THE MODERN POINT OF VIEW [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] Sut,—I am glad to see that one of your readers who signs himself " Twentieth Century," not only lives in this century but is prepared to throw himself into the spirit of his age. The movement to " save England " from the " abominations " of modern invention is a singularly vicious form of cowardice and dilettantism. Recently reproduced in The Evening Standard was a photograph of what purported to be a clever attempt to mitigate the awfulness of a petrol-filling station. The cleverness consisted in crowning each pump with a little thatched roof. The conversion of a pump into a piece of rustic furniture is nothing but a poor-spirited evasion of the ieal meaning of things. Some people seem to think that a carpenter would best minister to the Cause of Beauty by tying a piece of pink ribbon round his hammer.
An adequate answer to this sort of spiritual frivolity was long ago supplied by Blake : Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. Certainly an unfamiliar object in an old and loved landscape may give us a shock that is not altogether pleasant. But the situation must be faced squarely ; we must teach ourselves not to le ashamed of the things we really need. To try to make a new and useful thing look like a piece of old-world bric-a-brac is just a nasty torm of shirking.—I am, Sir, &c., GEOFFREY SAINSBURY,.
24 Peel Street, W 8. -
Previous page
