Education: How Old The New

by James J. Walsh

American millionaires model the gates of their parks and the grille doors of their palaces under the wise direction of modern architects who fortunately know enough to follow the designs created by these village workmen of the olden time. Modern palatial residences are glad to have samples of the wood-carving of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as models for their decoration, and as attractive pieces around which present-day work may be done. We have to import our workmen, even our large cities cannot supply all that we want of them, and yet little towns of a few thousand inhabitants had them in sufficient abundance in the olden time to enable them to make every portion of their great monumental buildings, cathedrals, abbeys, universities, castles and town halls beautiful in every way. This represents the triumph of a technical training afforded by the gilds of workmen of the olden time. We have to insist on this because our present generation has been so sure that ours was the first generation that gave any serious attention to the education of the masses, that it is important to show by [{163}] contrast how much of a mistake we have made and how well an older generation accomplished its purpose.

The chapter of the "Lost Arts" might well be told with regard to this old time. They had secrets in glass-making which were the tradition of the teaching of particular gilds that we have been unable to find again in the modern time. There is a jewel-like lustre to their colors that is sometimes simply marvellous in its depth and purity. At Lincoln the contrast between old and new glass can be seen very well. The old windows of the thirteenth century time were stoned out by the Parliamentarians when they captured the town, because forsooth they could have no such idolatry as that in their presence. The old sexton, who as man and boy for over sixty years had lived his life under the beautiful tints of the old glass, now saw it scattered upon the floor in fragments. He could not part with it thus and so he gathered it up into bags, broken to pieces though it was, and hid it away in the crypt. In the nineteenth century when they were restoring the cathedral they found these fragments of the old windows. They pieced them together and they proved to be so beautiful that, though they could not fit them as they were in the olden time, at least they succeeded in making a beautiful patchwork of colored glass.

Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral they then placed some new windows of the [{164}] modern time. These were made in France, I believe. They were made about the middle of the nineteenth century, when stained-glass making was almost at its lowest ebb. They were considered to be very beautiful, however, and something like £20,000 sterling was paid for them. The contrast between the two sets of windows is very striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the new ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even though he knows nothing about art, notices the contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views with something of a shock this attempt of the nineteenth century to do something that had been so well done by the gild-trained workmen of the technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though they are represented here only by patched fragments of their work he can scarcely repress a smile at the effect of their work in cheapening the modern. Everywhere it is the same way. Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has been studying thirteenth-century glass, and talking of its wonderful beauty as compared to anything modern, says: "There are also fragments of two windows, pieced together and the missing parts filled in with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby Glass (secret lost) of marvellous depth and brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. (The ancient is just like a decanter of port wine.)"

This is the story, no matter where one goes, [{165}] throughout Europe. At York they would not surrender the town to the Parliamentary army until a guarantee had been given them that their cathedral would not be devastated as had been the case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton was a friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree to the stipulation. The agreement was not fully carried out, fanatic soldiers could not be entirely restrained, but some of the old glass remains. There is probably nothing more beautiful in all the realm of artistic glass-making than the famous Five Sisters window at York. In France the Revolution repeated what the Puritans accomplished of ruin in England. Notre Dame has no trace of its old glass. In some of the cathedrals, however, there has fortunately been preserved for us enough of it to know how wonderfully the makers of it must have been trained, and to let us realize how much of experiment, of investigation, of study that we would now call applied chemistry must have gone to the making of this wonderful old glass. These technical schools were not merely passing on arts and crafts traditions, but each generation was adding to the secrets of the gilds by original research of its own. We are prone to think that such work of original investigation was reserved for our time, but that is only because of the foolish self-complacency which blinds us to what other generations did.

The stained glass of the cathedrals of Bourges [{166}] and of Chartres shows the marvellous success of these old workers in glass and their power to make enduring products. It is a mystery to see how their blues have lasted while the sun has shone through them all these years and caused no deterioration or only such as softens and adds to beauty but not really causes to fade. Blue had to be used in great profusion on the windows because the symbolism of color was well determined and blue stood for the virtue of purity and was the Blessed Virgin's color. It had to come in, therefore, on nearly all occasions. Usually by irradiation blue causes surrounding colors to lose something of their tint, and by contrast often spoils what would ordinarily be expected to prove beautiful color effects. These old workmen had found the secret of using it in such a way as not thus to spoil surrounding colors, not to permit it to be too assertive, yet we have wonderful enduring blues that have come down to us practically unchanged through all these centuries. Where the workmen of the old time set themselves producing pure color effects, their windows look like jewels and coruscate in the light of the setting sun--for their most charming effects were particularly obtained in the west windows--with a glorious beauty that has appealed to every generation since.

It was not alone in the building trades, however, that these fine things were accomplished. Bookmaking reached a degree of perfection that [{167}] has never been excelled. Humphreys, the authority on illuminated books, declares that the manuscript volumes of the thirteenth century, illuminated as they are by the patient labor and the finely developed taste of this time, are the most beautiful ever made. We have one example of the thirteenth-century illuminated book in the Lenox Library in New York for which, I believe, the museum authorities were quite willing to pay some $18,000, and it is worth much more than that now, for it is a wondrously beautiful example of the illuminations of the time. Like the glassmakers, these bookmakers had secrets that have been lost, and that we with all our knowledge of science and of art in the modern time, or at least our fondly complacent notion of our knowledge of art and science, are unable to find the formulas for. They used blues in their illuminating work that have never faded, though blues are so prone to fade on parchment. They managed their blues in wonderful way and they still are as fresh and as undisturbing of the harmony of other colors as in the long ago. They could burnish gold and it stays as bright as when it was first applied to the leaves, even after seven centuries. We have lost the art of burnishing gold in such applied work and ours becomes dull after a time.

Nor was this teaching of technics confined only to the men. From this period we have the most beautiful needlework in the world. The famous [{168}] Cope of Ascoli has recently attracted wide attention. Mr. Pierpont Morgan purchased it and was willing to pay $60,000 for it, though the jewels that had been on it originally had been removed. His experts assured him that it was the most beautiful piece of needlework in the world. Afterwards it was found to have been stolen, and so he restored it to the Italian Government, who did not return it to the little convent of Ascoli in North Central Italy, from which it had been stolen and where it was made at the end of the thirteenth century (1284), Elsewhere in Europe they were doing just as charming work with the needle. In fact England, not Italy, was the acknowledged home of it. The English Cope of Cyon is another notable example of needlework from this time. Thirteenth-century work with the needle is famous in the history of the art. It was the product of just the same forces that gave us the wonderful stained glass. They, too, used colors and applied great art principles to this unpromising mode of expression and accomplished great results. I have had the privilege of seeing the copy of the Cope of Ascoli that was made while in Mr. Morgan's possession, and, like the stained glass of York or Bourges or Chartres, it is one of the things not likely ever to be forgotten, so beautiful a realization is it of what is best in taste and art.

The supremely interesting feature of this popular education was its effect upon the lives, and [{169}] minds, and happiness of the workmen. Men got up to their work in the morning not as to a routine occupation in which they did the same things over and over again, until they were so tired that they could scarcely do them any more, and then came home to rest from fatigue in weariness of mind and of body. But they awoke from sound sleep with the memory that ideas had been coming to them the day before, and especially towards evening that, now with fresh bodies, they might be able to execute better, and that it would surely be a pleasure to work out. They came to their work with an artist's spirit, hopeful that they would be able to express in the material what they saw so clearly with their mind's eye. It was tiresome working but the hours were not long, and always there was the thought of accomplishment worthy of the cathedral or the abbey or the town hall, worthy to be placed beside the masterpieces in the best sense of that dear old word, that their fellow-workmen of the other gilds were accomplishing around them. They went to bed healthily tired but not weary, sometimes to dream of their work, not as a nightmare, but as something that represented possibilities of accomplishment. When technical schools can lift men up to this plane then, indeed, there is a chance for happiness even for the workmen.

Compare with this for a moment the lot of the modern workman. He goes out in the morning to work that seldom is interesting, that he [{170}] practically never cares to do only that he must get money enough to support himself and his family, and that requires the frequent repetition of routine movements until he is weary, body and soul. He must work or starve. He has very little interest in it as a rule, often none at all, and sometimes he is thoroughly disgusted with it. He must earn money enough to get bread to live to-day so that he shall be able to go and work again tomorrow. And so the humdrum round from day to day with nothing to relieve the prospect until the darkness comes when no man can work. As to dreams of accomplishment or pleasure in his work, as the artist has, there is practically none. He needs must go on, and that is all about it. Is it any wonder that this breeds discontent?

Happy is the man who has found his work. There is only one happiness in this little life of ours and that consists in having work to do that one cares to do, and the chance to do it in such order and with such rewards as make life reasonably pleasant, satisfying from the material side. There are no pleasures in life equal to the joy of the worker in his work when he cares for it. Pleasures are at most but passing incidents. The work is what counts. These workmen of the Middle Ages taught in the technical schools of that olden time had chances for happiness, chances that were well taken, such as perhaps no other generation of workmen could have.