And two other bright points of movement, which I look to as having in them the basis of a true Art training, are the widespread revival, in so many of our towns and villages, through the efforts of Miss Mary Neal, Mr. Cecil Sharp and others, of our old folk-songs and Morris dances, and lastly—perhaps I shall surprise you—the Boy Scout movement.
Coming into contact with these two movements, I have found that they have in them certain elements in common. Instituted with a rare combination of tact and enthusiasm, they have taken hold of the blood; they have got home at a certain point in boy and girl nature which has already made them become native. I find that these two organisations tend to develop among their members grace and vigour of movement, good manners, a cheerful spirit, a more alert interest in the things about them, a feeling of comradeship, and best of all, a certain sense of honour toward life. And therefore, even in a place technically devoted to the training of students, I say boldly that I see nowhere better hope of a sound basis for national Art than in this revival of village dancing and folk-song and in the Boy Scout movement.
The assertion may perhaps seem strange and ironic to some of you that it is not from a study of beautiful objects that the sense of beauty can be made national, but only in the recovery of an ordered plan for our social and industrial life, and in the finding of a true and worthy purpose for all that our hands are put to do. But in that connection you may remember how Ruskin maintained that great Art has only flourished in countries which produced in abundance either wine or corn; in countries, that is to say, where the greatest industries were those with which we most readily associate that note of joy which has become proverbial, the joy of the harvest. It is perhaps too much to dream that we shall ever again see England living upon its own corn; and the greatest forms of Art may, therefore, remain for ever beyond our reach. But until a nation does honour to the human hand as the most perfect and beautiful of all instruments under the sun, by giving it only honourable and useful tasks—until then I must rather wish you to be good valuers, keen—indignantly keen—to destroy the false values which you see about you, than that you should be either good draughtsmen or good artists.
You can do honest and good work as designers and illustrators and architects, as workers in wood and metal and stone; but you are hampered and bound by the conditions of your day, and you cannot by your best efforts make Art national till you have established joy in labour. No great school of Art can ever arise in our midst in such a form as to carry with it through all the world its national character, until the nation itself has found that voice (which to-day seems so conspicuously absent, even when we close our shops to make holiday); I mean the voice of joy.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] By that reckoning we in Europe are to-day the best comedians the world has ever seen. Out of peace-conditions nations produce their wars.
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IMMORTALITY.
(1915.)