BEAUTY IN DAILY LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3017, 10 January 1912, Page 83

BEAUTY IN DAILY LIFE.

WHY HAS IT DISAPPEARED THROUGHOUT THE CIViriSED WORLD? Mr Henry Holiday, the famous artist and friend of Burne-Jones and Holman Hunt, has a notable article with the above

title in the November Contemporary Review. “Is this heading a question-begging title?” he asks. "If we turn the question into a statement, we must admat, ami gladly do admit, that there arc exceptions : but these are only exceptions, and do not invalidate the substantial truth of the charge that beauty has practically ceased to form a natural part of the daily life among civilised nations. What is Meant by Beauty.— “By beauty is here meant all that makes life gracious, pure, and sweet, spiritually, socially, and materially, and it is the absence of this in the world as man makes it that is here deplored. If we leave Gcd’s world of infinite beauty, the world of hills and vales, of woods and rivers, of fields and flowers; if wo leave these and enter man’s own domain as it is now, is it fair and beautiful, or is it not dingy and depressing? ‘‘The first things that meet the eye are rows of dreary, monotonous houses, all exactly, alike, and therefore equally bald and ugly. We may go to quarters higher cr lower in the social scale, and find, on the one hand, little more beauty and little less monotony, but at least some suggestions of comfort, and, on the other hand, pitiful squalor, inhuman in its total lack Of everything that can make life tolerable, inhuman in its surfeit of filth and degradation, and of everything that makes life vile and terrible. People Who Don’t Miss It “ I would call attention first to the lamentable fact that, for the most part, we do not miss the vanished beauty which in former times blossomed on all sides The millions of dwellers in those streets which exhibit the lowest depths of dismal monotony arc callous to it; they have no experience of anything else, and look for nothing better; and even those of the educated classes who have cultivated their own taste, and have imparted something of grace and charm to their own bonus, take the prevailing ugliness as a matter of course, criticise the Philistinism of the masses, hut seem wholly unaware that the social life which exhibits these results must be a dismal failure —that the root must he diseased and corrupt which can only produce such miserable blossoms. “ The fact that beauty is not to he found in our ordinary life, and that its absence, is tacitly accepted, has been indirectly, but forcibly, brought out by recent occurrences in a way which compels us to think. Our Dingy Industries. —

“ What i s the cause of the extraordinary decision to exclude the representations of- all beneficent work from lloyal processions, to treat our Sovereigns- as if their sole aim and interest were fighting, and as if nothing which, is done in the country for the sustenance. elevation, and adornment of our national life deserved the smallest consideration? Can we believe that there is a single sane citizen who really holds this view? And if not, h'ow can we explain a practice which explicitly embodies it? “ I fear the explanation is too simple, and that the practice is profoundly and painfully significant. We all agree that the national pageant should bo beautiful, and that it must at least_ be brilliant; and how is this possible if it is to represent our industrial, our ioCfelectual, or our artistic lives? What do we find in any of these but dingy gloom? Beauty has been thrust out, nay kicked out, of all of them. “In former times a pageant required little special preparation; the people had merely t'o assemble and walk in procession, and beauty and pictureequeness in the highest degree were inevitable. The dresses of the citizens were full of delightful form and colour, and so were the streets through which they walked. Beauty pervaded their existence as_ the natural expression of their inclinations, and this resulted from the influences of (heir environment and of the conditions, of their lives. .—Picturesque Oriental Towns.—• “The same thing is still true of those parts of the Far East which have so far escaped the influences of that industrial system which prevails under European civilisation. Streets in Oriental towns are normally beautiful, and pageants arc magnificent, while in Europe we have re ciueed our attire to such a pitiful condition of dreary ugliness that we cannot for shame let it appear publicly in any situation where beauty would be looked for. and we emphasise the humiliating confession of our poverty-stricken taste by decking out with colour and gold and silver trimmings the one calling which might well be gloomy if its externals bore any relation to the awful needs to which its' members are doomed, except when they are idle at home or elsewhere. There is little enough real beauty in military dress, but much of it i 6 showy, and apparently satisfies the requirements of a generation which, as a rule, gets no beauty at all. What Has Destroyed Beauty?— “ A second, and even graver, question now confronts us. If the universally prevailing conditions and environments of the past led to a universal love of beauty and to the habitual and spontaneous production of beautiful work, what is there in the conditions of to-day which throughcut the Western world has destroyed this love and this capacity? The prevalence of both till after the middle of the eighteenth century shows that it was natural to man, and that its decay must have been due to a morbid state of society. . . “The cause of this strange and rapid decay can only be found in some factor tbat either did not exist at all throughput the earlier periods, or only in so slight a degree that it was unable to quench the natural love of _ doing good work which prevailed during all those centuries. “I only know of one factor which, fils

this description, and that one, doubtless, appeared first in a perfectly innocent form from -which none could have predicted Its later poisonous effects; and even when these did begin to develop themselves they were little understood, and the evil wjs email until it was suddenly accelerated in its action by a worlds shaking discovery in the latter part of the eighteenth century, since when th( fover has tfa-ged with great and everincreasing virulence. This factor is the system of buying cheap and selling dear, and living on the difference. —What Steam Power Did.— “The discovery of steam-power, which multiplied so enormously man’s means of production that it was said the comforts of life would be brought within the reach .of ail; and so they would had our jn- : dustrial life been based on humane and j Christian principles. But it was based ;on the principle of buying cheap and ‘ selling dear, on giving as little and grasping as much as possible in every transaction —i.e., on unqualified greed; and here was a new opportunity for putting that principle into practice On a scale hitherto undreamt of. > j “ The question, ‘Oan we promote the well-being of our fellow-creatures?’ never arose. The only question for the capitalists who started the new steam-power i factories was, ‘ Can -we buy our labour i cheap ?’ And they, could and did. By substituting steam for human hands they ! could dispense with ‘ hands ’; hence these ! ; became a drug in the market, and they i could get them so cheap that the hands cculd not support their families, and i women and children had to work under conditions which made their lives a long j misery. After many years this cruelty ■ was mitigated, chiefly by the noble efforts ; of the great Lord Shaftesbury : but the | evils are stil going on, and every day re- j veals stories of terrible fealfering and a universal unrest. j --Industry Dedicated to Mammon. —• ■ “ How could beauty exist in an atmosphere so foul as this? Work had become ( a drudgery in which none could take the ' smallest interest. What had became of those crafts which throughout the pxe--1 vious history of the world had been the ! delightful handiwork of craftsmen viho . had put their hearts into it? The change . ' may be expressed in three wordo. | “ All crafts had been turned into , trades—mostly d'shonest trades. Beauty i had been stifled, and vulgar finery and tawdry gimcracks were the only substitutes left. j “Wo have dedicated our whole industrial system to lire service of Mammon, and Beauty, spiritual, material, and _ social, is trampled under his feet, j —Think on These Things.— ! “ Happily,” concludes Mr Holiday, “there are now large numbers in every ■ class, though chiefly in tlb?. educated ■ middle class, who are earnestly seeking the promotion of a system of work which | will not appeal to greed, which will be i | based upon "a genuine spirit cf goodwill • and brotherhood, and whose motto may / be, ‘Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever tilings are of good report, think on these things.’ ”