The Decline of the Amateur

— Among the words which have come to us, at different periods in the history of our language, from the graceful and expressive French, I know of none which has undergone such misappropriation as the term “ amateur.”

I do not refer to the matter of pronunciation. One does not wish to he pedantic, and no great inconsistency is found in the fact that we may be fairly good French scholars and yet be addicted to the pronunciation amature. I refer rather to the significance and application of the term. There must have been—there was — a time when the title carried with it respect, dignity, and worth. The primary definition signified that the amateur was a person attached to some particular pursuit, study, or science (vide Burke), and that this attachment was cultivated without hope of pecuniary benefit and without reference to social advancement ; literally from love of it. In Europe, especially, the leisure classes produced many amateurs of both sexes, who did their duty and filled a certain place in life, as became enthusiastic lovers of art, science, and literature. But this elegant, useful, cultivated, and appreciative class seems in danger of disappearing. Amateur has collided with professional, and the former term has gradually but steadily declined in favor ; in fact, it has become almost a term of opprobrium. The work of an amateur, the touch of the amateur, a mere amateur, amateurish, amateurishness, — these are different current expressions which all mean the same thing, bad work.

This feature of our present development is to be deplored, partly on the ground that the original assumption — that is, that all amateur work is bad—is false, partly because the state of society suffers thereby. The evil has spread until even roval amateurs come into collision with professionals. Ideals have been lost, standards have been lowered, and criticism has frequently floundered in serious, sometimes ludicrous distress. No sphere once sacred to the professional but has been invaded by the amateur ; and if the term has, as I suggest,, lost its primary respectable meaning, the amateur himself is largely to blame for it. The point is, whether amateurs, as such, had any right to exist, and whether their original functions, aims, and orbits were correct or not. At all times the line must have been difficult to draw, but at least, fifty or a hundred years ago, the professions were restricted to one sex ; now the difficulty is made complex by the application and perseverance of the present generation of women. Every one now demands pay for work, recognition as a worker. No one wishes to remain “ a mere amateur.”

Exemplary as this may be, whither will it tend? Had the “mere amateur” no place in society, no duties in the world ? Was he a cumberer of the ground, a loiterer by the way, a blunder, an excrescence, a pest, a scourge ? Surely not. Surely there were duties depending upon him ; there were functions pleasant to discharge and honorable in themselves ; there was a sphere sacred to honest if not brilliant endeavor, and within which a career of noble industry, gentle enthusiasm, and unbiased critical growth was possible. In the present day we sneer, of course, at patronage. We read, but read only, of Grub Street hacks and dedications and flowery odes. We despise Goldsmith, and pity Johnson.

Yet there are many young writers, artists, singers, actors, who are daily courting the society and help of others more fortunate and famous, daily seeking the royal road to success, and often secretly wishing for the patron or patroness, the leisurely, rich, and cultivated friend, the sympathetic amateur, ready to lay time, influence, and money at their feet. “ Patronage ” is an ugly word, and one phase of it an ugly thing ; still, it is the duty, and might be the pleasure, of the rich to assist the poor, — the artistically and spiritually as well as the financially poor : here is one of the functions of the “ mere amateur.”

I do not care to repeat the platitude that amateurs will often insist upon recognition. There is the man who can afford to buy pictures, moving heaven and earth and the hanging committee to admit his own sketches. He is a man with a nice taste in art and a turn for the pencil ; too bad no one has the courage to tell him so. There is the lady who is really musical, with a fine touch and an unerring ear, but whose technique is at fault; probably old-fashioned, most certainly unreliable and inadequate. You insult them both, however, if you use the word “amateur.” And so on through the professions, arts, sciences. Many of the writers of to-day might very well serve their country better as readers. I once did a friend, from his point of view, a serious injury by carefully locking away a thin volume of sonnets inscribed “For private circulation only.” I had believed in liis reticence and modesty, knowing him to be a busy professional man, with little time to devote to the growing of poetry. As a nation, we probably produce more teachers, more journalists, more singers, more painters, more poets, — even for our size, — than any other country in the world, and we are able to convert them, at will, into first-class representative original and creative workers. Every other day somebody or other announces a “ new message ” from the market place. A musical friend, who conducts a provincial Philharmonic Society, complains that he fears the taste for joining such organizations is on the. wane ; his singers, particularly sopranos and tenors, all wish to study in Europe and become “stars,” and are continually leaving him with that intention. This is a case in point. Contrast it with the attitude of the patient Lancashire weavers and miners, the people who make up the great Festival Choruses of the north of England ! These are amateurs, if you like, “ mere amateurs,” who hardly know the word ; but they do their duty, and fill a niche in a steady, intelligent way which insures fine results.

It would be an immense step in the art life of our country if cultivated men and women could be set seriously thinking upon this point, with the result of seeing fully one half of them resolve to bear nobly the name “ amateur,” neither ashamed of it, nor claiming more for their work than it deserves. Reticence is not yet a feature of our civilization ; at a later date, perhaps, will arrive that disparagement of cheap achievement, that hesitation to put forward as original what is only clever imitation, which distinguish the modest, conscientious, devoted amateur.