The Case for the Artist
By an “artist” I mean Shakespeare and
Me and Bach and Myself and Velasquez and Phidias,
and even You if you have ever written four lines on
the sunset in somebody’s album, or modelled a
Noah’s Ark for your little boy in plasticine.
Perhaps we have not quite reached the heights where
Shakespeare stands, but we are on his track. Shakespeare
can be representative of all of us, or Velasquez if
you prefer him. One of them shall be President
of our United Artists’ Federation. Let
us, then, consider what place in the scheme of things
our federation can claim.
Probably we artists have all been a little modest
about ourselves lately. During the war we asked
ourselves gloomily what use we were to the State compared
with the noble digger of coals, the much-to-be-reverenced
maker of boots, and the god-like grower of wheat.
Looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers
of brawny, half-dressed men pushing about blocks of
red-hot iron, we have told ourselves that these heroes
were the pillars of society, and that we were just
an incidental decoration. It was a wonder that
we were allowed to live. And now in these days
of strikes, when a single union of manual workers
can hold up the rest of the nation, it is a bitter
refection to us that, if we were to strike, the country
would go on its way quite happily, and nine-tenths
of the population would not even know that we had
downed our pens and brushes.
If there is any artist who has been depressed by such
thoughts as these, let him take comfort. We are
all right.
I made the discovery that we were all right by studying
the life of the bee. All that I knew about bees
until yesterday was derived from that great naturalist,
Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who
has been a child I knew that the insect in question
improved each shining hour by something honey something
something every something flower. I had also
heard that bees could not sting you if you held your
breath, a precaution which would make conversation
by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too
spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same
bee could only sting you once—though, apparently,
there was no similar provision of Nature’s that
the same person could not be stung twice.
Well, that was all that I knew about bees until yesterday.
I used to see them about the place from time to time,
busy enough, no douht, but really no busier than I
was; and as they were not much interested in me they
had no reason to complain that I was not much interested
in them. But since yesterday, when I read a book
which dealt fully, not only with the public life of
the bee, but with the most intimate details of its
private life, I have looked at them with a new interest
and a new sympathy. For there is no animal which
does not get more out of life than the pitiable insect
which Dr. Watts holds up as an example to us.
