Let it, however, be assumed that the details have been arranged, and that, under a wise director, a party of University men have settled in East London. The director—welcomed here, as University men are always welcomed—will have opened relations with the neighbouring clergy, and with the various charitable agencies; he will have found out the clubs and centres of social life, and he will have got some knowledge of the bodies engaged in local government. His large rooms will have been offered for classes, directed by the University Extension or Popular Concert Societies, and for meetings of instruction or entertainment. He will have thus won the reputation of a man with something to give, who is willing to be friendly with his neighbours. At once he will be able to introduce the settlers to duties, which will mean introductions to friendships. Those to whom it is given to know the high things of God, he will introduce to the clergy, who will guide them to find friends among those who, in trouble and sickness, will listen to a life-giving message. Honour men have confessed that they have found a key to life in teaching the Bible to children, and not once nor twice has it happened that old truths have seemed to take new meaning when spoken by a man brought fresh from Oxford to face the poor. Those with the passion for righteousness the director will bring face to face with the victims of sin. In the degraded quarters of the town, in the wards of the workhouses, they will find those to whom the friendship of the pure is strange, and who are to be saved only by the mercy which can be angry as well as pitiful. As I write, I recall one who was brought to us by an undergraduate out of a wretched court, overwhelmed by the look and words of his young enthusiasm. I recall another who was taken from the police court by a Cambridge man, put to an Industrial School, and is now touchingly grateful, not to him, but to God for the service. Some, whose spare time is in the day, will become visitors for the Charity Organization Society, Managers of Industrial and Public Elementary Schools, Members of the Committees which direct Sanitary, Shoe Black, and other Societies, and in these positions form friendships, which to officials, weary of the dull routine, will let in light, and to the poor, fearful of law, will give strength. Others who can spare time only in the evening will teach classes, join clubs, and assist in Co-operative and Friendly Societies, and they will, perhaps, be surprised to find that they know so much that is useful when they see the interest their talk arouses. In one club, I know, whist ceases to be attractive when the gentleman is not there to talk. There are friendly societies worked by artisans, which owe their success to the inspiration of University men, and there is one branch of the Charity Organization Society which still keeps the mark impressed on it, when a man of culture did the lowest work.
The elder settlers will, perhaps, take up official positions. If they could be qualified, they might be Vestry-men and Guardians, or they might qualify themselves to become Schoolmasters. What University men can do in local government is written on the face of parishes redeemed from the demoralizing influence of out-relief, and cleansed by well-administered law. Further reforms are already seen to be near, but it has not entered into men’s imaginations to conceive the change for good which might be wrought if men of culture would undertake the education of the people. The younger settlers will always find occupation day or night in playing with the boys, taking them in the daytime to open spaces, or to visit London sights, amusing them in the evening with games and songs. Unconsciously, they will set up a higher standard of man’s life, and through friendship will commend to these boys respect for manhood, honour for womanhood, reverence for God. Work of such kind will be abundant, and, as it must result in the settlers forming many acquaintances, the large rooms of the house will be much used for receptions. Parties will be frequent, and whatever be the form of entertainment provided, be it books or pictures, lectures or reading, dancing or music, the guests will find that their pleasure lies in intercourse. Social pleasure is unknown to those who have no large rooms and no place for common meeting. The parties of the Settlement will thus be attractive just in so far as they are useful. The more means of intercourse they offer, the more will they be appreciated. The pleasure which binds all together will give force to every method of good-doing, be it the words of the preacher, spoken to the crowd, hushed, perhaps, by the presence of death, or be it the laughter-making tale told during the Saturday ramble in the country.
If something like this is to be the work of a College Settlement, “How far,” it may be asked, “is it adequate to the hope of the college to do something for the poor?” Obviously, it affords an outlet for every form of earnestness. No man—call himself what he may—need be excluded from the service of the poor on account of his views. No talent, be it called spiritual or secular, need be lost on account of its unfitness to existing machinery. If there be any virtue, if there be any good in man, whatsoever is beautiful, whatsoever is pure in things will find a place in the Settlement.
There is yet a fuller answer to the question. A Settlement enables men to live within sight of the poor. Many a young man would be saved from selfishness if he were allowed at once to translate feeling into action. It is the facility for talk, and the ready suggestion that a money gift is the best relief, which makes some dread lest, after this awakening of interest, there may follow a deeper sleep. He who has, even for a month, shared the life of the poor can never again rest in his old thoughts. If with these obvious advantages, a Settlement seems to want that something which association with religious forms gives to the mission, I can only say that such association does not make work religious, if the workers have not its spirit. If the director be such a man as I can imagine, and if there be any truth in the saying that “Every one that loveth knoweth God,” then it must be that the work of settlers, inspired and guided by love, will be religious. The man in East London, who is the simplest worker for God I know, has added members to many churches, and has no sect or church of his own. The true religious teacher is he who makes known God to man. God is manifest to every age by that which is the Best of the age. The modern representatives of those who healed diseases, taught the ignorant, and preached the Gospel to the poor, are those who make common the Best which can be known or imagined. Christ the Son of God is still the “Christ which is to be”—and even through our Best He will be but darkly seen.
That such work as I have described would be useful in East London, I myself have no doubt. The needs of East London are often urged, but they are little understood. Its inhabitants are at one moment assumed to be well paid workmen, who will get on if they are left to themselves; at another, they are assumed to be outcasts, starving for the necessaries of living. It is impossible but that misunderstanding should follow ignorance, and at the present moment the West-End is ignorant of the East-End. The want of that knowledge which comes only from the sight of others’ daily life, and from sympathy with “the joys and sorrows in widest commonalty spread,” is the source of the mistaken charity which has done much to increase the hardness of the life of the poor.
The much-talked of East London is made up of miles of mean streets, whose inhabitants are in no want of bread or even of better houses; here and there are the courts now made familiar by descriptions. They are few in number, and West-End visitors who have come to visit their “neighbours” confess themselves—with a strange irony on their motives—“disappointed that the people don’t look worse”.
The settlers will find themselves related to two distinct classes of “the poor,” and it will be well if they keep in mind the fact that they must serve both those who, like the artisans, need the necessaries for life, and also those who, like casual labourers, need the necessaries for livelihood. They will not of course come believing that their Settlement will make the wicked good, the dull glad, and the poor rich, but they may be assured that results will follow the sympathy born of close neighbourhood. It will be something, if they are able to give to a few the higher thoughts in which men’s minds can move, to suggest other forms of recreation, and to open a view over the course of the river of life as it flows to the Infinite Sea. It will be something if they create among a few a distaste for dirt and disorder, if they make some discontented with their degrading conditions, if they leaven public opinion with the belief that the law which provides cleanliness, light and order should be applied equally in all quarters of the town. It will be something, if thus they give to the one class the ideal of life, and stir up in the other those feelings of self-respect, without which increased means of livelihood will be useless. It will be more if to both classes they can show that selfishness or sin is the only really bad thing, and that the best is not “too good for human nature’s daily food”. Nothing that is divine is alien to man, and nothing which can be learnt at the University is too good for East London.
Many have been the schemes of reform I have known, but, out of eleven years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil which does not bring helper and helped into friendly relations. Vain will be higher education, music, art, or even the Gospel, unless they come clothed in the life of brother men—“it took the Life to make God known”. Vain, too, will be sanitary legislation and model dwellings, unless the outcast are by friendly hands brought in one by one to habits of cleanliness and order, to thoughts of righteousness and peace. “What will save East London?” asked one of our University visitors of his master. “The destruction of West London” was the answer, and, in so far as he meant the abolition of the influences which divide rich and poor, the answer was right. Not until the habits of the rich are changed, and they are again content to breathe the same air and walk the same streets as the poor, will East London be “saved”. Meantime a Settlement of University men will do a little to remove the inequalities of life, as the settlers share their best with the poor and learn through feeling how they live. It was by residence among the poor that Edward Denison learned the lessons which have taken shape in the new philanthropy of our days. It was by visiting in East London that Arnold Toynbee fed the interest which in later years became such a force at Oxford. It was around a University man, who chose to live as our neighbour, that a group of East Londoners gathered, attracted by the hope of learning something and held together after five years by the joy which learning gives. Men like Mr. Goschen and Professor Huxley have lately spoken out their belief that the intercourse of the highest with the lowest is the only solution of the social problem.
Settlers may thus join the Settlement, looking back to the example of others and to the opinions of the wise—looking forward to the grandest future which has risen on the horizon of hope. It may not be theirs to see the future realized, but it is theirs to cheer themselves with the thought of the time when the disinherited sons of God shall be received into their Father’s house, when the poor will know the Higher Life as it is being revealed to those who watch by the never silent spirit, when daily drudgery will be irradiated with eternal thought, when neither wealth nor poverty will hinder men in their pursuit of the Perfect life, because everything which is Best will be made in love common to all.
Samuel A. Barnett.