Bank Holiday.
Nor is the "country,"—except in strictly limited quantities,—such an unfailing consolation to the children of the poor, as some would have us imagine. (That it is such a priceless advantage to their health is, no doubt, partly owing to the fact that it is generally associated with good and wholesome food.) The children like the "real country" for a day or two;—afterwards, they are too often conscious of slight boredom. At first, they delight in the fact that "it's so green all rarnd,—right to the sky,—with no roads, and no walls,—and no trespsin boards,—and no pleecemen;" but these joys have their limitations,—and, after a fortnight's holiday,—even poor slum children are generally glad to get back home. Even in tender youth,—the country is a cult that requires some learning. "The country is dreadful slow,"—a little girl of the great city once remarked with painful frankness,—"no swings, no rahnd-abarts, no penny-ice men, no orgins, no shops, no nothink;—jest a great bare field only." Here, again, is the difference of "the point of view!"
Go into that glittering Armida-Palace, the busy Whitechapel Road, and watch the scene at nightfall. The weather may be cold or mirk; the weather matters little; the skies may be glum and starless, but a galaxy of light, from innumerable gas jets and shop fronts, floods the busy street. Here is, certainly, no lack of life and amusement; the crowd laughs, jostles, and chatters, as if no such thing as care or struggle existed. It is a motley crowd. Handsome dark-eyed Jewesses with floppy hair and long gold earrings; coster girls "on the spree," dressed in their gaudy best; staid couples doing their weekly marketing; here and there a happy family round a stall, eating "winkles" composedly with the help of pins, or demolishing saucerfuls of the savoury cockle; vendors of penny toys; all these, combined with the voluble "patter" of the lively shop-boys, make a veritable pandemonium. Shops are full; barrows of all kinds drive a brisk trade; velvet-cushioned trams ply up and down the big highway, which extends, apparently almost into infinity, up the long Mile End Road. (Tram-lines, in London, seem more or less confined to the uninspiring North and East and their suburbs.) Ugly and uninvigorating enough by day, the streets, by night, invest themselves with mysterious glamour and brightness. Like some murky theatre when the deceiving footlights are lit, this, too, is a "stage illusion," and it is a wise one. For all the East End does its shopping by gaslight; now only it begins to enjoy its day. Seen in such kaleidoscopic glare of light, even the Whitechapel Road has its attractions. Yet through it all one sometimes sees sad sights. Many public-houses dot these thoroughfares, shining like meteors through the nocturnal mists; and here and there, truth to tell, a bevy of red-faced women may be seen through the plate-glass, whose unhappy infants are stationed in shabby perambulators outside; their eyes, by dint of vain straining towards their natural guardians, painfully acquiring that squint that would seem to be the birthright of so many of the London poor.
In strange contrast with the din and bustle of Aldgate and its network of wide streets, are the collegiate buildings of Toynbee Hall, in Commercial Street, close by. This is a curious little oasis in the wilderness, a most unexpected by-way in busy, glaring Whitechapel. To Canon and Mrs. Barnett, who have devoted their lives towards making Toynbee Hall what it is, is due the chief honour for the successful working of this Institution, primarily intended to bring "sweetness and light" into the darkened, unlovely lives of the London poor. The name of Arnold Toynbee, the young and enthusiastic Oxford man and reformer, has been immortalised in this place, the first of the University Settlements in London. Toynbee died young, of overwork and overpressure; in a sense a martyr to his cause; yet the work of this latter-day apostle has already had large results, and his creed has had many followers. To him, dying in his youthful zeal, Tennyson's lines seem specially appropriate:
"So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
............
"O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name."
In some ways, Toynbee Hall, and its successive, and kindred institutions, seem like late revivals of the monastic system of the middle ages. Toynbee Hall is a hall in the academic sense,—and shelters successive batches of some twenty residents,—young university men of strong convictions,—who come here both to learn and to teach;—to teach their less fortunate brothers,—to learn how the poor live. At its hospitable door the sick and suffering apply for help and succour; here charity,—charity, too, of the kind that "blesseth him that gives and him that takes,"—is freely given,—without narrow restrictions of sectarianism or dogma—and it does more than this.
For,—unlike the monastic system,—Toynbee Hall is specially devised to help the individual soul of the poor worker in busy London to rise above its often base and mean surroundings. The late Matthew Arnold, in his well-remembered lecture at Toynbee Hall,—taught the possibility of "following the gleam" even in the "gloom" of the East-End,—and of helping Nature, by the aid of books and of art, from sinking under "long-lived pressure of obscure distress." Books and art are great tonics. The ancient monasteries dissuaded,—if anything,—knowledge, and aspiration generally, in the "masses": Toynbee Hall encourages and promotes it; it is thus a physician to the mind even more than to the body. It raises the aims, improves the tastes, and widens the horizons of its disciples; it satisfies the cravings of the poor for better things; but it must first inculcate such cravings. Within its walls the poor and struggling artisan may enjoy concerts, lectures, pictures;—may learn, too, from the best teachers,—and profit by many of the advantages of university life. There are not only lecture-rooms, but reception-rooms,—dining-rooms,—a library;—the latter a much-valued institution in the neighbourhood. Many pleasant social gatherings are held here;—not only of working men,—but also of factory girls,—shop-hands,—pupil-teachers,—who come here,—these latter,—to cast off the "codes" and dry bones of learning, and acquire a little of its warmer, fuller humanity.
Toynbee Hall is not the only place in East London where such works are carried on. Oxford House, Bethnal Green,—and Mansfield House, Canning Town,—are, among others,—institutions more or less of the kind; and the Passmore Edwards Institute, in Tavistock Place, has similar aims. But to Toynbee Hall is due the introduction of yearly loan Exhibitions of good pictures for the East End,—originated by Canon Barnett, and still successfully carried on by his unwearying exertions.