“I’ve been,” he said, “I’ve been about a lot of England, following my business, and I’ve seta a lot of so-called War Memorials. They’ve been two classes in the main, as you might say: the class the people have had some say in, which is what they think their dear ones would have liked, and the class foisted on them by people who can’t be satisfied with what their own country produces, but go bringing in all sorts. They think these things are very artistic, but if you’d heard the complaints I’ve heard about some of those things, complaints which can’t get into the papers, mind you, you’d agree that these matters are best left to practical men.”
Several people came in here; indeed they came in at intervals all through the evening. In a lull, Frampton asked the Chairman if he might speak, and having been asked to do so, said:
“My work has taken me over most of England since the War; I suppose I have seen hundreds of War Memorials. I’ve studied them carefully. I have photographs of hundreds of them, over eleven hundred, certainly; my books of them are here at your service. Most of these Memorials are works of dignity, as all works must be which proceed, as these do, from very deep feeling. Some of the best of them, all the very best of them, are works of art. I do not doubt that you in Stubbington want your Memorial to be among the very best in the land, a real work of art.”
A little, excitable, pale-faced man, with side-whiskers and very bright eyes said that they wanted the best value their money could buy, but it must be what would seem the best value to those whose money it was; they did not want any of this foreign stuff that was coming over, not in Stubbington.
The grocer, who was portly, rosy in the gill, and with a reek of cloves about him, which cloves he chewed to disguise the smell of alcohol, said that the last speaker had hit it.
“Don’t be too artistic; give us something that we can understand, Mr. Mansell,” he said.
Mr. Ock, of Font and Vespers, said, that as many memorials had to be in public ways, the man in the street was the best judge; the plain taste was the best. You could not fool the people. Put up the dozen competing designs, and have a plebiscite, and you’d find the people reject the artistic thing, so-called, in favour of the thing they understood.
“You say you can’t fool the people,” Frampton said. “That is not the whole quotation. The sage said: ‘You can’t fool all the people
“Yes, as long as it can be understood,” the grocer said.
It occurred to Frampton suddenly that he had seen this man behind the counter of a big and prosperous store in Stubbington.
“Sir,” Frampton said, “if the Queen were to come into your store and ask to taste some biscuits, would you ask her which biscuits she understood, and then try whether she understood them properly? You wouldn’t do anything of the sort. You’d get the most expensive biscuits in your store, the ones you yourself long to be always eating but which only millionaires can really afford, wouldn’t you now?”
There was a laugh at this; the grocer laughed, too.
“In the long run, that is the only thing that survives, the very best,” Frampton said. “It is the only thing that can move all people all the time. You ask the curator of any gallery or museum what exhibitions are successful; he will tell you, the best exhibitions, the shows of the masters. You here, in Stubbington, want a work of art. A work of art proceeds from the mind of a rare type of man; not from a business firm of men, however experienced, or however practical. The artist may be thirty years ahead of his time; his work may seem strange indeed to one not accustomed to the play and the leap of intellect. This town has had no work of art added to it for two hundred and forty years, when you put up your Corn Exchange. You must be prepared for a bit of a shock, after so long an abstinence. There seems to be unanimity here, that you want a work of art. But am I right about that? Is that decided? Is there no question of a water supply or a playing-field?”
Lady Susan Drachm, who had been watching him with disfavour, put in here, with:
“I didn’t hear that we had decided against a water supply or a playing field. It wasn’t put to the vote.”
“I’m sorry to have mistaken,” Frampton said.
“It hasn’t been put to the vote,” the Rector said, “but I will gladly put it to the meeting, that the field of enquiry may be limited. After all, we have invited Mr. Mansell here to advise us about matters of art, and he must, therefore, have assumed that the field of enquiry had already been limited. Shall I put it?”