LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA FROM THE LIBRARY OF F. VON BOSCHAN A PLEA FOR ART IN THE HOUSE. SMITH'S SIDEBOARD. A PLEA FOR ART IN THE HOUSE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ECONOMY OF COLLECTING WORKS OF ART, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF TASTE IN EDUCATION AND MORALS. BY W. J. LOFTIE, B. A., F.S.A., AUTHOR OF " IN AND OUT OF LONDON. SECOND EDITION. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1877. [The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved,} LONDON : LAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS BKKAO STREKT HILL, OUKKN VICTORIA STRUCT, E.C. PREFACE. following chapters are an attempt to put some practical rules and anecdotes into colloquial language. Almost all that has hitherto been published on Art, either at home or abroad, has been written in a manner which may almost be called poeti- cal, so far does it differ from the plainness of what is practical. I hope I have succeeded in showing, on simple grounds, the advantages of cultivating a love for art, especially art in the family and household. I am under the persuasion that common-sense arguments may be found powerful with many people to whom high flights are unpleasant. Art is therefore pleaded for on such grounds as the manifest prudence of making collections, the civilising effects of taste upon young persons, the plea- sure of pursuing an object, and, generally, viii PREFACE. the economical value of art training both to the individual, the family, and the nation at large. A second volume of the series will be issued almost simultaneously with this one, containing some hints on " House Decoration," by Miss RHODA GARRETT and her partner, Miss AGNES GARRETT. Further volumes, by Mr. H. STACY MARKS, A.R.A., on Drawing and Painting, by Mrs. OLIPHANT, on Dress, by Mr. JOHN HULLAH, on Family Music, and by Mr. J. J. STEVENSON, on Domestic Architecture, are in preparation ; and it is hoped that similar trea- tises on Gardening, Sculpture and Carving, Needlework and Lace-making, and other sub- jects connected with Art at Home, may follow in due course. W. J. L. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. KAGH THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING I Black-letter books. A bronze cross. Old China. Cheap buying. The judicious collector. Pocket money. Toys. Engravings. Mr. Gillott. A family romance. CHAPTER II. FURNISHING AND OLD FURNITURE . Brown's house and Smith's house. How. not to do it. An old sideboard. How to eat a cake and have it. Congruity and comfort. Imitations. Some rules for choice. Two pretty rooms. CHAPTER III. PICTURES 43 Pictures are cheap. The cost of a gallery. Three great col- lectors. Old masters. Young artists. A spiritualist painter. Prints. Woodcuts. Photographs. Portraits. Hanging. Art in the nursery. b CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. FAGS BOOKS AND CHINA 71 What books are ornamental. Illuminated MSS. A valuable book. Nursery literature Bindings. A sad story. Another. Three old bindings. Oriental and English porcelain. Marks. Domestic museums. Enamels. Ivories. Bronzes and Plate, Glass. CHAPTER V. ART AND MORALS 89 Sacredness of home. A beautiful home. Money not needful. Family art. Drawing classes and clubs. Art in schools. The gin palace. A "beauty mission." A wise father. Landscape a great discovery. Hooker on beauty, moral and material. End. LIST OF WOODCUTS. PAGB SMITH'S SIDEBOARD Frontispiece INITIAL, "JUDITH," FROM xin. CENTURY MS i TAIL-PIECE, "SPRING" 20 INITIAL, "JONAH," FROM xin. CENTURY MS 21 A DRAWING-ROOM 38 TAIL-PIECE, "SUMMER" 42 INITIAL, "SOLOMON," FROM xin. CENTURY MS 43 BEHAM'S " MELENCOLIA," REVERSED FACSIMILE .... 61 TAIL-PIECE, "AUTUMN" 70 INITIAL, "JONAH," FROM xin. CENTURY MS 71 EXAMPLES OF OLD ENGLISH BINDING 79 CUPBOARD WITH STAINED GLASS WINDOW 88 INITIAL, "AN APOSTLE," FROM xin. CENTURY MS. ... 89 TAIL-PIECE, "WINTER" ;oo A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. CHAPTER I. THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. FEW years ago a merchant in the west of England had in his employment a traveller who was fortunate enough to possess a taste. That such a pos- session may be of value I hope to show further on. This traveller's taste was for black-letter books. Wherever business took him he visited the places in which old books are to be seen and bought. Such shops are in almost every little town, and sometimes, as I have occasion to remember, they are not ostensibly book-shops ; for I once bought a very scarce black-letter Bible, a Bible of which, so far as I know, there was no example in the British Museum, or any other public collection, ind I found it among some old iron on the counter of a retired tinker at Canterbury. LOF. 8 2 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. But this west country bagman never neglected an opportunity of picking up a little book printed before our ordinary type was in common use. He preferred little books. Very small indeed were some of them, and he gave very small prices. He knew that the early popular literature of England was often of such a character that the owner of a book might easily conceal it. In what Mr. Green calls the " English Terror," when Henry VIII. and Thomas Cromwell had set people thinking and questioning, and then hanged or burnt them for pretending to have opinions, some printers issued little books which were never licensed by the authorities : and such books are very scarce and very valuable. And this collector endea- voured whereverhe could to find such books. And one day he found a prize four prizes in fact. They were a number of Wycliffe's writings, printed in London, evidently for popular reading, but very small and curious. He bought them, as I have heard, for a shilling each ; that is, for four shillings altogether. He could find no account of them in apy of the works on bibliography, and began to think they must be valuable. He had them very handsomely bound, which I dare say did not cost him more than 2l. so that his whole investment amounted to about 2l. 43. There are copies of the four little books and also of a fifth which belongs to the set, in that wonderful treasure house, the Lambeth Library : but our com- mercial gentleman did not know this, nor did any one else, so far as I am aware, until an event occurred, which gives me my excuse for telling this anecdote. Our commercial traveller bethought him once, when I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 3 times were bad, as they were for so many people in 1866 and the following years, that he would sell some of the little books he had collected. So he sent a selection up to a well-known auction-room in London, and included in the parcel his four little Wycliffes. They were duly put up and knocked down, and the four little Wycliffes fetched four hundred pounds, that is, one hundred pounds a piece. It is easy to calculate the interest our travelling collector made on his original outlay. He spent 2/. 4-y., and kept the books two years, during which time he was out of the interest, say, at 10 per cent., or thereabouts, $s. So that when his books were put up they had cost him 2/. 9^. Then the auctioneers' expenses amounted to \2\ per cent, or 5o/. : and his whole profit was 348/. %s. i\d., or about two thousand per cent, per annum, for each of the two years. This was, of course, an extreme example of the prudence of collecting : black-letter books are not art ; and it may be objected, that I have no right to take up time with stories not to the point. I hope to return to this question, namely, what is art, and what is not, but first I will tell another collector's story which may be a little more to the purpose. The late Canon R. was a man of taste. When he began life he was poor, and was, I believe, chaplain to a nobleman of his own persuasion, in the country. He lived in a small house near the high road, and one day a tinker came to him with his bag of old iron, and said he had heard that Mr. R. was a collector of curiosities. Presently after much fumbling among the old iron, he brought out a bronze processional cross of B 2 4. A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. the utmost beauty, made probably in the fourteenth century, and altogether such a magnificent example of the art, that poor Mr. R.'s heart beat with excite- ment merely at the sight of it. His practised eye showed him, as he examined it, that the bronze surface had formerly been heavily plated with silver, and in places even with gold, and the cross must have been borne before some great abbot, possibly before an archbishop. With a trembling voice, for he had very little money, he asked the tinker how much he wanted for the cross, " Sixpence, sir," said the man ; "and indeed I think it's quite worth it, sir it is, I'm sure." Canon R. thought he was dreaming. " Sixpence," he repeated. " Well, sir, I gave nearly that for it," said the man ; " and there's more than the weight of copper in it." Canon R., as he told me the story, said, the mere reference to the weight of copper, and the allusion to the possibility of melting it, made him feel quite sick. He could hardly summon up strength to take out the sixpence. As soon as the tinker had it in his hand, he picked up his bag, and walked away quickly. Canon R. looked at the cross, and could hardly believe his good fortune. Then he looked at the retreating figure of the tinker. It seemed like robbery to give him only sixpence for such a treasure. He called nim back. The man came back very slowly and doubtfully. I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 5 " Look here," said Dr. R., "I think this cross is worth more than sixpence. I'll give you a shilling." The tinker took the shilling with hesitation. He looked twice .at it and twice at the priest's face. " There's summat rummy in it," was no doubt the reflection which passed through his mind. Then he took it, and again departed. Canon R. looked at the cross, and turned to go into the house with his treasure. He told me as he took it in he felt sure it would melt away into thin air and disappear like a dream. But when he had laid it on the table, his mind was reassured, and again his conscience smote him. It was worth niore than is. 6d. He would give the man half-a-crown, fortunately he had half-a-crown in his pocket. The tinker had nearly reached the gate. Canon R. called him. He stopped. " Look here, I think I have given you too little for that cross." The man came no nearer. The Canon advanced towards him. He retreated. " I'll give you half-a- crown. Here it is," said the Canon, putting his hand into his pocket. The tinker looked at him for a moment. Then with a look of deep suspicion, and the use of a word which sounded very like " Walker," he turned and took to his heels. The cross has been engraved more than once, and if I do not mistake, the reader will find a very faithful representation of it as a frontispiece to Paley's Gothic Architecture. If this cut does not represent the same cross, it is one almost exactly like it ; and the reader can judge for himself whether it is worth half-a-crown. 6 A PLEA FOR ART A T HOME. [CHAP. Now in both these cases, that of the commercial traveller, and that of Canon R., the quality required was knowledge. Mr. D. knew the value and scarcity of black-letter books in duodecimo. Canon R. knew the style of art practised in the fourteenth century, and could judge in a moment of the genuineness of the bronze cross. But another and very needful quality is forethought. Some years ago, I think about forty, a young gentle- man who was in a public office in London saw a pair of jars at a dealer's shop. This young gentleman had a small but sufficient allowance from his father, a country squire. The price of the jars was fifty guineas. They were of English make, I forget of what particular pottery, but I think it was Chelsea. Now fifty guineas would be very nearly a quarter's allow- ance, but the young man observed two things about the jars ; first, that they were very beautifully painted, and secondly that the manufactory whose mark they bore had long been closed, and no more ware would issue from it. Such porcelain can never become more common, he reflected, and this is the best work that particular pottery ever produced. So he offered the dealer thirty guineas. " No, sir, they're worth the fifty." But fifty was more than he had to give. He went away, but came back again the next day. He offered the dealer 4O/. and carried away his jars. I need hardly say that his father, when the end of the quarter came, and the son petitioned for a little advance of his allowance, at the same time telling truly what he had done his father was shocked. !] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 7 " Forty pounds for a couple of jars ! Such an ex- travagant son was never known." He would not have been in the very least surprised if his son had lost forty or even a hundred guineas on a horse-race, but that he should give 2O/. a piece for a pair of jars, seemed to him simply madness. But thirty years later that same pair of jars were sold at Christie's at a price which paid interest on the orignal outlay of 20 per cent, per annum for all the thirty years, and left a good margin over, besides, as profit. Thus the young gentleman in the public office had put by in his youth a sum of money quite as profit- ably as if he had invested in shares, and he had, moreover, during thirty years of his life, enjoyed the pleasure of looking at what he considered a pair of very beautiful objects. I did not admire them when I saw them. They were ugly in shape, as I thought, and dingy in colour. But my taste in ceramics is warped, no doubt, by a strong admiration for the porcelain of China and Japan. But the collector has another incentive. By forming a collection he does good work for the knowledge of art, and he increases the value of each individual specimen in his collection. I have spoken hitherto only of cases in which a man has bought some one object or set of objects. But collecting involves more than this. It implies what phrenologists call " com- parativeness." The collector must endeavour to ascertain the comparative excellence and rarity of the objects he collects. This is especially the case with prints. 3 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. Books, that is printed books, are much like prints in this respect. A unique book is as rare as a unique print. But every painting and every manuscript is unique ; and the collector who can afford to buy pictures and illuminations will perhaps do better than the book collector or the print collector. On the other hand, pictures, especially good ones, are much more expensive than books. The question is which will afford the collector the greatest measure of enjoyment. Some men like one thing and some another ; but unquestionably the man who wishes to make his house look nice, and who wants his family and his friends to partake of his enjoyment, will prefer pictures or prints, which can be hung en his walls, to anything else. But the cheapest collection that can be made is one of books. The experienced buyer lays out very little money. If he has gathered a library judiciously he can sell it at a large profit : for example : A man of moderate means made a study of- a certain class of religious books. They were rare, and often they were beautifully illustrated with cuts and engravings. When he had collected a hundred or more, one by one, and at very low prices, he began to find he knew more about them than anybody else ; he could, therefore, confidently bid for a book, knowing perhaps that it was perfect, perhaps that it was unique, and could exercise a little discrimi- nation. Every now and then he picked up a treasure, and his knowledge grew rapidly. For instance, one day he saw a large volume, which he knew to be rare, put up at a sale. It ft-tched what seemed a I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 9 good price, 4/., I think. He went home, not having bought it ; but his interest being aroused by finding he knew very little of that particular edition, he tried to discover more. After some research he found it was extremely scarce. No other copy had ever occurred for sale. It had been rigidly suppressed. So, full of excitement, he rushed to the saleroom to discover the name of the buyer, determining to offer him a profit on his purchase. The clerk informed him of the name, but added that the book was found to have a worm-hole and had been returned in other words, the buyer, a bookseller, thought his bargain too dear. Our young collector asked when it would be re-sold. " In about a month," was the reply ; " you shall have notice." A month elapsed, and then another, but at last the precious volume came up again for sale. Unfortunately for our friend, he was not his own master. Duty called him away on the long expected day. He found it would be impossible for him to go to the sale. He went in his despair to a man on whom he could depend, and said to him, " Buy me that book at a moderate price. It may fetch four or five guineas, perhaps more, but I would go to io/. and even a few shillings more, if there is any chance of getting it." All day he thought of the book. Had he offered enough ? Had he offered too much ? Could he have made any mistake about it ? Would his man be punctual ? In short he was full of contradictory questions, and almost trembling with excitement. io A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. The next morning came. He went to the saleroom, almost afraid to ask about the book. He had not been able to see his agent, and came to ask the clerk. " What was the number of the lot, sir ? " " It was No. so-and-so." The clerk looked it out slowly. My friend felt as if it took hours to find the entry. " I find, sir," said the clerk, at length, " that the lot 's entered to your name at four-and-sixpence." When he had gathered about two hundred volumes he made an elaborate catalogue. It was much noticed and reviewed. The subject was of some interest to the general public ; and my friend's book, a mere list, was bought by many people who did not care for bibliography. Its publication, how- ever, cut off his sources of supply. Every bookseller could now judge as well as himself, of the value and rarity of books of this class. He determined to sell his collection. So he had a list printed, and sent it to people who were likely to buy, and meanwhile he prepared to sell by auction, if necessary. But in a few weeks he had an offer from a great public library, which he accepted. It was that he should send them all the books in his list, and that the trustees of the library, on condition of his taking a certain sum, would keep the collection together and put them in a bookcase inscribed with his name. He could not afford to present them, though he would willingly have done so, but this offer seemed to him so pleasing that he accepted it, and sent the books. I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 1 1 As I happened to hear both the sum laid out and the sum received, and as this chapter is not so much on the art or ethics, as on the prudence, of collecting, I may as well give them as nearly as I can remember. He had laid out altogether on buying and on binding 78/. This outlay had been spread over some three or four years. He received 225/., of which the odd 25/- was absorbed by various expenses connected with the printing and packing. His profit was thus I22/. I say nothing of the pleasure he had taken in the pursuit, nor yet of the advantages of the knowledge he acquired, and the many incidental benefits which accrued to him. The point on which I am anxious to insist is merely that it is often profitable to collect judiciously. I think this point may be taken as proved. I have purposely avoided, for the present, any mention of the great collections of which one so constantly hears. I only speak of what may be done in a very small way by a man engaged in some other business and only collecting in his leisure hours, and with what may be called his leisure money. People who live in great cities are often shocked to find how much is spent without any return. Pocket money makes away with itself and leaves no mark behind. You have bought nothing yet your money is gone. We cannot all bring ourselves to the state of mind of a late nobleman, who having several hundreds of thousands a year used to go out without any money in his purse for fear he should be induced by pity or a passing fancy to spend even sixpence. Without going this length, we might yet find it possible to 12 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. economise considerably in this one particular. The man is singular who does not enjoy buying, just as the sportsman enjoys killing, for its own sake. We must buy, and there are few pleasures more to be enjoyed, and "few also which need cost us so little, and which may be more innocent. For though it may seems a little paradoxical to say that spending money, even judiciously, is a cheap pleasure, I will endeavour to prove the truth of the proposition. There are two pleasures in buying. One is in the act of buying itself, the other in the subsequent pos- session of the object bought. But if the object be one which soon loses its value this second pleasure is gone Avith it. A young man likes to go to an arcade and spend his money in gorgeous jewellery, satin neck- cloths, and other things which may safely be summed up in the single word " toys." The pleasure of buying these things, that is of choosing them, must be con- siderable, for many young men of wealth seem to do nothing else, and it would be hard to believe that they do it from any sense of duty, and not rather from self-gratification. But that the choice is not of a kind to give the aesthetic faculties much play is also evident Though the buyer lavishes both time and money on diamonds and cigars, his taste is often not sufficient to enable him to give any reason for his preferences. The fancy shops are furnished to reach him, and they succeed, for as he has no taste, in the true sense of the word, one which implies something of reflection he is guided wholly by his fancy. Novelty, there- fore, is the first thing he seeks. It requires no mental effort to know that you never saw a thing before, or I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 13 do not recollect it, which comes to the same thing. As your experience increases you begin to find that real novelty is very rare, and that for the most part you have been imposed on. But by this time you have also found that few of the things for which you paid such long prices are worth anything now, and you are disgusted to see that though your money is gone you have nothing to show for it. This kind of expenditure, then, is not remunerative. And there is another kind, which is also, as a rule, a loss of money. You may buy with taste but without knowledge. Thus a few years ago a young man who had con- siderable command of money, and also considerable taste for, art, took the advice of a well-known print- seller^ who is still alive, and whom therefore I refrain from mentioning by name. This man advised him to buy the large engravings from Landseer's pictures, and offered him proofs at very high prices, telling him that in a very few years .they would be worth twice as much. After a time our young friend married. " Now," he said, " I will realize all that money I put into engravings ; they should be worth a great sum by this time." He went accordingly to the dealer. What was his surprise to hear they were only worth twice as many shillings as he had given pounds ! At first he said he would bring an action against the printseller. But after a time he grew more com- posed, as he saw that the fault was his own, and was this : He had bought without knowledge. He was 14 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. content with, say, the last proof; and everyone knows that the first ordinary print is almost as good as the last proof, and frequently even better. My friend had thought any proof was equal to any other proof from the same plate, and he had made the further mistake of allowing the dealer to choose for him, without any mental exercise on his own part. But I have only shown that buying novelties and buying good things without knowledge are not cheap pleasures. I have still to show how it may be cheap to buy. The late Mr. Gillott, of Birmingham, began as soon as he had the money to buy a picture or two every year from some rising artist. I am told that he trusted his own judgment. This implies that he had judg- ment to trust. He enjoyed the possession of the pictures very much. They were a constant source of intense pleasure to him. He was an illiterate man, having raised himself from the lowest condition. I do not know whether he could read. He certainly could not read so as to be fond of reading, and his great resource was in his picture gallery. When he died I went to Birmingham to see it before it should be dispersed ; and I afterwards attended the famous sale at Christie's. I may have more to say about it presently. My present purpose is only to show that Mr. Gillott's gallery was a cheap pleasure. The fact is it cost nothing. When it was dispersed there were not wanting people to assert that the increase in the value of the pictures since they were painted was such as to bring in to Mr. Gillott's heirs a sum equal to the aggregate produce at 20 per cent. I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. \ 5 per annum of all the money spent. And it is curious further to observe, that the pictures which Mr. Gillott had bought at the highest prices fetched less at his sale than those he had given the least money for. The Ettys, the Maclises, the Wilsons, which formed, as he probably thought, the great features of his gallery, fetched nothing in comparison with the Turner water-colours, and the Miillers, for which comparatively he had given very little. But let us take a less prominent case, as more illus- trative of the position, that collecting may be a cheap pleasure. A man with a taste for early printed books, and with a knowledge of the history of the art, goes into an auction room or a bookseller's every now and then as he passes by on his daily road to business. Sometimes he sees a rare book going for a low price, and he buys it. More often he has to be content while others buy who are wealthier, but he learns something regarding the comparative value and rarity of particular books. He derives a vast amount of enjoyment from his pursuit. He meets intellectual men on common ground. He has a little wholesome excitement now and then at a sale. And he has the quiet pleasure of collating his treasures of an evening, of mending them, of binding them, perhaps of making one perfect whole from several fragments. He learns a great deal, and that too of a useful kind, and though he often has to walk or go in the omnibus rather than take a cab, he does not mind it. The taste, the con- sciousness that he has something behind the daily routine of business life, is worth much to him, and meanwhile he is steadily gathering a collection. All 1 6 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. CHAP. those cab drives he does not take, all those newspapers and magazines he does not buy, all those cigars he does not smoke, all those club luncheons he does not eat, all those coats, hats, hosen, and other garments he does as well without, have gone to increase the collection. Had he bought all these things he would have none of them to leave ; but the mere chips and parings of ordinary life have given him enough to form a good, if a small, collection, and at his death, or before it, they are sold for such a sum as will materially add to the resources of his family. This is the kind of case on which I would rather dwell ; and indeed the object of my present book is to show that a very small expenditure on worthy objects of art is both good and pleasant in itself, and also a prudent piece of economy. I will take one more example. The facts of it are true, but one or two particulars, of no importance to the matter in hand, are varied, as many of the actors in the story are still alive. About forty years ago, let us say, but it may have been fifty, and it may have been ten, a country baronet of moderate wealth married for the second time. His only son did not get on with his stepmother. He was wild, and would not be restrained. She had a large family in the course of time ; and the stepson, having gone on from bad to worse, died in miserable circum- o stances, into which we need not pry further than to say that, immediately after his death, the old baronet had a letter acquainting him with the fact that his son had married just before his death, and that the widow hoped shortly to present him with a grandchild. L] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 17 Knowing, as he too well did, the kind of female com- pany into which his prodigal son habitually entered, the old man was terribly shocked at the news. His second wife's eldest boy was a good lad, and was likely to be a comfort to himself and a credit to his family. But if this woman should have a son then all would go into her control, and the result probably would be the utter ruin of his ancient family. So much did these apprehensions distress him that he died a very few months after his eldest son. Almost at the same time the widow wrote to say she was the mother of a boy. The consternation in the family may be imagined. The young mother had taken care to provide for all possible contingencies. There were witnesses to the marriage and to everything. And though the witnesses chiefly belonged to the same class as the lady herself, their testimony was not thereby invalidated. At first the young uncle and his mother endea- voured to do what they could to draw the heir and his mother to them, and, promising to forget all past errors, offered to receive her into the family, and to make no opposition to the child's succession. But before very long curious rumours reached them. They made inquiries, which were attended with great expense, and led to nothing. By degrees, however, one little circumstance after another accumulated till they were able to take a decisive step. They boldly challenged the paternity of the child, and refused to acknowledge it or its mother. Legal proof was still difficult to obtain. It was LOF. C 1 8 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. obtained at last, however, and by a mere accident. The child was proved to be the offspring of a washerwoman at Stepney ; and though the marriage was never called in question, it is said that the witnesses to it were no more to be believed than those who testified to the birth of the false heir. A more romantic story has seldom been told in our law-courts. The general public were greatly entertained. But the bill had to be paid, and of that the public knew nothing. A great deal of money had been spent or was owed, and the new baronet's success seemed to have been purchased at a cost which would keep him poor all his life. But it so happened that shortly after these events a man of taste, who was well acquainted with certain branches of art and archaeology, was staying in the house. And one day the unfortunate young heir showed him a great boxful of old curiosities coins, let us say ; they were not coins, but coins will do for my purpose. "They were gathered by my great- grandfather, and are of all ages and kinds. Do you think they would be worth selling ? They did not cost much, for my ancestor never had much money to spend." The connoisseur looked over them for a few minutes. There were a great number, most of them worthless. But presently he jumped up with an exclamation : "This must be a forgery," he cried. "The only known example is in the Museum ; they gave a thousand pounds for it, and it should be worth more now." I.] THE PRUDENCE OF COLLECTING. 19 He had two or three more surprises, and finally determined to take the whole boxful to town, and show them to an expert. When the box of coins had been thoroughly ransacked, about four hundred were found to be of great value. Of these two hundred were at once bought for a great public collection at an immense price, as it seemed to their owner ; and the rest were sent to a saleroom. There they brought such a sum as, added to that obtained from the museum, paid off all the costs of the lawsuit, and enabled the young baronet to start in life out of debt from that cause at least. From which may be drawn the safe moral that, if you collect what may seem common enough now, a few years hence your grandchildren may have cause to bless you. How far it is to be considered worth while to make a collection in order to deserve the thanks of posterity I cannot say, but I can promise you a great deal of pleasure for yourself from the pursuit, and I think I may venture to claim that I have made out some part of my original propo- sition that spending money in this way is a cheap enjoyment It may of course be objected that collecting is not in itself the practice of art. But, except for people who are actually artists, much that goes to make home beautiful must of necessity be obtained by judicious collecting. It might easily be proved that articles which are really beautiful owe their chief attraction to the sense of suitability and permanent value which is required to make them satisfactory. C 2 20 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. But, further than this, it may fairly be argued, and, indeed, has several times been pointed out already, that it is the duty of every one who is so fortunate as to possess a home and to be the head of a family, to endeavour, so far as he can, to make his family happy by making his home beautiful. II.] FURBISHING AND OLD FURNITURE. CHAPTER II. FURNISHING AND OLD FURNITURE. VEN economical collecting is open to a certain suspicion. Too many men collect only for their own private gra- tification ; and it may be as well before we go further to draw a sharp line between the man who gathers objects in which he alone is interested, and the man who desires to beautify his house with what he buys. My concern here is with the latter only. The old Adam in me may perhaps make me lenient to the faults of the other class, but Art at Home is art calculated to give pleasure to as many as possible in the home, and to make its rooms as pretty and attractive as possible. The bibliomaniac too often forgets others in his com- paratively solitary pursuit, and the collector of autographs can have but little regard for the plea- sures of his family. If things are only bought to be stowed away in portfolios and cupboards, they are merely money laid by to accumulate. But this is not the ideal of collecting which I wish 22 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CH A P. to inculcate. If, as we proceed, we keep before our eyes the thought that whatever is brought into the house should go towards the decoration, or at least the beauty of the house, we shall see that it is quite easy to add that nothing should be brought in which is without a permanent value. Collecting, indeed, is only one name for the thing. I do not want to see everybody collecting. I do not admire private museums. I think houses which are ugly and badly furnished and uncomfortable, are none the better for being filled with curiosities. But short of this there is something to be done. I go into my neighbour Brown's house, and this is what I see : The carpet is modern " Brussels ; " the curtains are figured " rep ; " the hall and passages are covered with oil-cloths ; the furniture is of the last new pattern, designed in the " Gothic style," by Messrs Oak and Velvet, upholsterers and undertakers. Brown tells me complacently that he has spent a thousand pounds on furnishing the sitting-rooms, and asks me to look at the frames of his prints. They are gorgeous enough, certainly. " Now," says Brown, " I venture to say you can hardly tell them from carved and gilt wood. They are done by a new process." You look at the prints for which the imitation frames were procured. They are late pale impressions of poor second-rate works, of which even proofs would be worthless, but Brown has had to pay some cheating dealer a good sum for them. It is the same with everything. Its only possible value, at the best, was in its novelty. A year's wear makes it worthless. Ii.l FURNISHING AND OLD FURNITURE. 23 These dining-room chairs are of carved oak, " carved Dy machinery " of course, and the backs are marked with Brown's monogram in gilding on the scarlet leather. They have cost him between two and three guineas apiece, and he is naturally proud of them But what are they worth ? What is anything in the house worth ? Well, at most, a third of the price he has paid. Take the chairs as an example, Say they cost Brown 2.1. los. each. They are carved by machinery, and a-re of the latest pattern. But since he bought them, a newer and still more attractive pattern has come out, and so their value as being in the fashion is gone ; and their carving, too, is rather a drawback, for the carvers have invented a new way of doing such work, and can turn it out so cheaply, that chairs twice as fine as Brown's are to be had for 25^. It is the same with prints and their frames. The prints never were worth anything, and the frames, after a year's hanging on the walls, have the new look well rubbed off, and are not worth dor ig up a second time. It would be useless to go through all the items. But if Brown's things are sold they may perhaps fetch 3 and individual artist. To many people it will be new to hear that we had a school of art in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries such as we have never had since, and that there were painters and sculptors among our ancestors in the reign of Henry III. whose works excel any- thing that has been produced in our island in the nineteenth century. ' rv.] BOOKS AND CHINA. 73 The initial letters of the chapters of this book are taken from Bibles of that period written in England, because such Bibles are among the most common examples of this style of art, while they best illustrate my meaning, owing to the identity of the subjects in several. Jonah in the act of falling into the jaws of the whale, or else just rising from them again, is a favourite subject and is sometimes treated with exceeding quaintness. The crossbar letter E, with which in the Latin the Book of Jonah com- mences, was made use of to give the picture a kind of upper story. In buying manuscripts the great difficulty consists in knowing whether they are perfect or not. It would be impossible to give rules for the purpose of assisting a buyer in the space at my disposal, but I may ven- ture a caution as to two of the most common of such books. In Missals always look for a painting of the crucifixion. If this is wanting the book is almost certainly imperfect. In books of " Hours," you may be equally particular in seeking a calendar. Without a calendar the book would have been practically useless, and I cannot believe any book of " Hours " is perfect without some sort of calendar. Of manuscripts, too, it may safely be said that some of the most gaudy are the least valuable, and that the judicious buyer will prefer that which has an especially quaint treatment of a subject, or any sign of being the work of an original and untrammelled mind. Modern illustrated books may be very briefly dis- missed. The best have woodcuts, the worst have chromo-lithographs ; but it may be worth while to 74 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. point out that different copies of an illustrated book have very different impressions of the pictures; an'i that a late edition of one of Bewick's books, fo v example, is a very inferior work to an early edition. There has been a kind of run on early woodcuts of* late years, and we are at length, after centuries of neglect, beginning to recognize the beauty of the early French school that of Paris, from which issued so many devotional books in the fifteenth century, and the early part of the sixteenth, as well as of the later school, and that of Lyons, from which issued so many exquisitely illustrated Bibles, Testaments, Dances of Death, Emblems, and other books, all now become exceedingly valuable, though once, not many years ago, to be had very cheap. If we could tell what will be the next fashion we might commence collecting now, and make a fortune when the tide turns. The French are busy at present with books illustrated with copper-plate vignettes, and chiefly belonging to the period before the Revolution. But we have little art to show for that period in England, and must come down to the times of Stothard and Westall for some- thing original and good of native growth. The book collector may, however, form a collection of many kinds of books different from any already the fashion. If he buy with knowledge he can hardly lose by it, but the kind of knowledge required is rathei literary than artistic, and does not exactly belong to our subject. So I will pass on at once, only pausing to encourage the book collector with an anecdote relating to circumstances which lately occurred. A gentleman happened to stroll into a saleroom during iv.j BOOKS AND CHINA. 75 a sale of books, and seeing an unbound book full of engravings, and described as a Sarum Service-book, he bid 5/. for it, imagining it to be worth much more. It was knocked down to him, however, and for months he amused his leisure with that book. First he went, to the British Museum and soon ascertained that no example of the same edition was in the library there. Then he had it handsomely bound, and taking it to Oxford and other places compared it with various specimens, sometimes finding a fragment of the same edition bound into another book, and once a very imperfect copy wanting the large cuts. At last he grew tired of his toy, and having written a full account of its beauties and peculiarities he put it up at an auction and received 3O/. for it. This example speaks for itself. The nursery literature of the present day is one of the wonderful things of our wonderful age. Chil- dren are indeed provided for in this respect better than their parents were when they grew up. Many a child has a library that would have sufficed a hundred years ago for a country town. Mr. Marks led the way in seeing the difficulty of making good " toy books." His nursery rhymes marked an epoch in pictorial literature. Since then Mr. Crane and others have taken up the tale, and the parent who desires to bring up a child as if harmony cf colour was to be compared in importance with har- mony of sound, may easily provide that the infantine eye shall only be used to what is good. Picture books have all the same drawback as pieces of household decoration, but bindings are sometimes 76 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. very pretty. For the most part however our modern bindings are hideous and one longs to go back to the time when every book was bound in calf or sheep at the least, if it was bound at all. Binders follow many very objectionable practices in binding books. It is quite impossible to persuade the ordinary binder, for instance, that there is any beauty in wide margins, nay in any margin. He ruthlessly cuts off all such superfluities. According to his view the printed portion only should be left of the page, and where he is in doubt as to whether he has left enough margin he settles the question by cutting a line or two of the printing at the top and bottom. How many valuable books have been rendered valueless by the binder, no one can ever know. His enmity against margins is only equalled by his abhorrence of fly leaves, an abhorrence extending even to such useless things as title pages. He argues perhaps that the world did very well without title pages before printing was invented, and even for twenty or thirty years later, so that though he habit- ually preserves the title, more especially if told to do so, he thinks it a vanity. As to the half title no persuasion can save it, and he looks on people who preserve the covers of books issued in covers, as simply idiotic. Lately I had some volumes of a scarce though modern German book on Hymnology bound. I had bought it in numbers and gave directions that the green paper covers should be included in the binding. When the book came home I found the binder had spared the front cover, but had taken off iv.] BOOKS AND CHINA. 77 the other though both front and back leaves had contained notices of the greatest importance. A still more melancholy example of the hopeless- ness of trying to resist fate's shears in those of the binder came before me recently. A gentleman who collected Bibles was greatly elated one day at finding a copy of one of the black-letter quartos with, ar he expressed it, "the rare sheet A before the title.'' Bibliographers are inscrutable in all their ways, and attach great importance to such external features So he bought the book, though it was a poor copy wanting a leaf or two, and of a common edition. True, the " rare leaf A " was in all probability unique, and the happy owner broke up another copy to make this one perfect, and took his treasure to a binder, charging him to spare no expense in covering it suit- ably. The result is too dreadful for words, and I cannot dwell on it. But the unfortunate bibliographer had gone to great expense, and had in return a very worthless book. One wonders whether binders keep albums of rare fly leaves and title-pages. Another, and very similar case is famous. A lady who had a nephew, wished as his birthday approached to give him a present. She knew that he greatly admired an old book in her library. It was the " First Folio " of Shakespeare, a very large copy in the original binding. She would give him this book, and thinking it looked shabby she sent it to her binder, who took off the rubbed old calf, and put the book into a neat half-binding of green roan, at the same time cutting the edges close to the text and gilding them. The lady's nephew found it difficult 73 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. to express his thanks in suitable terms, for his chief, if not his only, admiration for the book consisted in its being one of the " tallest " copies in existence. This story has, I believe, been often in print before. But not long ago I knew an almost precisely similar case in which, however, it was only a Bewick which was mutilated by being clipped close, title taken off as soiled, and the title of the second volume prefixed to the first. There is in fact a certain excitement in sending a precious book to be 1 bound, and the most singular thing, one of the most singular things, indeed, in the history of human nature, is the constant persistence of binders in the same habits which, for hundreds of years have caused them to be universally reprobated by all right-thinking book collectors. Roger Payne used to boast that he bound books so strongly, that they might be laid down in a pavement, and the suffering tribe of bibliographers retorted that his books were only fit for that position. But Payne did not cut a book if he could help it, and some of his modern disciples in " bibliopegistry " are quite as careful. It is only the ignorant second-rate book- binder who does the damage, but it must be allowed that whether owing to the large number of such binders, or to their amazing energy, the harm they do is enough for themselves, and for their more careful congeners too. Bindings pleasing to the eye need not be expensive. If you fix on a pattern, you will find the cost greatly diminished by sending a dozen volumes together to the binder. Some variety of " Roxburgh " half- iv. J BOOKS AND CHINA. 79 binding looks well, both on the shelf and on the table. As to patterns for whole bindings, we have plenty of examples, and need never be at a loss for a good one. In the woodcut I have shown two ancient books in my own collection. The smaller one may possibly date from the fourteenth century : its two sides are not stamped with the same pattern, although they match very well, two varieties of the fret being employed. The result is very pleasing, and I can .vouch for its being suitable for a modern book, as I have tried it. The principles of decoration at present in use only present two varieties, but here we have a third. We have books with one side plain and one side ornamented, or else we have both sides bearing the impression of the same pattern. But this example shows what a good effect may be produced by having the sides both ornamented but with different patterns, designed to harmonize with each other but not to match exactly. The larger volume is equally picturesque, but not so useful for imitation. It is stamped all over with 8o A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. little heraldic dragons, in rows, divided by mottoes in English, and is interesting as an example of* English work of the fifteenth century. Another style of the binding would be suitable, pretty and convenient for prayer-books and hymn- books. It is such a binding as we see in the hands of Van Eyck's Madonna at Ghent. Service-books, which had to be carried to church, and which were constantly opened and thumbed at the same place were bound with a kind of hanging curtain or veil which both served to attach the book to its owner's belt, and also to turn up and put under the fingers during the time the book was in use. There are very few examples remaining of such a binding, but modern binders have copied some specimens from pictures. Of later bindings much has been said and written : many fine collections have been made, but, so far, very little done as to classification and identification. The greatest French binder was probably Derome, the greatest English was Roger Payne, but bindings are chiefly distinguished by the names of the binders' patrons ; Grolier, with his motto on every book, " Grolierii et amicorum," and Thuanus, otherwise known as De Thou. There is also a very fine old English style, much sought after, and harmonizing very well with " Queen Anne " furniture and decora- tions. I have perhaps spent more time on books and bindings than they deserve, considered as specimens of art at home. I have still to speak of china, of ivories, and of many other things most commonly met with in our houses. IV.] BOOKS AND CHINA, 81 For decorative purposes, " Oriental," that is Chinese and Japanese china, only, is worth much. Some Sevres, and a good deal of what the modern English makers have produced of late years, is also to be admired, but chiefly in so far as it approaches the " Oriental." As to the porcelain, for which, under the names of Chelsea, Bow, and Bristol, such fabulous prices are often given, I have little or nothing to say. They are ugly, inharmonious, sometimes dingy, sometimes gaudy, and only valuable as very fragile curiosities. I cannot remember ever to have seen a beautiful example of any of these much-: prized potteries. Of Worcester and Derby, on the other hand, some very beautiful specimens occa- sionally occur, close imitations of the Oriental patterns. It is some times quite absurd to see a plate or a bowl of Oriental ware put up and sold for a few shil- lings, while a similar piece, imitated from it and not nearly so' good, but bearing a Worcester mark, fetches as many pounds. The mark, indeed, generally determines the value of the china. So far we have only deciphered and identified a few of the Chinese and Japanese marks, and cannot always tell what is valuable or scarce. But on European marks many great volumes have been written, and there is no need I should go into them here. If you buy with a view to making your house look pretty you will avoid the European and cleave to the Oriental, and a few years hence the labours of investigators may have determined the comparative rarity and value of the pieces in your collection. As an example of the difference in value LOF. G 82 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. at present between European and foreign work I may mention the case of an eminent Parisian manufacturer who produced at a price of forty guineas each a pair of jars such as could be imported from China, and sold here for forty shillings. Of all so-called bric-a-brac, the highest prices are given for early examples of Sevres. They are seldom beautiful, yet they deserve a certain amount of praise as being among the few original pieces of European work we can point out. The Sevres decoration was its own invention. It is not imitated from China or Japan, though it has been imitated in all directions of late.' The colours are generally staring, but sometimes very delicate, and the little pictures are often exquisite examples of miniature painting. It is not, however, for such specimens that the highest prices are given, but for an early style of purplish pink, known as Rose du Barry, and an equally unpleasing green, both spotted with a kind of diaper work of feebly painted rosebuds. I do not think plates look well hung on the wall They should be put on shelves in a kind of dresser. Such a piece of furniture looks very suitable in a dining-room, and may be made convenient as well as pretty. China in the dining-room may consist of plates and dishes, ranged neatly on the sideboard, but china in the drawing-room should only consist of purely ornamental objects and of tea things. I have seen brown ware and Flemish grey pottery used with good effect in a library or on a staircase. Such pottery is very strong, and the housemaid will seldom succeed in breaking: it when she is dusting. iv.] BOOKS AND CHINA. 83 Some of the forms are very pretty, and the grey has the further merit that no two pieces are exactly alike. I speak here only of the original ware. In modern imi-tations dozens of jugs and jars are moulded to the same pattern, but such examples are valueless. You can always tell the genuine from the cast work by the marks of the mould, and by the evident tokens of original handywork in the older vessels. Maiolica also has a very decorative effect, but it is not easy to obtain Maiolica. Time was when tourists in Italy, if they were wise, always brought some home ; but now you cannot obtain anything good, and must be on your guard as to forgeries. I am frequently asked to look at so-called Maiolica and faience which I can see at a glance is a forgery. But failing old Italian pottery there is plenty of beautiful and effective ware made in Algiers, and even in Spain, which may be picked up very cheap, and if artfully disposed in a room be made to look very pretty. Such things, however, must be carefully selected and still more carefully placed. Do not be induced to turn your rooms into a museum ; and if you place a large quantity of china or pottery on your shelves take care that some at least is bright and fresh- looking, for nothing can be more dingy than a large quantity of such things as Etruscan or Greek vases, Moorish brown and black ware, Egyptian stone bottles, and modern Norman or German gres. These are all things beautiful in themselves. They will have an excellent effect if judiciously contrasted with Japanese jars and bowls, but by themselves they only suit a G 2 84 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. great hall, or at best, the buffet of a very large dining-room. In speaking of the objects on which the collector at home spends his admiration, I have avoided men- tioning a number of things of value and beauty because they do not in the ordinary course of events come into our houses, and because it is only people of great wealth who can buy enough of them to make any great show. Such are enamels, ivories, bronzes, marbles, jewels, and gold or silver plate. Yet it may be worth while to say a few words about them in order. Enamels are very ornamental, very valuable in the history of art, and very indestructible. But a single picture of Limoges work, some six or seven inches square, will cost you forty, fifty, or sixty guineas, according to the period and beauty. The brilliant Japanese Cloisonne enamels are much cheaper, and have a very charming effect ; they may be bought at very reasonable prices in comparison with Limoges, but they are still dearer than porcelain, though well worth the difference. If you collect such things you had better give some special study to the subject. It is a complicated and difficult one, and forgeries are common. Ivories, generally speaking, cannot be forged. In that respect they are like illuminated MSS. An ivory carving is valued by the merit of the workmanship bestowed on it, and if the carvers could produce diptychs and triptychs like those of the middle ages, they would be nearly, if not quite, as valuable. The collector of ivories, therefore, may trust to his own IV.] BOOKS AND CHINA. 85 taste, if he has any, and need not fear to be taken in. If he is taken in he deserves his fate. .Imitations of late years have been attempted of some very ancient ivories. For the most part these are not ornamental objects, and are chiefly of interest to the scientific collector. It is therefore hardly necessary for me to warn my reader that if he is offered the leaf of a con- sular diptych of the third century he had better take it to the British Museum or South Kensington before he buys it. But there can be no question about the beautiful statuettes of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, which sometimes occur for sale ; and I cannot but wish our Gothic revival had directed some artist of genius to work in ivory. Fiammingo's work, too, of a totally different style is very pretty, and good imitations of it are to be had. But it is safe to avoid what is rude and what is commonplace. We see numberless Venuses and Cupids and a few Saints in the ivory shops, but it is seldom we find one in which the carver has shown any knowledge of anatomy or proportion, or has been able to give his work any expression. Bronzes may in many respects be classed with ivories, except that forgeries are very common and very deceptive. It requires special study to judge of a good bronze, and it is not worth while to go into the whole subject here. A separate treatise would be required for it. And it is much the same with plate. Within the last few years the date marks on old gold and silver have been carefully examined. The connoisseur can 86 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. tell easily what age a piece of silver purports to be. But electrotyping has made forgery so easy that it hardly deserves the name of forgery. The collector must judge by merit alone. There is great beauty in some styles of silver work, and it does not require much knowledge to tell the genuineness of any but rare and ancient marks. The precious metals are always worth their weight, and good workmanship, whether genuine or imitative, also counts for what it has cost. It would be easy, indeed, to Write a chapter on the silversmith's art as it is at present. The revival in painting, architecture, and many other arts does not seem to have reached the silversmith. There are few more distressing sights to the sensitive eye than a sideboard set out with yachting or racing prizes. A " cup " consists of a block of silver on which is a cast metal representation of a cutter in full sail, or a stag after Landseer, but a long way behind, or a group of ill-modelled horses and jockeys. Of chasing and repousse work, as it was understood by Cellini, our designers know nothing. Their most ambitious efforts resemble the Prince Consort Memorial or a wedding- cake indifferently, and their ordinary works violate every canon of taste, and are so evidently only vehicles for the employment of so many ounces of netal that they do not come under the denomination of art in any sense. Much the same is to be sai'd of jewellery, but some attempts have been made of late years to improve design and setting. In such matters we are too much in the hands of professional tradesmen, and might iv.] BOOKS AND CHINA. 87 with advantage, when we wish to give a friend an ornament insist on designing it for ourselves. In such matters, however, emancipation is not easily attained. All the power of queen, lords, and commons could not prevent the jewellers from cutting down the koh- i-noor, though they materially reduced its weight, and consequently impaired its value in the process. Nor could all the criticisms of judges, nor the ridicule of the whole money-using public, prevent us from having such a design as that on our florins put into circulation and retained as English money. We can never assert before a foreigner that as a nation we love art, so long as he has only to take out a two- shilling piece, or even a penny, and show us the image and superscription. . Stained glass is sometimes an object of pursuit with collectors, and few things more beautiful can be brought into a house. It is now much used for window screens with pleasing effect. But for the most part our modern glass fails in having too much colour, or too many colours in one composition, and not enough of a neutral character. Enough light cannot be transmitted where this is the case. But sometimes good pieces, old or new, are to be had. When a window has to be closed permanently, which some- times happens where there are cross lights, a black board with holes in which specimens of glass are inserted may be used with excellent effect. Such a window is represented in the annexed cut. A thorough light in a library had to be stopped, and although the window was very large it was easily managed by placing a great oak cupboard across 88 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. the lower half, and by hanging a picture in stained glass framed in a black board across the upper. The effect thus simply attained is very satisfactory. v.] ART AND MORALS. 89 CHAPTER V. ART AND MORALS. HERE seems to be something para- doxical in talking- of the cultivation of taste as a moral duty. Yet a little reflection may perhaps convince us, not only that it may be a moral but even a religious duty. Strangely enough, in the minds of most of us, music enters largely into the idea we form of the happiness of heaven. But why do we exclude all other kinds of art ? And if we look on the home here as the prototype of the home hereafter, we may see reasons for making it as a sacred thing, beautiful and pleasant, as, indeed, we have no hesitation about making our churches. If we follow Bishop Butler in speaking of this life as a state of probation, and if we allow that home life is the highest " ideal type of the life in heavenly ' mansions,' " we find ourselves forced to go a little further, and to contemplate our own houses, our fire- sides, our sitting rooms, our surroundings in the house, or, in a word, all those things which go to make up 90 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. our notions of home, with a kind of moral and even a religious reverence. I cannot go here into the religious topics started by the contemplation of home life, but I have said enough to show that reasons may exist for asserting that a working view of Christianity would include an ideal of heaven as a home, and help us to do some- thing while we can to establish and increase neatness and order, beauty and sweetness, music and art, in all the houses which may come under our influence, feeling as we do so that we do something towards raising ourselves and others, and bringing heaven nearer to earth. To make home what it should be, a cheerful, happy habitation, to which the absent members of a family may look with love, and to which the wanderer will always return with joy, we must have it not only clean, for cleanliness is next to godliness, and whole- some, which is another way of saying holy, but also beautiful. Refinement cannot go with sordidness and ugliness. Even the Scotch meeting-house is now beginning to lose its distinctive plainness. We in England have decorated our churches sometimes per- haps a little too much. And it is surely time we turned to that second church, the temple in which even the old heathen placed a family altar, and would give our homes a little more of the beauty which comes of order and purity. Money is not what we most require for such a purpose. I have endeavoured to show this already. A pleasant and lovely home need not be expensive. To make a house beautiful we do not require gilding v.] ART AND MORALS. 91 and carving, marble and bronze, but we do want a little taste, and perhaps a little trouble. Simplicity is not incompatible with art, even high art. It is, indeed, as we are so often taught by the art of the Greeks, and the scarcely less perfect art of our own thirteenth century, an element in true beauty, and no one can think a room less pleasant because it is furnished with studied plainness. A pretty and pleasant house, whether in town or country, is a centre of life radiating into other houses. If a house in a London street shows signs of being cared for and well treated, other houses soon begin to look like it. Art is very infectious in such things. Taste spreads with wonderful rapidity. Thirty years ago if you asked schoolboys or young ladies about their knowledge of architecture they would probably have repeated the names of the five classical orders, and there would have begun and ended their informa- tion. Now every church, almost every school, in our land shows signs of the knowledge and taste in Gothic and Elizabethan art of young curates and rectors' daughters. It is high time something of the kind should spread to our dwelling-houses. How many young ladies now spend their time making minute water-colour sketches while their father has to bring in a house-painter to " do up "a sitting-room. Yet there is no reason I can think of why a young lady should not paint and decorate a door as easily as she paints a view in the Highlands or a fisherman's family. If the complete decoration of a room would be too much, all the details, not only the carving of mouldings, and the colouring of panels, but even 92 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. the arrangement of a tile pattern and the design of a window leading might be done at home. One house in which the inmates set themselves from their first coming to do nothing except in good taste would soon become a centre of civilisation in a country district. Nothing will keep the boys at home of an evening more certainly than a little art, whether music or painting. The sons of a family in moments of leisure could carve a chimney-piece which would be a credit to the country at large. The trouble spent in learning a quartet would be perhaps just as well, certainly no worse, spent in learning to paint a motto over the door. It requires no greater exertion to make an embroidered curtain or portiere than to make a dozen " anti-macassars." What is chiefly wanted for such ambitious efforts is a little taste and knowledge, and the schools of art all through the country might supply both if they would. So far they have done very little for the improvement of home art. Perhaps the school water-colours are a little less hard and impossible. Perhaps a few students have learned enough figure drawing not to make the men and women in their sketches look so like jointed dolls. But very little has yet been done to give people rules how to draw and stencil a diaper all over a bedroom wall, how to choose two delicate colours for the panels of a cupboard, or how to make a plaster work pattern for the drawing-room ceiling. This is what the local schools have yet to do, what some sanguine people imagined they would do, and what they never will do under South Kensington, management as it is at present. v.] ART AND MORALS. 93 To prove that I am not expecting too much, 1 have only to point to cases like that one at Lambeth, in which a school of art becoming connected with the practical art of a pottery, has produced some of the best work we have had in England for five hundred ' years. Drawing classes and clubs sensibly conducted might do much for the improvement of art at home, but, so far as they have hitherto been tried, they have usually degenerated into parties for the cultivation of the art of flirting, and if I recommend that the sexes study drawing apart I lay myself open to the answer that under such conditions the sexes will prefer not to study drawing at all. In any case a good teacher is one of the first requisites and one generally done without. The second thing required is subordination, which of all virtues is the one most often wanting among amateurs. A class well conducted and well organized might undertake the painting and decora- tion of a village school, or a mechanics' institute, but the difficulty would of course be double. It would be necessary for every one to work under the direction of one master-mind, and for such a master-mind to be found. The village is very small in which during the winter something of the nature of penny readings is not held. At penny readings, lectures, and especially illustrated lectures on art, might be given with advantage. Few clergymen are without some knowledge of architec- ture. Few intelligent men, in fact, are without some special knowledge of one branch of art or another. It is very easy to get such people to give shore 94 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. lectures. People would not be tired by a quarter of an hour on the structure of a flying buttress, or the life of Reynolds, or the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, or the meaning of Durer's Melencholia, or the Japanese way of drawing foliage. I do not speak without some experience of the subject. I have seen a large audience composed chiefly of working men in a mining district very much interested by a series of short lectures on architecture, delivered as part of the entertainments of an evening. A few diagrams are necessary, but they are easily made, and few places are without an amateur able to draw them. The civilising influence of art has been matter of remark since the time of Ovid at least, and it is high time in these days of culture that we should try its virtue. We talk too much about these things and do too little. The smallest child in the village school learns singing, but no child learns drawing. Yet of the two singing and drawing which is the most likely to be of use in after life ? It is objected perhaps, that all children have not a taste for drawing, but neither have all children a taste for music, as we have full proof every Sunday in church, at least. A more serious objection is that masters and mistresses have already too many " subjects," and cannot make them all equally familiar. But the thing might at least be tried, and I think it would soon be found that an amateur would turn up to solve the difficulty in a great many places, just as at present the village choir is often trained by voluntary labour. But it is more among adults than children that the beneficial influence of art may be seen. In small v.] ART AND MORALS. Q5 country towns and villages it is sometimes not easy to get so many performers together as will constitute a band, but a class for art study, for drawing, or carving, would not require any particular number. No matter how small the village, the public-house finds no diffi- culty in keeping full ; and there is nothing so efficacious in counteracting the public-house as a little cultivation. It is ridiculous to lecture on tem- perance and force total abstinence on hard-worked men, unless you often find them some compensating entertainment, and I hope and believe that before very long this truth will be recognized, and some artistic object of interest for evening entertainment be added to the few now existing to counteract the tavern. The longing for beauty is acknowledged by the tavern-keepers. They are obliged to supply the want. They have music if possible, and the grog shop is transformed into a palace. Marble and granite columns, carved oak stalls, shining glass and silver, coloured lights and mirrors, are lavishly spent to attract the workman. If such an outlay pays, and it must pay or it would not be incurred so frequently, we may feel perfectly sure that the "licensed victualler" has hit on a want and supplies it. All these scenic and architectural effects are produced because he knows that the people whose lives are spent in labour have a craving for the sight of what is beautiful, and that if they can resist the mere attraction of drinking by itself, they will not be able to resist it when it is backed up and helped by all the gorgeous surround- ings of the gin palace. A movement has of late years been made at the 96 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. east end of London to do something to mitigate the sordid ugliness of home life. That working people should care for art or should like to see pretty things was thought a short time ago perfectly ridi- culous. Their houses were miserable and filthy, and they showed no taste either in their dress, or in their personal habits. One of the first moves was made by a parochial exhibition of works of art, which was held in one or two places. The people brought some curious specimens of domestic manu- facture. Old samplers, full rigged ships in fish-bone, cardboard models, a few drawings, a black letter family Bible or two, an old German engraving many such objects were shown, and the interest excited was very great. Then came the Bethnal Green Museum. To everybody's surprise the people flocked there in crowds, and competent witnesses declared that the working man's remarks on pictures were often at least as sensible as those of some professed critics. It will be a great pity if this movement is allowed to die out. Mr. Harry Jones has got leave to make a garden of the dreary waste of tombs which surrounds St. George's-in-the-East, and some benevolent ladies are endeavouring to start a " Beauty Mission " for the homes of the people, and I heartily wish them success. A few bare walls hung with pictures, a few flowers in the windows, a pretty tile on the hob, would, in my opinion, do more to keep men and women at home, and to promote family love, than libraries of tracts and platforms full of temperance lecturers. While we thus think of the homes of the poor, it V.] ART AND MORALS. 97 will not do for us to neglect our own. Mothers wonder oftentimes that their sons care so little for staying at home. But does it occur to them to ask themselves what they have done to make home happy and pleasant ? not happy only but pleasant also. Even a merry house, if it is untidy and dirty, if it is dingy and ugly, is unattractive to young people. They are unconsciously very sensitive to external impressions. The comfort and good taste of the club drawing-room has as much to do as the company and newspapers in bringing young men from home. Our sons are literally driven out to seek away from home that comfort and order which is there denied them. We nip the youthful taste in the bud : we look on mere art as a useless expense, and we lose hold of the strongest cord by which we might bind our children to home. A wise father all whose children have turned out well, and in different places and employments still love their home told me that he encouraged each of them from the first to " make a collection." Some of them had more decided taste than others. To several postage stamps and such insipid objects were enough. Others preferred pictures, engravings, carvings, or something distinctly artistic. In after life all these young men and women found themselves in the possession of at least a portion of the pocket-money they had received in youth, and found themselves moreover possessed of that inestimable advantage, whether in a busy or in an idle life, a love for something which would serve as an amusement and relaxation for leisure hours. LOF. H 9 S A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP Such people have no occasion for card-playing or gambling to pass a long evening. To them a spare hour is not an enemy to be killed. Satan finds no mischief for their idle hands to do. They wonder how anyone can complain of ennui, for their time is fully occupied, and life is only too short for what they want to get into it. So, too, even their passive enjoyment is immensely increased. The taste for fine scenery is a modern invention, and assuredly it is one of the greatest benefits mankind has received. I cannot help think- ing our modern love of beautiful landscape is the sign of a general improvement of all our race. Mankind has not been able till within the last few centuries to see fully how beautiful nature is, and now the love of nature is like a sixth sense. Virgil and the classical poets only introduce landscape incidentally. The Christian poets, with King David himself to lead them, alone describe natural loveliness properly that is, religiously. There is a yearning towards beauty in form and colour as well as in sound and in morals : and this yearning has almost always taken a religious direction. Even the impure worship of the Grecian gods had its pure aesthetic side : and the neglected author of the Book of Wisdom points it out in words worthy to be remembered : " The sky is fair," he says, " but He that made it fairer ; " and he counsels those who love Nature to look beyond it, observing that they "deemed neither fire or wind or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world ; with whose v.] ART AND MORALS. 99 beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods, let them know how much better the Lord of them is : for the first author of beauty hath created them." And St. Augustine expresses the same thought or one like it, and with almost equal majesty. It is to this upward yearning of men's minds that the wise educator will address himself. The higher our conception of material beauty, the higher will be our ideal of moral beauty. The more we study nature the more complex, the more complete she appears. The higher we rise in our intellectual progress, the further does wisdom seem to soar above us. And as day by day, year by year, age by age, we enlarge our power of conceiving beauty and harmony,- the more beautiful, the more harmonious does Creation appear to us. " Man doth seek," says an old writer, 1 " a triple perfection. First, a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth, either as neces- sary supplements or as beauties and ornaments thereof. Then an intellectual, consisting of those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with. Lastly, a spiritual or divine consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but here cannot attain unto them." And again, a little further on, " although the beauties, riches, honours, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men living were in the present possession of one : yet somewhat above and beyond all this there would still be sought and earnestly thirsted for. So that Nature, even in this life, doth plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection." 1 Hooker, EccL Pol., B. i. 35. 100 A PLEA FOR ART AT HOME. [CHAP. v. What this perfection is, how we shall know it, not even Hooker could tell us. To some it may appear in one way, to others in another. It may conie to us at home in the monotonous round of duty: it may be like a vision of angels by a stony pillow in a foreign land : or it may be reserved for that hereafter in which we shall recognise without doubt the author of all moral and material beauty, and know openly the features which here perchance we have often passed by in the crowd. LONDON : R CtAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, COLLINSON & LOCK. ARTISTIC FURNITURE IN THE OLD ENGLISH STYLE, Inexpensive. Soundly constructed. Most finished workmanship. CONSTRUCTIVE WOODWORK FOR INTERIORS, Staircases, "Wall Panelling, Ceilings, Windows, Mantel-Pieces, and Doors. CURTAIN FABRICS OF SILK, WOOL, AND COTTON. Of Special Design and Colour. Keproductions of Old Brocades. DECORATIVE WALL AND CEILING PAPERS. 109, FLEET STREET, LONDON, B.C. ART AT HOME SERIES. A Plea for Art in the House. With Special Reference to the Economy of Collecting Works of Art, and the Importance of Taste in Education and Morals. By W. J. LOFTIE, B.A., F.S.A., Author of " In and Out of London. " With Illustrations, Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. [Heady. Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork, and Furniture. By RHODA and AGNES GARRETT. With Illustrations, Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. [Ready. Drawing and Painting. By H. STAGEY MARKS, A.E.A. DreSS. By MRS. OLIPHANT. Family Music. By JOHN HULLAH. Domestic Architecture. By J. J. STEVENSON. Other Vols. on Gardening, Sculpture and Carving, Needlework and Lace-mahing, and other Subjects connected with Art at Home, will follow. MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. III U University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.