Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

Picture galleries have hitherto been thought of chiefly as pleasure places for the educated, or as schools for the student. They can become mission-halls for the degraded. It is easy to arrange visits with a few people to the National Gallery, to the Kensington or Bethnal Green Museums; it is not an unpleasant afternoon’s work to guide little groups of people, just pointing out this beautiful picture, or putting in a few words to explain this or that historical allusion. I once took a girl--a merry lassie, light-hearted, fond of pleasure, but in danger of taking it at the expense of her character--to the National Gallery. The little picture of Raphael’s, where the women acting as the angels stand over the sleeping knight, offering him the protecting shield, opened to her a new truth. Here was a fresh possible relation between man and woman, not the one of rough jokes and doubtful fun, but a new connection not to be despised, either, where the province of the woman was to keep the man safe; a large lesson taught by dumb lips and dead hands.

When Sir Richard Wallace lent his pictures to the Bethnal Green Museum, he not only brightened the eyes of many used only to the drear monotony of East London, but he taught one poor wretched woman with a whining baby hanging on her thin breast a large lesson. Dirt on child and mother showed her condition, and was a dreary contrast to the Madonna with lovely crowing baby before whom the little group paused. ‘Ah, yer could easy enough “mother” such a baby as that now,’ was her apologetic remark, showing that the picture had conveyed the rebuke, and that the reverence born of faith in the painter’s heart had not yet finished bearing fruit.

It is but feebly that I have tried to show how such means could be used to teach spirituality to the lowest classes. It is not necessary to speak of school-lessons, lending libraries, mothers’ meetings, night-schools, temperance societies, and clubs; agencies for the good of the people which are at work in every well-organised parish; neither has mention been made of the communicants’ meetings, prayer assemblies, church services, which are food to feed and build up many of those who already recognise their true life, and strive bravely, amid adverse circumstances, to live it. We can all work at these in gladness and thanksgiving. They are not so hard to persevere with, for some result attends them. In meetings and classes there is encouragement in the regularity and the appreciation of the attendants. In services and prayer-meetings there is the knowledge that they help and strengthen the faint-hearted; but in the indirect means of helping the degraded there is little encouragement, for there can be no results. The highest work is often apparently resultless, bringing no personal thanks, no world’s applause; a failure, worthless labour, if judged by the world’s standard of work; a success, worth doing, if it open to a few, whom the usual means have failed to reach, the great secret of true being, their spiritual life; a buried life, buried but not dead.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

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IV.

_TOWN COUNCILS AND SOCIAL REFORM._[1]

[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of November
1883.

Mr. Bright has stated that in Glasgow 41,000 families occupy single rooms. The statement caused no surprise to those familiar with the poor quarters of our great towns; their surprise has been that the statement should cause surprise in any section of the community. It is, indeed, surprising that people should think so little about what they daily see, and should go on talking as if 20_s._ or 30_s._ a week were enough to satisfy the needs of a family’s life, and should be surprised that many persons still occupy one room, endure hardship and die, killed by the struggle to exist. It is surprising that reflection on such subjects is not more common because, when facts are stated, no defence is made for the present condition of the people.

Alongside of the growth of wealth during this age there has been growth of the belief in the powers of human nature, of the belief that in all men, independent of rank and birth, there exist great powers of being. ‘Nothing can breed such awe and fear as fall upon us when we look into our minds, into the mind of man,’ expresses the experience of many who do not use the poet’s words.

Those who are conscious of what men may be and do cannot be satisfied while the majority of Englishmen live, in the midst of wealthy England, stinted and joyless lives because they are poor.

When facts, therefore, such as that referred to by Mr. Bright are stated, no defence is made; and such facts are common. Here are some:--(1) The death-rate among the children of the poor is double that among the children of the rich. Born in some small room, which serves as the sleeping and living room of the family; hushed to sleep by discordant noises from neighbouring factories, refreshed by air laden with smoke and evil odours, forced to find their play in the streets; without country holiday or adequate medical skill, without sufficient air, space, or water, the children die, and the mothers among the poor are always weeping for their children and cannot be comforted. (2) The occupants of the prisons are mostly of one class--the poor. The fact for its explanation needs no assumption that ‘the poor in a lump are bad’; it is the natural result of their condition. It is because children are ill developed or unhealthily developed by life in the streets that they become idlers, sharpers, or thieves. It is because families are crowded together that quarrels begin and end in fights. It is because they have not the means to hide their vices under respectable forms that the poor go to prison and not the rich. (3) The lives of the people are joyless. The slaves of toil, worn by anxiety lest the slavery should end, they have not leisure nor calm for thought; they cannot therefore be happy, living in the thought of other times, as those are happy who, in reading or travel, have gathered memories to be the bliss of solitude, or as those who, ‘by discerning intellect,’ have found the best to be ‘the simple product of the common day.’ When work ceases, the one resource is excitement; and thus their lives are joyless. Anxiety consumes their powers in pleasure as in work, the faces of the women lose their beauty, and a woman of thirty looks old.

These are facts patent to those who know our great towns--the facts of life, not among a few of their degraded inhabitants, but facts of the life of the majority of the people. Let any one who does not know how his neighbours live set himself the following sum. Given 20_s._ or 40_s._ a week wages, how to keep a family, pay rent of 2_s._ 6_d._ a week for each room, and lay up an adequate amount for times of bad trade, sickness, and old age. As the sum is worked out, as it is seen how one after another the things which seem to make life worth living have to be given up, and as it is seen how many ‘necessaries’ are impossible, how many of the poor must put up with a diet more scanty than that allowed to paupers, how all must go without the leisure and the knowledge which transmute existence into life--faith will be shaken in many theories of social reform.

Teetotal advocates will preach in vain that drunkenness is the root of all evil, and that a nation of abstainers will be either a healthy, a happy, or a thoughtful nation. Thrift will be seen to be powerless to do more than to create a smug and transient respectability, and even those who are ‘converted’ will not claim to be raised by their faith out of the reach of early death and poverty into a life which belongs to their nature as members in the human family.

Theories of reform which do not touch the conditions in which the people live, which do not make possible for them fuller lives in happier circumstances, are not satisfactory. The conversion of sinners--at any rate while the sinners are sought chiefly among the poor--the emigration of children, the spread of thrift and temperance among the workpeople, will still leave families occupying single rooms and the sons of men the joyless slaves of work; a state of society for which no defence can be made.

It is only a larger share of wealth which can increase comfort and relieve men from the pressure brought on them by the close atmosphere of great towns; which can, in a word, give to all the results of thought and open to all the life which is possible. If it be that the return for fair land laid waste by mines and engines is wider knowledge of men and things, it is only the rich who now enjoy this return and it is only wealth which can make it common. And since any distribution of wealth in the shape of money relief would be fatal to the independence of the people, the one satisfactory method of social reform is that which tends to make more common the good things which wealth has gained for the few. The nationalisation of luxury must be the object of social reformers.

The presence of wealth is so obvious that the attempts to distribute its benefits both by individuals and by societies have been many. Individuals have given their money and their time; their failure is notorious, and societies have been formed to direct their efforts. The failure of these societies is not equally notorious, but few thinkers retain the hope that societies will reform Society and make the conditions of living such that people will be able to grow in wisdom and in stature to the full height of their manhood. If it were a sight to make men and angels weep to see one rich man struggling with the poverty of a street, making himself poor only to make others discontented paupers, it is as sad a sight to see societies hopelessly beaten and hardened into machines with no ‘reach beyond their grasp.’ The deadness of these societies or their ill-directed efforts has roused in the shape of Charity Organisation workers a most striking missionary enterprise. The history of the movement as a mission has yet to be written; the names of its martyrs stand in the list of the unknown good; but the most earnest member of a Charity Organisation Society cannot hope that organised almsgiving will be powerful so to alter conditions as to make the life of the poor a life worth living.

Societies which absorb much wealth, and which relieve their subscribers of their responsibility, are failing; it remains only to adopt the principle of the Education Act, of the Poor Law, and of other socialistic legislation, and call on Society to do what societies fail to do. There is much which may be urged in favour of such a course. It is only Society, or, to use the title by which Society expresses itself in towns, it is only Town Councils, which can cover all the ground and see that each locality gets equal treatment. It is by common action that a healthy spirit becomes common, and the tone of public opinion may be more healthy when the Town Council engages in good-doing than when good-doing is the monopoly of individuals or of societies. If nations have been ennobled by wars undertaken against an enemy, towns may be ennobled by work undertaken against the evils of poverty.

Through the centuries the sense of the duties of Society has been growing. Some earnest men may regret the limit placed on individual action and the failure of societies, but the change they regret is more apparent than real. The Town Councils are, indeed, the modern representatives of the Church and of other societies, through which in older times individuals expressed their hope and work, and to these bodies falls the duty of effecting that social reform which will help the poor to grow to the stature of the life of men.

The problem before them is one much more of ways than of means. If poverty is depressing the lives of the people, the wealth by which it may be relieved is superabundant. On the one side, there is disease for the want of food and doctors; on the other side there is disease because of food and doctors. In one part of the town the women cease to charm for want of finery; in the other they cease to please from excess of finery. It is for want of money that the streets in which the poor live are close, ill-swept, and ill-lighted; that the ‘East Ends’ of towns have no grand meeting-rooms and no beauty. It is through superfluity of money that the entertainments of the rich are made tiresome with music, and their picture galleries made ugly with uninteresting portraits. There is no want of means for making better the condition of the people; and there has ever been sufficient good-will to use the means when the way has been clear. To discover the way is the problem of the times.

Some way must be found which, without pauperising, without affecting the spirit of energy and independence, shall give to the inhabitants of our great towns the surroundings which will increase joy and develop life.

The first need is better dwellings. While the people live without adequate air, space, or light in houses where the arrangements are such that privacy is impossible, it is hopeless to expect that they will enjoy the best things. The need has been recognised, and, happily without going to Parliament, Town Councils may do much to meet the need. It is in their power to enforce sanitary improvements, to make every house healthy and clean, and to provide common rooms which will serve as libraries or drawing-rooms. If it is not in their power to reduce rents, it is possible for them to pull down unfit buildings, and sell the ground to builders at a low price, on condition that such builders shall provide extra appliances for the health and pleasure of the people.

Insanitary conditions and high rents are the points to which consideration must be directed. Builders to-day build houses on the fiction that each house will be occupied by one family. The fact that two or three families will at once take possession is kept out of sight, while the parlour, drawing-room, and single set of offices are finished off to suit the requirements of an English home. The fiction ends in the creation of evils on which medical officers write reports, and of other evils which, like Medusa’s head, are best seen by the shadow they cast on Society.

The insanitary conditions constitute one difficulty connected with the dwellings of the poor; the rent for adequate accommodation which absorbs one quarter of an irregular income constitutes another. To cure the insanitary conditions ample power exists; to even suggest a means for lowering rents is not so easy. Perhaps it might be possible for the community to sell the ground it acquires at some low price, on condition that the rents of the newly built houses should never exceed a certain rate, and that the occupier should always have the right of purchase. Such a condition is not, however, at present legal, and is of doubtful expediency. It is now possible for Town Councils to acquire land under the Artisans’ Dwellings Act, and to sell it cheaply on condition that the rooms are of a certain size and provided with certain appliances; that special arrangements are made for washing and cleaning, and that a common room is at the disposal of a certain number of families.

The improvement cannot be made without what is called a loss--that is to say, the Town Councils cannot sell land for the building of fit dwellings at the same price for which the land had been acquired. Money will in one sense be lost; and this phrase has such power that, though the need is recognised, the Act by which the need could be met has in most towns remained a dead letter. In Liverpool, where, according to official reports, the state of the dwellings is productive of fever and destructive of common decency, the Act has never been applied. In Manchester, where it is acknowledged to be the object of the Town Council to protect the health of the people, it is stated in the last report that the Act involves too great an outlay to be workable. The London Metropolitan Board of Works, which spends its millions wisely and unwisely, has striven to show that the application of the Act would lay too great a burden on the ratepayers. It is impossible, it is said, to house the poor at such a cost. It would not seem impossible if it were recognised that to spend money in housing the poor is a way of making the wealth of the town serve the needs of the town. It would not seem impossible if Town Councils recognised that on them has come the care of the people, and that money is not lost which is returned in longer and better life.

Other needs exist, hardly second to that of better dwellings, and these it is in the power of local authorities to meet, in a way of which few reformers seem to be aware. The Town Councils may provide means of recreation and instruction--libraries, playgrounds, and public baths. School Boards may provide, not only elementary instruction, but give a character to education, and use their buildings as centres for the meetings, classes, and recreation of the old scholars. Boards of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards, the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove abuses for which Englishmen make no defence.

Wise Town Councils, conscious of the mission they have inherited, could destroy every court and crowded alley and put in their places healthy dwellings; they could make water so cheap and bathing-places so common that cleanliness should no longer be a hard virtue; they could open playgrounds, and take away from a city the reproach of its gutter-children; they could provide gardens, libraries, and conversation-rooms, and make the pleasures of intercourse a delight to the poor, as it is a delight to the rich; they could open picture galleries and concerts, and give to all that pleasure which comes as surely from a common as from a private possession; they could light and clean the streets of the poor quarters; they could stamp out disease, and by enforcing regulations against smoke and all uncleanness limit the destructiveness of trade and lengthen the span of life; they could empty the streets of the boys and girls, too big for the narrow homes, too small for the clubs and public-houses, by opening for them playrooms and gymnasia; they could help the strong and hopeful to emigrate; they could give medicine to heal the sick, money to the old and poor, a training for the neglected, and a home for the friendless.

With this power in the hands of Town Councils, and with our great towns in such a state that a fact as to their condition shocks the nation, there is no need to wait for parliamentary action. The course on which the authorities are asked to enter is no untried one.

There are local bodies which have applied the Artisans’ Dwellings Act and cleared away houses or hovels, of which the medical officers’ descriptions are not fit for repetition in polite society. There are those who have built, and more who are ready to build, houses which shall at any rate give the people healthy surroundings, possibilities of home life and of common pleasures, even when a family can afford only a single room. And, although the London School Board’s buildings and playgrounds are occupied only during a few hours in each week, there are schools which are used for meetings, for classes in higher education, and for Art Exhibitions, and there are playgrounds which are open all day and every day to all comers. The way in which Guardians have in some unions made the system of relief in the highest sense educational is now an old tale. It has been shown that out-relief, with its demoralising results, may be abolished; it is being shown that a workhouse with trade masters and ‘mental instructors’ may be a reformatory; and it is not beyond the hope of some Boards that a system of medical relief may be developed adequate to the needs of the people. Public bodies here and there are showing what it is in their power to do, but at present their efforts hardly make any mark; they must become general.

The first practical work is to rouse the Town Councils to the sense of their powers; to make them feel that their reason of being is not political but social, that their duty is not to protect the pockets of the rich, but to save the people. It is for reformers in every town to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and not of any philanthropic section--is, indeed, the care of Society, and not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of party or of class, who care for the people. This is the first practical work, one in which all can join, whether he serves as elector or elected. It may be that efficient administration will show that without an increase of rating a sufficient fund may be found to do all that needs doing; but, if this is not the case, the social interest which is aroused will act on Parliament, and that body will be diverted from its party politics to consider how, by some change in taxation, by progressive rating, by a land-tax, or by some other means, the money can be raised to do what must be done.

The means, I repeat, is a matter for the future; the battle is to be won at the municipal elections; it is there the cry ‘The People, not Politics’ must be raised, and it is the councils of the town which can work the social reform. If it be urged that when Town Councils do for social reform all which can be done, the condition will still be unsatisfactory, I agree. Wealth cannot supply the needs of life, and many who have all that wealth can give are still without the life which is possible to men. The town in which houses shall be good, health general, and recreation possible, may be but a whited sepulchre. No social reform will be adequate which does not touch social relations, bind classes by friendship, and pass, through the medium of friendship, the spirit which inspires righteousness and devotion.

If, therefore, the first practical work of reformers be to rouse Town Councils, their second is to associate volunteers who will work with the official bodies. We may here regret the absence of a truly National Church. If in every parish Church Boards existed representative of every religious opinion and expressive of every form of philanthropy, they would be the centres round which such volunteers would gather and prove themselves to be an agency ready to their hand. While we hope for such boards there is no need to wait to act.

As a rule, it may be laid down that the voluntary work is most effective when it is in connection with official work. The connection gives a backbone, a dignity to work, which has lost something in the hands of Sunday-school teachers and district visitors. In every town volunteers in connection with official work are wanted. It is doubtful, indeed, if the tenements occupied by the least instructed classes could be kept in order, or the people made to live up to their better surroundings, if the rent collecting were not put in the hands of volunteers with the time to make friends and the will to have patience with the tenants. At any rate, wherever official work is done there will be something for volunteers to supply.

Guardians want those who will consider the poor; men who will visit the workhouse to rouse those too idle or too depressed to work, and to find help for those who by sickness or ill-chance have lost their footing in the rush for living. They want those who, knowing what wages can do and cannot do, will serve on relief committees, will see the poor in their distress, and, giving or not giving, will try to make them understand that care does not cease. They want also women who will be friends to the sick and, more than that, befriend the girls who drift wretched to the workhouse, or go out lonely from the pauper schools. School Boards want those who, visiting the schools, will seek out the children who are fit for country holidays, visit the homes, and do something to follow up the education between the years of thirteen and twenty-one.

Wherever there is an institution, a reading-room, a club, or a playground there is work for volunteers. It may not be that the volunteers will seem to do much; they will be certain to do something. They will be certain to make links between the classes, and lead both rich and poor to give up habits which keep them apart. They will be certain to add strength to the public opinion, which by the bye will relieve those whose higher life is destroyed by excess or by want. They will be certain to do something, and if they carry into their work a spirit of devotion, a faith in the high calling of the human race, and a love for its weakest members, there is no limit which can be placed on what they will do. They will put into the sound body the sound mind; into the well-ordered town citizens who ‘feel deep, think clear, and bear fruit well.’

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

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V.

_‘AT HOME’ TO THE POOR._[1]

[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Cornhill Magazine_ of May 1881.

Few people realise the extreme dulness of the lives of the poor. Cut off from the many interests which education or the possession of money gives, they have little left but the ‘trivial round, the common task,’ which indeed furnishes them with ‘room to deny themselves,’ but is hardly, in their case at least, ‘the road to bring them daily nearer God.’

‘People must be amuthed,’ is the caricatured statement of a true human need, and the terrible and often deplored attraction of the public-house has its root not so much in the love of strong drink as in the want of interest and desire for amusement felt by the lower classes of the poor. This is especially true with regard to the women and to those men who cannot read. Unable to comprehend the ever-living interest of watching public affairs, prevented by ignorance from following, even in outline, the actions of the nations, they are thrown back on the affairs of their neighbours, and centre all their interest in the sayings and doings of quarrelsome Mr. Jones or much-abused Mrs. Smith.

It is difficult for those of us to whom the world seems almost too full of interests to realise the deadening dulness of some of these lives. Let us imagine, for an instant, all knowledge of history, geography, art, science, and language blotted out; all interests in politics, social movements, and discoveries obliterated; no society pleasures to anticipate; no trials of skill nor tests of proficiency in work or play to look forward to; no money at command to enable us to plan some pleasure for a friend or dependent; no books always at hand, the old friends waiting silently till their acquaintance is renewed, the new ones standing ready to be learnt and loved; no opportunities of getting change of scene and idea; no memories laden with pleasures of travel; no objects of real beauty to look at. What would our lives become? And yet this is a true picture of the lives of thousands of the poorer classes, whose time is passed in hard, monotonous work, or occupied in the petty cares of many children, and in satisfying the sordid wants of the body. In some cases precarious labour adds the element of uncertainty to the other troubles, an element which, by the fact of its bringing some interest, is enjoyed by the men, but which adds tenfold to the many cares of the housewife.

It is not easy to see how the poor themselves can get out of this atmosphere of dulness. They can hardly give parties, even if the cost of entertaining were not a sufficient barrier; the extreme smallness of the rooms entirely prevents social intercourse, not to mention the hindrance caused by the necessity for putting the children to bed in the course of the evening, and by all the many discomforts consequent on the one room being bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery. But even supposing there are two rooms, or few children, the difficulties of entertaining are not yet over. With minds so barren, conversation can hardly be the source of much amusement, and music and dancing are almost impossible with no instrument to help and no space where even the little feet can patter.

But it is possible for the ignorant as well as the cultured to enjoy Nature. And it is often a subject of wonder why the poor living in such close streets or alleys, surrounded with such unlovely objects, do not take more trouble to get out into the country or enjoy the parks. ‘Only sixpence, you say,’ said a hard-working pale body to me one day when I was urging her to go on one of her enforced idle afternoons to get air and see some refreshing beauty at Hampstead. ‘Well, yer see, I could hardly go without the three children, and that’s 1_s._ 3_d._; besides they’d be a deal hungrier when they came home than perhaps I could manage for.’

What could be said to the last argument? Just fancy having to consider, otherwise than pleasurably, the increased appetite of one of our young ones fresh from a day by the sea or in the country?

But, apart from the money question, the desire to go into the country after a time wears off, even among those who have before lived in pure air and among country sights and scenes; people get used to their dull, sordid surroundings; the memory of fairer sights grows dim, and the imagination is not strong enough to conjure them up again.

‘Shure, I ain’t been in the country this fifteen year,’ an old woman once startled me by saying at a country party; ‘and if it hadn’t been for your note ’ere it would ha’ been another fifteen year afore I’d ha’ seen it.’

And she was not so poor, this old lady; 7_s._ a week, perhaps, and 2_s._ 6_d._ to pay for rent. It was not her poverty which prevented her seeing the fifteen fair springs which had passed since she came from the Green Isle. No! it was just the want of power to make the effort--a loss to her far more serious than the loss of the sight of the country. As the late James Hinton used to say, ‘The worst thing is to be in hell and not know it is hell’; perhaps the best thing one can do for another is to give him the glimpse of heaven, which, letting in the light, shows the blackness of hell.

‘Don’t you think green is God’s favourite colour?’ asked an old lady, the thought being suggested as we stood together in a forest of soft green. ‘Well, I can’t say,’ was the answer; ‘look at the sky; how blue that is.’ ‘Yes, but that isn’t always blue, and the earth is ’most always green.’

Does it not seem a pity that this old poet soul, so fit to teach God’s lessons, should live all through the summer days in one room, shared by four other people, seeing only the mud colours of London, which certainly are not God’s favourite colours. It was this same old lady who said on receiving her first invitation, ‘All the years I’ve lived in London I was never asked to go into the country before you asked me.’

But the want of pleasure and change is no newly discovered need of the poor. School-treats and excursions and bean-feasts have been organised and carried out almost since Sunday-schools have existed and congregations had a corporate life. Every summer sees the columns of the newspapers used to ask for money to give 900, 1,000, 2,000 children ‘one day in the country,’ and when the money is obtained and the day arrives, the children are packed into vans or a special train and turned into the woods or fields to enjoy themselves (and tease the frogs) until tea, buns, and hymns bring the ‘’appy day’ to an end. Good days these, full of pleasure and health-giving exercise, but perhaps mixed with too large an element of excitement to teach the children to enjoy the country for its own sake, to enable them to learn in Dame Nature’s lap ‘that we can feed this mind of ours in a wise passiveness.’

Neither have the clergy overlooked this need as existing among their grown people, and most of those working in poor neighbourhoods organise an annual ‘Treat,’ each person paying, say, 1_s._, to be met by the 6_d._ from the Pastor’s Fund. These treats sometimes assume the enormous proportions of 2,000 or 3,000 persons. All carry their mid-day meal to be eaten when and how they like. The assembling for tea and a few speeches by the rector and those in authority are the only means taken to bring the people together and to introduce the sense of host and guest. And with the memory of the 1_s._ paid, this sense is very difficult either to arouse or maintain. But, good as in many ways these treats are, they do not do all they might. They do not introduce fresh experiences, an acquaintance with other lives, the interest of new knowledge.

We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live,

as Coleridge puts it; and such sadly empty minds want the interpretation of the friendly eye to make them see what they went out ‘for to see.’

Struck with these ideas, we determined to try another method of entertaining our neighbours; and believing that they had the same need of social intercourse as that felt by the rich, and taking for granted that the kind of country entertainment most prevalent among the rich was that most enjoyed, we based our parties on the same foundation, remembering always that the minds of the poor being emptier, more active entertainment was needed, and that the party to which we invited them was perhaps the one day’s outing in the whole year, the one glimpse that they had (apart from divorce suits) into the lives and habits of the richer classes.

On talking over our plan with friends who, living in the suburbs of London, had the necessary garden, it was not long before we received kindly invitations to take thirty, forty, fifty, of our neighbours to spend the afternoon in the country. The day and hour fixed, it was left with us to decide which guests should be invited, and to pass on the invitation. Sometimes our hosts particularly wish to entertain children as well as grown people; and if so, we include the children in the invitation; but on the whole, experience has taught that those parties are most thoroughly enjoyed from which the children are omitted. This will not be misunderstood when it is remembered that these mothers and fathers have their children, perhaps seven, all small together, constantly with them for 365 days in the year, both day and night; that the children become noisy and excited in the country, and that each child’s noise, though it may be music in the ear of its mother, can hardly be anything but what it is, _disagreeable sounds_, in the ears of its mother’s neighbour. Another objection to the presence of the children is the extreme difficulty of entertaining them and the grown people together. To the social gatherings of other classes it is not the rule to invite children with their parents, and the taste or feeling which forbids such a rule is common to the poor.

It is not difficult, knowing many people who would be glad of a day’s outing, to pass on such invitations; but it is pleasanter, if it can be so arranged, that the guests should beforehand be acquainted with each other. For that reason it is better to invite together the members of a mothers’ meeting and their husbands, the _habitués_ of a club, the inhabitants of one block of buildings, the denizens of a particular court, the singing-class, the members of any society who worship, work, or learn together--in short, those who unite for any purpose.

There are other advantages in this plan besides the obvious one of the guests being already acquainted. Those who have hitherto seen each other’s character from the work point of view only now get another standpoint, and the day’s pleasure, together with the hearty laugh and the many-voiced songs, does more than many a pastoral address can do to teach forgiveness and break down barriers raised by quarrels--quarrels which more often owe their origin to close neighbourhoods than to bad tempers. ‘Now she ain’t such a bad ’un as one would think, considering the way she behaved to my Billy--is she now?’ is a true remark illustrating what I would say.

The guests chosen, the invitations go out in the usual form: ‘Mrs. So-and-So,’ mentioning our hostess’s name, ‘hopes to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So on Monday, 14th, to spend the afternoon in the country,’ and then follow the time of the train and the name of the station where the rendezvous is to be held. Added to these the friends connected in any way with the expected guests, the district visitor, the superintendent of the mothers’ meeting, the lady rent-collector are also invited; as well as those who have gifts of entertaining or those to whom we wish to introduce our neighbours. A train is generally chosen between one and two o’clock, so as to enable the man to get a half-day’s work and the woman to see to necessary household duties and give the children their dinner before she starts.

On reaching the country station the party rambles through the lanes, picking grasses and flowers, taking, if possible, a détour before arriving at the host’s house. ‘Why, the _trees_ smell,’ exclaimed one town-bred woman in almost awe-struck astonishment, standing under a lilac-tree. ‘Don’t it make one feel gentle-like!’ was another remark made more to himself than to anyone else, which came from a rough one-legged board-man, as he stood overlooking a quiet, far-stretching scene near Wimbledon.

Unless one has lived in close streets and amid noise and grinding hurry, it is difficult to understand the pleasures of these walks. The sweetness of the air, the quiet which can be felt, the very fact of strolling in the road without looking out to avoid being run over, are a relief, and the absence of the ever-present anxiety of the care of the children is a great addition to the irresponsible enjoyment of the day.

The destination reached, it is a great help if the host and hostess will come out to meet and welcome the party, as is customary towards guests of other classes. By this simple courtesy the tone is at once given, and the people feel themselves not brought out to a ‘treat’ but invited and welcomed as guests. I have seen men, among whom we were told when we first went to Whitechapel it was not ‘safe’ to go alone, entirely changed by the bearing of their hosts to them, and the determination with which they set out, to have a ‘lark,’ at whatever inconvenience to others, gradually melt away under the influence of being treated as gentlemen. ‘Why, she said she was glad to see me,’ said a low, coarse fellow, taking as a personal compliment to himself the conventional form of expression.

The duty of introducing and welcoming over, we are glad if we find tables on a shady lawn or under a tent ready spread and waiting for us. In the excitement of getting off, the midday meal taken hurriedly has probably been a slight one, and the walk and unwonted fresh air have given good appetites. Sometimes our hostess has made arrangements that all the party should take their food together, and this is the better plan if it can be managed. ‘Why, the gentry is sitting down with us. Now I do call _that_ comfortable like,’ was overheard on one occasion when this arrangement had been followed. If the one class waits on the other it but emphasises the painful class distinctions so sadly prominent in the ordinary affairs of life, and the feeling aroused in the minds of the people as they see the richer members of the party taken by the hostess to the house to have ‘something to eat’ is not always amiable, the ‘something’ being interpreted as better, anyhow other than that provided for them, or why should it not have been taken together?

The repast given by our many kindly hosts during these eight summers of parties has been various. Some add eggs and bacon to the tea and cakes; others give a large joint, which is even more enjoyed, a cut off a good 14 lb. sirloin of beef being a rare luxury in the ordinary dietary of the working classes, while others again offer tea, differing only in quantity from the ordinary afternoon meal which is commonly taken between lunch and dinner. Some of our hosts give every variety of cake, such as Scotch housewives delight in making, though I remember one lady who, while most kind and anxious to give pleasure, told me, as if it were an additional advantage, that she had ‘had all the cakes made very plain, and that they were all baked the day before yesterday.’

The meal over, the real pleasure of the day begins, and this must entirely depend on the capabilities of the hostess for entertaining and on the possibilities of the garden. If it is large, there is nothing townpeople like better than to saunter about, to wander in the shrubberies, to see the hothouses, conservatories, ferneries, especially if some one will be the guide and point out what is interesting, this spot where the best view is to be obtained, that curious flower, and tell the story hanging on this queerly shaped tree. ‘Aye, aye, ma’am, it’s all very beautiful, but to my mind you’re the beautifullest flower of the lot,’ was the spontaneous compliment elicited from a weather-beaten costermonger to the stately old lady who had taken pains to show him her garden, and though the remark was greeted with shouts of laughter from the surrounding group, the ‘Well, he ain’t far wrong, I’m sure,’ showed that the words had only spoken out the thoughts of many.

Sometimes the men go off to play cricket or bowls, to see the puppies or horses, or some other beasts particularly interesting to the masculine mind; or perhaps the interminable game of rounders occupies all the time. Sometimes swings, see-saws, or a row on the pond are great amusements. ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve only just learnt to enjoy myself,’ gasped one buxom woman of fifty, breathless with swinging her neighbour, whose face told that her life’s holidays could without difficulty be counted; while, to a few, the fact of sitting still and looking out and feeling the quiet is pleasure enough. ‘I seem to see further than ever I saw before,’ murmured a pale young mother, sitting on the Upper Terrace at Hampstead, and as she said it she looked as if the sight of the country just then, when her eyes were reopened by her new motherhood, might, in another sense, make her see farther than she had ever seen before.

If the garden is small and its resources soon ended, games must be resorted to, and such games as ‘tersa,’ where running and motion are enjoyed; the ‘ring and the string,’ when eyes and ears must be on the alert; or ‘blow the candle blindfold’; all cause hearty fun, especially when the unconscious blindfold, having walked crookedly, energetically blows, as he thinks, at the candle, which is still burning steadily a yard or two from him. On some of these occasions the hostess has had her carriage out, and by taking four or five of the guests at a time all have been able to have a short drive, and see from a higher elevation something more of the country, ‘Well, I don’t know that I was ever in a carriage before,’ said one woman, who could hardly be said to have been _in_ one then, as she dismounted from the box. ‘Except at funerals,’ corrected her neighbour. Might not some of the extraordinary liking, which is so common among the poor, for attending funerals be partly for the sake of the rare event of a drive? Occasionally it is possible to get up a dance, with the help of a fiddle or piano, and many a pale, worn face has lost, for the time at least, its stamp of weariness as it grew interested in the ups and downs of ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ ‘Bless me, if I ever thought to do any dancing, except the dancing of babbies,’ was an unexpected comment from my partner on one occasion; and many times have I since been referred to to confirm the fact that ‘You did see me dancing, didn’t you, ma’am?’

Besides these active pleasures, there is the enjoyment of music, the love and appreciation of which is so deep and warm in these uncultured minds; music which more than anything else helps to smooth away class as well as other inequalities. I have seen rough low-class men and women leave their active games or the swing for which they had been waiting and cluster round the singer or musician begging for another and yet ‘another bit.’ What they like best is a song with a chorus, or historical songs where they can hear the words, and next to these solemn music on a harmonium or organ; but any music charms them, and the hostess who is either musical herself or who invites her musical friends to help her finds the task of entertaining much easier. An oft-repeated mistake is that the poor like comic songs about themselves, and ‘Betsy Waring’ has been suggested and sung at our parties more often than I like to remember. A moment’s sympathetic thought will show, however, that the poor want other and wider interests, and it can hardly be the kindliest method of amusing them to sing them a song, the joke of which lies in imitations and ‘take-offs’ of their mispronunciation. It is, too, generally thought that the uneducated cannot appreciate what is commonly understood as ‘good music,’ but this, too, is a mistake. Long years ago I remember Mrs. Nassau Senior coming to a night-school of rough girls, held in a rough court. That evening some street row was more attractive than A B C, and our scholars were clustered around the heroine of the fight. I can still see the picture made by Mrs. Senior as she stood and sang in the doorway of the schoolroom, which opened directly on to the court, and among such surroundings it was a deep-sighted sympathy which led her to choose ‘Angels ever bright and fair.’ For long afterwards she was remembered as ‘the lady who came and sang about the angels, and looked like one herself.’

It is well if the hostess can bring her instrument to the window, so that the people can hear as they sit on the lawn outside and enjoy the air; perhaps she may find it possible to ask two or three of her guests who can sing, with strong, sweet, though untrained voices, to join her in a duet or glee, and helping, they enjoy the pleasure with the helper’s joy. Occasionally one of the party may have brought an accordion with which to aid the impromptu concert, or some one will recall the piece of poetry committed to memory long years ago, and then we have a recitation, which pleases none the less because it is ‘Jim Straw’s one bit,’ and has been heard a few times before. If it be wet or windy the hostess may ask her guests into the drawing-room. ‘You did not see the drawing-room, did you, mum?’ asked one of the guests after a party which I had been obliged to leave early; ‘it was lovely, and we all sat there quite friendly-like and listened to the music. I _did_ like the look of that room.’ Very pregnant of influence are these introductions into a house scrupulously clean and tastily furnished--a house kept as the dwelling of every human being should be kept. Do we not know ourselves, if we go to visit a friend with a higher standard of art, morals, or culture, how subtle is the influence; how from such visits (albeit unconsciously, or at least hardly with deliberate resolve) is dated the turning towards the new light, the intention to be more perfect?

One lady, with the real feeling of hostess-ship, took her Whitechapel guests, as she would any others, into a bedroom to take their outdoor things off. Touching, if amusing, was the remark of a girl of fifteen or thereabouts who, turning to her mother, said, ‘Look, mother, here’s a bed with a room all to itself!’ ‘Has any one really slept in this white bed?’ was asked by another of that same party. While to others of a rather higher class, who have been servants before marriage, the reintroduction to such a house is a great pleasure, though to them not such a revelation as it is to those who have passed all their lives in factories or workshops. It is a welcome reminder of their past, and often suggests little improvements in the arrangement of their homes. It is a means also of diffusing a love of beauty, a sense of harmony, and an artistic taste, not to be despised among those who feel that the ‘Beauty of Holiness’ constitutes its attraction to the right living which leads to Righteousness.

In various ways, too many to describe, but which every hostess can devise, the hours between half-past four and eight can be pleasantly filled, until the drawing in of the long summer evening brings the party to a close. The announcement of supper is generally greeted with, ‘What, go home already?’ or, ‘The time don’t go so fast working days,’ but garden parties must necessarily end with daylight, and for folk up at six in the morning ten or eleven o’clock is a late enough bed hour. Supper is generally a small meal--cake, buns, or pastry, with lemonade, fruit, or cold coffee--simply a light refreshment taken standing; but some of the friends who entertain us like better to give the light meal on the arrival of the guests, and the more substantial one later. The first plan, though, is perhaps better, as the people leave their homes early, and many of them miss their dinner altogether, amid the necessary preparation for the long absence.