THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE LONDON POOR.
By WALTER BESANT.
Everybody knows, in general terms, how the English working classes amuse themselves. Let us, however, set down the exact facts, so far as we can get at them, and consider them. First, it must be remembered that the workman of the present day possesses an accomplishment, or a weapon, which was denied to his fathers—he can read. That possession ought to open a boundless field; but it has not yet done so, for the simple reason that we have entirely forgotten to give the working man anything to read. This, if any, is a case in which the supply should have preceded and created the demand. Books are dear; beside, if a man wants to buy books, there is no one to guide him or tell him what he should get. Suppose, for instance, a studious workingman anxious to teach himself natural history, how is he to know the best, latest, and most trustworthy books? And so for every branch of learning. Secondly, there are no free libraries to speak of; I find in London one for Camden Town, one for Bethnal Green, one for South London, one for Notting Hill, one for Westminster, and one for the City; and this seems to exhaust the list. It would be interesting to know the daily average of evening visitors at these libraries. There are three millions of the working classes in London; there is, therefore, one free library for every half million, or, leaving out a whole three-fourths in order to allow for the children and the old people and those who are wanted at home, there is one library for every 125,000 people. The accommodation does not seem liberal, but one has as yet heard no complaints of overcrowding. It may be said, however, that the workman reads his paper regularly. That is quite true. The paper which he most loves is red hot on politics; and its readers are assumed to be politicians of the type which considers the millennium only delayed by the existence of the Church, the House of Lords, and a few other institutions. Yet our English workingman is not a firebrand, and though he listens to an immense quantity of fiery oratory, and reads endless fiery articles, he has the good sense to perceive that none of the destructive measures recommended by his friends are likely to improve his own wages or reduce the price of food. It is unfortunate that the favorite and popular papers, which might instruct the people in so many important matters—such as the growth, extent, and nature of the trades by which they live, the meaning of the word Constitution, the history of the British Empire, the rise and development of our liberties, and so forth—teach little or nothing on these or any other points.
If the workman does not read, however, he talks. At present he talks for the most part on the pavement and in public houses, but there is every indication that we shall see before long a rapid growth of workmen’s clubs—not the tea-and-coffee make-believes set up by the well meaning, but honest, independent clubs, in every respect such as those in Pall Mall, managed by the workmen themselves. Meantime, there is the public house for a club, and perhaps the workman spends, night after night, more than he should, upon beer. Let us remember, if he needs excuse, that his employers have found him no better place and no better amusement than to sit in a tavern, drink beer (generally in moderation), and talk and smoke tobacco.
Another magnificent gift he has obtained of late years—the excursion train and the cheap steamboat. For a small sum he can get far away from the close and smoky town, to the seaside perhaps, but certainly to the fields and country air; he can make of every fine Sunday in the summer a holiday indeed. Again, for those who can not afford the country excursion, there is now a park accessible from almost every quarter. And I seriously recommend to all those who are inclined to take a gloomy view concerning their fellow creatures, and the mischievous and dangerous tendencies of the lower classes, to pay a visit to Battersea Park on any Sunday evening in the summer.
As regards the workingman’s theatrical tastes, they lean, so far as they go, to the melodrama; but as a matter of fact there are great masses of working people who never go to the theater at all. Music halls there are, certainly, and these provide shows more or less dramatic, and, though they are not so numerous as might have been expected, they form a considerable part of the amusements of the people; it is therefore a thousand pities that among the “topical” songs, the breakdowns, and the comic songs, room has never been found for part-songs or for music of a quiet and somewhat better kind. The proprietors doubtless know their audience, but wherever the Kyrle Society has given concerts to working people they have succeeded in interesting them by music and songs of a kind to which they are not accustomed in their music halls.
The theater, the music hall, the public house, the Sunday excursion, the parks—these seem almost to exhaust the list of amusement. There are also, however, the suburban gardens, such as North Woolwich and Rosherville, where there are entertainments of all kinds, and dancing; there are the tea-gardens all round London; there are such places of resort as Kew and Hampton Court, Bushey, Burnham Beeches, Epping, Hainault and Rye House. There are also the harmonic meetings, the free-and-easy evenings, and the friendly leads at the public houses.
As regards the women, I declare that I have never been able to find out anything at all concerning their amusements. Certainly one can see a few of them any Sunday walking about in the lanes and in the fields of northern London, with their lovers; in the evening they may also be observed having tea in the tea-gardens. These, however, are the better sort of girls; they are well dressed, and generally quiet in their behavior. The domestic servants, for the most part, spend their “evening out” in taking tea with other servants, whose evening is in. On the same principle, an actor, when he has a holiday, goes to another theater; and no doubt it must be interesting for a cook to observe the differentiæ, the finer shades of difference, in the conduct of a kitchen. When women are married and the cares of maternity set in, one does not see how they can get any holiday or recreation at all; but I believe a good deal is done for their amusement by the mothers’ meetings and other clerical agencies. There is, however, below the shopgirls, the dressmakers, the servants, and the working girls, whom the world, so to speak, knows, a very large class of women whom the world does not know, and is not anxious to know. They are the factory hands of London; you can see them, if you wish, trooping out of the factories and places where they work on any Saturday afternoon, and thus get them, so to speak, in the lump. Their amusement seems to consist of nothing but walking about the streets, two and three abreast, and they laugh and shout as they go so noisily that they must needs be extraordinarily happy. These girls are, I am told, for the most part so ignorant and helpless, that many of them do not know even how to use a needle; they can not read, or if they can, they never do; they carry the virtue of independence as far as they are able; and insist on living by themselves, two sharing a single room; nor will they brook the least interference with their freedom, even from those who try to help them. Who are their friends, what becomes of them in the end, why they all seem to be about eighteen years of age, at what period of life they begin to get tired of walking up and down the streets, who their sweethearts are, what are their thoughts, what are their hopes—these are questions which no man can answer, because no man could make them communicate their experiences and opinions. Perhaps only a Bible-woman or two knows the history, and could tell it, of the London factory girl. Their pay is said to be wretched, whatever work they do; their food, I am told, is insufficient for young and hearty girls, consisting generally of tea and bread or bread and butter for breakfast and supper, and for dinner a lump of fried fish and a piece of bread. What can be done? The proprietors of the factory will give no better wages, the girls can not combine, and there is no one to help them. One would not willingly add another to the “rights” of man or woman; but surely, if there is such a thing at all as a “right,” it is that a day’s labor shall earn enough to pay for sufficient food, for shelter, and for clothes. As for the amusements of these girls, it is a thing which may be considered when something has been done for their material condition. The possibility of amusement only begins when we have reached the level of the well-fed. Great Gaster will let no one enjoy play who is hungry. Would it be possible, one asks in curiosity, to stop the noisy and mirthless laughter of these girls with a hot supper of chops fresh from the grill? Would they, if they were first well fed, incline their hearts to rest, reflection, instruction, and a little music?
The cheap excursions, the school feasts, the concerts given for the people, the increased brightness of religious services, the bank holidays, the Saturday half holidays, all point to the gradual recognition of the great natural law that men and women, as well as boys and girls, must have play. At the present moment we have just arrived at the stage of acknowledging this law; the next step will be that of respecting it, and preparing to obey it; just now we are willing and anxious that all should play; and it grieves us to see that in their leisure hours the people do not play because they do not know how.
Compare, for instance, the young workman with the young gentleman—the public schoolman, one of the kind who makes his life as “all round” as he can, and learns and practices whatever his hand findeth to do. Or, if you please, compare him with one of the better sort of young city clerks; or, again, compare him with one of the lads who belong to the classes now held in the building of the old Polytechnic; or with the lads who are found every evening at the classes of the Birkbeck. First of all, the young workman can not play any game at all; neither cricket, football, tennis, racquets, fives, or any of the other games which the young fellows in the class above him love so passionately; there are, in fact, no places for him where these games can be played; for though the boys may play cricket in Victoria Park, I do not understand that the carpenters, shoemakers, or painters have got clubs and play there too. There is no gymnasium for them, and so they never know the use of their limbs; they can not row, though they have a splendid river to row upon; they can not box, fence, wrestle, play single-stick, or shoot with the rifle; they do not, as a rule, join the volunteer corps; they do not run, leap, or practice athletics of any kind; they can not swim; they can not sing in parts, unless, which is naturally rare, they belong to a church choir; they can not play any kind of instrument—to be sure the public school boy is generally groveling in the same shameful ignorance of music. They never read. Think what it must be to be shut out entirely from the world of history, philosophy, poetry, fiction, essays and travels! Yet our working classes are thus practically excluded. Partly they have done this for themselves, because they have never felt the desire to read books; partly, as I said above, we have done it for them, because we have never taken any steps to create the demand. Now as regards these arts and accomplishments, the public schoolman and the better class city clerk have the chance of learning some of them, at least, and of practicing them both before and after they have left school. What a poor creature would that young man seem who could do none of these things! Yet the workingman has no chance of learning any. There are no teachers for him; the schools for the small arts, the accomplishments, and the graces of life are not open to him. In other words, the public schoolman has gone through a mill of discipline out of school as well as in. Law reigns in his sports as in his studies. Whether he sits over his books or plays in the fields, he learns to be obedient to law, order, and rule; he obeys, and expects to be obeyed; it is not himself whom he must study to please; it is the whole body of his fellows. And this discipline of self, much more useful than the discipline of books, the young workman knows not. Worse than this, and worst of all, not only is he unable to do any of these things, but he is even ignorant of their uses and their pleasures, and has no desire to learn any of them, and does not suspect at all that the possession of these accomplishments would multiply the joys of life. He is content to go on without them. Now contentment is the most mischievous of all the virtues; if anything is to be done, any improvement is to be effected, the wickedness of discontent must first be introduced.
Let us, if you please, brighten this gloomy picture by recognizing the existence of the artisan who pursues knowledge for its own sake. There are many of this kind. You may come across some of them botanizing, collecting insects, moths and butterflies in the fields on Sundays; others you will find reading works on astronomy, geometry, physics, or electricity; they have not gone through the early training, and so they often make blunders; but yet they are real students. One of them I knew once who had taught himself Hebrew; another, who read so much about coöperation, that he lifted himself clean out of the coöperative ranks, and is now a master; another, and yet another and another, who read perpetually, and meditate upon, books of political and social economy; and there are thousands whose lives are made dignified for them, and sacred, by the continual meditation on religious things. Let us make every kind of allowance for these students of the working class; and let us not forget, as well, the occasional appearance of those heaven-born artists who are fain to play music or die, and presently get into orchestras of one kind or another, and so leave the ranks of daily labor and join the great clan or caste of musicians, who are a race or family apart, and carry on their mystery from father to son.
But, as regards any place or institution where the people may learn or practice or be taught the beauty and desirability of any of the commoner amusements, arts, and accomplishments, there is not one, anywhere in London. The Bethnal Green Museum certainly proposed unto itself, at first, to “do something,” in a vague and uncertain way, for the people. Nobody dared to say that it would be first of all necessary to make the people discontented, because this would have been considered as flying in the face of Providence; and there was, beside, a sort of nebulous hope, not strong enough for a theory, that by dint of long gazing upon vases and tapestry everybody would in time acquire a true feeling for art, and begin to crave for culture. Many very beautiful things have, from time to time, been sent there—pictures, collections, priceless vases; and I am sure that those visitors who brought with them the sense of beauty and feeling for artistic work which comes of culture, have carried away memories and lessons which will last them for a lifetime. On the other hand, to those who visit the Museum chiefly in order to see the people, it has long been painfully evident that the folk who do not bring that sense with them go away carrying nothing of it home with them. Nothing at all. Those glass cases, those pictures, those big jugs, say no more to the crowd than a cuneiform or a Hittite inscription. They have now, or had quite recently, on exhibition, a collection of turnips and carrots beautifully modeled in wax; it is perhaps hoped that the contemplation of these precious but homely things may carry the people a step farther in the direction of culture than pictures could effect. In fact, the Bethnal Green Museum does no more to educate the people than the British Museum. It is to them simply a collection of curious things which is sometimes changed. It is cold and dumb. It is merely an unintelligent branch of a department; and it will remain so, because whatever the collection may be, a museum can teach nothing, unless there is some one to expound the meaning of the things. Is it possible that, by any persuasion, attraction, or teaching, the working-men of this country can be induced to aim at those organized, highly skilled, and disciplined forms of recreation which make up the better pleasure of life? Will they consent, without hope of gain, to give the labor, patience and practice required of every man who would become master of any art or accomplishment, or even any game? There are men, one is happy to find, who think that it is not only possible, but even easy, to effect this, and the thing is about to be transferred from the region of theory to that of practice, by the creation of the People’s Palace.
Let me say a few words as to what this palace may and may not do. In the first place it can do nothing, absolutely nothing to relieve the great fringe of starvation and misery which lies all about London, but more especially at the East-end. People who are out of work and starving do not want amusement, not even of the highest kind; still less do they want university extension. Therefore, as regards the palace, let us forget for awhile the miserable condition of the very poor who live in East London; we are concerned only with the well fed, those who are in steady work, the respectable artisans and petits commis, the artists in the hundred little industries which are carried on in the East-end; those, in fact, who have already acquired some power of enjoyment because they are separated by a sensible distance from their hand-to-mouth brothers and sisters, and are pretty certain to-day that they will have enough to eat to-morrow. It is for these, and such as these, that the palace will be established. It is to contain: (1) class rooms, where all kinds of study can be carried on; (2) concert rooms; (3) conversation rooms; (4) a gymnasium; (5) a library; and lastly, a winter garden. In other words, it is to be an institution which will recognize the fact that for some of those who have to work all day at, perhaps, uncongenial and tedious labor, the best form of recreation may be study and intellectual effort; while for others, that is to say for the great majority—music, reading, tobacco, and rest will be desired. Let us be under no illusions as to the supposed thirst for knowledge. Those who desire to learn are even in youth always a minority. How many men do we know, among our own friends, who have ever set themselves to learn anything since they left school? It is a great mistake to suppose that the working man, any more than the merchant man, or the clerk man, or the tradesman, is ardently desirous of learning. But there will always be a few; and especially there are the young who would fain, if they could, make a ladder of learning, and so, as has ever been the goodly and godly custom in this realm of England, mount unto higher things. The palace of the people would be incomplete indeed if it gave no assistance to ambitious youths. Next to the classes in literature and science come those in music and painting. There is no reason whatever why the palace should not include an academy of music, an academy of arts, and an academy of acting; in a few months after its establishment it should have its own choir, its own orchestra, its own concerts, its own opera, with a company formed of its own alumni. And in a year or two it should have its own exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture. As regards the simpler amusements, there must be rooms where the men can smoke, and others where the girls and women can work, read, and talk; there must be a debating society for questions, social and political, but especially the former.
As for the teaching of the classes, we must look for voluntary work rather than to a great endowment. The history of the college in Great Ormand Street shows how much may be done by unpaid labor, and I do not think it too much to expect that the palace of the people may be started by unpaid teachers in every branch of science and art; moreover, as regards science, history and language, the University Extension Society will probably find the staff. There must be, however, volunteers, women as well as men, to teach singing, music, sewing, speaking, drawing, painting, carving, modeling, and many other things. This kind of help should only be wanted at the outset, because before long, all the art departments ought to be conducted by ex-students who have become in their turn teachers; they should be paid, but not on the West-end scale, from fees—so that the schools may support themselves. Let us not give more than is necessary; for every class and every course there should be some kind of fee, though a liberal system of small scholarships should encourage the students, and there should be the power of remitting fees in certain cases. As for the difficulty of starting the classes, I think that the assistance of board schoolmasters, foremen of works, Sunday-schools, the political clubs and debating societies should be invited; and that beside small scholarships, substantial prizes of musical and mathematical instruments, books, artists’ materials, and so forth, should be offered, with the glory of public exhibition and public performances. After the first year there should be nothing exhibited in the palace except work done in the classes, and no performances of music or of plays should be given but by the students themselves.
There has been going on in Philadelphia for the last two years an experiment, conducted by Mr. Charles Leland, whose sagacious and active mind is as pleased to be engaged upon things practical as upon the construction of humorous poems. He has founded, and now conducts personally, an academy for the teaching of the minor arts; he gets shop girls, work girls, factory girls, boys and young men of all classes together, and he teaches them how to make things, pretty things, artistic things. “Nothing,” he writes to me, “can describe the joy which fills a poor girl’s mind when she finds that she, too, possesses and can exercise a real accomplishment.” He takes them as ignorant, perhaps—but I have no means of comparing—as the London factory girl, the girl of freedom, the girl with the fringe—and he shows them how to do crewel work, fret work, brass work; how to carve in wood; how to design; how to draw—he maintains that it is possible to teach nearly every one to draw; how to make and ornament leather work, boxes, rolls, and all kinds of pretty things in leather. What has been done in Philadelphia amounts, in fact, to this: That one man who loves his brother man is bringing purpose, brightness and hope into thousands of lives previously made dismal by hard and monotonous work; he has put new and higher thoughts into their heads; he has introduced the discipline of methodical training; he has awakened in them the sense of beauty. Such a man is nothing less than a benefactor to humanity. Let us follow his example in the palace of the people.
I must go on, though there is so much to be said. I see before us, in the immediate future, a vast university, whose home is in Mile End Road; but it has affiliated colleges in all the suburbs, so that even poor, dismal, uncared-for Hoxton shall no longer be neglected; the graduates of this university are the men and women whose lives, now unlovely and dismal, shall be made beautiful for them by their studies, and their heavy eyes uplifted to meet the sunlight; the subjects of examination shall be, first, the arts of every kind; so that unless a man have neither eyes to see nor hand to work with, he may here find something or other which he may learn to do; and next, the games, sports, and amusements with which we cheat the weariness of leisure and court the joy of exercising brain and wit and strength. From the crowded classrooms I hear already the busy hum of those who learn and those who teach. Outside, in the street, are those—a vast multitude, to be sure—who are too lazy and too sluggish of brain to learn anything; but these, too, will flock into the palace presently to sit, talk, and argue in the smoking rooms; to read in the library; to see the students’ pictures upon the walls; to listen to the students’ orchestra, discoursing such music as they have never dreamed of before; to look on while Her Majesty’s Servants of the People’s Palace perform a play, and to hear the bright-eyed girls sing madrigals.—The Contemporary Review.
