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.
