Savagery of Electric Signs

New York Times Magazine, 3 February 1924, page SM3, 1,536 words

“A disgrace to any planet,” Says George Moore, and Speaks His MInd Also As to Hooting Motors

[Illustrated with a caricature of George Moore by Max Beerbohm]

“You have come, my dear sir,” said Mr. George Moore, “to talk to me about the changes that are taking place in the arrangement of our cities, and you are as anxious as another that London should be beautiful. Everybody seems to be of your opinion. In all the newspapers I read paragraphs about the need for a beautiful London, for a city that will represent all the colonies, that will stand as a symbol of empire, that will build splendid churches and theatres and universities. We are all agreed in principle that London should be beautiful, yet no steps are taken to make her so, although a great many steps are taken to make her ridiculous. Always it is the same story. London must be beautiful: but let us not do anything to interfere with our business or with the taste of today — with the savagery of electric signs, for example.”

“You look upon modern man, then, as an irrational animal?” I asked.

“I do,” Mr. Moore replied. “Gorillas live a natural life, but man does not. Theory goes down this way, practice goes down that way, two sets of lines, parallel lines, that never meet in modern life — consider as another passing example the noises of London.”

Mr. Moore waved his arm toward the roadway outside, beyond which a lorry, changing from first gear to second, made a noise like the rattling of an ancient anchor’s rusted chains. A motor car hooted again and again and again while it swerved away from the lorry, which screamed into third gear.

“Oh dear!” said Mr. Moore, as he pressed a hand against his forehead. “Would you be good enough to close the window? Thank you. Now I can think more clearly. What a relief!

“Motor cars, I suppose, must hoot,” he continued, “but there are drivers who have no thought for anybody but themselves. Last night, at about 10 o’clock, a man in a car hooted so much outside my house that I finally asked what was the matter. ‘My wife is upstairs; would you mind ringing the bell for me?’ he said. ‘That is your business,’ I replied, ‘especially as you have another man with you.’ I then fetched a policeman and told him that the man refused to turn off his engine and had been hooting continually. ‘I only hooted five times,’ declared the motorist. ‘Five time — twenty times!’ I corrected him. ‘You have no right to hoot at all,’ the policeman said.

“Only three or four years ago,” Mr. Moore continued, “everybody whistled. At the door of every theatre a thousand whistlings went up in the darkness. People delighted, like redskins, in piercing whistles. Porters, parlor maids, page boys whistled. In my street, where there are a number of lodging houses, the whistles never ceased; yet no cabs came. The whistling was enormous and the cabmen refused to pay attention, but it only occurred to few of us to say that if whistling did not bring cabs, let us stop whistling. I take some credit because it was largely due to myself that the whistling stopped. I gave interviews on the subject, and wrote letters to all the newspapers; and following a great many letters to The Evening News, a paper which was interested in London affairs more than any other, Lord Northcliffe took up the matter. ‘When I had The Daily Mail on my side it was discovered that London could get along very well without whistling, and it ceased.

“You used a phrase about the savagery of electric signs just now,” I reminded Mr. Moore.

“Yes,” he said, ‘if whistling no longer torments our ears, we now have sky signs to torment our eyes. Piccadilly Circus, because of its monstrosities in flamboyant lights, Piccadilly Circus is more ridiculous than anything savages ever invented. It would be a disgrace to any planet. A cannibal feast is not more absurd. There is one horror that flaunts somebody’s gin, another that pours out port, and a third that insists on putting before us inescapably the name of a popular newspaper which is always advocating the beauty of London. Nothing is too good for London, this journal would say — and there the matter ends. But if we were to say, let us begin by taking away your electric signs, the reply would be made that it is a  matter of business that people must advertise their goods. Nobody buys port wine because a ruby decanter is displayed pouring red light into a goblet. Ruby lights and electric port! It is fantastic! It does not help any more than did the whistling for cabs. Yet many like it because it is vulgar; and the cult of vulgarity has increased in the last century.”

“You believe then, that the state of mind symbolized by sky signs is a modern product?”

“Decidedly,” Mr. Moore answered. “We were a civilized people up to the eighteenth century, but since then we have become savages. And in explanation of our savagery the capital argument ‘for business reasons’ is used. I repeat, and am not afraid of repetitions, that just as the stoppage of whistling did not interfere with the calling of cabs, so, if the sky signs were scrapped tomorrow not a bottle of port or gin less would be sold.”

“Do you maintain, Mr. Moore, that our subordination to business interests is so absolute that the ideal of beauty which animated the antique world no longer exists?”

“It may be revived,” said Mr. Moore. “I hope it will be revived. In the meantime every object of beauty in London is being removed for commercial reasons, for the convenience of traffic or to allow the business director to pay higher dividends. One company wants to pull down Kensington Square, one of the best squares in London, and build an emporium there. The inhabitants, of course, have to be compensated, but a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred families may be without houses as a moment when there is an outcry about the shortage of houses. The law, as it stands, is that anybody can buy a property, pull it down and make what he likes of it. If a man were rich enough he could buy all the old squares in London, destroy them, and build emporiums.

“In my next book, ‘Conversations in Ebury Street,’ I reproduce some of Mr. Granville Barker’s eloquence when he talked to me about the necessity for a municipal theatre which should represent by its site the importance of the British Empire, and which, but its architecture, should set an example to that empire. And I was eloquent, too, or tried to be so. I answered Mr. Barker that I agreed with everything he said, and very likely I interjected an observation or two concerning the indifference of Londoners regarding London. I think, if I am not mistaken, I spoke of the city churches, the destruction of which has been advocated over and over again.

“One reason given for the breaking up of these lovely buildings — Wren’s buildings — is that motor cars cannot move about easily. Another is that the churches have no congregations — but churches are not intended for congregations. Congregations come and go; the church remains. The church is, or used to be, a thing of beauty. Nothing is more beautiful. A steeple is one of the most beautiful things in the world. A city without steeples can hardly be imagined. Catholic congregations, Protestant congregations, Methodist congregations and Unitarian congregations are nothing. The beauty of the spire is everything. I would have a thousand spires in London. The destruction of churches leads one to think that the desire of beauty is pure theory. My friends in Chelsea still believe that there is such a thing in the world as beauty; but the ordinary Londoner has no sense of the beauty of London. Consider Regent Street! Once a splendid thoroughfare, Regent Street, it is being pulled down to put up show windows — twenty or thirty yards of plate glass.”

“But what would you propose as a remedy, Mr. Moore?” I asked.

“The only remedy I can suggest is that a dozen people should be nominated, artists and architects, who would be allowed to control the desire of the business man to exhibit his taste at the expense of London. What must foreigners think when they drive through Piccadilly Circus? True the sky signs may be just as flamboyant in New York, but why should we imitate New York? I know nothing of other cities. And after that perhaps it would be better to do what was done in Paris; to have some scheme for building in conformity in architecture. Little by little, London should be rebuilt, and some style would gradually evolve itself as it did in the Middle Ages. In the Norman and the Gothic Ages, every town was beautiful, and now, most towns are horrible.

A.B. [initials of Alan Bott]