POPULAR AND UNPOPULAR ART
393
when the 1914 War broke up American Victorian and aroused,
in
some not quite understandable fashion, the middle class en–
thusiasm for the American antique. The folk tradition, as a
result, has become thoroughly bourgeoizi:fied. At present there
is no way for the artist to get at it, for it
ha~
been dragged into
a region where nothing living or nutritious for his purposes
exists. It can be looked at and listened to, admired and imi–
tated; but it cannot at .the present time be called upon to do any
truly important task. Only a writer thoroughly immersed in
middle-class values, and soaked through and through with the
sentimentality of the middle, could for a moment believe that
this mummified and genteelized folk could contribute any spark
of life to his purposes.
The English and French tradition of town-folk (with a
head start of some forty or :fifty years of true industrialism
ovet the United States) chanelled itself into the music-hall.
"The supreme embodiment of the surviving character of the
English working people", writes one chronicler of the English
19th century scene, "was the music-hall. • . • Springing spon–
taneously out of the sing-song of the upper tavern room and
the old out-of-door gardens of the artisans of the pastoral past,
it became for a space of time a British institution. Its morality
was to make the best of a bad job; its purpose to make everyone
free and easy...." The authenticity of this institution, created
by the :first articulate development of urban folk for its own
enjoyment soon impressed itself on the artists and writers of
the time. Through it, they were able to skirt the middle, find
excitement and restorative energy and make a point of contact
with "life". But the music-hall decayed.
It
was based on that
period of "proletarian" existence when the workers were stiffiy
encased in the tradition of knowing their place and imitating
their betters. This tradition exploded in 1918; and we hear
Eliot making a final tribute to Marie Lloyd, with added gloomy
prognostications for the future:
"... It was her capacity for expressing the soul of a people that
made her unique.... It was her understanding of the people
and sympathy with them, and the people's recognitior. of the
fact that she embodied the virtues, that they most genuinely
respected in private life, that raised her to the position she
