“I must say that I agree with Mr. Quart,” a member said. We don’t want any medical students coming round our War Memorials with green paint, as they say they do in London. We want an art that we can understand. It seems to me, that if we have a local War Memorial, we ought to employ local talent. I’m a builder myself, and it don’t beseem me to push my own wares; but a lot of local men could put up a simple stone with the names on and tidy it all round a bit, and have something over for a supper to the poor on Armistice Night. All these memorials in this book, Mr. Mansell, are a lot above us.”
“In what way above? I don’t quite see.”
“They aren’t the sort of thing people would like to have about.”
“But people do like to have them about. In some villages and towns they’re very proud of them. In one or two, they have even found that their War Memorial has given them a kind of fame. People come there from distances to see the Memorial. Just look at page thirty-three in that book, will you? That’s it—the Memorial at Naunton Crucis, a little place, with a very fine village cross, one of the best still standing. They got young Dick Pilbrow to do a marble for the great spring of water just opposite the Cross. That marble with the low relief is the result. It loses a full half of its beauty in a photograph; but you go over to Naunton and look at it. It’s only forty-odd miles. If it doesn’t take your breath away, I’ll be sorry for you. People go from all over the Continent to see that marble. It made young Pilbrow famous all over the world. He’s in America now, doing a fountain for one of their colleges.”
“Yes, but I don’t think that Stubbington would quite approve of marble figures with quite so few clothes,” Mrs. Methodde said. “Four hundred pounds may not be very much, but it should be enough to provide the figures, if we must have figures, with decent suitings. After all, we insist upon it, even at seaside resorts, and I feel that art ought not to have a lower standard in these matters than the ordinary rank and file of everyday people.”
Frampton looked at her with a kindling eye; he restrained his instinct to go for her. He heard comment of a slighting kind as the view of the Naunton fountain went down the table.
“Well, we don’t want anything like that,” was the most favourable remark which came to him.
“I want to add,” Frampton said, “that Pilbrow gave his work on that marble for love of the job. It was his first big chance to show what was in him; and luckily it led to other big chances being given to him. He has, therefore, grown to his capacity. Think how glad you would be, if you could set free another Pilbrow. It is all in that one phrase: ‘Setting free.’ Nations don’t alter. Men have the same kind of art power, year after year, century after century. Only in one century they will turn the power to building and decorating cathedrals, and in another to designing petrol pumps and mascots for motors. The power is there. All that is needed is a discrimination, and then a wise encouragement.”
“I don’t call it much encouragement,” Lady Susan said, “to put up a marble fountain for nothing.”
“It was just Life itself, he told me, after three years of neglect and starvation.”
“Well,” the Admiral said, “this fountain is all very well for Naunton Crucis, as they have that great spring of water there; the fountain suggests itself. I’m afraid that nothing of this kind would suit our triangle at the cross-ways. Tom here suggests a stone with the names, and some sort of flower-bed with evergreens. Does that seem a fair proposal?”
There was general approval of the stone with names and a sort of flower-bed. It would be the very thing; and in the space around it people could lay wreaths. Mr. Fence and Mr. Ock said that a plain brick plinth with marble facings was the sort of thing, surrounded by a grass plot fenced with chain swags. This was welcomed by most. The Rector asked Frampton what he, as adviser, thought of it.