufactory of bone-black closed on account of a death," would surely have been less severely splenetic had but a museum or two been open to beguile his tedium. In our present year of grace, the British Museum, from two till four, is thronged by the lower middle-class, who, if their affection for mummies is a trifle out of proportion to the interest they take in the Elgin Marbles, and their love of historic missals is sometimes too subordinate to the intricacies of the neighbouring World's Unique Stamp-Collection, yet show in their way an intelligent and praiseworthy desire for knowledge.

These treasure-houses of London,—what wealth do they not represent,—what unimagined riches do they not contain? London, the richest city in the world, yet for so long a period far behind other capitals in representative art, has in the last century equalled, if not surpassed them all. Some fifty or more years ago, the great "Pan-Opticon" of Leicester Square, the precursor of the present Biograph and Cinematograph, was the chief "artistic" glory of London. In the days of our grandfathers, people were for ever taken to see this "Pan-Opticon," a great building with endless galleries, on the site of the present "Alhambra"; where you saw all the things of the world and the glory thereof. Now this baby-show is superseded by museums and galleries filled with the most priceless gems of art and of history: yes, the London collections may in this sense be regarded as variations of the Pan-Opticon—Pan-Opticons of a nobler kind. London's National Gallery is now a collection of pictures worthy of so great a nation, her museums are filled with the best of the spoils of ancient Greek art. If London has been late in awaking to her artistic responsibilities, at any rate she takes them seriously enough at the present day. And, of late years, her art treasure has been enormously and continuously enriched, not only by the expenditure of public moneys, but by private bequest and private munificence. Rich men, with true patriotism, have spent their lives in painfully searching for, and collecting, beautiful things, to leave them, afterwards, freely to the nation. Millionaires, too, have, it would seem, their uses. And we are thus all, in a sense, millionaires, for we inherit the priceless treasures of others, and we enjoy the fruits of their lifelong toil.

It is in London, more than anywhere, that the real poetry of living may be enjoyed, and that every passing artistic whim may be indulged. Does your mind require stimulating by the study of Greek art? the galleries of the British Museum are open to you; or

"Dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee straight
Adonis painted by a running brook;
Or Cytherea, 'mid the sedges hid,
That seem to move and wanton with her breath."

Or do you feel that what your mood needs is the contemplation of beautiful eighteenth century French furniture, and Fragonard's pictures? Go then, to Hertford House in quiet Manchester Square, and see the world-famed Wallace Collection. The "Wallace Collection," that pearl of great price, of which the bequest has recently so convulsed the art world, is the latest expression of the patriotism of wealth. Collected mainly by the third Marquess of Hertford,—the "Lord Steyne" of Thackeray's novel,—and his successor the fourth Marquess, Attaché at the Paris Embassy,—the treasure, since its formation, has met, at one time or another, with strange and unique adventures. In Paris, the fourth Marquess, Richard Seymour Conway, built for his collection "a stately pleasure house," fitted and designed after his own sumptuous taste; living meanwhile, his wealth no doubt crippled by his vast "unearned increment," not, indeed, as a miser, but in a degree of seclusion that almost amounted to eccentricity. During the Commune, the bulk of that collection that we now admire was even, it is said, buried in underground cellars for safety. The beautiful French furniture,—the bric-à-brac, blazing with enamels and precious stones,—one can well imagine these the constant delight of the old collector, with whom the love for such things had become a ruling passion. Yet, by the irony of fate, this fourth Lord Hertford suffered from a painful disease, a continual affliction which, they say, only the news of victories achieved in sale rooms, by his agents, over some rival collector, at all tended to alleviate.