Amusements.
On this last, but not least, division of the subject, I need not dilate at very great length. Much has been written with reference to it of late with which I cordially agree.
No one can help being sensible of the melancholy fact that the tendency of many of our so-called entertainments is debasing and degrading in the last degree. It is difficult to imagine anything much more demoralizing in every aspect—anything which appears to be more utterly without redeeming features—than our music-halls. Dances, which are simply unnatural contortions on the part of the male performers, and indelicate exhibitions on the part of the female ones; songs, which are utterly idiotic and meaningless, except when their meaning is indecency, sounding the very lowest depths of imbecility, and having no literary merit save double entendres of the most vulgar description; the whole taking place in an atmosphere redolent with the fumes of beer, gin, and tobacco,—such is the pabulum provided for our delectation through this particular medium. Much the same poisonous mixture is administered at our tea-gardens and other places where we most do congregate. Is it a marvel, then, that our young men waste their strength in drunkenness, and our young women stray from the narrow path? Is it wonderful that when you respectables meet us abroad on Bank Holidays, or Derby or Boat Race days, we comport ourselves in ruffianly fashion, and greet the ears of your dames and damsels with expressions which it is not good for them to hear?
Ultra-exclusives! those of you who are most deeply impressed with the desirability of keeping us in our proper places, and are offended if we pass “between the wind and your nobility,” to you most of all do I address myself, and take the liberty of saying that on you rests the onus of providing better and more healthy recreations for us; for needs must that at times the most fastidious of you will find yourselves in the midst of us, and it will interest you even more deeply than others that we should not sink into unmitigated and universal rascaldom, the only natural goal at which the pursuit of such pleasures as those above-named is likely to land us. Give us attractions of a less baneful character, and wean us from these cesspools of infamy. To you it is specially important that this matter should receive attention. Do not, however, seek to do the work half-way; do not attempt to take away the means of recreation we have—evil as they are—until substitutes are furnished; it will not be convenient to you that the people should have too much time to brood; it will be safer for you that we should be mercurial rather than that we should be morose; in one mood or the other, however you may strive to ignore us, we shall continue to exist in tangible form and be distinctly visible to your perceptions.
I like not threats or innuendoes, however, and say no more concerning this matter.
Time was when holy-days were frequent, when gorgeous pageants feasted the eyes of our forefathers—times of Maypoles and morrice-dancers, of roasted oxen and sheep, of conduits running with wine and milk: I say not I wish these to return. Much I fear that all was not pure, pastoral, Arcadian simplicity amidst these poetic scenes, fascinating as they are to the imagination. I doubt not the taint of vice was there, and the ghastly presence of misery and sorrow, and I do not regret them—let them go.
What, then, do I suggest? Aware of the risk I run in having it imputed to me that my suggestions have already been too numerous, I will, with brevity, venture yet one more.
Repetition is vexatious; notwithstanding which, unification is imperative, and committees must again be called into requisition.
Cricket-clubs, quoit-clubs, bowling-clubs, even skittle-clubs ad libitum, in summer; ballad concerts, dramatic performances, &c., in winter, under the same auspices. Membership extended to all comers, fee payable one shilling per annum in monthly instalments; the expulsion or suspension for a longer or shorter term—according to the more or less heinous nature of the offence—of any member for bad language, intoxication, or other misbehaviour; the gradual unbending of the rich and the cultured, and their condescending to grace the sports with their occasional presence, thereby infusing a spirit of refinement into them; the prohibition of betting or over-drinking,—these are, shortly and imperfectly stated, the remedies I would suggest.
To conclude the whole matter. We, the industrious poor of this realm—the hard-working classes—are in pressing need of help now, in this present time. This, I believe, is confessed on all hands, diverse and contradictory as the theories how such help could best be given may be. The question at issue is not whether ameliorations are desirable or the contrary, but in what manner to bring them about, and how to be certain that it is bread which is bestowed, and not a stone.
I do not claim to have solved this enigma, or to have invented a millennium. I simply assert my belief that some of my propositions may contain germs capable of being nurtured into hopeful possibilities.
As I have selected four principal points in which improvements are required—health, pocket, mind, and amusements—so have I striven to indicate four principal modes which I think best calculated to attain the desired end, and which for the most part must come from without our borders—namely, sympathy, earnestness, money, and centralized organization—all being essential; the last-named especially being so, for it may be regarded as an irrefragable verity that every movement to be really efficacious must be national, and not parochial.
I look for many objections on both sides of the temperate zone, on the waters of which alone I elect to voyage. The frigid will aver that I expect too much, that my notions are Utopian and chimerical to the last degree, and the nostrums prescribed empirical and baneful; that it is not to be supposed sensible people will take all this trouble, and rush into such reckless expenditure in a project so visionary. To such my only answer is,—Where the return is to be great the investment must be great also. The torrid, on the other hand, will say I am not sufficiently thorough; that the only means of elevating the poor is by lugging the wealthy down to their level, abrogating dignities, distributing riches, abolishing ownership in lands and corporeal hereditaments. To these my reply will be,—Evil will the day be which shall dawn on such devil’s-sabbath employments as these. Levelling upwards is laudable; levelling downwards is execrable. I would in nowise interfere with the least of these institutions. The overthrow of dynasties will not advantage us, nor will a general scramble conduce to our lasting welfare. I am a sceptic as to the benefits to be derived from revolution, although professing myself a warm admirer of reformation, as I understand the word—re-formation.
Neither do I anticipate that the time will ever come, under the best devised systems, when poverty will altogether cease out of the land. Evil will there be, and good also, while the world stands. This, however, should be no excuse for indifferentism in the work of lessening the sum-total of the evil, and increasing the sum-total of the good.
And so Lazarus unmoors his fragile boat, and launches it, unmanned and untended, on the bosom of the stream,—to meet its fate.
Henry J. Miller.