TRANSFORMATION OF THE BOURGEOIS
“Will you mock at an ancient tradition?”--_Henry V._
When one speaks of the Bourgeois, one means the class which Matthew
Arnold was never tired of ridiculing as without culture, ideals,
or standards. For my own part, I think it would be more useful to
recognise, first, that there are certain occupations in life which can
be carried on very well without ideals; that the advent or genesis
of ideas among certain people would inevitably spoil them for their
humble work; and that it is sufficient for the State if they remain on
the side of order, with due respect to law and justice. Now, whatever
the short-comings of these people with respect to culture, no one can
complain of them with respect to their love of order.
A craftsman--a man who makes anything--may cultivate himself to the
highest, and remain a craftsman; he may be an artist; he may be a poet;
he may nourish himself upon the noblest thoughts, and yet remain a
craftsman. Out of the trade of shoemakers have sprung poets, artists,
and actors. Cobblers have been fierce politicians. But a man who sells
the shoes which another man makes cannot, in the nature of things,
cultivate lofty standards or æsthetic ideals. His occupation, which has
in it something servile, forbids it. And I have here to speak of the
English tradesman, and to show the transformation which has fallen upon
him too.
Let us consider the daily life of a London shopkeeper early in the
present century. He had a shop in Cheapside. The shop occupied the
front part of the ground-floor: at the back was the “parlour,” the
family living-room, which looked out upon a small churchyard, in which
funerals were conducted almost daily; the ground was covered with bones
and bits of coffins; once a month or so the sexton made a bonfire of
the wood. Upstairs were the bedrooms--the best bedroom in front, which
nobody ever occupied because there were no guests. Here the tenant of
the house lived, he and his family; they had no change, and desired
none, from day to day. An apprentice lived with them, slept under
the counter, and made himself useful in the house as well as in the
shop--washing plates and dishes after meals and running errands for his
mistress. One servant was kept; she and the daughters and the mistress
of the house were all occupied perpetually in making things; they made
puddings, cakes, jam, preserves, pickles, cordials, perfumes, washes,
and home-made wines--thin and pallid fluids named after cowslip,
primrose, raspberry, and currant. When they were not making or cooking
they were sewing; all the women of the house sewed perpetually--they
were slaves to the needle: they sat round the table in the parlour,
with a single candle, and sewed in silence all through a winter
evening. The girls had been to school; they went to a private school in
the suburbs, where they learned various small feminine accomplishments;
they learned from their mother certain maxims which should regulate the
conduct of every maiden. And on Sunday they turned out for church in
toilettes whose splendour highly gratified the pride of their father,
because they seemed to challenge all Cheapside to spend more money
upon the daughters’ dress. Yet he knew, and all the neighbours knew,
that this finery was all contrived at home--hats trimmed, ribbons and
streamers put in place, and the lovely sleeve designed by the girls
themselves. At church they enjoyed a service which we should call
lugubrious. The psalms were read, two hymns were sung but slowly, and
the sermon, an hour long, was an argument on doctrine; but there was
the pleasure of sitting in the Sunday best, which made one forget the
doctrine and enjoy the hymns.
[Illustration: QUEEN IN ROYAL CLOSET, ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR]
[Illustration:
_Painting by Landseer_
THE QUEEN, THE PRINCE OF WALES, AND PRINCESS ROYAL]
All day long in the week, and during a good part of the evening, the
good man served in his shop. It was a shop of which survivals may
still be found in various parts of London--a shop with a round window
furnished with many small panes of glass; the window was not garnished
with the choicest wares which this dealer had to sell--not at all; he
prided himself on keeping much better things within than those which
he chose to show. After dark the window was illumined by two or three
candles.
He breakfasted, for the most part, on tea and toast; he dined at
one o’clock, plentifully if not luxuriously; it was not the custom,
among his class, to invite friends to dinner. The house, in fact,
was regarded as a kind of sacred harem, to which no one was invited.
Friends, however, were taken to the tavern. Unless he was a Dissenter,
this citizen was a member of the Vestry, and served all the parish
offices. On Sunday he dined more plentifully than on a week day: he was
a member of a club which met once a week; there he exchanged sentiments
which we should call commonplace, but they were expected; any other
sentiments would have affected his friends painfully, with doubt and
misgiving.
These sentiments were based upon convictions fixed and unalterable. He
believed--long before any Reform Bill--that the only land of liberty
was Great Britain; that British armies were irresistible, and British
fleets were ever victorious; that the greatest enemy to mankind was the
Pope; that the greatest crime conceivable was not to pay your debts,
especially debts contracted with a tradesman of Cheapside; that the
greatest disgrace was to become bankrupt. A debtor’s prison he regarded
as the chief safeguard and stay of British trade; he would listen to no
sentimental nonsense about locking up debtors--every debtor ought to be
locked up, ought to be flogged, ought to be hanged!
[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S PRIVATE CHAPEL, WINDSOR]
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL]
He entertained no sympathy with trades unions: the working-man was the
servant of his employer; it was not for him to regulate his own wages
and his hours; he was to take what he could get, what the generosity of
his master, what the conditions of trade, allowed him to have.
This man, of whom there were many hundred thousands in the country,
read no books; he was quite ignorant of what we call everything, that
is, of literature, science, art, music, history. Something he knew of
what was going on, because there were newspapers at the tavern, which
he sometimes read. But he took in no newspaper, and he read no books.
There were no books in his house at all; his girls read no books. A
book of Family Prayers there was; and for Church purposes, Prayer Books
and Bibles, but no books. And so this man, with all his household,
lived and died, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, without culture, without
ideals, without standards, without aspirations.
[Illustration: QUEEN’S PRIVATE SITTING ROOM, WINDSOR]
[Illustration: THE ROYAL KITCHEN, WINDSOR]
He had become, after the Mob Riots of the eighteenth century, a
prodigious coward. Formerly, as in 1715, when a mob appeared in the
street, he had run to the mug-house or tavern, seized a club, and
sallied forth to disperse that mob. Gradually he lost courage; he
stayed at home; he was sleek and fat and unwarlike; when the mob came
along he put up his shutters, locked his door, and sat behind it
trembling. However, the establishment of the New Police sufficiently
repressed the mob, and made the question of the civic valour no longer
necessary.
For holidays, he had none, that is to say, he felt no need of any
change year after year; he lived the daily routine, and would not alter
it if he could. Some of his neighbours--a few--had begun to go in the
summer to Brighton or to Margate. Not our friend; he stayed where he
was, with his nose over the churchyard, and said that London air was
best. Once a year he might take his family to Bagnigge Wells or over to
Vauxhall; on summer evenings he would walk with them in the pleasant
fields outside the city walls; he wanted no other holiday. Nor did his
people. His daughters married and left him; but he and his wife kept on
where they were until the end.
The man himself, ill-educated, vulgar, incapable of understanding
anything except that which lies on the surface, unfortunately stood
in the eyes of the world to represent the City: the trading merchants
had gradually withdrawn from the Corporation, leaving it to the
shopkeepers, so that for a time the Mayor and Corporation of the
greatest city of the world were drawn from a narrow, vulgar part of
the community. Not only the city, but trade itself fell into contempt
during this interval. You may remember that Thackeray is filled with
contempt of trade, with his Alderman Gobble and the purse-proud
merchants.
One point must be acknowledged in favour of this man. He was a great
stickler for what he called morals--not including that part of morals
which deals with the treatment of dependents. Private character he
expected of his friends: a young man who came courting his daughters
had to bring with him an unsullied private character. You may note, if
you please, because the virtue is the foundation of all trade, that in
his private expenditure he was thrifty.
How, then, has this man been affected by the changes of sixty years?
First, his trade is entirely altered. The extension of machinery has
affected every line of trade. In watchmaking, for instance, the best
watches were made in Clerkenwell: they cost from six pounds to a
hundred and twenty pounds; a machine-made watch can now be obtained
for twenty shillings. So with stuffs, velvets, silks, ribbons,
everything: machinery has largely increased the production and as
largely diminished the cost. This means, as one effect, that less
capital is required to embark in trade. Free Trade, which has done such
great things for this country, though we make no converts, has largely
affected the retail trade.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN IN ROYAL ROBES]
Apart from his trade the English tradesman’s private life has been
completely changed. He no longer lives next to a noisome burial-ground
in the city; he has a villa in a suburb; he goes into town every
morning and comes out in the evening; the old evenings with the city
cronies are things of the past. In his suburb there is very little
social life even for his children; for himself there is none. He does
not frequent theatres or concerts; he stays at home. In the morning he
reads a newspaper; in the evening he reads books and plays cribbage. As
for his children they have forgotten the former stage; they are well
educated; they go into the professions; they are artistic and become
Art students; they are as well read as can be desired; they are in the
stream of modern ideas.
Not only this, but the social position of the tradesman has been
raised: here and there one may find a huge palace devoted to the sale
of everything; the palace has been created by the genius of one man,
and is controlled by the mind of one man. It is impossible to feel
anything but respect and admiration for a man of such great ability,
who has created interests so vast and so commanding.
The shopkeeper has, for the most part, abandoned the Corporation; he
no longer seeks office in the city; when he does, he is a man who can
hold his own with the merchants who have once more taken over the
municipality; the City is the gainer by the change, and so is the
London tradesman, because what advances the reputation of the City also
advances him.
[Illustration:
_Painting by Sir Edwin Landseer_
ROYAL GROUP, WINDSOR, 1843]
The forces which have changed the common people have also acted
upon himself and his family: the widening of the world, improved
communication, and cheap postage and the rest. His young people
are not concerned with the polytechnics, but they are moved by the
spirit of athletics that drag all the youth of this country into the
playing-fields. They career over the country on bicycles; they play
golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football; they are not shut out from
suburban society by the old exclusiveness with which “wholesale people”
formerly regarded “retail people.” The playing-field is a leveller;
there is no rank in a football team.
[Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE]
[Illustration:
_Painting by C. R. Leslie_
BAPTISM OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL]
Let us not forget to remark how large a knowledge of geography is
possessed by our friend of Cheapside. You would be amazed at the
extent: sure and certain I am that the average American citizen cannot
compare with my man in this respect. He has learned this knowledge by
following day after day the wars and rumours of wars which assail the
country continually. Since the accession of Queen Victoria, we have
carried on war in Canada, at the Cape, in India, in New Zealand, on the
West Coast of Africa, in the Crimea, in Egypt, in China, in Abyssinia,
in Dahomey, in Burmah, in Afghanistan, in Chitral, and I know not
where beside. This good man, with his newspaper and his atlas, gets up
his geography from day to day and from war to war.
[Illustration:
_Painting by F. Winterhalter_
ROYAL GROUP, 1848]
There is perhaps a “seamy” side to trade of every kind. With that I
have no concern whatever; I have only to show here how the events of
sixty years have affected the London tradesman, and this, I venture to
hope, I have succeeded in doing. Again, it must be understood that I
am talking of the better class--not necessarily the richer class--of
London retail dealers. There are, I believe, those who live for making
money, and have no other care or thought. For them order, law, peace,
justice exist for no other purpose than to allow the most perfect
freedom for the besting of the customer. The old Cheapside trader was
narrow and stupid; these people are neither narrow nor stupid; they
are sharp; they exist in every trading city; they are purse-proud and
ostentatious; they flourish their wealth at the “Grand Hotels”; they
wear the finest fur and the richest silk--and, if you please, we will
say no more about them.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]