CHAPTER XI
THE ARTS IN ENGLAND
That the English are an "inartistic" people, without true appreciation of pictures, music, the drama, is a statement commonly made and commonly accepted without any very serious examination of the evidence for and against. A just judge giving the benefit of a close and impartial inquiry to the case of Madam England, indicted for that she is a Philistine without any true taste in, or proper love of, the arts, would be able to go no further than the Scottish verdict of "not proven." But few of those people who find England guilty without leaving the box have attempted to make any sound examination of the evidence available. They have heard of a Hanoverian monarch of past days, who despised "boetry und bainting," and have come to a settled conviction that that represented the English mind then and represents it now.
Elsewhere I have maintained that a nation which has such a noble taste in parks and gardens as have the English must be "æsthetic" at heart; and "æsthetic" and "inartistic" are not compatible. But apart from Nature love and delight in gardening, there is a great deal of evidence to be cited in the Englishman's favour as a lover of the arts.
It could certainly have been said with truth a few years ago, and probably could be said now, in spite of the recent rush of American buyers into the picture market, that the finest collection of Italian Masters of painting outside of Italy could be made from English galleries and English houses, and also the finest collection of Spanish Masters outside of Spain, of Flemish Masters outside the Low Countries, of French Masters outside of France. In short, one might get the finest and most complete collection representative of all the painting schools of the world from English collections.
One ungracious explanation is easy: that the English have been the rich people and have been able to buy. But a rich nation does not buy pictures without some national love and appreciation of pictures. I hesitate to write that in these days when one hears of a nouveau riche commissioning a friend "to buy him £10,000 worth of pictures by those old jossers"; and in any well-regulated fashionable furniture shop you may buy with the pots and the pans and the indubitably old worm-eaten antique furniture, pictures of the right age; and even books in the proper tone of binding for your old oak book-shelves. Still, taking a view by centuries and disregarding the crazes of a season or a generation, it is fair to conclude that a nation which consistently buys pictures, and good pictures at that, has some love of and taste in painting.
The lordly young Englishmen of past generations who, "doing the grand tour," came home with examples of the great continental Masters of painting for their halls, had not the motive of a blind and vulgar obedience to a passing craze. They must have known good pictures and liked good pictures. Year by year, generation by generation, they carried on their work until English collections came to have representative examples of all the great schools of the world. The while, there was no lack of English painters of distinction, and though the English schools of painting may not claim the same degree of achievement as English schools of prose and verse, they have done enough to rescue their country from the reproach of being careless as a nation of the art of painting. There are, let it be agreed, "Philistine" classes in England; and these "Philistines" have had more authority and opportunities of rule in England than in most European countries, a fact which has carried with it artistic disadvantages to weigh something in the balance against advantages in other directions. But it is absurd to attempt to represent England as a lost country artistically. The visitor who is interested chiefly in art will find in the various public galleries (not alone in London, but also in the provincial cities) many great examples of painting. If he chooses to carry his curiosity further he will find most of the private collections open to the inspection of any one who will take the trouble to ask courteously for permission to visit them.
In regard to music, it is probably just as easy to clear England of the charge of ignorance and want of sympathy. But I cannot undertake the task with any skill, for I know little of the musical world, not enough even to distinguish surely in Simonetti, the famous Italian conductor of the Athanasian orchestra (the names are laboriously fictitious), the excellent Simpson of Brixton, S.W. But the evidence (I plead always for a judgment on evidence, not on the hasty impression founded on a prejudice) would seem to show that England at one time was musical enough in a sweet wholesome way, producing a music of the open-air and the green fields. Then there came the great industrial epoch, and the people turned from the fields to the factories, and dug under the soil instead of tilling its surface; and that stream of thrush-melody was choked, and there came nothing notable to take its place, with no prompting to madrigal and pastoral, with not enough of neurasthenia to produce anything notable in the music of morbidity.
But the charge against musical England is carried further. Not only does she produce nothing, but she appreciates nothing. Dumb herself, she is resolutely deaf also to the song of others. I find it difficult to believe this in view of the fact that the hall-mark of London is still sought eagerly by the singers of the world, and is regarded as the final stamp of approval. If England were such a barbarian of the musical world as some would have us believe, why this eagerness for an English verdict of approval, an eagerness which is to be met with all over Europe, America, and Australia?
To record concrete facts, there is a great deal that is of musical interest to be explored in England. The capital has many excellent concert halls, where all the world's music from the classics to the latest frenzies of neo-Impressionism can be heard. In the provinces, too, there are many fine musical organisations, and when the "Celtic fringe" comes to be encountered, as in Wales, there is a musical fervour to match that of the most ardent of the Latin races. So—even though opera in London is of social rather than of musical importance—the English cannot be condemned at the present day as musically careless and ignorant; and in past times they have produced some worthy music and show signs in the present time of a revival of native music.