;: 
 
 CA 
 
THE ACE 
 
 OF 
 
 ISFIGUREMENT 
 
 Richardson Evans. 
 
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THE AGE OF DISFIGUREMENT 
 
THE AGE 
 
 DISFIGUEEMENT 
 
 RICHARDSON EVANS , 
 
 :;^ 
 
 
 REMINGTON & CO LIMITED 
 
 LONDON & SYDNEY 
 
 1893 
 
 [All Ri^htf re<:eyir(f 
 

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Of the two sections forming this Httle book, the 
 first is substantially a reprint of an Article which 
 appeared in the National Review for October, 1890, 
 and I desire here to express my obligation to the 
 Editors for their kind permission to reproduce it. 
 The other section deals with the present phase of 
 the remedial movement. I could wish that it were 
 open to no graver reproach than that of vain 
 repetition and lack of coherence. 
 
 1 have thought that to be frankly egotistical 
 savoured less of presumption than the use of forms 
 implying any right to speak for others. The views 
 set forth are only the views of an individual member 
 of the " National Society tor Checking the Abuses 
 of Public Advertising." 
 
 1G9950 
 
Digitized by tlie Internet Arcliive 
 
 in 2008 witli funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/ageofdisfiguremeOOevanricli 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Age of Disfigurement (1890). . . i 
 
 II. CoNciNNiTAS Redux (1893) 25 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 A. Scheme of National Society for Check- 
 
 ing" the Abuses of Public Advertising . 103 
 
 B. Sample Scheme of suggested Local 
 
 Associations for the Protection of the 
 Picturesque 105 
 
 C. Suggestions towards a Scheme of Muni- 
 
 cipal Regulation 107 
 
THE AGE OF DISFIGUEEMENT. 
 
 (October, i8go.) 
 
Behold to what a goodly world we come ! 
 For us the spacious bounty of the air, 
 The impregnable pavilion of heaven, 
 And silent muster of the disciplined stars. 
 For us the sun replenished, and for us 
 The punctual patience of the lonely moon ; 
 The planetary seasons moving round 
 Their stately soundless orbits, foste ring life 
 In blade, leaf, flower, blossom, and reddening truit 
 The mountains motionless, the mobile sea, 
 Freshness of dawn and frankincense of eve, 
 And vestal hush of meditative night. 
 Paupers we come into a world prepared 
 As for some regal guest ; prepared, arrayed, 
 With temples, shrines, and statues of the gods, 
 Cathedrals where unfaltering twilight dwells, 
 Subduing souls to sympathy and prayer : 
 Lakes, woods, and waterfalls, and cities girt 
 With walls majestic circling sumptuous tombs 
 Of sceptres superseded, thrones interred, 
 Prodigious pageant open to us all. 
 
 Alfred Austin, 
 From " Fortunatus the Pessimist." 
 
Earth has not anything to show more fair : 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty : 
 This city now doth like a garment wear 
 The beauty of the morning ; silent, l)are, 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 Open unto the fields, and to the sky ; 
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep 
 In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill ; 
 Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will : 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still ! 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery 
 that might be shown on behalf of their nearest neighbours. 
 
 Georgk Eliot. 
 
There have been some gratifying indications of late 
 that the March of Disfigurement is not absolutely or 
 universally accepted as the inexorable law of progress. 
 Those who have pleaded timidly and fitfully that 
 something should be done to save the amenities of life 
 from the extinction with which they are menaced, find 
 at last, something to their surprise, that they no longer 
 cry in the wilderness. The signs are abroad of a 
 national awakening. Several months ago someone 
 discovered that a huge advertising board was a repre- 
 hensible intrusion in one of the sweetest stretches of 
 the Thames, and wrote to tell the public so. About 
 the same time the municipal authorities of a Welsh 
 watering-place woke up to the strenuous conviction 
 that bathing machines, bedaubed with the praise of a 
 certain pushing proprietor's pills, were not an embel- 
 lishment to the beach. Then came the Zaeo outcry, 
 foolish enough, no doubt, but still an evidence of a 
 lingering belief that the community should not be un- 
 reservedly at the mercy of the bill-sticker ; and now 
 several persons appear to have become simultaneously 
 aware that sky-line advertising goes beyond the per- 
 missible limit of Philistinism. 
 
 This, I confess, is flattering to my presaging 
 faculty. Chance ordained that this most hideous 
 development of aggressive vulgarity was born, so to 
 speak, under my very eyes. Night after night it has 
 
 B 
 
been my lot to pass the factory which proudly claims 
 to be the original home of the abomination, and on its 
 hated roof ridge I beheld the first of the awful struc- 
 tures rise. I shall not give particulars of place, for 
 the obvious reason that it would please the enemy of 
 the common peace to have his misdeeds blazoned 
 abroad. Suffice to say that I solaced the pains occa- 
 sioned by the spectacle with the reflection that it was 
 the beginning of the end. If, I argued to myself, the 
 nuisance had kept within its former bounds, society 
 would not suffer acutely enough to make its indigna- 
 tion felt, and daily experience would breed insen- 
 sibility. But when street architecture disappears, 
 when the metropolis becomes one vast expanse of 
 aerial alphabets, when the dome of St. Paul's and the 
 towers of Westminster are intercepted by a gigantic 
 web of posts and rails, the dullest soul will feel that 
 a wanton outrage is being perpetrated. I went on 
 cynically to reflect that some day or other the crazy 
 structure would come down with a rush, and that 
 alarm for the physical safety of the pedestrian would 
 effect what concern for aesthetic proprieties would not 
 have been lively enough to essay. Zaeo was a case in 
 point. Had the poster simply offended the eye it 
 would have escaped criticism ; but, because in the 
 imaginations of some people it sinned against 
 morality, it at once suggested the question — Can 
 nothing be done to regulate wall advertising? 
 
 The sky-line modiflcation of the practice is un- 
 doubtedly the grossest and least tolerable of all that 
 the perverse ingenuity of the experts has devised. 
 It has already robbed of the last trace of seemliness 
 several of our most pretentious thoroughfares, and no 
 one knows how long any firmamental space will be 
 left unoccupied. I can extract no grain of comfort 
 from the isolated acts of repentance and reparation 
 which have followed the first outcry. To take down a 
 sign is as much a mode of advertising as putting one 
 
up. If there be an uproar, well and good; the 
 desired publicity has been secured, while the dis- 
 play of unselfish deference to public feeling will 
 be carried to account in the books of the firm as 
 a good commercial asset. Smaller people will imitate 
 the offence without being under any temptation 
 to simulate the contrition. After a time, the novelty 
 of undoing the evil done will wear off, and those who 
 believe that these sky announcements attract custom 
 will not care to substitute a speculative investment in 
 the gratitude of the crowd. The whole practice of 
 advertisement rests on the assumption that the only 
 way to interest the passer in the wares of the trader is 
 to worry him unrelentingly and incessantly. The 
 experts in the art are far too shrewd not to understand 
 that a generation which has been subjected to such a 
 discipline has lost all delicacy of moral perception. 
 Slaves are not expected to show the virtues of free 
 men ; and a public in whom long experience of tor- 
 ment has developed a blessed callousness can no 
 longer discriminate between clemency and cruelty in 
 those who play upon its nerves. 
 
 After all, this particular phase of the disfigurement 
 question is important mainly because it has arrested 
 attention and broken the long spell of despairing sub- 
 mission. If every aerial symbol were removed to- 
 morrow — ^if the argument of physical insecurity 
 prevailed, and the fear of having to pay damages for 
 the havoc wrought to person and property by the 
 descent of the structures into the thoroughfares pre- 
 vailed over the hope of catching custom — there 
 would hardly be any appreciable relief to the " quiet 
 eye." 
 
 Some time ago — it seems a period now very far 
 away — there was nothing more picturesque, nothing 
 more majestic, than the view from Waterloo Bridge 
 towards Blackfriars. The charm has ceased, the glory 
 has departed. But let us be just. The sky-line 
 
frameworks only threaten to complete the ruin which 
 other disfigurements began. There was a gloomy and 
 romantic Shot Tower on the south side of the river, 
 which was one of the dominating features in the 
 scene. In an evil hour it occurred to the proprietors 
 that it offered, in its imposing isolation, a splendid 
 advertising station. Accordingly they painted on two 
 of the faces large bands of white groundwork, and on 
 this they inscribed their name and the trade they 
 prosecuted. It maybe read a mile away, with effects 
 on the merely sensitive beholder that maybe guessed. 
 Incongruity is the worst form of ugliness, and a 
 glaring patch of this sort converts all that was pleas- 
 ing into an offence. In vain does the eye seek to 
 dwell on the flotilla of moored barges which lie 
 sleepily in the stream ; in vain does it struggle to rest 
 on the graceful bulk of St. Paul's. True, it has not 
 yet occurred to the owners of the craft to make the 
 sides eloquent (in vermilion and emerald green) of 
 the superlative merits of So-and-So's dogs' meat, or 
 to inscribe as a legend on the sail the saving virtues 
 of the Patent Emetic. Not yet have the sky-line 
 frames shrouded with their abhorrent lattice-work the 
 mighty dome. These things we are spared for the 
 moment. But the perpetual presence of the deformed 
 and deforming tower spoils the dream."^ It is here to" 
 remind us in our most contemplative mood that every 
 delight that nature or art can offer, every glory that 
 the past has bequeathed to the present, the grandest 
 of our monuments, the finest of the effects which 
 clouds and light reveal, and the happy combinations 
 which the natural play of human activities produce, 
 are ours indeed, but are held upon the most precarious 
 of tenures. The caprice, the stupidity, the insensi- 
 bility, nay, the deliberate malice of one person may 
 
 * Since this was written, the gentle obliterating toucli of London 
 smoke has softened the inscription to inoff'ensiveness. 
 
destroy what it took the exertions and the lavish 
 outlay of generations to create, and may kill in an 
 hour charms which were part of the delight of many 
 lives. It may be that of the thousands of human 
 beings who every hour stream across the bridges, 
 those who have eyes to perceive and souls to feel are 
 hardly to be reckoned by the score. I have even 
 known persons who pretend to culture maintain 
 seriously that the Surrey side is one long panorama 
 of unmitigated and irredeemable ugliness. The multi- 
 tude are subdued to the element in which fate has 
 ordained that they shall live and move and have their 
 being. But are the few who see something in human 
 affairs nobler and better than the pursuit of gain, 
 and who, if they cheerfully accept the law of universal 
 labour, claim for themselves the right to enjoy, as well 
 as to struggle, to win refreshment for the spirit as 
 well as nourishment for the body ; are these, I say, 
 unworthy of the regard of the practical philanthropist ? 
 Is the lowest and coarsest standard to be taken as the 
 determining one? 
 
 Here I am concerned only to maintain that the lives 
 of a vast number of men and women, who certainly 
 are not among the least worthy members of society, 
 are made distinctly poorer by each blot upon the 
 Thames' bank. What is true of Southwark is true of 
 an infinite number of other regions, where some wan- 
 tonly jarring and intrusive feature spoils a scene which 
 would be, if not gracious, at least not distressing. I 
 am not blaming the owners. They were not bound, 
 I suppose, to think of the public when they had a 
 chance of improving their business. " If we had not 
 made the most of our advantage," I can conceive their 
 arguing, " other firms would have made the most of 
 theirs. Blame not us, but the insensate rivalry of 
 modern trade, and the apathy of public feeling which 
 allows us, in our suicidal struggles, to neutralize all 
 
6 
 
 that has been done to minister to the better tastes of 
 men, and to efface from the only landscape on which 
 the toiling masses can look all elements of grace and 
 restfulness." 
 
 I might multiply instances indefinitely. But the 
 shot tower will suffice to show how a minimum 
 exercise of power by individuals, an exercise of power 
 absolutely legitimate in itself, has worked the maxi- 
 mum amount of damage to the public interest, so far 
 as it is a public interest to conserve what is beautiful 
 and to exclude what is repulsive in public prospects. 
 I need not rehearse the melancholy list of advertising 
 disfigurements and others of a kindred type. Every- 
 one is apparently free to inflict any discomfort or even 
 pain upon the community, if by doing so he can secure 
 notoriety for something in which he feels an interest. 
 Of all the sorry bits of cant that I know, there is none 
 to compare with the talk about the "taste" shown in 
 the new developments. Each bill or tablet is, I readily 
 allow, neat enough, and often is admirable in design 
 or colouring. But street advertisements in the aggre- 
 gate are beyond all question a nuisance, and, what is 
 material to my point, they are efficacious very often 
 in proportion to the annoyance they cause. The per- 
 sons interested rely on the recurrence of nervous 
 shocks. If a man has physic to sell, and attempts to 
 impress me with a sense of its merits by knocking 
 me down every five minutes, 1 have my remedy in the 
 police courts. If, again, he depend on lung power to 
 puff his wares, and hire a small boy to shout into my 
 ear every two minutes the name and title of the article 
 in question, this also would be a matter for the Justices. 
 But if he commits assault and battery on my eyes, if 
 he so arrange his execrable enamelled announcements 
 in blue and yellow, that, turn w^here I will, I am con- 
 fronted with one at every step, I must suffer. The 
 law gives me no relief ; the institutions under which 
 I live give me no protection. 1 go in fear of my 
 
spirit's life at railway stations. I dare not look out 
 of the window as the train carries me through the 
 " residential suburbs." If I mount the steps of an 
 omnibus, lo ! the enemy grins horribly in my face 
 with staring brutality of vivid colour; and if I take 
 the penny steamer, he is there. Chelsea, Lambeth, 
 London Bridge : these are obsolete distinctions ; all 
 the metropolitan, and, for the matter of that, the pro- 
 vincial world, is one under the levelling rule of the 
 almighty placard. 
 
 I have no intention of spoiling my case by con- 
 founding in one sweeping complaint all sorts of 
 painted or printed notifications. Nor do I for a 
 moment assume. that any considerable proportion of 
 my fellows-citizens are so uncomfortably constituted as 
 I am in relation to these matters. I believe an appre- 
 ciable number of excellent people would rather have 
 the existing display in omnibuses, on the steps of ex- 
 hibitions, on the fronts of buildings in public thorough- 
 fares, in railway stations, wherever, in fine, money 
 can purchase a few feet of superfices, than have the 
 garish display banished altogether. Taste, I quite 
 realize, is subjective, and the addition that jars on one 
 pair of eyes may commend itself to another pair, on 
 the ground that it " brightens things up a bit." 
 
 Let me at the earliest moment make my peace with 
 that most formidable and intolerant order of intelli- 
 gence which prides itself on being above all things 
 " practical." I am very sensible that We live in a 
 world where commonplace is lord and master ; I know 
 that it is hopeless to ask public authority to interpose 
 to save the finer — or, to avoid coloured language, let 
 us say the exceptional — feelings of the few. Jf I could 
 persuade myself that the people deliberately prefer to 
 have what the aforesaid few call comeliness banished 
 from the face of England, I should hold my peace and 
 endure. But I am persuaded that there is no positive 
 preference for disfigurement — nay, that the majority 
 
of men, though they may not be uncomfortably con- 
 scious of the malady, would appreciate the relief. 
 
 In this as in many other departments of life, the 
 good-humoured or despairing resignation of the public 
 is falsely construed as active connivance or consent. 
 The balance of opinion, and, beyond all question, the 
 tendency of collective effort, is towards taste, not 
 towards the negation of taste. The very fact that 
 many whose business it is to prepare advertisements 
 strive to make them individually neat and attractive, 
 that it has been found commercially remunerative to 
 hire accomplished painters or draughtsmen to prepare 
 designs, implies that there is a critical faculty in the 
 breast of those to whom the signs are to appeal. 
 
 Take, again, our public buildings. Our constitution 
 is democratic, and the first duty of a representative is 
 held to be to cut down wasteful outlay. Yet what 
 Ministry would dare to submit proposals for some 
 new official pile which did not involve lavish expen- 
 diture for the sake of architectural effect ? That the 
 nation does not always get what the Aediles are sup- 
 posed to aim at does not affect the argument. What 
 praise the Metropolitan Board of Works earned and 
 obtained by the construction of the Thames Embank- 
 ment ! Yet, if a way for vehicles were alone desired, 
 where was the advantage in devising all that fineness of 
 proportion, that massive grace of chiselled granite ? 
 
 Pass, again, to natural beauty. How it redounds 
 to the honour of the City Corporation that they saved 
 Epping Forest and Burnham Beeches ! Why Burn- 
 ham Beeches? If the problem were simply to provide 
 a picnic-ground, it would have been a simple matter 
 to get a larger area of less stately woodland ever so 
 much nearer town. If this bogey of popular indiffer- 
 ence were not perpetually being set up to discourage 
 the reformer, it might seem waste of time to quote 
 instances to prove that the masses, or those who 
 speak for them, do prefer the congruous to the incon- 
 
9 
 
 gruous, grace to hideousness, repose to endless jar. 
 Go to an East-end theatre : observe with what raptures 
 the gallery greets the transformation scene. Where 
 would be the applause if the palm-trees bore trade 
 inscriptions, or the fairy sprites were utilized as sand- 
 wich-men ? Would Battersea Park retain its fascina- 
 tion if the Sub-tropical Gardens were placed at the 
 disposal of one of the too well-known firms? 
 
 All I claim of the " practical intelligence" is to be 
 consistent. If the community devotes so much of its 
 resources to providing objects intended to please the 
 eye, it surely is illogical to concede a discretionary 
 power to individuals to destroy the effect when the 
 expenditure has been incurred. If a garden is created 
 at infinite expense on the Thames Embankment, is it 
 not monstrous that a railway company should be 
 allowed to annihilate the picturesque effect by dis- 
 playing high above the leafy vista a permanent blaze 
 of excursion announcements, which, even if they fulfil 
 the intention of the enterprising managers, will result 
 only in an infinitesimal increase to the dividends. 
 Here, let me remark, as an illustration of the work- 
 ings of the '' practical spirit," that probably many of 
 the directors who have authorized this unfeeling Van- 
 dalism will be found munificent patrons of societies 
 for bringing beauty home to the poor, and possibly 
 write letters at intervals to the papers to urge that 
 really and truly " something ought to be done to make 
 London beautiful." Their notion is that another 
 quarter of a million or so should be spent upon rear- 
 ing a pretentious edifice or cutting a new thorough- 
 fare ; but that the right of anybody and everybody to 
 introduce an element of torture into the costly pano- 
 rama shall, as heretofore, be tacitly reserved. Again, 
 I plead, let us be consistent. If it is a fundamental 
 and immutable principle of the British Constitution 
 that no one who owns, or rents, or hires a piece of 
 ground is to be under any obligation, in his use of it, 
 
10 
 
 to respect the susceptibility of his fellows — that Sight 
 alone of all the senses maybe outraged with impunity, 
 let us accept the consequences. Let us, that is to say, 
 cease to squander funds in developing tastes which 
 can only be a cause of lifelong suffering to those who 
 possess them. Instead of teaching the children at 
 Board Schools to feel the delicate harmonies of tint 
 and form, let us instil into them a saving insensibility 
 to ugliness. Let us fortify them, as the phrase goes, 
 for the battle of life by deadening the faculties in 
 which they will be vulnerable to the countless shafts 
 of all subduing Philistinism. Let us (cant again !) 
 adapt them to their environments. There is no form 
 of pain more wearying than that which attacks us in 
 the sphere of our highest pleasures. It is only the 
 trained musician that knows the agony of a false note. 
 
 It may be said that the existing reign of anarchy is 
 a working compromise between the rival powers. 
 The Englishman's house, according to this theory, is 
 his castle. From the ramparts he can hurl his mis- 
 siles at will against the passers-by ; within it he is 
 free to indulge, unassailed, any cravings in the way 
 of taste with which he may be afflicted. The arrange- 
 ment is scarcely flattering to civilization. But let that 
 pfts-s. The exemption it provides is too partial to 
 deserve recognition. To the rich man it gives only 
 an occasional respite ; for the poor man it does noth- 
 ing. The families who " live in one room," the artisans 
 who, after food is found for wife and little ones, have 
 no available balance to spend on etchings and easy 
 chairs, are left outside the understanding. No. The 
 "practical intelligence" must really provide some 
 more substantial excuse than this for the policy of 
 folded hands, with or without groans. 
 
 Those who have had the patience to follow me thus 
 far will bear with me, I trust, yet a little longer while 
 I try to roll out of the way other boulders with which 
 the Faint-hearts or the Gallios would block the line of 
 
11 
 
 action. It is, we are eternally told, a utilitarian age. 
 England is very full, and very busy. Everyone is 
 intent on money-making, and will not stand any 
 finicking nonsense about unsightliness and what not 
 in the race for profit. People who have to earn a 
 livelihood cannot afford to indulge in aesthetic tom- 
 foolery. You cannot have mediaeval quaintness and 
 prettiness — if, indeed, the Middle Ages cared an atom 
 more than the nineteenth century for grace and come- 
 liness — in the thick of an industrial community. The 
 individual speculator will not forego, and ought not 
 to be asked to forego, a chance of making gain. Look 
 at the fortunes made by the free employment of 
 posters. Will you strike at the root of prosperity in 
 a nation of shopkeepers just for the sake of sparing 
 your nerves ? No, says the practical man, cultivate a 
 little necessary toughness of fibre. " He who wears 
 shoes," runs the Sanscrit proverb, "carpets the earth 
 with leather." " He who ceases to be fastidious," as 
 the Hitopadcsha, edited for the use of true-born 
 Britons, would put it, " will find life endurable for 
 himself, and will cease to distress others with his 
 querulous preaching." 
 
 I am far from disputing that the advice would be 
 judicious if the premisses were sound. It is as a con- 
 vinced utilitarian that I write, and above all as one 
 who accepts the iron law of economic production. 
 Each age has to face its own conditions and make the 
 best of them. I claim to be infinitely more in har- 
 mony with my time and to breathe more truly the 
 spirit of the age than the degenerate and ungrateful 
 children who ask us to believe that the generation is 
 hopelessly, irredeemably, content with sordid sur- 
 roundings. What is utilitarianism ? The doctrine 
 that our regulations, political and social, should be 
 framed with a view to the widest possible diffusion of 
 happiness. And happiness — what is it ? I forbear 
 definition. I would not limit the scope. No doubt 
 
12 
 
 the fulfilment of duty is in itself happiness, and in 
 this sense I can conceive that there is joy and reward 
 for those who, according to their lights, fight on 
 bravely through an existence that knows no calm con- 
 templation of nature, no comfort in the survey of the 
 works of man. A home may be excruciating to the 
 eye of taste, and yet the shrine of many a virtue. 
 But I protest against the tendency of some minds to 
 assume that because taste and morals belong to 
 different spheres, there should be an eternal divorce 
 between them. The sightless man is not, ipso facto, 
 better than the man who sees. What is duty? What 
 is the goal at which it aims ? The happiness of 
 others. And who will exclude from the elements of 
 happiness the enjoyment of physical loveliness, or at 
 least exemption from never-ceasing collision with 
 physical deformity. 
 
 This is where the apologists for unfettered license 
 in the disfigurement of public places land themselves 
 in a contradiction. Authority must not control, they 
 say, because that would interfere with trade, and trade 
 brings profit. Society, in other words, must be made 
 unhappy at every turn in order that society may have 
 the means of happiness. The higher and broader 
 utility must be sacrificed lest the trivial and subordi- 
 nate utilities should be compromised. The proprietor 
 of a quack medicine is to be free to afflict remorse- 
 lessly and indiscriminately the gaze of millions, not 
 one in a thousand of whom could by any possibility 
 become his customers. And the recompense (from 
 the Philistine point of view, the justification) of his 
 persistence is that by doing so he amasses wealth 
 enough to get a " little place in the country " to which 
 he personally can retreat and find refuge from the 
 inferno that he and his kind have created. I am 
 dealing just now with the " business " defence of the 
 existing license. Is this, I ask, a business-like pro- 
 ceeding? Is it utilitarianism ? Is it the shortest and 
 
13 
 
 cheapest way to secure the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number ? Surely it is simpler to leave the 
 earth habitable for the children of men. 
 
 This brings me to the essence of the controversy. 
 It appears to be a very hard saying to most people 
 that it is not steam, nor manufactures, nor the growth 
 of population that makes towns unlovely ; but it is 
 true. Florence, and Venice, and Genoa, Ghent and 
 Antwerp, or to come back to our own shores, Nor- 
 wich or Totnes, or unregarded Rye in Sussex are 
 reputed to be fairly picturesque. Yet every grace 
 they possess was given to them in the days when 
 they were the centre of fierce bustle and turmoil. 
 Whatever jars is the work of these times of progress 
 and enlightenment. If it be objected that the glories 
 of the Italian and Flemish towns, and of our English 
 Norfolk, were due to a combination of opulence and 
 munificence among the burghers of long ago, I own 
 it ; but I add, that public spirit, infinitely greater in 
 these times, cannot redeem the character of our cities 
 and rural districts until the hand of the defacer be 
 stayed. To what purpose has been all our outlay on 
 the Thames Embankment while it is in the power of 
 the tenant of any one of the buildings on the bank to 
 make his facade one huge advertising scroll in gam- 
 boge and pink ? or so long as nothing but the absence 
 of external motive prevents the directors of any of the 
 railway companies that possess bridges from plastering 
 the girders from end to end with vivid descriptions of 
 cheap trips, and more or less imaginative time-tables. 
 
 If we want to beautify the metropolis — and some- 
 one is always producing a big and costly scheme for 
 achieving this noble end — the one simple and effectual 
 method is not to add anything, but to prevent 
 certain things from being added. Do not invite your 
 architects to rear yet another structure to be killed 
 by the neighbouring vulgarities ; but give such art as 
 the architects have already used a chance. Pull down 
 
14 
 
 the sordid hatchments, and reveal to the passers-by 
 details of delicate stone-work and admirable terra 
 cotta which have lain perdu behind the planking ever 
 since the builder made the edifice over to the trades- 
 man and his expert advisers. Great will be the 
 excitement when the public discovers, to its astonish- 
 ment, some fine morning that modern British archi- 
 tecture may be found outside the precincts of the 
 design-room at the Royal Academy Exhibition. Our 
 public departments will have to surrender one or two 
 traditions if they are to co-operate in the regenerat- 
 ing movement. The appointed Guardians of parks 
 and commons and woodland spaces must disabuse 
 themselves of the notion that the official fitness of 
 things demands the wholesale erection of useless 
 notice-boards at every point of picturesque vantage, 
 while the District Councils (which it is not precipitate 
 to suppose will exist in the golden age I am prefigur- 
 ing) may be induced to indicate the names of streets 
 by labels less fatal to the architecture of the corners 
 than the aggravating things in glistening blue and 
 white, which the fancy of the Municipal Surveyor has 
 devised. 
 
 There is, I repeat, no reason under the sun whv 
 the places where human beings work or dwell should 
 be repulsive. The cottages, the inns, the homesteads 
 that delight the eye of the traveller in rural districts 
 were not constructed with any deliberate regard to 
 picturesque effect. It is hardly less easy to make a 
 workman's suburb agreeable than to make it — as the 
 practice of the speculative builder ordains — an area, 
 at the best, of depressing uniformity. It is not out- 
 lay that has made the precincts of the Temple a haven 
 of blissful rest. Nor is it — be it said with all respect 
 — the ornate and pretentious piles erected to the 
 ■order of the Benchers of to-day that bestow or sus- 
 tain the charm. The old courts, with their grim, 
 smoke-encrusted tenements of plain brick, soothe the 
 
15 
 
 sense simply because no jarring addition has been 
 allowed, and because the piety ot departed Treasurers 
 placed here and there a sapling, which the nurturing 
 care of time has converted into stately trees. The 
 secret is an open one. 
 
 All that is w^anted is that degree of care and con- 
 science, the absence of which everyone is ready to 
 denounce when it leads to sanitary evil. The judi- 
 cious and timely planting of a few young trees may 
 convert what would otherwise have been an eye- 
 sore into a delight. A Virginian creeper, a fig, a vine, 
 a jasmine ; what a perpetual miracle does the man 
 who spends sixpence and five minutes on any one of 
 these create for the comfort of posterity. Compare 
 the street of sombre brick in Bloomsbury that is 
 varied and brightened by these kindly climbers with 
 the staring painted barrenness of a fashionable 
 thoroughfare in Belgravia. If I had to point out the 
 one standing impediment to grace, I should unhesitat- 
 ingly name the paint-pot. Whitewash or any form 
 of pigment can hardly ever offend. I was going to 
 say something in praise of drapery, but I recall the 
 awful possibilities of calico blinds. 
 
 When I say that manufactures do not involve ugli- 
 ness, I make no exception as regard the factories. 
 There is, or there would be if the perversity of the 
 individual proprietors allowed, a grim dignity about 
 these vast agglomerations of busy workshops and ware- 
 rooms, with their gigantic gables and stately chimneys 
 belching Tartarean smoke, which appeals both to the 
 imagination and to the thoughtful eye. Of railways 
 is it necessary to speak? Turner saw the poetic 
 aspect of the locomotive ; and I am content to leave 
 the revelation to his brush. It is not the iron roads, 
 the graceful sweep of the embankments, the mystic 
 signals, the romantic cuttings that repel, but the 
 wanton eye-sores. I never see a little station garden, 
 its pretty' clumps backed by a panorama of Removals 
 
16 
 
 by Sea or Land, ^^ithout feeling that here is a typical 
 illustration of the contest between Ormuzd and Ahri- 
 man. If the employes would only strike against the 
 outrage on the flower-beds, they might count on 
 generous subscriptions to the Union fund. One of 
 the curious side-effects of the recent controversy is 
 the development of genteel notions about the beautiful 
 and the repulsive. One person (who had contributed 
 a horror to the river below bridge) disposed of his 
 critics to his own satisfaction by asking what there 
 was to spoil. For this gentleman — a type no doubt 
 of many who for all that are held in high esteem by 
 their bankers — it was a perfectly grotesque idea that 
 there was any picturesqueness about the Pool. Artists 
 and other eccentrics might have delusions, but the 
 commercial instinct sees nothing that need be spared. 
 It is dirty mud at low tide — dirty water at high. 
 Chimneys, masts, and other dirty things keep sticking 
 up into the dirty atmosphere. There is nothing at 
 all pretty and bright, except, indeed, at Rosherville 
 Gardens, and, perhaps, some of the pavilions on the 
 piers when the paint is quite fresh. The makers of 
 the signs take much the same view. The chimney- 
 stacks, with their clusters of uncanny pots and cowls, 
 the telegraph-poles and ventilating-tubes are already 
 there, and are not joys to the beholders; what for- 
 bids, then, to make what is already unpleasant abso- 
 lutely unbearable. Because certain things have been 
 permitted, anything must be borne. Because we 
 have not saved what we might have saved, we are to 
 sacrifice all the rest. 
 
 Another argument that finds much favour with those 
 who think that nothing can be done is based on a 
 principle which was once held in just respect. The 
 liberty of the individual to do what he likes with his 
 own; the danger and difficulty of interfering with the 
 rights of private property : I am as jealous in these 
 things as Lord Bramwell himself. But be it observed 
 
17 
 
 that civilized society rests on restrictions. Legitimate 
 liberty begins where legitimate restraint ends, and not 
 before. To use your own in such a way as not to 
 injure your neighbour's, is a fundamental maxim of 
 law and morality. A man is not allowed to build a 
 house, even on his own ground, precisely as he pleases. 
 Municipal bye-laws prescribe imperative conditions 
 about frontage and about drainage, to which the free- 
 holder must submit. He cannot preach from his draw- 
 ing-room window doctrines which ordinary morality 
 condemns. The Italian may not grind his organ in 
 the street when the aggrieved householder motions 
 him round the corner. Instances might be multiplied 
 indefinitely. If the collective will overrides individual 
 caprice in matters affecting the ear, the smell, the 
 health, the moral sense, why should the eye alone be 
 left outside the pale of legal protection. "Oh!" 
 comes the answer oat, " because it is so hard to draw 
 the line ; because tastes differ ; because what capti- 
 vates one agonizes another." Most true ; but this 
 absence of universally accepted standards is not 
 peculiar to the sphere of vision. Notions of decency 
 (as every traveller knows) differ from one country to 
 another. What shocks an English woman would not 
 be thought coarse by a French woman. What would 
 argue depravity in Great Britain is prescribed by 
 usage in Japan. Yet are we to blot all the laws for 
 upholding public morals from the statute book ? Sani- 
 tary engineers have as yet arrived at no common 
 understanding as to modes of house-drainage, disposal 
 of sewage, and so on. Are we on that account to say 
 there shall be no code of building rules, and that con- 
 servancy arrangements shall lapse? Homoeopaths 
 denounce allopaths, allopaths denounce homoeopaths, 
 the public possibly are not absolute believers in the 
 science of either ; are we for this reason to disestablish 
 the College of Physicians ? What shall we say of 
 art ? Has any building ever pleased all the architects ? 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 Has any picture ever received the suffrages of all the 
 painters ? Yet the Royal Academy is not to be 
 deprived, just yet, of its endowments. I cannot trust 
 myself to speak of the feuds of the savants, and can 
 only, therefore, remark in passing that science, in 
 spite of the difference among the doctors, is still 
 taught at public expense in universities and elemen- 
 tary schools. Perhaps cruelty to animals and children 
 offers the best analogy. Men of equally kind disposi- 
 tion have irreconcilable notions about the limits of 
 judicious discipline. A farmer thinks nothing of 
 practices which make the flesh of the sentimentalist 
 creep. Yet who proposes that the law shall not pro- 
 vide penalties for brutality ? 
 
 If a strong and urgent reason exists for authoritative 
 intervention between the public and the defacers of 
 public places, there is, 1 maintain, no antecedent 
 objection to interference. And is there not a cause ? 
 At present no place is safe. The quaint cottage by 
 the roadside is plastered with enamelled puffs. The 
 sequestered nook enshrines the painted panels of 
 competing hotels. The piers on remote Highland 
 lochs are emulating the garish medley of the Under- 
 ground Railway. It may be possible — indeed, I know, 
 by happy experience, that it is still possible — to escape 
 from the pest ; but one has ceased to have any confi- 
 dence. The sense of insecurity, jurists tell us, is the 
 worst incident of despotic government. During an 
 earthquake period, it is not so much the shock that 
 appals as the continuous apprehension that unmans. 
 A special disease of the nervous system is, I am told, 
 developed at such times. To some such malady of 
 the soul, thousands of men who cannot wrap them- 
 selves, as the fortunate many do, in the mantle of in- 
 sensibility, are daily victims. Vede e passa. They 
 cannot, alas ! pass without seeing; they fear, when as 
 yet they have not perceived ; they cannot even, like 
 the Eton truants, snatch a fearful joy from momentary 
 
19 
 
 exemption. These have the highest interest in obtain- 
 ing some sort of guarantee against the indefinite 
 extension of the scourge ; but reform is the concern 
 of the multitude as well. There is, I believe, a general 
 readiness to accept the doctrine that there are places 
 (" prospects," perhaps, would convey the meaning 
 better) where no obtrusive advertising ought to be 
 permitted, and that even in unprotected areas adver- 
 tising should be regulated. In every breast lingers 
 some sense of comeliness, of congruity, some prefer- 
 ence for what is picturesque to what is sordid and un- 
 lovely. Many who do not quite realize that it is 
 wanton and unnecessary advertising that makes the 
 aspect of English towns— yes, and of English villages 
 and rural resorts — every day less pleasing, would, 
 nevertheless, feel the transformation when it was 
 wrought. For the minority, half the sting will be 
 taken from the pain when sufferers can feel that there 
 is a limit set to the scourge. 
 
 Let me now, with more diffidence than I have been 
 able to affect in speaking of the disease, indicate 
 roughly and tentatively the lines on which relief may 
 be sought. One word of caution on the threshold. 
 If we are to succeed at all, we must not attempt too 
 much. We cannot trust to public feeling to redress 
 our wrong, but we shall have to carrv public feeling 
 with us. We shall only make ourselves bores and 
 laughing-stocks if we give ourselves superior airs, and 
 rail at the " tastelessness " of a generation which is 
 not disposed to fret itself to death because things exist 
 that we find disagreeable. We must, in a word, be 
 opportunists. We must tolerate much that we dislike, 
 and welcome some things that we should not wish for. 
 For instance, I am individually persuaded that if it 
 were penal to exhibit any notification of any kind, or 
 for any purpose, in letters more than an inch in 
 height; if it were treason by statute to erect any 
 building, or to make any alteration in a building, not 
 
20 
 
 fairly in harmony with the surroundings ; and, above 
 all, if architects were held criminally responsible for 
 providing, as an integral part of the design, chimneys 
 that would carry off the smoke and the proper appara- 
 tus for efficient house drainage ; if, that is to say, 
 these accomplished persons were forbidden to dele- 
 gate the most important part of their functions to the 
 chimney doctor and the journeyman plumber, no harm 
 would be done to anyone, and an enormous addition 
 would be made to the sum of human happiness. But 
 the proposal is too practical to be practicable. We 
 must not speak of it; we must not think of it. 
 
 Putting aside the impossible, suggestions may be 
 arranged in a descending scale. First would come the 
 conferment on local representative bodies of a power 
 of regulation, either absolute or subject to appeal. 
 This would only be the application to a case peculiarly 
 suited for it of the principle of local option, which, as 
 regards the liquor traffic, has been repeatedly affirmed. 
 I do not think there is any risk that the authority thus 
 given to popular bodies would be abused. The 
 tendency would rather be to laxity. But it would 
 provide an efficacious remedy in those cases which are 
 constantly occurring, where something in which a 
 locality takes a pride and delight, or — more important 
 still — something which brings custom to a place, is 
 jeopardized by the greed or stupidity of an individuaL 
 The prosperity of many villages, for instance, depends 
 on their reputation for picturesqueness. The provi- 
 sion suggested would prevent a single tradesman from 
 destroying the harmony of the whole. It would, in 
 short, empower a representative authority to do what 
 many large landlords earn the gratitude of the locality 
 by doing now. through a simple exercise of their 
 territorial rights. 
 
 Secondly, it should be possible to schedule scenes of 
 remarkable beauty or interest, and to protect them 
 from desecration by a general Act. This has beea 
 
21 
 
 done as regards ancient monuments. Why should 
 Sir John Lubbock limit his sympathies to prehistoric 
 remains? 
 
 Thirdly, it has often been urged, on purely revenue 
 grounds, that a tax should be imposed on advertising 
 posters in England as in most Continental countries. 
 It would be a welcome addition to local resources, and 
 could not be vehemently resisted even by those who 
 flatter themselves that they have vested interests in 
 the art of display. It would not seriously reduce the 
 number of habitual offenders, but would rid us of a vast 
 quantity of desultory, half-hearted bills and posters. 
 
 Fourthly, even if opinion be not found ripe for any 
 of these courses, much may be achieved by the action 
 of individuals. If every tourist who finds a pretty 
 place spoiled would only tell the innkeeper so, an 
 appreciable benefit would result. The want of per- 
 ception on the part of natives in these matters is well 
 understood, but is seldom allowed for. As often as 
 not the local man imagines that the eye-sore is one of 
 the attractions. 
 
 No one would take me seriously if I did not insist 
 on the necessity for forming an Association. I do. 
 But 1 fear that I shall disappoint reasonable expecta- 
 tions by assigning to it singularly modest functions. 
 The members will, of course, " lose no opportunity of 
 contributing to the creation of a healthy public senti- 
 ment on this vital subject." Apathy and despairing 
 resignation rather than deliberate hostility are the 
 difficulties to be overcome. The hotel smoking-room, 
 the top of the coach, the deck of the steamer, offer 
 hopeful fields for the new mission.'^ 
 
 But, I confess, the weapon from the vigorous use of 
 which I should expect the best results lies ready to 
 be grasped and wielded by every householder. The 
 nuisance culminates in the effort to secure notoriety 
 
 * It will be seen in the second part of this bocik, that the idea of a 
 National Society has since been worked out in detail. 
 
22 
 
 for certain varieties of commodities that are in general 
 consumption. Those who are aggrieved have the 
 remedy in their own hands. They have only to cease 
 to use any article which is offensively advertised. By 
 this blameless exercise of the right of discrimination 
 they will not only discourage iniquity, but will save 
 money; for, of course, the cost of wholesale puffing is 
 included in the price, and there is hardly a case in 
 which, by proper inquiry, a substitute of equal, 
 perhaps identical quality, may not be procured at a 
 reduction of 25 per cent. As the persons likely to 
 act on this advice constitute the class to which, as a 
 rule, the staring insincerities of the posters are ad- 
 dressed, the enterprising managers would very soon 
 find that their unscrupulous zeal did not pay. Their con- 
 science would at last be touched in its sensitive point. 
 No one probably dreams of suppressing the display 
 of notices on hoardings of a temporary kind. When a 
 site is vacant, and building operations are going on, 
 there is in any case a break of continuity which must 
 be filled, and it may as well be filled with paper- 
 hanging as with bare boards. Assuming that there 
 must be advertisements, that is the place for them. 
 The aim of the judicious reformer must be to concen- 
 trate and keep within manageable bounds phenomena 
 which we cannot get rid of. Nor, if anyone suggests 
 that something positive may be said in praise of such 
 an ordered and compact display of colour and device, 
 will 1 care very energetically to dissent. Nay, I will 
 not rule out as inadmissible the contention that there 
 might be recognized stations of a permanent kind at 
 which those who liked such things might revel in 
 them, and which those whose tastes run otherwise 
 would be free to shun. I only plead for liberty of 
 choice. Should anyone say that to impose any check 
 or prescribe any condition is to hamper trade, I must 
 answer that a statement more absolutely at variance 
 with fact could not be made. That an individual who 
 
23 
 
 has based his business on the method of factitious 
 publicity may be thwarted, I allow. But trade, legiti- 
 mate trade, respectable trade, honest trade, would 
 reap enormous benefit. 
 
 The morbid physiology of advertising is worth 
 remark. It is practised only in certain depart- 
 ments, and in them one can generally recall the 
 beginning of the system. Mustard, soap, tea, furni- 
 ture, wine, beer, patent specifics, these almost 
 exhaust the list. The public does fairly well 
 in the matter of meat and vegetables, and bread and 
 butter, and all the main staples of household economy, 
 without having the names of particular brands thrust 
 upon the eye at every turn. Stairs were kept 
 scrupulously clean long before a thousand and one 
 competing soaps jostled for vicious prominence on 
 the omnibus steps. It requires a very modest faculty 
 of divination to conjecture that of the firms who 
 have thus to assail the public sense few are 
 willing offenders. One pushing tradesman begins, 
 and the rest, to the ruin, not to the advantage, of the 
 industry are forced in self-defence to follow. I 
 believe that a veto on advertising— not that I am 
 contending for it — would be an immense relief to 
 many who have to spend a large part of their capital 
 not on raw material or plant, or in kindly dealing 
 with workpeople, but in barefaced puffery. Supposing 
 a dozen people are in a small room. Two begin to 
 talk to each other at the top of their voices. The 
 others must either give up conversation or shout also. 
 The result is that no one hears so well as before, and 
 that comfort is at an end. So it is with trade; a 
 number of old-fashioned firms sell an honest article 
 at an honest price. One of them in an evil hour 
 comes under the control of a ''pushing manager." 
 Henceforth all have to supplement their really pro- 
 ductive stalT with an army of bill-stickers and painters 
 
24 
 
 and enamellers. The public have to pay for the 
 outlay necessary to give them pain. 
 
 I wish most strongly to emphasize this considera- 
 tion. Not only should we have whatever is sound in 
 the world of commerce and industry with us, but we 
 should have the press enthusiastrcally on our side. 
 Our public writers would, — need I say? — be in any case 
 the champions of all that made for grace and sim- 
 plicity in our daily life. But the disinterested zeal of 
 the critics would be reinforced by the less altruistic 
 instincts of the conductors. Reduce the number of 
 notices on the walls, on the posts, on the housetops, 
 and the inevitable result will be an increase of those 
 appearing in the columns of the daily papers. 
 Thrown broadcast they afflict all alike ; in the 
 journals they appeal only to those who look for them. 
 In the one case they are a scourge, against which the 
 highest philosophy has no defence ; in the other they 
 represent a providential arrangement, by which those 
 who are beguiled by professions contribute indirectly 
 to the support of an institution for the propagation of 
 right ideas. 
 
CONCINNITAS REDUX. 
 
 (March, 18^3.) 
 
More than two years have passed since I first took 
 up my parable concerning the March of Disfigure- 
 ment. In the interval much has occurred to justify 
 my forecasts and something to fulfil my hopes. The 
 sky signs which provoked me into speech multiplied 
 rapidly beyond endurance point, and though in many 
 places the ghastly fabrics remain as monuments of the 
 evils to which the absence of reasonable regulation 
 exposes society, a term has been set to the existence 
 of all. The London County Council, to whose 
 parliamentary action we owe our assured prospect of 
 deliverance, flinched, as my doubting spirit presaged, 
 from standing forth confessedly as the guardians of 
 public comeliness. But though danger to the life and 
 limb of passers-by was the pretext, anxiety to prevent 
 the culminating outrage on the sense of sight was, no 
 doubt, the impelling motive. Virtue grows by prac- 
 tice, and as a sequel to this act of disguised reverence 
 for the proprieties, an edict has gone forth, without 
 any cloak of solicitude for physical safety, reducing 
 advertising hoardings to comparatively moderate ele- 
 vations. The next stage, let us hope, will be a frank 
 recognition that it is distinctly a public interest to 
 maintain decency of aspect in our thoroughfares and 
 places of general resort. A reasonable standard of 
 taste, in fact, will take rank with consideration of 
 health and of facilities for locomotion as determining 
 principles in the ordering of affairs in town and 
 country. 
 
 It has further appeared that the City of London 
 
28 
 
 does already exercise, albeit, in no very fastidious 
 spirit, control over wall advertising, and that the Chief 
 Commissioner of Police has discretion as to the trade 
 embellishments of vehicles. There have been some 
 remarkable rulings on the subject. A brougham 
 decorated with floral puffery has been held intolerable, 
 chiefly, it would seem, because the liveries worn by 
 the gentlemen on the box were too grand to be con- 
 sistent with the austerities of the perfumery trade. 
 
 Then there were the processional omnibuses, but as 
 this case is still sub lite, the discreet Muse must be 
 silent. Further symptoms of advance are found in 
 the circumstance that, when an ingenious inventor 
 announced the discovery of a method of flashing 
 signals on the clouds, several morning papers arrived, 
 independently, at the conclusion that the sky was 
 hardly an appropriate place for advertisements. Even 
 the comparatively mild suggestion that the vestries 
 should (following the example of the omnibus com- 
 panies) let out the glass in the street lamps for 
 mercantile illuminations, was not favourably received. 
 It would hardly be scientific to register the opposi- 
 tion to the St. John's Wood railway scheme or to the 
 extension of tramways to the Thames Embankment as 
 tokens of improved feeling; since the very persons 
 who were exercised about the amenities of the polite 
 suburb or the riverside boulevard would probably lift 
 neither hand nor voice to purge from stations and 
 public vehicles the features that, mainly, make them 
 objectionable. 
 
 It may at first appear a hard saying, but any reader 
 who cares to make an effort of practical imagination 
 can verify its truth, that if the most hideous terminus, 
 for which the metropolis can blush were used only 
 for purposes immediately essential to the working of 
 the traffic and the convenience of travellers, there 
 would be little to offend and much in tlie general 
 spectacle to entertain. A market is not '' ugly," nor 
 
29 
 
 a dockyard. There is a certain impressiveness about 
 massive girders and light arches, about eager crowds 
 and the equable remorseless force of the huge loco- 
 motives. Nothing, 1 maintain, need be displeasing to 
 the eye that frankly subserves the real wants of 
 everyday humanity. It is the accidents, the mercenary 
 makeshifts, the incongruous accretions, that convert 
 simplicity into an offence. There was sadness enough 
 and to spare about the great omnibus strike; but it 
 revealed to many eyes what, till then, had been either 
 denied or not perceived, the beauty and picturesque- 
 ness of some of our great thoroughfares. It was not 
 the ampler space or freer vistas that wrought the 
 marvellous change ; but the disappearance of the 
 blazing irrelevancies of the road cars. There may be 
 a lack of positive charm in many of our city avenues. 
 But the absolute grossness is due to wanton blemish. 
 In the city proper are many long lines of facades not 
 unworthy of Verona or of Venice in the days when 
 the Italians had not ceased to reconcile the most 
 prosperous commerce with perfect stateliness and 
 exquisite grace. 
 
 1 permit myself to reaffirm this doctrine of the 
 essential harmlessness and potential grace of common 
 things, because an earlier perception of its truth w^ould 
 have averted the calamity of Trade Disfigurement. 
 
 There are, as we have seen, encouraging tokens that 
 municipal authorities are ceasing to be indifferent to 
 the evil, and claim the right of setting some limit to 
 its growth. Yet this tardy evidence that the matter 
 is regarded as one of public concern is only a 
 testimony to the rapid advance of the evil. The host 
 is roused from slumber because the enemy is swarm- 
 ing in the camp. The mischief that timely vigilance 
 would have kept within manageable dimensions is 
 now so vast that many are found to despair of bringing 
 it under control. There was a time — not so long 
 ago — when the open country was fairly free from the 
 
30 
 
 pest; when, in towns, the display was confined to 
 comparatively unobtrusive posters on hoardings and 
 dead walls ; and when, if the interior of railway 
 stations was not exactly modest, the fabric inside and 
 out was not absolutely placed at the disposal of the 
 advertising contractor. But now humanity has become 
 almost accustomed to the ubiquitous enamelled plate ; 
 one marvels at the moderation of the shopkeeper who 
 does not cover his fa9ade with gaudy things in print 
 or paint ; and if I may believe the evidence of my own 
 eyes and the testimony of many agonized cor- 
 respondents, it is difficult to find any considerable 
 stretch of railway line along which a continuous 
 series of boards, lifting their repulsive height towards 
 the heavens, does not convert into torture the fair 
 prospect of field and wood and sea. 
 
 It is not merely the extent of the plague, but its 
 indeterminate character that breeds in many the sense 
 of helplessness. There are forms which the most 
 stolid observer will pronounce intolerable outrages ; 
 but between these and the modes of attracting 
 attention, which even the most fastidious would not 
 think it compatible with the necessary give and take 
 of modern society to prohibit, there are an infinite 
 number of gradations. Where are you to draw the 
 line is the question one hears constantly from lips 
 that are still quivering with indignation at the suffer- 
 ings which mankind is — these same lips aver — 
 irredeemably destined to endure. 
 
 1 want these cheerless critics (who, for the most 
 part, lay claim to penetration) to tell me plainly — 
 whether they propose to draw the line nowhere ? 
 Do they mean that license shall be absolute ; that a 
 man shall be free to do anything and everything that 
 is right in his own sight, without regard to the pain 
 and the loss it may cause to the sight of the indefinite 
 number of persons called the community. For the 
 choice lies between regulation and chaos. The point 
 
31 
 
 is not whether we are to submit to things as they are, 
 but whether we are to consent now, that we ourselves 
 and our children after us, shall endure things as they 
 are certain, unless the process of morbid development 
 be checked, to grow to. Multiply by any rule of pro- 
 gression the features that are offensive in the world 
 to-day, and you will have a measure of the sort of 
 world posterity will have to live in Think, too, of 
 what that posterity will be if nurtured amid surround- 
 ings where sordid growths have been permitted to 
 choke and extinguish all beauty and dignity and 
 repose. Comeliness, that neutral state, neither of 
 charm nor of repulsiveness, may be reconciled — if we 
 will — with every reasonable requirement of trade and 
 industry and material convenience. It is for us to 
 decide, and to decide now. 
 
 I will not charge any man with acting unfairly 
 when the step he takes is one the law permits him to 
 take. But I maintain that the exceptional advantage 
 which a particular firm obtains over competing firms 
 by advertising, is one that may involve so much social 
 harm as to make restraint — according to accepted 
 canons of public policy — imperative. The more the 
 system of attracting custom by notifications (good or 
 bad, artistic or vulgarly obtrusive) is practised, the 
 more necessity will there be for practising it. This 
 is not speculation, but the result of observation. One 
 maker of one article takes to spending money in de- 
 facing the public prospect in town or country. All 
 others follow suit. The article is just the same as 
 before ; but the consumer has to pay for the torture 
 aforesaid, as well as for the ordinary cost of 
 production. A draper, who has for years earned 
 an honourable livelihood by selling fabrics of pure 
 wool, thinks a huge painted board will draw a little 
 additional custom. The draper on the opposite side 
 of the way has, in self-defence, to get a still larger 
 hatchment affixed to his premises. So the thing 
 
32 
 
 grows and grows, till by-and-bye the street is one 
 mass of mere signboards ; its architectural features 
 disappear, an Elizabethan house is undistinguishable 
 from one of the reign of Victoria, and the end of it 
 all is that a stranger who w^ants to get a pair of 
 stockings cannot, in the blaze of intimations, discover 
 where the shop is for the merchandise he seeks. 
 
 I recognize, of course, the value and the utility of 
 many business announcements. Even if they were 
 superfluous, it would be no part of my present purpose 
 to reprehend their employment. I am not arguing 
 against posters as posters or even against enamelled 
 plates as enamelled plates. Many of the printed pic- 
 tures which meet the eye of the pedestrian are (in my 
 unlearned judgment) admirable in design, in tone, 
 and in colour. No one dreams of banishing them. 
 We must even put up with a certain measure of 
 hideousness in detail. We are not discussing the 
 ethics of advertising or the comparative merits of 
 modern architects and of the artists who seek a 
 more transient renown by placing their pencil at the 
 service of trade enterprise. The proposition for 
 which I claim assent is that if license in specta- 
 cular advertising takes forms or reaches dimensions 
 which constitute a public evil, it is the veriest clap- 
 trap to object to authoritative interference on the 
 ground that trade is thereby hampered. The great 
 bulk of the trade of the country (which, happily as yet, 
 does not resort to this wasteful mode of competition) 
 remains unaffected. To the businesses which have 
 been disorganized and demoralized by its adoption, 
 limitation would bring relief. Spectacular touting for 
 custom simply enriches one concern at the expense of 
 another. With trade, in the proper sense, it has no 
 more to do than green fly has with the growth of roses. 
 
 But I have to point out to the contractors, who are 
 already teaching their workpeople to cry that the 
 craft is in danger, a consideration that they in their 
 
33 
 
 wisdom have overlooked. To prohibit absolutely the 
 most offensive abuses of the present liberty, and to 
 subject generally to rigid restraints the exhibition of 
 notices appealing to the public eye, would not neces- 
 sarily reduce the opportunities of advertisers or the 
 profits of those who own or rent stations. To limit 
 the supply of hoardings will (according to political 
 economy, orthodox and unorthodox) raise their value. 
 The available space will be less, and accordingly each 
 bill or tablet must be reduced in size. Even the bill- 
 stickers and the printers would not suffer, since this 
 would entail more rapid changes of the afhches. 
 If the same measure is applied to all, there is pre- 
 judice to none. It is the apparently illimitable vista 
 open to the paste pot and hammer, that has led to the 
 appalling increase in — I had almost said — the acreage 
 of the fin de siecle poster. If all are trimmed to 
 more reasonable superficies, each will give its message 
 quite as impressively. 
 
 Diana of the Hoardings may be as potent a divinity 
 as Demetrius would fain make out, but there is no 
 likelihood of any grave decline in offerings at her 
 shrine. All the teachers of the new doctrine demand 
 is that her images shall be kept to appropriate groves. 
 They are not indifferent to individual liberty or to 
 personal rights. Urave as is the injury done to 
 society by the delay in bringing advertising (like 
 other activities that trench upon the public sphere) 
 under control, regard ought to be paid to the vested 
 interests which our want of foresight has allowed to 
 grow up. But in truth, the various enterprises sup- 
 posed to be interested in resisting reform, have little 
 more to fear than interference. I am not blind to the 
 difficulty on this score, for the ordinary business 
 temperament is much more ruffled by the possibility 
 of having to modify existing routine than by the 
 certainty of absolute loss. But reflection and, let us 
 trust, a sense of public duty should induce railway 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 directors and advertising contractors to submit with a 
 good grace to the inevitable. Some of the advertisers 
 have acquired a reputation for being inventive. 
 Their operations appear to me to depend rather on 
 effrontery. But if we give them credit for ingenuity 
 we must presume that they will not enjoy the sport 
 less, when obliged to conform to the Rules of the 
 Game. 
 
 Apart from this, the notion that the classes who 
 have selfish reasons for opposing restriction are too 
 formidable to be defied, is a figment of the incuri- 
 ous imagination. Why should the manufacturers who 
 have got into the way of soliciting custom by the 
 familiar emblazonments, fret themselves because they 
 hear that in future they are not to have their names 
 and their wares associated with the desecration of 
 scenes of special interest or beauty, or set forth with 
 absolute disregard of the feelings of decent citizens ? 
 Most of them, remember, have taken to the thing 
 reluctantly and in self defence. They will be well 
 pleased to obey rules the necessity of which they 
 must, as men of good will, recognize, and by whicli 
 their pushing rivals are equally restrained. But in 
 fact the total number of merchants, makers, dealers, 
 and managers who solicit custom by the "peculiar in- 
 stitution," is insignificant when compared with those 
 who have faith in the quality of their goods 
 and who confine themselves to the ordinary 
 channels of respectable trade. Every shopkeeper who 
 trusts to integrity and industry will be on our side in 
 withstanding the preposterous claims to immunity 
 advanced by the huge puffing firms. Every old- 
 fashioned manufacturing firm will join us in rejecting 
 the pretensions of a class which consists largely of 
 parvenus and impostors. Every lover of nature, 
 everyone who hates mendacity and vulgarity, every- 
 one who values dignity and propriety in our towns, 
 will be with us so far as we aim at curbing license. 
 
35 
 
 If the vast majority of Englishmen are lukewarm or 
 apathetic, they will not, at any rate, have the smallest 
 inducements to assist the defacer. Is it worth while 
 asking which party to the conflict — if conflict there is 
 to be^ — will have the advantage of numbers and in- 
 fluence ? The press, we are sometimes told, has close 
 relations with the contractors. No doubt, but the 
 conductors of our public journals are not only very en- 
 lightened, but remarkably shrewd men. They will 
 see that for every legitimate purpose of spectacular 
 announcement there will remain adequate facilities. 
 So far as a certain margin of opportunity is cut off, 
 the newspaper manager will at once perceive that 
 he must himself benefit. The wisdom and morality 
 of advertising are not in question now. We are con- 
 cerned only with the hard facts, that to whatever 
 extent the streets and country lanes and river banks 
 are closed against the advertiser, to that extent he 
 will be under an inducement to transfer his opera- 
 tions and his payments to the columns of the public 
 journals. This alternative has to be taken into 
 consideration in estimating the position of the 
 " advertising contractor." 
 
 But I own I have a better opinion of those with 
 whom we have to deal, than have some who, without 
 receiving a brief, have made haste to claim them as 
 clients. Many of the advertisers, as has been said, 
 are not willing and deliberate offenders. It is surely 
 uncharitable to credit them, in the absence of proof, 
 with want of taste or of conscience. If a man finds 
 that a landowner throws his preserves open to all 
 comers is he to be branded as a poacher ? And if 
 society has not expressly prohibited assaults upon 
 its nerves, is an enterprising business man, who 
 makes the most of the chance, to be sneered at as a 
 Philistine ? I like to think that the great advertisers 
 have refined susceptibilities when they are at home. 
 J do not think they parade the cherished emblems in 
 
36 
 
 their parks, and I know that some of them take pains 
 to screen themselves in their Highland retreats 
 against the intrusion of the mere wayfarer too 
 inconsiderately keen in pursuit of the picturesque. 
 One managing director of a notorious soap concern 
 has explained that he is animated by a desire to 
 encourage British art and to extend the range of 
 honourable employment, while an even more famous 
 pill man has pleaded duty to the fishermen as his 
 compelling reason tor presenting to them sails em- 
 bellished with his trade legend. But in all serious- 
 ness it may be assumed that some at least of the 
 more important contractors are honestly anxious to 
 avoid superfluous offence, and if approached in the 
 right spirit would willingly meet us half way. 
 
 Nor must the worldly-wise reformer overlook the 
 advantage he would have in appealing to the merely 
 selfish instinct of the inveterate advertiser. This 
 class has already acquired publicity, and so far has 
 made commercial hay while the sun of unre- 
 strained liberty was shining. If the system of regula- 
 tion does not narrow his sphere of action he has 
 nothing to complain of. But if it does narrow it 
 he has the consolation of being so far protected 
 against a younger generation of rivals. As to the 
 coming race of pushing business men, they will 
 accept the situation which law and usage for the 
 time being presents to them. It is only change that 
 causes friction. We have all got accustomed to 
 thousands of restrictions, which twenty years ago 
 many true-born Britons would resent or laugh at. 
 But now it would require some moral courage to pro- 
 pose to go back to the obsolete and barbaric 
 license. The methods of trade naturally adapt them- 
 selves to the arrangements of society. Real enterprise 
 and ingenuity rejoices in making the best of the con- 
 ditions prescribed. The English genius — though no 
 one likes to admit it — is essentially imitative. Our 
 
37 
 
 commerce has pushed itself all over the world, but 
 always by following accepted lines. Every merchant, 
 manufacturer, the spirited conductors of our leading 
 journals, all keep their eye, not on what is ideally 
 possible, but on each other's movements. The net 
 result is advance, but cautious, gradual advance. 
 Excellent as this habit is, it has, for want of external 
 regulation, worked out badly in the " publicity " de- 
 partment. Everyone tries to do what his neighbour 
 does, only a little more so. 
 
 In other things authority has stepped in to set 
 wholesome bounds to private competition. Tardily 
 but strenuously we have now^ to claim that the 
 aspect of thoroughfares and of the open country 
 is as much a matter of public concern as the cleanli- 
 ness of the streets, ease of traffic, safeguards against 
 infection and atmospheric pollution. We are in our 
 turn only following the steps of those who adjusted the 
 law on other subjects to the new needs or the better 
 intelligence of a growing and complex civilisation. 
 No one is allowed to build on his own ground without 
 regard to his fellows and a nice observance of the 
 precise requirements of municipal bye-laws. A 
 manufacturer is bound (by the letter of the law) to 
 consume his own smoke. Whatever the private con- 
 victions of the householder may be, he is compelled 
 to have a prescribed system of drains. The obnoxi- 
 ous barrel-organ man must go round the corner at a 
 hint from the owner of tortured ears. Surely it is 
 not so much pedantry as flat nonsense to pretend 
 that the citizen who, in every other phase of his life, 
 has to respect ordinances framed in the general 
 interest, shall be free to establish eyesores when and 
 where he pleases, and perhaps spoil, by some garish 
 addition, a scene which nature has made pleasing or 
 which the lavish outlay of public monies has been 
 employed to render attractive and imposing. By 
 endowing technical schools and art museums, by 
 
38 
 
 making and maintaining parks and gardens, public 
 authority has, once for all, recognised that the delight 
 of the eye is a matter of national policy. It follows 
 that to vindicate the right of the sight to repose, to 
 freedom from wanton affront, is no less an elementary 
 duty. To fulfil the duty it is only necessary to subject to 
 regulation the imitative tendency which scatters 
 offence over the land. 
 
 Individualism is a creed entitled to all respect. But 
 it has nothing to do with the considerations advanced 
 here. We are not proposing to dictate to anyone how 
 he shall regulate his life or conduct his business. It 
 is stipulated only that he must not violate theindividual 
 rights of others. If a man's house is his own, the 
 thoroughfare belongs to the community. He has no 
 more right to vex the sight of the thousands who pass 
 his way with a dazzling announcement than to flash 
 the sun in their eyes from his first floor with the help 
 of a pocket mirror. As a matter of fact, many of the 
 appendages objected to, occupy a space in air which 
 is public property. 
 
 To sum up. We have not to deal with an 
 ineradicable and irrepressible tendency of human 
 nature, but with a practice adopted by a compara- 
 tively limited class. It is not a moral disease of 
 society, but an inconvenience due to the absence of 
 restraint on individual action. By an oversight, law 
 has not, in this instance, accommodated itself to the 
 dictates of public utility. The " moral question " — so 
 far as there is one — consists in making the necessary 
 adjustment. " Repression " is a very misleading 
 account of the remedial policy contemplated. Municipal 
 regulation and the voluntary play of social effort will 
 set up a standard to which all good citizens will 
 gladly conform, and which after a little will rank as a 
 rule of conduct of no less obvious and natural obliga- 
 tion than that which forbids wanton molestation and 
 intrusion in other departments of life. 
 
■69 
 
 The difficulty of " drawing the line " need not 
 detain us. There is no accepted canon of taste in 
 art or conduct ; yet official departments are per- 
 petually deciding between competitive designs for 
 public edifices, and there is a certain standard of 
 decent behaviour which no one, however lacking fine 
 feeling, ventures to transgress. Juries of twelve 
 men chosen at random are every day interpreting, 
 with reference to transactions between individuals, 
 such vague phrases as " good faith/' " due care and 
 attention," " reasonable despatch," " marketable con- 
 dition," and so on. For our purpose, it will do very 
 well if we say that the line of the "permissible" 
 should be drawn at what the general sense of those 
 who live in a locality or frequent it agree to permit. 
 
 A society, of whose precise methods full particulars 
 will be found in the appendix, has been formed to 
 give effect to this view of public duty. Here it may 
 be convenient to present in less formidable detail some 
 account of its aim : — 
 
 " I ought to say at the outset that we do not dream 
 of suppressing posters or abolishing the use of tem- 
 porary hoardings as advertising stations. Whatever 
 some of us may think about the taste or the morality 
 of some of the bills, we are all agreed that we have to 
 accept, as an inevitable incident of modern life, the 
 display of announcements pictorial or printed, and we 
 do not think it practicable to discrimmate between 
 those that are useful and those that are superfluous, 
 those that are in good taste or those that are unsightly 
 or vulgar. But we do contend that there ought to be 
 some limit as regards the character, position, and size 
 of advertising stations ; we think there are places 
 where they ought not to be allowed at all ; in brief, 
 we want to substitute control for the present license ; 
 and for reasons it would be tedious to go into we hold 
 that the public can be protected against much that 
 causes pain and interferes with enjoyment, without 
 
40 
 
 imposing any restraint on trade, or appreciably inter- 
 fering with the earnings of those now interested in the 
 business of advertising. 
 
 "The means we contemplate are chiefly these : 
 
 " I. A change in the law by which the local repre- 
 sentative authorities will be empowered to regulate 
 public displays of advertising notices of all kinds — 
 boards, tablets on walls and so on, as well as posters 
 — just as they now lay down rules for building, for 
 traffic, for sanitary appliances, and many other things. 
 The extent to which the power conferred will be used 
 will depend on the feelings of the electors. In some 
 places there will be a wish for greater, in other for less 
 restraint : in some perhaps there will be no desire at 
 all for change. The Councils, we hope, will adapt 
 their rules to the wants of the different localities 
 within their jurisdiction — treating, for instance, a quiet 
 suburban road and a busy business street in different 
 ways. We trust, however, that there will be in many 
 localities a veto on sky signs, advertisements on 
 chimneys and towers and parapets, the painted boards 
 in fields, which have lately multiplied so rapidly and 
 make a railway journey a nightmare ; straggling 
 posters and tablets on walls, gigantic hoardings, the 
 more glaring defacements on town sites of particular 
 historical or architectural interest, or at picturesque 
 rural spots. 
 
 "II. \\'henever application is made to Parliament 
 by Railway Companies or other bodies for powers to 
 take up land, we aim at procuring the insertion of 
 provisions subjecting to the necessary regulation the 
 use of any portion of the fabric or the land for adver- 
 tising purposes. 
 
 " III. Some of us advocate a special impost on all 
 exposed advertisements ; but this opens up many 
 delicate issues of policy which have still to be carefully 
 examined. 
 
 " IV. And — to omit minor matters — we have a 
 
41 
 
 common understanding that as members we will each 
 at his own discretion abstain (as far as may be) from 
 using commodities which he personally feels are ad- 
 vertised in an offensive way, or patronising establish- 
 ments which he regards as exceptionally unscrupulous 
 in advertising display. The design is not to punish 
 the advertisers, but (i) to teach them that the devices 
 they resort to may repel rather than attract customers, 
 and (2) to encourage firms that do not resort to them. 
 The Society does not countenance any action beyond 
 the strict intention of this paragraph. 
 
 " In order to secure the enforcement of the amended 
 law when we get it — we are much interested in pro- 
 moting the formation of local associations which 
 some of us believe might — besides occupying them- 
 selves with the advertisement evil — do much generally 
 to keep the aspect of town and country picturesque, 
 or — where grace is out of the question — to keep it as 
 little unsightly as possible. These local associations 
 would, also, help us greatly in our appeal to public 
 opinion. 
 
 " The subscription of members is 2s. 6d. per annum, 
 but donations are welcome from those able and anxious 
 to give more. The services of the officers, it need 
 hardly be said, are honorary." 
 
 It will be observed that we try to hit the happy 
 mean between extravagant hope and blank despair. 
 Because we hold that disfigurements are not as a 
 rule connected with any of the real utilities of 
 ordinary life and effort, and because we count 
 advertisements, in one form or another, to be 
 among the principal causes of disfigurement, it does 
 not at all follow that we contemplate as a practicable 
 ideal the removal of all eyesores or the suppression of 
 all objectionable symbols of trade puffery. We take 
 note of the conditions with which we have to deal, 
 and are content — in the present phase of public 
 sentiment — to reduce the evil ; to circumscribe its 
 
42 
 
 sphere ; to set limits to its growth. We set up no- 
 fantastic ideal of aesthetic rectitude. We abjure the 
 notion that we or any other body can pretend to be a 
 committee of taste. Some will think perhaps that 
 we attempt too much, others will be disappointed 
 because we aim at too little. Yet we hope to do some 
 service to the State. We plead that if our scheme- 
 contains the promise of any sensible and permanent 
 abatement of an acknowledged evil, it ought not to 
 be set aside because it does not purport to make a 
 clean sweep of all that offends the fastidious. 
 
 No movement can be " serious " or " practical " that 
 is not based upon an appreciation of the minute 
 ramifications of the tendency we deplore, and does not 
 aim at making provision for meeting each detail with 
 the expedient appropriate to the special need. It is 
 the indeterminate character of the evil that alone 
 makes it formidable. Its wide diffusion and fluctuat- 
 ing character bewilders and disheartens many. How, 
 it is asked, is the hammer of regulation to be brought 
 to bear on an indefinite number of irritating atoms, 
 varying infinitely in shape and size and texture?" 
 How, too, is the diversity of sensibilities to be 
 provided for? Some are galled by posters mainly, 
 while others would gladly purchase deliverance 
 from the painted board and metal plate variety 
 by a broad toleration of hoardings. Some men 
 have long sight, others short; that is to say, some 
 are vexed by objects that show themselves at a dis- 
 tance, while others are exempt till they come within 
 close range. Some, again, have the happy gift of 
 being able to concentrate visual attention on a single 
 feature. The neighbourhood of the pier with its flashy 
 panorama of placards does not spoil their appreciation 
 of the sea or even of the long line of cliffs; while others- 
 cannot regard a detail save in relation to the whole 
 landscape. Some have not that perfect delicacy of 
 sight which enables them to perceive the subtle 
 
43" 
 
 nuances of mist and vapour; of gleam and glow. 
 They miss an intense pleasure, but they are to some 
 extent recompensed by an immunity from the extreme 
 forms of pain. Sylvanus loves the country, and has 
 cultivated a pessimistic calm, which enables him to 
 take the degradation of town life as a necessary evil. 
 Urbanus has a taste for city picturesque, and deplores 
 the ravage wrought on the stately fa9ades. Yet 
 another distinction must be mentioned which is 
 fundamental. There are eyes that can be blind when 
 there is nothing pleasant to look at. Others there are 
 that cannot help regarding most closely what they 
 most dislike. There are eyes which are not caught by 
 legible characters, and eyes that must read whatever 
 print assails them. There are, again, many to whom 
 advertising is offensive, not because it offends 
 the artistic taste, but because it is (through the 
 eye) a vulgar intrusion on their intellectual calm. 
 To them the perpetual iteration of one name or 
 phrase in glaring colours, jars on the nerves as much as 
 the persistent solicitations of the same begging im- 
 postor at the same street corner. If a shopkeeper 
 runs after a citizen, takes him by the collar or follows 
 him down the street, shouting out that he has pills 
 to sell of extraordinary merit, the victim can appeal 
 to the policeman ; why should there be no relief 
 when the same shopkeeper presents himself at every 
 turn in the shameless livery of paint or printing 
 ink or glaze. There are others still to whom the 
 affront to the sight and the breach of good manners 
 is accentuated by moral indignation at the mechanical 
 bombast or the gross and cruel lying. The man 
 who for the sake of personal gain, announces that his 
 nostrum is a specific, when he knows perfectly well 
 that it has failed and must fail in the vast majority of 
 cases, and in many must do grievous injury, is surely 
 outside the pale of charity. The tricks of trade, 
 the lowered tone of commercial ethics are common- 
 
u 
 
 place themes. It would be presumptuous to dogma- 
 tise about the vexed questions of mercantile morality. 
 But those who believe that there is a decay of probity 
 cannot help connecting it with the profuse and 
 garish dishonesties of the ubiquitous placards. " If 
 these mendacities," they say within themselves, " can 
 be flaunted in the face of a church-going community, 
 what wonder that rectitude is no longer reverenced as 
 the guide of conduct ? " 
 
 Lastly may be mentioned, with all deference, an 
 eminently influential class which objects strongly, 
 though it does not feel acutely. At one pole is the 
 opulent personage who does not like to have the 
 neighbourhood of his highly-rented villa degraded to 
 the level of a poor district ; and at another the 
 exemplary lodging-house keeper, who understands 
 that an efflorescence of posters interferes sadly with 
 her chance of getting good tenants for the drawing- 
 room floor. 
 
 The conclusion to which this analysis is intended to 
 lead is that if we are to deal effectually with the pro- 
 tean evil we must marshal against it not one phase 
 or school of disapproval, but every phase and school. 
 Some of us have the combative temperament : they 
 love the delights of battle, and they scorn any counsel 
 which does not mean sharp, direct conflict. Others are 
 men of peace : averse to controversial collision with 
 their fellow-men. The proposal is to unite and to 
 co-ordinate all these various discontents. Those who 
 are peculiarly sensitive to one aspect of the evil can 
 help themselves by co-operating with those who feel 
 another. It each declines to join in a scheme because, 
 tried by his individual standard, it aims at too much 
 or too little ; if he confines himself to the angle which 
 causes him acute pain, and ignores the angle that 
 afflicts his neighbour, there will be relief for none. 
 
 The Society for Checking the Abuses of Public 
 Advertising has, it will be observed, as a col- 
 
^ O.-THE A 
 
 ^j. UNIVERSITY J 
 
 lateral object that of " protecting and^pr onTO t TTT g the 
 picturesque simplicity of rural and river scenes, and 
 the dignity and propriety of our large towns." It need 
 not be disguised that its labours to this end will be 
 very largely preventive. Yet its spirit and — so far as 
 it rests upon local efforts — its methods will be positive 
 and constructive. It is felt that cast-iron enactments 
 of a broadly prohibitory kind would be useless. Every 
 locality must depend for exemption from superfluous 
 disfigurement, and for growth in the amenities, on the 
 loving care and vigilance of a body of residents, who 
 know precisely what is wanted, and what the play of 
 local sentiment will permit to be done. Such a body 
 would, in the dreams of some of us, be interested 
 quite as much in promoting improvements as 
 in checking abuses. It would not be indifferent 
 to play-grounds and parks. It would help Con- 
 servators and Local Boards in contriving and 
 carrying out all the little odds and ends by which the 
 aspect of towns and villages may be immensely 
 improved, but which, just because they are small 
 things, are hardly susceptible of official treatment. I 
 have been laughed at for suggesting the planting of 
 trees and saplings as a proper function ; yet anyone 
 who analyzes the charm of a pretty country town must 
 be conscious of the obligation he owes to some long- 
 departed worthy who in his day believed in the duty 
 of planting. Every traveller knows how a simple 
 fountain, or a shrine at a street corner, converts the 
 commonplace into a thing of beauty. Why should 
 modern England be incapable of learning a lesson 
 from mediaeval Italy ? 
 
 Such local bodies as are here contemplated would 
 be a sort of Standing Committee for stray suggestions 
 regarding small improvements and reforms which are 
 admitted to be sound, yet often end in nothing for 
 lack of some fixed organization. They would also be 
 Tallying points for various scattered interests that 
 
46 
 
 languish just because they are isolated. Who does 
 not wish well to the societies which aim at protecting 
 our native fauna and flora : yet in how many districts 
 can they be said to constitute an effective force ? It 
 is necessary that they should exist on a specific basis; 
 but would they not gain much in working energy if, 
 for local purposes, the disciples federated themselves 
 with others whose instincts tended in the same 
 direction ? Sketching clubs and archaeological 
 societies might well come under the same umbrella — 
 the common bond being a loving interest in "the 
 place." 
 
 Allotments may be mentioned as a subject which 
 might be a legitimate matter of concern to associa- 
 tions in the rural districts. I think most people who 
 are enthusiastic about rural beauty are still more 
 enthusiastic about the comfort and well-being of the 
 labourer. Better a thousand times have hideousness 
 than hunger. But there is no reason why the multi- 
 plication of the poor man's gardens should be a blot 
 on a landscape. Nature always provides a mellow- 
 ing drapery — if only a little kindly prevision allows 
 nature a chance. There have been complaints that 
 some landlords are reluctant to give land for small 
 holdings. Let us hope they are not well founded. 
 But the agrarian reformer will find a more ready wel- 
 come if he show a tenderness for scenery. Spoiling 
 a landscape does not make the three acres more 
 fruitful or the cow more profitable. 
 
 Concurrently with specific eftbrts at protection would 
 be the educational activity of the local associations. 
 It is part of the English character to love " respect- 
 abilitv^' and "morality," and it should be easy to enlist 
 popular sentiment under both these heads on our side. 
 The present writer, for his part, has a firm belief 
 that the people do in their hearts prefer order and 
 comeliness to sordid chaos. 
 
 It will not be quite amiss if in the course of time 
 
47 
 
 ■we get a sort of Mrs. Grundv prestige in these matters. 
 'I'he Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings 
 -deals, not always suavely, with niceties that are heyond 
 the ken of the ordinary country clergyman : yet, I am 
 told, such is the vague awe produced hy their ency- 
 clicals that the most unsophisticated of vicars never 
 dreams now of touching the stonework of his Church 
 till he has taken the advice of the cognoscenti. Let us 
 hope that we also in our small way will put into the 
 air the doctrine of congruity and sightliness. 
 
 The efforts of the local associations, I think, are more 
 likely to be repressive for our specific purpose if they are 
 •also benevolent and educational. Those who aire ady take 
 an interest in the preservation of ancient buildings — in 
 securiniT and extending parks, pleasuri^-grounds and 
 open spaces — in providing good music for the many — 
 in lessening the pain caus'^d by music of the other kind, 
 t>y street cries nnd steam whistles — in vindicating the 
 libeities of country paths and waterways — nay, in the 
 humble practice of planting trees here and there where 
 there is ugliness to conceal or beauty to heighten — 
 all these are naturally on our side. It would h^ an 
 ■excellent economy of labour if some of the existino" 
 <igencies would add to their beneficent functions those 
 that we would assign to our local association — in other 
 yvords, would become the local association. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to explain that the movement 
 will not involve the customary array of auxiliary 
 hranches, collecting cards, and pleasing annual reports. 
 These local societies are to be, if not absolutely autoch- 
 thonous, at any rate autonomous, and thev will be 
 ■expressly free from the degrading bond of tribute. ] 
 -am afraid we cannot quite avoid deputations from the 
 parent society^ but these will not be frequent, and will 
 take care not to give themselves airs. In most places 
 the prolific |:)rovincial soil will, it is hoped, spon- 
 taneously produce its own Hampdens, but in some 
 iess favoured spots a husbandman may be despatched 
 
48 
 
 from headquarters not so much to sow the seed as to 
 start the growth. In plain words, it will be for people 
 on the spot to look after the comeliness of their own 
 district, to be either fastidious or lax at their own 
 discretion. The local societies will be executive groups, 
 managing permanently their own affairs, and looking 
 outside onlv for the sort of help that they cannot, as 
 isolated bodies, dispense with. 
 
 The relation between the National Society and the 
 local associations may be thus defined. To effect our 
 end the law must, it would appear, be amended. 
 Parliament, we hope, will confer on the representative 
 bodies already charged with local administration, power 
 to frame suitable regulations, and it must be the busi- 
 ness of the local associations, whose existence is as- 
 sumed, to see that Boards and Councils avail them- 
 selves of the powers, and that they are duly enforced. 
 
 To bring the necessary pressure to bear on Parlia- 
 ment, and, generally speaking, to promote the forma- 
 tion and to co-ordinate the effort of the various local 
 societies, the central organization is necessary. It 
 would, besides, in a quiet, modest way, set itself to 
 create a sound public opinion on the subject by the 
 time-honoured method of literature and lectures. 
 
 We are informed, on very high authority in these 
 matters, that provisions may be foui;d scatteied through 
 a great number of Acts which might lend themselves 
 to our purpose. Existing statutes furnish us with en- 
 couraging precedents and serviceable analogies. They 
 occur (as an expert will easily believe), for the most 
 part, in Acts that were passed at the initiative of private 
 Members. The object in view was to put down some- 
 thing or other that appeared to the promoter flagrantly 
 objectionable; but, thanks to the fine freedom of the 
 draughting, the provisions enacted would cover a very 
 much larger field than was intended by the Member in 
 charge. Even within their original intention they form 
 collectively a very resjK-ctable armoury of j)ositive pro- 
 
49 
 
 hibitions. We can hardly, however, dare to hope that 
 scrutiny will show they give us all we want. 
 
 Time will be required to develop the relations with 
 the local societies, but speaking generally, we hope to 
 help in calling local sentiment into active play, stimu- 
 lating it where it is languid and assisting it where 
 external help is needed. We shall do our best to make 
 the experience gained in one place available for 
 others ; to be a medium of intercourse and a centre 
 of suggestion. Not the least useful of the con- 
 templated functions will be that of advising the local 
 associations in cases of doubt and difficulty. The 
 National Society will seek to prevent the overlapping 
 of areas, or the occurrence of gaps in the network : 
 and of some branches of the work, which have a 
 national rather than a local importance, it might take 
 exclusive and immediate charge. 
 
 How local societies are to spring into being and 
 constitute themselves is a problem which will solve 
 itself in different places in different ways. They will have 
 to settle then for themselves the appropriate mode of 
 work. Judgment, temper, a fine regard for circumstances, 
 will be necessary to avoid the chance of mischievous 
 friction. No code can anticipate all the fluctuating 
 conditions of each case ; no handbook can lay down 
 dogmatic rules of procedure. Granted reasonableness 
 and good feeling on the part of the reformers, there is 
 little prospect of serious opposition. But our friends 
 must neither ride full tilt against windmills, nor attack 
 cottages with field artillery. It would be absurd to set 
 up the same standard of visual propriety for the New 
 Cut and for the sweet village of Totteridge. The 
 practical ideal must have some rational relation to the 
 average feeling of the average resident. Compulsion 
 is essential, but it must be compulsion tempered in 
 practice by Local Option. 
 
 Reasons have been set forth in the first part of this 
 pamphlet for the belief that a common understanding 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 on the part of the members to abstain from purchasing 
 commodities which they severally feel to be adver- 
 tised in an objectionable way, or from patronizing 
 establishments similarly open to reproach, would be 
 efhcacious. I may be permitted to say that, personally, 
 I am intensely averse to anything in the shape of 
 social persecution — whether it be called boycotting or 
 exclusive dealing — and if this feature presented itself 
 to my mind mainly as a distinctly punitive measure I 
 should hesitate about accepting or commending it. It 
 has been remarked that you are no more justified in 
 avoiding a man's shop because it is not decorated to 
 your liking than in withdrawing your custom because 
 you do not like the cut of his trousers ; that a pill pro- 
 prietor is as much entitled to put his name at intervals 
 of every ten yards all the way from Paddington to Milford 
 Haven as other people are to append their signature 
 to a letter. But suppose the shopkeeper persistently 
 thrusts himself and his trousers on my attention, under 
 the impression that this was a good way of getting me 
 to patronize his establishment, would it not be a kind- 
 ness and a duty to correct his error by going to some 
 other trader, whose tastes in tailoring approximated 
 more closely to mine? And if my correspondent 
 persisted in sending me batches of begging letters by 
 every post, would I not be justified in letting him 
 know that he did not improve his chance of ex- 
 periencing my benevolence by this intrusive multiplica- 
 tion of signatures. The parallel is absolute. The 
 oilman does not wish to annoy me by sticking a 
 placard of Byle's Blue on his house front ; he thinks 
 it is the way to catch custom. Surely we who are 
 not susceptible to the lure, owe it to the poor deluded 
 man to convince him of his error, and so save him 
 from being — what as a respectable citizen he does 
 not desire to be — a nuisance to his neighbours. 
 Stupid imitation, it cannot be too explicitly reiterated, 
 
51 
 
 accounts to a very large extent for the spread of 
 puffing disfigurements. 
 
 There must, of course, be no black list of obnoxious 
 firms. Each member must independently and spon- 
 taneously form his own decision as to whether there is 
 need of teaching the lesson. By so doing he will display 
 due reverence for law, morality, and economy. If 
 Bloggs sticks the name of himself and his nostrum 
 in buff and blue on a series of enamelled plates, 
 and if he gets a contractor to hammer these at 
 intervals of every ten yards into every wall that he 
 can hire within an indefinite area, he calculates that he 
 will plague a remunerative number of passers-by into a 
 vivid recollection of the commodity he wants to sell, 
 and that, accordingly, the victim will purchase it in 
 preference to that of a more modest competitor in the 
 manufacturing line. Bloggs and the contractor will go 
 on extending these operations as long as experience 
 justifies Bloggs^ calculations. But Bloggs is no fool, 
 and when he finds that he loses custom instead of 
 gaining it Bloggs will desist. 
 
 It has sometimes been objected that since those who 
 are pained by advertisements are not the people whom 
 advertisements would influence, there would be no dis- 
 suasive efficacy in the suggested understanding. But 
 I do not admit that the two classes are distinct. Many 
 a lady who feels the unkindness of the enamelled 
 plates has hitherto allowed her housekeeper to buy the 
 stuff that is thus cruelly and unfairly pushed. Every 
 owner of a large establishment, domestic or industrial, 
 would have much power in the way of du'ecting con- 
 sumption into moral lines. Assume that people who 
 .are peculiarly sensitive to disfigurement never take 
 .patent specifics, is it probable that among those who do, 
 there are not many who may be led, by the force of 
 reason and e^^ample, to see that it is not right to en- 
 -courage practices that rob the country of its charm ? 
 
52 
 
 I must here repeat my own absolute faith, founded on 
 observation and particular inquiry, that the masses of 
 the people are not indifferent to desecration. But_, in 
 any case, a great number of articles which collectively 
 enjoy much "dishonourable mention" of the kind \\e 
 are condemning, appeal only to those who, being well- 
 to-do, must be credited with a rudimentary preference 
 for decency and order. Pianos, for instance, and 
 champagne, and toilet soap at fancy piices, and Turkish 
 cigarettes, and choice flower seeds are not the sort of 
 thing for which it is worth anyone^s while to solicit the 
 custom of the travelling " masses." Granted that we 
 are not likely to annihilate the profits the mere quack 
 medicine man derives from wholesale disfigurement, we 
 shall deprive him of his more dignified partners in evil^ 
 and leave him to be dealt with, by more direct measures,, 
 as an exceptional nuisance. At the very lowest esti- 
 mate, the action we recommend would be a continuous 
 and extending protest of material propagandist virtue. 
 
 As another illustration of the use of individual op- 
 portunity, let me say that landlords have it in their 
 power to create "oases" of repose by putting in 
 restrictive conditions in building and other leases. It 
 is not quite a vain dream that some day or other the 
 family lawyer, when consulted about developing the 
 estate of a client, will suggest that if there be a rigid" 
 rule against trade blazonry of all kinds, and if arrange- 
 ments be made with the Railway Company to keep the 
 local station decent in this respect, fancy rents will be 
 secured. One such experiment would lead to many 
 more — for it would undoubtedly succeed. By-and-bye, 
 organizers of exhibitions would find it profitable to 
 ensure for portions, at least, of the grounds the repose 
 for which so many long. Perhaps — who knows r — 
 the Directors of the Crystal Palace would discover that 
 the catch-penny boards deprive them of many a solid 
 shilling or high-class half-crown. Hotel proprietors — 
 
53 
 
 though very slow to learn — would also attain to wisdom 
 in the end. 
 
 On some of the great London estates the rule of pro- 
 hibition is already in force. I do not think that the 
 noble landlords suffer ; I am sure that the residents 
 greatly gain. The tendency of legislation nowadays is 
 to reduce the power — for good as well as evil — of the 
 private proprietor. All the more need, then, is there to 
 ensm-e that the County Councils and Corporations 
 rshall be in a position to do what, confessedly, has been 
 well done under the ancien regime. 
 
 A series of instances, not wholly imaginary, may 
 ■help us to think out the appropriate modes of action in 
 contrasted cases. I have endeavoured to coniemplate 
 the problem, both as a whole and in its several parts, 
 -and it seems only fair to ask that the value of one of 
 the component features of the suggested solution shall 
 not be tested by a reference to conditions to which it was 
 ■never intended to apply. 
 
 To our illustrations : There is a row of cottages not as 
 •well built as could be wished, but possessed of that 
 exquisite charm of picturesqueness which is often 
 .associated with wet clay floors and lozenge windows 
 that have not been opened for centuries. Yet there 
 the people are, not discontented, as times go, with 
 their lot and happy in the little folks who have (in 
 ■contempt of sanitary science) the rosiest of cheeks and 
 the sturdiest of legs. If the landlord thought of replacing 
 them with habitations more suited to the use of man, 
 though less pleasing to the eye, I, for one, should 
 applaud that beneficent piece of vandalism. But I 
 thmk the local society (supposing the landlord were a 
 Gallio as regards rural beauties) might here, with great 
 .advantage and general approval, induce him (through the 
 good offices of those who enjoyed his acquaintance 
 ■or by frankly throwing themselves on his good nature) 
 to make the new cottages as little unsightly as ))ossible. 
 If, indeed, they could only get the builder to thmk, first 
 
54 
 
 and only, of making the houses comfortable and service- 
 able, the result could not be displeasing. The creepers 
 might (by a little management) be restored once more 
 to the walls, the white lilies and the roses dealt with 
 tenderly by the bricklayers, and in a year or so the row 
 would have settled down to comeliness, and no small 
 part of the former beauty. But supposing the families 
 in the big houses of the neighbourhood are too modest 
 to connect themselves with ''movements," or too 
 diffident to allow their names to appear in print, or too 
 penetrating and prpctical to admit that anything can ever 
 be done to withstand the Philistine tendencies of the 
 age, what will ensue? The builder (not by malice, but 
 by force of mere indolent routine and lack of interest iii 
 better things) will work his own will. Then the 
 genteel families will shudder and talk over their billiards 
 about that awful monstrosity in yellow brick that has 
 supplanted the perfectly charming bit of mediaevalisni 
 they all so loved ; nay, even the passing bicyclist 
 (though he has still his sixty miles to do before night- 
 fall and can't spare time for scenery and that sort of 
 thing) flashes a glance over the handle of his machine 
 and — misses something. 
 
 Imagine now that our pretty cottages remain; for 
 what landowner can afford, in these days of depres- 
 sion, to spend money on mere doctor^s fads ? Bv- 
 and-bye there comes along a plausible gentleman. 
 It is one of my firm beliefs that he invariably 
 comes in a gig. He descends, picks out a house 
 with an eligible bit of showy wall, converses a little 
 with the good woman. The negotiation is brief but 
 satisfactory. The family is richer by, say half-a-crown, 
 and next day the blushing roses look pale beside tiie 
 gorgeous tablet, which mentions unceasingly to earth 
 and heaven the name of Brass's Blue or of the 
 Gambling Gazette. This is the beginning of the 
 end. Let us try to work the transaction out in figures. 
 Gain to the tenant of the house, half-a-crown; gain to 
 Messrs. Brass, the erection of the ten thousandth testi- 
 
55 
 
 monial to their shamelessness and (possibly) a slight 
 enhancement of the disagreeable impression which 
 a contemplation of the remaining nine thousand nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine testimonials has left on the 
 minds of that unhappy class of travellers who cannot 
 help looking at what they detest. Loss, per contra, the 
 happiness which the aspect of the unspoilt cottages 
 gave to an infinite succession of not quite unworthy 
 men and women, whom duty or pleasure led along the 
 road. I admit at once that if there were an Act, as we 
 mean there shall be, empowering the local authorities 
 to make a bye-law declaring the exhibition of any 
 unsanctioned notice within the visible horizon of a 
 thoroughfare an ofience, the evil might be averted or 
 remedied. But is it quite a case for invoking the 
 rigour of the law and provoking the resentment with 
 which ordinary human nature regards the interference 
 of Boards ? We must have coercion in reserve, but 
 we need not put it in evidence. The iron hand will 
 work best with the help of a velvet glove. We must 
 in every way diminish friction. Let us have legal 
 restriction by all means, but be it meanwhile our duty 
 and our aim to create that atmosphere of intelligent 
 assent in which law can work, rather as a standard to 
 be conformed to than as a code of penalties to be 
 shunned. To those who pin their faith on authorita- 
 tive repression, I answer that the kindly vigilance of 
 the local society is a factor essential to the success of 
 their policy. It is not enough to call force into being : 
 there must be machinery through which the force can 
 operate, and no particle of energy should be uselessly 
 expended for lack of lubricants. 
 
 Let us pass to another sample case. There is a 
 castle majestic in its decay, rich in historic associations, 
 a stronghold which barred the way of conquerors and 
 still keeps watch and ward over the narrow passage 
 through green hills^ which cut off the " Isle of Purbeck" 
 from the rest of Britain. From the summit of the 
 keep the eye ranges over a landscape of singular 
 
56 
 
 and, with trifling exceptions, of absolutely unblemished 
 loveliness. Close to the outer circle of the vast 
 enclosing walls lies a town which, if it were in Ger- 
 many, would be a place of pilgrimage for mediaevalists, 
 and of this town — old-fashioned where it is not 
 antique — the market-square is the central treasure. 
 A quaint inn — worthy of the place — affords a hospit- 
 able welcome to many a relay of visitors from the neigh- 
 bouring watering-places. When I was there — some 
 time since — the houses round looked as they might have 
 looked in the days of Charles the First, though they 
 were old even then. Only one thing was visible to 
 remind the sentimental traveller that his lot was cast in 
 nineteenth century times. But this was, alas ! fatally 
 conclusive evidence of the fact, for, adhering somehow, 
 in spite of the storms of years, to some of the most 
 imposing of the fa9ades (there were shops below) were 
 huge frames bearing what were still recognizable as the 
 proclamations of a certain (household) soap. The firm 
 that issued them have long since adopted what I must 
 be permitted to call the enamelled iron system ; this 
 was the forlorn relic of the age of canvas. Yet the 
 faded placard, useless even as an advertisement, sufficed 
 to cause the peculiar pain of marred loveliness, and 
 even the coveys of excursionists would have carried 
 away an infinitely more pleasant recollection of the 
 place if the tattered gaudiness had not been there. If 
 half-a-dozen visitors to the hotel had at brief intervals 
 communicated to mine host the thoughts that were 
 passing in their several minds he would, on mere 
 calculations of business interest, have talked to his 
 neighbours, to whom the picturesqueness of their town 
 is a source of gain, and the abhorred emblem would 
 have fed a bonfire. The owner of the mighty castle 
 has shown in the arrangements within the walls the 
 nicest care for picturesque propriety, but apparently 
 allowed his interest and his influence to end at the great 
 gateway. Here surely is a case for a local society. 
 Can anyone suppose that half-a-dozen of the artists and 
 
57 
 
 archaeologists who abound in the neighbourhood, if they 
 only consented to believe that "something could be 
 done/' would not be able, without incurring any outlay 
 or any ill will, to restore Corfe to its romantic perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 Not far away is another town, once a port of 
 some renown, and still in that happy position midway 
 between decline and growth, which is so favourable to 
 comeliness. And certainly it would be hard to imagine 
 anything more pleasing than the wide thoroughfare 
 which forms its centre. The grass grows at the sides 
 over the paving-stones where departed fashion had its 
 promenade. Houses of all periods, stately or modest, 
 but nowhere wanting in charm, line this old English 
 boulevard. But, alas ! at the end is a railway station — 
 something in the red brick Swiss cottage style, as I 
 remember, but no eyesore, for all that. Unluckily the 
 yard around is enclosed with a paling, and stuck along 
 the paling are — .T will not name the things again — and 
 on one post I found a notice declaring to all and sundry 
 that anyone defacing — " defacing ! " — or removing the 
 objects would be prosecuted. Might not a local associa- 
 tion have got the burgesses to take some pride in their 
 town, and while respecting their own house fronts, bring 
 pressure on the company to maintain the palings in 
 decent simplicity. That abundant materials exist 
 among the residents I was glad to satisfy myself by 
 talking with some. What is lacking is the wave of 
 impulse — the contagious spirit of organization. Am I, 
 then, to be charged with proposing "• nothing serious,'' 
 if I urge moral propagandism as an integral part of our 
 scheme. 
 
 Any lover of natural beauty or of the more complex 
 charms that still abound in many an English town can 
 recall an infinite number of instances in which a very 
 slight exertion of influence at a very small sacrifice of 
 the assumed interests of shopkeepers or manufac- 
 turers would rescue fair prospects from disfigurements 
 trivial in themselves, but ruinous to the repose of the 
 
58 
 
 tout ensemble. There is a cathedral town in Somer- 
 setshire that in twenty-four hours might be made 
 beautiful as that storied Camelot of which it may, 
 indeed^ have been in the eyes of Lord Tennyson the 
 visible image. Far away in the north, in the very heart 
 of a mining region, is another fane, more noble, if that 
 may be, than Wells, and more superbly placed, per- 
 haps, than any temple reared by human hands. Below 
 the heights on which the cathedral and the ancient 
 castle stands the river sweeps in gentle curve, and on 
 either bank are woodland walks and garden wilds. Two- 
 bridges cross the stream. From one — but I must not 
 attempt to compete in words with the labours of a long 
 line of painters. From the other the outlook would be no 
 less one of exquisite beauty, if it had not occurred to 
 someone to set up a huge framework in a chance patch 
 of unoccupied land at one end and let it out for posters \ 
 Durham is blessed with a University and a Corporation, 
 but, apparently, both are waiting for a local association 
 to convince the townsfolk that it is sound policy to see 
 to the setting of the inestimable jewel of which they 
 are the fortunate, though not wholly vigilant, guardians. 
 This seems the place for remarking that the projected 
 associations (whether at the centre or throughout the 
 country) will, as a matter of course, take care that their 
 views are presented both in Parliament and in the 
 Municipal Councils, by sympathetic representatives. It 
 vi'ould be an error from every point of view to make 
 the vindication of the Rights of the Seeing Eye a test 
 question or to add another issue to the perplexed tangle 
 of politics. But as voters and ratepayers we should 
 convince the candidate we severally prefer that we have 
 convictions as stubborn on this subject as the ordinary 
 party man has on any item of his Parliamentary pro- 
 gramme. 
 
 Conceive, next, one of the pleasant reaches on the 
 Thames. I suppose the reason people go by steamer 
 to Oxford, or navigate steam launches, or float through 
 their holidays in lazy barges is that they find the scenery 
 
59 
 
 soothing. Their taste, such as it is — I do not pretend 
 that the main element in the happiness is the landscape 
 — brings custom to a good many hotels. To conserve 
 the grace that attracts is undoubtedly the commercial 
 interest of the innkeepers. Yet I am told that in one 
 ot" the loveliest spots, one of these persons has 
 destroyed, even in the eyes of the most tolerant, the 
 entire charm by setting up, high above the topmost 
 branches of the trees, a colossal sky sign. There are 
 recorded cases in which men who are fond in the 
 abstract of maintaining that a house owner is entitled 
 to do what he likes with his own have criticized this 
 particular exercise of constitutional freedom, in terms 
 that have shocked the passing bargee. We for our part 
 will be moderate in speech. The law we hold ought to 
 give the means of preventing this thing ; and the law, 
 we intend, shall give the means. But meanwhile (since 
 I am engaged in glorifying the force of extra legal 
 effort) I desire to suggest that there is a remedy. No 
 traveller need land at the spot that has been profaned. 
 Editors of guide books, the younger race of whom have 
 done splendid service in creating the taste for the 
 picturesque and in making the treasures of scenery 
 accessible, might with great advantage annotate with 
 appropriate observations such outrages. No faithful 
 member of our societies will miss a chance of protest- 
 ing against these stupid barbarities. Considering how 
 apt average men and women are to derive what they 
 would call their opinions from the expressed opinions 
 of others, judicious candour on this topic would have 
 no insignificant effect in modifying average feeling. 
 We all of us owe to others a part of our faculty of per- 
 ception, and many a muscular young man, who at the 
 beginning of his pilgrimage is set down in the smoking- 
 room as an irreclaimable Philistine, has developed before 
 his pedestrian tour is over much more than a rudimentary 
 sense of the loveliness of the earth and sea and sky. 
 Indifference is very much an affair of habit. Culture 
 means only the result of utilized opportunities. 
 
60 
 
 So much for the country, for the preservation of 
 which nearly every one is soHcitous and comparatively 
 sanguine. About towns there is less disposition to 
 exercise faith and hope. Many frankly give them up 
 as beyond the scope of rational effort. 1 have said my 
 say at the outset about the assumption that cities are 
 necessarily hideous. The view of Zurich from the 
 terrace of the Polytechnic is a standing refutation of 
 the doctrine of inherent ugliness, and if only any 
 persuasion or legal compulsion swept from English 
 manufacturing towns (Leeds for example) the Gar- 
 gantuan inscriptions on roofs and chinnieys, and hoard- 
 ings raised ad hoc, compelling the spectators to note that 
 this is So-and-So's Coal Depot and that is So-and- 
 So's Ironworks, there would be something impressive 
 and grimly picturesque in that vast expanse of tapering 
 chimneys belching smoke and huge factories shelter- 
 ing the teeming life within. Beauty may be wanting ; 
 but not poetry. But, in truth, cities are often 
 recognized as " of high artistic merit." Why is Edin- 
 burgh perennially packed with visitors ? Has there ever 
 been an Academy E,xhibition without a picture of New- 
 castle ? Is Dublin ugly? No, what bewilders and 
 repels in these great seats of industry is not of the 
 essence of city life. But I stipulate expressly for 
 power on the part of those who govern, to keep the 
 excrescences within bounds. Unless the Provost of 
 the Scottish Athens and his colleagues interpose to pre- 
 vent the newspaper offices round the Tol booth from 
 proclaiming themselves in golden letters visible afar, 
 and every charitable institution and hotel and business 
 house from joining in the competition to catch the eye. 
 Princes street will not long be the Mecca of romantic 
 students. Sir Walter Scott himself would renounce 
 the rock if he had to survey in close association with 
 its bold escarpment of liquid red and tender green, this 
 repulsive panorama of ticketed warehouses. This, I 
 confess, appears to me a case in which nothing but 
 stringent compulsion will serve, and the function of the 
 
61 
 
 Local Association in Edinburgh will be to make the law 
 operative. 
 
 The same must be said of the close of Westminster 
 and of the Thames as it flows through London. It is 
 surely an afl'ront to practical intelligence that a spot 
 dominated by a church dear to all men of English blood, 
 consecrated by history as well as religion, and in 
 architectural glory of supreme excellence^ should be 
 exposed, as it now is, to the profanation of glaringly 
 sordid surroundings. I am so far wanting in critical 
 taste as to admire greatly the Houses of Parliament, 
 and as the seat of the Legislature of the Empire they 
 should command respect. To touch a responsive chord, 
 be it added that they cost the nation an enormous 
 amount. Include the parish church of St. Margaret's, 
 and we have a group for which it would be 
 hard to find a parallel in the world. Yet we — who 
 claim to have some notion of business — allow this 
 priceless possession to be besmeared and belittered at 
 the caprice of anyone who happens to be a tenant of 
 any of the houses or buildings round. A hospital 
 announces in stupendous letters, on an enormous 
 board, that it is supported by voluntary subscriptions; 
 a place of amusement bedizens itself with posters that 
 would be an outrage anywhere ; a railway station is 
 plastered with unalluring bills ; it is much to the credit 
 of the cafe keepers and sellers of cheap goods that they 
 have shown comparative moderation. It would be 
 tedious to chronicle in detail the series of analogous 
 blots that you are compelled to observe as you pass 
 from this disfigured holy place along the noble avenue 
 of the Thames Embankment. Here the sky sign is seen 
 in its most monstrous form : here the railway station 
 reaches the ideal of glaring meanness : here official 
 neglect goes hand in hand with private profanation. Yet 
 to those who can nerve themselves to see profanation 
 in its worst shape I can commend a visit to Tower Hill : 
 the spot of all others that the sentiment of historic 
 reverence might have induced the nation to protect. 
 
And all these are but types. Is there nothing here 
 to save ? Is there no crying need of succour ? 
 
 Yet another case. A great business thoroughfare. 
 Houses on both sides. Some would be interesting as 
 being old ; others would be w orth regard as being the 
 conscientious work of accomplished architects. But 
 all alike, without respect to age or status, are either 
 themselves overlaid with trade announcements in huge 
 letters of gold or glass or common painter's pigments, 
 or killed by the show on the neighbouring premises. 
 Here a huge gilt hat projects above the side path, and 
 here a coffee pot of monstrous dimensions or a model 
 stove (larger than life) tells that the trade of grocer or 
 ironmonger is plied within. The one merit common to 
 all these devices is that they so effectually compete with 
 each other, eclipsed and eclipsing, that no single one is 
 noted by the struggling throng of pedestrians. The crowd 
 of human beings surges through a chaos of ineffectual 
 glitter and colour. Trade is not helped, but the street 
 is spoilt, and even the famous spire is lost in the be- 
 wildering medley. Yet hardly any appreciable good 
 results to the general commerce of the thoroughtare. 
 Each individual shop-keeper, each tenant of an upper 
 floor, has, or fancies he has, a special inducement to 
 announce himself. Conspicuous he cannot be ; but in 
 the fierce rivalrv he trusts to escape absolute eff'acement. 
 Now, will any member of the Common Council tell 
 me whether any wrong would have been done had the 
 authorities of the city laid down years ago, and enforced 
 ever since, a rule that every sign should keep within 
 defined limits as regards position, size and design ? If 
 he is as sagacious as a successor of Whittington 
 ought to be he will answer that, on the contrary, a 
 great benefit would have been conferred — since fair 
 play would have been secured, and customers in search 
 of a particular shop could find it without distracting 
 care. But the mischief is done, and the number of 
 Whittingtons in the Common Council being restricted, 
 I much fear that any attempt to pull down what ougnt 
 
63 
 
 never to have been put up v^^ould breed bad blood. Yet 
 it surely would be possible to effect gradually what it 
 would be inj udicious to attempt at once. The precedent 
 set by the County Council in the matter of sky signs 
 might be followed. Additions should not be permitted 
 to the existing assortment. When the County Council, 
 or the Corporation of London, at enormous charge to 
 the community, creates some avenue or circus that 
 might be imposing, and was at least duly chronicled on 
 the day of its inauguration as "a noteworthy addition to 
 thesplendour of the metropolis," it is notquite unreason- 
 able to hope that stipulations may be made which will save 
 the site from being at the disposal of competitive dentists, 
 whose professional attainments dispose them to announce 
 themselves in letters the size of an ordinary window. 
 
 Respect for criticism compels me to be tedious in 
 the array of" instances.^' Take this time a graveyard 
 in the heart of a great town, which the exertions of the 
 Kyrle Society, or of Lord Meath and his friends, assisted 
 by local or corporate munificence, has rescued from 
 neglect, and converted into a pretty garden. Some 
 houses round have, perhaps, been acquired, and the 
 sites added to this much desired open space. The 
 result of the clearance is to bring into sunshine and 
 prominence the walls and windows of other buildings, 
 and the owners of these see their way to making a 
 profit by letting them out to the contractors, or using 
 them for drawing attention to their own existence. 
 The result is, in any case, to destroy much of the 
 picturesqueness ; to place eyesores over the little vista 
 of green that the taste of the gardener contrives. We 
 spend some thousands of pounds in creating the little 
 sylvan patch, and, for want of a bye-law, allow the 
 worst feature of the city life to dominate all. If any- 
 one imagines that this is not a transcript from fact let 
 the doubter go to the gardens on the Thames Embank- 
 ment (which cost who knows how many tens of thou- 
 sands) and observe what the directors of two Railway 
 
64 
 
 Companies have done to add to their embellishment. 
 The Charing Cross Station is not a thing of beauty, 
 but it is a gratuitous and intolerable abuse that those 
 who made it should take advantage of their own wrong, 
 and wound the sight they have taken so little pains to 
 please. 
 
 Another sample of the subsidiary and collateral 
 opportunities of bringing influence or constraint to bear. 
 There is a road of small Jerryesque villas in a suburb. 
 City clerks, all of small incomes, some nevertheless of 
 fine taste, dwell in them. One would not take it as a 
 type of what might be. Yet the yellow brick has toned 
 down under the chastening touch of smoke ; the shrubs 
 have had time to grow in the little front gardens, and in 
 summer there is a pretty display of lilac and hawthorn 
 and laburnum. Some of the plane trees, too, that the 
 builder planted in the roadway when he decided on 
 calling it Acacia Grove have survived, and give some 
 slight air of French shadiness and dignity to the avenue. 
 The rich merchant takes it sometimes on his way to the 
 Railway Station, and feels that somehow it is not only 
 cooler, but nicer than the regular route via the Pro- 
 menade (where the "good" shops are). But there is 
 one little gap in the row of villas. This exposes to 
 view the end of one of them, and the enterprising per- 
 son who has an eye for suitable positions has not over- 
 looked so obvious an opportunity. Therefore our poor 
 clerk and our rich merchant have to run (with closed 
 eyes if they can) the gauntlet of much superfluous and 
 highly coloured information as to the relative newsiness 
 of'daily papers, the lustre of blacklead, and the limpidity 
 of washing blue. 
 
 This cause of suffering — for the pain grows by repeti- 
 tion — might have been obviated in a dozen ways, be- 
 ginning with the discretion of the original lessor of the 
 ground and ending with the directly repressive action of 
 the Local Board. The use of a Local Association would 
 be to bring later, if not sooner, one or other of the 
 
65 
 
 remedial forces into play. It is hardly necessary to add 
 that the considerations which apply to this case apply 
 also to the pretty village church and its neighbourhood, 
 to the bridge that crosses the stream, to the Elizabethan 
 inn on the old coach road. Had they been laid to heart 
 by even a few lovers of the picturesque twenty years 
 ago, such a town as Edgeware would be now what it 
 might be, and not, alas ! alas ! what it has been made. 
 
 " But what would you do with the bare wall ? " says 
 the interrogator, the fear of whose insistence has driven 
 me through this wearying catalogue of actualities and 
 possibilities ? " Surely nothing can add to the deformity 
 of a bare wall." I answer, "There would be 
 nothing positively repulsive in mere bricks. Walls 
 indeed (as Mr. Ruskin has taught many of us to see) 
 may in themselves be pleasant objects to the sight, and 
 some who are not aesthetic prigs have found an old 
 park rampart no bad companion for some miles of road. 
 Railway cuttings may be monotonous, but they are not 
 distressing. But in the particular case we have been 
 discussing I should, had I lived in Acacia Grove and 
 been consulted, have recommended a fast-growing ivy, 
 a few Banksian roses, and (if the total sum available 
 for capital expenditure amounted to five shillings) a 
 clematis or two. Even the man who shudders at 
 bareness might have something to look at in the lapse 
 of time.'' 
 
 Let us pass to another illustrative case. There is a 
 sequestered cove on the bleak Cornish coast. Wooded 
 slopes, rising to the waste moorland above, close in 
 the little bay. Where the tiny valley through which the 
 brook descends opens out as a shore there stands a 
 cluster of cottages. They have no great loveliness in 
 themselves, but there is a grim solidity about the 
 massive walls which have protected many a generation 
 of fishing folk from the storms of winter, and when in 
 summer the sun beats upon the flights of stone steps, 
 and the glistening fish scales and dark nets on one 
 
66 
 
 side, and plunges the other in sharp black shadow, 
 and the little mermaids in gay frocks chase each other 
 in and out from the biightness to the gloom, the 
 contrast of strength and colour is such as Herodotus 
 may have felt — though he does not record his medita- 
 tions — when he wandered in Egyptian Thebes. Follow 
 the stream as it comes rushing down, now in tiny 
 cataracts and now forming calm pools, and you will be 
 back once more in truest English woodland, and be 
 lulled by the song of innumerable birds. As yet no 
 railway has approached the spot, but though for many a 
 year the secret of its existence was kept jealously 
 guarded by the few who made it their refuge from the 
 outer world, it has of late been mentioned in the guide 
 books. Indeed, on a comparatively level space towards 
 one of the horns of the bay, the signs of settlement are 
 clearly visible. There are some new houses, not dainty, 
 but plain and unpretending, and, therefore, harmless. 
 One of these calls itseU a hotel, the birth of "inns" 
 having apparently ceased in our enlightened times. The 
 earlier race of pilgrims to the sjK)t lament, of course, the 
 tokens of development. The owners of the soil and 
 the villagers do not share their regret. The change 
 means rent to one — employment to the other. Neither 
 are to be blamed. Sleepy Hollow, the schoolmaster has 
 been heard to say, is waking up, and the owner of the 
 hotel (who has lately been to ilfracombe) has dreams of 
 a great future. 1 for my part am enough of a Philis- 
 tine to rejoice at the tendency which is destroying the 
 romantic isolation of these primitive nooks. I am 
 heartily glad that the instinct of the commonplace 
 young man takes him to the sea-side, even though 
 when he gets there he spends most of his time listening 
 to comic songs with banjo accompaniments in the 
 Great Swiss Dining Hall, and it is to me a good sign 
 that there is this constant searching out of " less 
 frequented " places. The first visitors — the pioneers 
 of the invasion — are, it is needless to say, lovers of the 
 
67 
 
 quiet picturesque. They wish to escape from the 
 barbarities of the popular resorts ; but, alas ! in their 
 train will come the crowd from which they fly. And 
 then? If history, absolutely uniform hitherto, repeats 
 itself, our pleasant Cornish retreat will in a decade be 
 very much the same as other seats of habitation that 
 flourish by letting lodgings. If, that is to say, there 
 be no deliberate arrangement for conserving beauty (as 
 far as ordinarv convenience permits), and of excludino; 
 superfluous defacements, there will be a wanton growth 
 of evil. Schemes there are. There is talk already of 
 a branch line. Plans have been prepared for systematic 
 building, with the proper complement of esplanade, 
 squares, site for a church, for public houses, and ap- 
 proaches to a pier. The owners of the great houses in 
 the neighbourhood — those of them who are not lords 
 of the soil round the bay — rail at fate and groan at the 
 inevitable influx of vulgarity. The present writer 
 sympathises with the sorrows, but desires to rebuke 
 the despair. It is, he contends, every one's interest 
 and every one's duty to take timely steps to reconcile 
 growth with such a measure of grace as conditions 
 permit. Now is the favourable moment for founding 
 the Local Association, and enrolling as members those 
 who will by-and-by be the fathers of the municipality. 
 Contrive, as may be done with ease by a small com- 
 mittee (including of course the progressive school- 
 master), so to arrange the roads that the buildings 
 will do the least harm to the aspect. Make sure that 
 good view points are reserved as the property of the 
 commune. Do not forget, in your anxiety to have an 
 asphalted terrace for the bath chairs, to secure a net- 
 work of footpaths. Plant the trees before the " villas " 
 are built. Above all things, adopt as an inexorable 
 rule that no advertisement boards shall be affixed to 
 any building, whether that building be a school or 
 hotel or lodging-house. In granting the concession 
 for the pier make it an imperative condition that the 
 
fabric shall not be used for anything but the strict 
 objects of a pier. Settle once for all that no one shall 
 be allowed to display announcements of any kind save 
 in such places and in such manner as the collective 
 authority shall sanction, and exercise the power of 
 control with a rigid regard for propriety of aspect. No 
 one will be injured. '1 he shopkeepers collectively will 
 do exactly the same amount of business as they would 
 if they competed in making the place hideous. It 
 must be a matter of pure indifference to them 
 whether a Lancashire or a London soap boiler 
 loses the chance of puffing his stuff". 1 put it, 
 as a matter of pure business advantage, to any 
 expert in development whether a town which, from the 
 first, was subject to these salutary influences would not 
 — from the standpoint of mere profit making— have an 
 immense advantage over one in which individual caprice, 
 or greed, or stupidity was allowed to run liot. It would 
 be an object lesson to every visitor; thousands who 
 had never perceived A'hy it was that " popularity '* 
 ruined picturesqueness would become aware of the 
 reason why. Repose, the absence of aflfront, is the 
 most valuable of all elements in promoting attractive- 
 ness. I cannot, indeed, guarantee that the monopoly 
 which for the time being it is in the power of an infant 
 tourist resort to secure would be permanent, for, thanks 
 to the force of rivalry, the example would spread, and 
 when propriety became the rule no sane shop-keeping 
 community would relapse into higgledy-piggledy and 
 pandemonium. j 
 
 What holds good of our Cornish village would, 
 mutatis rrmtavdis, apply to a new suburban district. 
 I have often wondered why, in the eagerness to 
 secure some fresh outlets for capital and enterprise, 
 it has never occurred to some rich man to start a settle- 
 ment of Rest within reasonable travelling distance of 
 the Eank of England. 1 he railway company would be 
 indenmified — it the prospect of traffic weie not sufficient 
 
to open the eyes of the Directors to their own palpable 
 interest — for foregoing the profits resulting from the 
 defacement of their stations. The waiting room would 
 be a room in which it was possible to find rest. The 
 station itself would be a building of some little dignity. 
 Immediately round it would be, as in France and Italy, 
 a garden, instead of, as in our Free England, an in- 
 coherent jumble of sheds, placards on gigantic props, 
 and jerry-built houses, to which the enterprise of the 
 bill-poster and enamelled plate-maker has added fac- 
 titious horrors. The shops would be massed in con- 
 venient quarters contiguous to the main avenues, which 
 would be flanked with trees and green borders instead of 
 plate glass. The houses in which people with smaller 
 means lived would differ in scale and sumptuousness 
 from those occupied by those of larger means ; but as to 
 the general eflect, the roads would be as well kept and 
 as graciously fringed with the verdure and bloom of 
 garden plots. 'I'he man who would invest his money in 
 such an enterprise as this would enjoy an increment not 
 quite "unearned/' and he would have a reward — not 
 assessable uniier the Income Tax Act — in the conscious- 
 ness of having set a great and fruitful example. Yet, 
 in the present tone of what is called in the city " British 
 enterprise," I have no very confident hope of seeing 
 this field exploited. Millions will be lost or squandered 
 in the attempt to extract dividends from souie sordid 
 El Dorado in the Kalahari waste, but to create an 
 Earthly Paradise at home is dismissed as a crotchet 
 quite unworthy of the notice of financiers. 
 
 A last exauiple. Tlianks partly to the Commons 
 Preservation Society, partly to the enthusiasm of some 
 residents, partly to the goodwill of the Lord of the 
 Manor, a great expanse of breezy moorland was saved 
 a generation since for the enjoyment, to all time, of the 
 people of a huge city. At one end is the old village 
 green, lined on three of its sides mth stately or pic- 
 turesque houses, of which none that are old are without 
 
70 
 
 historical associations. Beyond the green the plain 
 opens out, sinking on one hand into a valley through 
 which passes the oldest road in Britain. Beyond the 
 vallev a Royal park slopes upwards, lorniing heights 
 clothed with antique forest. To close in the valley are 
 at both ends the long line of distant hills. It is a pros- 
 pect of almost perfect rural loveliness, and may be found 
 by diligent inquiry within ten miles of Charing Cross. 
 The management of the common— or rather cluster of 
 commons — is vested by Act of Parliament in Conserva- 
 tors, who levy a rate for its n)aintenance upon the property 
 in the immediate neighbouihood. Some years ago there 
 was a proposal to bring a railway through the valley. 
 The piojcct was defeated by a revival of the public 
 spirit by which in the first instance the doom of 
 enclosure was averted. So far well. We see what can 
 be done by local organization when something large and 
 definite is in question. Also the honest chronicler 
 has little but praise for the successive conservators. 
 They have planted woods which are now regions of 
 delight; they have been well disposed to the golfers and 
 considerate to cricket and football. 1 hey have drained 
 some Serbonian bogs, and created sheets of water 
 where it is possible to swim in summer and skate in 
 winter. 1 hey are not careless of wild birds, or indif- 
 ferent to the specific beetles. Everything, in short, 
 that can be done by general directions and by arrange- 
 ments of routine has been done, and even in small 
 matters they receive suggestions with much benignity. 
 But for all that there is to the eye of afl'ection a want of 
 loving care in things small in scale, yet of much 
 moment in their bearing on picturesque completeness. 
 "Where it is a matter of planting a thousand trees 
 accoidiug to the approved practice of forestry, the thing 
 is done in a minute by resolution. But where a little 
 clump would relieve the harsh angle of the new lake it 
 remains indefinitely undone. When (as has happened, 
 and will happen again) a great mansion is built which 
 
71 
 
 catches the eye unpleasantly, no step is taken in time to 
 provide the softening screen of foliage. Chance does 
 much, but sometimes, like the conservators, it cannot 
 be depended on. Then from time to time occur changes 
 which affect the aspect. Rightly considered, no ques- 
 tion of improvement can be half so important as the 
 appropriate repair of the old buildings which form the 
 most charming features in the landscape. The farm 
 house that dates from long before the mythical age of 
 Queen Anne ; the ancient imi where in the last century 
 all the duelling parties had their rendezvous — is it to 
 be thought of without pain that the old red tiles on one 
 of the outhouses of these should be replaced by corru- 
 gated iron? Yet the farmer thinks of economy first 
 of all, and the conservators cannot be expected to 
 interpose, since the due discharge of ordinary m nis- 
 terial duties is already a sufficient burden on their 
 patriotic energies. Imagine now that there is a 
 local association whose special function it is to have 
 regard to the delicacies and refinements of public pros- 
 pects, how easily all interests may be reconciled. It 
 would provide — in no niggard spirit — the difference be- 
 tween the cost of deforming and conserving repair. The 
 mere approaches to the tenant on the subject would 
 rouse that good man and his wife to the sense that their 
 abode was something to be regarded and to be proud of, 
 and their lads and lasses woidd learn from the talk at 
 the tea-table that beauty was an element in a recognized 
 ideal of well-being; and that human life meant some- 
 thing besides "getting on'' in the sense of money 
 earnings. Besides these smaller demands on the solici- 
 tude of a local society, there woidd be more considerable 
 tasks — the restoration of the windmill, shall we say ? — 
 should the sails be condemned as unsafe. Here, again, 
 the "Standing Committee'' for the Protection of the 
 Picturesque would be available at once to get together 
 the necessary funds from the wealthy or — not always 
 the same thing — the munificent residents. 
 
72 
 
 But candour must add that the estimable conser- 
 vators who do so much excellently well — leave some- 
 thing undone that it were well to do, and do something 
 that it were well to leave undone. It is understood that 
 there is in their pay a corps of veterans who are unceas- 
 ingly struggling to clear away the torn newspapers, the 
 broken bottles, the crownless hats, the toeless boots. 
 But the enemy remains in possession of the field, some- 
 times as stragglers, too often in force. Far be it from 
 my purpose to propose any solution of the mystery how 
 these things come and why they do not go. But with 
 all diffidence, I hold that it is not beyond the scope of 
 human effort to prevent the accumulation : to arrange 
 that the debris of picnics shall not be the unfailing 
 ornament of every grove, and that the furze bushes shall 
 not wear the livery of coloured broad sheets. 'Phe 
 secret is to put on more old men : incidentally simplify- 
 ing one of the problems with which our local branch 
 of the Charity Organization Society has to deal. 
 Further, the provision of unobtrusive boxes close to the 
 cricket grounds and the favourite haunts of the al fresco 
 banqueters, for the reception of orange peel and the 
 wrappings of the viands, would make virtue more easy 
 for those who now succumb to overmastering tempta- 
 tion. Nor, since most of the members of our imaginary 
 society would be subscribers also to the village schools, 
 would it be quite vain to hope that, as a part of the 
 moral training — as a concrete illustration of duty to 
 one^s neighbour — the heinousness of casting the greasy 
 lunch papers to the winds, of using newly-planted trees 
 as climbing posts, and of other favourite enormities of 
 the young, should be steadfastly inculcated. 
 
 I conclude with the things which the conservators 
 (as it seems to some) do amiss. This little book has for 
 its theme The Age of Disfigurement. It would be more 
 scientific to call it The Age of Labelling. " Cogito : 
 Ergo sum^'' was a good enough maxim once. 1 he 
 modern equivalent is '' 1 am : therefore I announce the 
 
73 
 
 fact in large capital letters." No public body respects 
 itself till it has stuck up a forest of notice boards, as 
 symbols of its sovereignty, throughout its domain. 
 Here I am concerned only with the shape in which the 
 disease has attacked the worthy guardians of the sample 
 common. 
 
 There are entrances to it from many different direc- 
 tions ; and some of the most charming of these 
 approaches have been selected as theatres for the dis- 
 play of huge printed proclamations. The matter is, as 
 a rule, illegible, because obliterated by the weather. 
 But, in any case, it would remain unread. "The 
 British fleet you cannot see, for ^tis not yet in sight." 
 Official dignity demanded a high post, and the result 
 is that the edifying regulations could, under the most 
 favourable circumstances, be deciphered only with the 
 aid of a telescope. But not one visitor in ten thousand 
 would dream of reading them. The only reason they 
 exist is that the personage who had them reared was 
 under an impression it was officially correct to have such 
 things about. One picturesque spot is reserved for 
 carpet-beating. I do not complain — it is the recognition 
 of an ancient privilege, and — save in the season of 
 spring cleaning — the frames can be construed as a 
 cluster of gallows, with appropriate reminiscences of 
 departed highwaymen. But, by way of embellishment, 
 there is a notice up to say that here, and only here, 
 may the banging of Brussels and Kidderminster be 
 lawfully performed. That is, the notification of the 
 rule is made onlv for the information of those who 
 already are aware of it, and are, in fact, conforming 
 to it. 
 
 The utility generally of these notice boards is con- 
 fined to marring the picturesque effect just at the place 
 and time when the jar is most keenly felt. There is 
 hardly an open space round London of which the grace 
 is not most seriously diminished by these purposeless 
 erections. I suppose the curators (or the permanent 
 
74 
 
 official who has put them up in honour of the Divinity 
 of his caste, Estabhshed Usage) would, if pressed on the 
 matter, refer to some legal consideration as his warrant. 
 You cannot prove a breach of the bye-laws, he would 
 urge, unless they are on view. Well, as it would 
 be a long business to revise the Statute Book, the local 
 societies might be content to compromise. Reduce the 
 height of the boards, and in each place make one serve 
 for all purposes. Existing custom appears to demand 
 three or four of diflerent heights, shapes, and colours, 
 and in varying stages of dilapidation. Make the in- 
 scriptions in which all the necessary protestations and 
 warnings are combined the base of a pedestal ; and on 
 the top put a map of the immediate neighbourhood, duly 
 adjusted to show the points of the compass. On this 
 map mark the precise spot where the observer is stand- 
 ing. Then, indeed, it will be a monument of good 
 counsel, and many a bewildered wayfarer will bless the 
 kindly friend that put him on the right track. There 
 are admirable societies in France and Germany which 
 undertake to provide finger-posts in regions beloved by 
 the pedestrian. But I think that those who have trusted 
 too fondly to such guidance will appreciate the less 
 obtrusive but infinitely less misleading method I have 
 sketched. Need I add that country roads come within 
 the scope of these remarks as distinctly as "open 
 spaces'^ or forest tracts. 
 
 It will be allowed, 1 trust, that in the several activities 
 indicated — especially those of modest scale — is work 
 which may be done by little companies of men and 
 women who care for neatness and beauty (when that is 
 within their reach), who love their kind, and do not 
 despair of humanity, without noise, without conflict, and, 
 it may be, not wholly without the sweet applause of 
 honest thanks. It is to them we must look as the 
 active agents in the long labour that lies before us. 
 Every organ gains strength by being called into play, 
 and the more closely and earnestly the Local Associa- 
 
75 
 
 tions devote themselves to " bringing beauty home/' the 
 greater will be their influence for procuring the abate- 
 ment of palpable disfigurements. 
 
 Those who have had the patience to follow me thus 
 far will have perceived that I assume the general exis- 
 tence of at least a rudimentary love of grace and order, 
 and that I assert very strongly the need and the feasi- 
 bility of developing it. The special phase of disfigurement 
 with which the National Society is primarily concerned 
 would never have been permitted to grow to its present 
 dimensions if the defensive forces had been organized. 
 Many have suffered, have inwardly groaned under the 
 wrong, but have imagined themselves powerless just 
 because, for want of faith in their fellows, they have 
 remained isolated. We have now to undo what has 
 been done, by the aid of those instincts which 
 might have been marshalled to prevent the evil. To 
 this end we have to rouse to genuine life the senti- 
 ment of local patriotism — to get people to feel a pride 
 and love for the place that is their home. The 
 loose and fluctuating character of modern society may 
 make the effort appear formidable; but there is no 
 reason at all why the sense of honourable obligation 
 should not in this, as in other things, shape itself to the 
 altered conditions. There never was a time when the 
 units of which the nation is made up were so thoroughly 
 in earnest about the future of the social aggregate. 
 Why should it not be a matter in the strictest sense of 
 conscience and of religion to see that our children and 
 children's children shall not — so far as it depends on us, 
 the men of to-day — be doomed to live in ignoble 
 surroundings any more than to grow up with cramped 
 intelligence or ill-nourished limbs ? The impulse to do 
 right is there ; we have only to enlarge the sphere in 
 which it should operate. Much has been said of late in 
 defence of Greek studies. Our country needs a fuller 
 infusion of the Greek Spirit. The Glory of Athens 
 was the love of the citizen for his State : a State not as 
 
76 
 
 accounted for in census returns or statistics of exports 
 and imports, or even estimates of average incomes. 
 The State was a visible thing — it was the people and the 
 land in which they dwelt. The Acropolis whs the holy 
 place of filial devotion. Athene was the guardian god- 
 dess of the fair city, because she was the guardian of the 
 arts that made it fair ; and we may be sure that those 
 who reared the Parthenon — that most j^erfect gem of 
 architecture, in theloveliest setting of sea and mountains 
 and verdant plains — did not dishonour divinity by forget- 
 ting what was due to the dignity of Home. The splendour 
 may have been lavished on the fanes, but there was 
 nothing mean and sordid in the simplicity of the houses 
 of the common folk. There were in ancient days, no 
 doubt, notifications on the walls announcing elections, 
 games, and so forth; but there was nothing on the 
 "Long Walls" that could ruffle the repose of the 
 peripatetic philosophers. It would be so in England 
 to-day if the mechanical facilities for reproducing and 
 the blind struggles of a complex society had not pre- 
 sented temptation. We have to invoke the Spirit of 
 "Progress" to heal the ills that "Progress" has 
 wrought. In our political ideals we have nothing to be 
 ashamed of. Selfishness, cupidity, the rancour and 
 folly of faction : these disturbed the even course of 
 public counsel at the gates of the Temple of Theseus, as 
 well as over tfie Chapel of St. Stephen's. But we have 
 still to add to the instinct of brotherhood a loving 
 reverence for the very face and features of the Mother- 
 land. We may not imagine nymphs in the woodland or 
 tributary divinities at the sources of the sacred streams. 
 But let us rerert to Nature-worship, in holding that 
 there is profanation in wanton defacement, and piety 
 in preserving the simple freshness of the vdlage 
 green. 
 
 The sense of solidarity and sympathy engendered by 
 the estal)lishment of a National organization would 
 have a stimulating effect in this direction. Many sen- 
 
77 
 
 sitive souls shrink at present from complaining. They 
 imagine that they are exceptions to the general rule of 
 content. They suspect themselves of eccentricity and 
 stifle protest as selfish. But when they become aware 
 that many feel as they do, that the removal of the cause 
 of their distress would be distinctly a public good, they 
 would deem it incumbent on them to utter the thoughts 
 that erewhile they had suppressed. 
 
 I have to consider here some doubts that have been 
 hinted as to the wisdom of any plan which assumes 
 the existence of any common standard of taste. Taste, 
 it is urged, is purely sui)jective. Nothing is intrinsi- 
 cally beautiful; nothing is intrinsically ugly; it is all in 
 the eyes of the observer. I grant this, of course. I 
 know that if we are to be guided by scientific charity 
 no one ought to speak of "bad^' taste and "good" 
 taste, but of "differing" tastes. Nor for my present 
 purpose have T the smallest objection to use such colour- 
 less terms as likes and dislikes. I say then that there 
 is, as a matter of everyday observation, a standard of 
 likes and dislikes so nearly general as to be easily enforce- 
 able; and in contemplating the work before either the 
 Local Associations or the National Society we need 
 not go beyond this well understood criterion. I find as 
 a rule that it is those who are themselves fastidious 
 (those, that is to say, whose range of likings differs 
 seriously from that of the bulk of their fellows) who are 
 most disposed to give taste up altogether as a bad job. 
 I want to speak to them in their own language. Some 
 special style, some particular effect pleases them 
 greatly; or, it may be, is singularly displeasing; and 
 they are aware that both in approving and in dis- 
 approving they have few to sympathize with them ; and 
 so when they hear of some proposal which aims at 
 diminishing the causes of aesthetic pain or promoting 
 aesthetic delight, they cry out in scorn. ''What is the 
 use," they exclaim, "of making a Local Board the 
 guardian of amenities when it includes men whose 
 
78 
 
 perceptions I cannot trust ? They may destroy what I 
 love or create what I detest." I cannot help saying 
 that there is some little dash of intolerance in this 
 specious protest against control. To the end of time 
 judgments will diHer in the domain of art, and — if I 
 may be permitted to coin a convenient barbarism — of 
 " ocular satisfaction." If it were proposed to establish 
 an Inquisition of the Fine Arts, an Index Expurga- 
 torious of heterodox works, a Dictatorship for dog- 
 matic embellishment, I could understand the objection. 
 But nothing of the kind is dreamt (^f. We want only 
 to diminish the supply of things which hardly anyone 
 regards as anything but blots ; we want to give fair 
 play to things that nearly everyone agrees in liking. In 
 the National Gallery there are subjects and masters 
 which have very unequal attractions for different classes 
 of visitors; there are indeed many highly respectable 
 citizens to whom no canvas in the whole collection 
 would afford the slightest entertainment. Yet there 
 would, I suppose, be a consensus of opinion that it 
 would be an ill deed to paste a play bill over a Turner 
 or hammer a direction plate on a Crivelli. So, though 
 every public building that is put up is sure to be 
 abused, no one would seriously contend that our state 
 departments should be permanently housed in shanties. 
 Out of every hundred visitors to St. James's Park 
 probably ninety-five would pronounce it a reproach to 
 our civilization that such a pile as Hankey's Buildings 
 should have been permitted to overtop the Abbey. Not 
 one, surely, would have any hesitation in pronouncing 
 the one unsightly and the other gracious. St. Paul's 
 Cathedral has to the eyes of a yokel a beauty and a 
 dignity which he would fail to find in the gayest booth 
 at a fair. As with the craft of man, so with the gifts 
 of nature. Listen to the conversation in a smok- 
 ing compartment between London and Dover, and 
 you will hardly dispute the existence of a general 
 perception that rural Kent is more pleasing than 
 
79 
 
 one of the growing suburban districts, and that this in 
 turn is better than — a station interior. River scenes, 
 woodland, mountains, the sea and shore have their 
 special votaries, but there is substantial agreement that 
 there is Charm in the aspect of the world away from 
 human resort. The capacity for enjoying waterfalls is a 
 somewhat variable quantity, but it may be accepted as 
 an axiom of taste that waterfalls are beautiful. Again, 
 though judgments differ as to whether the plinths on 
 the Thames Embankment are to be commended as 
 features in the design, no member of the late Metro- 
 politan Board of VVorks or of the present County 
 Council would maintain, as an abstract proposition, 
 that a stump of gas pipe, which for some ten years 
 past has projected from the centre of many of 
 them, is a suitable detail. No one advises that 
 corporations or even voluntary associations should 
 presume to trespass into the debatable ground ; but 
 there is a strong feeling that the time has come when 
 authority shall intervene to reconcile with the other 
 uses ot life, the survival of elements of pleasure to which 
 few can be indifferent. Those who predict that 
 municipalities will make existence intolerable by insist- 
 ing on meddling in every detail, may be referred to the 
 other order of pessimists, who say that elected repre- 
 sentatives are too liopelessly Philistine and apathetic to 
 think of anything but paving, drainage, and the 
 striking of the rate. The more probable view is that 
 corporate action in the future will follow the line of 
 corporate action in the past. It has given us parks, 
 picture galler es, museums, open spaces: when armed 
 with authority to restrain as well as to create, it may be 
 trusted, without vexatious interference with private 
 enterprise, to give effect to the demands of average 
 opinion. 
 
 The propaganda in which both our National Society 
 and the Local Associations will be engaged would be 
 manifold in its forms. Every time our Bills or amend- 
 
80 
 
 ments are discussed in Parliament we shall be rousing 
 an interest in fresh audiences. We shall visit the 
 Workmen's Clubs, where we are sure of finding well- 
 disposed hearers. We shall hold parley with bill- 
 posting firms and the shopkeepers, and convince them 
 that we are not unreasonable, and that a modus vivendi 
 may be established by which they would not seriously 
 lose and we should greatly gain. Even where we fail to 
 awaken artistic sentiment, we shall try to touch that 
 most responsive string in British character — the love of 
 respectability. Every self-respecting housewife keeps 
 the doorstep jealously scrubbed and whitened. Why 
 should not the etiquette of common life make the 
 exhibition of puffing plates a discredit ? Public 
 opinion, we know, enforces a certain standard of 
 decent behaviour in the streets. We have only to 
 extend the range of popular ethics to house-fronts. 
 Hotel syndicates in "Tourist" districts may be 
 appealed to with confidence to join in protecting from 
 defacement the beauty that brings them custom ; and 
 (as has been remarked before) everyone who lives by 
 letting rooms that have a pretty outlook will be a 
 natural ally. 
 
 It may — who knows? — become the Fashion to be 
 down on Defacement. The mysterious influence 
 which has taught half our polite population to shake 
 hands at an elevation above the sea quite a foot higher 
 than was at first comfortable, might prevail on rank and 
 beauty to acknowledge that scenery, like other good 
 things, is worth attention and respect, and that there 
 may be vulgarity in the tolerance of Disfigurement as 
 well as in the creation of it. 
 
 The sentiment of patriotism might usefully be invoked. 
 We used to be proud of the aspect of merry England. 
 Now we can but hang our heads for very shame. At 
 one time 1 solaced myself (on the assurance of travelled 
 friends) that things were worse in the United States. A 
 remark made by an American in an underground rail- 
 
81 
 
 way carriage chastened and corrected me. " What a 
 people these English are for advertising," he remarked 
 to the ladies of his party, as the train pulled up at 
 Victoria. Even a director would have felt mortified at 
 the sneer. 
 
 T am not sure that we may not, with a good con- 
 science, enlist the doctors as propagandists. Certain 
 forms of diseases are admittedly connected with the 
 worry, bustle, and nervous excitement of modern life. 
 A faithful analysis of the elements which make the 
 daily round distressing would, assuredly, assign no 
 small part to the bewildering glare and incessant assault 
 upon the temper through the eye. The oculist, 
 especially, would have valuable testimony to give about 
 the effect of vivid, recurring im})ressions on the brain. 
 Danger to life and limb would thus be supplemented by 
 danger to sight and intellect. 
 
 The line plainly can hardly be drawn at posters and 
 at hoardings, since the use made of private premises 
 is often more distressing than the shows on the con- 
 tractor's stands; and it must be remembered that to 
 reduce the scope of hoarding enterprise will set a 
 premium on house-fronts and window space. I know 
 of a delightful bit of Essex where (from what was 
 once the most tempting standpoint) the eye is now 
 caught, and held and tortured by the word "Billiards" 
 inscribed in colossal letters of staring white on the roof 
 of a long line of slates belonging to an otherwise 
 romantic inn. As an enticement to the game the 
 inscription is utterly useless. The owner had the work 
 executed probably because he had '' seen it done " else- 
 where. 
 
 The extent to which restraint will be carried will depend 
 on our own success in obtaining influence, and in many 
 places there should be no insuperable difficulty in secur- 
 ing a regulation (for example) to the effect that in a 
 business street there shall be no display above, say, the 
 second floor ; that the letters shall be kept within fixed 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 dimensions; that there shall be no obtrusive emblems 
 or hieroglyphs without express sanction. No one 
 will hint that it would be "unpopular" in a pro- 
 fessional or residential quarter to forbid announcements 
 inconsistent with its general character. The effect would 
 be decidedly to raise " letting values." On this head 
 of the subject I have consulted one entitled to the 
 highest respect as a Philistine and an authority in 
 Utilitarian Ethics. His rescript is to the effect that if 
 persons who are foolish enough to live in what they 
 delude themselves into believing is, by reason of trees, 
 gardens, and unadorned house fronts, a nice road, then, 
 on the principle of securing the maximum happiness 
 (even though it rest upon a basis of ridiculous rus-in- 
 urbe-ism), it is proper to restrain an individual house- 
 holder from destroying the illusion by introducing 
 anything gravely out of keeping with the general tone of 
 the road. 
 
 The simple fact that there is in existence an authority 
 which can be appealed to, will take the sting out 
 of the sorrow which so many of us feel. We can 
 bear a good deal when we know that the torment 
 cannot be carried to indefinite lengths ; we can resign 
 ourselves to the loss of much when we feel that 
 there is a way of saving what remains. The sense 
 of helplessness is the worst part of pain. 
 
 As to hoardings, few can be so enamoured of 
 posters as to complain if no permanent stations were 
 allowed. On the other hand, most of those who love 
 them not are sufficiently opportunists to admit that 
 since there must be temporary erections they might, 
 subject to regulation as to size, number, and duration, 
 be placed at the disposal of those who seek publicity. 
 Some of us would prefer the bare boards, but there 
 is a general consensus of opinion that, human nature 
 being what it is, has been, and will to the end 
 of the chapter be, the world cannot wholly dispense 
 with the emblazonry of printer's ink. The London 
 
83 
 
 County Council has anticipated the suggestion that 
 there should be rigid limits as to height, but there 
 should be vigilance and reserve in granting licenses to 
 exhibit posters at all. Nearly everyone, I think, holds 
 it to be a scandal that the vicinity of Fulhain Church 
 and Palace and the 'graceful bridge over the Thames 
 should be converted, as it novi^ is, into an inferno of 
 glaring bills. To many eyes the most exasperating 
 part of these displays is the protruding piece at the top 
 by v^'hich the contractors proclaim (in emerald green or 
 jaundiced yellow) that they are the persons who have 
 done the deed. 
 
 Similarly the conversion of the approaches to rail- 
 way stations into hideous panoramas of enamelled 
 plates and painted boards cries out for stern measures. 
 The mild-spoken irianagers of puffing concerns, who tell 
 us that the thing really needed is to make advertise- 
 ments artistic, are mainly responsible for these instru- 
 ments of pure torture. Let them show their good faith 
 by removing them. Nothing is more idle and irritating 
 than the evasive cant about the "quality" of the designs. 
 If every member of the Royal Academy were to put 
 his services at the disposal of the more notorious adver- 
 tisers they would still continue to use most largely the 
 forms that are meant to pain. The National Society, it 
 is needless to remark, desires by all means to "elevate 
 the type," and it will most effectually do so when it 
 secures fair play for what is graceful by reducing the 
 opportunities of employing what is vile. 
 
 The erections in fields should not be allowed a 
 moment's law. They are an abomination to everyone. 
 The persons who have put them up will plead, no 
 doubt, that in these days of agricultural depression, the 
 poor struggling farmer ought not to be deprived of the 
 extra shillings he earns by lending himself and his field 
 to the powers of evil. I believe the same defence has 
 been set up for those who send diseased meat to 
 market. The juries have not admitted its force. It 
 
84 
 
 would be more manly to take at once to highway 
 robbery. Yet we owe no small debt to the gentle- 
 men who have been busy in placing these stations on 
 the Railway Pilgrim's Way from Oxford (and every- 
 where else) to London. They have provided a rediictio 
 ad alsiirdvvi of the doctrine that "a man may do what 
 he likes with his own." The deviser of sky signs gave 
 the signal for revolt : to the specialist in field placards 
 we are indebted for the final provocation that ensures 
 the triumjih of the Revolution.* 
 
 The spirit of compromise will settle the vexed ques- 
 tion of station interiors. No one is likely to overlook 
 the fact that the companies derive a handsome revenue 
 from letting out their walls^ just as the profits from 
 the hoardings is taken into account in ordinary build- 
 ing contracts. Respect for equity will not permit us 
 to confiscate a property which the laches of the public 
 has permitted to come into being. But there seems no 
 reason whv in new concessions there should not be 
 stringent restrictions. Directors are proverbially short- 
 sighted, and it will require a little piactical experience 
 to convince them that it is to their own interest to 
 accept w holesome lin)itations. Half the opposition they 
 encounter when they want to invade a new district is due 
 to the unnecessary ugliness and defacement which they 
 bring in their train. What they lose in wall rents they 
 would save in Parliamentary expenses. The Central 
 Society will help them by securing the proper provisions 
 in all future Bills. It is no part of the legitimate trade 
 of a Railway to keep advertising gallerits. In other 
 respects they are under an cbligation to keep their pre- 
 mises in a reasonably decent condition, and to afford a 
 prescribed amount of accommodation at the stations. 
 All that we have to do is to give logical effect to the 
 principles governing these monopolies. I have ex- 
 
 * Readers who may be disposed to suspect that the writer unduly 
 shirks detail as to the provisions for regulating exposed advertisements 
 are requested to refer to Appendix C. 
 
86 
 
 pressed my dissent from the doctrine that a terminus is 
 intrinsically hideous, though the Companies contrive to 
 give a colour to the delusion. Many stations in France 
 are pleasant enough, and there are few roadside stations 
 in England v^hich might not be either harmless or pretty 
 if the management did not prefer to make them offensive. 
 
 There can be no toleration for the practice of sticking 
 the hateful things on the palmgs of country stations 
 as a background to the shrubs in the porter's pretty 
 garden patch, and as a foreground to the foliage on the 
 hill-slope behind. Parliament, it must be repeated, has 
 given the companies space for a station; it has not 
 authorized them to create an eyesore and a nuisance in 
 a rural neighbourhood. It would appear only fair to 
 those who have rights and susceptibilities in the neigh- 
 bourhood of a railway station, rural, city, or suburban, 
 to provide that no advertisements shall be exhibited on 
 the exterior or along platforms, or in other places where 
 they are offensively visible from outside. 
 
 For the rest, Mr, Waterhouse, Mr. Richmond, and 
 Mr. Sumner have already suggested a via media. I beg, 
 with all the deference due to such immobile bodies as 
 Boards of Directors, to submit that a very trifling change 
 of system on their part would substantially mitigate the 
 sufferings of the sensitive passenger. It has been re- 
 marked by Mr. Herbert Spencer, as an illustration of the 
 survival of a traditional type, that our railway carriages 
 are still built on the model of the old stage coach. Just 
 in the same way, the stations are designed on the 
 principle that was very properly adopted before the Com- 
 panies got into the habit of earning side profits by convert- 
 ing the walls into permanent hoardings. The architect 
 prepares his plans just as his more fortunate prede- 
 cessors used to do, on the assumption that a building is 
 a building, and that its features ought to have a certain 
 propriety. So he contrives, according to the best 
 of his power, a due balance and variety of parts, and 
 succeeds in rearing a structure of brick and iron which 
 
86 
 
 is seldom without dignity, and often has an appropriate 
 degree of grace. As a conscientious artist he makes; 
 it is someone else's business to mar; but (faithful to an 
 obsolete ideal) he declines to allow for the approaching 
 doom. My proposition is that the Directors should 
 instruct their architects to recognize facts; to devise 
 station interiors, not with a view to their appearance on 
 paper, but with a view to their future use. It will be 
 humiliating, no doubt, at the first, to arrange wall 
 spaces, not according to the canons of abstiact har- 
 mony, but with strict relation to the intentions of the 
 advertising contractors. Yet the devout craftsman is 
 surely he who adapts his methods and his aims to the 
 conditions with which he has to make his account. So, 
 then, my Eirenicon amounts to this: that the manager 
 of the line shall tell the designer once for all how many 
 hundreds of square yards are to be dedicated to the 
 placards. The duty of the architect shall be to assign 
 for this purpose spaces, so adroitly conceived, that when 
 they are occupied, the general effect shall be as har- 
 monious and quiet as the nature of the case permits. 
 I see no reason why the introduction of colour, in con- 
 formity with structural symmetry and unity, should not be 
 rendered comparatively pleasing. At the worst it would 
 relieve us from the most serious part of the pain. The 
 difficulty of discerning the name of the station, which 
 distresses so many non-assthetic souls, would be at once 
 removed. It should be the business of the regulating 
 authority to define what proportion the area conceded to 
 advertisements should bear to the total dimensions of 
 the station, and any trespass beyond the " reserved 
 compartments " would be prohibited under penalties. 
 
 I have been taken to task for including in ihe list of 
 remediable ills the practice — much afiected by Govern- 
 ment Departments and Municipalities — ot painting 
 official posts and premises in irritating tints. 1 remain 
 obstinate in error. The reader must be lucky if he is 
 not painfully aware of some such combination as this : 
 
87 
 
 — A noble pile, in red brick and terra-cotta — the work 
 of some gifted architect. On the corner a tablet in blue 
 and white to tell the name of the street ; below the tablet 
 a gas lamp painted buff; a notice in another tint hang- 
 ing from the rod ; others inserted in the glass (colours 
 various). On one side of the gas lamp a vermilion 
 letter-pillar; on the other a realistic fire signal. Is it 
 quite a wild idea to believe that responsible authorities 
 may be led to perceive that considerations of " utility '' 
 do not in reason imply a stolid disregard for appear- 
 ances ? — that they may be persuaded io revert, for 
 example, to the old unaggressive plates, in black 
 and white, for the names of streets, or even to allow 
 the architects of corner houses to make these useful 
 details an integral part of the design. It is not neces- 
 sary that such indications should arrest the gaze : it 
 suffices if, when sought, they can be found. I need 
 hardly add that the familiar pillar posts in their red 
 livery are not in themselves open to reproach. 
 
 The proposal to put some distinct impost on affixed 
 advertisements — other than that which incidentally falls 
 on them as an element in the rateable value of the 
 premises to which they are attached — deserves detailed 
 examination. It must be recognized at the outset that 
 many notifications are of unquestionable public utility 
 — announcements, for instance, of entertainments and 
 auctions, and others relating to special contingencies of 
 trade. It would be unreasonable and impolitic to drive 
 these into the columns of the newspapers, however 
 palatable such a course might be to the proprietors of 
 journals. Any tax that would be worth levying would 
 thus become a " tax on necessaries " and an " impedi- 
 ment to business,^' and would fall under the censure of 
 the political economist. It is to some extent an answer 
 that the stamp duties already hamper conmiercial trans- 
 actions, but then they are highly productive. There 
 are no materials for forming an estimate of the fiscal 
 effect of the suggested tax. But it may be assumed 
 
88 
 
 that a rate which would not be very seriously deterrent 
 would bring in quite enough to entitle it to the respect- 
 ful consideration of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. To 
 the proprietors of patent medicines and other nostrums 
 advertising already forms the principal part of the 
 " cost of production."'^ The addition of the duty on 
 the posters would be a comparatively trifling addition to 
 their outlay ; and so (it may be argued) one of the most 
 objectionable forms of the evil would not be perceptibly 
 abated. But the effect would be very marked, I think, 
 on what may be described as the " marginal " puff" — the 
 poster or tablet, that is to say, which it is just worth 
 the while of the advertiser to put up. This is a large 
 and hateful class, including most of the sporadic bills 
 that distress the eye on palings, trees, and odd jMeces 
 of wall. It would thus appear that the Treasury would 
 have an adequate motive for action, and that disfigure- 
 ment would be materially diminished. It has been 
 objected by a very high authority on such matters that 
 if a payment of dues to the State or to the Local 
 Authority were added to the expenses of wall advertising 
 those interested would seek to recoup themselves by 
 reducing the standard of artistic excellence. With all 
 diffidence, I would urge that it is at least as likely that 
 the impost would operate in just the other direction. 
 Having to advertise less — to have fewer and smaller bills 
 — the speculators would naturally try to make them 
 more attractive in appearance. 
 
 Nor do I see very much prospect of harm in the 
 possibility that the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the 
 County Council (if the proceeds were devoted to local 
 purposes) might grow fond of this convenient source of 
 revenue and nurse the monster that it ought to starve. 
 There will, no doubt, be an inducement to keep the 
 impost at the level at which the total return will be 
 
 * The expression is not inaccurate. What they "produce" is the 
 impression that their stuff has marvellous therapeutic properties : what 
 they " trade on " is popular credulity. 
 
89 
 
 highest, and whatever the rate thus determined may 
 be, it must tend to limit the practice. There remains, 
 however, the risk that local representative bodies may 
 be tempted, for the sake of profit from the impost, to be 
 less careful in the exercise of their general power of 
 limiting the number and extent of hoardings and other 
 advertising stations. 
 
 The balance of the general argument would appear to 
 be in favour of levying a variable license charge for local 
 purposes on the licensed stations according to area and 
 position. But there is, to my mind, a serious objection 
 on tactical grounds to pressing the policy just now. 
 It would be a matter of baffling delicacy to define 
 categories of advertisements which should be declared — 
 as useful or necessary — exempt from taxation. Further, 
 unless announcements in the nature of advertisements 
 on business premises were brought within the scope of 
 the impost, the plague would only be driven from one 
 of its seats to break out where it is even more painful. 
 Yet if there be even, all round, undiscriminating treat- 
 ment, we shall have marshalled against us, not merely 
 the class whose license we desire to curb, but an 
 infinitely larger and more worthy class, with whom we 
 have no quarrel. It is superfluous to add that the 
 coyness of a Chancellor of the Exchequer about enter- 
 taining new proposals for making enemies has to be con- 
 sidered, especially when those who present them have to 
 own that they are not moved by zeal for the public purse. 
 
 Mr. John Leighton makes an excellent suggestion 
 which would go far to meet the difficulty. He proposes 
 a tax not on all exposed advertisements, but only those 
 above a certain size — treating duplicates as an excess 
 above the tax free dimensions. 
 
 Some cases which lie on the debatable borders of 
 the society's cares remain to be considered. There is 
 no form of " eye-catching" which causes so much pain 
 to gentle souls as the employment of sandwich men. 
 Many who have cultivated a good-humoured tolerance 
 
90 
 
 for the defacements of Nature or of the works of man 
 resent the indignity herein done to humanity itself. 
 These poor strollers represent, no doubt, the failures of 
 the industrial struggle. They are the weakly, perhaps 
 too often the worthless, members of the industrial 
 aggregate, and it is easy to anticipate the plea that will 
 be advanced by those who utilize their distress. It is a 
 choice for them, it will be argued, between earning; 
 a miserable, precarious pittance in this way or destitu- 
 tion pure and simple. " Let them promenade, lest 
 haply they come upon the rates." Anyone who knows 
 anything of the art of agitation will see that the poor 
 victims themselves would be marshalled to protest 
 against any interference with their melancholy calling. 
 It is a phase of sweating : and I own that, for myself, 
 though I see very plainly how the system of starvation 
 wages does perpetuate from generation to generation a 
 class of starvation-toilers, I have never been quite 
 satisfied with a blank policy of prohibition, which 
 leaves the fate of the excluded to the indefinite chance 
 of finding " something else to do." It is not enough — 
 to my understanding — to say that the State nuist pro- 
 vide for them, unless a way is shown by which the 
 State can do so without creating evils greater than that 
 which has to be redressed. 
 
 I do not, therefore, urge that the sentiment of com- 
 miseration which the aspcctof those poor fellows excites 
 can reasonably translate itself into a veto on their em- 
 plovment. On general grounds of public convenience 
 there is, however, abundant warrant for regulation. In 
 the city of London — though the Corporation cannot be 
 charged with any want of consideration for the poor or 
 any pedantic notions about taste — the board men are 
 not allowed to perambulate ; and there seems no 
 reason whv they should be permitted to add, as they 
 undoubtedly do,' to the congestion of the more crowded 
 thoroughfares, under the rule of the Vestries or County 
 Council. 
 
91 
 
 But whatever may be the decision as to the h'mitation 
 of the practice in respect of place, there is crying need 
 of regulation as regards mode. In the preceding pages 
 no particular stress has been laid on the character of 
 the designs in posters. We have been concerned rather 
 with the general effect and the circumstances under 
 which they amount to an affront. But when the things 
 are brought under the very nose of the pedestrian, and 
 reiterated in endlessly recurring files, the question of 
 taste and morality becomes pressing; and no one will 
 be disposed to deny that the tendency is from bad to 
 worse. A case could be made out for interference on 
 grounds of public health; for some of the placards 
 which disgust the robust are admirably calculated to 
 give a nervous shock to the delicate. If we cannot 
 quite reform the boards, we are bound to provide 
 against the systematic degradation of those who bear 
 them. It is a cruel mockery to trick these decrepit 
 veterans in the guise of warriors, to send them wearily 
 picking their way through the rain and slush in the 
 draggled finery of Eastern potentates. Well did the 
 Roman poet remark that "the most grievous thing in 
 poverty is this : that it makes a man a laughing stock." 
 But at least there need be no artificial heightening of 
 the humiliation. " Some man or other,'^ says Bottom 
 in the Midsvmvier Night's Dream, " must present wall; 
 and let him have some plaster or some loam or some 
 rough cast about him to signify wall." "'j^he wall, 
 methinks," remarks Theseus, later on, " being sensible, 
 should curse again." The Bottoms of our London 
 whole year's nightmare have substituted city mud for 
 honest "loam," and since poor Wall dare not " curse 
 again," the spectators of the tragic farce must see that 
 Right is done. 
 
 Homage must here be paid to an objection which is 
 made, with unfailing regularity, to every proposal that 
 aims at correcting an abuse. " A good many men," it 
 is said, " get their living by making or fixing the things 
 
92 
 
 you dislike. You must not, therefore, interfere,'^for 
 that would deprive them of employment.'' 
 
 So far as this raises the question of temporary dis- 
 location of labour, the consideration is one to which 
 most of us allow some weight. It would induce us 
 (supposing there were any risk of a sudden and serious 
 change of practice) to take steps to make the transition 
 gradual. But we cannot flatter ourselves that our pro- 
 test will have such early and widespread effect as to 
 lead to distress in the bill-sticking fraternity. Even if 
 we accomplish the utmost measure of our hopes, we 
 shall leave these practitioners a good deal to do. The 
 overthrow of the boards in fields and the banishment 
 of the enamelled plates will not affect the fortunes of 
 the artists who erected them. No doubt there will be 
 less demand for their services in this special line after- 
 wards. But in the two industries concerned the range 
 of really useful and honourable employment is so wide 
 that no workman will suffer inconvenience. They will 
 find a more praiseworthy outlet for their honest 
 energies. 
 
 It is, therefore, hardly necessary for my immediate 
 purpose to show that unless the forms of advertising 
 we are speaking of add to the general well-being, they 
 cannot claim indulgence on the mere ground that they 
 ^' give employment." Certain groups of capitalists and 
 workmen are engaged in making boots and shoes. 
 These boots and shoes, when worn, add to the comfort 
 and efficiency of others, and therefore when the mem- 
 bers of the shoe-making trade get their share of the 
 food, clothes, houses, books, and so forth, produced by 
 other groups, it is a case of fair exchange by which 
 everyone benefts. But supposing the workmen made 
 shoes so bad that, instead of giving comfort, they 
 caused acute pain, it would be no justification of their 
 trade that it gave them employment. So to the extent 
 to which bill-stickers and their masters vex us without 
 benefiting us they are as useless as beggars, and, in- 
 
93 
 
 deed — save as regards the honesty of their intention — 
 are as harmful as thieves. Labourers live on things 
 produced by labour, and when they return nothing 
 useful to the common stock they are parasites. 
 
 The adornments of public-houses have to be con- 
 sidered. If any trade can claim a prescriptive right to 
 assert itself in colour, it is that of the licensed 
 victualler. When the custom of inn signs grew up it 
 was, I suppose, as a part of the general practice in all 
 callings. But whereas in most others it has died out, 
 it not only survives in that of the publican, but assumes 
 every day more monstrous proportions. Not even the 
 rigid teetotaler has any quarrel — as far as aspect goes — 
 with the sign in the old-fashioned sense. It is one of 
 the most picturesque features in country towns, and 
 along the old coach roads. The pity is that the charm 
 of the quaint iron work and of the gay device is 
 destroyed by the glaring horrors on the gable end or 
 on the dead walls hard by. But the cases are rare in 
 which an inn, however old, is allowed to remain without 
 large additions to its peculiar blazonry. The brewers, 
 we may suspect, are the culprits. There seems to be a 
 keen competition between the members of this opulent 
 brotherhood as to which shall render itself most un- 
 pleasant to the possessor of a quiet eye. I quite admit 
 that in this case the pain is much lessened by a tacit 
 recognition in the mind of the observer that the thing 
 is usual; that it is part of established practice; that 
 it is done, if we may say so, on fixed principles, 
 and with a sort of conscientious thoroughness. 
 The gaudy proclamation of a starch or a wash- 
 ing blue which assails us from between the draw- 
 ing-room windows of the local oilman, vexes us 
 as an impatient, irregular, haphazard excrescence on 
 the modest brickwork. But the highly varnished in- 
 scription, brilliant wiih gold and rainbow hues, which 
 forms in itself an upper story for the neighbouring 
 public-houses, and bears (as hundreds of others do in 
 
94 
 
 the surrounding district) the legend " So and So's 
 Entire," is somehow accepted as of the essence of the 
 establishment of which, in truth, it forms so large a 
 part. The psychologists if appealed to could render no 
 doubt a satisfactory explanation of what on the surface 
 appears to be a flagrant want of equity in our emotional 
 judgments, but it is, I think, a fact that the boards on the 
 orthodox brewer's public-house do not distress us as 
 much as they ought. As a confirmed opportunist I think 
 that this is fortunate, for beer, if not the most respect- 
 able, is one of the most powerful of interests, and is 
 certainly not least formidable when it is resisting some- 
 thing that it would be its own interest to accept. If 
 the brewers and the publicans were wise they would 
 make haste to make licensed premises less conspicuous. 
 But in their short-sighted zeal to snatch custom from 
 each other by aiming at notoriety they bring their 
 common enterprise into superfluous discredit. This is 
 not the place to hint any opinion as to the evil or the 
 good of alcohol, as to the expediency or possibility of 
 diminishing drinking by prohibition or local control. But 
 assuming that the moral repugnance with which many 
 men and women regard the trafiic is not wholly justified 
 by the realities of the matter, the trade, I think, has 
 mainly itself to blame for the exaggerated dislike to it. 
 Many a license has been opposed and refused, not so 
 much because additional facilities were deemed likely 
 to increase drunkenness, but because the appearance of 
 another aggressive exterior was considered likely to 
 lower the social tone of the locality. Therefore, while I 
 cannot expect that local bodies will subject licensed 
 premises to quite the same regulations in respect of 
 "notices visible from the thoroughfare" as ordinary 
 callings, I am not without hope that those directly 
 interested will see the need of discreet moderation. If 
 brewers are strong so are total ai)Stainers. 
 
 " Advertisements in periodicals." "Advertisements 
 delivered by hand." " Advertisements despatched by 
 
96 
 
 half-penny post." '' Advertisements stuck between 
 the pages, or bound in the substance, or printed on the 
 covers of books." " Advertisements glued furtively on 
 portmanteaus." " Advertisements on furniture.'^ ''Ad- 
 vertisements as wall decorations of restaurants." " The 
 corpus of advertising literature that forms the sole 
 library of many hotels of the first rank." These, as 
 the Committee of the National Society have saddest 
 reason to know, are causes of perpetual annoyance and 
 lively indignation to many who are not easily roused 
 to wrath. The provocation is no doubt extreme, and 
 growing. But it does not appear that organized eflfort 
 is the most appropriate way of securing relief. The 
 Society stands upon the principle that the protection 
 of the public Sight is a public duty and a public interest. 
 To give efTect to that principle is, we hold, an under- 
 taking within the scope of wt-ll-directed energy; but 
 we do not disguise from ourselves the truth that it 
 will tax our resources to the utmost. We dare not 
 aim at more. We cannot presume to save individuals 
 from annoyance in the sphere of private life. But in 
 most cases the remedy lies in the hands of those who 
 are aggrieved. It demands no extraordinary effort to 
 consign circulars by the sheaf to the waste-paper 
 basket. If the readers of illustrated papers who are 
 annoyed at finding the trade puffs inextricably inter- 
 woven with the matter which they care to look at and 
 to preserve for binding, would simply write to the 
 publisher to intimate that sooner than have the paper 
 with offensive intrusions, they will dispense with it 
 altogether, the publisher (or his advisers) will 
 become aware that there is a loss as well as a 
 profit side to the advertisement account. From all 
 I have heard, I venture to believe that even now it 
 would be commercially remunerative in some depart- 
 ments of serial literature to make the sensibilities of the 
 readers, and not the reports of the advertisement can- 
 vasser, the criterion of expediency. In the long run 
 
96 
 
 the tradesmen who seek the custom of the cultured 
 classes will be only too pleased to address their eyes in 
 the form that least affronts. It is not the newspapers that 
 print the flash announcements that obtain the highest 
 terms for their advertising space. Conductors will go 
 as far in the direction of vulgarity as they can without 
 repelling absolutely the better order of readers. But 
 they will not go farther, and, therefore, I repeat, taste 
 and culture, if they choose to assert themselves, can 
 determine the character of the advertising columns in 
 publications that appeal to taste and culture for 
 patronage. 
 
 We have been urged to bring advertising noises, and 
 noises generallv, whether purporting to be music or not, 
 within our scheme. Most of those who feel the 
 unpleasantness that is visible feel also the unpleasant- 
 ness that is audible. But, for reasons already set forth, 
 it cannot be deemed safe to comjilicate our task. The 
 law, it is some comfort to know, has already given 
 aggrieved residents a right to secure, at any rate, a 
 partial respite in each separate case of assault on his 
 nerves. An understanding among a sufficient number 
 of householders in any given neighbourhood to exercise 
 the right, regularly and remorselessly, would secure for 
 the district such unpopularity with organ grinders, 
 German bands, and singing beggars, that as a fraternity 
 they would soon learn to shun the inhospitable region. 
 The nuisance of steam whistles would appear to be an 
 infliction serious enough to justify a separate Act of 
 Parliament. Meanwhile everything gained for the com- 
 fort of the suffering eye will help to smooth the way 
 of the champions of the tortured ear. 
 
 We must not be too severely blamed for calling our 
 association " The National Society for Checking the 
 Abuses of Public Advertising." The title is long and 
 cumbrous, and does not lend itself to abbreviation. But 
 it has the merit of detailing fairly well our principal 
 purposes. We object to advertisements so far as they 
 
97 
 
 are disfiguring, and we object to them because they 
 disfigure. Zeal against disfigurement implies, of course, 
 a love of harmony, of order, of grace, and, in fact, as 
 has been seen, it is part of the acknowledged aim of the 
 society to promote, as well as to protect, picturesqueness. 
 But many of us, perhaps most of us, regard the repression 
 of the particular evil of jarring advertisements as our 
 most hopeful sphere. In any case, the wider mission 
 would be entrusted in detail to local associations. 
 The practical ideal is not to convert this world of 
 Britain in all its parts into a scene of beauty — for that 
 we know may not be — but to conserve, as far as 
 possible, what is fair, and where grace is out of the 
 question, to exclude wanton and unnecessary uusightli- 
 ness. The condition contemplated in the latter case 
 is something midway between the pleasing and the 
 repulsive, a neutral state of restfulness, neither loveli- 
 ness nor deformity. Unfortunately the English 
 language has no word to express this negative good. 
 The Latin word concinnitas conveys, I believe, the 
 ilesired sense, but we were afraid of being thought 
 pedantic by the unlearned and inaccurate by the 
 scholars. "Comeliness" was tentatively submitted 
 (" The Society for the promotion of comeliness in public 
 places"), but there were smiles, and no more was heard 
 of the phrase. "Decency" and "propriety" are 
 etymologically all we could have desired, but the writers 
 on ethics have misappropriated them to their own pur- 
 poses, and they are no longer available for common use. 
 Had we called ourselves the Guild of Protectors of the 
 Public Eye the College of Surgeons would have obtained 
 an injunction. We cast about (inspired by the example 
 of the Kyrle Society) for some eponymous hero, 
 someone who had distinguished himself in past times 
 by his zeal against defacements. But historical records 
 disclosed (as might have been surmised) that till the 
 reign of Queen Victoria there never was a crisis that 
 called for such a deliverer. " The Vaishnava sect" would 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 have done if the public could have been expected to 
 know that of the three members of the Hindu triad 
 Vishnu was " 1 he Preserver," as opposed to Siva, the 
 destroyer. But the public is not familiar with Hindu 
 mythology, and, besides, it would have been unwise to 
 incur the suspicion of being theosophists. So we 
 were reduced to the name we bear, and which we fear 
 we must continue to bear. But if anyone not being 
 an impenitent advertising contractor can suggest a 
 better the society will gratefully adopt it, and elect the 
 ingenious proposer a member on the spot. 
 
 The infelicity of our title has not, at any rate, 
 marred our fortunes. The movement is still in its 
 beginnings, but the list of members is conclusive as to 
 the wide" diffusion of the feeling represented by the 
 society. The Cabinet and the County Council, the 
 Judicial bench, the Universities and Public Schools, 
 Science, speculative and applied, the College of Surgeons 
 and the Royal Academy, Literature in all its branches, the 
 great Public Departments, County Society and com- 
 mercial enterprise contribute representatives whom the 
 most diffident Court chamberlain must describe as 
 eminent in their several walks. The morning papers 
 have not overwhelmed us with attention, but the few 
 that have spoken and the evening papers have shown 
 much goodwill towards our aims, and subject to some 
 reservations, thorough approval of our methods. Con- 
 servative criticism has been as kind as Liberal or Radical, 
 and we have reason to know that some who are very 
 closely identified with what is, not very aptly, I think, 
 called the Democratic movement, are most heartily on 
 our side. 
 
 In the minds of those who have stirred in this 
 matter there has indeed been one misgiving. The 
 wilderness of ''movements" is hardly less appalling 
 than the array of notices in a station ot the Under- 
 ground Railway. No humane man would lightly 
 add another to the mass. Some will tell us, too, that 
 
99 
 
 the time is not propitious, that now, when labour is 
 waking to a fresh sense of its powers and its wants, 
 when society is intent upon the problem how best the 
 means of living can be secured to all its members, it is 
 vain to plead for the mere comfort of the eye. " Give 
 us bread," cry the unemployed ; " we are too hungry 
 to care whether the outward aspect of this earth, which 
 only gives us room to struggle, be foul or fair." None 
 of us, I think, are indifferent to these great issues of 
 social organization, and some of us take an active part, 
 on one side or the other, in searching for the right 
 solution. But we say that this is a part, and an essential 
 part of the work that has to be done. While Socialists 
 and Individualists, Radicals and Conservatives, New 
 Unionists and Old are settling among themselves 
 the better way of giving the worker a larger share of the 
 material comforts of existence and ampler opportunities 
 of culture, our part is to keep his world one in which 
 rational happiness is possible, and in which taste shall 
 be a blessing and not a curse. The rich man 
 does not renounce all prospect of aesthetic enjoy- 
 ment when he resigns the streets and fields to 
 rampant Philistinism. He has his home and his 
 pictures, his yearly holiday in tracts which as yet the 
 advertising contractor has not annexed. When he 
 closes his garden gate he can breathe freely. But the 
 poor man's only travel is the daily journey from home 
 to work and from work to home, relieved now and then 
 with a cheap excursion. He is always in presence of 
 the pest which makes his course its pecuHar prey. In 
 the omnibus, in the tramway, in the compartment of the 
 railway carriage — wherever he goes, Hampstead, Boxhill, 
 Epping Forest — it dogs his steps. Taste, let us remem- 
 ber, grows with wha^ it feeds on. If you want to 
 elevate the people you must chasten their surroundings. 
 If you wish to degrade them, leave the land still at the 
 mercy of the defacer. But spare us at least the sage 
 remark that it is " no use to do anything," that " the 
 
100 
 
 masses are irredeemably vulgar in their likings." We 
 who are joining together now for strenuous effort may 
 fall far short of the attainment of our end. But we shall 
 free ourselves from the reproach of having, by selfish 
 apathy or spiritless despair, consented to the wrong. 
 We shall have done something in our day and genera- 
 tion to make the world a better place for those who 
 live in it. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
A. 
 
 " The National Society for Checking the Abuses of 
 Public Advertising" has been formed with the pur- 
 pose : 
 
 (i) Of checking the abuse of the practice of 
 spectacular advertising. 
 
 (2) Of protecting and promoting the picturesque 
 simplicity of rural and river scenes, and the dignity 
 and propriety of our large towns. 
 
 All persons who are in general sympathy with the 
 objects and methods are eligible as members ; but no 
 member is personally committed to each and every 
 feature of the Society's scheme. 
 
 The services of all the officers are to be honorary. 
 
 The annual subscription is to be half-a-crovvn per 
 annum. 
 
 The measures contemplated — subject always to the 
 result of closer examination and more mature con- 
 sideration — include : 
 
 I. Such an amendment of the existing law as would 
 confer on local representative bodies effective control 
 over all forms of painted or printed announcements 
 visible from the thoroughfares or public places, and 
 would direct them to frame reasonable regulations; 
 the regulations framed in pursuance of these powers 
 not being necessarily uniform over the whole area, 
 but varying according to the special character of 
 distinct localities. In case of breach of the regula- 
 tions relief to be obtainable on complaint of ag- 
 
104 
 
 grieved persons. It is impossible to lay down 
 beforehand any hard-and-fast rule as to the degree 
 of prohibition. There is no intention of abolishing 
 the use of temporary hoardings as advertising stations. 
 But, no doubt, it would be easy in many localities 
 to secure a veto on sky signs, advertisements on 
 chimneys and towers and parapets, hoardings and 
 boards in fields, straggling posters and tablets on 
 walls, gigantic hoardings, the more glaring deface- 
 ments on town sites of particular historical or archi- 
 tectural interest, or at picturesque rural spots ; the 
 sort of intrusions, in short, which even the Laodicean 
 judgment pronounces offensive. The "invasion of 
 the country " by the defacer is felt by nearly everyone 
 to be an outrage, and to repel it would involve the 
 minimum of trouble and afford the maximum of relief. 
 
 II. The imposition of a duty or special rate on all 
 exposed advertisements as a form of local or imperial 
 revenue. 
 
 III. The insertion in all Bills giving legislative 
 authority for the acquisition of land or construction of 
 works, of provisions either prohibiting or subjecting 
 to appropriate regulation (as the case may require) the 
 use of any portion of the land or fabrics for advertis- 
 ing purposes. 
 
 IV. The recognition by public departments and 
 municipal authorities that in the arrangement of official 
 premises and appliances — for example, in the placing 
 of signs and notices — reasonable regard should be paid 
 to the public sense of sight. In other words, that 
 appearance should be considered in connection with 
 convenience. 
 
 V. A common understanding that the members will 
 each at his own discretion abstain (as far as may be) 
 from using commodities which he personally feels are 
 advertised in an offensive way, or patronizing estab- 
 lishments which he regards as exceptionally un- 
 scrupulous in advertising display. The Society dis- 
 
105 
 
 countenances any action beyond the strict intention 
 of this paragraph. 
 
 As to organization it is proposed to have — 
 A Central Society in London, which shall 
 promote the necessary legislalion ; 
 
 promote the formation and co-ordinate the efforts of a 
 network of local associations, each working in detail 
 within a defined and manageable sphere ; 
 contribute as far as a central organization can to the 
 formation of a healthy public sentiment on the sub- 
 ject by the publication of pamphlets and leaflets, by 
 representations to public bodies, by arranging con- 
 ferences and supplying lecturers ; 
 undertake when deemed advisable specific efforts at 
 
 repression or prevention ; 
 assist with advice and with the resources of a central 
 representative organization those locally concerned. 
 The local associations would exert themselves by the 
 use of social influence and individual opportunities to 
 exclude disfigurements, and would by the exertion of 
 the power of the individual members as ratepayers or 
 as municipal councillors, secure the effective local ap- 
 plication of the powers conferred by the amended law. 
 The members would seek to propagate a taste for 
 comeliness, and to convince their less critical neigh- 
 bours that it is really worth while to have sobriety and 
 order in the aspect of a place. The associations would 
 act in concert with all other organizations having for 
 their end the preservation of town and country from 
 wanton and unnecessary blemish, and for enlarging the 
 range of popular enjoyment of the pleasing and the 
 picturesque."^ 
 
 B. 
 
 The following circular may serve as an illustration 
 of what may be done towards the formation of a Local 
 Association for the Protection of the Picturesque : — 
 
 * Fuller particulars may be obtained by written application to the 
 Honorary Secretaries at 7, Great College Street, Westminster, S.W. 
 
106 
 
 It is proposed to form an Association for the district of 
 . . . with the object of preserving the picturesque features 
 of the neighbourhood, as far as possible, from destruction or 
 impairment, and generally of promoting grace and dignity 
 in the aspect of the place. 
 
 The Association would act in concert with the National 
 Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising. 
 Happily, at present its functions in this respect would, save in 
 one or two instances, be rather preventive than remedial. 
 
 It would seek to supplement the labours of the Common 
 Conservators, and of the Local Board, in the numerous cases 
 •where official management necessarily falls short of an ideal 
 standard of minute care for the amenities ; but it would aim 
 at maintaining the most cordial relations with both these 
 bodies, and would, it is hoped, include most of the members 
 among its own supporters. 
 
 It would, as a voluntary agency, undertake functions to 
 which the representative bodies could not usefully address 
 themselves, and on matters falling properly within the sphere 
 of corporate effort, would assist wiih suggestions. 
 
 It would not make any pretension to being a tribunal of 
 taste ; but would seek to secure effect for views regarding 
 modest improvements or precautions, about which there is 
 practically a consensus of opinion. 
 
 A few examples of matters with which the Association might 
 be invited to occupy itself at once may make the purpose in- 
 telligible — {a) The rescue of the Windmill from its present 
 state of decrepitude and mutilation. (<^) The diffusion of torn 
 newspapers, old boots, empty cans, and other remains over 
 the Common is felt to detract materially from the primitive 
 charms of the expanse. It would be possible to combine 
 the provision of employment for some of the aged poor, 
 with effectual deliverance from this jarring element, (r) The 
 upper end of the Lake is felt by many to be somewhat 
 harsh and ungracious. A little judicious planting would, in 
 a few years, restore the picturesque balance, (rt') There are 
 likely to be very soon extensive building operations on the 
 . . . Estates. It is thought that suggestions from those 
 living in the neighbourhood, and therefore well acquainted 
 with the opportunities for picturesque effect, would be cour- 
 teously received by those responsible for the plans, and that 
 
107 
 
 in this way some addition to public enjoyment of scenery 
 may be combined with a distinct advantage to those interested 
 in the property. Similarly, with respect to the contemplated 
 widening of the village end of . . . Road, the Association 
 might, without being too intrusive, have some suggestions to 
 make. 
 
 The Association would not be precluded from considering 
 any proposals that purported to be for the improvement of 
 the town or Common, or for reconciling the fullest enjoyment 
 of the Common as a pleasure resort, with respect for its 
 natural beauties and unspoilt simplicity. 
 
 It might, in brief, be a permanent clearing house for many 
 excellent schemes of a kind which from time to time are 
 broached, but generally end in nothing for want of some 
 steady organization, enjoying and deserving the confidence 
 of the residents. 
 
 Nor is there any reason why, when the Association is 
 formed, it should not have separate committees for doing the 
 work of such Societies as the Kyrle, the Selborne, the Wild 
 Birds' Protection Society. It would not regard as visionary 
 the idea that people generally might be encouraged to prefer 
 what is beautiful or orderly to unsighiliness, and to feel an 
 affectionate pride in the place that is their home. To this 
 end it would use the time-honoured method of leaflets, lec- 
 tures, and exhibitions. An effort to get together a loan col- 
 lection of pictures illustrating the past and present of . . . 
 would, it is thought, be a welcome beginning. 
 
 The subscription would be balf-a-crown a year. Special 
 subscriptions would be invited for special objects from those 
 particularly interested. 
 
 Residents desiring to join will kindly communicate with 
 any of the undersigned. 
 
 If, on the one hand, we do not presume to lay down 
 any rigid and unvarying standard of municipal regula- 
 tion, we must not, on the other, incur the suspicion of 
 being unable to give any concrete expression to our 
 views. 1 venture, therefore, to suggest tentatively the 
 following scheme of bye-laws, not as a precise model 
 
108 
 
 of what ought to be done, but as an example of the 
 maximum degree of restraint that could be proposed in 
 ordinary cases with fair prospect of acceptance. 
 
 For Country Districts {ijichidivg the Railway Zone). 
 
 Licenses to be granted for the exhibition of advertis- 
 ing announcements on specified surfaces of walls or 
 hoardings. 
 
 Only licensed persons should be permitted to affix 
 such announcements, and it should be a condition of 
 the license that the holders should affix them with 
 strict regard to compactness and regularity of general 
 forms. Painted boards, enamelled plates, paper posters, 
 and other distinct categories to be separately dis])layed. 
 
 It would be a condition of the license that no in- 
 decent or repulsive advertisements should be affixed. 
 Penalties for breach to be recoverable on complaint of 
 any aggrieved person — the question of indecency or re- 
 pulsiveness to be decided, as a question of fact, by the 
 magistrate or jury. 
 
 No projections beyond the general outline to be 
 allowed. 
 
 No authorized station to exceed, say, 15ft. in height 
 from the ground. 
 
 The positions to be sanctioned with careful regard to 
 the surroundings, the determining principle being to 
 allow easy access within the radius of legibility, and yet 
 to prevent the announcements from being conspicuous 
 at distances from which the oidinary matter of bills 
 cannot be read, and to confine them to situations where 
 the effect is least disfiguring. 
 
 Assuming that the Local Authority levies an impost, 
 either on each station (according to the sanctioned 
 superficies) or the separate bills, etc. (according to size), 
 the rate of impost to be fixed from time to time with a 
 view to discouraging excessive display. 
 
 Due notice of the intention of the Local Authority 
 to sanction any new station to be given before the 
 
109 
 
 sanction is to have effect, in order to give those locally 
 interested an opportunity of making representations 
 on the subject. 
 
 No advertising announcement visible from public 
 thoroughfares (including railway lines) to be allowed in 
 places other than the authorized stations. From this 
 would be excepted announcements on premises relating 
 strictly to the general business carried on therein, or the 
 purposes for which the premises are used. But even as 
 to these, the regulation as to "■ conspicuousness " and 
 disfiguring effect to apply, due regard being paid to 
 present interests. 
 
 For Towns. 
 
 All thoroughfares or other " areas of vision " to be 
 grouped in classes. For the first class the rule would 
 be prohibition of all external announcements. (I am 
 not drafting formal rules, and, therefore, need not 
 mention such obvious exceptions as brass door plates 
 and cognate trifles.) The other classes would follow 
 in descending scale, according to the diminishing 
 stringency of the rules deemed applicable, the distin- 
 guishing factors being: the height above the ground at 
 which advertisements would be allowed, the size of 
 the letters, the size of the announcement as a whole, 
 its position on the fabric, the material and colour to be 
 employed. Advertising announcements would mean, 
 of course, any painted or inscribed description intended 
 to attract notice. It will be seen that this method of 
 classification would cover the cases of sky signs, of 
 letters on roofs, or end walls. Advertising emblems 
 would come within the scope of the regulations. 
 
 As to hoardings and advertising stations generally, 
 the system proposed for the country would, mutatis 
 midandis, apply. But as the temporary exigencies of 
 building would provide in most places all the accommo- 
 dation that could reasonably be required, permanent 
 stations would as a rule be prohibited. 
 
110 
 
 The duty of classifying areas would devolve on a 
 Committee of the Local Authority, either constituted 
 ad hoc or dealing with kindred branches of control. 
 There appears no necessity for a precise system of appeal, 
 but say three months' notice should be given before 
 the decision of the Committee should come into force, 
 and within that period any person interested (not resi- 
 dent ratepayers niereK) might make representations to 
 the ConuTiittee, uhich would naturally desire to be 
 guided by local feeling. The Committee would at all 
 times be willing to revise the classification in the light 
 of fuller information. 
 
 Although the "areas" constituted would commonly be 
 streets or sections of streets, the range of sight would 
 be the determining principle. Thus the rule in its 
 application to quays, squares, and parks would govern 
 all structures which iorm conspicuous features in the 
 prospect, the more stringent rule prevailing over the 
 less stringent. For example, the regulations for the 
 towing-path from Putney to Barnes would prohibit 
 offensive displays on the Middlesex side; the right of 
 Fulham Church and of l^itney Bridge to be pictui-esque 
 would be vindicated. The overlapping of jurisdictions 
 ought not in practice to l)e a difficutly. 
 
 It will not be denied, I think, that the plan of con- 
 trol here roughly sketched could be embodied in precise 
 and definite regulations ; that in their application they 
 would involve no considerations more subtle or dis- 
 putable than a measuring tape would at once decide, 
 and that in their interference with the discretion of 
 mdividual owners they are not nearly as vexatious as 
 many bye-laws now in force relating to sanitation and 
 building, while the object aimed at would be on the 
 surface much more obviously and immediately beneficial 
 to the localities affected. Every paragraph of these 
 proposals is, I am well aware, open to grave objection. 
 I have not attempted to insert all the necessary 
 provisos or limitations or aimed at accuracy of defini- 
 
: 111 
 
 tion. The question I submit is not whether I have 
 been verbally exact, but whether the scheme, roughly 
 indicated, is susceptible of being thrown into working 
 shape. 
 
 Let me add that, such as it is, it must be read in the 
 light of the general cousiderations set forth in the body 
 of this book. An indolent critic may, possibly, take 
 hold of the suggestion that, in towns, areas should be 
 classified, "the determining factors being — the height 
 above the ground at which advertising announcements 
 would be allowed ; the size of the letters ; the size of 
 the announcement as a whole ; the material and colour 
 to be employed." Armed with this excerpt he would 
 deliver judgment in some such strain as this: — "We 
 quite admit that many of the things we have to see in 
 the streets go beyond the line of the permissible. But 
 it will never do to say that Town Councillors are to 
 dictate to every shopkeeper the mode in which he is to 
 attract custom. 'Colour' and 'material,' indeed! 
 No, no. English common-sense will never stand such 
 a crude absurdity." 
 
 The answer to the indolent critic, of course, is that 
 if you want to have a flexible system you must provide 
 for extreme cases. In London the Chief Commis- 
 sioner of Police has power to regulate traffic ; he can 
 (and often does) direct that between certain hours 
 certain thoroughfares shall be closed to vehicles 
 or pedestrians. What would be thought of the 
 common sense of the indolent critic if he declaimed 
 against the preposterous notion of lodging such 
 arbitrary authority in the hands of a non-elective official ? 
 Would he consider it eflective sarcasm to exclaim, 
 " What? Permit a glorified constable to prescribe the 
 routes by which a citizen is to get to his office or his 
 house. Preposterous 1 " 
 
 I ask only that the function of control I suggest shall 
 be examined in the same spirit of reasonableness as those 
 functions of control which already exist. There is not? 
 
112 
 
 bye-law or set of regulations on anv subject under the 
 sun which if perversely interpreted might not be made to 
 appear a monument of complicated meddlesomeness. 
 A candid inquirer will take into account the condi- 
 tions under which they are to be applied. Local bodies 
 will, for our purpose as for others, be delegates of the 
 community, and will seek to conform to the prevailing 
 wish. They are more likely to under-regulate than to 
 over-regulate. The rule of absolute prohibition would 
 be a counsel of perfection, though I do not suppose 
 there would be much uproar if it were applied to Bel- 
 grave Square, or to some less august areas in many of the 
 semi-rural suburbs. Probably a very large part of every 
 parish would come under the category at the other end 
 of the scale, that, to wit, in which there is no constraint 
 at all. As regards the intermediate classes, the regulating 
 authority would rather wait for the expressed desires of 
 those locally interested and respond to their wishes than 
 force upon them a particular regime. But it must have 
 a wide discretional power if it is to give appropriate 
 relief where relief is sincerely wished for. The stipula- 
 tion as to "colour" and " material " is made with a 
 view to conjpromise, not with a view to rigid ordinance. 
 There may, for instance, be cases where the use of open 
 letters of gilt metal would serve the purpose of the 
 shopkeeper and be less distressing to his fastidious 
 neighbours than gaudily painted boards. It would not 
 mitigate my own pangs, I confess; but from local 
 observations, especially in Scotland, I am led to think 
 that some conflicts of tastes have been settled on this 
 basis. 
 
 Speaking generally, the principle contended for is 
 that areas which object to advertising disfigurements 
 ^hall have the means of procuring their exclusion, to 
 the extent of the objection. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 ') 
 

 
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