As We Are and As We May Be
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Title: As We Are and As We May Be
Author: Walter Besant
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AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
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THIS SON OF VULCAN.
THE MONKS OF THELEMA.
BY CELIA'S ARBOUR.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE FLEET.
THE SEAMY SIDE.
THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT.
'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY.
THE TEN YEARS' TENANT.
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UNCLE JACK, and other Stories.
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HERR PAULUS: His Rise, his Greatness, and his Fall.
THE BELL OF ST. PAUL'S.
FOR FAITH AND FREEDOM. Illusts. by FORESTIER and WADDY.
TO CALL HER MINE. With 9 Illustrations by A. FORESTIER.
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ARMOREL OF LYONESSE. With 12 Illustrations by F. BARNARD.
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THE REBEL QUEEN.
BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. 12 Illustrations by HYDE.
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THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN.
THE CITY OF REFUGE.
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THE CHANGELING.
THE FOURTH GENERATION.
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AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1903
FOREWORD.
_The reader of these Essays, which are not chronologically arranged,
is asked to notice the date in each case affixed to them. Almost
without exception, those passages which cannot fail to strike him as
nearly exact repetitions, whether of argument or of example, will be
seen to have been written at considerable intervals of time. A series
of papers, composed in different circumstances, and with no design of
collective re-issue in any particular form, will always present these
repetitions; and they serve to emphasize the author's message. The
lapse of time will also account for the apparent inaccuracy of a few
statements, and for the fact that some of the occurrences alluded to
in the future tense were accomplished during Sir Walter Besant's
lifetime. 'As We Are and As We May Be' is the exposition of a
practical philanthropist's creed, and of his hopes for the progress of
his fellow-countrymen. Some of these hopes may never be realized; some
he had the great happiness to see bear fruit. And for the realization
of all he spared no pains. The personal service of humanity, that in
these pages he urges repeatedly on others, he was himself ever the
first to give._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE ENDOWMENT OF THE DAUGHTER 1
FROM THIRTEEN TO SEVENTEEN 24
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE 50
SUNDAY MORNING IN THE CITY 67
A RIVERSIDE PARISH 106
ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER 137
THE UPWARD PRESSURE 166
THE LAND OF ROMANCE 203
THE LAND OF REALITY 224
ART AND THE PEOPLE 246
THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE 271
THE ASSOCIATED LIFE 296
AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
THE ENDOWMENT OF THE DAUGHTER.
Those who begin to consider the subject of the working woman discover
presently that there is a vast field of inquiry lying quite within
their reach, without any trouble of going into slums or inquiring of
sweaters. This is the field occupied by the gentlewoman who works for
a livelihood. She is not always, perhaps, gentle in quite the old
sense, but she is gentle in that new and better sense which means
culture, education, and refinement. There are now thousands of these
working gentlewomen, and the number is daily increasing. A few among
them--a very few--are working happily and successfully; some are
working contentedly, others with murmuring and discontent at the
hardness of the work and the poorness of the pay. Others, again, are
always trying, and for the most part vainly, to get work--any kind of
work--which will bring in money--any small sum of money. This is a
dreadful spectacle, to any who have eyes to see, of gentlewomen
struggling, snatching, importuning, begging for work. No one knows,
who has not looked into the field, how crowded it is, and how sad a
sight it presents.
For my own part I think it is a shame that a lady should ever have to
stand in the labour market for hire like a milkmaid at a statute fair.
I think that the rush of women into the labour market is a most
lamentable thing. Labour, and especially labour which is without
organization or union, has to wage an incessant battle--always getting
beaten--against greed and injustice: the natural enemy of labour is
the employer, especially the impecunious employer; in the struggle
women always get worsted. Again, in whatever trade or calling they
attempt, the great majority of women are hopelessly incompetent. As in
the lower occupations, so in the higher, the greatest obstacle to
success is incompetence. How should gentlewomen be anything but
incompetent? They have not been taught anything special, they have not
been 'put through the mill'; mostly, they are fit only for those
employments which require the single quality that everybody can
claim--general intelligence. Hopeless indeed is the position of that
woman who brings into the intellectual labour market nothing but
general intelligence. She is exactly like the labourer who knows no
trade, and has nothing but his strong frame and his pair of hands. To
that man falls the hardest work and the smallest wage. To the woman
with general intelligence is assigned the lowest drudgery of
intellectual labour. And yet there are so many clamouring for this, or
for anything. A few months ago a certain weekly magazine stated that
I, the writer, had started an Association for Providing Ladies with
Copying Work--all in capitals. The number of letters which came to me
by every post in consequence of that statement was incredible. The
writers implored me to give them a share of that copying work; they
told terrible, heart-rending stories of suffering. Of course, there
was no such Association. There is, now that typewriting is fairly
established, no copying work left to speak of. Even now the letters
have not quite ceased to arrive.
The existence of this army of necessitous gentlewomen is a new thing
in the land. That is to say, there have always been ladies who have
'come down in the world'--not a seaside lodging-housekeeper but has
known better days. There have always been girls who never expected to
be poor; always suffered to live in a fool's paradise who ought to
have been taught some way of earning their livelihood. Never till now,
however, has this army of gentlewomen been so great, or its distress
so acute. One reason--it is one which threatens to increase with
accelerated rapidity--is the depression of agriculture. I think we
hardly realize the magnitude of this great national disaster. We
believe that it is only the landlords, or the landlords and farmers,
who are suffering. If that were all--but can one member of the body
politic suffer and the rest go free from pain? All the trade of the
small towns droops with agriculture; the professional men of the
country towns lose their practice; clergymen who depend upon glebe,
dissenting ministers who depend upon the townspeople, lose their
income; the labourers, the craftsmen--why, it bewilders one even to
think of the widespread ruin which will follow the agricultural
depression if it continues. And every day carriage becomes cheaper,
and food products of all kinds are conveyed at lower prices and from
greater distances. Every fall in price makes it more difficult to let
the farms, drives the rustics in greater numbers from the country to
the town, lays the curse of labour upon thousands of untrained
gentlewomen, and makes it more difficult for them to escape in the old
way, that of marriage.
Another reason is the enormous increase during the last thirty years
of the cultivated classes. We have all, except the very lowest, moved
upwards. The working-man wears broadcloth and has his club; the
tradesman who has grown rich also has his club, his daughters are
young ladies of culture, his sons are educated at the public schools
and the universities--things perfectly proper and laudable. The
thickness of the cultured stratum grows greater every day. But those
who belong to the lower part of that stratum--those whose position is
not as yet strengthened by family connections and the accumulations of
generations--are apt to yield and to be crushed down by the first
approach of misfortune. Then the daughters who, in the last
generation, would have joined the working girls and become dressmakers
in a 'genteel' way, join the ranks of distressed gentlewomen.
Everybody knows the way up the social ladder. It has been shown to
those below by millions of twinkling feet. It is a broad ladder up
which people are always climbing, some slowly, some quickly--from
corduroy to broadcloth; from workshop to counter; from shop-boy to
master; from shop to office; from trade to profession; from the
bedroom over the shop to the great country villa. The other day a
bricklayer told me that his grandfather and the first Lord O.'s father
were old pals: they used to go poaching together; but the parent of
Lord O. was so clever as to open a shop, where he sold what his friend
poached. The shop began it you see. The way up is known to everybody.
But there is another way which we seldom regard; it is the way down
again. The Family Rise is the commonest phenomenon. Is not the name
Legion of those of whom men say, partly with the pride of connecting
themselves with greatness, partly with the natural desire, which small
men always show, to tear away something of that greatness, 'Why, I
knew him when his father had a shop!' The Family Fall is less
conspicuous. Yet there are always as many going down as climbing up.
You cannot, in fact, stay still. You must either climb or slip
down--unless, indeed, you have got your leg over the topmost rung,
which means the stability of an hereditary title and landed property.
We all ought to have hereditary titles and landed property, in order
to insure national prosperity for ever. Novelists do not, as a rule,
treat of the Sinking Back because it is a depressing subject. There
are many ways of falling. Mostly, the father makes an ass of himself
in the way of business or speculation; or he dies too soon; or his
sons possess none of their father's ability; or they take to drink.
Anyhow, down goes the Family, at first slowly, but with ever
increasing rapidity, back to its original level. There is no country
in the world--certainly not the United States--where a young man may
rise to distinction with greater ease than this realm of the Three
Kingdoms. There is also none where the families show a greater
alacrity in sinking. But the most reluctant to go down, those who
cling most tightly to the social level which they think they have
reached, are the daughters; so that when misfortunes fall upon them
they are ready to deny themselves everything rather than lose the
social dignity which they think belongs to them.
Again, a steady feeder of these ranks is the large family of girls. It
is astonishing what a number of families there are in which they are
all, or nearly all, girls. The father is, perhaps, a professional man
of some kind, whose blamelessness has not brought him solid success,
so that there is always tightness. And it is beautiful to remark the
cheerfulness of the girls, and how they accept the tightness as a
necessary part of the World's Order; and how they welcome each new
feminine arrival as if it was really going to add a solid lump of
comfort to the family joy. These girls face work from the beginning.
Well for them if they have any better training than the ordinary
day-school, or any special teaching at all.
Another--the most potent cause of all--is the complete revolution of
opinion as regards woman's work which has been effected in the course
of a single generation. Thirty years ago, if a girl was compelled to
earn her bread by her own work, what could she do? There were a few--a
very few--who wrote; many very excellent persons held writing to be
'unladylike.' There were a few--a very few--who painted; there were
some--but very few, and those chiefly the daughters of actors--who
went on the stage. All the rest of the women who maintained
themselves, and were called, by courtesy, ladies, became governesses.
Some taught in schools, where they endured hardness--remember the
account of the school where Charlotte Brontë was educated. Some went
to live in private houses--think of the governess in the old novel,
meek and gentle, snubbed by her employer, bullied by her pupils, and
insulted by the footman, until the young Prince came along. Some went
from house to house as daily governesses. Even in teaching they were
greatly restricted. Man was called in to teach dancing; he went round
among the schools in black silk stockings, with a kit under his arm,
and could caper wonderfully. Woman could only teach dancing at the
awful risk of showing her ankles. Who cares now whether a woman shows
her ankles or not? It makes one think of Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle,
and of the admiration which those sly dogs expressed for a neat pair
of ankles. Man, again, taught drawing; man taught music; man taught
singing; man taught writing; man taught arithmetic; man taught French
and Italian; German was not taught at all. Indeed, had it not been for
geography and the use of the globes, and the right handling of the
blackboard, there would have been nothing at all left for the
governess to teach. Forty years ago, however, she was great on the
Church Catechism and a martinet as to the Sunday sermon.
It was not every girl, even then, who could teach. I remember one lady
who in her young days had refused to teach on the ground that she
would have to be hanged for child-murder if she tried. Those who did
not teach, unless they married and became mistresses of their own
_ménage_, stayed at home until the parents died, and then went to live
with a brother or a married sister. What family would be without the
unmarried sister, the universal aunt? Sometimes, perhaps, she became a
mere unpaid household servant, who could not give notice. But one
would fain hope that these were rare cases.
Now, however, all is changed. The doors are thrown wide open. With a
few exceptions--to be sure, the Church, the Law, and Engineering are
important exceptions--a woman can enter upon any career she pleases.
The average woman, specially trained, should do at any intellectual
work nearly as well as the average man. The old prejudice against the
work of women is practically extinct. Love of independence and the
newly awakened impatience of the old shackles, in addition to the
forces already mentioned, are everywhere driving girls to take up
professional lives.
Not only are the doors of the old avenues thrown open: we have created
new ways for the women who work. Literature offers a hundred paths,
each one with stimulating examples of feminine success. There is
journalism, into which women are only now beginning to enter by ones
and twos. Before long they will sweep in with a flood. In medicine,
which requires arduous study and great bodily strength, they do not
enter in large numbers. Acting is a fashionable craze. Art covers as
wide a field as literature. Education in girls' schools of the highest
kind has passed into their own hands. Moreover, women can now do many
things--and remain gentlewomen--which were formerly impossible. Some
keep furniture shops, some are decorators, some are dressmakers, some
make or sell embroidery.
In all these professions two things are wanting--natural aptitude and
special training. Unfortunately, the competition is encumbered and
crowded with those who have neither, or else both imperfectly,
developed.
The present state of things is somewhat as follows: The world contains
a great open market, where the demand for first-class work of every
kind is practically inexhaustible. In literature everything really
good commands instant attention, respect--and payment. But it must be
really good. Publishers are always looking about for genius.
Editors--even the much-abused editors--are always looking about for
good and popular writers. But the world is critical. To become popular
requires a combination of qualities, which include special training,
education, and natural aptitude. Art, again, in every possible branch,
offers recognition--and pay--for good work. But it must be really
good. The world is even more critical in Art than in Literature. In
the theatre, managers are always looking about for good plays, good
actors, and good actresses. In scholarship, women who have taken
university honours command good salaries and an honourable position if
they can teach. In music, a really good composer, player, or singer,
is always received with joy and the usual solid marks of approval. In
this great open Market there is no favouritism possible, because the
public, which is scornful of failure--making no allowance, and
receiving no excuses--is also generous and quick to recognise success.
In this Market clever women have exactly the same chances as clever
men; their work commands the same price. George Eliot is as well paid
as Thackeray; and the Market is full of the most splendid prizes both
of praise and pudding. It is a most wonderful Market. In all other
Markets the stalls are full of good things which the vendors are
anxious to sell, but cannot. In this Market nothing is offered but it
is snapped up greedily by the buyers; there are even, indeed, men who
buy up the things before they reach the open Market. In other Markets
the cry of those who stand at the stalls is 'Buy, buy, buy!' In this
Market it is the buyers who cry out continually, 'Bring out more wares
to sell.' Only to think of this Market, and of the thousands of
gentlewomen outside, fills the heart with sadness.
For outside, there is quite another kind of Market. Here there are
long lines of stalls behind which stand the gentlewomen eagerly
offering their wares. Alas! here is Art in every shape, but it is not
the art which we can buy. Here are painting and drawing; here are
coloured photographs, painted china, art embroideries, and fine work.
Here are offered original songs and original music. Here are standing
long lines of those who want to teach, and are most melancholy because
they have no degree or diploma, and know nothing. Here are standing
those who wait to be hired, and who will do anything in which 'general
intelligence' will show the way; lastly, there is a whole quarter at
least a quarter--of the Market filled with stalls covered with
manuscripts, and there are thousands of women offering these
manuscripts. The publishers and the editors walk slowly along before
the stalls and receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then
lay down, though their writers weep and wail and wring their hands.
Presently there comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression
of his face the wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to
take up a manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of
strange oaths and ejaculations, wonder and imagination. ''Fore Gad,
madam!' he says, ''tis fine! 'Twill take the town by storm! 'Tis an
immortal piece! Your own, madam? Truly 'tis wonderful! Nay, madam, but
I must have it. 'Twill cost you for the printing of it a paltry sixty
pounds or so, and for return, believe me, 'twill prove a new Potosi.'
This is the confidence trick under another form. The unfortunate woman
begs and borrows the money, of which she will never again see one
farthing; and if her book be produced, no one will ever buy a copy.
The women at these stalls are always changing. They grow tired of
waiting when no one will buy: they go away. A few may be traced. They
become type-writers: they become cashiers in shops; they sit in the
outer office of photographers and receive the visitors: they 'devil'
for literary men: they make extracts: they conduct researches and look
up authorities: they address envelopes; some, I suppose, go home again
and contrive to live somehow with their relations. What becomes of the
rest no man can tell. Only when men get together and talk of these
things it is whispered that there is no family, however prosperous,
but has its unsuccessful members--no House, however great, which has
not its hangers-on and followers, like the _ribauderie_ of an army,
helpless and penniless.
Considering, therefore, the miseries, drudgeries, insults, and
humiliations which await the necessitous gentlewoman in her quest for
work and a living, and the fact that these ladies are increasing in
number, and likely to increase, I venture to call attention to certain
preventive steps which may be applied--not for those who are now in
this hell, but for those innocent children whose lot it may be to join
the hapless band. The subject concerns all of us who have to work, all
who have to provide for our families; it concerns every woman who has
daughters: it concerns the girls themselves to such a degree that, if
they knew or suspected the dangers before them they would cry aloud
for prevention, they would rebel, they would strike the Fifth
Commandment out of the Tables. So great, so terrible, are the dangers
before them.
The absolute duty of teaching girls who may at some future time have
to depend upon themselves some trade, calling or profession, seems a
mere axiom, a thing which cannot be disputed or denied. Yet it has not
even begun to be practised. If any thought is taken at all of this
contingency, 'general intelligence' is still relied upon. There are,
however, other ways of facing the future.
In France, as everybody knows, no girl born of respectable parents is
unprovided with a _dot_; there is no family, however poor, which does
not strive and save in order to find their daughter some kind of
_dot_. If she has no _dot_, she remains unmarried. The amount of the
_dot_ is determined by the social position of the parents. No marriage
is arranged without the _dot_ forming an important part of the
business. No bride goes empty-handed out of her father's house. And
since families in France are much smaller than in this country, a much
smaller proportion of girls go unmarried.
In this country no girls of the lower class, and few of the middle
class, ever have any _dot_ at all. They go to their husbands
empty-handed, unless, as sometimes happens, the father makes an
allowance to the daughter. All they have is their expectation of what
may come to them after the father's death, when there will be
insurances and savings to be divided. The daughter who marries has no
_dot_. The daughter who remains unmarried has no fortune until her
father dies: very often she has none after that event.
In Germany, where the custom of the _dot_ is not, I believe, so
prevalent, there are companies or societies founded for the express
purpose of providing for unmarried women. They work, I am told, with a
kind of tontine--it is, in fact, a lottery. On the birth of a girl the
father inscribes her name on the books of the company, and pays a
certain small sum every year on her account. At the age of
twenty-five, if she is still unmarried, she receives the right of
living rent free in two rooms, and becomes entitled to a certain small
annuity. If she marries she has nothing. Those who marry, therefore,
pay for those who do not marry. It is the same principle as with life
insurances: those who live long pay for those who die young. If we
assume, for instance, that four girls out of five marry, which seems a
fair proportion, the fifth girl receives five times her own premium.
Suppose that her father has paid £5 a year for her for twenty-one
years, she would receive the amount, at compound interest, of £25 a
year for twenty-one years--namely, about a thousand pounds.
Only consider what a thousand pounds may mean to a girl. It may be
invested to produce £35 a year--that is to say, 13s. 6d. a week. Such
an income, paltry as it seems, may be invaluable; it may supplement
her scanty earnings: it may enable her to take a holiday: it may give
her time to look about her: it may keep her out of the sweater's
hands: it may help her to develop her powers and to step into the
front rank. What gratitude would not the necessitous gentlewoman
bestow upon any who would endow her with 13s. 6d. a week? Why, there
are Homes where she could live in comfort on 12s., and have a solid
1s. 6d. to spare. She would even be able to give alms to others not so
rich.
Take, then, a thousand pounds--£35 a year--as a minimum. Take the case
of a professional man who cannot save much, but who is resolved on
endowing his daughters with an annuity of at least £35 a year. There
are ways and means of doing this which are advertised freely and
placed in everybody's hands. Yet they seem to fail in impressing the
public. One does not hear among one's professional friends of the
endowment of girls. Yet one does hear, constantly, that someone is
dead and has left his daughters without a penny.
First of all, the rules and regulations of the Post Office, which are
published every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these
ways.
I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for
twenty-five years. If the child is five years of age, and under six,
an annuity of £1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased
for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of £12 3s. 8d., the
money to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of £35,
therefore, would cost a yearly premium of £22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum
of £426 8s. 4d.
One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for
the endowment of children. I find, for instance, in the tables issued
by the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of £3 11s.
begun at infancy will insure the sum of £100 at twenty-one years of
age, with the return of the premium should the child die, or that £35
10s. paid annually will insure the sum of £1,000. There is also in
these tables a method of payment by which, should the father die and
the premiums be therefore discontinued, the money will be paid just
the same. No doubt, if the practice were to spread, every insurance
company would take up this kind of business.
It is not every young married man who could afford to pay so large a
sum of money as £426 in one lump; on the contrary, very few indeed
could do so. But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to
purchase, with the first £12 he could save, a deferred annuity of £1
for his child, and so with the next £12, and so with the next, until
he had placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose,
again, that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus
providing for her that amusement and pleasure would be postponed or
curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not
thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first
defrayed: in that case there would be few young married people indeed
who would not speedily be able to purchase this small annuity of £35 a
year. And with every successive payment the sense of the value of the
thing, its importance, its necessity, would grow more and more in the
mind; and with every payment would increase the satisfaction of
feeling that the child was removed from destitution by one pound a
year more. It took a very long time to create in men's minds the duty
of life insurance. That has now taken so firm a hold on people that,
although the English bride brings no dot, the bridegroom is not
permitted to marry her until he settles a life insurance upon her.
When once the mother thoroughly understands that by the exercise of a
little more self-denial her daughter can be rendered independent for
life, that self-denial will certainly not be wanting. Think of the
vast sums of money which are squandered by the middle classes of this
country, even though they are more provident than the working classes.
The money is not spent in any kind of riot: not at all; the middle
classes are, on the whole, most decorous and sober: it is spent in
living just a little more luxuriously than the many changes and
chances of mortal life should permit. It is by lowering the standard
of living that the money must be saved for the endowment of the
daughters; and since the children cost less in infancy than when they
grow older, it is then that the saving must be made. Everyone knows
that there are thousands of young married people who can only by dint
of the strictest economy make both ends meet. It is not for them that
I speak. Another voice, far more powerful than mine, should thunder
into their hearts the selfishness and the wickedness of bringing into
the world children for whom they can make no provision whatever, and
who are destined to be thrown into the battle-field of labour provided
with no other weapons than the knowledge of reading and writing. It is
bad enough for the boys; but as for the girls--they had better have
been thrown as soon as born to the lions. I speak rather to those who
are in better plight, who live comfortably upon the year's income,
which is not too much, and who look forward to putting their boys in
the way of an ambitious career, and to marrying their daughters. But
as for the endowment of the girls, they have not even begun to think
about it. Their conscience has not been yet awakened, their fears not
yet aroused; they look abroad and see their friends struck down by
death or disaster, but they never think it may be their turn next. And
yet the happiness to reflect, if death or disaster does come, that
your girls are safe!
One sees here, besides, a splendid opening for the rich uncle, the
benevolent godfather, the affectionate grandfather, the kindly aunt,
the successful brother. They will come bearing gifts--not the silver
cup, if you please, but the Deferred Annuity. 'I bring you, my dear,
in honour of your little Molly's birthday, an increase of five pounds
to her Deferred Annuity. This makes it up to twenty pounds, and the
money-box getting on, you say, to another pound. Capital! we shall
have her thirty-five pounds in no time now.' What a noble field for
the uncle!
The endowment of the daughter is essentially a woman's question. The
bride, or at least her mother for her, ought to consider that, though
every family quiver varies in capacity with the income, her own lot
may be to have a quiver full. Heaven forbid, as Montaigne said, that
we should interfere with the feminine methods, but common prudence
seems to dictate the duty of this forecast. Let, therefore, the demand
for endowment come from the bride's mother. All that she would be
justified in asking of a man whose means are as yet narrow, would be
such an endowment, gradually purchased, as would keep the girls from
starvation.
For my own part, I think that no woman should be forced to work at
all, except at such things as please her. When a woman marries, for
instance, she voluntarily engages herself to do a vast quantity of
work. To look after the house and to bring up the children involves
daily, unremitting labour and thought. If she has a vocation for any
kind of work, as for Art, or Letters, or Teaching, let her obey the
call and find her happiness. Generally she has none. The average
woman--I make this statement with complete confidence--hates
compulsory work: she hates and loathes it. There are, it is true, some
kinds of work which must be done by women. Well, there will always be
enough for those occupations among women who prefer work to idleness.
There is another very serious consideration. There is only so much
work--a limited quantity--in the world: so many hands for whom
occupation can be found--and the number of hands wanted does not very
greatly exceed that of the male hands ready for it. Now, by giving
this work to women, we take it from the men. If we open the Civil
Service to women, we take so many posts from the men, which we give to
the women, _at a lower salary_; if they become cashiers, accountants,
clerks, they take these places from the men, _at a lower salary_.
Always they take lower pay, and turn the men out. Well, the men must
either go elsewhere, or they must take the lower pay. In either case
the happiest lot of all--that of marriage--is rendered more difficult,
because the men are made poorer; the position of the toiler becomes
harder, because he gets worse pay; then man's sense of responsibility
for the women of his family is destroyed. Nay, in some cases the men
actually live, and live contentedly, upon the labour of their wives.
But when all is said about women, and their rights and wrongs, and
their work and place, and their equality and their superiority, we
fall back at last upon nature. There is still, and will always remain
with us, the sense in man that it is his duty to work for his wife,
and the sense in woman that nothing is better for her than to receive
the fruits of her husband's labour.
Let us endow the Daughters: those who are not clever, in order to save
them from the struggles of the Incompetent and the hopelessness of the
Dependent; those who are clever, so as to give them time for work and
training. The Bread-winner may die: his powers may cease: he may lose
his clients, his reputation, his popularity, his business; in a
thousand forms misfortune and poverty may fall upon him. Think of the
happiness with which he would then contemplate that endowment of a
Deferred Annuity. And the endowment will not prevent or interfere with
any work the girls may wish to do. It will even help them in their
work. My brothers, let our girls work if they wish; perhaps they will
be happier if they work let them work at whatever kind of work they
may desire; but not--oh not--because they must.
[1888.]
FROM THIRTEEN TO SEVENTEEN
In the history of every measure designed for the amelioration of the
people there may be observed four distinct and clearly marked stages.
First, there is the original project, fresh from the brain of the
dreamer, glowing with the colours of his imagination, a figure fair
and strong as the newly born Athênê. By its single-handed power
mankind are to be regenerated, and the millennium is to be at once
taken in hand. There are no difficulties which it will not at once
clear away; there are no obstacles which will not vanish at its
approach as the morning mist is burned up by the newly risen sun. The
dreamer creates a school, and presently among his disciples there
arises one who is practical enough to reduce the dream to a possible
and working scheme. The advocates of the Cause are still, however, a
good way from getting the scheme established. The battle with the
opposition follows, in which one has to contend--first with those who
cannot be touched by any generous aims, always a pretty large body;
next with those who are afraid of the people; and lastly with those
who have private interests of their own to defend. The triumph which
presently arrives by no means concludes the history of the agitation,
because there is certain to follow at no distant day the discovery
that the measure has somehow failed to achieve those glorious results
which were so freely promised. It has, in fact, gone to swell the
pages of that chronicle, not yet written, which may be called the
'History of the Well-intentioned.'
The emancipation of the West Indian slaves, for instance, has not been
accompanied by the burning desire for progress--industrial, artistic,
or educational--which was confidently anticipated. Quite the contrary.
Yet--which is a point which continually recurs in the History of the
Well-intentioned--one would not, if it were possible, go back to the
former conditions. It is better that the negro should lie idle, and
sleep in the sun all his days, than that he should work under the
overseer's lash. For the free man there is always hope; for the slave
there is none. Again, the first apostles of Co-operation expected
nothing less than that their ideas would be universally, immediately,
and ardently adopted. That was a good many years ago. The method of
Co-operation still offers the most wonderful vision of universal
welfare, easily attainable on the simple condition of honesty, ever
put before humanity; yet we see how little has been achieved and how
numerous have been the failures. Again, though the advantages of
temperance are continually preached to working men, beer remains the
national beverage; yet even those of us who would rather see the
working classes sober and self-restrained than water-drinkers by Act
of Parliament or solemn pledge, acknowledge how good it is that the
preaching of temperance was begun. Again, we have got most of those
Points for which the Chartists once so passionately struggled. As for
those we have not got, there is no longer much enthusiasm left for
them. The world does not seem so far very substantially advanced by
the concession of the Points; yet we would not willingly give them
back and return to the old order. Again, we have opened free museums,
containing all kinds of beautiful things: the people visit them in
thousands; yet they remain ignorant of Art, and have no yearning
discoverable for Art. In spite of this, we would not willingly close
the museums.
The dreamer, in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain
factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially
takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed,
indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in
humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these
are the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most
important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with
an incurable indolence of mind or body, which keeps them rooted in the
old grooves and destroys every germ of ambition at its first
appearance.
The latest failure of the Well-intentioned, so far as we have yet
found out, is the Education Act, for which the London rate has now
mounted to nine-pence in the pound. It is a failure, like the
emancipation of the slaves; because, though it has done some things
well, it has wholly failed to achieve the great results confidently
predicted for it by its advocates in the year '68. What is more, we
now understand that it never can achieve those results.
It was going, we were told, to give all English children a sound and
thorough elementary education. It was, further, going to inspire those
children with the ardour for knowledge, so that, on leaving school,
they would carry on their studies and continually advance in learning.
It was going to take away the national reproach of ignorance, and to
make us the best educated country in the world.
As for what it has done and is doing, the children are taught to read,
write, cipher, and spell (this accomplishment being wholly useless to
them and its mastery a sheer waste of time). They are also taught a
little singing, and a few other things; and in general terms the Board
Schools do, I suppose, impart as good an education to the children as
the time at their disposal will allow. They command the services of a
great body of well-trained, disciplined, and zealous teachers, against
whose intelligence and conscientious work nothing can be alleged. And
yet, with the very best intentions of Board and teachers, the
practical result has been, as is now maintained, that but a very small
percentage of all the children who go through the schools are educated
at all.
This is an extremely disagreeable discovery. It is, however, as will
presently be seen, a result which might have been expected. Those who
looked for so splendid an outcome of this magnificent educational
machinery, this enormous expenditure, forgot to take into account two
or three very important factors. They were, first, those we have
already indicated, stupidity, apathy, and indolence; and next, the
exigencies and conditions of labour. These shall be presently
explained. Meantime, the discovery once made, and once plainly stated,
seems to have been frankly acknowledged and recognised by all who are
interested in educational questions: it has been made the subject of a
great meeting at the Mansion House, which was addressed by men of
every class: and it has, further, which is a very valuable and
encouraging circumstance, been seriously taken up by the Trades Unions
and the working men.
As for the situation, it is briefly as follows:
The children leave the Board Schools, for the most part, at the age of
thirteen, when they have passed the standard which exempts them from
further attendance; or if they are half-timers, they remain until they
are fourteen. At this ripe age, when the education of the richer class
is only just beginning, these children have to leave school and begin
work. Whatever kind of work this may be, it is certain to involve a
day's labour of ten hours. It might be thought--at one time it was
fully expected--that the children would by this age have received such
an impetus and imbibed so great a love for reading that they would of
their own accord continue to read and study on the lines laid down,
and eagerly make use of such facilities as might be provided for them.
In the History of the Well-intentioned we shall find that we are
always crediting the working classes with virtues which no other class
can boast. In this case we credited the children of working men with a
clear insight into their own best interests; with resolution and
patience; with industry; with the power of resisting temptation, and
with the strength to forego present enjoyment. This is a good deal to
expect of them. But apply the sane situation to a boy of the middle
class. He is taken from school at sixteen and sent to a merchant's
office or a shop. Here he works from nine till six, or perhaps later.
How many of these lads, when their day's work is over--what proportion
of the whole--make any attempt at all to carry on their education or
to learn anything new? For instance, there are two things, the
acquisition of which doubles the marketable value of a clerk: one is a
knowledge of shorthand, and the other is the power of reading and
writing a foreign language. This is a fact which all clerks very well
understand. But not one in a hundred possesses the industry and
resolution necessary to acquire this knowledge, and this, though he is
taught from infancy to desire a good income, and knows that this
additional power will go far to procure it. Again, these boys come
from homes where there are some books at least, some journals, and
some papers; and they hear at their offices and at home talk which
should stimulate them to effort. Yet most of them lie where they are.
If such boys as these remain in indolence, what are we to expect of
those who belong to the lower levels? For they have no books at home,
no magazines, no journals; they hear no talk of learning or knowledge;
if they wanted to read, what are they to read? and where are they to
find books? Free libraries are few and far between: in all London, for
instance, I can find but five or six. They are those at the Guildhall,
Bethnal Green, Westminster, Camden Town, Notting Hill, and
Knightsbridge. Put a red dot upon each of these sites on the map of
London, and consider how very small can be the influence of these
libraries over the whole of this great city. Boys and girls at
thirteen have no inclination to read newspapers; there remains,
therefore, nothing but the penny novelette for those who have any
desire to read at all. There is, it is true, the evening school, but
it is not often found to possess attractions for these children.
Again, after their day's work and confinement in the hot rooms, they
are tired; they want fresh air and exercise. To sum up: there are no
existing inducements for the children to read and study; most of them
are sluggish of intellect; outside the evening schools there are no
facilities for them at all; they have no books; when evening comes
they are tired; they do not understand their own interests; after a
day's work they like an evening's rest; of the two paths open to every
man at every juncture, one is for the most part hidden to children,
and the other is always the easier.
Therefore they spend their evenings in the streets. They would
sometimes, I dare say, prefer the gallery of the theatre or the
music-hall, but these are not often within reach of their means. The
street is always open to them. Here they find their companions of the
workroom; here they feel the strong, swift current of life; here
something is always happening; here there are always new pleasures;
here they can talk and play, unrestrained, left wholly to themselves,
taking for pattern those who are a little older than themselves. As
for their favourite amusements and their pleasures, they grow yearly
coarser; as for their conversation, it grows continually viler, until
Zola himself would be ashamed to reproduce the talk of these young
people. The love which these children have for the street is
wonderful; no boulevard in the world, I am sure, is more loved by its
frequenters than the Whitechapel Road, unless it be the High Street,
Islington. Especially is this the case with the girls. There is a
certain working girls' club with which I am acquainted whose members,
when they leave the club at ten, go back every night to the streets
and walk about till midnight; they would rather give up their club
than the street. As for the moral aspect of this roaming about the
streets, that may for a moment be neglected. Consider the situation
from an educational point of view. How long, do you think, does it
take to forget almost all that the boys and girls learned at school?
'The garden,' says one who knows, 'which by daily culture has been
brought into such an admirable and promising condition, is given over
to utter neglect; the money, the time, the labour, bestowed upon it
are lost.' In the first two years after leaving school it is said that
they have forgotten everything. There is, however, it is objected, the
use and exercise of the intellectual faculty. Can that, once taught,
ever be forgotten? By way of reply, consider this case. The other day
twenty young mechanics were persuaded to join a South Kensington
class. Of the whole twenty one only struggled through the course and
passed his examination; the rest dropped off, one after the other, in
sheer despair, because they had lost not only the little knowledge
they had once acquired, but even the methods of application and study
which they had formerly been able to exercise. There are exceptions,
of course; it is computed, in fact, that there are 4 per cent. of
Board School boys and girls who carry on their studies in the evening
schools, but this proportion is said to be decreasing. After thirteen,
no school, no books, no reading or writing, nothing to keep up the old
knowledge, no kind of conversation that stimulates; no examples of
perseverance; in a great many cases no church, chapel, or
Sunday-school; the street for playground, exercise, observation, and
talk; what kind of young men and maidens are we to expect that these
boys and girls will become? If this were the exact, plain, and naked
truth we were in a parlous state indeed. Fortunately, however, there
arc in every parish mitigations, introduced principally by those who
come from the city of Samaria, or it would be bad indeed for the next
generation. There are a few girls' clubs; the church, the chapel, and
the Sunday-school get hold of many children; visiting and kindly
ladies look after others. There are working boys' institutes here and
there, but these things taken together are almost powerless with the
great mass which remains unaffected. The evil for the most part lies
hidden, yet one sometimes lights upon a case which shows that the
results of our own neglect of the children may be such as cannot be
placed on paper for general reading. For instance, on last August Bank
Holiday I was on Hampstead Heath. The East Heath was crowded with a
noisy, turbulent, good-tempered mob, enjoying, as a London crowd
always does, the mere presence of a multitude. There was a little
rough horse-play and the exchange of favourite witticisms, and there
was some preaching and a great singing of irreverent parodies; there
was little drunkenness and little bad behaviour except for half a
dozen troops or companies of girls. They were quite young, none of
them apparently over fifteen or sixteen. They were running about
together, not courting the company of the boys, but contented with
their own society, and loudly talking and shouting as they ran among
the swings and merry-go-rounds and other attractions of the fair. I
may safely aver that language more vile and depraved, revealing
knowledge and thoughts more vile and depraved, I have never heard from
any grown men or women in the worst part of the town. At mere
profanity, of course, these girls would be easily defeated by men, but
not in absolute vileness. The quiet working men among whom they ran
looked on in amazement and disgust; they had never heard anything in
all their lives to equal the abomination of these girls' language.
Now, they were girls who had all, I suppose, passed the third or
fourth standard. At thirteen they had gone into the workshop and the
street. Of all the various contrivances to influence the young not one
had as yet caught hold of them; the kerbstone and the pavements of the
street were their schools; as for their conversation, it had in this
short time developed to a vileness so amazing. What refining
influence, what trace of good manners, what desire for better things,
what self-restraint, respect, or government, was left in the minds of
these girls as a part of their education? As one of the bystanders,
himself of the working class, said to me, 'God help their husbands!'
Yes, poverty has many stings; but there can be none sharper than the
necessity of marrying one of these poor neglected creatures.
We do not, therefore, only leave the children without education; we
also leave them, at the most important age, I suppose, of any
namely--the age of early adolescence--without guidance or supervision.
How should we like our own girls left free to run about the streets at
thirteen years of age? Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen--how
can we ever forget this time?--there falls upon boy and girl alike a
strange and subtle change. It is a time when the brain is full of
strange new imaginings, when the thoughts go vaguely forth to unknown
splendours; when the continuity of self is broken, and the lad of
to-day is different from him of yesterday; when the energies, physical
and intellectual, wake into new life, and impel the youth in new
directions. Everyone has been young, but somehow we forget that sweet
spring season. Let us try to remember, in the interests of the
uncared-for youths and girls, the time of glorious dreaming, when the
boy became a man, and stood upon some peak in Darien to gaze upon the
purple isles of life in the great ocean beyond, peopled by men who
were as heroes and by women who were as goddesses. Our own dreaming
was glorified, to be sure, with memories of things we had read; yet,
as we dreamed, so, but without the colour lent to our visions, these
sallow-faced lads, with the long and ugly coats and the round-topped
hats, are dreaming now. For want of our help their dreams become
nightmares, and in their brains are born devils of every evil passion.
And, for the girls, although not all can become so bad as those
foul-mouthed young Bacchantes and raging Mænads of Hamstead Heath, it
would seem as if nothing could be left to them, after the education of
the gutter--nothing at all--of the things which we associate with holy
and gracious womanhood.
Truly, from the moral as well as the educational point of view, here
is a great evil disclosed. There is, however, another aspect of the
question, which must not be forgotten. If we are to hold our place at
the head of the industrial countries of the world, our workmen must
have technical education. But this can only be received by those who
possess already a certain amount of knowledge, and that a good deal
beyond the grasp of a child of thirteen years. How, then, can it be
made to reach those who have lost the whole of what once they knew?
These facts are, I believe, beyond any dispute or doubt. They have
only to be stated in order to be appreciated. They affect not London
only, but every great town. The working men themselves have recognised
the gravity of the situation, and are anxious to provide some remedy.
At Nottingham an address, signed on behalf of the School Board and the
Nottingham Trades Council, has been addressed to the employers of
labour, entreating them to assist in the establishment and maintenance
of remedial measures. At the meeting of the Trades Unions'
representatives held in London last year, two resolutions on the
subject were passed; and the School Boards of London, Glasgow, and
Nottingham are all willing to lend their schools for evening use. For
there is but one thing possible or practical--the evening school, In
Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, children are by law
compelled to attend 'continuation' schools until the age of sixteen.
In some places the zeal of the people for education outstrips even the
Government regulations. At the town of Chemnitz, in Saxony, for
example, with a population of 92,000 inhabitants, the Workmen's Union
have started a Continuation school with a far more comprehensive
system of subjects and classes than that provided by legislation. It
is attended by over 2,000 scholars, a very large proportion of the
inhabitants between thirteen and eighteen years of age. There is
nothing possible but the evening school. The children _must_ be sent
to work at thirteen or fourteen; they _must_ work all day; it is only
in the evening school that this education can be carried on, and that
they can be rescued from the contaminations and dangers of the
streets. But two difficulties present themselves. There is no law by
which the children can be compelled to attend the evening school. How,
then, can they be made to come in? And if the rate is now ninepence,
what will it be when to the burden of the elementary school is added
that of the Continuation school?
A scheme has been proposed which has so far met with favour that a
committee, including persons of every class, has been formed to
promote it. Briefly it is as follows:
The Continuation school is to be established in this country. The
difficulties of the situation will be met, not by compelling the
children to attend, but by persuading and attracting them. Much is
hoped from parents' influence now that working men understand the
situation; much may be hoped from the children themselves being
interested, and from others' example. The Continuation school will
have two branches--the recreative and the instructive. And since after
a hard day's work the children must have amusement, play will be found
for them in the shape of 'Rhythmic Drill,' which is defined as
'pleasant orderly movement accompanied by music,' and the instruction
is promised to be conveyed in a more attractive and pleasing manner
than that of the elementary schools. The latter announcement is at
first discouraging, because effective teaching must require
intellectual exercise and application, which may not always prove
attractive. As regards the former, it seems as if the projectors were
really going at last to recognise dancing as one of the most
delightful, healthful, and innocent amusements possible. I am quite
sure that if we can only make up our minds to give the young people
plenty of dancing, they will gratefully, in exchange, attend any
number of science classes. Next, there will be singing--a great deal
of singing, of course, in parts--which will still further lead to that
orderly association of young men and maidens which is so desirable a
thing and so wholesome for the human soul. There will also be classes
in drawing and design--the very commencement of technical instruction
and the necessary foundation of skilled handicraft. There will be for
boys classes in some elementary science bearing on their trade; for
girls there will be lessons in domestic economy and elementary
cooking; and for both boys and girls there will be classes in those
minor arts which are just now coming to the front, such as modelling,
wood-carving, repoussé work, and so forth. In fact, if the children
can only be persuaded to come in, or can be hailed in, from the
streets, there is no end at all to the things which may be taught
them.
As regards the management of these schools, it seems, as if we could
hardly do better than follow the example of Nottingham. Here they have
already five evening schools, and seven working men are appointed
managers for each school. The work is thus made essentially
democratic. These managers have begun by calling upon clergymen,
Sunday-school teachers, employers of labour, leaders of trades unions,
and, one supposes, _pères de famille_ generally, to use their
influence in making children attend these schools. The management of
such schools by the people is a feature of the greatest interest and
importance. As regards the girls' schools, it is suggested that 'lady'
managers should be appointed for each school. Alas! It is not yet
thought possible or desirable that working women should be appointed.
Then follows the question of expense. It cannot be supposed that the
rate-payer is going to look on with indifference to so great an
additional burden as this stupendous work threatens to lay upon him.
But let him rest easy. It is not proposed to add one penny to the
rates. The schools are to cost nothing--a fact which will add greatly
to their popularity and assist their establishment. It is proposed to
pay the necessary expenses of Board School teachers' work there will
be nothing to pay for the use of the buildings--by the Government
grant for drawing and for one other specific class subject. Next, a
small additional grant will be asked for singing, and one for
modelling, carving, or design: the standards must be divided in the
evening schools, and there must be necessarily a more elastic method
of examination adopted for the evening than for the day schools, one
which will be more observant of intelligence than careful of memory
concerning facts. Still, when all the aid that can be expected is got
from the Government grants, the, schools will not be self-supporting.
Here, then, comes in the really novel part of the project. _The rest
must be supplied by voluntary work._ The trained staff of the School
Board teachers will instruct the classes in those subjects required or
sanctioned by the Department for which grants are made; but for all
other subjects--the recreative, the technical, the scientific, the
minor arts, the history, the dancing, and the rest--the schools will
depend wholly upon volunteer teachers.
We must not disguise the audacity of the scheme. There are, I believe,
in London alone 120 schools, for which 2,400 volunteers will be
required. They must not be mere amateurs or kindly, benevolent people,
who will lightly or in a fit of enthusiasm undertake the work, and
after a month or so throw it over in weariness of the drudgery; they
must be honest workers, who will give thought and take trouble over
the work they have in hand, who will keep to their time, stick to
their engagement, study the art of teaching, and be amenable to order
and discipline. Are there so many as 2,400 such teachers to be found
in London, without counting the many thousands wanted for the rest of
the country? It seems a good-sized army of volunteers to raise.
Let us, however, consider. First, there is the hopeful fact that the
Sunday-School Union numbers 12,000 teachers--all voluntary and
unpaid--in London alone. There is, next, another hopeful fact in the
rapid development of the Home Arts Association, which has existed for
no more than a year or two. The teaching is wholly voluntary; and
volunteers are crowding in faster than the slender means of the
Society can provide schools for them to teach in, and the machinery,
materials, and tools to teach with. Even with these facts before us,
the projector and dreamer of the scheme may appear a bold man when he
asks for 2,400 men and women to help him, not in a religious but a
purely secular scheme. Yet it may not appear to many people purely
secular when they remember that he asks for this large army of
unselfish men and women--so unselfish as to give some of their time,
thought, and activity for nothing, not even praise, but only out of
love for the children--from a population of four millions, all of whom
have been taught, and most believe, that self-sacrifice is the most
divine thing that man can offer. To suppose that one in every two
thousand is willing to the extent of an hour or two every week to
follow at a distance the example of his acknowledged Master does not,
after all, seem so very extravagant, For my own part, I believe that
for every post there will be a dozen volunteers. Is that extravagant?
It means no more than a poor 1 per cent, of such distant followers.
Those who go at all among the poor, and try to find out for themselves
something of what goes on beneath the surface, presently become aware
of a most remarkable movement, whispers of which from time to time
reach the upper strata. All over London--no doubt over other great
towns as well, but I know no other great town--there are at this day
living, for the most part in obscurity, unpaid, and in some cases
alone, men and women of the gentle class, among the poor, working for
them, thinking for them, and even in some cases thinking with them.
One such case I know where a gentlewoman has spent the greater part of
her life among the industrial poor of the East End, so that she has
come to think as they think, to look on things from their point of
view, though not to talk as they talk. Some of these men are vicars,
curates, Nonconformist ministers, Roman Catholic clergymen; some of
the women are Roman Catholic sisters and nuns; others are sham nuns,
Anglicans, who seem to find that an ugly dress keeps them more
steadily to their work; others are deaconesses or Bible-women. Some,
again, and it is to these that one turns with the greatest hope--they
may or may not be actuated by religious motives--are bound by no vows,
nor tied to any church. When twenty years ago Edward Denison went to
live in Philpot Lane, he was quite alone in his voluntary work. He had
no companion to try that experiment with him. Now he would be one of
many. At Toynbee Hall are gathered together a company of young and
generous hearts, who give their best without grudge or stint to their
poorer brethren. There are rich men who have retired from the haunts
of the wealthy, and voluntarily chosen to place their homes among the
poor. There are men who work all day at business, and in the evening
devote themselves to the care of working boys; there are women, under
no vows, who read in hospitals, preside at cheap dinners, take care of
girls' clubs, collect rents, and in a thousand ways bring light and
kindness into dark places. The clergy of the Established Church, who
may be regarded as almoners and missionaries of civilization rather
than of religion, seeing how few of the poor attend their services,
can generally command voluntary help when they ask for it. Voluntary
work in generous enterprise is no longer, happily, so rare that men
regard it with surprise; yet it belongs essentially to this century,
and almost to this generation. Since the Reformation the work of
English charity presents three distinct aspects. First came the
foundation of almshouses and the endowment of doles. Nothing, surely,
can be more delightful than to found an almshouse, and to consider
that for generations to come there will be a haven of rest provided
for so many old people past their work. The soul of King James's
confectioner--good Balthazar Sanchez--must, we feel sure, still
contemplate his cottages at Tottenham with complacency; one hopes His
Majesty was not overcharged in the matter of pasties and comfits in
order to find the endowment for those cottages. Even the dole of a few
loaves every Sunday to as many aged poor has its attraction, though
necessarily falling far short of the solid satisfaction to be derived
from the foundation of an almshouse. But the period of almshouses
passed away, and that of Societies succeeded. For a hundred years the
well-to-do of this country have been greatly liberal for every kind of
philanthropic effort. But they have conducted their charity as they
have conducted their business, by drawing cheques. The clergy, the
secretaries, and the committees have done the active work,
administering the funds subscribed by the rich man's cheques. The
system of cheque-charity has its merits as well as its defects,
because the help given does generally reach the people for whom it was
intended. Compared, however, with the real thing, which is essentially
personal, it may be likened unto the good old method--which gave the
rich man so glorious an advantage--of getting into heaven by paying
for masses. Its principal defect is that it keeps apart the rich and
poor, creates and widens the breach between classes, causing those who
have the money to consider that it is theirs by Divine right, and
those who have it not to forget that the origin of wealth is thrift
and patience and energy, and that the way to wealth is always open for
all who dare to enter and to practise these virtues.
It has been reserved for this century, almost for this generation, to
discover that the highest form of charity is personal effort and
self-sacrifice. It has also been reserved for this time to show that
what was only possible in former times for those who were under vows,
so that in old days they man or woman who was moved by the enthusiasm
of humanity put on robe or veil and swore celibacy and obedience, can
really be practised quite as well without religious vows, peculiar
dress, articles of religion, papal allegiance, or anything of the
kind. The doubter, the agnostic, the atheist, may as truly sacrifice
himself and give up his life for humanity as the most saintly of the
faithful. There was an enthusiast fifteen years ago who cheerfully
endured prison and exile, poverty and persecution, for what seemed to
him the one thing in the world desirable and necessary to mankind. I
believe he was an atheist. Then came a time when, for a brief moment,
the dream was realized. And immediately afterwards it crumbled to the
dust. When all was lost, the poor old man arose, and, bareheaded, his
white hair flying behind him in the breeze, this martyr to humanity
mounted a barricade, and stood there until the bullets brought him
death. This is the enthusiasm which may be intensified, disciplined,
and ennobled by religion, but it is independent of religion; it is a
personal quality, like the power of feeling music or writing poetry.
When it is encouraged and developed, it produces men and women who can
only find their true happiness in renouncing all personal ambitions,
and giving up all hopes of distinction. They have hitherto sought the
opportunity of satisfying this instinctive yearning in the Church and
in the convent. They have now found a readier if not a happier way,
with more liberty of action and fewer chains of rule and custom,
outside the Church, as lay-helpers. It seems to me, perhaps because I
am old enough to have fallen under the influence of Maurice's
teaching, that a large part of this voluntary spirit is due to the
writings of that great teacher and his followers. Certainly the
College for Working Men and Women was founded by men of his school,
and has grown and now flourishes exceedingly, and is a monument of
voluntary effort sustained, passing from hand to hand, continually
growing, and always bringing together more and more closely those who
teach and those who are taught. Cheque-charity may harden the heart of
him who gives, and pauperize him who takes. That charity which is
personal can neither harden nor pauperize.
Considering these things, therefore, the impulse to personal effort
which has fallen upon us, the greatness of the work that is to be
done, the simplicity of the means to be employed, and the cooperation
of the better kind of working men themselves, I cannot but think that
the promoters of this scheme have only to hold up their hands in order
to collect as many voluntary teachers as they wish to have.
There is a selfish side to this scheme which ought not to be entirely
overlooked. It is this: The wealth of Great Britain is not, as some
seem to suppose, a gold-mine into which we can dig at pleasure; nor is
it a mine of coal or iron into which we can dig as the demand arises.
Our wealth is nothing but the prosperity of the country, and this
depends wholly on the industry, the patience, and the skill of the
working man; everything we possess is locked up, somehow or other, in
industrial enterprise, or depends upon the success of industrial
enterprise; our railways, our ships, our shares of every kind, even
the interest of our National Debt, depend upon the maintenance of our
trade. The dividends even of gas and water companies depend upon the
successful carrying on of trade and manufactures. We may readily
conceive of a time when--our manufactures ruined by superior foreign
intelligence and skill, our railways earning no profit, our carrying
trade lost, our agriculture destroyed by foreign imports, our farms
without farmers, our houses without tenants--the boasted wealth of
England will have vanished like a splendid dream of the morning, and
the children of the rich will have become even as the children of the
poor; all this may be within measurable distance, and may very well
happen before the death of men who are now no more than middle-aged.
Considering this, as well as the other points in favour of the scheme
before us, it may be owned that it is best to look after the boys and
girls while it is yet time.
[1886.]
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE
Now that the foundations of the Palace are fairly laid, and the walls
of the Great Hall are rapidly rising, and the future existence of this
institution for good or for evil seems assured, it may be permitted to
one who has watched day by day, with the keenest interest, the result
of Sir Edmund Currie's appeals, to offer a few remarks on the manner
in which these appeals have been received, and on the mental attitude
of the public towards the class whom it is desired to befriend.
I. It is, to begin with, highly significant that the recreative side
of the Palace has not been so strongly insisted upon as its
educational side. Is this because the working man, for whom the Palace
is building, has suddenly developed an extraordinary ardour for
education, and a previously unexpected desire for the acquisition of
knowledge in all its branches? Not at all. It is because the
recreative part of the scheme has few attractions for the general
public, and because the educational part, once it began to assume a
practical shape, was seen to possess possibilities which could be
grasped by everyone. Whatever be the future of the Palace as regards
the recreation of the people, one thing is quite clear--that its
educational capacities are almost boundless, and that there will be
founded here a University for the People of a kind hitherto unknown
and undreamed of.
The recreation of the people, in fact, has proved a stumbling-block
rather than an attraction. It is a new idea suddenly presented to
people who have never considered the subject of recreation at all,
save in connection with skittles, so to speak. Now it seems hardly
necessary to erect a splendid palace for the better convenience of the
skittle alley. The objections, in fact, to supporting the scheme on
the ground of its recreative aims show a mixture of prejudice and
ignorance which ought to astonish us were we not daily, in every
business transaction and in every talk with friend or stranger,
encountering, and very likely revealing, the most wonderful prejudice
and ignorance. One should never be surprised at finding great black
patches in every mind.
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?
At the very age when these boys have reached the point when the
intellect, already partly trained and the hand, not yet trained at
all, should begin to work together, they are faced by the terrible
fact--how terrible to them they little know--that they can be taught
no trade. They must go out into the world with a pair of unskilled
hands, and nothing more. Consider. A country lad learns every day
something new; he learns continually by daily practice how to use his
hands and his strength, by the time he is eighteen he has become a
very highly skilled agriculturist; he knows and can do a great many
most useful and necessary things. But the town lad, if he learns no
trade, learns nothing. He will never have any chance in life; he can
never have any chance; he is foredoomed to misery; he will all his
life be a servant of the lowest kind; he will never have the least
independence; he will, in all probability, be one of those who wait
day by day for the chance gifts of Luck. At the best, he can but get
into the railway service, or into some house of business where they
want porters and carriers.
There is, however, a great demand for boys, who can earn five
shillings a week as shop boys, errand boys, and so forth. Our clever
lad, therefore, who has done so well at school, becomes a fruiterer's
lad, cleans out the shop, carries round the baskets, and is generally
useful; he gets a rise in a year or two, to seven shillings and
sixpence; presently he is dismissed to make room for a younger boy who
will take five shillings. Shall we follow the lad farther? If he gets,
as we hope he may, steady employment, we see him next, at the age of
fifteen, marching about the streets in the evening with a girl of the
same age to whom he makes love, and smoking 'fags,' or cigarettes.
There are thousands of such pairs to be seen everywhere; in Victoria
Park on Sundays, or Hampstead Heath on Saturday evenings, every
evening in the great thoroughfares--in Oxford Street as much as in
Whitechapel, in the music-halls and in the public-houses. You may see
them sitting together on doorsteps as well as promenading the
pavement. If there is any way of spending the evenings more
destructive of every good gift and useful quality of manhood and
womanhood than this, I know not what it is. The idleness and
uselessness of it, the precocious abuse of tobacco, the premature and
forced development of the emotions which should belong to love at a
later period, the loss of such intellectual attainments as had already
been acquired, the vacuous mind, the contentment to remain in the
lower depths--in a word, the waste and wanton ruin of a life involved
in such a youth, make the contemplation of this pair the most
melancholy sight in the world. The boy's early cleverness is gone, the
brightness has left his eyes, he reads no more, he has forgotten all
he ever learned, he thinks only now of keeping his berth, if he has
one, or of getting another if he has lost his last. But there is worse
to follow, for at eighteen he will marry the little slip of a girl,
and by the time she is five-and-twenty there will be half a dozen
children born in poverty and privation for a similar life of poverty
and privation, and the hapless parents will have endured all that
there is to be endured from the evils of hunger, cold, starving
children, and want of work.
This couple were thrown together because they were left to themselves
and uncared for; they marry because they have nothing else to think
about; they remain in misery because the husband knows no trade, and
because of mere hands unskilled and ignorant there are already more
than enough.
The Palace is going to take that boy out of the streets: it is going
to remove both from boy and girl the temptation--that of the idle
hand--to go away and get married. It will fill that lad's mind with
thoughts and make those hands deft and crafty.
In other words, the Palace will open a great technical school for all
the trades as well as for all the Arts. It is reckoned that three
years' training in the evenings will give a boy a trade. Once master
of a trade his future is assured, because somewhere in the world there
is always a want of tradesmen of every kind. There may be too many
shoemakers in London while they are wanted in Queensland;
cabinet-makers and carpenters may be overcrowded here, but there are
all the English-speaking countries in the world to choose from.
There can be no doubt that the schools will be crowded. The success of
the schools at the old Polytechnic (where there are 8,000 boys), of
the Whittington Club, of the Finsbury Technical Schools, leave no
doubt possible that the East-End Palace Schools will be crammed with
eager learners. The Palace is in the very heart and centre of East
London, with its two millions, mostly working men; trams, trains, and
omnibuses make it accessible from every part of this vast city--from
Bromley, Bow and Stratford, from Poplar, Stepney and Ratcliff, from
Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Yet but two or three years, and there
will be 20,000 boys and more flocking to those gates which shut out
the Earthly Hell of ignorance, dependence, and poverty, and open the
doors to the Earthly Paradise of skilled hands and drilled eye, of
plenty and the dignity of manhood. Why, if it were only to stop these
early marriages--if only for the sake of the poor child-mother and the
unborn children doomed, if they see the light, to life-long
misery--one would shower upon the Palace all the money that is asked
to complete it. Think--with every stone that is laid in its place,
with every hour of work that each mason bestows upon its walls, there
is another couple rescued, one more lad made into a man, one more girl
suffered to grow into a woman before she becomes a mother, one more
humble household furnished with the means of a livelihood, one more
unborn family rescued from the curse of hopeless poverty.
The remaining portions of the scheme, with its provision for women as
well as men, its entertainments, its University extension lectures,
reading-rooms, and schools of Art in all its branches, can only be
fully realized when the first generation of these boys has passed
through the technical schools, and they have learned to look upon the
Palace as their own, to consider its halls and cloisters the most
delightful place in the world. And what the Palace may then become,
what a perennial fountain it may prove of all that makes for the
purification and elevation of life, one would fain endeavour to
depict, but may not, for fear of the charge of extravagance.
III. There is one other point which those who have read the
correspondence and comments upon the proposed institution in the
papers have noted with amusement rather than with astonishment. It is
a point which comes out in everything that has been written on the
scheme, except by the actual founders. It is the profound distrust
with which the more wealthy classes regard the working men--not the
poor, so-called, but the working men. They do not seem even to have
begun trusting them: they speak and think of them as if they were
children in leading-strings; as if they were certain to accept with
gratitude whatever gifts may be bestowed upon them, even when they are
safe-guarded and carefully regulated as for mischievous boys; as if
the working men were constantly looking for guidance to the class
which has the money. It is true that the working men are always
looking for guidance, just like the rest of us. 'Lord, send a leader!'
It is the cry of all mankind in all ages. But that the working men
regard the people who live in villas, and are genteel, as possessing
more wisdom than themselves is by no means certain.
This feeling was, of course, most deeply marked when the great Drink
Question arose, as it was bound to arise. We have heard how meetings
were called, and resolutions passed by worthy people against the
admission of intoxicating drinks into the Palace. At one of the
meetings they had the audacity to pass a resolution that 'East London
will never be satisfied until intoxicating drink of any kind is
prohibited in the Palace.' East London! with its thousands of
public-houses! Dear me! Then, if East London passed such a resolution,
its hypocrisy surpasses the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees.
If, however, a little knot of people choose to call themselves East
London, or Babylon, or Rome, and to pass resolutions in the name of
those cities, we can accept their resolutions for what they are worth.
Whether the working man will adopt them and put them into practice is
another matter altogether.
Let us remember, and constantly bear in mind, that the Palace is to be
_governed by the people for themselves_. Otherwise it would be better
for East London that it had never been erected. Whatever we do or
resolve is, in fact, subject to the will of the governing body. As for
passing a resolution on drink for the Palace, we might just as well
resolve that drink shall not be sold to the members of the House of
Commons, and expect them instantly to close their cellars. If the
governing body wish to have drink in the Palace they will have it,
whether we like it or not. But it shows the profound distrust of the
people that these restrictions should be attempted and these
resolutions passed. For my own part, considering the needlessness of
drink in such a place, the abundant facilities provided outside, and
the enormous additional trouble, danger, and expense entailed by
letting drink be sold in a place where there will be every evening
thousands of young people, I am quite sure that the governing
body--that is to say, the chosen representatives of East London--will
never admit it within their walls.
We do not trust the working man. We have given over to him the whole
of the power. All the power there is we have given to him, because he
stands in an enormous majority. We have made him absolute master of
this realm of Great Britain and Ireland. What could we do more for a
man whom we blindly and implicitly trusted? Yet the working man, for
whom we have done so much, we have not yet begun to trust.
SUNDAY MORNING IN THE CITY
On Saturday afternoon, when the last of the clerks bangs the great
door behind him and steps out of the office on his way home; when the
shutters of the warehouses are at last all closed; there falls upon
the street a silence and loneliness which lasts from three o'clock on
Saturday till eight o'clock on Monday--a sleep unbroken for forty-one
long hours. In the main arteries, it is true, there is always a little
life; the tramp of feet never ceases day or night in Fleet Street or
Cheapside. But in all the narrow streets branching north and south,
east and west, of the great thoroughfares there is silence--there is
sleep. This Sabbath of forty hours' duration is absolutely
unparalleled in any other City of the world. There is no other place,
there never has been any other place, in which not only work ceases,
but where the workers also disappear. In that far-off City of the
Rabbis called Sambatyon, where live the descendants of the Ten Tribes,
the river which surrounds and protects the City with its broad and
mighty flood, too strong for boats to cross, ceases to flow on the
Sabbath; but it is not pretended that the people cease to live there.
Of no other City can it be said that it sleeps from Saturday night
till Monday morning.
An attempt is made to awaken the City every Sunday morning when the
bells begin to ring, and there is as great and joyful a ringing from
every church tower or steeple as if the bells were calling the
faithful, as of old, by the hundred thousand; they go on ringing
because it is their duty; they were hung up there for no other
purpose; hidden away in the towers, they do not know that the people
have all gone away, and that they ring to empty houses and deserted
streets. For there is no response. At most one may see a solitary
figure dressed in black stuff creeping stealthily along like a ghost
on her way from the empty house to the empty church. When the bells
leave off silence falls again, there is no one in the street. One's
own footsteps echo from the wall; we walk along in a dream; old words
and old rhymes crowd into the brain. It is a dead City--a City newly
dead--we are gazing upon the dead.
Life and thought have gone away
Side by side.
All within is dark as night.
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door
So frequent on its hinge before.
Silence everywhere. The blinds are down in every window of the tall
stack of offices, the doors are all closed, if there are shutters they
are up, there are no carte in the streets, no porters carry burdens,
there are no wheelbarrows, there is no more work done of any kind or
sort. Even the taverns and the eating-shops are shut--no one is
thinking of work. To-morrow--Monday--poverty will lift again his cruel
arm, and drive the world to work with crack of whip. The needle-woman
will appear again with her bundle of work; the porters, the packers,
the carmen, the clerks, the merchants themselves will all come
back--the vast army of those who earn their daily bread in the City
will troop back again. But as for to-day, nobody works; we are all at
rest; we are at peace; we are taking holiday.
This is the day--this is the time--for those who would study the City
and its monuments. It is only on this day, and at this time, that the
churches are all open. It is only on this day, and at this time, that
a man may wander at his ease and find out how the history of the past
is illustrated by the names of the streets, by the houses and the
sites, and by the few old things which still remain, even by the old
things, names and all, which have perished. The area of the City is
small; its widest part, from Blackfriars to the Tower, is but a single
mile in length, and its greatest depth is no more that half a mile But
it is so crowded and crammed full of sites sacred to this or that
memory of its long life of two thousand busy years, there is so much
to think of in every street, that a pilgrim may spend all his Sunday
mornings for years and never get to the end of London City. I should
hardly like to say how many Sunday mornings I have myself spent in
wandering about the City, Yet I can never go into it without making
some new discovery. Only last week, for instance, I discovered in the
very midst of the City, in its most crowded part, nothing less than a
house--with a private garden. I had thought that the last was
destroyed about four years ago when they pulled down a certain noble
old merchant's mansion, No, there is one other stall left; perhaps
more. There are gardens, I know, belonging to certain Companies'
Halls; there is the ivy-planted garden of Amen Court; there are
burying-grounds laid out as gardens; but this is the only house I know
in the City which has a private garden at the back. One must not say
where it is, otherwise that garden will be seized and built upon. This
the owner evidently fears, for he has surrounded it by a high wall, so
that no one shall be able to seize it, no rich man shall covet it, and
offer to buy it and build great warehouses upon it, and the
underground railway shall not dig it out and swallow it up.
In such journeyings and wanderings one must not go with an empty mind,
otherwise there will be neither pleasure nor profit. The traveller,
says Emerson, brings away from his travels precisely what he took
there. Not his mind but his climate, says Horace, does he change who
travels beyond the seas. In other words, if a man who knows nothing of
archæology goes to see a collection of flint implements, or a person
ignorant of art goes to see a picture gallery, he comes away as
ignorant as he went, because flint implements by themselves, or
pictures by themselves, teach nothing. They can teach nothing. So, if
a man who knows nothing of history should stand before Guildhall on
the quietest Sunday in the whole year he will see nothing but a
building, he will hear nothing but the fluttering wings of the
pigeons. And if he wanders in the streets he will see nothing but tall
and ugly houses, all with their blinds pulled down. Before he goes on
a pilgrimage in the City he must first prepare his mind by reading
history. This is not difficult to find. If he is in earnest he will
get the great 'Survey of London,' by Strype and Stow, published in the
year 1720 in two folio volumes. If this is too much for him, there are
Peter Cunningham, Timbs, Thornbury, Walford, Hare, Loftie, and a dozen
others, all of whom have a good deal to tell him, though there is
little to tell, save a tale of destruction, after Strype and Stow.
Thus, before he begins he should learn something of Roman London,
Saxon London, Norman London, of London medieval, London under the
Tudors, London of the Stuarts, and London of the Georges. He should
learn how the municipality arose, gaining one liberty after another,
and letting go of none, but all the more jealously guarding each as a
sacred inheritance; how the trade of the City grew more and more; how
the Companies were formed, one after the other, for the protection of
trade interests. Then he should learn how the Sovereign and great
nobles have always kept themselves in close connection with the City,
even in the proudest times of the Barons, even in the days when the
nobles were supposed to have most despised the burgesses and the men
of trade. He should learn, besides, how the City itself, its houses,
and its streets, grew and covered up the space within the wall, and
spread itself without; he should learn the meaning of the names--why
one street is called College Hill and another Jewry and another
Minories. Armed with such knowledge as this, every new ramble will
bring home to him more and more vividly the history of the past. He
will never be solitary, even at noon on Sunday morning even in Suffolk
Street or Pudding Lane, because all the streets will be thronged with
figures of the dead, silent ghosts haunting the scenes where they
lived and loved and died, and felt the fierce joys of venture, of
risk, and enterprise.
But let no man ramble aimlessly. It is pleasant, I own, to wander from
street to street idly remembering what has happened here; but it is
more profitable to map out a walk beforehand, to read up all that can
be ascertained about it before sallying forth, and to carry a notebook
to set down the things that may be observed or discovered.
Or, which is another method, he may consider the City with regard to
certain divisions of subjects. He may make, for instance, a special
study of the London churches. The City, small as it is, formerly
contained nearly 150 parishes, each with its church, its
burying-ground, and its parish charities. Some of these were not
rebuilt after the Great Fire, some have been wickedly and wantonly
destroyed in these latter days. A few yet survive which were not
burned down in that great calamity. These are St. Helen and St.
Ethelburga; St. Katherine Cree, the last expiring effort of Gothic,
consecrated by Archbishop Laud; All Hallows, Barking, and St. Giles.
Most of the existing City churches were built by Wren, as you know. I
think I have seen them nearly all, and in every one, however
externally unpromising, I have found something curious, Interesting,
and unexpected--some wealth of wood-carving, some relic of the past
snatched from the names, some monument, some association with the
medieval city.
Of course, it is well to visit these churches on the Saturday
afternoon or Monday morning, when they are swept before and after the
service; but as one is never quite certain of finding them open, it
is, perhaps, best to take them after service on the Sunday. If you
show a real interest in the church, you will find the pew-opener or
verger pleased to let you see everything, not only the monuments and
the carvings in the church, but also the treasures of the vestry, in
which are preserved many interesting things--old maps, portraits, old
deeds and gifts, old charities--now all clean swept away by the
Charity Commission--ancient Bibles and Prayer-books, muniment chests,
embroidered palls, old registers with signatures historical--all these
things are found in the vestry of the City church.
Then there are the churchyards. We are familiar with the little oblong
area open to the street, surrounded by tall warehouses, one tomb left
in the middle, and three headstones ranged against the wall, patches
of green mould to represent grass, and a litter of scraps of paper and
orange-peel. This is fondly believed to be the churchyard of some old
church burned down or rebuilt. There are dozens of these in the City;
it is sometimes difficult to find out the name of the church to which
they once belonged. Every time a building is erected adjacent to them
they become smaller, and when they happened to lie behind the houses
they were shut in and forgotten, covered over and built upon when
nobody was looking, and so their very memory perished.
It is curious to look for them. For instance, there is a certain great
burying ground laid down in Strype's map of the year 1720. It is there
represented as so large that to cover it up would be a big thing. No
single man would dare to appropriate all at once so huge a slice of
land. I went, therefore, in search of this particular churchyard, and
I found a very curious thing. On one side of the ground stands a great
printing office. As the gate was open I walked in. At the back of the
printing office is a flagged court or yard. In the court the boys--it
was the dinner hour--were leaping and running. Not one of them knows
now that he is running and jumping over the bones of his ancestors. It
is clean forgotten that here was a great churchyard. Another great
burying ground long since built over lay at the back of Botolph's Lane
in Thames Street. That is built over and forgotten. There is another
where lies the dust of the marvellous boy Chatterton. I am due that of
the thousands who every day seek this spot not one can tell or
remember that it was once a burying ground. On this spot the paupers
of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, were buried--Chatterton, that
poor young pauper! with them. And it is now a market, Farringdon
Market--close to Farringdon Street--opposite the site of the Old Fleet
Prison whence came so many of the bodies which now lie beneath these
flags.
Or, a pilgrim may consider the City with special reference to the
great Houses which formerly stood within its walls. There were palaces
in the City--King Athelstan had one; King Richard II. lived for a time
in the City; Richard III. lived here; Henry V. had a house here. Of
the great nobles, the Beaumonts, Scropes, Arundells, Bigods all had
houses. The names of Worcester House, Buckingham House, Hereford
House, suggest the great Lords who formerly lived here. And the names
of Crosby Hall, Basinghall, Gresham House, College Hill, recall the
merchants who built themselves palaces and entertained kings.
Again, there are the City Companies and their Halls. Very few visitors
ever make the round of the Halls: yet they are most curious, and
contain treasures great and various. It is not always easy to see
these treasures, but the conscientious pilgrim, who, by the way, must
not seek entrance into these Halls on the Sunday morning, will
persevere until he has managed to see them all.
As for the sights of the City--the things which Baedeker enumerates,
and which foreign and country visitors run to see--the Tower, the
Monument, the Guildhall, the Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, the
Mint, St. Paul's, and the rest, I say nothing, because the pilgrim
does not waste his Sunday morning over things to be seen as well on
any other day. But there are some things to be seen every day which
are best approached on Sunday, by reason of the peace which prevails
and a certain solemnity in the air. I would, for instance, choose to
visit the Charter House on a Sunday morning, I would sit with the
Pensioners in their quiet chapel, and I would stroll about the
peaceful courts of that holy place, venerable not only for its history
but for the broken and ruined lives--often ruined only in purse, but
rich in honour and in noble record--of the fifty bedesmen or
pensioners who rest there in the evening of their days. And quite
apart from its associations, I know no more beautiful place in the
City or anywhere else than the ancient Charter House.
Again, we may wander in the City and remember the great men who have
made certain streets for ever famous. Thus, to stand in Bread Street
is to think of Milton. Here he was born, here he was baptized, here
for a time he lived. Or we may visit Blackfriars and remember the
Elizabethan dramatists. Here Shakespeare had a house--it was among the
ruins of old Blackfriars Abbey, part of the foundations of which were
found when some years ago they made an extension of the Times'
printing office. Broad Street recalls the memory of Gresham, while
that of Whittington lingers along Thames Street and College Hill and
clings to St. Michael's Church. In that parish he lived and died. Here
he founded the College of the Holy Spirit which still exists in the
Highgate Almshouses; on its site the boys of Mercers School now study
and play. His tomb was burned in the Great Fire and his ashes
scattered, but the very streets preserve his name. Boas Alley, of
which there are two, records the fact that Whittington brought a
conduit or Boss of fresh water to this spot. It was he who paved
Guildhall, he who built a hall for the Grey Friars, now the Blue Coat
School, he who rebuilt Newgate; of all the merchants who have adorned
the great City not one whose memory is so widely spread and whose
example has so long survived his death. When country boys think of the
City of London they still think of Whittington.
Perhaps you are afraid that the preparation, the reading, for such a
walk about the City would be dull. I have never found it so. I do not
think that anyone who has the least love for, or knowledge of, old
things would find such reading dull. There are, to be sure, some
unhappy creatures who love nothing but what is new, and esteem
everything for what it will fetch. These are the people who are always
trying to pull down the City churches. They are at this very moment
pulling down another, the poor old church of St. Mary Magdalen. The
tower is down, the roof is off the windows are all broken, in a week
or two the church will be razed to the ground, and in a year or two
its very memory will have perished. Why, we vainly ask, do they pull
it down? What harm has the old church done? To be sure its
congregation numbered less than a dozen, but then we must not estimate
an old church by a modern congregation. There has been a church here
from time immemorial. It is mentioned in the year 1120. It was,
therefore, certainly a Saxon church. Edward the Confessor probably
worshipped here--perhaps King Alfred himself. One of its Rectors was
John Carpenter, executor of Whittington, and founder of the City of
London School; another was Barham, author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends.'
The loss of St. Mary Magdalen is one more link with the past
absolutely destroyed, never to be replaced. These destroyers, for
instance, are the kind of people who pulled down Sion College. As
often as I pass the spot where that place once stood I mourn and
lament its loss more and more. It was the college of the City clergy,
they were its guardians, it was their library, it contained their
reading hall; formerly it held their garden, and it had their
almshouses. There was hardly any place in the City more peaceful or
more beautiful than the long narrow room which held their library. It
was a very ancient site--formerly the site of Elsing's Hospital, the
oldest hospital in the whole City. Everything about it was venerable,
and yet the City clergy themselves--its official guardians--sold it
for what it would fetch, and stuck up the horrid thing on the
embankment which they call Sion College. There they still use the old
seal and arms of the college. But there is no more a Sion
College--that is gone. You cannot replace it. You might as well tear
down King's College Chapel at Cambridge and call Dr. Parker's City
Temple by that honoured and ancient name. Well, for such people as the
majority of the City clergy who can do such things, there can be no
voice or utterance at all from ancient stones, the past can have no
lessons, no teachings for them, there can be no message to them from
the dead who should still live for them in memory and association. For
them the ancient City and its citizens are dumb.
Now that we know what to expect and what to look for, let us take
together a Sunday morning ramble in a certain part of the City. We
will go on a morning in early summer, when the leaves of those trees
which still stand in the old City churchyards are bright with their
first tender green, and when the river, as we catch glimpses of it,
shows a broad surface of dancing waves across to the stairs and barges
of old Southwark. We will take this walk at the quietest hour in the
whole week, between eleven and twelve. All the churches are open for
service. We will look in noiselessly, but, indeed, we shall find no
congregations to disturb, only, literally, two or three gathered
together.
I will take you to the very heart of the City. Perhaps you have
thought that the heart of the City is that open triangular space faced
by the Royal Exchange, and flanked by the Bank of England and the
Mansion House. We have taught ourselves to think this, in ignorance of
the City history. But a hundred and fifty years ago there was no
Mansion House, three hundred years ago there was no Royal Exchange,
and the Bank of England itself is but a mushroom building of the day
before yesterday.
In the long life of London--it covers two thousand years--the chief
seat of its trade, the chief artery of its circulation, has been
Thames Street. Along here for seventeen hundred years were carried on
the chief events in the drama which we call the History of London. Its
past origin, its growth and expansion, are indicated along this line.
Here the City merchants of old--Whittingtons, Fitzwarrens, Sevenokes,
Greshams--thronged to do their business. To these wharves came the
vessels laden from Antwerp, Hamburg, Riga, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Venice,
Genoa, and far-off Smyrna and the Levant. This line stretches across
the whole breadth of the City. It indicates the former extent of the
City, what was behind it originally was the mass of houses built to
accommodate those who could no longer find room on the riverside. It
is now a narrow, dark, and dirty street; its south side is covered
with quays and wharves; narrow lanes lead to ancient river stairs; its
north side is lined with warehouses, the streets which run out of it
are also dark and narrow lanes with offices on either side. It is no
longer one of the great arteries of the City. Those who come here use
it not for a thoroughfare but for a place of business. When their
business is done they go away; the churches, of which there were once
so many, are more deserted here than in any other part of the City Let
me give you a little--a very little--of its history.
Two thousand years ago, or thereabouts, the City of London was first
begun. At that time the Thames valley, where now stands Greater
London, was a vast morass, sometimes flooded at high tide, everywhere
low and swampy, studded with islands or bits of ground rising a few
feet above the level--such was Thorney Island, on which Westminster
Abbey was built; such was the original site of Chelsea and Battersea.
On the south side the swamp and low ground continued until the ground
began to rise for the first low Surrey Hills at what is now called
Clapham Rise. On the north side the swamp was bordered by a
well-defined cliff from ten to thirty or forty feet high, which
followed a curve, approaching the river edge from the east till it
reached where is now Tower Hill, where it nearly touched the water,
and the spot now called Dowgate--a continuation of Walbrook
Street--where the river actually washed its base, and where it
presented two little hillocks side by side, with the
brook--Walbrook--running into the river between. This was a natural
site for a town--two hills, a tidal river in front, a freshwater
stream between. Here was a spot adapted both for fortification and for
communication with the outer world. Here, then, the town began to be
built. How the trade began I cannot tell you, but it did begin, and
grew very rapidly, Now, as it grew it became necessary for the people
to stretch out and expand; there was no longer any room on the two
hillocks; they, therefore, built a strong wall to keep out the river
and put up houses, quays, and store-houses above and along this
wall--portions of which have been found quite recently. The river once
kept out--although the cliff receded again--the marsh became dry land,
but, in fact, the cliff receded a very little way, and the slopes of
the streets north of Thames Street show exactly how far it went back.
Many hundreds of years later precisely the same course was adopted for
the rescue of Wapping from the marsh in which it stood. They built a
strong river wall, and Wapping grew up on and behind that wall, just
exactly as London itself had done long before.
The citizens of London had, from a very early time, their two ports of
Billingsgate and Queenhithe, both of them still ports. They had also
their communication with the south by means of a ferry, which ran from
the place now called the Old Swan Stairs to a port or dock on the
Surrey side, still existing, afterwards called St. Mary of the Ferry,
or St. Mary Overies. The City became rapidly populous and full of
trade and wealth. Vast numbers of ships came yearly, bringing
merchandise, and taking away what the country had to export. Tacitus,
writing in the year 61, says that the City then was full of merchants
and their wares. It is also certain that the Londoners, who have
always been a pugnacious and a valiant folk, already showed that side
of their character, for we learn that, shortly before the landing of
Julius Cæsar, they had a great battle in the Middlesex Forest with the
people of Verulam, now St Albans. The Verulamites had reason to repent
of their rashness in coming out to meet the Londoners, for they were
routed with great slaughter, and never ventured on another trial of
strength. As for the site of the battle, it has been pretty clearly
demonstrated by Professor Hales that it took place close to Parliament
Hill, at Hampstead, and the barrow on the newly acquired part of the
Heath probably marks the burial-place of the forgotten heroes who
perished on that field. And as for the Londoners who fought and won,
let us remember that they came from this part of the modern City--from
Thames Street.
The town was walled between the years 350 and 369. The building of the
Roman wall has determined down to these days the circuit of the City.
Now, here a very curious and suggestive point has been raised. In or
near all other Roman towns are remains of amphitheatres, theatres and
temples. There is an amphitheatre near Rutupiæ, the present
Richborough; everybody knows the amphitheatres of Nîmes, Arles and
Verona; but in or near London there have never been found any traces
of amphitheatres or temples whatever. Was the City then, so early,
Christian? Observe, again, that the earliest churches were dedicated,
not to British saints, or to the saints and martyrs of the second or
third centuries--the centuries of persecution--but to the Apostles
themselves--to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, St. Stephen, St. Mary,
St. Philip. These facts, it is thought, seem to indicate that very
early in the history of the City its people were Christians. When the
Roman wall was built, Thames Street already possessed most of the
streets which you now see branching northward up the hill, and south
to the river stairs, the space beyond was occupied by villas and
gardens, and the life of the merchants and Roman officers who lived in
them was as luxurious as wealth and civilization could make it.
You now understand why I have called Thames Street the heart of the
City. It was the first part built and settled, the first cradle of the
great trade of England. More than this, it continued to be the thief
centre of trade; its wharves received the imports and exports; its
warehouses behind stored them; its streets which ran up the sloping
ground grew with the growth of the trade; new streets continually
sprang up until villas and gardens were gradually built over and the
whole area was covered; but all sprang in the first place from Thames
Street; everything grew out of the trade carried on along the river.
We are going to walk through all the five riverside wards belonging to
this street. There are one or two things to note in advance, if only
to show how this quarter remained the most populous and the most busy
part of London. The City of London has eighty companies. Forty of
these have--or had--Halls of their own. Out of the forty Halls no
fewer than twenty-two belong to these five wards, while one company,
the Fishmongers', had at one time six Halls, or places of meeting, in
and about Thames Street. Again, the City of London formerly had about
150 churches. Along the river, that is, in and about Thames Street
alone, there were at least twenty-four, or one-sixth of the whole
number. Lastly, to show the estimation in which this part was held,
out of the great houses formerly belonging to the King and nobles,
those of Castle Baynard, Cold Harbour, the Erber, Tower Royal, and the
King's Wardrobe belong to Thames Street, while the names of Beaumont,
Scrope, Derby, Worcester, Burleigh, Suffolk, and Arundell connect
houses in the five wards of Thames Street with noble families, in the
days when knights and nobles rode along the street, side by side with
the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City.
In Thames Street are the ancient markets of Billingsgate and
Queenhithe. The former has been a market and a port for more than a
thousand years. Customs and tolls were paid here in the time of King
Ethelred the Second, that is, in the year 979. The exclusive sale of
fish here is comparatively modern, that is, it is not three hundred
years old. As for Queenhithe it is still more ancient than
Billingsgate. Its earliest name was Edred Hithe, that is, Edred's
wharf. It was given by King Stephen to the Convent of the Holy
Trinity. It returned, however, to the Crown, and was given by King
Henry III. to the Queen Eleanor, whence it was called the Queen's Bank
or Queenhithe. On the west side of Queenhithe lived Sir Richard
Gresham, father of Sir Thomas Gresham, in a great house that had
belonged to the Earls and Dukes of Norfolk.
The splendid building of the Custom House on the south side is the
fifth Custom House that has been put up on the same spot. The first
was built by one John Churchman, Sheriff in the year 1385; the next in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth--it was furnished with high-pitched
gables and a water gate, this was burned down in the Great Fire. Wren
built the third, which was burned down in 1718; one Ripley built the
fourth, which was also burned down in 1814. The present building was
designed by David Laing and cost nearly half a million.
Until quite recently a little narrow and dirty passage to the river,
known as Coldharbour Lane, commemorated the site of a great Palace,
known as the Cold Harbour, which stood here overlooking the river with
many gables. It was already standing in the reign of Edward II. It
belonged successively to Sir John Poultney; to John Holland, Duke of
Exeter--that Duke who was buried in St. Katherine's Hospital; to Henry
V., who lived here for a brief period when Prince of Wales; to Richard
III.; to the College of Heralds; and to Henry VIII. Finally, it was
burned in the Great Fire, but during the last hundred years of its
life the old Palace fell into decay and was let out in tenements to
poor people. The City Brewery now stands on the site of Cold Harbour.
Close beside this great house--the site itself now entirely covered by
the railway--was the Steelyard. This was the centre of the German
trade; here the merchants of the Hanseatic League were permitted to
dwell and to store the goods which they imported. The history of the
German merchants in London is a very important chapter in that of
London. They came here in the year 1250, they formed a fraternity of
their own, living together, by Royal permission, in a kind of college,
with a great and stately hall, wharves, quays, and square courts. The
building is represented, before it was burned down in the Great Fire,
as picturesque, with many gables crowded together like the whole of
London. Their trade was extremely valuable to them; they imported
Rhenish wines, grain of all kinds, cordage and cables, pitch, tar,
flax, deal timber, linen fabrics, wax, steel, and many other things.
They obtained concession after concession until practically they
enjoyed a monopoly. For this they had to pay certain tolls or duties.
They were made, for instance, to maintain one of the City gates. They
were compelled to live together in their own quarters. Their monopoly
lasted for 300 years, during which the London merchants, especially
the Association called Merchant Adventurers, who belonged principally
to the Mercers' Company, continued to besiege the Sovereign with
petitions and complaints. It was not until the reign of Queen
Elizabeth that they were finally turned out and expelled the Kingdom.
Their house and grounds were converted into a store-house for the
Royal Navy. At the same time the old Navy Office, which had formerly
stood in Mark Lane, was transferred to the suppressed college and
chapel belonging to All Hallows, Barking, in Seething Lane, where you
may still see, if you go to look for them, the old stone pillars of
the gates and the old courtyard which was originally the court of the
college, then the court of the Navy Office, and now the court of the
warehouse belonging to the London Docks. As for the unfortunate
Steelyard, that, as I said, is now completely covered by the Cannon
Street Railway. As you walk under the railway arch you may now look
southward and say, 'Here for 300 years lived the Hanseatic
merchants--here the fraternity had their warehouses, their exchange,
their great Hall. Here the German porters loaded and cleared the
ships, the German clerks took notes and kept accounts, and the German
merchants bought and sold.' They ventured not far from their own
place; the Londoners have never loved foreigners or the sound of an
unknown language; they lived here making money as fast as they could
and then going home to Lubeck, Bremen, or Hamburg, others coming to
take their place.
On Dowgate Hill was another famous old house called the Erber--which
is, I suppose, the same word as Harbour. It belonged at successive
periods to Lord Scroope, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury,
and to George, Duke of Clarence. This house, too, perished in the
Fire. In this street Sir Francis Drake lived, and here are now three
Companies' Halls. Close by, on Laurence Poultney Hill, lived Dr.
William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood.
In Suffolk Lane the Earls of Suffolk had a great house, and here,
before they moved to Charter House, stood the Merchant Taylors'
School. Three Companies had their Halls on the riverside--the
Watermen's at the bottom of Cold Harbour Lane; the Dyers' at the
bottom of Angel Alley; and the Vintners' which still stands close to
Southwark Bridge.
Nearly at the end of the street was Baynard's Castle. You may still
see the name on the gate of a wharf, and it also gives its name to the
ward. This was the western fortress of the City, just as the Tower was
the eastern; but with this difference, that Castle Baynard belonged to
the City during the troubled time when the Crown and the City were
constantly in conflict. The Tower, on the other hand, always belonged
to the Crown. Baynard's Castle belonged, in fact, to the FitzWalters,
hereditary barons of the City. One of their functions was at the
outbreak of a war to appear at the west door of St. Paul's, armed and
mounted, with twenty attendants, there to receive from the Lord Mayor
the banner of the City, a horse worth £20, and £20 in money. Finally,
the castle became, I do not know how, Crown property. It was burned to
the ground, but rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Within this
castle the Duke of Buckingham offered the Crown to Richard III., and
here the Privy Council proclaimed Queen Mary. The castle afterwards
fell into the hands of the Earls of Shrewsbury. It was destroyed in
the Great Fire. It consisted of two courts: the south front of the
buildings faced the river, the north front, with the principal
entrance, was in Thames Street.
In more ancient times there stood a tower west of Baynard's Castle
called Montfichet, but of this building very few memorials remain.
Again, there is said to have been a palace on Addle Hill, built by
Athelstan. The Wardrobe was another great house acquired by King
Edward III., close to the church still called St. Andrew's by the
Wardrobe. The memory of this house is still kept up by that very
interesting little square, which looks exactly like a place in a
southern French town, called Wardrobe Place. One of the court offices
was that of Master of the Wardrobe. In old days he resided in this
house and actually did take care of the King's clothes. The Queen's
wardrobe, on the other hand, was kept in the other royal house, called
Tower Royal, the house still surviving in the street so-called. This
was formerly King Stephen's palace. In the year 1331 it was granted by
the King to his Queen Philippa for her wardrobe. It was then called
'La Réal,' without the addition of the word 'tower,' and the meaning
and origin of the name are unknown. The palace stood in the parish of
St. Thomas Apostle, the church of which was not rebuilt after the
Fire; but the name of the church survives in a small fragment of the
street so-called.
There were, therefore, in this small bit of London, at least four
royal palaces, besides the great houses of the nobles that I have
enumerated. Half the City companies had their Halls here; and even to
this day there are standing here and there one or two of the solid
houses built by the merchants in the narrow streets north of Thames
Street for their private residences. As late as the beginning of the
present century the house now called the 'Shades,' close to the Swan
Stairs, London Bridge, was built for his own town house by Lord Mayor
Garratt, who laid the foundation stone of London Bridge. Of the old
merchants' houses, rich with carved woodwork, built with black timber
round courts and gardens, not one now remains in the City. But there
are one or two remaining in the old inns of Southwark and the Old Bell
Inn, Holborn, Yet the last great house built in the City, the Mansion
House, was itself originally built round a court.
* * * * *
You may, if you try, reconstruct Thames Street as it was before the
Fire. Its breadth was exactly the same as at present. Eight stately
churches stood, each with its own burial-ground, along the street. The
palace of Baynard reared its gables on the right as you entered the
street from the west. Lower down, on the same side, stood the great
House of Cold Harbour, also gabled. The low-gabled warehouses stood
round Queenhithe and Billingsgate; the Custom House was thronged with
those who came to pay their tolls and clear their dues; the broad
court of the Steelyard--covered with boxes, bales, and casks, some
exposed, some under sheds--stretched southward, behind its three great
gates. On the river-side stood its stately Hall. The Halls of the
Companies, great and noble houses, proclaimed the wealth and power of
the merchants. On the north side stood the merchants' houses built
round their gardens. In those days they had no country houses, and
they wanted none. They could carry their falcons out into the fields
which began on the other side of the City wall, or across the river in
the low-lying lands of Bermondsey and Redriffe. The street was already
crammed and thronged with porters, carts, and wheelbarrows; it was
full of noise; there were sailors and merchants from foreign parts.
Already the Levantine was here, lithe and supple, black of eye, ready
of tongue, quick with his dagger; and the Italian, passionate and
eager; and the Spaniard, the Fleming, the Frenchman, and the Dutchman.
All nations were here, as now, but they were then kept on board their
ships or in their own quarters by night. The great merchants walked up
and down, conversing, heedless of the noise, to which their ears were
so accustomed as to be deaf to them. The merchants had reason to be
grave. Always there were wars and rumours of wars; always some pirate
from French shores was attacking their ships; their latest venture was
too often overdue--the ship had to run the gauntlet of the Algerian
galleys, and no one could tell what might have happened; there was
plague at Antwerp--it might be lurking in the bales lying on the quay
before them; there was civil war brewing; fortune is fickle--he who
was rich yesterday may be a beggar to-morrow. Merchants, in those
days, did well to be grave.
I have considered, so far, some of the great houses standing in or
along this historic street. Let us now note a few of the churches.
All Hallows, Barking, the first walking from the east, commemorates in
its name the fact that it formerly belonged to the great convent of
Barking in Essex, the gateway of which still stands at the entrance to
the churchyard. This church escaped the Fire. Here was buried the poet
Surrey, Bishop Fisher, and Archbishop Laud.
In the church of St. Magnus, London Bridge, the remains of Miles
Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, rest: they were removed here
from the Church of St. Bartholomew when it was pulled down to make
more room for the Bank of England. This church has perhaps the finest
tower, lantern, and steeple of all the City churches, in front is a
small court planted with trees, whose foliage is strangely refreshing
in early summer down in this dark place almost below the approach to
the bridge. The church itself is fine but not very interesting. I have
sometimes counted as many as ten present at the Sunday morning
service.
St. Michael's, Tower Royal, is Whittington's church. In this parish he
lived, though a house was long shown as his in Hart Street; here he
died; in this church he was buried--behind this church stood his
College of the Holy Spirit with its bedesmen and its ecclesiastical
staff. If we pass the church and look in at the gateway on the north,
we shall notice unmistakable signs of an ancient collegiate foundation
in the disposition of the modern houses. Here is now the Mercers'
School. In the church there is no adequate monument to the memory of
London's greatest merchant--the man who did so much for the City which
made him so rich, who royally entertained the King and Queen in his
own house, and at the close of the banquet burned before their eyes
the royal bond for £60,000, worth in modern money at least £600,000. I
never think of Whittington without remembering a certain verse in the
Book of Proverbs, 'Blessed is he who is diligent in his business, for
he shall stand before Kings.'
St. Nicolas Cole Abbey is, within, a kind of gilded drawing-room.
There is gilt everywhere, gilt and wood-carving; and on Sunday
morning, thanks to the strange taste of the Vicar, who likes to dress
himself up in scarlet and green, and to have a boy making a smell with
a swinging pot, there are sometimes more than the customary ten for a
congregation.
Of St. Mary Somerset only the tower remains. Why they pulled down this
church, why they pulled down St. Michael's Queenhithe, or St. Nicolas
Olave, or St. Mary Magdalen, all in this part of London, passeth man's
understanding. If you want to find out what these churches were like,
you may consult the book by Britton and Le Keux on London Churches.
They are represented in a collection of steel engravings drawn after
the fashion of eighty years ago, so as to bring out the strong points
with great softening of unpleasant details.
Many of the churches were not rebuilt after the Fire. This shows that
by the year 1666 this part of London was already beginning to be
occupied more by warehouses than by private dwellings. Among them were
St. Andrew Hubberd, St. Benet Sherehog, St. Leonard, Eastcheap, All
Hallows the Less, Holy Trinity, St. Martin Vintry, St. Laurence
Poultney, St. Botolph Billingsgate, St. Thomas Apostle, St. Mary
Mounthaut, St. Peter's, St. Gregory's by St Paul, and St. Anne's
Blackfriars--thirteen in all.
At St. Benet's Church--where Fielding was married--you may now hear
the service in the Welsh language, just as in Wellclose Square you may
hear it in Swedish. In Endell Street, Holborn, you may hear it in
French, and in Palestine Place, Hackney, you may hear it in Hebrew.
Certain spaces on old maps of London are coloured green to show where
stood certain churchyards. In Thames Street the churchyard of All
Hallows the Less still stands; in Queen Street that of St. Thomas
Apostle, in Laurence Poultney Hill that of St. Laurence Poultney, a
very large and well-kept churchyard; St. Dunstan's, All Hallows,
Barking, St. Stephen's, Wallbrook all keep their churchyards still.
That of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, stands retired behind the houses. But
those of St. Nicolas Cole Abbey, St. Mary Somerset, St. Botolph's, and
St. Mary Magdalen, formerly large and crowded churchyards, still kept
sacred in the year 1720, and, indeed, until further interments were
forbidden in the year 1845, are now quite built over and forgotten.
What has become of the churchyards of St. Michael Royal, St. Michael
Queenhithe, St. Benet, St. George, St. Leonard Eastcheap, and St.
James's Garlickhithe? Alas! no one knows. The tombstones are taken
away, the ground has been dug up, the coffin-wood burned, the bones
dispersed, and of all the thousands, the tens of thousands, of
citizens buried there--old and young, rich and poor, Lord Mayors,
aldermen, merchants, clerks, craftsmen, and servants--the dust of all
is scattered abroad, the names of all are as much forgotten as if they
never lived. But they have lived, and if you seek their monument--look
around. It is in the greatness, the wealth, the dignity of the modern
City, that these ancient citizens live again. Life is a long united
chain with links that cannot be separated; the story of humanity is
unbroken; it will go on continuous and continued until the Creator's
great purpose is fulfilled, and the drama of Man complete.
In one or two of these churches all the churchyard left is a square
yard or two at the back of the church. In one of these tiny
enclosures--I forget which now--I found that of all the headstones and
tombs which had once adorned this now sadly diminished and attenuated
acre, there was left but one. It was a tombstone in memory of an
infant, aged eight months. Out of all the people buried here, who had
lived long and been held in honour, and thought that their memory
would last for many generations--perhaps as long as that of
Whittington or Gresham--only the name of this one baby left!
It was in the vaults of St. James's Garlickhithe, that they found,
before the place was bricked up and left to be disturbed no more, many
bodies in a state of perfect preservation--mummies. One of these has
been taken out and set up in a cupboard in the outer chapel. He is
decently guarded by a door kept locked, and is neatly framed in glass.
You can see him by special application to the pew-opener, who holds a
candle and points out his beauties. Perhaps in all the City churches
there is no other object quite so curious as this old nameless mummy.
He was once, it may be, Lord Mayor--a good many Lord Mayors have been
buried in this church--or, perhaps, he was a Sheriff, and wore a
splendid chain; or he may have been the poorest and most miserable
wretch of his time. It matters not; he has escaped the dust--he is a
mummy. Somehow he contrives to look superior, as if he was conscious
of the fact and proud of it; he cannot smile, or nod, or wink, but he
can look superior.
One more church and one more scene, and I have done.
There is a church on the south side of Thames Street, close to the
site of the Steelyard--_i.e._, almost under the railway arches which
lead to Cannon Street. It is not very much to look at. With one
exception, indeed, it is the ugliest church in the whole of London
City. It is a big oblong box, with round windows stuck in here and
there. Wren designed it, I believe, one evening after dinner, when he
had taken a glass or two more than his customary allowance of port or
mountain. It is the church of All Hallows the Great combined with All
Hallows the Less. Before the Fire it was a very beautiful church, with
a cloister running round its churchyard on the south, and to the east
looking out upon the lane that led to Cold Harbour House. This is the
church to which the Hanseatic merchants for three hundred years came
for worship. Very near the church, on the river bank, stood the
Waterman's Hall. To this church, therefore, came the 'prentices of the
watermen every Sunday. The Great Fire carried it away, with Steelyard,
cloister, church, Waterman's Hall, Cold Harbour House, and everything.
Then Wren, as I said, took a pencil and ruler one evening, and showed
how a square box could be constructed on the site. Now, let no man
judge by externals. If you can get into the church, you will be
rewarded by the sight of an eighteenth-century church left exactly as
it was in those days of grave and sober merchants, and of City
ceremonies and church services attended in state. On the north side,
against the middle of the wall, is planted what we now most
irreverently call a Three Decker. But we must not laugh, because of
all Three Deckers this is the most splendid. There is nothing in the
City more beautiful than the wood-carving which makes pulpit,
sounding-board, reading-desk, and clerk's desk in this church precious
and wonderful. The old pews, which, I rejoice to say, have never been
removed, are many of them richly and beautifully carved. The Pew of
State, reserved for the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, is a miracle of
art. Across the very middle of the church is a screen in carved wood,
the most wonderful screen you ever saw, presented as a sign of
gratitude to their old church by the Hanseatic merchants. The east end
is decorated by a wooden table, richly carved, and the reredos is
designed by the great Christopher himself, no doubt for partial
expiation of his sin in making the church externally so hideous. It
consists of a marble panel, on which are engraved the Ten
Commandments. On the left hand stands Aaron in full pontificals, as
set forth in the Book of Leviticus or that of Numbers. On the right
hand, in more humble guise, stands Moses, facing the people, in his
hand a rod of gold. With this he points to the Commandments, which
contain among them the whole Rule of Life. The pews are not arranged
to face the east, but are gathered round the pulpit in the north, the
most desirable being those nearest the pulpit. In the outside pews,
close to the east end, sat the watermen's 'prentices. These young
villains, who were afterwards doubtless for the most part hanged,
spent their time during the service in carving their initials, with
rude pictures of ships, houses, and boats, with dates on the sloping
desks before them. There they still remain--because the pews are
unchanged--with the dates 1720, 1730, 1740, and so on. From father to
son they kept up this sacrilegious practice, hidden in the depths of
the high pews. There is, behind the church, a vestry with wainscoting
and more carved wood, and with portraits of bygone rectors, plans of
the parish, and notes on the old parish charities, which exist no
longer. Through the vestry window one looks out upon a little garden.
It is the churchyard. One sees how the old cloister ran. Formerly it
was full of tombs, and he who paced the cloister could meditate on
death. Now it is an open and cheerful place, all the old tombs cleared
away--which is loss, not gain--and in the month of May it is bright
with flowers. At first sight it seems as if it was so completely
hidden away that it could gladden no man's eyes. That is not so. In
the City Brewery there are certain windows which overlook this garden.
These are the windows of the rooms where dwells a chief
officer--Master Brewer, Master Taster, Master Chemist, I know not--of
the City Brewery, last of the many breweries which once stood along
the river bank. He, almost the only resident of the parish, can look
out, solitary and quiet, of the cool of an evening in early summer,
and rejoice in the beauty of this little garden blossoming, all for
his eyes alone, in a desert.
As one looks about this church the present fades away and the past
comes back. I see, once more, the Rector, what time George II. was
King, in full wig and black gown poring over his learned discourse.
Below him sleeps his clerk. In the Lord Mayor's pew, robed in garments
and chain of state, sleep my Lord Mayor and the worshipful the
Sheriffs; their footmen, all in blue and green and gold, are in the
aisle; the rich merchant of the parish clad in black velvet, with silk
stockings, silver buckles to their shoes, ruffles of the richest and
rarest lace at their throats, and neckties of the same hanging down
before their long silk waistcoats, sleep in their pews--it is a sleepy
time for the Church Service--beside their wives and children. The
wives are grand in hoop, and powder, and painted face. We know what is
meant by rank in the days of King George II. In this our parish church
we who are or have been wardens of our Company, aldermen who have
passed the chair, or aldermen who have yet to pass it, know what is
due to our position, and we bear ourselves accordingly. Our
inferiors--the clerks and the shopkeepers, the servants and the
'prentices--we treat, it is true, with kindliness, but with
condescension and with authority. On those rare occasions when a Peer
comes to our civic banquets we show him that we know what is due to
his rank. As for our life, it is centred in this parish; here are our
houses, here we live, here we carry on our business, and here we die.
Our poor are our servants when they are young and strong, and they are
our bedesmen when they grow old. Do not, I entreat you, believe in the
fiction that the Church neglected the poor during the last century.
The poor in the City parishes were not neglected; the boys were
thoroughly taught and conscientiously flogged, thieves were sent away
to be hanged, bad characters were turned out, the old were maintained,
the sick were looked after, the parish organization was complete, and
the parish charities were many and generous. Outside the City
precincts, if you please, where there were few churches and great
parishes, always increasing in population, the poor were neglected;
but in the City, never. But listen, the Rector has done. He finishes
his sermon with an admirable and appropriate quotation in Greek, which
I hope the congregation understands; he pronounces the prayer of
dismissal; the organ rolls, the clerk wakes up, the Lord Mayor and the
Sheriffs walk forth and get into their coaches, the footmen climb up
behind, the merchants and their families go out next, while all the
people stand in respect to their masters and betters, and those set in
authority over them. Then come out the people themselves, and last of
all the 'prentice boys come clattering down the aisle.
Let us awake. It is Sunday morning again, but the merchants are gone.
The eighteenth century is gone, the church is empty, the parish is
deserted; the streets are silent.
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep;
The river glideth at his own sweet will!
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart to lying still.
A RIVERSIDE PARISH
There are several riverside parishes east of London Bridge, not
counting the ancient towns of Deptford and Greenwich, which formerly
lay beyond London, and could not be reckoned as suburbs. The history
of all these parishes, till the present century, is the same. Once,
south-east and west of London, there stretched a broad marsh covered
with water at every spring-tide; here and there rose islets overgrown
with brambles, the haunt of wild fowl innumerable. In course of time,
the city having grown and stretching out long arms along the bank,
people began to build a broad and strong river-wall to keep out the
floods. This river-wall, which still remains, was gradually extended
until it reached the mouth of the river and ran quite round the low
coast of Essex. To the marshes succeeded a vast level, low-lying,
fertile region affording good pasture, excellent dairy farms, and
gardens of fruit and vegetables. The only inhabitants of this district
were the farmers and the farmhands. So things continued for a thousand
years, while the ships went up the river with wind and tide, and down
the river with wind and tide, and were moored below the Bridge, and
discharged their cargoes into lighters, which landed them on the quays
of London Port, between the Tower and the Bridge. As for the people
who did the work of the Port--the loading and the unloading--those
whom now we call the stevedores, coalers, dockers, lightermen, and
watermen, they lived in the narrow lanes and crowded courts above and
about Thames Street.
When the trade of London Port increased, these courts became more
crowded; some of them overflowed, and a colony outside the walls was
established in St. Katherine's Precinct beyond the Tower. Next to St.
Katherine's lay the fields called by Stow 'Wappin in the Wose,' or
Wash, where there were broken places in the wall, and the water poured
in so that it was as much a marsh as when there was no dyke at all.
Then the Commissioners of Sewers thought it would be a good plan to
encourage people to build along the wall, so that they would be
personally interested in its preservation. Thus arose the Hamlet of
Wapping, which, till far into the eighteenth century, consisted of
little more than a single long street, with a few cross lanes,
inhabited by sailor-folk. At this time--toward the end of the
sixteenth century--began that great and wonderful development of
London trade which has continued without any cessation of growth.
Gresham began it. He taught the citizens how to unite for the common
weal; he gave them a Bourse; he transferred the foreign trade of
Antwerp to the Thames. Then the service of the river grew apace; where
one lighter had sufficed there were now wanted ten; 'Wappin in the
Wose' became crowded Wapping; the long street stretched farther and
farther along the river beyond Shad's Well; beyond Ratcliff Cross,
where the 'red cliff' came down nearly to the river bank; beyond the
'Lime-house'; beyond the 'Poplar' Grove. The whole of that great city
of a million souls, now called East London, consisted, until the end
of the last century, of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, still
preserving something of the old rusticity; of Mile End, Stepney and
Bow, and West Ham, hamlets set among fields, and market-gardens, and
of that long fringe of riverside streets and houses. In these rural
hamlets great merchants had their country-houses; the place was
fertile; the air was wholesome; nowhere could one see finer flowers or
finer plants; the merchant-captains--both those at sea and those
retired--had houses with garden-bowers and masts at Mile End Old Town.
Captain Cook left his wife and children there when he went sailing
round the world; here, because ground was cheap and plentiful, were
long rope-walks and tenter-grounds; here were roadside taverns and
gardens for the thirsty Londoner on a summer evening, here were placed
many almshouses, dotted about among the gardens, where the poor old
folks lengthened their days in peace and fresh air.
But Riverside London was a far different place, here lived none but
sailors, watermen, lightermen, and all those who had to do with ships
and shipping, with the wants and the pleasures of the sailors. Boat
builders had their yards along the bank; mastmakers, sail-makers,
rope-makers, block-makers; there were repairing docks dotted about all
down the river, each able to hold one ship at a time, like one or two
still remaining at Rotherhithe, there were ship-building yards of
considerable importance; all these places employed a vast number of
workmen--carpenters, caulkers, painters, riggers, carvers of
figure-heads, block-makers, stevedores, lightermen, watermen,
victuallers, tavern-keepers, and all the roguery and _ribauderie_ that
always gather round mercantile Jack ashore. A crowded suburb indeed it
was, and for the most part with no gentlefolk to give the people an
example of conduct, temperance, and religion--at best the
master-mariners, a decorous people, and the better class of tradesmen,
to lead the way to church. And as time went on the better class
vanished, until the riverside parishes became abandoned entirely to
mercantile Jack, and to those who live by loading and unloading,
repairing and building the ships, and by showing Jack ashore how
fastest and best to spend his money. There were churches--Wapping, St.
George in the East, Shadwell, and Lime-house--they are there to this
day; but Jack and his friends enter not their portals. Moreover, when
they were built the function of the clergyman was to perform with
dignity and reverence the services of the church; if people chose not
to come, and the law of attendance could not be enforced, so much the
worse for them. Though Jack kept out of church, there was some
religious life in the place, as is shown not only by the presence of
the church, but also by that of the chapel. Now, wherever there is a
chapel it indicates thought, independence, and a sensible elevation
above the reckless, senseless rabble. Some kinds of Nonconformity also
indicate a first step toward education and culture.
He who now stands on London Bridge and looks down the river, will see
a large number of steamers lying off the quays; there are barges,
river steamers, and boats, there are great ocean steamers working up
or down the river; but there is little to give the stranger even a
suspicion of the enormous trade that is carried on at the Port of
London. That port is now hidden behind the dock gates; the trade is
invisible unless one enters the docks and reckons up the ships and
their tonnage, the warehouses and their contents. But a hundred years
ago this trade was visible to any who chose to look at it, and the
ships in which the trade was carried on were visible as well.
Below the Bridge, the river, for more than a mile, pursues a straight
course with a uniform breadth. It then bends in a north-easterly
direction for a mile or so, when it turns southward, passing Deptford
and Greenwich. Now, a hundred years ago, for two miles and more below
the bridge, the ships lay moored side by side in double lines, with a
narrow channel between. There were no docks; all the loading and the
unloading had to be done by means of barges and lighters in the
stream. One can hardly realize this vast concourse of boats and barges
and ships; the thousands of men at work; the passage to and fro of the
barges laden to the water's edge, or returning empty to the ship's
side; the yeo-heave-oh! of the sailors hoisting up the casks and bales
and cases; the shouting, the turmoil, the quarrelling, the fighting,
the tumult upon the river, now so peaceful. But when we talk of a
riverside parish we must remember this great concourse, because it was
the cause of practices from which we suffer to the present day.
Of these things we may be perfectly certain. First, that without the
presence among a people of some higher life, some nobler standard,
than that of the senses, this people will sink rapidly and surely.
Next, that no class of persons, whether in the better or the worser
rank, can ever be trusted to be a law unto themselves. For which
reason we may continue to be grateful to our ancestors who caused to
be written in large letters of gold, for all the world to see once a
week, "THUS SAITH THE LORD, Thou shalt not steal," and the rest: the
lack of which reminder sometimes causes in Nonconformist circles, it
is whispered, a deplorable separation of faith and works. The third
maxim, axiom, or self-evident proposition is, that when people can
steal without fear of consequences they will steal. All through the
last century, and indeed far into this, the only influence brought to
bear upon the common people was that of authority. The master ruled
his servants; he watched over them; when they were young he had them
catechized and taught the sentiments proper to their station; he also
flogged them soundly; when they grew up he gave them wages and work;
he made them go to church regularly; he rewarded them for industry by
fraternal care; he sent them to the almshouse when they were old. At
church the sermons were not for the servants but for the masters; yet
the former were reminded every week of the Ten Commandments, which
were not only written out large for all to see, but were read out for
their instruction every Sunday morning. The decay of authority is one
of the distinguishing features of the present century.
But in Riverside London there were no masters, and there was no
authority for the great mass of the people. The sailor ashore had no
master; the men who worked on the lighters and on the ships had no
master except for the day; the ignoble horde of those who supplied the
coarse pleasures of the sailors had no masters; they were not made to
do anything but what they pleased; the church was not for them; their
children were not sent to school; their only masters were the fear of
the gallows, constantly before their eyes at Execution Dock and on the
shores of the Isle of Dogs, and their profound respect for the cat o'
nine tails. They knew no morality; they had no other restraint; they
all together slid, ran, fell, leaped, danced, and rolled swiftly and
easily adown the Primrose Path; they fell into a savagery the like of
which has never been known among English-folk since the days of their
conversion to the Christian faith. It is only by searching and poking
among unknown pamphlets and forgotten books that one finds out the
actual depths of the English savagery of the last century. And it is
not too much to say that for drunkenness, brutality, and ignorance,
the Englishman of the baser kind touched about the lowest depth ever
reached by civilized man during the last century. What he was in
Riverside London has been disclosed by Colquhoun, the Police
Magistrate. Here he was not only a drunkard, a brawler, a torturer of
dumb beasts, a wife-beater, a profligate--he was also, with his
fellows, engaged every day, and all day long, in a vast systematic
organized depredation. The people of the riverside were all, to a man,
river pirates; by day and by night they stole from the ships. There
were often as many as a thousand vessels lying in the river; there
were many hundreds of boats, barges, and lighters engaged upon their
cargoes, They practised their robberies in a thousand ingenious ways;
they weighed the anchors and stole them; they cut adrift lighters when
they were loaded, and when they had floated down the river they
pillaged what they could carry and left the rest to sink or swim; they
waited till night and then rowed of to half-laden lighters and helped
themselves. Sometimes they went on board the ships as stevedores and
tossed bales overboard to a confederate in a boat below; or they were
coopers who carried under their aprons bags which they filled with
sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the
rum. Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that
was thrown to them from the ships. Some obtained admission to the ship
as rat-catchers, and in that capacity were able to carry away plunder
previously concealed by their friends; some, called _scuffle-hunters_,
stood on the quays as porters, carrying bags under their long white
aprons in which to hide whatever they could pilfer. It was estimated
that, taking one year with another, the depredations from the shipping
in the Port of London amounted to nearly a quarter of a million
sterling every year. All this was carried on by the riverside people.
But, to make robbery successful, there must be accomplices,
receiving-houses, fences, a way to dispose of the goods. In this case
the thieves had as their accomplices the whole of the population of
the quarter where they lived. All the public-houses were secret
markets attended by grocers and other tradesmen where the booty was
sold by auction, and, to escape detection, fictitious bills and
accounts were given and received. The thieves were known among
themselves by fancy names, which at once indicated the special line of
each and showed the popularity of the calling; they were bold pirates,
night plunderers, light horsemen, heavy horsemen, mud-larks, game
lightermen, scuffle-hunters and gangsmen. Their thefts enabled them to
live in the coarse profusion of meat and drink, which was all they
wanted; yet they were always poor because their plunder was knocked
down for so little; they saved nothing; and they were always egged on
to new robberies by the men who sold them drinks, by the women who
took their money from them, and by the honest merchants who attended
the secret markets.
I dwell upon the past because the present is its natural legacy. When
you read of the efforts now being made to raise the living, or at
least to prevent them from sinking any lower, remember that they are
what the dead made them. We inherit more than the wealth of our
ancestors; we inherit the consequences of their misdeeds. It is a most
expensive thing to suffer the people to drop and sink; it is a sad
burden which we lay upon posterity if we do not continually spend our
utmost in lifting them up. Why, we have been the best part of two
thousand years in recovering the civilization which fell to pieces
when the Roman Empire decayed. We have not been fifty years in
dragging up the very poor whom we neglected and left to themselves,
the gallows, the cat, and the press-gang only a hundred years ago. And
how slow, how slow and sometimes hopeless, is the work!
The establishment of river police and the construction of docks have
cleared the river of all this gentry. Ships now enter the docks; there
discharge and receive; the labourers can carry away nothing through
the dock-gates. No apron allows a bag to be hidden; policemen stand at
the gates to search the men; the old game is gone--what is left is a
surviving spirit of lawlessness; the herding together; the
hand-to-mouth life; the love of drink as the chief attainable
pleasure; the absence of conscience and responsibility; and the old
brutality.
What the riverside then was may be learned by a small piece of
Rotherhithe in which the old things still linger. Small
repairing-docks, each capable of holding one vessel, are dotted along
the street; to each are its great dock-gates, keeping out the high
tide, and the quays and the shops and the caretaker's lodge; the ship
lies in the dock shored up by timbers on either side, and the workmen
are hammering, caulking, painting, and scraping the wooden hull; her
bowsprit and her figurehead stick out over the street, Between the
docks are small two-storied houses, half of them little shops trying
to sell something; the public-house is frequent, but the 'Humours' of
Ratcliff Highway are absent; mercantile Jack at Rotherhithe is mostly
Norwegian and has morals of his own. Such, however, as this little
village of Rotherhithe is, so were 'Wappin in the Wose,' Shadwell,
Ratcliff, and the 'Limehouse' a hundred years ago, with the addition
of street fighting and brawling all day long; the perpetual adoration
of rum, quarrels over stolen goods; quarrels over drunken drabs;
quarrels over all-fours; the scraping of fiddles from every
public-house, the noise of singing, feasting, and dancing, and a
never-ending, still-beginning debauch, all hushed and quiet--as birds
cower in the hedge at sight of the kestrel--when the press-gang swept
down the narrow streets and carried off the lads, unwilling to leave
the girls and the grog, and put them aboard His Majesty's tender to
meet what fate might bring.
The construction of the great docks has completely changed this
quarter. The Precinct of St. Katherine's by the Tower has almost
entirely disappeared, being covered by St. Katherine's Dock; the
London Dock has reduced Wapping to a strip covered with warehouses.
But the church remains, so frankly proclaiming itself of the
eighteenth century, with its great churchyard. The new Dock Basin,
Limehouse Basin, and the West India Docks, have sliced huge cantles
out of Shadwell, Limehouse, and Poplar; the little private docks and
boat-building yards have disappeared; here and there the dock remains,
with its river gates gone, an ancient barge reposing in its black mud;
here and there may be found a great building which was formerly a
warehouse when ship-building was still carried on. That branch of
industry was abandoned after 1868, when the shipwrights struck. Their
action transferred the ship-building of the country to the Clyde, and
threw out of work thousands of men who had been earning large wages in
the yards. Before this unlucky event Riverside London had been rough
and squalid, but there were in it plenty of people earning good
wages--skilled artisans, good craftsmen. Since then it has been next
door to starving. The effect of the shipwrights' strike may be
illustrated in the history of one couple.
The man, of Irish parentage, though born in Stepney, was a painter or
decorator of the saloons and cabins of the ships. He was a
highly-skilled workman of taste and dexterity; he could not only paint
but he could carve; he made about three pounds a week and lived in
comfort. The wife, a decent Yorkshire woman whose manners were very
much above those of the riverside folk, was a few years older than her
husband. They had no children. During the years of fatness they saved
nothing; the husband was not a drunkard, but, like most workmen, he
liked to cut a figure and to make a show. So he saved little or
nothing. When the yard was finally closed he had to cadge about for
work. Fifteen years later he was found in a single room of the meanest
tenement-house; his furniture was reduced to a bed, a table, and a
chair; all that they had was a little tea and no money--no money at
all. He was weak and ill, with trudging about in search of work; he
was lying exhausted on the bed while his wife sat crouched over the
little bit of fire. This was how they had lived for fifteen years--the
whole time on the verge of starvation. Well, they were taken away;
they were persuaded to leave their quarters and to try anther place,
where odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made
friends in private families, for whom she did a little sewing. But it
was too late for the man; his privations had destroyed his sleight of
hand, though he knew it not; the fine workman was gone. He took
painters' paralysis, and very often when work was offered his hand
would drop before he could begin it; then the long years of tramping
about had made him restless; from time to time he was fain to borrow a
few shillings and to go on the tramp again, pretending that he was in
search of work; he would stay away for a fortnight, marching about
from place to place, heartily enjoying the change and the social
evening at the public-houses where he put up. For, though no drunkard,
he loved to sit in a warm bar and to talk over the splendours of the
past. Then he died. No one, now looking at the neat old lady in the
clean white cap and apron who sits all day in the nursery crooning
over her work, would believe that she has gone through this ordeal by
famine, and served her fifteen years' term of starvation for the sins
of others.
The Parish of St. James's, Ratcliff, is the least known of Riverside
London. There is nothing about this parish in the Guide-books; nobody
goes to see it. Why should they? There is nothing to see. Yet it is
not without its romantic touches. Once there was here a cross--the
Ratcliff Cross--but nobody knows what it was, when it was erected, why
it was erected, or when it was pulled down. The oldest inhabitant now
at Ratcliff remembers that there was a cross here--the name survived
until the other day, attached to a little street, but that is now
gone. It is mentioned in Dryden. And on the Queen's Accession, in
1837, she was proclaimed, among other places, at Ratcliff Cross--but
why, no one knows. Once the Shipwrights' Company had their hall here;
it stood among gardens where the scent of the gillyflower and the
stock mingled with the scent of the tar from the neighbouring
rope-yard and boat-building yard. In the old days, many were the
feasts which the jolly shipwrights held in their hall after service at
St. Dunstan's, Stepney. The hall is now pulled down, and the Company,
which is one of the smallest, worth an income of less than a thousand,
has never built another. Then there are the Ratcliff Stairs--rather
dirty and dilapidated to look at, but, at half-tide, affording the
best view one can get anywhere of the Pool and the shipping. In the
good old days of the scuffle-hunters and the heavy horsemen, the view
of the thousand ships moored in their long lines with the narrow
passage between was splendid. History has deigned to speak of Ratcliff
Stairs. 'Twas by these steps that the gallant Willoughby embarked for
his fatal voyage; with flags flying and the discharge of guns he
sailed past Greenwich, hoping that the King would come forth to see
him pass. Alas! the young King lay a-dying, and Willoughby himself was
sailing off to meet his death.
The parish contains four good houses, all of which, I believe, are
marked in Roque's map of 1745.
One of these is now the vicarage of the new church. It is a large,
solid, and substantial house, built early in the last century, when as
yet the light horsemen and lumpers were no nearer than Wapping. The
walls of the dining-room are painted with Italian landscapes, to which
belongs a romance. The paintings were executed by a young Italian
artist. For the sake of convenience he was allowed by the merchant who
then lived here, and employed him, to stay in the house. Now the
merchant had a daughter, and she was fair. The artist was a goodly
youth, and inflammable; as the poet says, their eyes met; presently,
as the poet goes on, their lips met; then the merchant found out what
was going on, and ordered the young man, with good old British
determination, out of the house. The young man retired to his room,
presumably to pack up his things. But he did not go out of the house;
instead of that, he hanged himself in his room. His ghost, naturally,
continued to remain in the house, and has been seen by many. Why he
has not long ago joined the ghost of the young lady is not clear
unless that, like many ghosts, his chief pleasure is in keeping as
miserable as he possibly can.
The second large house of the parish is apparently of the same date,
but the broad garden in which it formerly stood has been built over
with mean tenement houses. Nothing is known about it; at present
certain Roman Catholic sisters live in it, and carry on some kind of
work.
The third great house is one of the few surviving specimens of the
merchant's warehouse and residence in one. It is now an old and
tumbledown place. Its ancient history I know not. What rich and costly
bales were hoisted into this warehouse; what goods lay here waiting to
be carried down the Stairs, and so on board ship in the Pool; what
fortunes were made and lost here one knows not. Its ancient history is
gone and lost, but it has a modern history. Here a certain man began,
in a small way, a work which has grown to be great; here he spent and
was spent; here he gave his life for the work, which was for the
children of the poor. He was a young physician; he saw in this squalid
and crowded neighbourhood the lives of the children needlessly
sacrificed by the thousand for the want of a hospital; to be taken ill
in the wretched room where the whole family lived was to die; the
nearest hospital was two miles away. The young physician had but
slender means, but he had a stout heart. He found this house empty,
its rent a song. He took it, put in half a dozen beds, constituted
himself the physician and his wife the nurse, and opened the
Children's Hospital. Very soon the rooms became wards; the wards
became crowded with children; the one nurse was multiplied by twenty;
the one physician by six. Very soon, too, the physician lay upon his
death-bed, killed by the work. But the Children's Hospital was
founded, and now it stands, not far off, a stately building with one
of its wards--the Heckford Ward--named after the physician who gave
his own life to save the children. When the house ceased to be a
hospital it was taken by a Mr. Dawson, who was the first to start here
a club for the very rough lads. He, too, gave his life for the cause,
for the illness which killed him was due to overwork and neglect.
Devotion and death are therefore associated with this old house.
The fourth large house is now degraded to a common lodging-house. But
it has still its fine old staircase.
The Parish of St. James's, Ratcliff, consists of an irregular patch of
ground having the river on the south, and the Commercial Road, one of
the great arteries of London, on the north. It contains about seven
thousand people, of whom some three thousand are Irish Catholics. It
includes a number of small, mean, and squalid streets; there is not
anywhere in the great city a collection of streets smaller or meaner.
The people live in tenement-houses, very often one family for every
room--in one street, for instance, of fifty houses, there are one
hundred and thirty families. The men are nearly all
dock-labourers--the descendants of the scuffle-hunters, whose
traditions still survive, perhaps, in an unconquerable hatred of
government. The women and girls are shirt-makers, tailoresses,
jam-makers, biscuit-makers, match-makers, and rope-makers.
In this parish the only gentlefolk are the clergy and the ladies
working in the parish for the Church; there are no substantial
shopkeepers, no private residents, no lawyer, no doctor, no
professional people of any kind; there are thirty-six public-houses,
or one to every hundred adults, so that if each spends on an average
only two shillings a week, the weekly takings of each are ten pounds.
Till lately there were forty-six, but ten have been suppressed; there
are no places of public entertainment, there are no books, there are
hardly any papers except some of those Irish papers whose continued
sufferance gives the lie to their own everlasting charges of English
tyranny. Most significant of all, there are no Dissenting chapels,
with one remarkable exception. Fifteen chapels in the three parishes
of Ratcliff, Shadwell, and St. George's have been closed during the
last twenty years. Does this mean conversion to the Anglican Church?
Not exactly; it means, first, that the people have become too poor to
maintain a chapel, and next, that they have become too poor to think
of religion. So long as an Englishman's head is above the grinding
misery, he exercises, as he should, a free and independent choice of
creeds, thereby vindicating and assorting his liberties. Here there is
no chapel, therefore no one thinks; they lie like sheep; of death and
its possibilities no one heeds; they live from day to day; when they
are young they believe they will be always young; when they are old,
so far as they know, they have been always old.
The people being such as they are--so poor, so hopeless, so
ignorant--what is done for them? How are they helped upward? How are
they driven, pushed, shoved, pulled, to prevent them from sinking
still lower? For they are not at the lowest depths; they are not
criminals; up to their lights they are honest; that poor fellow who
stands with his hands ready--all he has got in the wide world--only
his hands--no trade, no craft, no skill--will give you a good day's
work if you engage him; he will not steal things; he will drink more
than he should with the money you give him; he will knock his wife
down if she angers him; but he is not a criminal. That step has yet to
be taken; he will not take it; but his children may, and unless they
are prevented they certainly will. For the London-born child very soon
learns the meaning of the Easy Way and the Primrose Path. We have to
do with the people ignorant, drunken, helpless, always at the point of
destitution, their whole thoughts as much concentrated upon the
difficulty of the daily bread as ever were those of their ancestor who
roamed about the Middlesex Forest and hunted the bear with a club, and
shot the wild goose with a flint-headed arrow.
First there is the Church work; that is to say, the various agencies
and machinery directed by the Vicar. It may be new to some readers,
especially to Americans, to learn how much of the time and thoughts of
our Anglican beneficed clergymen are wanted for things not directly
religious. The church, a plain and unpretending edifice, built in the
year 1838, is served by the Vicar and two curates. There are daily
services, and on Sundays an early celebration. The average attendance
at the Sunday morning mid-day service is about one hundred; in the
evening it is generally double that number. They are all adults. For
the children another service is held in the Mission Room, The average
attendance at the Sunday-schools and Bible-classes is about three
hundred and fifty, and would be more if the Vicar had a larger staff
of teachers, of whom, however, there are forty-two. The whole number
of men and women engaged in organized work connected with the Church
is about one hundred and twenty-six. Some of them are ladies from the
other end of London, but most belong to the parish itself; in the
choir, for instance, are found a barber, a postman, a caretaker, and
one or two small shopkeepers, all living in the parish, When we
remember that Ratcliff is not what is called a 'show' parish, that the
newspapers never talk about it, and that rich people never hear of it,
this indicates a very considerable support to Church work.
In addition to the church proper there is the 'Mission Chapel,' where
other services are held. One day in the week there is a sale of
clothes at very low prices. They are sold rather than given, because
if the women have paid a few pence for them they are less willing to
pawn them than if they had received them for nothing. In the Mission
Chapel are held classes for young girls and services for children.
The churchyard, like so many of the London churchyards, has been
converted into a recreation ground, where there are trees and
flower-beds, and benches for old and young.
Outside the Church, but yet connected with it, there is, first, the
Girls' Club. The girls of Ratcliff are all working-girls; as might be
expected, a rough and wild company, as untrained as colts, yet open to
kindly and considerate treatment. Their first yearning is for finery;
give them a high hat with a flaring ostrich feather, a plush jacket,
and a 'fringe,' and they are happy. There are seventy-five of these
girls; they use their club every evening, and they have various
classes, though it cannot be said that they are desirous of learning
anything. Needlework, especially, they dislike; they dance, sing, have
musical drill, and read a little. Five ladies who work for the church
and for the club live in the club-house, and other ladies come to lend
assistance. When we consider what the homes and the companions of
these girls are, what kind of men will be their husbands, and that
they are to become mothers of the next generation, it seems as if one
could not possibly attempt a more useful achievement than their
civilization. Above all, this club stands in the way of the greatest
curse of East London--the boy and girl marriage. For the elder women
there are Mothers' Meetings, at which two hundred attend every week;
and there are branches of the Societies for Nursing and Helping
Married Women. For general purposes there is a Parish Sick and
Distress Fund; a fund for giving dinners to poor children; there is a
frequent distribution of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, sent up by
people from the country. And for the children there is a large room
which they can use as a play-room from four o'clock till half-past
seven. Here they are at least warm; were it not for this room they
would have to run about the cold streets; here they have games and
pictures and toys. In connection with the work for the girls, help is
given by the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants,
which takes charge of a good many of the girls.
For the men there is one of the institutions called a Tee-To-Tum Club,
which has a grand café open to everybody all day long; the members
manage the club themselves; they have a concert once a week, a
dramatic performance once a week, a gymnastic display once a week; on
Sunday they have a lecture or an address, with a discussion after it;
and they have smaller clubs attached for football, cricket, rowing,
and swimming.
For the younger lads there is another club, of one hundred and sixty
members; they also have their gymnasium, their football, cricket, and
swimming clubs; their classes for carpentry, wood-carving, singing,
and shorthand; their savings' bank, their sick club, and their
library.
Only the better class of lads belong to this club. But there is a
lower set, those who lounge about the streets at night, and take to
gambling and betting. For these boys the children's play-room is
opened in the evening; here they read, talk, box, and play bagstelle,
draughts, and dominoes, These lads are as rough as can be found, yet
on the whole they give very little trouble.
Another important institution is the Country Holiday; this is
accomplished by saving. It means, while it lasts, an expenditure of
five shillings a week; sometimes the lads are taken to the seaside and
live in a barn; sometimes the girls are sent to a village and placed
about in cottages. A great number of the girls and lads go off every
year a-hopping in Kent.
Add to these the temperance societies, and we seem to complete the
organized work of the Church. It must, however, be remembered that
this work is not confined to those who attend the services or are
Anglican in name. The clergy and the ladies who help them go about the
whole parish from house to house; they know all the people in every
house, to whatever creed they belong; their visits are looked for as a
kind of right; they are not insulted even by the roughest; they are
trusted by all; as they go along the streets the children run after
them and hang upon their dress; if a strange man is walking with one
of these ladies, they catch at his hands and pull at his
coat-tails--we judge of a man, you see, by his companions. All this
machinery seems costly. It is, of course, far beyond the slender
resources of the parish. It demands, however, no more than £850 a
year, of which £310 is found by different societies and the sum of
£540 has to be raised somehow.
There are, it has been stated, no more than seven thousand people in
this parish, of whom nearly half belong to the Church of Rome. It
would therefore almost seem as if every man, woman, and child in the
place must be brought under the influence of all this work. In a sense
all the people do feel the influence of the Church, whether they are
Anglicans or not. The parish system, as you have seen, provides
everything; for the men, clubs; for the women, nursing in sickness,
friendly counsel always, help in trouble; the girls are brought
together and kept out of mischief and encouraged in self-respect by
ladies who understand what they want and how they look at things, the
grown lads are taken from the streets, and, with the younger boys, are
taught arts and crafts, and are trained in manly exercises just as if
they were boys of Eton and Harrow. The Church services, which used to
be everything, are now only a part of the parish work. The clergy are
at once servants of the altar, preachers, teachers, almoners, leaders
in all kinds of societies and clubs, and providers of amusements and
recreation. The people look on, hold out their hands, receive, at
first indifferently--but presently, one by one, awaken to a new sense.
As they receive they cannot choose but to discover that these ladies
have given up their luxurious homes and the life of ease in order to
work among them. They also discover that these young gentlemen who
'run' the dubs, teach the boys gymnastics, boxing, drawing, carving,
and the rest, give up for this all their evenings--the flower of the
day in the flower of life. What for? What do they get for it? Not in
this parish only, but in every parish the same kind of thing goes on
and spreads daily. This--observe--is the last step _but one_ of
charity. For the progress of charity is as follows: First, there is
the pitiful dole to the beggar; then the bequest to monk and
monastery; then the founding of the almshouse and the parish charity;
then the Easter and the Christmas offerings; then the gift to the
almoner; then the cheque to a society; next--latest and best--personal
service among the poor. This is both flower and fruit of charity. One
thing only remains. And before long this thing also shall come to pass
as well.
Those who live in the dens and witness these things done daily must be
stocks and stones if they were not moved by them. They are not stocks
and stones; they are actually, though slowly, moved by them; the old
hatred of the Church--you may find it expressed in the working man's
papers of fifty years ago--is dying out rapidly in our great towns;
the brawling is better, even the drinking is diminishing. And there is
another--perhaps an unexpected--result. Not only are the poor turning
to the Church which befriends them, the Church which they used to
deride, but the clergy are turning to the poor; there are many for
whom the condition of the people is above all other earthly
considerations. If that great conflict--long predicted--of capital and
labour ever takes place, it is safe to prophecy that the Church will
not desert the poor.
Apart from the Church what machinery is at work? First, because there
are so many Catholics in the place, one must think of them. It is,
however, difficult to ascertain the Catholic agencies at work among
these people. The people are told that they must go to mass; Roman
Catholic sisters give dinners to children; there is the Roman League
of the Cross--a temperance association; I think that the Catholics are
in great measure left to the charities of the Anglicans, so long as
these do not try to convert the Romans.
The Salvation Army people attempt nothing--absolutely nothing in this
parish. There are at present neither Baptist, nor Wesleyan, nor
Independent chapels in the place. A few years ago, on the appearance
of the book called the 'Bitter Cry of Outcast London,' an attempt was
made by the last-named body; they found an old chapel belonging to the
Congregationalists, with an endowment of £80 a year, which they turned
into a mission-hall, and carried on with spirit for two years mission
work in the place; they soon obtained large funds, which they seem to
have lavished with more zeal than discretion. Presently their money
was all gone and they could get no more; then the chapel was turned
into a night-shelter. Next It was burned to the ground. It is now
rebuilt and is again a night-shelter. There is, however, an historic
monument in the parish with which remains a survival of former
activity. It is a Quaker meeting-house which dates back to 1667. It
stands within its walls, quiet and decorous; there are the chapel, the
ante-room, and the burial-ground. The congregation still meet, reduced
to fifty; they still hold their Sunday-school; and not far off one of
the fraternity carries on a Crêche which takes care of seventy or
eighty babies, and is blessed every day by as many mothers.
Considering all these agencies--how they are at work day after day,
never resting, never ceasing, never relaxing their hold, always
compelling the people more and more within the circle of their
influence; how they incline the hearts of the children to better
things and show them how to win these better things--one wonders that
the whole parish is not already clad in white robes and sitting with
harp and crown. On the other hand, walking down London Street,
Ratcliff, looking at the foul houses, hearing the foul language,
seeing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous
children in the mud, one wonders whether even these agencies are
enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from
falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery. This parish
is one of the poorest in London; it is one of the least known; it is
one of the least visited. Explorers of slums seldom come here; it is
not fashionably miserable. Yet all these fine things are done here,
and as in this parish so in every other. It is continually stated as a
mere commonplace--one may see the thing advanced everywhere, in
'thoughtful' papers, in leading articles--that the Church of Rome
alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of pure
devotion. Then what of these parish-workers of the Church of England?
What of that young physician who worked himself to death for the
children? What of the young men--not one here and there but in
dozens--who give up all that young men mostly love for the sake of
laborious nights among rough and rude lads? What of the gentlewomen
who pass long years--give up their youth, their beauty, and their
strength--among girls and women whose language is at first like a blow
to them? What of the clergy themselves, always, all day long, living
in the midst of the very poor--hardly paid, always giving out of their
poverty, forgotten in their obscurity, far from any chance of
promotion, too hard-worked to read or study, dropped out of all the
old scholarly circles? Nay, my brothers, we cannot allow to the Church
of Rome all the unselfish men and women. Father Damien is one of us as
well. I have met him--I know him by sight--he lives and has long
lived, in Riverside London.
ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER
On the 30th day of October, in the year of grace one thousand eight
hundred and twenty-five, there was gathered together a congregation to
assist at the mournfullest service ever heard in any church. The place
was the Precinct of St. Katherine's, the church was that known as St.
Katherine's by the Tower--the most ancient and venerable church in the
whole of East London--a city which now has but two ancient churches
left, those of Bow and of Stepney, without counting the old tower of
Hackney.
Suppose it was advertised that the last and the farewell service,
before the demolition of the Abbey, would be held at Westminster on a
certain day; that after the service the old church would be pulled
down; that some of the monuments would be removed, the rest destroyed;
that the bones of the illustrious dead would be carted away and
scattered, and that the site would be occupied by warehouses used for
commercial purposes. One can picture the frantic rage and despair with
which the news would everywhere be received; one can imagine the
stirring of the hearts of all those who to every part of the world
inherit the Anglo-Saxon speech, one can hear the sobbing and the
wailing which accompany the last anthem, the last sermon, the last
prayer.
St. Katherine's by the Tower was the Abbey of East London, poor and
small, certainly, compared with the Cathedral church of the City and
the Abbey of the West; but stately and ancient; endowed by half a
dozen Sovereigns; consecrated by the memory of seven hundred years,
filled with the monuments of great men and small men buried within her
walls; standing in her own Precinct; with her own Courts, Spiritual
and Temporal; with her own judges and officers; surrounded by the
claustral buildings belonging to Master, Brethren, Sisters, and
Bedeswomen. The church and the hospital had long survived the
intentions of the founders; yet as they stood, so situated, so
ancient, so venerable, amid a dense population of rough sailors and
sailor folk, with such enormous possibilities for good and useful
work, sacred and secular, one is lost in wonder that the consent of
Parliament, even for purposes of gain, could be obtained for their
destruction. Yet St. Katherine's was destroyed. When the voice of the
preacher died away, the destroyers began their work. They pulled down
the church; they hacked up the monuments, and dug up the bones; they
destroyed the Master's house, and cut down the trees in his quiet
orchard; they pulled down the Brothers' houses round the little
ancient square; they pulled down the row of Sisters' houses and the
Bedeswomen's houses; they swept the people out of the Precinct, and
destroyed the streets; they pulled down the Courts, Spiritual and
Temporal, and opened the doors of the prison; they grubbed up the
burying ground, and with the bones and the dust of the dead, and the
rubbish of the foundations, they filled up the old reservoir of the
Chelsea water-works, and enabled Mr.
Cubitt to build Eccleston Square. When all was gone they let the water
into the big hole they had made, and called it St. Katherine's Dock.
All this done, they became aware of certain prickings of conscience.
They had utterly demolished and swept away and destroyed a thing which
could never be replaced; they were fain to do something to appease
those prickings. They therefore stuck up a new chapel, which the
architect called Gothic, with six neat houses in two rows, and a large
house with a garden in Regent's Park, and this they called St.
Katherine's, 'Sirs,' they said, 'it is not true that we have destroyed
that ancient foundation at all; we have only removed it to another
place. Behold your St. Katherine's!' Of course it is nothing of the
kind. It is not St. Katherine's. It is a sham, a house of Shams and
Shadows.
Thus was St. Katherine's destroyed; not for the needs of the City,
because it is not clear that the new docks were wanted, or that there
was no other place for them, but in sheer inability to understand what
the place meant as to the past, and what it might be made to do in the
future. The story of the Hospital has been often told: partly, as by
Ducarel and by Lysons, for the historical interest; partly, as by Mr.
Simcox Lea, in protest against the present we of its revenues. It is
with the latter object, though I disagree altogether with Mr. Lea's
conclusions, that I ask leave to tell the story once more. The story
will have to be told, perhaps, again and again, until people can be
made to understand the uselessness and the waste and the foolishness
of the present establishment in the Park, which has assumed and bears
the style and title of St. Katherine's Hospital by the Tower.
The beginning of the Hospital dates seven hundred and forty years
back, when Matilda, Stephen's Queen, founded it for the purpose of
having masses said for the repose of her two children, Baldwin and
Matilda, She ordered that the Hospital should consist of a Master,
Brothers, Sisters, and certain poor persons--probably the same as in
the later foundation. She appointed the Prior and Canons of Holy
Trinity to have perpetual custody of the Hospital; and she reserved to
herself and all succeeding Queens of England the nomination, of the
Master. Her grant was approved by the King, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Pope. Shortly afterwards William of Ypres bestowed
the land of Edredeshede, afterwards called Queenhythe, on the Priory
of Holy Trinity, subject to an annual payment of £20 to the Hospital
of Katherine's by the Tower.
This was the original foundation. It was not a Charity; it was a
Religious House with a definite duty--to pray for the souls of two
children; it had no other charitable objects than belong to any
religious foundation--viz., the giving of alms to the poor, nor was it
intended as a church for the people; in those days there were no
people outside the Tower, save the inhabitants of a few scattered
cottages along the river Wall, and the farmhouses of Steban Heath. It
was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes' souls. One
refrains from asking what was done for the little paupers' souls in
those days.
The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to
exercise some
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