Beauty Is a Need

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Barbara Ellen McMahon, author of the novella, Mrs. Rochester. It’s a sequel to Jane Eyre. This time, it’s Jane who’s locked in the attic and there’s a new governess. It’s available on Kobo, where it’s been getting rave reviews. If you enjoy my writing here, chances are you’ll love Mrs. Rochester.

If you don’t have a Kobo reader, you can download the app for free.

Buy My Book

* * * * * * ** ** * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** ** * * ** * ** * ** * * ** ** * * * ** * ** * * * * * ** **

The poor need not only bread. The poor also need beauty.

— Monsignor Hildebrand —

And aren’t we all a little bit poor, one way or another?

This makes me think of the poem, attributed to different people in different times, but it goes like this:

If thou of fortune be bereft,
and in thy store there be but left
two loaves, sell one, and with the
dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

When I was growing up, every time she got a pot of them, my mother would sigh and say “hyacinths for the soul” and I thought it was just one of her quirky sayings. I didn’t know it was a poem until years after she was gone. And then I read it and realized that it’s exactly what Alan and I have done with our lives. We sell bread (he owns a bakery) and with the dole, we buy, if not hyacinths, then something to feed our souls. I think it’s pretty cool that we could internalize a poem we didn’t even know existed.

So beauty is important, as important as bread. You see it all over the world, people we think of as achingly poor, struggling to survive and also making beautiful, purely decorative things. Because they know they need them. We need them.

When we talk about ‘the poor’, it’s not just the financially poor who need beauty. Financially wealthy but spiritually bankrupt people would be better off with an infusion of beauty into their lives. I don’t mean they should just go out and buy art, especially if they view it as an investment. But they should go out and find beauty, find the things that speak to their souls.

Then there are the poor in health. I know that beauty helps me. When I can get outside and breathe in all the natural goodness, I feel better. As I do when I can go and sit in an art gallery, when I can spend time in my studio, creating beauty with my collages or my words.

It’s too bad this need for beauty isn’t completely obvious to everyone, the way we know and accept that people need air to breathe or gravity is essential. Why do we question the value of beauty? Of art? Why do so many consider it nonessential, frivolous even? When, since the dawn of time, humanity has been making art, painting on cave walls, decorating pots, making, creating. It’s what makes us human and yet we still see it as optional. When will we learn?

As society regresses (we seem to be back in the 1930’s and heading backwards), I want us to really regress — all the way back to the Renaissance, when everyone was expected to paint and write and make music, and the ones who were good at it would be taken on by a patron and paid well to keep on doing what they did best. Just - here’s a roof over your head, food on your table, a couple of servants to make your life easier and a decent amount of spending money. Come and sing for me every Thursday afternoon or paint a portrait of my family this year while also following your own pursuits. Because what you do is important and my wealth obliges me to support that.

That would be such an improvement on the constant, impossible struggle to make our art pay. To have to justify even doing it. It’s wild. It’s wrong. I wish we could do better.

Obviously, when I say I’d like to go back to the Renaissance, I mean while keeping the best of modern life: vaccines, clean drinking water and insulated coffee mugs for a start. I like to keep the best of the past while also enjoying the good things we have now.

* * * * * * ** ** * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** ** * * ** * ** * ** * * ** ** * * * ** * ** * * * * * ** **

ANNOUNCING!!! Mrs. Rochester is now available as a pdf download on my Ko-fi page. It’s pay what you like and I hope you enjoy it!