I am not sure that the
chimney-pot with the pure light upon it was not more beautiful than a
whole black Greek or a whole black Gothic building in the adulterated
light of a customary London day. Nor is the pleasure that many writers,
and a certain number of painters, tell us they owe to such adulteration
anything other than a sign of derogation--in a word, a pleasure in the
secondary thing.
Are we the better artists for our preference of the waiting-woman? It is
a strange claim. The search for the beauty of the less-beautiful is a
modern enterprise, ingenious in its minor pranks, insolent in its
greater. And its chief ignobility is the love of marred, defiled,
disordered, dulled, and imperfect skies, the skies of cities.
Some will tell us that the unveiled light is too clear or sharp for art.
So much the worse for art; but even on that plea the limitations of art
are better respected by natural mist, cloudy gloom of natural rain,
natural twilight before night, or natural twilight--Corot's--before day,
than by the artificial dimness of our unlovely towns. Those, too, who
praise the "mystery" of smoke are praising rather a mystification than a
mystery; and must be unaware of the profounder mysteries of light. Light
is all mystery when you face the sun, and every particle of the
innumerable atmosphere carries its infinitesimal shadow.
Moreover, it is only in some parts of the world that we should ask for
even natural veils.
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