On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 8

182. Teaching by visitors constantly changing mischievous.

183. How a picture should be hung.--An ill-worked picture ought not to be admitted by the Academy.--Bearing of this last opinion upon the present Exhibition.

184. Would have works of sculpture placed permanently in the painting-room, but not any of those sent in for the Exhibition of the year.

185. In favor of the present honorary members being made of use in their positions.

186. Introduction of laymen into the Academy deprecated under present circ.u.mstances, and why.--Present feeling towards art and artists at the Universities.

187. Desirable that Government grants should be made to obtain for the pupils of the Academy beautiful examples of every kind of art.

188. In favor of separate exhibitions of the works of a.s.sociates (or Graduates) and Academicians.

189. In favor of art-fellows.h.i.+ps, but not of a fixed school in connection with the Academy at Rome.

190. Comparison of the French, and English systems (as regards a.s.sistance from pupils) in the production of great public paintings.

191. How the works of the Italian masters were executed.--Desirable that pupils should be trained to a.s.sist great masters in public works.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Reprinted from "The Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Present Position of the Royal Academy in Relation to the Fine Arts." London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1863 (pp. 546-55.

Questions 5079-5142). The Commission consisted of Earl Stanhope (_Chairman_), Viscount Hardinge, Lord Elcho, Sir E. W. Head, Mr. William Stirling, Mr. H. D. Seymour, and Mr. Henry Reeve, all of whom, except Mr. Seymour, were present at the above sitting.--ED.]

A MUSEUM OR PICTURE GALLERY:

ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS FORMATION.[4]

_March 20th, 1880._

MY DEAR ----,

192. If I put off writing the paper you asked me for, till I can do it conveniently, it may hang fire till this time next year. If you will accept a note on the subject now and then, keeping them till there are enough to be worth printing, all practical ends may be enough answered, and much more quickly.

The first function of a Museum--(for a little while I shall speak of Art and Natural History as alike cared for in an ideal one)--is to give example of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of that test word, to the disorderly and rude populace. Everything in its _own_ place, everything looking its best because it is there, nothing crowded, nothing unnecessary, nothing puzzling. Therefore, after a room has been once arranged, there must be no change in it. For new possessions there must be new rooms, and after twenty years' absence--coming back to the room in which one learned one's bird or beast alphabet, we should be able to show our children the old bird on the old perch in the accustomed corner. But--first of all, let the room be beautifully complete, _i.e._ complete enough for its proper business.

193. In the British Museum, at the top of the stairs, we encounter in a terrific alliance a giraffe, a hippopotamus, and a basking shark. The public--young and old--pa.s.s with a start and a stare, and remain as wise as they were before about all the three creatures. The day before yesterday I was standing by the big fish--a father came up to it with his little boy. "That's a shark," says he; "it turns on its side when it wants to eat you," and so went on--literally as wise as he was before; for he had read in a book that sharks turn on their side to bite, and he never looked at the ticket, which told him this particular shark only ate small fish. Now he never looked at the ticket, because he didn't expect to find anything on it except that this was the Sharkogobalus Smith-Jonesianius. But if, round the walls of the room, there had been all the _well-known_ kinds of shark, going down, in graduated sizes, from that basking one to our waggling dog-fish, and if every one of these had had a plain English ticket, with ten words of common sense on it, saying where and how the beast lived, and a number (unchangeable) referring to a properly arranged manual of the shark tribe (sold by the Museum publisher, who ought to have his little shop close by the porter's lodge), both father and son must have been much below the level of average English man and boy in mother wit if they did not go out of the room by the door in front of them very distinctly, and--to themselves--amazingly, wiser than they had come in by the door behind them.

194. If I venture to give instances of fault from the British Museum, it is because, on the whole, it is the best-ordered and pleasantest inst.i.tution in all England, and the grandest concentration of the means of human knowledge in the world. And I am heartily sorry for the break-up of it, and augur no good from any changes of arrangement likely to take place in concurrence with Kensington, where, the same day that I had been meditating by the old shark, I lost myself in a Cretan labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertis.e.m.e.nts of spring blinds, model fish-farming, and plaster bathing nymphs with a year's s.m.u.t on all the noses of them; and had to put myself in charge of a policeman to get out again. Ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

_March 29th, 1880._

MY DEAR ----,

195. The only chance of my getting these letters themselves into fairly consistent and Museum-like order is by writing a word or two always the first thing in the morning till I get them done; so, I shall at least remember what I was talking of the day before; but for the rest--I must speak of one thing or another as it may come into my head, for there are too many to cla.s.sify without pedantry and loss of time.

My requirement of "elegance" in that last letter contemplates chiefly architecture and fittings. These should not only be perfect in stateliness, durability, and comfort, but beautiful to the utmost point consistent with due subordination to the objects displayed. To enter a room in the Louvre is an education in itself; but two steps on the filthy floor and under the iron forks, half scaffold, half gallows, of the big Norwood gla.s.s bazaar, debase mind and eye at once below possibility of looking at anything with profit all the day afterwards. I have just heard that a French picture dealer is to have charge of the picture gallery there, and that the whole interior is to become virtually a large cafe, when--it is hoped--the gla.s.s monster may at last "pay." Concerning which beautiful consummation of Mr. d.i.c.kens's "Fairyland" (see my pamphlet[5] on the opening of the so-called "palace"), be it here at once noted, that all idea of any "payment," in that sense, must be utterly and scornfully abjured on the foundation stone of every National or Civic Museum. There must be neither companies to fill their own pockets out of it, nor trustees who can cramp the management, or interfere with the officering, or shorten the supplies of it. Put one man of reputation and sense at its head; give him what staff he asks for, and a fixed annual sum for expenditure--specific accounts to be printed annually for all the world's seeing--and let him alone.

The original expenditure for building and fitting must be magnificent, and the current expenditure for cleaning and refitting magnanimous; but a certain proportion of this current cost should be covered by small entrance fees, exacted, not for any miserly helping out of the floor-sweepers' salaries, but for the sake of the visitors themselves, that the rooms may not be inc.u.mbered by the idle, or disgraced by the disreputable. You must not make your Museum a refuge against either rain or ennui, nor let into perfectly well-furnished, and even, in the true sense, palatial, rooms, the utterly squalid and ill-bred portion of the people. There should, indeed, be refuges for the poor from rain and cold, and decent rooms accessible to indecent persons, if they like to go there; but neither of these charities should be part of the function of a Civic Museum.

196. Make the entrance fee a silver penny (a silver groat, typically representing the father, mother, eldest son, and eldest daughter, pa.s.sing always the total number of any one family), and every person admitted, however young, being requested to sign their name, or make their mark.

That the entrance money should be always of silver is one of the beginnings of education in the place--one of the conditions of its "elegance" on the very threshold.

And the inst.i.tution of silver for bronze in the lower coinage is a part of the system of National education which I have been teaching these last ten years--a very much deeper and wider one than any that can be given in museums--and without which all museums will ultimately be vain.--Ever affectionately yours,

J. R.

P.S.--There should be a well-served coffee-room attached to the building; but this part of the establishment without any luxury in furniture or decoration, and without any cooking apparatus for carnivora.

_Easter Monday, 1880._

DEAR ----,

197. The day is auspicious for the beginning of reflection on the right manner of manifestation of all divine things to those who desire to see them. For every house of the Muses, where, indeed, they live, is an Interpreter's by the wayside, or rather, a place of oracle and interpretation in one. And the right function of every museum, to simple persons, is the manifestation to them of what is lovely in the life of Nature, and heroic in the life of Men.

There are already, you see, some quaint restrictions in that last sentence, whereat sundry of our friends will start, and others stop. I must stop also, myself, therefore, for a minute or two, to insist on them.

198. A Museum, primarily, is to be for _simple_ persons. Children, that is to say, and peasants. For your student, your antiquary, or your scientific gentleman, there must be separate accommodation, or they must be sent elsewhere. The Town Museum is to be for the Town's People, the Village Museum for the Villagers. Keep that first principle clear to start with. If you want to found an academy of painting in Littleborough, or of literature in Squattlesea Mere, you must get your advice from somebody else, not me.

199. Secondly. The museum is to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a gla.s.s case a crocodile crunching a baby.

Neither must you ever show bones or guts, or any other charnel-house stuff. Teach your children to know the lark's note from the nightingale's; the length of their larynxes is their own business, and G.o.d's.

I cannot enough insist upon this point, nor too solemnly. If you wish your children to be surgeons, send them to Surgeons' College; if jugglers or necromancers, to Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke; and if butchers, to the shambles: but if you want them to lead the calm life of country gentlemen and gentlewomen, manservants and maidservants, let them seek none of Death's secrets till they die. Ever faithfully and affectionately yours,

J. R.

_Easter Tuesday, 1880._

DEAR ----,

200. I must enter to-day somewhat further on the practical, no less than emotional, reason for the refusal of anatomical ill.u.s.trations to the general public.

It is difficult enough to get one clear idea into anybody, of any single thing. But next to impossible to get _two_ clear ideas into them, of the same thing. We have had lions' heads for door-knockers these hundred and fifty years, without ever learning so much as what a lion's head is like. But with good modern stuffing and fetching, I can manage now to make a child really understand something about the beast's look, and his mane, and his sullen eyes and brindled lips. But if I'm bothered at the same time with a big bony box, that has neither mane, lips, nor eyes, and have to explain to the poor wretch of a parish schoolboy how somehow this fits on to that, I will be bound that, at a year's end, draw one as big as the other, and he won't know a lion's head from a tiger's--nor a lion's skull from a rabbit's. Nor is it the parish boy only who suffers.

The scientific people themselves miss half their points from the habit of hacking at things, instead of looking at them. When I gave my lecture on the Swallow[6] at Oxford, I challenged every anatomist there to tell me the use of his tail (I believe half of them didn't know he had one).

Not a soul of them could tell me, which I knew beforehand; but I did not know, till I had looked well through their books, how they were quarreling about his wings! Actually at this moment (Easter Tuesday, 1880), I don't believe you can find in any scientific book in Europe a true account of the way a bird flies--or how a snake serpentines. My Swallow lecture was the first bit of clear statement on the one point, and when I get my Snake lecture published, you will have the first extant bit of clear statement on the other; and that is simply because the anatomists can't, for their life, look at a thing till they have skinned it.

201. And matters get worse and worse every hour. Yesterday, after writing the first leaf of this note, I went into the British Museum, and found a nasty skeleton of a lizard, with its under jaw dropped off, on the top of a table of b.u.t.terflies--temporarily of course--but then everything has been temporary or temporizing at the British Museum for the last half-century; making it always a mere waste and weariness to the general public, because, forsooth, it had always to be kept up to the last meeting of the Zoological Society, and last edition of the _Times_. As if there had not been beasts enough before the Ark to tell our children the manners of, on a Sunday afternoon!