The Passmore Edwards Settlement, in Tavistock Place, goes perhaps, far to realise some of the ideas of Morris's Utopia. To begin with, it is a thing of beauty. Its newness is not aggressive, and its long red-brick building, adorned by quaint porches and backed by refreshing green plane-trees, is a pleasing object as viewed from the essentially unromantic and grimy street into which it opens. Its architecture is a credit to the two young men who designed it. Though the building, I believe, at first excited some adverse comment in Bloomsbury circles, yet there can be no doubt of its success as a whole. Its style, simple yet decorative, gains on the beholder. While, externally, it forms a little "isle of quiet breathing" in Bloomsbury streets, its proportions and general construction are internally, no less charming. The big lecture-hall with its white arched roof, its many windows, the beautifully-proportioned drawing-room with its lovely colouring of green and red, the well-stocked library, the gymnasium, the sewing-rooms, the cooking-school, are all arranged and decorated in the Morris style, and according to Morris's ideas.... Mrs. Humphry Ward, as every one knows, is the inspiring spirit of the Settlement, and Mr. Tatton is her warden and prophet. The present building, for which the funds were principally provided by Mr. Passmore Edwards of the Echo, is the outcome of Mrs. Ward's earlier "settlement" in Gordon Square. It was built in 1897 on the site of a curious old house called "The Grove," which stood apart in its own grounds; a house where Herschel lived and where he first weighed the world; where, also, report says, that George IV. kept one of his numerous "ladies." The Settlement, which is of the Toynbee Hall type, is unsectarian, and therefore looked coldly on by many church people; though, by the admitted good it works, it has overcome many prejudices. Among the most novel, and assuredly the most excellent, of its works is the Cripples' School which is conducted within its walls. It is a pathetic sight to see the vehicle—half omnibus and half ambulance—carrying these poor little pupils to and from the Settlement. Also, it ministers to the highest pleasures of the people; and it is far more difficult to teach enjoyment than to teach learning. Gymnasiums, cooking, and social gatherings for all classes alike pave, at any rate, the way to still larger "departures" and Ruskinian possibilities in the way of "preaching to the rich and dining with the poor." The pretty drawing-room of the Settlement looks, with its bay window, on to a charming green garden once backed by Dickens's old house,—Tavistock House,—now demolished.
Literary memories attach even to Gower Street; that long, prosaic, interminable thoroughfare.
Here, at No. 110 (then No. 12, Upper Gower Street, and now utilized with neighbouring houses as Shoolbred's offices), lived, in 1839, Charles Darwin; it was described by his son as "a small, commonplace London house, with a dining room in front, and a small room behind, in which they lived for quietness." Though Darwin sometimes grumbled, as men will, over the necessity of living in "dirty odious London," he also appreciated its peculiar charm, as the following extract will testify:
"We are living a life of extreme quietness. What you describe as so secluded a spot is, I will answer for it, quite dissipated compared with Gower Street. We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if one is quiet in London there is nothing like it for quietness.... There is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and the dull, distant sounds of cabs and coaches; in fact, you may perceive I am becoming a thorough-paced cockney, and I glory in the thought that I shall be here for the next six months."
In 1835, too, as Mr. Frith recalls in his amusing Reminiscences, he himself was a boy, just introduced to his first drawing academy, immortalized as "Gandish's" in the Newcomes; that of Mr. Henry Sass, which still stands, a corner house at No. 6 Charlotte Street, the Holborn continuation of Gower Street. At the side entrance, under the classic bust of Minerva,—which, yellowed and antique in more senses than one, "to this day looks down on the passer-by;"—under this doorway came not only Frith, but Millais, and other well-known Academicians. Edward Lear, of much Nonsense Book fame, and much undeserved neglect as a landscape-painter, "a man of varied and great accomplishments," was also one of Sass's pupils.
Millais, when a boy attending Sass's school, lived with his parents at 83, Gower Street (the studio was built out behind). Mr. Holman Hunt thus describes the Millais ménage at the time:
"It (the studio) was comfortably furnished with artistic objects tastefully arranged.... The son put his hand on his father's shoulder and the other on his mother's chair, and said: 'They both help me, I can tell you. He's capital! and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a little alteration and putting a beard on him he does splendidly, and he sits for hands and draperies, too; and as for mamma, she finds me all I want in the way of dresses, and makes them up for me. She reads to me, too, at times, and finds out whatever I want to know at the British Museum library. She's very clever, I can tell you,' and he stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the 'old daddy,' as he called him, on the back."
It was close to Sass's old school, and opposite his benign Minerva, that I once saw, myself, one bitter May-Day of nipping "north-easter," the real old "Jack-in-the-Green" described by Dickens and illustrated by Cruikshank; the "May-Day sweeps" of the Sketches by Boz; "my lord," "my lady," "clowns," "green," and all. Very wretched and miserable looked these belated illustrators of an ancient custom, as they danced and piped through the wind and sleet that usually, by some strange perversity, usher in the first of May. The Cockney children who storm the doorsteps, clamorously demanding May-Day tribute, and crying their shrilly monotonous song:
"Fust er Ma—ay,
Dawn er da—ay,
It's only once a yee—ar"—
are usually suggestive of a cold, cheerless morn.