I remember especially in one particular window where this colour scheme was adopted—an "Anemone-coloured" window—the modification of the one splash of red by the introduction of a lighter pink which suggested itself in the course of work as it went along, and was the pet fancy of an assistant—readily accepted.

The window in question is small and in nowise remarkable, but it was in the course of a ride taken to see it in its place, on one of those glorious mornings when Spring puts on all the pageantry of Summer, that the thoughts with which we are now dealing, and especially the thoughts of the infinite suggestion which Nature gives in untouched country and of the need we have to drink often at that fountain, were borne in upon the writer with more than usual force.

To take in fully and often the glowing life and strength and renewal direct from Nature is part of every man's proper manhood, still more then of every artist's artistry and student's studentship.

And truly 'tis no great hardship to go out to meet the salutary discipline when the country is beautiful in mid-April, and the road good and the sun pleasant. The Spring air sets the blood racing as you ride, and when you stop and stand for a moment to enjoy these things, ankle-deep in roadside grass, you can seem to hear the healthy pulses beating and see the wavy line of hills beating with them, as you look at the sun-warmed world.

It is good sometimes to think where we are in the scheme of things, to realise that we are under the bell-glass of this balmy air, which shuts us in, safe from the pitch-dark spaces of infinite cold, through which the world is sweeping at eighteen miles a second; while we, with all our little problems to solve and work to do, are riding warm by this fireside, and the orange-tip butterflies with that curious pertinacity of flight which is speed without haste are keeping up their incessant, rippling patrol, to and fro along the length of every sunny lane, above the ditch-side border of white-blossomed keck!

What has all this to do with stained-glass?

Everything, my boy! Be a human! For you have got to choose your place in things, and to choose on which side you will work.

A choice which, in these days, more than ever perhaps before, is one between such things as these and the money-getting which cares so little for them. I have tried to show you one side by speaking of a little part of what may be seen and felt on a spring morning, along a ridge of untouched hills in "pleasant Hertfordshire:"[1] if you want to see the other side of things ride across to Buntingford, and take the train back up the Lea Valley. Look at Stratford (and smell it) and imagine it spreading, as no doubt it will, where its outposts of oil-mill and factory have already led the way, and think of the valley full up with slums, from Lea Bridge to Ponders End! For the present writer can remember—and that not half a lifetime back—Edmonton and Tottenham, Brondesbury and Upton Park, sweet country villages where quiet people lived and farmed and gardened amidst the orchards, fields, and hawthorn lanes.

Here now live, in mile after mile of jerry-building, the "hands" who, never taught any craft or work worthy of a man, spend their lives in some little single operation that, as it happens, no machine has yet been invented to perform; month after month, year after year, painting, let us say, endless repeats of one pattern to use as they are required for the borders of pious windows in the churches of this land.

This is the "other side of things," much commended by what is looked on as "robust common sense"; and with this you have—nothing to do. Your place is elsewhere, and if it needs be that it seems an isolated one, you must bear it and accept it. Nature and your craft will solve all; live in them, bathe in them to the lips; and let nothing tempt you away from them to measure things by the standard of the mart.

Let us go back to our sunny hillside. "It is good for us to be here," for this also is Holy Ground; and you must indeed be much amongst such things if you would do stained-glass, for you will never learn all the joy of it in a dusty shop.

"So hard to get out of London?"

But get a bicycle then;—only sit upright on it and go slow—and get away from these bricks and mortar, to where we can see things like these! those dandelions and daisies against the deep, green grass; the blazing candles of the sycamore buds against the purple haze of the oak copse; and those willows like puffs of grey smoke where the stream winds. Did you ever? No, you never! Well—do it then!

But indeed, having stated our principles of colour, the practice of those principles and the influence of nature and of nature's hints upon that practice are infinite, both in number and variety. The flowers of the field and garden; butterflies, birds, and shells; the pebbles of the shore; above all, the dry seaweeds, lying there, with the evening sun slanting through them. These last are exceedingly like both in colour and texture, or rather in colour and the amount of translucency, to fine old stained-glass; so also are dead leaves. But, in short, the thing is endless. The "wine when it is red" (or amber, as the case may be), even the whisky and water, and whisky without water, side by side, make just those straw and ripe-corn coloured golden-yellows that are so hard to attain in stained-glass (impossible indeed by means of yellow-stain), and yet so much to be desired and sought after.

Will you have more hints still? Well, there are many tropical butterflies, chiefly among the Pierinf, with broad spaces of yellow dashed with one small spot or flush of vivid orange or red. Now you know how terrible yellow and red may be made to look in a window; for you have seen "ruby" robes in conjunction with "yellow-stain," or the still more horrible combination where ruby has been acided off from a yellow base. But it is a question of the actual quality of the two tints and also of their quantity. What I have spoken of looks horrible because the yellow is of a brassy tone, as stain so often is, especially on green-white glasses, and the red inclining to puce—jam-colour. It is no use talking, therefore, of "red and yellow"—we must say what red and what yellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies—while if one wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the hint from such things—to splash the golden wings of your Resurrection Angel as he rolls away the stone with scarlet beads of sunrise, not seen but felt from where you stand on the pavement below. I want the reader to fully grasp this question of quantity, so I will instance the flower of the mullein which contains almost the very tints of the "lemon," and the "dahlia" I quoted, and yet is beautiful by virtue of its quantities: which may be said to be of a "lemon" yellow and yet can bear (ay! can it not?) the little crimson stamens in the heart of it and its sage-green leaves around.

And there is even something besides "tint" and "quantity." The way you distribute your colour matters very much. Some in washes, some in splashes, some in spots, some in stripes. What will "not do" in one way will often be just right in the other: yes, and the very way you treat your glass when all is chosen and placed together—matt in one place, film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw glass with texture and bringing out its nature and its life.

Do not be afraid; for the things that yet remain to do are numberless. Do you like the look of deep vivid vermilion-red, upon dark cold green? Look at the hip-loaded rose-briar burning in the last rays of a red October sunset! You get physical pleasure from the sight; the eye seems to vibrate to the harmony as the ear enjoys a chord struck upon the strings. Therefore do not fear. But mind, it must be in nature's actual colour, not merely "green" and "red": for I once saw the head of a celebrated tragic actress painted by a Dutch artist who, to make it as deathly as he could, had placed the ashen face upon a background of emerald-green with spots of actual red sealing-wax. The eye was so affected that the colours swung to and fro, producing in a short time a nausea like sea-sickness. That is not pleasure.

The training of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual; springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once, even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try some simple scheme from the things of Nature. Hyacinths look well with their leaves: therefore that green and that blue, with the white of April clouds and the black of the tree-stems in the wood are colours that can be used together.

You must be prepared to find almost a sort of penalty in this habit of looking at everything with the eye of a stained-glass artist. One seems after a time to see natural objects with numbers attached to them corresponding with the numbers of one's glasses in the racks: butterflies flying about labelled "No. 50, deep," or "75a, pale," or a bit of "123, special streaky" in the sunset. But if one does not obtrude this so as to bore one's friends, the little personal discomfort, if it exists, is a very small price to pay for the delight of living in this glorious fairyland of colour.

Do not think it beneath your dignity or as if you were shirking some vital artistic obligation, to take hints from these natural objects, or from ancient or modern glass, in a perfectly frank and simple manner; nay, even to match your whole colour scheme, tint for tint, by them if it seems well to you. You may get help anywhere and from anything, and as much as you like; it will only be so much more chance for you; so much richer a store to choose from, so much stronger resource to guide to good end; for after all, with all the helps you can get, much lies in the doing. Do what you like then—as a child: but be sure you do like it: and if the window wants a bit of any particular tint, put it there, meaning or no meaning. If there is no robe or other feature to excuse and account for it in the spot which seems to crave for it,—put the colour in, anywhere and anyhow—in the background if need be—a sudden orange or ruby "quarry" or bit of a quarry, as if the thing were done in purest waywardness. "You would like a bit there if there were an excuse for it?" Then there is an excuse—the best of all—that the eye demands it. Do it fearlessly.

But to work in this way (it hardly need be said) you must watch and work at your glass yourself; for these hints come late on in the work, when colour, light and shade, and design are all fusing together into a harmony. You can no more forecast these final accidents, which are the flower and crown and finish of the whole, than you could forecast the lost "Chord";—

"Which came from the soul of the organ, And entered into mine."

It "comes from the soul" of the window.

We all know the feeling—the climaxes, exceptions, surprises, suspensions, in which harmony delights; the change from the last bar of the overture to the first of the opening recitative in the "Messiah," the chord upon which the victor is crowned in "The Meistersingers," the 59th and 60th bars in Handel's "Every Valley." (I hope some of us are "old-fashioned" enough to be unashamed of still believing in Handel!)

Or if it may be said that these are hardly examples of the kind of accidental things I have spoken of, being rather, indeed, the deliberately arranged climax to which the whole construction has been leading, I would instance the 12th (complete) bar in the overture to "Tannhduser," the 20th and 22nd bar in Chopin's Funeral March, the change from the minor to major in Schubert's Romance from "Rosamunde," and the 24th bar in his Serenade (Staendchen), the 13th and following bars of the Crescendo in the Largo Appassionato of Beethoven's Op. 2. Or if you wish to have an example where all is exception, like one of the south nave windows in York Minster, the opening of the "Sonata Appassionata," Op. 57.

Now how can you forecast such things as these!

Let me draw another instance from actual practice. I was once painting a figure of a bishop in what I meant to be a dark green robe, the kind of black, and yet vivid, green of the summer leafage of the oak; for it was St. Boniface who cut down the heathen oak of Frisia. But the orphreys of his cope were to be embroidered in gold upon this green, and therefore the pattern had first to be added out in white upon a blue-flashed glass, which yellow stain over all would afterwards turn into green and gold. And when all was prepared and the staining should have followed, my head man sent for me to come to the shop, and there hung the figure with its dark green robe with orphreys of deep blue and silver.

"I thought you'd like to look at it before we stained it," said he.

"STAIN IT!" I said. "I wouldn't touch it; not for sixpence three-farthings!"

There was a sigh of relief all round the shop, and the reply was, "Well, so we all thought!"

Just so; therefore the figure remained, and so was erected in its place. Now suppose I had had men who did what they were told, instead of being encouraged to think and feel and suggest?

A serious word to you about this question of staining. It is a resource very easily open to abuse—to excess. Be careful of the danger, and never stain without first trying the effect on the back of the easel-plate with pure gamboge, and if you wish for a very clear orange-stain, mix with the gamboge a little ordinary red ink. It is too much the custom to "pick out" every bit of silver "canopy" work with dottings and stripings of yellow. A little sometimes warms up pleasantly what would be too cold—and the old men used it with effect: but the modern tendency, as is the case in all things merely imitative, is to overdo it. For the old men used it very differently from those who copy them in the way I am speaking of, and, to begin with, used it chiefly on pure white glass. Much modern canopy work is done on greenish-white, upon which the stain immediately becomes that greenish-yellow that I have called "brassy." A little of this can be borne, when side by side with it is placed stain upon pure white. The reader will easily find, if he looks for them, plenty of examples in old glass, where the stain upon the white glass has taken even a rosy tinge exactly like that of a yellow crocus seen through its white sheath. It is perhaps owing partly to patina on the old glass, which "scumbles" it; but I have myself sometimes succeeded in getting the same effect by using yellow-stain on pure white glass. A whole window, where the highest light is a greenish white, is to me very unpleasant, and when in addition yellow-stain is used, unbearable. This became a fashion in stained-glass when red-lead-coloured pigments, started by Barff's formula, came into general use. They could not be used on pure white glass, and therefore pure white glass was discarded and greenish-white used instead. I can only say that if the practice of stained-glass were presented to me with this condition—of abstaining from the use of pure white—I would try to learn some useful trade.

There is another question of ideals in the treatment of colour in stained-glass about which a word must be said.

Those who are enthusiastic about the material of stained-glass and its improvement are apt to condemn the degree of heaviness with which windows are ordinarily painted, and this to some extent is a just criticism. But I cannot go the length of thinking that all matt-painting should be avoided, and outline only used; or that stained-glass material can, except under very unusual conditions and in exceptional situations, be independent of this resource. As to the slab-glasses—"Early-English," "Norman," or "stamped-circles"—which are chiefly affected by this question, the texture and surface upon which their special character depends is sometimes a very useful resource in work seen against, or partly against, background of trees or buildings; while against an entirely "borrowed" light perhaps, sometimes, it can almost dispense with any painting. The grey shadows that come from the background play about in the glass and modify its tones, doing the work of painting, and doing it much more beautifully. But this advantage cannot always be had, for it vanishes against clear sky. It is all, therefore, a question of situation and of aspect, and I believe the right rule to be to do in all cases what seems best for every individual bit of glass—that each piece should be "cared for" on its merits and "nursed," so to speak, and its qualities brought out and its beauty heightened by any and every means, just as if it were a jewel to be cut (or left uncut) or foiled (or left unfoiled)—as Benvenuto Cellini would treat, as he tells you he did treat, precious stones. There is a fashion now of thinking that gems should be uncut. Well, gems are hardly a fair comparison in discussing stained-glass; for in glass what we aim at is the effect of a composition and combination of a multitude of things, while gems are individual things, for the most part, to be looked at separately. But I would not lay down a rule even about gems. Certainly the universal, awkward, faceting of all precious stones—which is a relic of the mid-Victorian period—is a vulgarity that one is glad to be rid of; but if one wants for any reason the special sparkle, here or there, which comes from it, why not use it? I would use it in stained-glass—have done so. If I have got my window already brilliant and the whites pure white, and still want, over and above all this, my "Star of the Nativity," let us say, to sparkle out with a light that cannot be its own, shall I not use a faceted "jewel" of glass, forty feet from the eye, where none can see what it is but only what it does, just because it would be a gross vulgarity to use it where it would pretend to be a diamond?

The safe guide (as far as there can be a guide where I have maintained that there should not be a rule) is, surely, to generally get the depth of colour that you want by the glass itself, if you can, and therefore with that aim to deal with rich, full-coloured glass and to promote its manufacture. But this being once done and the resource carried to its full limit, there is no reason why you should deny yourself the further resource of touching it with pigment to any extent that may seem fit to you as an artist, and necessary to get the effect of colour and texture that you are aiming at, in the thing seen as a whole. As to the exaggeration of making accidental streaks in the glass do duty for folds of drapery, and manufacturing glass (as has been done) to meet this purpose, I hold the thing to be a gross degradation and an entire misconception of the relation of materials to art. You may also lay this to mind, as a thing worthy of consideration, that all old glass was painted, and that no school of stained-glass has ever existed which made a principle of refusing this aid. I would never argue from this that such cannot exist, but it is a thing to be thought on.

Throw your net, then, into every sea, and catch what you can. Learn what purple is, in the north ambulatory at York; what green is, in the east window of the same, in the ante-chapel of New College, Oxford, and in the "Adam and Eve" window in the north aisle at Fairford; what blue and red are, in the glorious east window of the nave at Gloucester, and in the glow and gloom of Chartres and Canterbury and King's College, Cambridge. And when you have got all these things in your mind, and gathered lavishly in the field of Nature also, face your problem with a heart heated through with the memory of them all, and with a will braced as to a great and arduous task, but one of rich reward. For remember this (and so let us draw to an end), that in any large window the spaces are so great and the problems so numerous that a few colours and groupings of colour, however well chosen, will not suffice. Set out the main scheme of colours first: those that shall lead and preponderate and convey your meaning to the mind and your intended impression to the eye. But if you stop here, the effect will be hard and coarse and cold-hearted in its harmonies, a lot of banging notes like a band all brass, not out of tune perhaps, but craving for the infinite embroidery of the strings and wood.

When, therefore, the main relations of colour have been all set out and decided for your window, turn your attention to small differences, to harmonies round the harmonies. Make each note into a chord, each tint into a group of tints, not only the strong and bold, but also the subtle and tender; do not miss the value of small modifications of tint that soften brilliance into glow. Study how Nature does it on the petals of the pansy or sweet-pea. You think a pansy is purple, and there an end? but cut out the pale yellow band, the orange central spot, the faint lilacs and whites in between, and where is your pansy gone?

* * * * *

And here I must now leave it to you. But one last little hint, and do not smile at its simplicity.

For the problem, after all, when you have gathered all the hints you can from nature or the past, and collected your resources from however varied fields, resolves itself at last into one question—"How shall I do it in glass?" And the practical solving of this problem is in the handling of the actual bits of coloured glass which are the tools of your craft. And for manipulating these I have found nothing so good as that old-fashioned toy—still my own delight when a sick-bed enforces idleness—the kaleidoscope. A sixpenny one, pulled to pieces, will give you the knowledge of how to make it; and you will find a "Bath-Oliver" biscuit-tin, or a large-sized millboard "postal-roll" will make an excellent instrument. But the former is best, because you also then have the lid and the end. If you cut away all the end of the lid except a rim of one-eighth of an inch, and insert in its place with cement a piece of ground-glass, and then, inside this, have another lid of clear glass cemented on to a rim of wood or millboard, you can, in the space between the two, place chips of the glasses you think of using; and, replacing the whole on the instrument, a few minutes of turning with the hand will give you, not hundreds, but thousand of changes, both of the arrangement, and, what is far more important, of the proportions of the various colours. You can thus in a few moments watch them pass through an almost infinite succession of changes in their relation to each other, and form your judgment on those changes, choosing finally that which seems best. And I really think that the fact of these combinations being presented to us, as they are by the action of the instrument, arranged in ordered shapes, is a help to the judgment in deciding on the harmonies of colour. It is natural that it should be so. "Order is Heaven's first law." And it is right that we should rejoice in things ordered and arranged, as the savage in his string of beads, and reasonable that we should find it easier to judge them in order rather than confused.

Each in his place. How good a thing it is! how much to be desired! how well if we ourselves could be so, and know of the pattern that we make! For our lives are like the broken bits of glass, sadly or brightly coloured, jostled about and shaken hither and thither, in a seeming confusion, which yet we hope is somewhere held up to a light in which each one meets with his own, and holds his place; and, to the Eye that watches, plays his part in a universal harmony by us, as yet, unseen.

[1] West of the road between Welwyn and Hitchin.



CHAPTER XVII

OF ARCHITECTURAL FITNESS

Come, in thought, reader, and stand in quiet village churches, nestling amongst trees where rooks are building; or in gaps of the chalk downs, where the village shelters from the wind; or in stately cathedrals, where the aisles echo to the footstep and the sound of the chimes comes down, with the memory of the centuries which have lived and died. Here the old artists set their handmark to live now they are gone, and we who see it today see, if our eye be single, with what sincerity they built, carved, or painted their heart and life into these stones. In such a spirit and for such a memorial you too must do your work, to be weighed by the judgment of the coming ages, when you in turn are gone, in the same balance as theirs—perhaps even side by side with it.

And will you dare to venture? Have no fear if you also bring your best. But if we enter on work like this as to a mere market for our wares, and with no other thought than to make a brisk business with those that buy and sell; we well may pray that some merciful scourge of small cords drive us also hence to dig or beg (which is more honourable), lest worse befall us!

And I do not say these things because this or that place is "God's house." All places are so, and the first that was called so was the bare hillside; but because you are a man and have indeed here arrived, as there the lonely traveller did, at the arena of your wrestling. But, granted that you mean to hold your own and put your strength into it, I have brought you to these grave walls to consult with them as to the limits they impose upon your working.

And perhaps the most important of all is already observed by your being here, for it is important that you should visit, whenever possible, the place where you are to do work; if you are not able to do this, get all the particulars you can as to aspect and surroundings. And yet a reservation must be made, even upon all this; for everything depends upon the way we use it, and if you only have an eye to the showing off of your work to advantage, treating the church as a mere frame for your picture, it would be better that your window should misfit and have to be cut down and altered, or anything else happen to it that would help to put it back and make it take second place. It is so hard to explain these things so that they cannot be misconstrued; but you remember I quoted the windows at St. Philip's, Birmingham, as an example of noble thought and work carried to the pitch of perfection and design. But that was in a classic building, with large, plain, single openings without tracery. Do you think the artist would have let himself go, in that full and ample way, in a beautiful Gothic building full of lovely architectural detail? Not so: rather would he have made his pictures hang lightly and daintily in the air amongst the slender shafts, as in St. Martin's Church in the same town, at Jesus College and at All Saints' Church, Cambridge, at Tamworth; and in Lyndhurst, and many another church where the architecture, to say truth, had but slender claims to such respect.

* * * * *

In short, you must think of the building first, and make your windows help it. You must observe its scale and the spacing and proportions of its style, and place your own work, with whatever new feeling and new detail may be natural to you, well within those circumscribing bounds.

But here we find ourselves suddenly brought sharp up, face to face with a most difficult and thorny subject, upon which we have rushed without knowing it. "Must we observe then" (you say) "the style of the building into which we put our work, and not have a style of our own that is native to us?"

"This is contrary to all you have been preaching! The old men did not so. Did they not add the fancies of their own time to the old work, and fill with their dainty, branching tracery the severe, round-headed, Norman openings of Peterborough and Gloucester? Did fifteenth-century men do thirteenth-century glass when they had to refill a window of that date?" No. Nor must you. Never imitate, but graft your own work on to the old, reverently, and only changing from it so far forth as you, like itself, have also a living tradition, springing from mastery of craft—naturally, spontaneously, and inevitably.

Whether we shall ever again have such a tradition running throughout all the arts is a thing that cannot possibly be foretold. But three things we may be quite sure of.

First, that if it comes it will not be by way of any imitative revival of a past style;

Second, that it will be in harmony with the principles of Nature; and

Third, that it will be founded upon the crafts, and brought about by craftsmen working in it with their own hands, on the materials of architecture, designing only what they themselves can execute, and giving employment to others only in what they themselves can do.

A word about each of these three conditions.

In the course of the various attempted revivals in architecture that have taken place during the past sixty years, it has been frequently urged both by writers and architects that we should agree to revive some one style of ancient art that might again become a national style of architecture. It would, indeed, no doubt be better, if we must speak in a dead language, to agree to use only one, instead of our present confusion of tongues: but what, after all, is the adopting of this principle at all but to engage once again in the replanting of a full-grown tree—the mistake of the Renaissance and the Gothic revival repeated? Such things never take firm root or establish healthy growth which lives and goes on of its own vitality. They never succeed in obtaining a natural, national sympathy and acceptance. The movement is a scholarly and academic one, and the art so remains. The reaction against it is always a return to materials, and almost always the first result of this is a revival of simplicity. People get tired of being surrounded with elaborate mouldings and traceries and other architectural features, which are not the natural growth of their own day but of another day long since dead, which had other thoughts and moods, feelings and aspirations. "Let us have straightforward masonry and simple openings, and ornament them with something from Nature."

So in the very midst of the pampered and enervated over-refinement of Roman decay, Constantine did something more than merely turn the conquering eagle back, against the course of the heavens, for which Dante seems to blame him,[2] when he established his capital at Byzantium; for there at once upon the new soil, and in less than a single century, sprang to life again all the natural modes of building and decoration that, despised as barbaric, had been ignored and forgotten amid the Roman luxury and sham.

It is a curious feature of these latest days of ours that this searching after sincerity should seem to be leading us towards a similar revival; taking even very much the same forms. We went back, at the time of the Gothic revival, to the forgotten Gothic art of stained-glass; now tired, as it would seem, of the insincerity and mere spirit of imitation with which it and similar arts have been practised, a number of us appear to be ready to throw it aside, along with scholarly mouldings and traceries, and build our arts afresh out of the ground, as was done by the Byzantines, with plain brickwork, mosaic, and matched slabs of marble. Definite examples in recent architecture will occur to the reader. But I am thinking less of these—which for the most part are deliberate and scholastic revivals of a particular style, founded on the study of previous examples and executed on rigid academic methods—than of what appears to be a widespread awakening to principles of simplicity, sincerity, and common sense in the arts of building generally. Signs are not wanting of a revived interest in building—a revived interest in materials for their own sake, and a revived practice of personally working in them and experimenting with them. One calls to mind examples of these things, growing in number daily—plain and strong furniture made with the designer's own hands and without machinery, and enjoyed in the making—made for actual places and personal needs and tastes; houses built in the same spirit by architects who condescend to be masons also; an effort here and an effort there to revive the common ways of building that used to prevail—and not so long ago—for the ordinary housing and uses of country-folk and country-life, and which gave us cottages, barns, and sheds throughout the length and breadth of the land; simple things for simple needs, built by simple men, without self-consciousness, for actual use and pleasant dwelling; traditional construction and the habits of making belonging to the country-side. These still linger in the time-honoured ways of making the waggon and the cart and the plough; but they have vanished from architecture and building except in so far as they are being now, as I have said, consciously and deliberately revived by men who are going back from academic methods, to found their arts once more upon the actual making of things with their own hand and as their hand and materials will guide them.

This was what happened in the time to which I have referred: in the dawn of the Christian era and of a new civilisation; and it has special interest for us of today, because it was not a case of an infant or savage race, beginning all things from seed; but the revival, as in Sparta, centuries before it, of simplicity and sincerity of life, in the midst of enervation, luxury, and decay.

This seems our hope for the future.

There has already gathered together in the great field of the arts of today a little Byzantium of the crafts setting itself to learn from the beginning how things are actually made, how built, hammered, painted, cut, stitched; casting aside theories and academical thought, and founding itself upon simplicity, and sincerity, and materials. And the architect who condescends, or, as we should rather say, aspires, to be a builder and a master-mason, true director of his craft, will, if things go on as they seem now going, find in the near future a band around him of other workers so minded, and will have these bright tools of the accessory crafts ready to his hand. This it is, if anything, that will solve all the vexed questions of "style," and lead, if anything will, to the art of the times to be. For the reason why the nineteenth century complained so constantly that it had "no style of architecture" was surely because it had every style of architecture, and a race of architects who could design in every style because they could build in no style; knew by practical handling and tooling nothing of the real natures and capacities of stone or brick or wood or glass; received no criticism from their materials; whereas these should have daily and hourly moulded their work and formed the very breath of its life, warning and forbidding on the one hand, suggesting on the other, and so directing over all.

I have thought fit, dear student, to touch on these great questions in passing, that you may know where you stand; but our real business is with ourselves: to make ourselves so secure upon firm standing ground, in our own particular province, that when the hour arrives, it may find in us the man. Let us therefore return again from these bright hopes to consider those particular details of architectural fitness which are our proper business as workers in glass.

What, then, in detail, are the rules that must guide us in placing windows in ancient buildings? But first—may we place windows in ancient buildings at all? "No," say some; "because we have no right to touch the past; it is 'restoration,' a word that has covered, in the past," they say (and we must agree with them), "a mass of artistic crime never to be expiated, and of loss never to be repaired." "Yes," say others, "because new churches will be older in half-an-hour— half-an-hour older; for the world has moved, and where will you draw the line? Also, glass has to be renewed, you must put in something, or some one must."

Let each decide the question for himself; but, supposing you admit that it is permissible, what are the proper restrictions and conditions?

You must not tell a lie, or "match" old work, joining your own on to it as if itself were old.

Shall we work in the style of the "New art," then—"l'art Nouveau"? the style of the last new poster? the art-tree, the art-bird, the art-squirm, and the ace of spades form of ornament?

Heaven in mercy defend us and forbid it!

Canopies are venerable; thirteenth-century panels and borders are venerable, the great traditional vestments are so, and liturgy, and symbolism, and ceremony. These are not things of one age alone, but belong to all time. Get, wherever possible, authority on all these points.

Must we work in a "style," then—a "Gothic" style?

No.

What rule, then?

It is hard to formulate so as to cover all questions, but something thus:—

Take forms, and proportions, and scale from the style of the church you are to work in.

Add your own feeling to it from—

(1) The feeling of the day, but the best and most reverent feeling.

(2) From Nature.

(3) From (and the whole conditioned by) materials and the knowledge of craft.

Finally, let us say that you must consider each case on its merits, and be ready even sometimes perhaps to admit that the old white glass may be better for a certain position than your new glass could be, while old stained-glass, of course, should always be sacred to you, a thing to be left untouched. Even where new work seems justifiable and to be demanded, proceed as if treading on holy ground. Do not try crude experiments on venerable and beautiful buildings, but be modest and reticent; know the styles of the past thoroughly and add your own fresh feeling to them reverently. And in thought do not think it necessary to be novel in order to be original. There is quite enough originality in making a noble figure of a saint, or treating with reverent and dignified art some actual theme of Scripture or tradition, and working into its detail the sweetness of nature and the skill of your hands, without going into eccentricity for the sake of novelty, and into weak allegory to show your originality and independence, tired with the world-old truths and laws of holy life and noble character. And this leads us to the point where we must speak of these deep things in the great province of thought.

[2] Paradise, canto vi. 1.



CHAPTER XVIII

OF THOUGHT, IMAGINATION, AND ALLEGORY

"The first thing one should demand of a man who calls himself an artist is that he has something to say, some truth to teach, some lesson to enforce. Don't you think so?"

Thus once said to me an artist of respectable attainment.

"I don't care a hang for subject; give me good colour, composition, fine effects of light, skill in technique, that's all one wants. Don't you think so?"

Thus once said to me a member of a window-committee, himself also an artist.

To both I answered, and would answer with all the emphasis possible—No!

The first duty of an artist, as of every other kind of worker, is to know his business; and, unless he knows it, all the "truths" he wishes to "teach," and the lessons he wishes to enforce, are but degraded and discredited in the eyes of men by his bungling advocacy.

On the other hand, the artist who has trained himself to speak with the tongues of angels and after all has nothing to say, is also, to me, an imperfect being. What follows is written, as the whole book is written, for the young student, just beginning his career and feeling the pressure and conflict of these questions. For such I must venture to discuss points which the wise and the experienced may pass by.

The present day is deluged with allegory; and the first thing three students out of four wish to attempt when they arrive at the stage of original art is the presentation, by figures and emblems, of some deep abstract truth, some problem of the great battle of life, some force of the universe that they begin to feel around them, pressing upon their being. Forty years ago such a thing was hardly heard of. In the sketching-clubs at the Academies of that day, the historical, the concrete, or the respectably pious were all that one ever saw. We can hardly realise it, the art of the late sixties. The pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, as such, a thing of the past, and seemingly leaving few imitators. Burne-Jones just heard of as a strange, unknown artist, who wouldn't exhibit his pictures, but who had done some queer new kind of stained-glass windows at Lyndhurst, which one might perhaps be curious to see when we went (as of course we must) to worship "Leighton's great altar-piece." Nay, ten years later, at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, the new, imaginative, and allegorical art could be met with a large measure of derision, and Punch could write, regarding it, an audacious and contemptuous parody of the "Palace of Art"; while, abroad, Botticelli's Primavera hung over a door, and the attendants at the Uffizii were puzzled by requests, granted grudgingly (if granted), to have his other pictures placed for copying and study! Times have altogether changed, and we now see in every school competition—often set as the subject of such—abstract and allegorical themes, demanding for their adequate expression the highest and deepest thought and the noblest mood of mind and views of life.

It is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rule about these things, for each case must differ. There is such a thing as genius, and where that is there is but small question of rules or even of youth or age, maturity or immaturity. And even apart from the question of genius the mind of childhood is a very precious thing, and "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Nay, the mere fact of youth with its trials, is a great thing; we shall never again have such a chance, such fresh, responsive hearts, such capacity for feeling—for suffering—that school of wisdom and source of inspiration! It is well to record its lessons while they are fresh, to jot down for ourselves, if we can, something of the passing hours; to store up their thoughts and feelings for future expression perhaps, when our powers of expression have grown more worthy of them; but it is not well to try to make universal lessons out of, or universal applications of, what we haven't ourselves learned. Our own proper lesson at this time is to learn our trade; to strengthen our weak hands and train the ignorance of our mind to knowledge day by day, strenuously, and only spurred on by the deep stirrings of thought and life within us, which generally ought to remain for the present unspoken.

A great point of happiness in this dangerous and critical time is to have a definite trade; learnt in its completeness and practised day by day, step by step, upwards from its elements, in constant subservience to wise and kind mastership. This indeed is a golden lot, and one rare in these days; and perhaps we must not look to be so shielded. This was the sober and happy craftsmanship of the Middle Ages, and produced for us all that imagery and ornature, instinct with gaiety and simplicity of heart, which decorates, where the hand of the ruthless restorer has spared it, the churches and cathedrals of Europe.

But in these changeful days it would be rash indeed to forecast where lies the sphere of duty for any individual life. It may lie in the reconstruction by solitary, personal experiment, of some forgotten art or system, the quiet laying of foundation for the future rather than building the monument of today. Or perhaps the self-devoted life of the seer may be the Age's chief need, and it is not a Giotto that is wanted for the twentieth century but a Dante or a Blake, with the accompanying destiny of having to prove as they did—

"si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com'h duro calle Lo scendere e'l salir per l'altrui scale."[3]

But, however these things be, whether working happily in harmony with the scheme of things around us, and only concerned to give it full expression, or not; whether we are the fortunate apprentices of a well-taught trade, gaining secure and advancing knowledge day by day, or whether we are lonely experimentalists, wringing the secret from reluctant Nature and Art upon some untrodden path; there is one last great principle that covers all conditions, solves all questions, and is an abiding rock which remains, unfailing foundation on which all may build; and that is the constant measuring of our smallness against the greatness of things, a thing which, done in the right spirit, does not daunt, but inspires. For the greatness of all things is ours for the winning, almost for the asking.

The great imaginative poets and thinkers and artists of the mid-nineteenth century have drawn aside for us the curtain of the world behind the veil, and he would be an ambitious man who would expect to set the mark higher, in type of beauty or depth of feeling, than they have placed it for us; but all must hope to do so, even if they do not expect it; for the great themes are not exhausted or ever to be exhausted; and the storehouse of the great thought and action of the past is ever open to us to clothe our nakedness and enrich our poverty; we need only ask to have.

"Ah!" said Coningsby, "I should like to be a great man."

The stranger threw at him a scrutinising glance. His countenance was serious. He said in a voice of almost solemn melody—

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes."[4]

All the great thoughts of the world are stored up in books, and all the great books of the world, or nearly all, have been translated into English. You should make it a systematic part of your life to search these things out and, if only by a page or two, try how far they fit your need. We do not enough realise how wide a field this is, how great an undertaking, how completely unattainable except by carefully husbanding our time from the start, how impossible it is in the span of a human life to read the great books unless we strictly save the time which so many spend on the little books. Ruskin's words on this subject, almost harsh in their blunt common sense, bring the matter home so well that I cannot refrain from quoting them.[5]

"Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose today you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entrie here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead."

This is the great world of BOOKS that is open to you; and how shall you find your way in it, in these days, amongst the plethora of the second and third and fourth rate, shouting out at you and besieging your attention on every stall? It is no more possible to give you entire guidance towards this than to give complete advice on any other problem of life; your own nature must be your guide, choosing the good and refusing the evil in the degree in which itself is good or evil. But one may name some landmarks, set up some guide-posts, and the best of all guidance surely is not that of a guide-post, but that of a guide, a kindly hand of one who knows the way, to take your hand.

Do you ask for such a guide? A man of our own day, in full view of all its questions from the loftiest to the least, and heart and soul engaged in them, with deep and sympathetic wisdom born of his own companionship with all the great thoughts of the ages? One surely need not hesitate a moment in naming as the one for our special needs the writer we have just quoted.

Scattered up and down the whole of his works is constant reference to and commentary upon the great themes of all ages, the great creeds of all peoples.

"Queen of the Air," "Aratra Pentelici," "Ariadne Florentina," "The Mornings in Florence," "St. Mark's Rest," "The Oxford Inaugural Lectures," "The Bible of Amiens," "Fors Clavigera."

With these as portals you can enter by easy steps into the whole universe of great things: the divine myth and symbolism of the old pagan world (as we call it) and of more recent Christendom; all the makers of ancient Greece and Italy and of our own England; worship and kingship and leadership, and the high thought and noble deed of all times. And clustering in groups round these centres is the world of books. All Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, Sacred History; Homer, Plato, Virgil, the Bible, and the Breviary. The great doctors and saints, kings and heroes, poets and painters, Gerome and Dominic and Francis; St. Louis and Coeur-de-Lion; Dante, St. Jerome, Chaucer, and Froissart; Botticelli, Giotto, Angelico; the "Golden Legend"; and many another ancient or modern legend and story or passage from the history of some great and splendid life, or illuminating hint upon the beauties of liturgy and symbolism. They, and a hundred other things, are all gathered up and introduced to us in Ruskin's books; and we are shown them from the exact standpoint from which they are most likely to appeal to us, and be of use. There never was a great world made so easy and pleasant of entrance for the adventuring traveller; you have only to enter and take possession.

Do you incline towards myth and symbolism and allegory—the expression of abstract thought by beautiful figures? Read the myths of Greece expounded to you in their exquisite spirituality in the "Queen of the Air." Or is your bent devotion and the devout life, expressed in thrilling story and gorgeous colour? Read, say, the life of St. Catherine or of St. George in the "Golden Legend." Or are you in love, and would express its spring-time beauty? Translate into your own native language of form and colour "The Romaunt of the Rose."

For the great safeguard and guide in the perilous forest of fancy is to find enough interest in the actual facts of some history or the qualities of some heroic character, whether real or fabled, round which at first you may group your thought and allegory. Listen to them, and try to formulate and illustrate their meaning, not to announce your own. Do not set puzzles, or set things that will be puzzling, without the highest and deepest reasons and the apostleship urgently laid upon you so to do—but let your allegory surround some definite subject, so that men in general can see it and say, "Yes, that is so and so," and go away satisfied rather than puzzled and affronted; leaving the inner few for whom you really speak, the hearts that, you hope, are waiting for your message, to find it out (and you need have no fear that they will do so), and to say, "Yes, that means so and so, and it is a good thought."

For, remember always that, even if you conceive that you have a mission laid upon you to declare Truth, it is most sternly conditioned by an obligation, as binding as itself and of as high authority, to set forth Beauty: the holiness of beauty equally with the beauty of holiness. No amount of good intent can make up for lack of skill; it is your business to know your business. Youth always would begin with allegory, but the ambition of the good intention is generally in exactly the reverse proportion to the ability to carry it out in expression. But the true allegory that appeals to all is the presentment of noble natures and of noble deeds. Where, for most people at any rate, is the "allegory" in the Theseus or the Venus of Milo? Yet is not the whole race of man the better for them?

Work, therefore, quietly and continually at the great themes ready set for you in the story of the past and "understanded of the people," while you are patiently strengthening and maturing your powers of art in safety, sheltered from yourself, and sheltered from the condemnation due to the too presumptuous assumption of apostleship. For it is one thing to stand forth and say, "I have a message to deliver to the world," and quite another to say, "There is such a message, and it has fallen to me to be its mouthpiece; woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips." It is needless, therefore—nay, it is harmful—to be always breaking your heart against tasks beyond your strength. Work in some little province; get foothold and grow outwards from it; go on from weakness to strength, and then from strength to the stronger, doing the things you can do while you practise towards the things you hope to do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to try your own individual battle in the great world of thought and feeling; till, mature in strength equal to the portrayal of great natures, the Angels of God as shown forth by you may be recognised as indeed Spirit, and His Ministers as flaming Fire.

There is even yet one last word, and that is, in all the minor symbolism surrounding your subjects, to observe a due proportion. For you may easily be tempted to allow some beautiful little fancy, not essential to the subject, to find expression in a form or symbol that will thrust itself unduly on the attention, and will only puzzle and distract.

Never let little things come first, and never let them be allowed at all to the damage, or impairing, or obscuring of the simplicity and dignity of the great things; remembering always that the first function of a window is to have stately and seemly figures in beautiful glass, and not to arrest or distract the attention of the spectator with puzzles. Given the great themes adequately expressed, the little fancies may then cluster round them and will be carried lightly, as the victor wears his wreath; while, on the other hand, if these be lacking no amount of symbolism or attribute will supply their place. "Cucullus non facit monachum," as the old proverb says—"It is not the hood that makes the monk," but the ascetic face you depict within it. Indeed, rather beware of trusting even to the ordinary, well-recognised symbols in common use, and being misled by them to think you have done something you have not done; and rather withhold these until the other be made sure. Get your figures dignified and your faces beautiful; show the majesty or the sanctity that you are aiming at in these alone, and your saint will be recognised as saintly without his halo of glory, and your angel as angelic without his tongue of flame.

* * * * *

In my own practice, when drawing from the life, I make a great point of keeping back all these ornaments and symbols of attribute, until I feel that my figure alone expresses itself fully, as far as my powers go, without them. No ornament upon the robe, or the crosier, or the sword; above all, no circle round the head, until—the figure standing out at last and seeming to represent, as near as may be, the true pastor or warrior it claims to represent—the moment arrives when I say, "Yes, I have done all I can,—now he may have his nimbus!"

[3]

"how tastes of salt The bread of others, and how is hard the passage To go down and to go up by other's stairs."

—Paradise, xvii. 58.

[4] Coningsby, Book iii. ch. i.

[5] "Sesame and Lilies," Lecture 1.



CHAPTER XIX

Of General Conduct and Procedure—Amount of Legitimate Assistance—The Ordinary Practice—The Great Rule—The Second Great Rule—Four Things to Observe—Art v. Routine—The Truth of the Case—The Penalty of Virtue in the Matter—The Compensating Privilege—Practical Applications—An Economy of Time in the Studio—Industry—Work "To Order"—Clients and Patrons—And Requests Reasonable and Unreasonable—The Chief Difficulty the Chief Opportunity—But ascertain all Conditions before starting Work—Business Habits—Order—Accuracy—Setting out Cartoon Forms—An Artist must Dream—But Wake—Three Plain Rules.

Having now described, as well as I can, the whole of your equipment—of hand, and head, and heart—your mental and technical weapons for the practice of stained-glass, there now follow a few simple hints to guide you in the use of them; how best to dispose your forces, and on what to employ them. This must be a very broken and fragmentary chapter, full of little everyday matters, very different to the high themes we have just been trying to discuss—and relating chiefly to your conduct of the thing as a business, and your relationships with the interests that surround you; modes of procedure, business hints, practical matters. I am sorry, just as you were beginning (I hope) to be warmed to the subject, and fired with the high ambitions that it suggests, to take and toss you into the cold world of matter-of-fact things; but that is life, and we have to face it. Open the door into the cold air and let us bang at it straight away!

Now there is one great and plain question that contains all the rest; you do not see it now, but you will find it facing you before you have gone very far. The great question, "Must I do it all myself, or may I train pupils and assistants?"

Let us first amplify the question and get it fairly and fully stated. Then we shall have a better chance of being able to answer it wisely.

I have described or implied elsewhere the usual practice in the matter amongst those who produce stained-glass on a large scale. In great establishments the work is divided up into branches: designers, cartoonists, painters, cutters, lead workers, kiln-men: none of whom, as a rule, know any branch of the work except their own.

Obviously one of the principal contentions of this book is against the idea that such division, as practised, is an ideal method.

On the other hand, you will gather that the writer himself uses the service of assistants.

While in the plates at the end are examples of glass where everything has been done by the artists themselves (Plates I., II., III., IV., VII.).

I must freely confess that when I first saw in the work of these men the beauty resulting from the personal touch of the artist on the whole of the cutting and leading, a qualm of doubt arose whether the practice of admitting any other hand to my assistance was not a compromise to some extent with absolute ideal; whether it were not the only right plan, after all, to do the whole oneself; to sit down to the bench with one's drawing, and pick out the glass, piece by piece, on its merits, carefully considering each bit as it passed through hand; cutting it and trimming it affectionately to preserve its beauties, and, later, leading it into its place with thicker or thinner lead, in the same careful spirit. But I do not think so. I fancy the truth to be that the whole business should be opened up to all, and afterwards each should gravitate to his place by natural fitness. For the cartoonist once having the whole craft requires more constant practice in drawing to keep himself a good cartoonist than he would get if he also did all the other work of each window; quantity being in this matter even essential to quality. I think we must look for more monumental figures, achieved by the delegation of minor craft matters, in short, by co-operation. Nevertheless, I have never felt less certainty in pronouncing on any question of my craft than in this particular matter; whether, to get the best attainable results, one should do the whole of the work oneself. On the other hand, I never felt more certainty in pronouncing on any question of the craft, than now in laying down as an absolute rule and condition of doing good work at all: that one should be able to do the whole of the work oneself. That is the key to the whole situation, but it is not the whole key; for following close upon it comes the rule that springs naturally out of it; that, being a master oneself, one must make it one's object to train all assistants towards mastership also: to give them the whole ladder to climb. This at least has been the case with the work of my own which is shown in the other collotypes. There has been assistance, but every one of those assisting has had the opportunity to learn to make, and according to the degree of his talent is actually able to make, the whole of a stained-glass window himself. There is not a touch of painting on any of the panels shown which is not by a hand that can also cut and lead and design and draw, and perform all the other offices pertaining to stained-glass noted in the foregoing pages.

Speaking generally, I care not whether a man calls himself Brown, or Brown and Co., or, co-operating with others, works under the style of Brown, Jones and Robinson, so long as he observe four things.

(1) Not to direct what he cannot practise;

(2) To make masters of apprentices, or aim at making them;

(3) To keep his hand of mastery over the whole work personally at all stages; and

(4) To be prepared sometimes to make sacrifices of profit for the sake of the Art, should the interests of the two clash.

Such an one we must call an artist, a master, and a worthy craftsman. It is almost impossible to describe the deadening influence which a routine embodying the reverse of these four things has upon the mind of those who should be artists. Under this influence not only is the subdivision of labour which places each successive operation in separate hands accepted as a matter of course, but into each operation itself this separation imports a spirit of lassitude and dulness and compliance with false conditions and limited aims which would seem almost incredible in those practising what should be an inspiring art. To men so trained, so employed, all counsels of perfection are foolishness; all idea of tentative work, experiment, modification while in progress, is looked upon as mere delusion. To them work consists of a series of never-varied formulas, all fitting into each other and combined to aim at producing a definite result, the like of which they have produced a thousand times before and will produce a thousand times again.

"With us," once said, to a friend of the writer, a man so trained, "it's a matter of judgment and experience. It's all nonsense this talk about seeing work at a distance and against the sky, and so forth, while as to the ever taking it down again for retouching after once erecting it, that could only be done by an amateur. We paint a good deal of the work on the bench, and never see it as a whole until it's leaded up; but then we know what we want and get it."

"We know what we want!" To what a pass have we come that such a thing could be spoken by any one engaged in the arts! Were it wholly and universally true, nothing more would be needed in condemnation of wide fields of modern practice in the architectural and applied arts, for, most assuredly it is a sentence that could never be spoken of any one worthy of the name of artist that ever lived. Whence would you like instances quoted? Literature? Painting? Sculpture? Music? Their name is legion in the history of all these arts, and in the lives of the great men who wrought in them.

For a taste—

Did Michael Angelo "know what he wanted" when, half-way through his figure, he found the block not large enough, and had to make the limb too short?

Did Beethoven know, when he evolved a movement in one of his concerted pieces out of a quarrel with his landlady? and another, "from singing or rather roaring up and down the scale," until at last he said, "I think I have found a motive"—as one of his biographers relates? Tennyson, when he corrected and re-corrected his poems from youth to his death? Duerer, the precise, the perfect, able to say, "It cannot be better done," yet re-engraving a portion of his best-known plate, and frankly leaving the rejected portion half erased?[6] Titian, whose custom it was to lay aside his pictures for long periods and then criticise them, imagining that he was looking at them "with the eyes of his worst enemy"?

There is not, I suppose, in the English language a more "perfect" poem than "Lycidas." It purports to have been written in a single day, and its wholeness and unity and crystalline completeness give good colour to the thought that it probably was so.

"Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, While the still morn went out with sandals gray; He touched the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, And now was dropt into the western bay: At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; To-morrow, to fresh woods and pastures new."

Yet, regarding it, the delightful Charles Lamb writes:[7]—

"I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty,—as springing with all its parts absolute,—till, in evil hour, I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like something to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them, after the later cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore!—interlined, corrected, as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure; as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good; as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another Galatea."

But the real truth of the case is that whatever "inspiration" may be, and whether or not "made up of parts," it, or man's spirit and will in all works of art, has to deal with things so made up; and not only so, but also as described by the other words here chosen: fluctuating, successive, and indifferent. You have to deal with the whole sum of things all at once; the possible material crowds around the artist's will, shifting, changing, presenting at all stages and in all details of a work of art, infinite and continual choice. "Nothing," we are told, "is single," but all things have relations with each other. How much more, then, is it true that every bit of glass in a window is the centre of such relations with its brother and sister pieces, and that nothing is final until all is finished? A work of art is like a battle; conflict after conflict, manoeuvre after manoeuvre, combination after combination. The general does not pin himself down from the outset to one plan of tactics, but watches the field and moulds its issues to his will, according to the yielding or the resistance of the opposing forces, keeping all things solvent until the combinations of the strife have woven together into a soluble problem, upon which he can launch the final charge that shall bring him back with victory.

So also is all art, and you must hold all things in suspense. Aye! the last touch more or less of light or shade or colour upon the smallest piece, keeping all open and solvent to the last, until the whole thing rushes together and fuses into a harmony. It is not to be done by "judgment and experience," for all things are new, and there are no two tasks the same; and it is impossible for you from the outset to "know what you want," or to know it at any stage until you can say that the whole work is finished.

"But if we work on these methods we shall only get such a small quantity of work done, and it will be so costly done on a system like that you speak of! Make my assistants masters, and so rivals! put a window in, and take it out again, forsooth!" What remedy or answer for this?

Well—setting aside the question of the more or less genius—there are only two solutions that I can see:—an increase in industry or a possible decrease in profit, though much may be accomplished in mitigation of these hard conditions, if they prove too hard, by a good and economical system of work, and by time-saving appliances and methods.

But, after all, you were not looking out for an easy task, were you, in this world of stress and strain to have the privileges of an artist's life without its penalties? Why, look you, you must remember that besides the business of "saving your soul," which you may share in common with every one else, you have the special privilege of enjoying for its own sake your personal work in the world.

And you must expect to pay for that privilege at some corresponding personal cost; all the more so in these days when your lot is so exceptional a fortune, and when to enjoy daily work falls to so few. Nevertheless, when I say "enjoy" I do not mean that art is easy or pleasant in the way that ease is pleasant; there is nothing harder; and the better the artist, probably the harder it is. But you enjoy it because of its privileges; because beauty is delightful; because you know that good art does high and unquestioned service to man, and is even one of the ways for the advancing of the kingdom of God.

That should be pleasure enough for any one, and compensation for any pains. You must learn the secret of human suffering—and you can only learn it by tasting it—because it is yours to point its meaning to others and to give the message of hope.

In this spirit, then, and within these limitations, must you guide your own work and claim the co-operation of others, and arrange your relationships with them, and the limits of their assistance and your whole personal conduct and course of procedure:—

To be yourself a master.

To train others up to mastery.

To keep your hand over the whole.

To work in a spirit of sacrifice.

These things once firmly established, questions of procedure become simple. But a few detached hints may be given. I shall string them together just as they come.

An Economy of Time in the Studio.—Have a portion of your studio or work-room wall lined with thin boarding—"picture-backing" of 1/8 inch thick is enough, and this is to pin things on to. The cartoon is what you are busy upon, but you must "think in glass" all the time you are drawing it. Have therefore, pinned up, a number of slips of paper—a foolscap half-sheet divided vertically into two long strips I find best.

On these write down every direction to the cutter, or the painter, or the designer of minor ornament, the moment it comes into your mind, as you work at the charcoal drawing. If you once let the moment pass you will never remember these things again, but you will have them constantly forced back upon your memory, by the mistranslations of your intention which will face you when you first see your work in the glass. This practice is a huge saving of time—and of disappointment. But you also want this convenient wall space for a dozen other needs; for tracings and shiftings of parts, and all sorts of essays and suggestions for alteration.

That we should work always.—I hope it is not necessary to urge the importance of work. It is not of much use to work only when we feel inclined; many people very seldom do feel naturally inclined. Perhaps there are few things so sweet as the triumph of working through disinclination till it is leavened through with the will and becomes enjoyment by becoming conquest. To work through the dead three o'clock period on a July afternoon with an ache in the small of one's back and one's limbs all a-jerk with nervousness, drooping eyelids, and a general inclination to scream. At such a time, I fear, one sometimes falls back on rather low and sordid motives to act as a spur to the lethargic will. I think of the shortness of the time, the greatness of the task, but also of all those hosts of others who, if I lag, must pass me in the race. Not of actual rivals—or good nature and sense of comradeship would always break the vision—but of possible and unknown ones whom it is my habit to club all together and typify under the style and title of "that fellow Jones." And at such a time it is my habit to say or think, "Aha! I bet Jones is on his back under a plane tree!"—or thoughts to that effect—and grasp the charcoal firmer.

It is habits and dodges and ways of thinking such as these that will gradually cultivate in you the ability to "stand and deliver," as they say in the decorative arts. For, speaking now to the amateur (if any such, picture-painter or student, are hesitating on the brink of an art new to them), you must know that these arts are not like picture-painting, where you can choose your own times and seasons: they are always done to definite order and expected in a definite time; and that brings me to speak of the very important subject of "Clients."

Of Clients and Patrons.—It must, of course, be left to each one to establish his own relations with those who ask work of him; but a few hints may be given.

You will get many requests that will seem to you unreasonable and impossible of carrying out—some no doubt will really be so; but at least consider them. Remember what we said a little way back—not to be set on your own allegory, but to accept your subject from outside and add your poetic thought to it. And also what in another place we said about keeping all "solvent"—so do with actual suggestion of subject and with the wishes of your client: treat the whole thing as "raw material," and all surrounding questions as factors in one general problem. Here also Ruskin has a pregnant word of advice—as indeed where has he not?—"A great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them."[8] You cannot always do what people ask, but you can do it more often than a headstrong man would at first think.

I was once doing a series of small square panels, set at intervals in the height of some large, tall windows, and containing Scripture subjects, the intermediate spaces being filled with "grisaille" work. The subjects, of course, had to be approximately on one scale, and several of them became very tough problems on account of this restriction. However, all managed to slip through somehow till we came to "Jacob's Ladder," and there I stood firm, or perhaps I ought rather to say stuck fast. "How is it possible," I said to my client, "that you can have a picture of the 'Fall' in one panel with Eve's figure taking up almost the whole height of it, and have a similar panel with 'Angels Ascending and Descending' up and down a ladder? There are only two ways of doing it—to put the ladder far off in a landscape, which would reduce it to insignificance, and besides be unsuitable in glass; or to make the angels the size of dolls. Don't you see that it's impossible?" No, he didn't see that it was impossible. What he wanted was "Jacob's Ladder"; the possibility or otherwise was nothing to him. He said (what you'll often hear said, reader, if you do stained-glass), "I don't, of course, know anything about art, and I can't say how this could be done; that is the artist's province."

It was in my younger days, and I'm afraid I must have replied to the effect that it was not a question of art but of common reason, and that the artist's province did not extend to making bricks without straw or making two and two into five; and the work fell through. But had I the same thing to deal with now I should waste no words on it, but run the "ladder" right up out of the panel into the grisaille above; an opportunity for one of those delightful naive exceptions of which old art is so full—like, for instance, the west door of St. Maclou at Rouen, where the crowd of falling angels burst out of the tympanum, bang through the lintel, defying architecture as they defied the first great Architect, and continue their fall amongst the columns below. "Angels Descending," by-the-bye, with a vengeance! And if the bad ones, why not the good? I might just as well have done it, and probably it would have been the very thing out of the whole commission which would have prevented the series from being the tame things that such sometimes are. Anyway, remember this—for I have invariably found it true—that the chief difficulty of a work of art is always its chief opportunity. A thing can be looked at in a thousand and one ways, and something dauntingly impossible will often be the very thing that will shake your jogtrot cart out of its rut, make you whip up your horses, and get you right home.

BUT

Observe this—that all these wishes of the client should be most strictly ascertained beforehand; all possibility of midway criticism and alteration prevented. Thresh the thing well out in the preliminary stages and start clear; as long as it is raw material, all in solution, all hanging in the balance—you can do anything. It is like "clay in the hands of the potter," and you can make the vessel as you please: "Out of the same lump making one vessel to honour and another to dishonour." But when the work is half-done, when colour is calling out to colour, and shape to shape, and thought to thought, throughout the length and breadth of the work; when the ideas and the clothing of them are all fusing together into one harmony; when, in short, the thing is becoming that indestructible, unalterable unity which we call a Work of Art:—then, indeed, to be required to change or to reconsider is a real agony of impossibility; tearing the glowing web of thought, and form, and fancy into a destruction never to be reconstructed, and which no piecing or patching will mend.

There are many minor points, but they are really so entirely matters of experience, that it hardly seems worth while to dwell upon them. Start with recognising the fact that you must try to add business habits and sensible and economical ways to your genius as an artist; in short, another whole side to your character; and keep that ever in view, and the details will fall into their places.

Have Everything in Order.—Every letter relating to a current job should be findable at a moment's notice in an office "letter basket," rather wider than a sheet of foolscap paper, and with sides high enough to allow of the papers standing upright in unfolded sheets, each group of them behind a card taller than the tallest kind of ordinary document, and bearing along the top edge in large red letters—Roman capitals for choice—the name of the work: and it need hardly be said that these should be arranged in alphabetical order. For minor matters too small for such classification it is well to have, in the front place in the basket, cards dividing the alphabet itself into about four parts, so that unarranged small matters can be still kept roughly alphabetical. When the work is done, transfer all documents to separate labelled portfolios—a folded sheet of the thickest brown paper, such as they put under carpets, is very good—and store them away for reference. Larger portfolios for all templates, tracings, or architects' details or drawings relating to the work. If you have not a good system with regard to the ordering of these things, believe me the mere administration of a very moderate amount of work will take you all your day.

So also with measurement.

ON ACCURACY IN MEASUREMENT.

In one of Turgenieff's novels a Russian country proverb is quoted—"Measure thrice, cut once." It is a golden rule, and should be inscribed in the heart of every worker, and I will add one that springs out of it—"Never trust a measurement unless it has been made by yourself, or for yourself—to your order."

The measurements on architects' designs, or even working drawings, can never be trusted for the dimensions of the built work. Even the builders' templates, by which the work was built, cannot be, for the masons knock these quite enough out, in actual building, to make your work done by these guides a misfit. Have your own measurements taken again. Above all, beware of trusting to the supposed verticals or horizontals in built work, especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line.

With regard to accuracy of work in the shop, where it depends on yourself and the system you observe, I cannot do better than write out for you here the written notice by which the matter is regulated in my own practice with regard to cartoons.

"Rules to be Observed in Setting out Forms for Cartoons.

"In every case of setting out any form, or batch of forms, for new windows the truth of the first long line ruled must be tested by stretching a thread.

If the lath is proved to be out, it must at once be sent to a joiner to be accurately 'shot,' and the accuracy of both its edges must then be tested with a thread.

The first right angle made (for the corner of the form) must also be tested by raising a perpendicular, with a radius of the compasses not less than 6 inches and with a needle-pointed pencil, and by the subjoined formula and no other.

From a given point in a given straight line to raise a perpendicular. Let A B be the given straight line (this must be the long side of the form, and the point B must be one corner of the base-line): it is required to raise from the point B a line perpendicular to the line A B.



(1) Prolong the line A B at least 6 inches beyond B (if there is not room on the paper, it must be pinned on to a smooth board, and a piece of paper pinned on, so as to meet the edge of it, and continue it to the required distance).

(2) With the centre B (the compass leg being in all cases placed with absolute accuracy, using a lens if necessary to place it) describe the circle C D E.

(3) With the centres C and E, and with a radius of not less than 9 inches, describe arcs intersecting at F and G.

(4) Join F G.

Then, if the work has been correctly done, the line F G will pass through the point B, and be perpendicular to the line A B. If it does not do so, the work is incorrect, and must be repeated.

When the base and the springing-line are drawn on the form, the form must be accurately measured from the bottom upwards, and every foot marked on both sides. Such markings to be in fine pencil-line, and to be drawn from the sides of the form to the extreme margin of the paper, and you are not to trust your eye by laying the lath flat down and ticking off opposite the inch-marks, but you are to stand the lath on its edge, so that the inch-marks actually meet the paper, and then tick opposite to them.

Also if there are any bars in the window to be observed, the places of these must be marked, and it must be made quite clear whether the mark is the middle of the bar or its edge; and all this marking must be done lightly, but very carefully, with a needle-pointed pencil.

In every case where the forms are set out from templates, the accuracy of the templates must be verified, and in the event of the base not being at right angles with the side, a true horizontal must be made from the corner which is higher than the other (the one therefore which has the obtuse angle) and marked within the untrue line; and all measurements, whether of feet, bars, or squaring-out lines, or levels for canopies, bases, or any other divisions of the light, must be made upwards FROM THIS TRUE LEVEL LINE."

These rules, I suppose, have saved me on an average an hour a day since they were drawn up; and, mark you, an hour of waste and an hour of worry a day—which is as good as saving a day's work at the least.

An artist must dream; you will not charge me with undervaluing that; but a decorator must also wake, and have his wits about him! Start, therefore, in all the outward ordering of your career with the three plain rules:—

(1) To have everything orderly;

(2) To have everything accurate;

(3) To bring everything and every question to a point, at the time, and clinch it.

[6] "Ariadne Florentina," p. 31.

[7] "A Saturday's Dinner."

[8] "Aratra Pentelici," p. 253.



CHAPTER XX

A STRING OF BEADS

Is there anything more to say?

A whole world-full, of course; for every single thing is a part of all things. But I have said most of my say; and I could now wish that you were here that you might ask me aught else you want.

A few threads remain that might be gathered up—parting words, hints that cannot be classified. I must string them together like a row of beads; big and little mixed; we will try to get the big ones more or less in the middle if we can.

Grow everything from seed.

All seeds that are living (and therefore worth growing) have the power in them to grow.

But so many people miss the fact that, on the other hand, nothing else will grow; and that it is useless in art to transplant full-grown trees.

This is the key to great and little miseries, great and little mistakes.

Were you sorry to be on the lowest step of the ladder? Be glad; for all your hopes of climbing are in that.

And this applies in all things, from conditions of success and methods of "getting work" up to the highest questions of art and the "steps to Parnassus," by which are reached the very loftiest of ideals.

I must not linger over the former of these two things or do more than sum it up in the advice, to take anything you can get, and to be glad, not sorry, if it is small and comes to you but slowly. Simple things, and little things, and many things, are more needed in the arts today than complex things and great and isolated achievements. If you have nothing to do for others, do some little thing for yourself: it is a seed, presently it will send out a shoot of your first "commission," and that will probably lead to two others, or to a larger one; but pray to be led by small steps; and make sure of firm footing as you go, for there is such a thing as trying to take a leap on the ladder, and leaping off it.

So much for the seed of success.

The seed of craftsmanship I have tried to describe in this book.

The seed of ornament and design, it is impossible to treat of here; it would require as large a book as this to itself: but I will hazard the devotion of a page each to the A and the B of my own A B C of the subject as I try to teach it to my pupils, and put them before you without comment, hoping they may be of some slight use. (See figs. 72 and 73.)

But though I said that nothing will grow but seed, it does not, of course, follow that every seed will grow, or, if it does, that you yourself will reap the exact harvest you expect, or even recognise it in its fruitage as the growth of what you have sown. Expect to give much for little, to lose sight of the bread cast on the waters, not even sure that you will know it again even if you find it after many days. You never know, and therefore do not count your scalps too carefully or try to number your Israel and Judah. Neither, on the other hand, allow your seed to be forced by the hothouse of advertising or business pushing, or anything which will distract or distort that quiet gaze upon the work by which you love it for its own sake, and judge it on its merits; all such sidelights are misleading, since you do not know whether it is intended that this or that shall prosper or both be alike good.

How many a man one sees, earnest and sincere at starting, led aside off the track by the false lights of publicity and a first success. Art is peace. Do things because you love them. If purple is your favourite colour, put purple in your window; if green, green; if yellow, yellow. Flowers and leaves and buds because you love them. Glass because you love it. It is not that you are to despise either fame or wealth. Honestly acquired both are good. But you must bear in mind that the pursuit of these separately by any other means than perfecting your work is a thing requiring great outlay of TIME, and you cannot afford to withdraw any time from your work in order to acquire them.

[Illustration: FIG. 72. Design consists of arrangement. Let us practise arrangement separately, and on its simplest terms. Take the simplest possible arranged form, and make all ornament spring from this, without, for a considerable time changing its character, or making any additions of a different character to it. If we are not then to do this what resource have we? we may change its direction. Proceed then to do so, observing a few very simple rules. 1. Do the work in single "stitches" 2. & to each arm of the cross in turn. 3 keep a record of each step; that is, as soon as you have got any definite developement from your original form, put that down on paper and leave it, drawing it over again and developing from the second drawing. The fourth rule is the most important of all: 4. Keep "on the spot" as much as possible, i.e. take a number of single steps from the point you have arrived at, not a number of consecutive steps leading farther from it. For example: "b" here is a single step from "a", you do one thing. I do not want you to go on developing from it [fig. "b"] as "c", "d" & "e" until you have gone back to fig. "a" and made all the immediately possible steps to be taken from it, one of wh. is shown, fig "f."



]

[Illustration: FIG. 73. Seed of design as applied to Craft & Material. Suppose you have three simple openings. (fig. 'a'.) garret windows, or passage windows, we will suppose, each with a central horizontal bar: and suppose you have a number of pieces of glass to use up already cut to one gauge, and that six of these fill a window, can you get any little variety by arrangement on the following terms. 1. Treating both upper and lower ranges alike 2. Allowing yourself to halve them, vertically only. 3. Not wasting any glass. 4. Not halving more than two in each light. How is this, fig. b? you despise it? so absurdly simple? It is the key to all simple ornament in leaded glass. Exhaust all the possible varieties, there are at least nine. Do them. That's all.



]

In these days and in our huge cities there are so many avenues open to celebrity, through Society, the Press, Exhibition, and so forth, that a man once led to spend time on them is in danger of finding half his working life run away with by them before he is aware, while even if they are successful the success won by them is a poor thing compared to that which might have been earned by the work which was sacrificed for them. It becomes almost a profession in itself to keep oneself notorious.

To spend large slices out of one's time in the mere putting forward of one's work, showing it apart from doing it, necessary as this sometimes is, is a thing to be done grudgingly; still more so should one grudge to be called from one's work here, there, and everywhere by the social claims which crowd round the position of a public man.