As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

The black patch which concerns us, in the minds of those who have been asked to support the People's Palace, is the subject of recreation. 'There are enough music-halls. What have the working classes to do with recreation? If we give anything for the people it will be for their improvement, not for their amusement.' To these three objections all the rest may be reduced. Each objection points to a prejudice of very ancient standing, or else to a deep-seated ignorance of the whole subject.

To deal with the first. It is assumed that recreation means amusement, idle and purposeless, if not skittles with beer and tobacco, then the music-hall with beer and tobacco, the comic man bawling a topical song and executing the famous clog-dance. If one points out that it is not amusement that is meant, but recreation, which is explained to mean a very different thing, while a truer conception of what recreation really means may be seized, then there remains a rooted disbelief as to the power of the working man to rise above his beer and skittles. It is a disbelief not at all based upon familiarity with the manners and customs of the working man, because the ordinary well-to-do citizen, however much he may have read of manners and customs in other countries, is, as a rule, perfectly ignorant and perfectly incurious as to those of his fellow-countrymen; nor is it based upon the belief that the working man is imperfect in mind or body; but on an assurance that the working man will never lift himself to the level of the higher form of recreation, simply because the ordinary man knows himself and his own practice. He desires to be amused, and according to his manner of life he finds amusement in tobacco, reading, cards, music, or the theatre.

Consider the well-to-do man in pursuit of recreation. He has a club; he goes to his club every day; perhaps he gets whist there; very likely he belongs to one of the modern sepulchral places where the members do not know each other and every man glares at his neighbour. There is a billiard-table in all clubs as well as a card-room. Apart from cards and billiards the clubs recognise no form of recreation whatever. There are not in any club that I know, except the Savage, musical instruments: if you were to propose to have a piano, and to sing at it, I suppose the universal astonishment would be too great for words. At the Arts, I believe, some of the members sometimes hang up pictures of their own for exhibition and criticism, but at no other club is there any recognition of Art. There are good libraries at two or three clubs, but many have none. In fact, the clubs which belong to gentlemen are organized as if there was no other occupation possible for civilized people in polite society, except dining, smoking, reading papers, or playing whist and billiards. The working men who have recently established clubs of their own in imitation of the West-End clubs are said to be finding them so dull that, where they cannot turn them into political organizations, they have tolerated the introduction of gambling. When clubs were first established gambling was everywhere the favourite recreation, so that the working men are only beginning where their predecessors began sixty years ago.

Of all the Arts the average man, be he gentleman or mechanic, knows none. He has never learned to play any instrument at all; he cannot use his voice in taking a part, he cannot paint, draw, carve in wood or ivory, use a lathe, or make anything that the wide world wants to use. He cannot write poetry, or drama, or fiction; he is no orator; he plays no games of cards except whist, and no other games at all of any kind. What can he do? He can practise the trade he has learned, by which he makes his money. He knows how to convey property, how to buy and sell stock and shares, how to carry on business in the City. This, if you please, is all he knows. And when you propose that the working man shall, have an opportunity of learning and practising Art in any of its multitudinous varieties, he laughs derisively, because, which is a very natural and sensible thing to do, he puts himself in that man's place, and he knows that he would not be tempted to undergo the drudgery and the drill of learning one of the Arts, even did that Art appear to him in the form of a nymph more lovely than Helen of Troy.

The second objection belongs to the old order of prejudice. It used to be assumed that there were two distinct orders of human beings; it was the privilege of the higher order to be maintained by the labour of the lower; for the higher order was reserved all the graces, refinements, and joys of this fleeting life. The lower order were privileged to work for their betters, and to have, in the brief intervals between work and sleep, their own coarse enjoyments, which were not the same as those of the upper class; they were ordained by Providence to be different, not only in degree, but also in kind. The privileges of the former class have received of late years many grievous knocks. They have had to admit into their body, as capable of the higher social pleasures and of polite culture, an enormous accession of people who actually work for their own bread—even people in trade; and it is beginning to be perceived that their amusements—also, which seems the last straw, their vices—can actually be enjoyed by the base mechanical sort, insomuch that, if this kind of thing goes on, there must in the end follow an effacement of all classes, and the peer will walk arm and arm with the blacksmith. But class distinctions die hard, and the working men are not yet all ready for the disciplined recreation which will help to break down the barriers, and we may not look for this millennium within the lifetime of living men. It is enough to note that the old feeling still lingers even among those who, a hundred years ago, when class distinctions were in their worst and most odious form, would have been ranked among those incapable of refinement and ignorant of polite manners.

The third objection, that the people should only be helped in the way of education and self-improvement, is, at first sight, worthy of respect. But it involves the theory that it is the duty of the working man when he has done his day's work to devote his evenings to more work of a harder kind. There is a kind of hypocrisy in this feeling. Why should the working man be fired with that ardour for knowledge which is not expected of ourselves? I look round among my own acquaintances and friends, and I declare that I do not know a single household, except where the head of it is a literary man, and therefore obliged to be always studying and learning, in which the members spend their evenings after the day's work in the acquisition of new branches of learning. One may go farther: even of those who belong to the learned professions, few indeed there are who carry on their studies beyond the point where their knowledge has a marketable value. The doctor learns his craft as thoroughly as he can, and, after he has passed, reads no more than is just necessary to keep his eyes open to new lights; the solicitor knows enough law to carry on his business, and reads no more. As for the schoolmaster—who ever heard of a classical master reading any more Latin and Greek than he reads with the boys? and who ever heard of a mathematical master keeping up his knowledge of the higher branches, which put him among the wranglers of his year, but are not wanted in the school? Even the lads who have just begun to go into the City, and who know very well that their value would be enormously increased by a practical and real knowledge of French, German, or shorthand, will not take the trouble to acquire it. Yet, with the knowledge of all this, we expect the working man in his hours of leisure, and after a day physically exhausting, to sit down and work at something intellectual. There are, without doubt, some men so strong and so avid of knowledge that they will do this, but these are not many, and they do not long remain working men.

The People's Palace offers recreation to all who wish to fit themselves for its practice and enjoyment. But it is recreation of a kind which demands skill, patience, discipline, drill, and obedience to law. Those who master any one of the Arts, the practice of which constitutes true recreation, have left once and for ever the ranks of disorder: they belong, by virtue of their aptitude and their education—say, by virtue of their Election—to the army of Law and Order. They will not, we may be sure, be recruited from those whom long years of labour and want of cultivation have tendered stiff of finger, slow of ear and of eye, impenetrable of brain. We must get them from the boys and girls. We must be content if the elders learn to take delight in the hand-work which they cannot execute, the decorative work which they can never hope wholly to understand, the music and singing in which they themselves will never take a part.

But they will by no means be left out. They will have the library, the writing and reading rooms, the conversation and smoking rooms, with those games of skill which are loved by all men. There will be entertainments, concerts, and performances for them. And for those who desire to learn there will be classes, lectures, and lecturers. At the same time, I do not, I confess, anticipate a rush of young working men to share in these joys and privileges. This part of the Palace will grow and develop by degrees, because it is through the boys and girls that the real work and usefulness of the Palace will be effected, and not by means of the men. Of course, there will be from the outset a small proportion capable of rightly using the place. For all these reasons, it seems as if we may be very well contented that the recreation part of the scheme has been for the moment kept in the background.

II. Let us turn to the educational side of the scheme.

When a lad has passed the standards—very likely a bright, clever little chap, who had passed the sixth and even the seventh standard with credit—it becomes necessary for him immediately to earn the greater part of his own living. It is not in the power of his father, who lives from week to week, or even from day to day, to apprentice his boys and put them to a trade. They must earn their living at once. What are they to do?