Studio: international art (9.1897)

The "Furry Dance"

trated, would seem to show that a training for em- preliminary effort to arouse interest in a domestic
broidery was the main purpose, and the utilitarian trifle that is singularly fascinating in its way, and
matter of linen-marks quite a secondary aim. that may not long wait a more formal historian.
In the earlier examples especially, there seems to Gleeson White.

have been a distinct effort to provide a variety of
narrow and wide bands, which could .be worked

ad libitum on robes, and other articles of infantile "W . ~w ELSTON AND ITS "FURRY
and adult apparel. That time could be spared DANCE." BY NORMAN GAR-

from the routine of school for learning how to shape I I g-pj]\[
letters in stitches is itself proof of the changed

conditions that ruled then ; but that every child JL JL Picture to yourself the road to the
should be potentially equipped as in embroideries Derby, but picture it also very attenuated, gravely
is still more proof. Without asking whether it self-respecting, slightly Methodistical, tempered with
was not a more worthy aim to work a sampler a solid agricultural element journeying thither in
well than play a sonata badly, one must needs comfortable carts drawn by broad-hoofed, heavy-
regret that the rudimentary knowledge of one of pasterned horses smacking of the plough; brakes
the oldest of feminine arts should be lost. Of and Jersey cars, landaus, and the omnipresent
the sampler with fine drawn-work, or of those bicycle flitting by with resonant gong. Picture
with raised flowers; of samplers that were really these journeying along a hilly road that borders a
pictures in stitches, and a thousand and one other blue bay, a sunny mist of heat lying over the
varieties, space forbids mention. Even the Arts waters and softening all the landscape, and you
and Crafts of 1896 contains the entry of "a will see what those saw who travelled from Pen-
sampler," but the object is only distinctly related zance to Helston on the Flora day.
to those we are considering here, as it includes St. Michael's Mount is broken up with sun and
several sheets of admirable motives worked by shadow against the glittering, misty sea ; the mount
Mrs. Lewis F. Day to a large scale and quite with- always leaves an uncomfortable sensation of having
out lettering. But the subject is said to be in escaped out of a watercolour drawing before the
preparation for a monograph, so that this hasty artist had time to mount it (pun unintentional);
attempt to indicate its record and aims is but a in this wise does the commonplace revenge itself

upon the ultraqoicturesque
by slowly sapping your

............______ ~ __________, - , • power to believe in its

existence—outside of art.

But we must jog on to
Helston or the dancing
will begin before we get
there, so we wind our
dusty way up and down
long hills, but for the
most part upon high,
wind-swept, treeless, un-
dulatory highlands, where
the gorse is very yellow and
sweet in the sunny month of
May ; past square, uncom-
promising granite-built cot-
tages that scorn to nestle,
but plant themselves out
in square gardens and are
discreet and respectable,
like Charles Lamb's party
in a parlour " all silent and
all damned " ; past gaunt
mine chimneys and ruined
engine houses, and here
and there, peeping out of
some crease in the folded
land, rises the tower of a
parish church.

Down the sides of such

the sampler of Ax\ buss . 1841 a crease Helston stands,

7i