“The art powers of a race,” he wrote, “do not decline; they are there. In some ages, they are encouraged, with good models and good incentives; in others, they are neglected or thwarted, with no incentive and with base models.
“What has happened in the English countryside? It must once have had an art encouragement and good models; the survivals prove it. Most villages had also some art of festival of dance, play or song; the survivals prove that. Where is the art now? Here and there an old man may still put a straw crown on the top of a rick, but who could carve a gargoyle for his church or be trusted to paint a decoration there? As for the festivals, I have lately been to one.
“Perhaps, it would be fair to explain that the idea of a festival, as something quite apart from the idea of making money, is dead among us. This festival was the attempt of a community to make money for a local charity. A charity in this country is usually made necessary by the stupidity of ruling classes, who at times call on the stupidity of all other classes to keep it, and thereby them, from a deserved death. So here.
“The festival was called a concert, a word defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a musical performance (usually of a series of separate pieces) in which a number of singers or players or both, take part.’ It took place, as such things usually do, in a building plainly designed as a morgue and then thwarted of its natural prey of suicides. In this disappointed morgue, designed for four hundred, a hundred and twenty people gathered to support charity for two hours upon old wooden chairs. It was a cold night, the building was not warmed, so far as one could perceive; it was as cold as charity. The total receipts, we heard, were just under twelve pounds. The expenses, with hire of hall, lighting, advertisements, leaflets, printing, secretary and accompanist came to nine pounds, eighteen shillings and fourpence. The charity is up by fourpence a head.
“I do not grudge the charity its two pounds; but I ask, what has happened to the English countryside, that a performance such as I endured can be offered as entertainment?
“I saw at that concert the results of a century and a half of landlordism and commercialism; both of which have driven the salt and marrow of the land out of the country or into the towns. I saw the art-starved soul in all its native hideousness. One man, indeed, tried to play some Chopin
“Now, we are by nature a musical and music-loving people. Our past proves that. We have welcomed musicians and composers for centuries; Beethoven blessed us; Handel, Haydn, Chopin all found welcome and shelter here. Yet in a fair-sized town like Stubbington a popular concert, given for a popular cause, contained not one other item which could be described as music. Imbecile song was followed by imbecile noise, made now upon a trombone, then upon what is called a ‘boys-get-bizziphone,’ of which the best that could be said, is that at times it was less loud than at others.
“I am not a Bolshevik in any way, but the arts are the fruits of a way of life; and in this concert I was offered the fruits of our present way of life, and have no hesitation in saying that any change would be for the good.”