Chapter VII: Section III: Settlements

Settlements of University Men in Great Towns--Twenty-one Years of University Settlements--The Beginning of Toynbee Hall.

SETTLEMENTS OF UNIVERSITY MEN IN GREAT TOWNS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

[1] A paper read at a meeting in the rooms of Mr. Sidney Ball at St.
John’s College, Oxford, November, 1883.

“Something must be done” is the comment which follows the tale of how the poor live. Those who make the comment have, however, their business--their pieces of ground to see, their oxen to prove, their wives to consider, and so there is among them a general agreement that the “Something” must be done by Law or by Societies. “What can I do?” is a more healthy comment, and it is a sign of the times that this question is being widely asked, and by none more eagerly than by members of the Universities. Undergraduates and graduates, long before the late outcry, had become conscious that social conditions were not right, and that they themselves were called to do something. It is nine years since four or five Oxford undergraduates chose to spend part of their vacation in East London, working as Charity Organization Agents, becoming members of clubs, and teaching in classes or schools. It is long since a well-known Oxford man said, “The great work of our time is to connect centres of learning with centres of industry”. Freshmen have become fellows, since the Master of Balliol recommended his hearers, at a small meeting in the College Hall, to “find their friends among the poor”.

Thus slowly has men’s attention been drawn to consider the social condition of our great towns. The revelations of recent pamphlets have fallen on ears prepared to hear. The fact that the wealth _of_ England means only wealth _in_ England, and that the mass of the people live without knowledge, without hope, and often without health has come home to open minds and consciences. If inquiry has shown that statements have been exaggerated, and the blame badly directed, it is nevertheless evident that the best is the privilege of the few, and that the Gospel--God’s message to this age--does not reach the poor. A workman’s wages cannot procure for him the knowledge which means fullness of life, or the leisure in which he might “possess his soul”. Hardly by saving can he lay up for old age, and only by charity can he get the care of a skilled physician. If it be thus with the first-class workman, the case of the casual labourer, whose strength of mind and body is consumed by anxiety, must be almost intolerable. Statistics, which show the number in receipt of poor relief, the families which occupy single rooms, the death rate in poor quarters, make a “cry” which it needs no words to express.

The thought of the condition of the people has made a strange stirring in the calm life of the Universities, and many men feel themselves driven by a new spirit, possessed by a master idea. They are eager in their talk and in their inquiries, and they ask “What can we do to help the poor?”

A College Mission naturally suggests itself as a form in which the idea should take shape. It seems as if all the members of a college might unite in helping the poor, by adopting a district in a great town, finding for it a clergyman and associating themselves in his work.

A Mission, however, has necessarily its limitations.

The clergyman begins with a hall into which he gathers a congregation, and which he uses as a centre for “Mission” work. He himself is the only link between the college and the poor. He gives frequent reports of his progress, and enlists such personal help as he can, always keeping it in mind that the “district” is destined to become a “parish”. Many districts thus created in East London now take their places among the regular parishes, and the income of the clergyman is paid by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the patronage of the living is probably with the Bishop, and the old connexion has become simply a matter of history. Apart from the doubt whether this multiplication of parochial organizations, with its consequent division of interests, represents a wise policy, it is obvious that a college mission does not wholly cover the idea which possessed the college. The social spirit fulfils itself in many ways, and no one form is adequate to its total expression.

The idea was that all members of the college should unite in good work. A college mission excludes Nonconformists. “Can we do nothing,” complained one, “as we cannot join in building a church?”

The idea was to bring to bear the life of the University on the life of the poor. The tendency of a mission is to limit efforts within the recognized parochial machinery. “Can I help,” I am often asked, “in social work, which is not necessarily connected with your church or creed?” A college mission may--as many missions have done--result in bringing devoted workers to the service of the poor--where a good man leads, good must follow--but it is not, I think, the form best fitted to receive the spirit which is at present moving the Universities.

As a form more adequate, I would suggest a Settlement of University men in the midst of some great industrial centre.

In East London large houses are often to be found; they were formerly the residences of the wealthy, but are now let out in tenements or as warehouses. Such a house, affording sufficient sleeping rooms and large reception rooms, might be taken by a college, fitted with furniture, and (it may be) associated with its name. As director or head, some graduate might be appointed, a man of the right spirit, trusted by all parties; qualified by character to guide men, and by education to teach. He would be maintained by the college just as the clergyman of the mission district. Around such a man graduates and undergraduates would gather. Some working in London as curates, barristers, government clerks, medical students, or business men would be glad to make their home in the house for long periods. They would find there less distraction and more interest than in a West-End lodging. Others engaged elsewhere would come to spend some weeks or months of the vacation, taking up such work as was possible, touching with their lives the lives of the poor, and learning for themselves facts which would revolutionize their minds. There would be, of course, a graduated scale of payment so as to suit the means of the various settlers, but the scale would have to be so fixed as to cover the expense of board and lodging.

Let it, however, be assumed that the details have been arranged, and that, under a wise director, a party of University men have settled in East London. The director--welcomed here, as University men are always welcomed--will have opened relations with the neighbouring clergy, and with the various charitable agencies; he will have found out the clubs and centres of social life, and he will have got some knowledge of the bodies engaged in local government. His large rooms will have been offered for classes, directed by the University Extension or Popular Concert Societies, and for meetings of instruction or entertainment. He will have thus won the reputation of a man with something to give, who is willing to be friendly with his neighbours. At once he will be able to introduce the settlers to duties, which will mean introductions to friendships. Those to whom it is given to know the high things of God, he will introduce to the clergy, who will guide them to find friends among those who, in trouble and sickness, will listen to a life-giving message. Honour men have confessed that they have found a key to life in teaching the Bible to children, and not once nor twice has it happened that old truths have seemed to take new meaning when spoken by a man brought fresh from Oxford to face the poor. Those with the passion for righteousness the director will bring face to face with the victims of sin. In the degraded quarters of the town, in the wards of the workhouses, they will find those to whom the friendship of the pure is strange, and who are to be saved only by the mercy which can be angry as well as pitiful. As I write, I recall one who was brought to us by an undergraduate out of a wretched court, overwhelmed by the look and words of his young enthusiasm. I recall another who was taken from the police court by a Cambridge man, put to an Industrial School, and is now touchingly grateful, not to him, but to God for the service. Some, whose spare time is in the day, will become visitors for the Charity Organization Society, Managers of Industrial and Public Elementary Schools, Members of the Committees which direct Sanitary, Shoe Black, and other Societies, and in these positions form friendships, which to officials, weary of the dull routine, will let in light, and to the poor, fearful of law, will give strength. Others who can spare time only in the evening will teach classes, join clubs, and assist in Co-operative and Friendly Societies, and they will, perhaps, be surprised to find that they know so much that is useful when they see the interest their talk arouses. In one club, I know, whist ceases to be attractive when the gentleman is not there to talk. There are friendly societies worked by artisans, which owe their success to the inspiration of University men, and there is one branch of the Charity Organization Society which still keeps the mark impressed on it, when a man of culture did the lowest work.

The elder settlers will, perhaps, take up official positions. If they could be qualified, they might be Vestry-men and Guardians, or they might qualify themselves to become Schoolmasters. What University men can do in local government is written on the face of parishes redeemed from the demoralizing influence of out-relief, and cleansed by well-administered law. Further reforms are already seen to be near, but it has not entered into men’s imaginations to conceive the change for good which might be wrought if men of culture would undertake the education of the people. The younger settlers will always find occupation day or night in playing with the boys, taking them in the daytime to open spaces, or to visit London sights, amusing them in the evening with games and songs. Unconsciously, they will set up a higher standard of man’s life, and through friendship will commend to these boys respect for manhood, honour for womanhood, reverence for God. Work of such kind will be abundant, and, as it must result in the settlers forming many acquaintances, the large rooms of the house will be much used for receptions. Parties will be frequent, and whatever be the form of entertainment provided, be it books or pictures, lectures or reading, dancing or music, the guests will find that their pleasure lies in intercourse. Social pleasure is unknown to those who have no large rooms and no place for common meeting. The parties of the Settlement will thus be attractive just in so far as they are useful. The more means of intercourse they offer, the more will they be appreciated. The pleasure which binds all together will give force to every method of good-doing, be it the words of the preacher, spoken to the crowd, hushed, perhaps, by the presence of death, or be it the laughter-making tale told during the Saturday ramble in the country.

If something like this is to be the work of a College Settlement, “How far,” it may be asked, “is it adequate to the hope of the college to do something for the poor?” Obviously, it _affords an outlet for every form of earnestness_. No man--call himself what he may--need be excluded from the service of the poor on account of his views. No talent, be it called spiritual or secular, need be lost on account of its unfitness to existing machinery. If there be any virtue, if there be any good in man, whatsoever is beautiful, whatsoever is pure in things will find a place in the Settlement.

There is yet a fuller answer to the question. A Settlement enables men to _live within sight of the poor_. Many a young man would be saved from selfishness if he were allowed at once to translate feeling into action. It is the facility for talk, and the ready suggestion that a money gift is the best relief, which makes some dread lest, after this awakening of interest, there may follow a deeper sleep. He who has, even for a month, shared the life of the poor can never again rest in his old thoughts. If with these obvious advantages, a Settlement seems to want that something which association with religious forms gives to the mission, I can only say that such association does not make work religious, if the workers have not its spirit. If the director be such a man as I can imagine, and if there be any truth in the saying that “Every one that loveth knoweth God,” then it must be that the work of settlers, inspired and guided by love, will be religious. The man in East London, who is the simplest worker for God I know, has added members to many churches, and has no sect or church of his own. The true religious teacher is he who makes known God to man. God is manifest to every age by that which is the Best of the age. The modern representatives of those who healed diseases, taught the ignorant, and preached the Gospel to the poor, are those who make common the Best which can be known or imagined. Christ the Son of God is still the “Christ which is to be”--and even through our Best He will be but darkly seen.

That such work as I have described would be useful in East London, I myself have no doubt. The needs of East London are often urged, but they are little understood. Its inhabitants are at one moment assumed to be well paid workmen, who will get on if they are left to themselves; at another, they are assumed to be outcasts, starving for the necessaries of living. It is impossible but that misunderstanding should follow ignorance, and at the present moment the West-End is ignorant of the East-End. The want of that knowledge which comes only from the sight of others’ daily life, and from sympathy with “the joys and sorrows in widest commonalty spread,” is the source of the mistaken charity which has done much to increase the hardness of the life of the poor.

The much-talked of East London is made up of miles of mean streets, whose inhabitants are in no want of bread or even of better houses; here and there are the courts now made familiar by descriptions. They are few in number, and West-End visitors who have come to visit their “neighbours” confess themselves--with a strange irony on their motives--“disappointed that the people don’t look worse”.

The settlers will find themselves related to two distinct classes of “the poor,” and it will be well if they keep in mind the fact that they must serve both those who, like the artisans, need the necessaries for _life_, and also those who, like casual labourers, need the necessaries for _livelihood_. They will not of course come believing that their Settlement will make the wicked good, the dull glad, and the poor rich, but they may be assured that results will follow the sympathy born of close neighbourhood. It will be something, if they are able to give to a few the higher thoughts in which men’s minds can move, to suggest other forms of recreation, and to open a view over the course of the river of life as it flows to the Infinite Sea. It will be something if they create among a few a distaste for dirt and disorder, if they make some discontented with their degrading conditions, if they leaven public opinion with the belief that the law which provides cleanliness, light and order should be applied equally in all quarters of the town. It will be something, if thus they give to the one class the ideal of life, and stir up in the other those feelings of self-respect, without which increased means of livelihood will be useless. It will be more if to both classes they can show that selfishness or sin is the only really bad thing, and that the best is not “too good for human nature’s daily food”. Nothing that is divine is alien to man, and nothing which can be learnt at the University is too good for East London.

Many have been the schemes of reform I have known, but, out of eleven years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil which does not _bring helper and helped into friendly relations_. Vain will be higher education, music, art, or even the Gospel, unless they come clothed in the life of brother men--“it took the Life to make God known”. Vain, too, will be sanitary legislation and model dwellings, unless the outcast are by friendly hands brought in one by one to habits of cleanliness and order, to thoughts of righteousness and peace. “What will save East London?” asked one of our University visitors of his master. “The destruction of West London” was the answer, and, in so far as he meant the abolition of the influences which divide rich and poor, the answer was right. Not until the habits of the rich are changed, and they are again content to breathe the same air and walk the same streets as the poor, will East London be “saved”. Meantime a Settlement of University men will do a little to remove the inequalities of life, as the settlers share their best with the poor and learn through feeling how they live. It was by residence among the poor that Edward Denison learned the lessons which have taken shape in the new philanthropy of our days. It was by visiting in East London that Arnold Toynbee fed the interest which in later years became such a force at Oxford. It was around a University man, who chose to live as our neighbour, that a group of East Londoners gathered, attracted by the hope of learning something and held together after five years by the joy which learning gives. Men like Mr. Goschen and Professor Huxley have lately spoken out their belief that the intercourse of the highest with the lowest is the only solution of the social problem.

Settlers may thus join the Settlement, looking back to the example of others and to the opinions of the wise--looking forward to the grandest future which has risen on the horizon of hope. It may not be theirs to see the future realized, but it is theirs to cheer themselves with the thought of the time when the disinherited sons of God shall be received into their Father’s house, when the poor will know the Higher Life as it is being revealed to those who watch by the never silent spirit, when daily drudgery will be irradiated with eternal thought, when neither wealth nor poverty will hinder men in their pursuit of the Perfect life, because everything which is Best will be made in love common to all.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

This paper was reprinted in February, 1884, when the following words and names were added.

The following members of the University have undertaken to receive the names of any graduates or undergraduates who feel disposed to join a “Settlement” shortly or at any future time:--

The Rev. the Master of University.
The Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Balliol.
A. Robinson, Esq., New College.
A. H. D. Acland, Esq., Christ Church.
A. Sidgwick, Esq., C.C.C.
W. H. Forbes, Esq., Balliol.
A. L. Smith, Esq., Balliol.
T. H. Warren, Esq., Magdalen.
S. Ball, Esq., St. John’s.
C. E. Dawkins, Esq., Balliol.
B. King, Esq., Balliol.
M. E. Sadler, Esq., Trinity.
H. D. Leigh, Esq., New College.
G. C. Lang, Esq., Balliol.

_Names should be sent in as soon as possible._

OXFORD, Feb., 1884.

THE BEGINNINGS OF TOYNBEE HALL.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

1903.

[1] From “Towards Social Reform”. By kind permission of Messrs. Fisher
Unwin.

“How did the idea of a University Settlement arise?” “What was the beginning?” are questions so often asked by Americans, Frenchmen, Belgians, or the younger generations of earnest English people, that it seems worth while to reply in print, and to trundle one’s mind back to those early days of effort and loneliness before so many bore the burden and shared the anxiety. The fear is that in putting pen to paper on matters which are so closely bound up with our own lives, the sin of egotism will be committed, or that a special plant, which is still growing, may be damaged, as even weeds are if their roots are looked at. And yet in the tale which has to be told there is so much that is gladdening and strengthening to those who are fighting apparently forlorn causes that I venture to tell it in the belief that to some our experiences will give hope.

In the year 1869, Mr. Edward Denison took up his abode in East London. He did not stay long nor accomplish much, but as he breathed the air of the people he absorbed something of their sufferings, saw things from their standpoint, and, as his letters in his memoirs show, made frequent suggestions for social remedies. He was the first settler, and was followed by the late Mr. Edmund Hollond, to whom my husband and I owe our life in Whitechapel. He was ever on the outlook for men and women who cared for the people, and hearing that we wished to come Eastward, wrote to Dr. Jackson, then Bishop of London, when the living of St. Jude’s fell vacant in the autumn of 1872, and asked that it might be offered to Mr. Barnett, who was at that time working as Curate at St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, with Mr. Fremantle, now the Dean of Ripon. I have the Bishop’s letter, wise, kind and fatherly, the letter of a general sending a young captain to a difficult outpost. “Do not hurry in your decision,” he wrote, “it is the worst parish in my diocese, inhabited mainly by a criminal population, and one which has I fear been much corrupted by doles”.

How well I remember the day Mr. Barnett and I first came to see it!--a sulky sort of drizzle filled the atmosphere; the streets, dirty and ill kept, were crowded with vicious and bedraggled people, neglected children, and overdriven cattle. The whole parish was a network of courts and alleys, many houses being let out in furnished rooms at 8d. a night--a bad system, which lent itself to every form of evil, to thriftless habits, to untidiness, to loss of self-respect, to unruly living, to vicious courses.

We did not “hurry in our decision,” but just before Christmas, 1872, Mr. Barnett became vicar. A month later we were married, and took up our life-work on 6 March, 1873, accompanied by our friend Edward Leonard, who joined us, “to do what he could”; his “could” being ultimately the establishment of the Whitechapel Committee of the Charity Organization Society, and a change in the lives and ideals of a large number of young people, whom he gathered round him to hear of the Christ he worshipped.

It would sound like exaggeration if I told my memories of those times. The previous vicar had had a long and disabling illness, and all was out of order. The church, unserved by either curate, choir, or officials, was empty, dirty, unwarmed. Once the platform of popular preachers, Mr. Hugh Allen, and Mr. (now Bishop) Thornton, it had had huge galleries built to accommodate the crowds who came from all parts of London to hear them--galleries which blocked the light, and made the subsequent emptiness additionally oppressive. The schools were closed, the schoolrooms all but devoid of furniture, the parish organization nil; no Mothers’ meeting, no Sunday School, no communicants’ class, no library, no guilds, no music, no classes, nothing alive. Around this barren empty shell surged the people, here to-day, gone to-morrow. Thieves and worse, receivers of stolen goods, hawkers, casual dock labourers, every sort of unskilled low-class cadger congregated in the parish. There was an Irish quarter and a Jews’ quarter, while whole streets were given over to the hangers-on of a vicious population, people whose conduct was brutal, whose ideal was idleness, whose habits were disgusting, and among whom goodness was laughed at, the honest man and the right-living woman being scorned as impracticable. Robberies, assaults, and fights in the street were frequent; and to me, a born coward, it grew into a matter of distress when we became sufficiently well known in the parish for our presence to stop, or at least to moderate, a fight; for then it seemed a duty to join the crowd, and not to follow one’s nervous instincts and pass by on the other side. I recall one breakfast being disturbed by three fights outside the Vicarage. We each went to one, and the third was hindered by a hawker friend who had turned verger, and who fetched the distant policeman, though he evidently remained doubtful as to the value of interference.

We began our work very quietly and simply: opened the church (the first congregation was made up of six or seven old women, all expecting doles for coming), restarted the schools, established relief committees, organized parish machinery, and tried to cauterise, if not to cure, the deep cancer of dependence which was embedded in all our parishioners alike, lowering the best among them and degrading the worst. At all hours, and on all days, and with every possible pretext, the people came and begged. To them we were nothing but the source from which to obtain tickets, money, or food; and so confident were they that help would be forthcoming that they would allow themselves to get into circumstances of suffering or distress easily foreseen, and then send round and demand assistance.

I can still recall my emotions when summoned to a sick woman in Castle Alley, an alley long since pulled down, where the houses, three stories high, were hardly six feet apart; the sanitary accommodation--pits in the cellars; and the whole place only fit for the condemnation it got directly Cross’s Act was passed. This alley, by the way, was in part the cause of Cross’s Act, so great an impression did it make on Lord Cross (then Mr. Cross) when Mr. Barnett induced him to come down and see it.

In this stinking alley, in a tiny dirty room, all the windows broken and stuffed up, lay the woman who had sent for me. There were no bedclothes; she lay on a sacking covered with rags.

“I do not know you,” said I, “but I hear you want to see me.”

“No, ma’am!” replied a fat beer-sodden woman by the side of the bed, producing a wee, new-born baby; “we don’t know yer, but ’ere’s the babby, and in course she wants clothes, and the mother comforts like. So we jist sent round to the church.”

This was a compliment to the organization which represented Christ, but one which showed how sunken was the character which could not make even the simplest provision for an event which must have been expected for months, and which even the poorest among the respectable counts sacred.

The refusal of the demanded doles made the people very angry. Once the Vicarage windows were broken, once we were stoned by an angry crowd, who also hurled curses at us as we walked down a criminal-haunted street, and howled out as a climax to their wrongs “And it’s us as pays ’em”. But we lived all this down, and as the years went by reaped a harvest of love and gratitude which is one of the gladdest possessions of our lives, and is quite disproportionate to the service we have rendered. But this is the end of the story, and I must go back to the beginning.

In a parish which occupies only a few acres, and was inhabited by 8,000 persons, we were confronted by some of the hardest problems of city life. The housing of the people, the superfluity of unskilled labour, the enforcement of resented education, the liberty of the criminal classes to congregate and create a low public opinion, the administration of the Poor Law, the amusement of the ignorant, the hindrances to local government (in a neighbourhood devoid of the leisured and cultured), the difficulty of uniting the unskilled men and women, in trade unions, the necessity for stricter Factory Acts, the joylessness of the masses, the hopefulness of the young--all represented difficult problems, each waiting for a solution and made more complicated by the apathy of the poor, who were content with an unrighteous contentment and patient with an ungodly patience. These were not the questions to be replied to by doles, nor could the problem be solved by kind acts to individuals nor by the healing of the suffering, which was but the symptom of the disease.

In those days these difficulties were being dealt with mainly by good kind women, generally elderly; few men, with the exception of the clergy and noted philanthropists, as Lord Shaftesbury, were interested in the welfare of the poor, and economists rarely joined close experience with their theories.

“If men, cultivated, young, thinking men, could only know of these things they would be altered,” I used to say, with girlish faith in human goodwill--a faith which years has not shaken; and in the spring of 1875 we went to Oxford, partly to tell about the poor, partly to enjoy “eights week” with a group of young friends. Our party was planned by Miss Toynbee, whom I had met when at school, and whose brother Arnold was then an undergraduate at Pembroke. Our days were filled with the hospitality with which Oxford still rejoices its guests; but in the evenings we used to drop quietly down the river with two or three earnest men, or sit long and late in our lodgings in the Turl, and discuss the mighty problems of poverty and the people.

How vividly Canon Barnett and I can recall each and all of the first group of “thinking men,” so ready to take up enthusiasms in their boyish strength--Arnold Toynbee, Sidney Ball, W. H. Forbes, Arthur Hoare, Leonard Montefiore, Alfred Milner, Philip Gell, John Falk, G. E. Underhill, Ralph Whitehead, Lewis Nettleship! Some of these are still here, and caring for our people, but others have passed behind the veil, where perhaps earth’s sufferings are explicable.

We used to ask each undergraduate as he developed interest to come and stay in Whitechapel, and see for himself. And they came, some to spend a few weeks, some for the Long Vacation, while others, as they left the University and began their life’s work, took lodgings in East London, and felt all the fascination of its strong pulse of life, hearing, as those who listen always may, the hushed, unceasing moans underlying the cry which ever and anon makes itself heard by an unheeding public.

From that first visit to Oxford in the “eights week” of 1875, date many visits to both the Universities. Rarely a term passed without our going to Oxford, where the men who had been down to East London introduced us to others who might do as they had done. Sometimes we stayed with Dr. Jowett, the immortal Master of Balliol, sometimes we were the guests of the undergraduates, who would get up meetings in their rooms, and organize innumerable breakfasts, teas, river excursions, and other opportunities for introducing the subject of the duty of the cultured to the poor and degraded.

No organization was started, no committee, no society, no club formed. We met men, told them of the needs of the out-of-sight poor; and many came to see Whitechapel and stayed to help it. And so eight years went by--our Oxford friends laughingly calling my husband the “unpaid professor of social philosophy”.

In June, 1883, we were told by Mr. Moore Smith that some men at St. John’s College at Cambridge were wishful to do something for the poor, but that they were not quite prepared to start an ordinary College Mission. Mr. Barnett was asked to suggest some other possible and more excellent way. The letter came as we were leaving for Oxford, and was slipped with others in my husband’s pocket. Soon something went wrong with the engine and delayed the train so long that the passengers were allowed to get out. We seated ourselves on the railway bank, just then glorified by masses of large ox-eyed daisies, and there he wrote a letter suggesting that men might hire a house, where they could come for short or long periods, and, living in an industrial quarter, learn to “sup sorrow with the poor”. The letter pointed out that close personal knowledge of individuals among the poor must precede wise legislation for remedying their needs, and that as English local government was based on the assumption of a leisured cultivated class, it was necessary to provide it artificially in those regions where the line of leisure was drawn just above sleeping hours, and where the education ended at thirteen years of age and with the three R’s.

That letter founded Toynbee Hall. Insomnia had sapped my health for a long time, and later, in the autumn of that year, we were sent to Eaux Bonnes to try a water-cure. During that period the Cambridge letter was expanded into a paper, which was read at a college meeting at St. John’s College, Oxford, in November of the same year. Mr. Arthur Sidgwick was present, and it is largely due to his practical vigour that the idea of University Settlements in the industrial working-class quarters of large towns fell not only on sympathetic ears, but was guided until it came to fruition. The first meeting of undergraduates met in the room of Mr. Cosmo Lang now (1908), about to become Archbishop of York. Soon after the meeting a small but earnest committee was formed; later on the committee grew in size and importance, money was obtained on debenture bonds, and a Head sought who would turn the idea into a fact. Here was the difficulty. Such men as had been pictured in the paper which Mr. Knowles had published in the “Nineteenth Century Review” of February, 1884, are not met with every-day; and no inquiries seemed to discover the wanted man who would be called upon to give all and expect nothing.

Mr. Barnett and I had spent eleven years of life and work in Whitechapel. We were weary. My health stores were limited and often exhausted, and family circumstances had given us larger means and opportunities for travel. We were therefore desirous to turn our backs on the strain, the pain, the passion and the poverty of East London, at least for a year or two, and take repose after work which had aged and weakened us. But no other man was to be found who would and could do the work; and, if this child-thought was not to die, it looked as if we must undertake to try and rear it.

We went to the Mediterranean to consider the matter, and solemnly, on a Sunday morning, made our decision. How well I recall the scene as we sat at the end of the quaint harbour-pier at Mentone, the blue waves dancing at our feet, everything around scintillating with light and movement in contrast to the dull and dulling squalor of the neighbourhood which had been our home for eleven years, and which our new decision would make our home for another indefinite spell of labour and effort. “God help us,” we said to each other; and then we wired home to obtain the refusal of the big Industrial School next to St. Jude’s Vicarage, which had recently been vacated, and which we thought to be a good site for the first Settlement, and returned to try and live up to the standard which we had unwittingly set for ourselves in describing in the article the unknown man who was wanted for Warden.

The rest of the story is soon told. The Committee did the work, bought the land, engaged the architect (Mr. Elijah Hoole), raised the money, and interested more and more men, who came for varying periods, either to live, to visit, or to see what was being done.

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On 10 March, 1883, Arnold Toynbee had died. He had been our beloved and faithful friend, ever since, as a lad of eighteen, his own mind then being chiefly concerned with military interests and ideals, he had heard, with the close interest of one treading untrodden paths, facts about the toiling, ignorant multitude whose lives were stunted by labour, clouded by poverty, and degraded by ignorance. He had frequently been to see us at St. Jude’s, staying sometimes a few nights, oftener tempting us to go a day or two with him into the country; and ever wooing us with persistent hospitality to Oxford. Once in 1879 he had taken rooms over the Charity Organization Office in Commercial Road, hoping to spend part of the Long Vacation, learning of the people; but his health, often weakly, could not stand the noise of the traffic, the sullenness of the aspect, nor the pain which stands waiting at every corner; and at the end of some two or three weeks he gave up the plan and left East London, never to return except as our welcome guest. His share of the movement was at Oxford, where with a subtle force of personality he attracted original or earnest minds of all degrees, and turned their thoughts or faces towards the East End and its problems. Through him many men came to work with us, while others were stirred by the meetings held in Oxford, or by the pamphlet called the “Bitter Cry,” which, in spite of its exaggerations, aroused many to think of the poor; or by the stimulating teaching of Professor T. H. Green, and by the constant, kindly sympathy of the late Master of Balliol, who startled some of his hearers, who had not plumbed the depths of his wide, wise sympathy, by advising all young men, whatever their career, “to make some of their friends among the poor”.

The 10th of March, 1884, was a Sunday, and on the afternoon of that day Balliol Chapel was filled with a splendid body of men who had come together from all parts of England in loving memory of Arnold Toynbee, on the anniversary of his death. Dr. Jowett had asked my husband to preach to them, and they listened, separating almost silently at the chapel porch, filled, one could almost feel, by the aspiration to copy him in caring much, if not doing much, for those who had fallen by the way or were “vacant of our glorious gains”.

We had often chatted, those of us who were busy planning the new Settlement, as to what to call it. We did not mean the name to be descriptive; it should, we thought, be free from every possible savour of a Mission, and yet it should in itself be suggestive of a noble aim. As I sat on that Sunday afternoon in the chapel, one of the few women among the crowd of strong-brained, clean-living men assembled in reverent affection for one man, the thought flashed to me, “Let us call the Settlement Toynbee Hall”. To Mr. Bolton King, the honorary secretary of the committee, had come the same idea, and it, finding favour with the committee, was so decided, and our new Settlement received its name before a brick was laid or the plans concluded.

On the first day of July, 1884, the workmen began to pull down the old Industrial School, and to adapt such of it as was possible for the new uses; and on Christmas Eve, 1884, the first settlers, Mr. H. D. Leigh, of Corpus, and Mr. C. H. Grinling, of Hertford, slept in Toynbee Hall, quickly followed by thirteen residents, some of whom had been living in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, some for a considerable length of time, either singly or in groups, one party inhabiting a small disused public-house, others in model dwellings or in lodgings, none of them being altogether suitable for their own good or the needs of those whom they would serve. Those men had become settlers before the Settlement scheme was conceived, and as such were conversant with the questions in the air. It was an advantage also, that they were of different ages, friends of more than one University generation, and linked together by a common friendship to us.

The present Dean of Ripon had for many years lent his house at No. 3, Ship Street, for our use, and so had enabled us to spend some consecutive weeks of each summer at Oxford; and during those years we had learnt to know the flower of the University, counting, as boy friends, some men who have since become world-widely known; some who have done the finest work and “scorned to blot it with a name”; and others who, as civil servants, lawyers, doctors, country gentlemen, business men, have in the more humdrum walks of life carried into practice the same spirit of thoughtful sympathy which first brought them to inquire concerning those less endowed and deprived of life’s joys, or those who, handicapped by birth, training, and environment, had fallen by the way.

As to what Toynbee Hall has done and now is doing, it is difficult for any one, and impossible for me, to speak. Perhaps I cannot be expected to see the wood for the trees. Those who have cared to come and see for themselves what is being done, to stay in the house and join in its work, know that Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, is a place where twenty University men live in order to work for, to teach, to learn of the poor. Since 1884 the succession of residents has never failed. Men of varied opinions and many views, both political and religious, have lived harmoniously together, some staying as long as fifteen years, others remaining shorter periods. All have left behind them marks of their residence; sometimes in the policy of the local Boards, of which they have become members; or in relation to the Student Residences; or the Antiquarian, Natural History, or Travelling Clubs which individuals among them have founded; or by busying themselves with classes, debates, conferences, discussions. Their activities have been unceasing and manifold, but looking over many years and many men it seems to my inferior womanly mind that the best work has been done by those men who have cared most deeply for individuals among the poor. Out of such deep care has grown intimate knowledge of their lives and industrial position, and from knowledge has come improvement in laws, conditions, or administration. It is such care that has awakened in the people the desire to seek what is best. It is the care of those, who, loving God, have taught others to know Him. It is the care of those who, pursuing knowledge and rejoicing in learning, have spread it among the ignorant more effectively than books, classes or lectures could have done. It is the care for the degraded which alone rouses them to care for themselves. It is the care for the sickly, the weak, the oppressed, the rich, the powerful, the happy, the teacher and taught, the employed and the employer, which enables introduction to be made and interpretation of each other to be offered and accepted. From this seed of deep individual care has grown a large crop of friendship, and many flowers of graceful acts.

It is the duty of Toynbee Hall, situated as it is at the gate of East London, to play the part of a skilful host and introduce the East to the West; but all the guests must be intimate friends, or there will be social blunders. To quote some words out of a report, Toynbee Hall is “an association of persons, with different opinions and different tastes; its unity is that of variety; its methods are spiritual rather than material; it aims at permeation rather than conversion; and its trust is in friends linked to friends rather than in organization”....

It was a crowded meeting of the Universities Settlements Association that was held in Balliol Hall in March, 1892, it being known that Dr. Jowett, who had recently been dangerously ill, would take the chair. He spoke falteringly (for he was still weakly), and once there came an awful pause that paled the hearers who loved him, in fear for his well-being. He told something of his own connexion with the movement; of how he had twice stayed with us in Whitechapel, and had seen men’s efforts to lift this dead weight of ignorance and pain. He referred to Arnold Toynbee, one of the “purest-minded of men,” and one who “troubled himself greatly over the unequal position of mankind”. He told of the force of friendship which was to him sacred, and “some of which should be offered to the poor”. He dwelt on his own hopes for Toynbee Hall, and of its uses to Oxford, as well as to Whitechapel; and he spoke also of us and our work, but those words were conceived by his friendship for and his faith in us, and hardly represented the facts. They left out of sight what the Master of Balliol could only imperfectly know--the countless acts of kindness, the silent gifts of patient service, and the unobtrusive lives of many men; their reverence before weakness and poverty, their patience with misunderstanding, their faith in the power of the best, their tenderness to children and their boldness against vice. These are the foundations on which Toynbee Hall has been built, and on which it aims to raise the ideals of human life, and strengthen faith in God.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENTS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

June, 1905.

[1] From “The University Review”. By permission of the Editor.

Twenty-five years ago many social reformers were set on bringing about a co-operation between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the industrial classes. Arnold Toynbee thought he could study at Oxford during term time and lecture in great cities during the vacation. Professor Stuart thought that University teaching might be extended among working people by means of centres locally established. There were others to whom it seemed that no way could be so effective as the way of residence, and they advocated a plan by which members of the University should during some years live their lives among the poor.

Present social reformers have, however, other business on hand. They think that something practical is of first importance, some alteration in the land laws, which would make good houses more possible--some modification of the relation between labour and capital, which would spread the national wealth over a larger number of people. They see something which Parliament or the municipal bodies could do, which seems to be very good, and they are not disposed to spend time on democratizing the old Universities or on humanizing the working-man.

The present generation of reformers claim to be practical, but one who belongs to the past generation and is not without sympathy with the present, may also claim that much depends on the methods by which good objects are secured. There is truth in the saying that means are more important than ends. Many present evils are due to the means--the force, the flattery, the haste--by which good men of old time achieved their ends. “God forgive all good men” was the prayer of Charles Kingsley.

Reformers may to-day pass laws which would exalt the poor and bring down the rich, but if in the passing of such laws bitterness, anger, and uncharitableness were increased, and if, as the result, the exalted poor proved incapable of using or of enjoying their power--another giant behaving like a giant--where would be the world’s gain? The important thing surely is not that the poor shall be exalted, but that rich and poor shall equally feel the joy of their being and, living together in peace and goodwill, make a society to be a blessing to all nations.

Co-operation between the Universities and working men, between knowledge and industry, might--it seemed to the reformers of old days--make a force which would secure a reform not to be reformed, a repentance not to be repented of, a sort of progress whose means would justify its end.

The Universities have the knowledge of human things. Their professors and teachers have, in some measure, the secret of living, they know that life consists not in possessions, and that society has other bonds than force or selfishness, and they offer in their homes the best example of simple and refined living. They have studied the art of expression, and can put into words the thoughts of many hearts. They look with the eye of science over the fields of history, they appreciate tradition at its proper value, and are familiar with the mistakes which, in old times, broke up great hopes. Their minds are trained to leap from point to point in thought. They have followed the struggles of humanity towards its ideals, they know something of what is in man, and something of what he can possibly achieve.

If these national Universities, with their wealth of knowledge, felt at the same time the pressure of those problems which mean suffering to the workmen, they would be watch-towers from which watchmen would discern the signs of the times, those movements on the horizon now as small as a man’s hand but soon to cover the sky. If by sympathy they felt the unrest, which all over the world is giving cause for disquietude to those in authority, they would give a form to the wants, and show to those who cry, and those who listen, the meaning of the unrest. If they were in touch with the industrial classes, they would adapt their teaching to the needs and understandings of men, struggling to secure their position in a changing industrial system, and better acquainted with facts than with theories about facts. A democratized University would be constrained to give forth the principles which underlie social progress, to show the nation what is alterable and unalterable in the structure of society--what there is for pride or for shame in its past history, what is the expenditure which makes or destroys wealth--it would be driven to help to solve the mystery of the unemployed, why there should be so much unemployment when there must be so great a demand for employment if people are to be fitly clothed and fed and housed. It would, at any rate, guide the nation to remedies which would not be worse than the disease.

“How,” it was once asked of an Oxford professor, “can the University be adapted to take its place in modern progress.” His answer was “By establishing in its neighbourhood a great industrial centre.” The presence, that is to say, of workmen would bring the Universities to face the realities of the day, raise their policy to something more important than that of compulsory Greek, and direct their teaching to other needs than those felt by the limited class, whose children become undergraduates or listeners to an “extension lecturer”. A committee of the University dons has been described as a meeting where each member is only a critic, where nothing simple or practical has a chance of adoption, and only a paradox gets attention. If labour were heard knocking at its doors, and demanding that the national knowledge, of which the Universities are the trustees, should be put at its service, the same committee would cease criticizing and begin to be practical. Knowledge without industry is often selfishness.

If Oxford and Cambridge need what workmen can give, the workmen have no less need of the Universities. Workmen have the strength of character which comes of daily contact with necessity, the discipline of labour, sympathy with the sorrow and sufferings of neighbours with whose infirmities they themselves are touched. The working classes have on their side the force of sacrifice and the power of numbers. They have the future in their hands. If they had their share of the knowledge stored in the National Universities they would know better at what to aim, what to do, and how to do it. They, as it is, are often blind and unreasoning. Blind to the things which really satisfy human nature while they eagerly follow after their husks, unable to pursue a chain of thought while they readily act on some gaudy dogma, inclined to think food the chief good, selfishness the one motive of action, and force the only remedy. The speeches of candidates for workmen’s constituencies--their promises--their jokes--their appeals are the measure of the industrial mind. How would a Parliament of workmen deal with those elements which make so large a part of the nation’s strength--its traditions--its literature--its natural scenery--its art? What sort of education would it foster? Would it recognize that the imagination is the joy of life and a commercial asset, that unity depends on variety, that respect and not only toleration is due to honest opponents? How would it understand the people of India or deal reverently with the intricate motives, the fears and hopes of other nations? How would workmen themselves fulfil their place in the future if well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, they had no other recreation than the spectacle of a football match? Industry without knowledge is often brutality.

Workmen have the energy, the honesty, the fellow feeling, the habit of sacrifice which are probably the best part of the national inheritance, but as a class they have not knowledge of human things, the delicate sense which sees what is in man--the judgment which knows the value of evidence--the feeling which would guide them to distinguish idols from ideals and set them on making a Society in which every human being shall enjoy the fullness of his being. They have not insight nor far-sight and their frequent attitude is that of suspicion. If sometimes I am asked what I desire for East London I think of all the goodness, the struggles, the suffering I have seen--the sorrows of the poor and the many fruitless remedies--and I say “more education,” “higher education”. People cannot really be raised by gifts or food or houses. A healthy body may be used for low as for high objects. People must raise themselves--that which raises a man like that which defiles a man comes from within a man. People therefore must have the education which will reveal to them the powers within themselves and within other men, their capacities for thinking and feeling, for admiration, hope and love. They must be made something more than instruments of production, they must be made capable of enjoying the highest things. They need therefore something more than technical teaching, it is not enough for England to be the workshop of the world, it must export thoughts and hopes as well as machines. The Tower of London would be a better defence for the nation if it were a centre of teaching, than as a barracks for soldiers. The working class movement which is so full of promise for the nation seems to me likely to fail unless it be inspired by the human knowledge which the Universities represent. Working-men without such knowledge will--to say nothing else--be always suspicious as to one another and as to the objects which they seek.

The old Universities and industry must, if this analysis be near the truth, co-operate for social reform. There are many ways to bring them together. The University extension movement might be worked by the hands of the great labour organizations--legislation might adapt the constitution of the Universities to the coming days of labour ascendancy--workmen might be brought up to graduate in colleges, and they might, as an experiment, be allowed to use existing colleges during vacations.

But the subject of this paper is the “way of Settlements”. Members of the Universities, it is claimed, may for a few years settle in industrial centres, and in natural intercourse come into contact with their neighbours. There is nothing like contact for giving or getting understanding. There is no lecture and no book so effective as life. Culture spreads by contact. University men who are known as neighbours, who are met in the streets, in the clubs, and on committees, who can be visited in their own rooms, amid their own books and pictures, commend what the University stands for as it cannot otherwise be commended. On the other hand workmen who are casually and frequently met, whose idle words become familiar, whose homes are known, reveal the workman mind as it is not revealed by clever essayists or by orators of their own class. The friendship of one man of knowledge and one man of industry may go but a small way to bring together the Universities and the working classes, but it is such friendship which prepares the way for the understanding which underlies co-operation. If misunderstanding is war, understanding is peace. The men who settle may either take rooms by themselves, or they may associate themselves in a Settlement. There is something to be said for each plan. The advantage of Settlement is that a body of University men living together keep up the distinctive characteristics of their training, they better resist the tendency to put on the universal drab, and they bring a variety into their neighbourhood. They are helped, too, by the companionship of their fellows, to take larger views of what is wanted, their enthusiasm for progress is kept alive and at the same time well pruned by friendly and severe criticism.

But whether men live in lodgings or in Settlements, there is one necessary condition besides that of social interest if they are to be successful in uniting knowledge and industry in social reform. They must live their own life. There must be no affectation of asceticism, and no consciousness of superiority. They must show forth the taste, the mind and the faith that is in them. They have not come as “missioners,” they have come to settle, that is, to learn as much as to teach, to receive as much as to give.

Settlements which have been started during the last twenty years have not always fulfilled this condition. Many have become centres of missionary effort. They have often been powerful for good, and their works done by active and devoted men or women have so disturbed the water, that many unknown sick folk have been healed. They, however, are primarily missions. A Settlement in the original idea was not a mission, but a means by which University men and workmen might by natural intercourse get to understand one another, and co-operate in social reform.

There are many instances of such understanding and co-operation.

Twenty years ago primary education was much as it had been left by Mr. Lowe. Some University men living in a Settlement soon became conscious of the loss involved in the system, they talked with neighbours who by themselves were unconscious of the loss till inspired, and inspiring they formed an Education Reform League. There were committees, meetings, and public addresses. The league was a small affair, and seems to be little among the forces of the time. But every one of its proposals have been carried out. Some of its members in high official positions have wielded with effect the principles which were elaborated in the forge at which they and working men sweated together. Others of its members on local authorities or as citizens have never forgotten the inner meaning of education as they learnt it from their University friends.

Another instance may be offered. The relief of the poor is a subject on which the employing and the employed classes naturally incline to take different views. They suspect one another’s remedies. The working men hate both the charity of the rich and the strict administration of the economist, while they themselves talk a somewhat impracticable socialism. University men who assist in such relief, are naturally suspected as members of the employing class. A few men, however, who as residents had become known in other relations, and were recognized as human, induced some workmen to take part in administering relief. Together they faced actual problems, together they made mistakes, together they felt sympathy with sorrow, and saw the break-down of their carefully designed action. The process went on for years, the personnel of the body of fellow-workers has changed, but there has been a gradual approach from the different points of view. The University men have more acutely realized some of the causes of distress, the need of preserving and holding up self-respect, the pressure of the industrial system, and the claim of sufferers from this system to some compensation. They have learnt through their hearts. The workmen, on the other hand, have realized the failure of mere relief to do permanent good, the importance of thought in every case, and the kindness of severity. The result of this co-operation may be traced in the fact that workmen, economists and socialists have been found advocating the same principle of relief, and now more lately in the establishment of Mr. Long’s committee which is carrying those principles into effect. Far be it from me to claim that this committee is the direct outcome of the association of University and working-men, or to assert that this committee has discovered the secret of poverty, but it is certain that this committee represents the approach of two different views of relief, and that among some of its active members are workmen and University men who as neighbours in frequent intercourse learnt to respect and trust one another.

There is one other instance which is also of interest. Local Government is the corner-stone in the English Constitution. The people in their own neighbourhoods learn what self-government means, as their own Councils and Boards make them happy or unhappy. The government in industrial neighbourhoods is often bad, sometimes because the members are self-seekers, more often because they are ignorant or vainglorious. How can it be otherwise? If the industrial neighbourhood is self-contained, as for example in East London, it has few inhabitants with the necessary leisure for study or for frequent attendance at the meetings. If it is part of a larger government--as in county boroughs--it is unknown to the majority of the community. The consequence is that the neighbourhoods wanting most light and most water and most space have the least, and that bodies whose chief concern should be health and education waste their time and their rates arranging their contracts so as to support local labour. In a word, industrial neighbourhoods suffer for want of a voice to express their needs and for the want of the knowledge which can distinguish man from man, recognize the relative importance of spending and saving, and encourage mutual self-respect.

University men may and in some measure have met this want. They, by residence, have learnt the wants, and their voice has helped to bring about the more equal treatment which industrial districts are now receiving. They have often, for instance, been instrumental in getting the Libraries’ Act adopted. They have as members of local bodies learnt much and taught something. They have always won the respect of their fellow-members, and if not always successful in preventing the neighbourly kindnesses which seem to them to be “jobs,” or in forwarding expenditure which seems to them the best economy, they have kept up the lights along the course of public honour.

There are other examples in which results cannot be so easily traced. There have been friendships formed at clubs which have for ever changed the respective points of view affecting both taste and opinion. There have been new ideas born in discussion classes, which, beginning in special talk about some one subject, have ended in fireside confidences over the deepest subjects of life and faith. There have been common pleasures, travels, and visits in which every one has felt new interest, seeing things with other eyes, and learning that the best and most lasting amusement comes from mind activity. The University man who has a friend among the poor henceforth sees the whole class differently through that medium, and so it is with the workman who has a University man as his friend. The glory of a Settlement is not that it has spread opinions, or increased temperance, or relieved distress, but that it has promoted peace and goodwill.

But enough has been said to illustrate the point that by the way of residence the forces of knowledge and industry are brought into co-operation. The way, if long, is practicable. More men might live among the poor. The effort to do so involves the sacrifice of much which habits of luxury have marked as necessary. It involves the daring to be peculiar, which is often especially hard for the man who in the public school has learnt to support himself on school tradition.

Nothing has been said as to the effect of Settlements on Oxford and Cambridge. There does not seem to be much change in the attitude of these Universities to social reform, and they are not apparently moved by any impulse which comes from workmen. But judgment in this matter must be cautious as changes may be going on unnoticed. It is certain, at any rate, that the individual members who have lived among the poor are changed. If a greater number would live in the same way that experience could not fail ultimately to influence University life.

Social reform will soon be the all-absorbing interest as the modern realization of the claims of human nature and the growing power of the people, will not tolerate many of the present conditions of industrial life. The well-being of the future depends on the methods by which reform proceeds. Reforms in the past have often been disappointing. They have been made in the name of the rights of one class, and have ended in the assertion of rights over another class. They have been made by force and produced reaction. They have been done for the people not by the people, and have never been assimilated. The method by which knowledge and industry may co-operate has yet to be tried, and one way in which to bring about such co-operation is the way of University Settlements.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.