Fancy-dress balls are an amusement much esteemed at Bedford Park. There is, indeed, a rumor in the adjacent town of London that the people of Bedford Park move about in fancy dress every day. And so far as the ladies are concerned it is true that many of their costumes, open-air as well as other, might some years ago have been regarded as fancy dress, and would still cause a sensation in some Philistine quarters. At our last fancy-dress ball, some young men, having danced until five o’clock, when it was bright daylight, concluded not to go to bed at all, but went out to take a game of tennis. At eight they were still playing, but though they were in fancy costumes they did not attract much attention. The tradesmen and others moving about at that hour no doubt supposed it was only some new Bedford Park fashion. There seems to be a superstition on the Continent that fancy-dress balls must take place in the winter, and end with Mi-Carême. It does not prevail here. It was on one of the softest nights of June that we had our last ball of that character. The grounds, which in one of our pictures are seen beyond the tennis-players, were overhung with Chinese lanterns, and the sward and bushes were lit up, as it were, with many-tinted giant glow-worms. The fête-champêtre and the mirth of the ball-room went on side by side, with only a balcony and its luxurious cushions between them. Comparatively few of the ladies sought to represent any particular “character;” there were about two hundred present, and fancy costumes for both sexes were de rigueur; yet among all these there were few conventionally historical or allegorical characters. There was a notable absence of ambitious and costly dresses. The ladies had indulged their own tastes in design and color, largely assisted, no doubt, by the many artists which Bedford Park can boast, and the result was a most beautiful scene.
There is hardly an evening of the spring and summer when Bedford Park does not show unpurposed tableaux, which, were they visible any evening at the Opera, would be declared fine achievements of managerial art. Through the low and wide windows, on which the curtains often do not fall, the light of wax-candles comes out to mingle with the moonlight, and many are they who wend their way from the more dismal suburbs to gaze in at the happy families en tableau, and listen to the music stealing out on the ever-quiet air.
The new suburb which has thus come into existence swiftly, yet so quietly that the building of it has not scared the nightingale I heard yesternight nor the sky-larks singing while I write, has gone far toward the realization of some aims not its own, ideals that have hitherto failed. There is not a member of it who would not be startled, if not scandalized, at any suggestion that he or she belonged to a community largely socialistic. They would allege, with perfect truth, that they are not even acquainted with the majority of their neighbors, have their own circle of friends, and go on with their business as men and women of the world. Nevertheless, it is as certainly true that a degree in social evolution is represented by Bedford Park, and that it is in the direction of that co-operative life which animated the dreams of Père Enfantin and Saint-Simon. All society, indeed, must steadily and normally advance in that direction. For a long time there have been tendencies to put more and more of the domestic work out upon establishments which all have in common. As one baker prepares bread for many families, and one laundry washes for many, and the railway, omnibus, cab, ply for many, so other accommodations needed by all are found to be within reach of the co-operative principle; even the luxuries of life are found to be largely within reach of it. This village has been rendered possible by that principle, though it had another aim. Houses of similar architecture have in recent years been built here and there in London and other cities, but they have probably cost their owners a third more than they have cost here, because the large number of families which agreed to buy or rent houses enabled the landlord and founder of Bedford Park to make large, therefore comparatively cheap, arrangements for the supply of materials and labor, elsewhere special or exceptional. By this means one of the chief advantages of co-operation was to some extent secured. We have also our co-operative stores; our newspapers and current literature are obtained in common; we have billiard-rooms, tennis lawn, club conveniences, and entertainments to a considerable extent in common; and by the time this is read the Tabard, which has an excellent cook, may be supplying the table d’hôte at a rate sufficiently moderate to place a daily dinner within reach of families who may find that desirable. Thus the co-operative principle has shown its applicability to the requirements of the cultured class, who are especially interested in making for their families beautiful homes, without, as Thoreau said, sacrificing life to its means. Incomes are largely increased when they need no longer be expended on the physical appliances of comfort beyond the actual advantage derived. To keep a private carriage in order that it may be used an hour or two each day is not economy, if an equally good carriage can be hired for the hours needed. Now and then we hear a little gossip when some of the dishes at a distinguished dinner-party are suspected of having been prepared by Duclos instead of a private chef, but the tendency of refined society is to smile still more at large outlays for ostentation.
But while in some regards Bedford Park must be considered a socialistic village, it is almost the reverse of any community which has been so called hitherto, and is far away from the rocks on which most of them have been wrecked. No step in the planting or development of the village has been artificial, or even prescribed; each institution has appeared in response to a definite want. It was not in consequence of any original scheme that the co-operative stores, the club, or the Tabard Inn were built. The entire freedom of the village and of its inhabitants is unqualified by any theory whatever, whether social, political, or economic. It is the home of such various minds as James Sime, the biographer of Lessing and Schiller; of Bowdler Sharpe, the ornithologist (active protector of our birds); Dr.Todhunter, who has written a fine book on Shelley; Spalding, who wrote “Elizabethan Demonology;” Julian Hawthorne; Fox Bourne, author of the Life of John Locke, Miss Richardson, of the London School Board, and Miss Mary Cecil Hay, the well-known novelist. The eloquent and philanthropic chaplain of Clerkenwell Prison, Mr. Horsley, is a resident of Bedford Park. The professions are all well represented. Artists are especially numerous. The new Chiswick Art School has been erected at Bedford Park. It is connected with the Science and Art department of the government, and under the direction of E. S. Burchett and Hamilton Jackson, has already become a flourishing institution.
AN ARTIST’S STUDIO.
Bedford Park is in danger of becoming a show-place. Now and then the fair riders of Hyde Park extend afternoon exercise to enjoy a look at the new suburb. And sometimes the statesman, weary with his midnight work in Parliament or in Downing Street, finds relief in this quiet retreat. Professor Fawcett is apt to put in an appearance on Sunday afternoons, and one day the grand face of John Bright, with its white halo of silken hair, was seen among us. M. Renan, when he was delivering his Hibbert lectures, was entertained in one of our homes, and pronounced Bedford Park “que véritable utopie.” He appeared quite amazed at finding in London that ideal place which French enthusiasm has often dreamed of, and which differs from the “plain living and high thinking” of the English philosophers. For here, where we have the scientific lecture one evening, we may have theatricals on the next; and if we have ambrosial poetry or classic music one day, on the next the ladies will be found attending the School for Cookery, and learning how to make dishes dainty enough to set before any gourmand. Minister Lowell has also paid us a visit, and I believe he thought Bedford Park ought to be somewhere in the neighborhood of Harvard University. But our most memorable visitor was “H. H.,” whose eyes illuminated our town for a day or two, and then went away with such pictures as can only be painted when such vision as hers comes upon such a vision as she found here. She came from a beautiful home in a beautiful land; from bright rooms decorated with many a brilliant stripe and spot contributed by the wild creatures and growths of Colorado, and touched all over with her own poetic taste; and she realized at once that she had come to sister homes with hers, where there was the same desire to cultivate beauty in harmony with nature. The brilliant letter she wrote about her visit here comes back to Bedford Park just as I write this my last page, and among the many reports that have been written of us none is more true. My distant readers will perceive that my enthusiasm is not of delusion, if I conclude my rambling paper by borrowing for a moment the pen of “H. H.” “Only thirty minutes by rail from Charing Cross—gardens, country air, lanes, bits of opens where daisies grow, where fogs do not hang, and from which far horizons can be seen—is not the London prisoner lucky that can flee his jail at night, and sleep till morning in such a suburb? Lucky indeed, no matter to what sort of house he escaped, so it stood on a spot like this. But when to the opens, the clear air, lanes, and daisies, it is added that, fleeing thither, the London prisoner may sit down and rest, lie down and sleep in, and rise up and enjoy, a charming little Queen Anne house, built, colored, and decorated throughout with good taste by artists who know what souls need as well as what bodies require, there is conferred on him a double, nay, an immeasurable, benefit and unreckonable obligation.”
THE END.