But the want of pleasure and change is no newly discovered need of the poor. School-treats and excursions and bean-feasts have been organised and carried out almost since Sunday-schools have existed and congregations had a corporate life. Every summer sees the columns of the newspapers used to ask for money to give 900, 1,000, 2,000 children ‘one day in the country,’ and when the money is obtained and the day arrives, the children are packed into vans or a special train and turned into the woods or fields to enjoy themselves (and tease the frogs) until tea, buns, and hymns bring the ‘’appy day’ to an end. Good days these, full of pleasure and health-giving exercise, but perhaps mixed with too large an element of excitement to teach the children to enjoy the country for its own sake, to enable them to learn in Dame Nature’s lap ‘that we can feed this mind of ours in a wise passiveness.’
Neither have the clergy overlooked this need as existing among their grown people, and most of those working in poor neighbourhoods organise an annual ‘Treat,’ each person paying, say, 1s., to be met by the 6d. from the Pastor’s Fund. These treats sometimes assume the enormous proportions of 2,000 or 3,000 persons. All carry their mid-day meal to be eaten when and how they like. The assembling for tea and a few speeches by the rector and those in authority are the only means taken to bring the people together and to introduce the sense of host and guest. And with the memory of the 1s. paid, this sense is very difficult either to arouse or maintain. But, good as in many ways these treats are, they do not do all they might. They do not introduce fresh experiences, an acquaintance with other lives, the interest of new knowledge.
We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live,
as Coleridge puts it; and such sadly empty minds want the interpretation of the friendly eye to make them see what they went out ‘for to see.’
Struck with these ideas, we determined to try another method of entertaining our neighbours; and believing that they had the same need of social intercourse as that felt by the rich, and taking for granted that the kind of country entertainment most prevalent among the rich was that most enjoyed, we based our parties on the same foundation, remembering always that the minds of the poor being emptier, more active entertainment was needed, and that the party to which we invited them was perhaps the one day’s outing in the whole year, the one glimpse that they had (apart from divorce suits) into the lives and habits of the richer classes.
On talking over our plan with friends who, living in the suburbs of London, had the necessary garden, it was not long before we received kindly invitations to take thirty, forty, fifty, of our neighbours to spend the afternoon in the country. The day and hour fixed, it was left with us to decide which guests should be invited, and to pass on the invitation. Sometimes our hosts particularly wish to entertain children as well as grown people; and if so, we include the children in the invitation; but on the whole, experience has taught that those parties are most thoroughly enjoyed from which the children are omitted. This will not be misunderstood when it is remembered that these mothers and fathers have their children, perhaps seven, all small together, constantly with them for 365 days in the year, both day and night; that the children become noisy and excited in the country, and that each child’s noise, though it may be music in the ear of its mother, can hardly be anything but what it is, disagreeable sounds, in the ears of its mother’s neighbour. Another objection to the presence of the children is the extreme difficulty of entertaining them and the grown people together. To the social gatherings of other classes it is not the rule to invite children with their parents, and the taste or feeling which forbids such a rule is common to the poor.
It is not difficult, knowing many people who would be glad of a day’s outing, to pass on such invitations; but it is pleasanter, if it can be so arranged, that the guests should beforehand be acquainted with each other. For that reason it is better to invite together the members of a mothers’ meeting and their husbands, the habitués of a club, the inhabitants of one block of buildings, the denizens of a particular court, the singing-class, the members of any society who worship, work, or learn together—in short, those who unite for any purpose.
There are other advantages in this plan besides the obvious one of the guests being already acquainted. Those who have hitherto seen each other’s character from the work point of view only now get another standpoint, and the day’s pleasure, together with the hearty laugh and the many-voiced songs, does more than many a pastoral address can do to teach forgiveness and break down barriers raised by quarrels—quarrels which more often owe their origin to close neighbourhoods than to bad tempers. ‘Now she ain’t such a bad ’un as one would think, considering the way she behaved to my Billy—is she now?’ is a true remark illustrating what I would say.
The guests chosen, the invitations go out in the usual form: ‘Mrs. So-and-So,’ mentioning our hostess’s name, ‘hopes to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So on Monday, 14th, to spend the afternoon in the country,’ and then follow the time of the train and the name of the station where the rendezvous is to be held. Added to these the friends connected in any way with the expected guests, the district visitor, the superintendent of the mothers’ meeting, the lady rent-collector are also invited; as well as those who have gifts of entertaining or those to whom we wish to introduce our neighbours. A train is generally chosen between one and two o’clock, so as to enable the man to get a half-day’s work and the woman to see to necessary household duties and give the children their dinner before she starts.