As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

Let us, then, always with reference to this one city and this one class of its inhabitants, ascertain what has been done already to create a love of Art. The most important thing as yet attempted is the Bethnal Green Museum. It is, for our purposes, also the most instructive, because it has hitherto been, I consider, a complete and ignominious failure. That is to say, it was established and is maintained as an educational museum, it was especially designed to create and develop a knowledge of Art and it has not done so. It was opened in 1872 with, among other things, the magnificent collection of pictures lent by Sir Richard Wallace; during the twelve years of its existence it has exhibited other collections of considerable interest: but the education, the free library, and the classrooms promised at the outset have never been forthcoming. It is, in fact, a dumb and silent gallery. One may compare it to a Board School newly built, provided with all the latest appliances for education—with books, desks, seats, blackboards, and everything, including crowds of pupils, but left without a teaching staff, the pupils being expected to teach themselves. Why not? There are the books and there are the desks, So with this museum. You cannot learn anything of Art without the study of artistic work. Here is the artistic work. Why do not the people study it? They certainly come to the place; they come in large numbers; on free days when it is open until ten at night they average over two thousand a day all the year round. And if you take the trouble to watch them, to follow them about, and to listen to their conversation, you will presently discover with how much intelligence they are studying the artistic work before them.

The failure of Bethnal Green should teach us what to avoid. Let us therefore walk round the halls and galleries of this museum. In the central hall there is placed, each object with a ticket containing a brief description of it, a really noble collection of cabinets, carved and painted; with these are rare and costly vases, of English, Russian, Danish, and German workmanship; there are a few statuettes, some paintings on china, things in glazed earthenware, and glass cases containing Syrian and Albanian necklaces and jewellery. In the lower side galleries there is, first, a collection of food products, showing specimens of wheat, rice, starch, salt, and so forth, with models of vegetables and fruit executed in wax; and next, a collection of woollen stuff and fabrics of all kinds, with feathers, stags' heads, antlers, and so forth. In the upper galleries there is a collection of paintings and engravings. Here and there are suspended tablets which are inscribed with bits of information, chiefly statistical. On my last visit to the place I could not observe that anyone was studying these tablets. This is, roughly speaking, all that the Bethnal Green Museum contains. The directors of this institution, opened with so much promise, which was going to educate the people and endow them with a sense of Art and a love of beauty, think they have done all they promised when they show a collection of cabinets and vases, a few bottles containing rice and wheat, a few turnips in wax, a few cases with pretty fabrics, and collection of pictures. There is no music; there is no sculpture; none of the small arts are represented at all; there is not the slightest attempt made to educate anybody. If you want any other information or help besides that given by the tablets you will not get it, because there is nobody to give it. A policeman mounts guard over the cases, a woman sells the publications of the South Kensington Department, and you can rend on a board the number of visitors for every day in the year. But there is no one to go round with you and talk about the things on exhibition. There are no lectures nor any classes, there are no handbooks to teach the history of the Fine Arts and to illustrate the collection in the museum. There is not, incredible to say, even a catalogue. There is no catalogue. Imagine an exhibition without even an official guide to its contents. Here, says the Department, is the Bethnal Green Museum with its doors wide open: let the people walk in and inspect the contents.

So, if we invited the people to inspect a collection of cuneiform inscriptions, we might just as well expect them to carry away a knowledge of Assyrian history; or by exhibiting an electrical machine we might as well expect them to understand the appliances of electricity. It is not enough, in fact, to exhibit pictures: they must be explained. It is with paintings and drawings as with everything else, those who come to see them having no knowledge carry none away with them. The visitors to a museum are like travellers in a foreign country, of whom Emerson truly says that when they leave it they take nothing away but what they brought with them. The finest wood carving, the most beautiful vase, the richest classic painting, produces on the uncultivated eye no more valuable or lasting impression than the sight of a sailing ship for the first time produces on the mind of a savage. That is to say, the impression at the best is of wonder, not of delight or curiosity at all. In the picture galleries, it is true, the dull eyes are lifted and the weary faces brighten, because here, if you plea, we touch upon that art which every human being all over the world can appreciate. It is the art of story-telling. The visitors go from picture to picture and they read the stories. As for landscapes, figures, portraits, or slabs, they pass them by. What they love is a picture of life in action, a picture that tells a story and quicken their pulses. You may observe this in every picture gallery—even at the Grosvenor and the Royal Academy—even among the classes who are supposed to know something of Art: for one who studies a portrait by Millsis, or a head by Leighton, there are crowds who stand before a picture which tells a story. At the Royal Academy the story is generally, but not always, read in silence; at Bethnal Green it is read aloud. You will perhaps observe the importance of this difference. It is because at the Royal Academy everybody has the feeling that he is present in the character of a critic, and must therefore affect, at least, to be considering the workmanship, and passing a judgment on the artist. But at Bethnal Green the visitors feel that they have been invited to be pleased, to wonder, and to admire the beautiful stories represented on the canvas by clever men who have learnt this trade. As for how a story may be told on canvas, the way in which the conception of the artist has been executed, the truth of the drawing, the fidelity of colouring—on these points no questions are asked and no curiosity is expressed. Why should they? Painting they regard as one of the arts which may be learned for a trade, like matchmaking or shoemaking. Remember that it never occurs to people to learn the mysteries of any trade beside their own. On my last visit to this museum, for instance, I chanced upon two women who were standing before a vase. It was a large and very beautiful vase, of admirable form and proportions, and it was decorated on the top by a group representing three captives chained to the rock. Their comment on this work of art was as follows: 'Look,' said one, 'look at those poor men chained to the rock.' 'Yes,' replied the other, 'poor fellows! ain't it shocking?'

To their eyes the only thing to be looked at was the group of figures, and the only suggestion made to their minds by the vase related to the story, thus half told, of the captives. As for the vase itself, it was nothing; the workmanship and painting were nothing; the sculpturing of the figures was nothing.

It is constantly argued that the mere contemplation of things beautiful creates this artistic sense—the sense of beauty. This is undoubtedly true if one were to dwell entirely among beautiful things. But how if for one thing which is beautiful you are made to contemplate a hundred which are not? Suppose you offer a girl of untrained eye a choice of costumes, of which one is artistic and the rest are all hideous, how can you expect her to know the one—the only one—which she sought to choose? Or, again, if you allow a boy to read and learn as much bad poetry as good, what can you expect of his standard of taste? In other words, when the surroundings of life are wholly without Art, an occasional visit to a collection of paintings cannot create an intelligent appreciation of Art.

Again, there are many branches and diverse forms or Art. For Instance, there is music, there is singing there is acting, there is sculpture, poetry, fiction; and besides these there are working in metals, engraving in wood and copper, leather work, brass work, fret work, and decoration. None of these arts are illustrated and recognised in the Bethnal Green Museum, Yet, when we speak of the spreading of Art among the poor, surely we do not mean only drawing, design, and painting.

The popularity of this museum has been argued as a proof of its efficiency. It attracts, as I have stated already, over 2,000 on every free day all the year round. On the one day in the week when an entrance fee of sixpence is required it attracts from twenty to forty. This means that out of two millions of people in East London there is so little enthusiasm for Art that only forty can be found each week to pay sixpence in order to enjoy quiet galleries and undisturbed study. Remember that East London is not altogether a poor place; there are whole districts which are full of villa residences as good as any in the southern suburb; there are many people who are wealthy; but all the wealth and all the Art enthusiasm of the place will not bring more than forty every week to pay their sixpence. As for copying the pictures, I do not know if any facilities are afforded for the purpose, but I have never seen anyone in the place copying at all.

The throng of visitors on free days may partly be explained on other grounds than the love of Art. It is a place where one can pleasantly lounge, or sit down to rest, or lazily look at pleasant things, or talk with one's friends, or take refuge from bad weather. This is as it should be; the place is regarded as a pleasant place. Yet the number of visitors has fallen off. In the first year of its existence nearly a million entered the gates; four years later an equal number was registered; for the last three years the number has fallen to less than half a million. Its popularity, therefore, is on the decline.

It is, again, a great place for children. They are sent here just as they are sent to the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum, in order to be out of the way. You will always see children in these places, strolling listlessly among the rooms and corridors. Once, for instance, on a certain Easter Monday, I encountered, in the South Kensington Museum, a miserable little pair, who were crying in a corner by themselves. Beside the cases full of splendid embroideries and golden lace, among which they had strayed, they looked curiously incongruous, and somewhat like the unfortunate pair led to their destruction by the wicked uncle. They had, in fact, been sent to the museum by their mother, with a piece of bread-and-butter for their dinner, and told to stay there all day long. By this time the bread-and-butter had long since been eaten up, and they were hungry again, and there was a long afternoon before them. What to these hungry children would have been a whole Field of the Cloth of Gold? We must, therefore, make very large deductions indeed when we consider the popularity of Bethnal Green. Doubtless it is pleasant to read the stories of the pictures; but the light, the warmth, the society of the place are also pleasant. And as for Art education, why, as none is given, so none is desired.

I have dwelt upon Bethnal Green Museum at some length, not because I wished to attack the place, but because it seems to me an example of what ought not to be done, and because it illustrates most admirably two propositions which I have to offer. These are—(1) That the lower classes have no instinctive desire for Art; (2) that they will not teach themselves.