Page:John Collings Squire - Socialism and Art (1907).pdf/16

 The shortest way in which to combat these assaults would be to say right away to Capitalism: "Pluck the beam out of your own eye before thou pluckest out the mote which is in thy brother's—or, rather, thy son's." If the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of these several conditions is the test of a system's attitude towards Art, Capitalism stands trebly condemned out of its own mouth; for it fulfils none of them.

It may be an open question as to whether an artist should be absolutely free from any employment except his art. But at all events he never has been under Capitalism. If one excepts the painters—and most of those have had a very bad time in early life, while some have died in extreme poverty—one finds that the greater number of geniuses, English and foreign, have been forced not only to work for a living, but to do uncongenial and painful work for a living. Think of Chatterton and Haydon, the suicides; think of Burns, the excise-officer (small wonder that he took to drinking whisky when they put him to tapping it); think of Wordsworth, who might have starved had a friend not left him a small income; think of Goldsmith, doing the meanest literary hack work; of Wagner, writing cornet duets; of scores of others who have had to do any work which offered itself, or else live in absolute poverty.

Capitalism has never allowed the artist to live for his art—at least not until he has become almost too old to enjoy his leisure. The only way by which the gifted writer or painter has been able to secure case and independence in early life has been by prostituting his gifts to the caprice of his masters. If he can persuade himself to stifle his real aspirations and to adapt himself to the taste of Mr. Moneybags he can make the latter disgorge a little of his superfluous spoils. That is what is happening when we see talented painters wasting their time in painting vast portraits of rich nonentities or their wives for the Academy show. Your magnate hears that X.Y.Z. is a good painter, but he would see him a long way further before he would commission him to paint anything but a portrait of himself. Ostentation and taste can never exist side by side.

As the painter can make money by flattering the Capitalist's vanity through reflecting his ugly features, so the literary man can make money by reflecting his ugly thought—political or otherwise. If Kipling had confined himself to bringing out the best that was in him, he would have got fame—eventually—but he would never have become a plutocrat or a public oracle. He was