THE FUTURE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES
SIR,—Mrs. Croome takes a romantic view of " the best that civilisation can give." Her allusions to my article on the middle classes remind me of the words of a certain successful novelist and playwright who had been rich before he was successful. " Why," he said, " cannot a poet who really cares for his art be content to live with his wife and family in the country on £250 a year? He has the satisfaction of his art." The conversation had been about Edward Thomas. The fact about Edward Thomas is that in the effort to make a little more than the prescribed £250 he wore out his brains and produced little that was worthy of him until the last year or two of his life, when he enjoyed some leisure. Gissing had what Mrs. Croome calls the " alert and appreciative mind, the gifts of kindliness and wit . . . the delight of con- versation and correspondence "—the " best that civilisation can give "—and with this, thanks to his persistence and rare genius, he produced memorable writings, but soured and in part unbalanced, owing to the embittering experience of poverty. It is nice to believe that spiritual values have no dependence on cash conditions, but I do not think the history of civilisation supports so pleasing a view. It is doubtful if the Italian Renaissance would have been what it was had not handsome cash payments been made available for artists. Today the existence of a considerable public which will buy books and pictures, pay for tickets at theatres, listen to lectures, and go to universities, is the condition of the existence of authors, artists, actors, and dons ; and this con- siderable public is supplied by the middle classes, who do not all spend their slender surplus earnings on golf, bridge and roadhouses, any more than all those who are still poorer spend theirs at the public house or the dog races.—Yours, &c., R. A. Scour-JAmEs.
Previous page
