第 五十七 章 · A Chapter Of Art

When a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat and has

slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how happy it

is. To grown-ups this humming means nothing. It sounds like “goo-zum,

goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o,” but to the baby it is perfect music. It is his

first contribution to art.

As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit up,

the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do not interest

the outside world. There are too many million babies, making too

many million mud-pies at the same time. But to the small infant they

represent another expedition into the pleasant realm of art. The baby

is now a sculptor.

At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey the brain,

the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives him a box of

coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is rapidly covered with

strange pothooks and scrawls which represent houses and horses and

terrible naval battles.

Soon however this happiness of just “making things” comes to an end.

School begins and the greater part of the day is filled up with work.

The business of living, or rather the business of “making a living,”

becomes the most important event in the life of every boy and girl.

There is little time left for “art” between learning the tables of

multiplication and the past participles of the irregular French verbs.

And unless the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure

of creating them without any hope of a practical return be very

strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the first five

years of his life were mainly devoted to art.

Nations are not different from children. As soon as the cave-man had

escaped the threatening dangers of the long and shivering ice-period,

and had put his house in order, he began to make certain things which

he thought beautiful, although they were of no earthly use to him in

his fight with the wild animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of

his grotto with pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted,

and out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those women

he thought most attractive.

As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Persians and all

the other people of the east had founded their little countries along

the Nile and the Euphrates, they began to build magnificent palaces for

their kings, invented bright pieces of jewellery for their women and

planted gardens which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright

flowers.

Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the distant Asiatic

prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as fighters and hunters,

composed songs which celebrated the mighty deeds of their great leaders

and invented a form of poetry which has survived until our own day. A

thousand years later, when they had established themselves on the Greek

mainland, and had built their “city-states,” they expressed their joy

(and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in comedies and

in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of art.

The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy administering

other people and making money to have much love for “useless and

unprofitable” adventures of the spirit. They conquered the world and

built roads and bridges but they borrowed their art wholesale from the

Greeks. They invented certain practical forms of architecture which

answered the demands of their day and age. But their statues and their

histories and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imitations

of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-define something

which the world calls “personality,” there can be no art and the Roman

world distrusted that particular sort of personality. The Empire needed

efficient soldiers and tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or

making pictures was left to foreigners.

Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the proverbial bull in

the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use for what he did not

understand. Speaking in terms of the year 1921, he liked the magazine

covers of pretty ladies, but threw the Rembrandt etchings which he had

inherited into the ash-can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried

to undo the damage which he had created a few years before. But the

ash-cans were gone and so were the pictures.

But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with him from the

east, had developed into something very beautiful and he made up for

his past neglect and indifference by the so-called “art of the Middle

Ages” which as far as northern Europe is concerned was a product of

the Germanic mind and had borrowed but little from the Greeks and the

Latins and nothing at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and

Assyria, not to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist,

as far as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little had

the northern races been influenced by their southern neighbours that

their own architectural products were completely misunderstood by the

people of Italy and were treated by them with downright and unmitigated

contempt.

You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably associate it with the

picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slender spires towards

high heaven. But what does the word really mean?

It means something “uncouth” and “barbaric”—something which one might

expect from an “uncivilised Goth,” a rough backwoods-man who had no

respect for the established rules of classical art and who built his

“modern horrors” to please his own low tastes without a decent regard

for the examples of the Forum and the Acropolis.

And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architecture was the

highest expression of the sincere feeling for art which inspired the

whole northern continent. From a previous chapter, you will remember

how the people of the late Middle Ages lived. Unless they were peasants

and dwelt in villages, they were citizens of a “city” or “civitas,” the

old Latin name for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and

their deep moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared

the common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and prosperity which

they derived from their system of mutual protection.

In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where the temple

stood, had been the centre of civic life. During the Middle Ages, the

Church, the House of God, became such a centre. We modern Protestant

people, who go to our church only once a week, and then for a few

hours only, hardly know what a mediæval church meant to the community.

Then, before you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be

baptised. As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy stories

of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member of the congregation,

and if you were rich enough you built yourself a separate little chapel

sacred to the memory of the Patron Saint of your own family. As for

the sacred edifice, it was open at all hours of the day and many of

the night. In a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated

to all the inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely

caught a first glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a

great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when the end of the

journey had come, you were buried beneath the stones of this familiar

building, that all your children and their grandchildren might pass

over your grave until the Day of Judgement.

Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true

centre of all common life, the building had to be different from

anything that had ever been constructed by the hands of man. The

temples of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans had been merely

the shrine of a local divinity. As no sermons were preached before

the images of Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that

the interior offer space for a great multitude. All the religious

processions of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open.

But in the north, where the weather was usually bad, most functions

were held under the roof of the church.

[Illustration: GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE]

During many centuries the architects struggled with this problem of

constructing a building that was large enough. The Roman tradition

taught them how to build heavy stone walls with very small windows lest

the walls lose their strength. On the top of this they then placed a

heavy stone roof. But in the twelfth century, after the beginning of

the Crusades, when the architects had seen the pointed arches of the

Mohammedan builders, the western builders discovered a new style which

gave them their first chance to make the sort of building which those

days of an intense religious life demanded. And then they developed

this strange style upon which the Italians bestowed the contemptuous

name of “Gothic” or barbaric. They achieved their purpose by inventing

a vaulted roof which was supported by “ribs.” But such a roof, if it

became too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man of three

hundred pounds sitting down upon a child’s chair will force it to

collapse. To overcome this difficulty, certain French architects then

began to re-enforce the walls with “buttresses” which were merely heavy

masses of stone against which the walls could lean while they supported

the roof. And to assure the further safety of the roof they supported

the ribs of the roof by so-called “flying buttresses,” a very simple

method of construction which you will understand at once when you look

at our picture.

This new method of construction allowed the introduction of enormous

windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still an expensive

curiosity, and very few private buildings possessed glass windows. Even

the castles of the nobles were without protection and this accounts

for the eternal drafts and explains why people of that day wore furs

in-doors as well as out.

Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which the ancient

people of the Mediterranean had been familiar, had not been entirely

lost. There was a revival of stained glass-making and soon the windows

of the Gothic churches told the stories of the Holy Book in little

bits of brilliantly coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long

framework of lead.

Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God, filled with an

eager multitude, “living” its religion as no people have ever done

either before or since! Nothing is considered too good or too costly or

too wondrous for this House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who

since the destruction of the Roman Empire have been out of employment,

haltingly return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses

and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord and the

blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work to make tapestries

for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art that the shrine of

the altar may be worthy of complete adoration. Even the painter does

his best. Poor man, he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable

medium.

And thereby hangs a story.

The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the floors and

the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics; pictures made of

coloured bits of glass. But this art had been exceedingly difficult.

It gave the painter no chance to express all he wanted to say, as all

children know who have ever tried to make figures out of coloured

blocks of wood. The art of mosaic painting therefore died out during

the late Middle Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic

painters had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and

continued to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until the day

of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building of churches.

Of course, the mediæval painter could mix his colours with the water

of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of the churches. This

method of painting upon “fresh plaster” (which was generally called

“fresco” or “fresh” painting) was very popular for many centuries.

To-day, it is as rare as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts

and among the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps

one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the Middle

Ages there was no other way and the artists were “fresco” workers

for lack of something better. The method however had certain great

disadvantages. Very often the plaster came off the walls after only

a few years, or dampness spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will

spoil the pattern of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable

expedient to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix

their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with the sticky

white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory. For more

than a thousand years these experiments continued. In painting pictures

upon the parchment leaves of manuscripts the mediæval artists were very

successful. But when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone

with paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.

At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the problem

was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The

famous Flemish brothers mixed their paint with specially prepared oils

and this allowed them to use wood and canvas or stone or anything else

as a background for their pictures.

But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle Ages was a

thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities were succeeding the

bishops as patrons of the arts. And as art invariably follows the full

dinner-pail, the artists now began to work for these worldly employers

and painted pictures for kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers.

Within a very short time, the new method of painting with oil spread

through Europe and in every country there developed a school of special

painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the people for whom

these portraits and landscapes were made.

In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs and the weavers

of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects

connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and

Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant’s house,

and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious

children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on

the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts,

Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and Saints,

while in England, where the aristocracy was very rich and powerful

and in France where the kings had become uppermost in the state,

the artists painted distinguished gentlemen who were members of the

government, and very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty.

The great change in painting, which came about with the neglect of the

old church and the rise of a new class in society, was reflected in all

other forms of art. The invention of printing had made it possible for

authors to win fame and reputation by writing books for the multitudes.

In this way arose the profession of the novelist and the illustrator.

But the people who had money enough to buy the new books were not

the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling

or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels of the

Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for entertainment.

For the first time since the early Greek city-states of two thousand

years before, the professional playwright had a chance to ply his

trade. The Middle Ages had known the theatre merely as part of certain

church celebrations. The tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries had told the story of the suffering of our Lord. But during

the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its reappearance. It is

true that, at first, the position of the professional playwright and

actor was not a very high one. William Shakespeare was regarded as a

sort of circus-fellow who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and

comedies. But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the

respect of his neighbours and actors were no longer subjects of police

supervision.

William’s contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible Spaniard who wrote

no less than 1800 worldly and 400 religious plays, was a person of

rank who received the papal approval upon his work. A century later,

Molière, the Frenchman, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none

less than King Louis XIV.

Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing affection on the

part of the people. To-day a “theatre” is part of every well-regulated

city, and the “silent drama” of the movies has penetrated to the

tiniest of our prairie hamlets.

Another art, however, was to become the most popular of all. That was

music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a great deal of technical

skill. It takes years and years of practice before our clumsy hand is

able to follow the commands of the brain and reproduce our vision upon

canvas or in marble. It takes a lifetime to learn how to act or how

to write a good novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the

part of the public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and

sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can follow a

tune and almost everybody can get enjoyment out of some sort of music.

The Middle Ages had heard a little music but it had been entirely the

music of the church. The holy chants were subject to very severe laws

of rhythm and harmony and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they

could not well be sung in the street or in the market-place.

The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came into its own as the

best friend of man, both in his happiness and in his sorrows.

The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews had all been

great lovers of music. They had even combined different instruments

into regular orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric

foreign noise. They liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of

Homer and Pindar. They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre

(the poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any one

could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval. The Romans

on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their dinners and

parties and they had invented most of the instruments which (in _very_

modified form) we use to-day. The early church had despised this music

which smacked too much of the wicked pagan world which had just been

destroyed. A few songs rendered by the entire congregation were all

the bishops of the third and fourth centuries would tolerate. As the

congregation was apt to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance

of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an

organ, an invention of the second century of our era which consisted of

a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of bellows.

[Illustration: THE TROUBADOUR]

Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman musicians were

either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going from city to city and

playing in the street, and begging for pennies like the harpist on a

modern ferry-boat.

But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities of the

late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musicians. Instruments

like the horn, which had been used only as signal-instruments for

hunting and fighting, were remodelled until they could reproduce sounds

which were agreeable in the dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A

bow strung with horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar

and before the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument

(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back to Egypt

and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-stringed fiddle which

Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-makers of the eighteenth

century brought to the height of perfection.

And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-spread of all

musical instruments, which has followed man into the wilderness of the

jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland. The organ had been the first

of all keyed instruments but the performer always depended upon the

co-operation of some one who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays

is done by electricity. The musicians therefore looked for a handier

and less circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the

pupils of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century,

Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the birthplace of

the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system of musical annotation.

Some time during that century, when there was a great deal of popular

interest in music, the first instrument with both keys and strings was

built. It must have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children’s

pianos which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna, the

town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages (who had been

classed with jugglers and card sharps) had formed the first separate

Guild of Musicians in the year 1288, the little monochord was developed

into something which we can recognise as the direct ancestor of our

modern Steinway. From Austria the “clavichord” as it was usually called

in those days (because it had “claves” or keys) went to Italy. There

it was perfected into the “spinet” which was so called after the

inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during the eighteenth

century, some time between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a

“clavier” which allowed the performer to play both loudly and softly or

as it was said in Italian, “piano” and “forte.” This instrument with

certain changes became our “pianoforte” or piano.

Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient

instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years and did not

need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and was much pleasanter

to the ears than the mediæval tubas, clarinets, trombones and oboes.

Just as the phonograph has given millions of modern people their first

love of music so did the early “pianoforte” carry the knowledge of

music into much wider circles. Music became part of the education of

every well-bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained

private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering “jongleur”

and became a highly valued member of the community. Music was added

to the dramatic performances of the theatre and out of this practice,

grew our modern Opera. Originally only a few very rich princes could

afford the expenses of an “opera troupe.” But as the taste for this

sort of entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where

Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the unlimited joy of

the whole community with the exception of a few sects of very strict

Christians who still regarded music with deep suspicion as something

which was too lovely to be entirely good for the soul.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life of Europe

was in full swing. Then there came forward a man who was greater than

all others, a simple organist of the Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the

name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In his compositions for every known

instrument, from comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of

sacred hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern

music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by Mozart, who

created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which remind us of lace

that has been woven out of harmony and rhythm. Then came Ludwig von

Beethoven, the most tragic of men, who gave us our modern orchestra,

yet heard none of his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the

result of a cold contracted during his years of poverty.

Beethoven lived through the period of the great French Revolution.

Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had dedicated one of his

symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived to regret the hour. When he died

in the year 1827, Napoleon was gone and the French Revolution was gone,

but the steam engine had come and was filling the world with a sound

that had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony.

Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large factories

had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and poetry and

music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church and the princes and

the merchants of the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries no longer existed. The leaders of the new industrial world

were too busy and had too little education to bother about etchings and

sonatas and bits of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created

those things, and who were of no practical use to the community in

which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened to the

drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste for the melody

of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry. The arts became the

step-children of the new industrial era. Art and Life became entirely

separated. Whatever paintings had been left, were dying a slow death in

the museums. And music became a monopoly of a few “virtuosi” who took

the music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall.

But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into their own.

People begin to understand that Rembrandt and Beethoven and Rodin are

the true prophets and leaders of their race and that a world without

art and happiness resembles a nursery without laughter.