The Press Saturday, November 15, 1930. The Olde Cottage.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20086, 15 November 1930, Page 14

The Press Saturday, November 15, 1930. The Olde Cottage.

The editorial notes of the October number of the London Mercury return to a subject which has been treated there very often and with invariably good sense, the salvation of the countryside. Interest has been awakened, partly by the 'Mercury's efforts, and successes of almost surprising number and extent have been achieved by the National Trust and other organisations; but interest remains "a special- " ist's interest." If what is sought is n " common standard .of beauty," which shall include " the preservation of all that is worth preserving and " the supervision of all that is new," the pursuit has only begun. The public is not shamed when " develop- " ment," having pushed a broad black road through the fields, borders its length with " a thin ribbon of sham- " Tudor villas, built without plan, " grouped without order, never beauti- " ful and rarely convenient"; nor is public taste offended by tasteless borrowings from the Middle Ages, tasteless fakes and imitations which reveal a hopeless confusion of oddity and antiquity with beauty. Though beauty ages so well, soothed by the gentle, invisible hand of time into gradually perfect composure, what is old is not always what is beautiful. Yet the identity is assumed, with results that are for the most part as stupid failures in utility as in ornament. This attitude results in the incubus of olde Tudor, which is battering on our countryside, and on our country towns. Even in London a sensitive person ought to feel embarrassed at such a monstrosity as the half-timbered flats lately built between Lord's Cricket Ground and the Edgware road, or those others not far from H'ghgate Cemetery; and in the country it is scarcely possible to find a village without a nauseating stubble of halftimber growing on its fringes. All the concomitants are there —the modern brass bells, in which the clapper strikes the inside of a crinoline; the dainty pottery, glazed with deliberate inefficiency; the sprigged tea-cosy, purposely unsuitable. The roofs of these houses are—in the richer examples—purposely sagging, the doors purposely too low, the windows purposely too small. The lower rooms are all but too low to stand in, the upper rooms, owing to the pent of the roof, are immensely high. 'These things can b© attractive when they are genuine, but, when spurious, they have the blowzy artlessnees of a lifted face, determined (paradoxically) to be old at all costs. Even the timber is not always real. We should not be, surprised to hear that it is stencilled on afterwards.

Andy crooning over the past in this unintelligent rapture and aping its ■ways, without considering why they ■were followed and where they led, ends not only in abusing the present, as the Mercury says, but in making it uncomfortable. " Those little brass bells " ace not practical; in 1930 their work " is done far better by The " sprigged tea-cosy catches the dust "and the tea. The slit-like windows "in 1930 olde Tudor are positively "wicked." Unowned of Art, in whose name they are done, such works are not artistic but arty. The odd thing is that for this nndiscriminating adoraI tion of everything old enough not to be unfashionable, and for the stupid imitation of its nnserviceable N quaintness, WilliaDa. Morris's and Ruskin's really valuable reforms are partly to blame. Even directly, Raskin was ' responsible for slavish .imitation, as in His Venetian Gothic, "which l brought down on him the indignation of Leslie Stephen: " What will posterity think " of our masquerading in old clothes? " Will they want a new Cromwell to " sweep away nineteenth-century shams " or will they be content to let our " pretentious rubbish find its natural j " road -to ruin 1" Posterity hafe found other old clothes to-do its own masquerading * in. But "all the con- " comitants " of ye bide cottage are in a sense the perversions and heresies of. Morris's pure doctrine. He rebelled against teapots so ugly-elegant thatthey would not pour well or stand up ] safely, against chairs impossible to move or sit in easily, against everything in which use was sacrificed to ornament and ornament therefore became an abomination; and he turned* very rightly, to traditional craftsmanship fo* models and methods. Art, craftsmanship, and life were .to be drawn close together. Morris achieved something, though what he taught has always to be learned over again and re-interpreted. Partly because it has not been; people are torday. running mad over old things, copying them for the sake 1 , of theirage, Whether the design is good or bad for the purposein hand; but it was not age that Morris worshipped in the products of the past, it was, design, the achievement of beauty within the limits fixed by use and material. Unhappily, as those limits have been widened by all the engineering sciences, until a builder can now command' almost any combination of materials, judgment has not developed fast enough to use this freedom well. Mr Basil de Sdlineourt, a few years ago, pointed out how, only a, century ago, its very restrictions imposed harmony on architecture. If a man built a house, he had to build it from materials near at hand. His neighbours had always done the same, so that each district had its own architecture and a village - was a natural harmony, at one with itself and with the landscape; for the wood and the stone supplied by hill and field were worked into its walls and roofs and timbering. Broadly, beauty took care of itself, resting easily on the unity of building with surroundings; in particular, it was cultivated by men who had mastered the use of their few materials and were guided by affectionate familiarity in decorating theni. Now, when we can build as we like vhere we like, we build too often not fitly. Able to build any way, we build anyhow, and not seldom worst when meet intent on building beautifully—or on beautifying: a truth of which

Cfaristcfaurch has its hints and "revelations. "The beauty of man's handiu wor k f w Mr de Selincourt wrote, " has "in the past been aa much a process "as a creation, and of all that part "of it -which was process be was vir«tually unaware." But now what grows of itself, out of our turbulent freedom and abundance, is ugliness, is discord, is falsity. There is no remedy but the slow evolution of just, conscious, creative control.

New Zealand Cricket Council. There are'some interesting passages in the Annual Report of the New Zealand Cricket Council, portions of which we print to-day. There is first of all the statement that the Second Test at Wellington might have been won but for " several serious .blunders in the field." This is blunt but true, and cricketers will be glad to know that the Council proposes to instruct the selectors of the New Zealand team which will visit England next year not only to pay special attention to fielding, but to select no one " whose fielding fails to "reach a fair average standard." The Council might with advantage go further than this and insist that no player shall bo selected whose fielding is not good. Next years tour of England will be our last for at least eight years, and it is to be hoped -that no one will be included in the team who is not capable of helping the bowling to keep down runs. For although our batsmanship is good, our bowling is not good; and even if it were very much better than it is, bad fielding would destroy. its effectiveness. Then there is the problem of bad umpiring, as a solution of which thp Council has considered the English system of getting captains to supply confidential reports. Although umpiring is a far m<jre troublesome problem here than it is in England, where they have retired professionals to draw on, and maintain a very high standard, there is no reason why we should not adopt the English system so far as it is applicable to our conditions. Some of our readers will remember the good-humoured but still severely critical references to our umpiring in Messrs Allom and Turnbull's book on the M.C.C. tour; but when we remember how completely New Zealand depends on amateurs, who get too little practice at umpiring in first-class games, we ought to be grateful that we escape so well.