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THE MEMORIES OF THE PAST
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THE MEMORIES OF THE PAST
I HAVE so often insisted that East London must be regarded as a city of many crafts—the working-man’s city—that it may seem contradictory to call attention to another aspect. That part of East London with which we have been most concerned is the densely populated part lying north of the river and including all that part west of the river Lea as far north as Dalston, Clapton, and Hackney, and east of that river, including Bow, Stratford, Walthamstow, Wanstead, Forest Gate, Bromley West, and East Ham and Barking. It includes, in a word, very nearly all the ancient villages and hamlets whose names may be found upon the map. But there is a fringe, and there are extensions. When one emerges at last from streets which seem to have no end, when the nightmare of a world which is all streets, with never a field or an orchard or a hillside left, begins to break, when it is cleared away, as an ugly dream by the daylight, by the reappearance of trees and large gardens and wide roads, then we discover the fringe. Part of Stoke Newington, part of Stamford Hill, a small part of Tottenham, part of Snaresbrook, belong to the fringe. Here we get roads lined with trees, villas with trees in front gardens, modern churches built all after the same half-dozen patterns, in true proportions, correct and without inspiration; here we get windows filled with flowers, and here presently we get houses well apart and a wealth of creepers and of flowering shrubs; which means that the breath of the crowded City is left behind.
But there are further extensions; the suburbs of East London are not confined within the limits of the map of London; they stretch out far afield, they include Chigwell and Chingford and Theydon Bois, and all the villages round Epping Forest. Dotted about everywhere in this extension are stately houses with large gardens and grounds, the residences of the manufacturers and the employers, not those of the small trades of East London, where the master is often but one degree better off than the employee, but those of the factories and the works; theirs is the capital invested; theirs is the enterprise; theirs the wit and courage which have made them succeed; theirs is the wealth. This extension is a delightful place in early summer; it is full of trees; there are old churches, and there is “the” forest—the people of East London always speak of “the” forest, for to them there is no other. It is, also, a part of London very little visited; it is, to begin with, somewhat inaccessible; one who would visit it from the West End has to get first into the City. In the next chapter we will discourse on what may be seen by the curious who would explore the forest and its surroundings. Let us return to my group of villages.
To the American, and to most of my own people, the names of Stoke Newington, Hackney, Stepney, Mile End, and the rest are names and nothing else; they awaken no more memories than a list of Australian or American townships. Let me try to endow these names with associations; I would make them, if possible, venerable by means of their association with those who have gone before. The suburban life of London belongs essentially to the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. In the former only the wealthy had their country, as well as their town, houses; in the latter there have been no town houses left in the City at all, and the whole of the people who every day carry on their business in the City have now their suburban residences.
The introduction and the development of the suburban life effected a revolution in the City. It destroyed the social side of the City by the simple process of driving out all the people. When the citizens lived over their offices and their shops they belonged to a highly sociable and gregarious City, its society having no kind of connection with the aristocratic side of the west, and its gregarious nature preserving due respect and distinction to City rank and position. Every man had his weekly club and his nightly tavern. Here, with his friends of the same street or the same ward, he discussed the affairs of the day. He was a politician of advanced and well-defined views; he confirmed, by many a commonplace uttered with solemnity, his own and his friends’ prejudices; the use of conversation, when men read nothing more than was provided by an elementary press, was mainly the development and the maintenance of healthy prejudice. This was all the amusement that the good man desired—how great was the interval between two of John Gilpin’s pleasure jaunts? “Twice ten tedious years!” Wonderful! To be sure, he had his City company, and its dinners were events to be remembered. The City madams had their card-parties; for the élite there was the City Assembly. For those who wanted pleasure there were the gardens—Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells, any number of gardens.
The daily work, the business done on ’change, the counting-house, the shop, all this formed part and parcel of the family life; it was not cut off and separated as at present: from his counting-house the merchant went to his “parlor”—it was under the same roof—when dinner was called. And all the year round he slept under the same roof over his place of business.
A hundred and fifty years ago the people began to leave the City; the wealthiest merchants went first; then the less wealthy; finally the shopkeepers and the clerks; the private houses were converted into offices and warehouses and chambers; the old City life absolutely vanished. Everything disappeared; the club, the tavern, the card-parties, the assembly, the evenings at Vauxhall—all were swept away. The life of the City man was cut in two, one half belonging to his office in the City, the other to his suburban villa, with the night and three or four of the waking hours. He took breakfast at eight; he went off after breakfast, catching an early omnibus; he returned at six or seven; he dined; he sat for an hour or two; he went to bed. No life could be duller; of social intercourse the suburban resident had little or none; visiting was limited; at rare intervals there were evenings with a “little music”; dances were few and far between; the old circles were broken up and no new ones formed; the occupation and social position of neighbors were not known to each other. For amusements the girls had their slender stock of accomplishments; the sons, whenever they could, ran up to town and got into mischief; and the père de famille, not knowing or suspecting the narrowness and the dullness of his life, solemnly sat after dinner with a book in his hand or took a hand at cribbage, and went to bed at ten. There were no theaters, no evening entertainments, no lectures even, no concerts, no talk of amusements. As the evangelical narrowness was widely spread over all the London suburbs, if a young man spoke of amusements he was asked if he could reconcile amusement with the working out of his own salvation. The church, or the chapel, was in itself the principal recreation of the ladies. They found in religious emotions the excitement and the interest which their narrow round of life failed to supply.