LONDON LIFE--THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF THE CHILDREN'S PLAY CENTRES
1904-1917
Both _Lady Rose's Daughter_ and _The Marriage of William Ashe_, which
appeared in 1903 and 1905 respectively, are novels of London life,
reflecting in their minor characters, their talk and the incidents that
accompany the tale, that intimate aquaintance with the world of London
which Mrs. Ward had acquired during the many years that she had spent in
observing it, in working with it, and in sharing some of the rarer forms
of the rewards which it has to give. The central theme in each case is a
broadly human one, but the setting and the savour are those of
London--that all-devouring London which she loved so well, but from
which, after a few weeks of its turmoil, she was always so thankful to
escape. It was now twenty years and more since she and Mr. Ward had come
to live in the pretty old house in Russell Square where they had first
gathered their friends around them, and where her Thursdays had first
become an institution; but time had not dimmed her zest for friendship
and for talk, so that the Thursdays and the frequent dinner-parties
continued at Grosvenor Place through all the years that followed. She
would never have claimed that they amounted to a _salon_, for, in spite
of _Lady Rose's Daughter_, her belief was that a _salon_, properly
so-called, was not in the English tradition, and could hardly survive
outside Paris; yet I think that if one had taken the opinion of those
who frequented them they would have said that Mrs. Ward's afternoons or
evenings made a remarkable English equivalent. She herself did not
disguise the fact that she regarded good talk as an art, and enjoyed
nothing more than the play of mind on mind and the quick thrust and
parry that occasionally sweeps across a dinner-table; but she had no
illusions as to the natural inaptitude of the English for the art, and
would often quote the exasperated remark of her great friend in Rome,
Contessa Maria Pasolini, after an evening spent in entertaining English
visitors: "You English, you need so much winding up! Now, if I were
merely to tear up a piece of paper and throw it down among my French
friends, they would talk about it delightfully all the evening!" Hence
her injunctions to her children, when they began to take wing and go
forth to "social junketings" of their own, not to be stuck-up or blasé,
and above all "not to sit like a stuck pig when you get there!" To exert
one's wits to make a party go was part of one's social duty, just as
much as handing the tea-cake or opening the door, and she herself, in
spite of a natural absence of small talk which made her formidable
sometimes to new acquaintances, would faithfully follow her own
precepts. But with her the effort was second nature, for it sprang from
her inborn desire to place herself in sympathetic relations with her
neighbour, to draw out the best in him, to set him going. And so the
talk that was heard at Grosvenor Place, whether at her small
luncheon-parties, her Thursdays, or her dinners, always took from her
first and foremost the quality of reality; people talked--or made her
talk--of the things they knew or cared about, and since her range was so
wide, and there was always, as an old friend expressed it, "so much
tinder about" among her guests, the result was a certain vividness and
vitality that left their mark, and have been long remembered. And, as
one of those who knew her best said once on a public occasion,[26] she
had the secret of making you feel, as you left her house, that you were
a much finer fellow than you thought when you went in; she made you
believe in yourself, for she had, by some subtle magic--or perhaps by
the simplest of all--brought out gifts or powers in you which you hardly
knew that you possessed.
As to the persons who came and went in that pretty room, looking out on
the garden of Buckingham Palace, how is it possible to number or name
them, or to recall the flavour of their long-vanished conversation?
Many have, like their hostess, passed into the unknown: figures like
Leslie Stephen, who wrote to her often, especially after his wife's
death, and came at intervals to Grosvenor Place for a long
_tête-à-tête_, sitting on the sofa beside Mrs. Ward, his ear-trumpet
between them; or like the much-loved Burne-Jones, who came at an earlier
stage and too soon ceased to come, for he died in 1898, leaving her only
a little bundle of letters which she affectionately treasured; or again,
like Lady Wemyss, the deep-voiced, queerly-dressed _grande dame_, whom
Mrs. Ward loved for her heart's sake, and of whom she has recorded a
suggestion, perhaps, in the Lady Winterbourne of _Marcella_; and ah! how
many more, of whom it would be unprofitable for the after-born to write.
Mrs. Ward has left in her novels the mirror of the world in which she
lived and moved, and in her _Recollections_ a more intimate picture of
her friends. To try to add to these records would be but to tempt the
Gods.
But at what a cost in fatigue of body and mind even her entertaining was
carried on, those who passed their days with Mrs. Ward may at least
tell. It was always the same story. She put so much of herself into
whatever she was doing that the effort produced exhaustion. And so,
after her Thursdays, or perhaps after some gathering of Settlement
workers to whom she had been talking individually, she would collapse
upon the sofa, white and speechless, only fit to be "stroked" and left
to gather her forces again as best she might. There was one Thursday in
the month when, after her own "At Home," she was obliged to attend the
Settlement Council meeting at eight o'clock. This meant that there was
no time for recuperation between the two, but only for a hurried meal,
filled with hasty consultations as to the evening's notes, letters and
telephonings that must be done during her absence; then she would go
off, and some time towards eleven would return, worn out and crumpled,
though perhaps with the light of battle still in her eye over some point
well raised or some victory won. At the Settlement she would have given
no hint of any disability, and would have been the life and soul of the
meeting. Perhaps only her friend the Warden knew what a struggle against
physical pain and weakness her presence there had implied. We used to
chaff her sometimes about the physical ailments of her heroines, who,
according to our robust ideas, were too fond of turning white or of
letting their lips tremble, but this trick of her novels expressed only
too deep an experience of her own, since never, in all the years that
she was writing, did she know what it was to have a day of ordinary
physical strength. On many and many of her guests she made the illusion
of being a strong woman, but could they have seen her when the talk and
the excitement were over, they would have known that it was only her
spirit that had carried her through. The body was always dragged after,
a more or less protesting slave.
Her way of life at Grosvenor Place was naturally one which involved a
good deal of expenditure. Sometimes she would have searchings of heart
over this, or even momentary spasms of economy, but it sprang in reality
from two fundamental causes--one her delight in beautiful things,
inherited even in her starved childhood from her mother, and shared to
the full in later years with her husband; the other this constant
ill-health, which made her incapable of "roughing it," and rendered a
certain amount of luxury indispensable if she was to get through her
daily task. Good pictures and the right kind of furniture gave her a
definite joy for their own sakes, while the arrangement of the chairs
and tables in the manner best calculated to encourage talk was always a
fascinating problem. Clothes, too, were not to be despised, and though
she liked to sit and work in some old rag that had seen better days, it
amused her also to go and plan some beautiful thing with her dressmaker,
Mrs. Kerr, and it amused her to wear the "creation" when it was
finished. Her faithful maid, Lizzie, who had been with us since the
early days of Russell Square, and who was often more nurse than maid to
her, cut and altered and renovated in her little workroom upstairs,
while every now and then Mrs. Ward would issue forth and make a raid
upon the shops, coming home either triumphant to face the criticism of
her family, or very low because she knew she had been beguiled into
buying something which she now positively hated. She was extremely
particular, too, about her daughters' clothes, nor could she make up her
mind, when they came out, to give them a dress allowance, being far too
much interested herself in the problem of how they looked; but even
when she was fully responsible for some luckless garment of theirs she
would often break out, on its first appearance, with the fatal words,
"Go upstairs, take that off, and let me _never_ see it again until it's
completely re-made!"--usually uttered amid helpless giggles, for this
had become, by long use, a stock phrase in our family.
Strangers coming from afar with some claim upon her kindness found
always a ready welcome at her house. In addition to her French and
Italian friends, who would find their way to her door as soon as they
arrived in London, she had many warm friendships with Americans,
beginning with her much-loved cousin, Frederick W. Whitridge, who had
married Matthew Arnold's daughter Lucy, and had got Mr. Ward to build a
comely house for her within half a mile of Stocks. "Cousin Fred," with
his charming blue eyes and white moustache and beard, had been a truly
Olympian figure to us children even in the days of Russell Square, for
had he not deposited on our plates at breakfast, one golden morning, a
sovereign each for the two elders and half a sovereign for the youngest?
And as the years passed on, and he became the intimate friend of
Roosevelt and a recognized leader of the New York Bar, the friendship
between him and Mrs. Ward grew ever deeper, so that his shrewd wisdom
and inimitable humour, as well as his habit of spoiling the people he
was fond of, came to be looked for each summer as one of the true
pleasures of the year. His son was one of the first Americans to join
the British Army in 1914, but he himself, like Henry James, was not to
see the day for which both he and Roosevelt had toiled so hard. He died
in December, 1916, four months before America "came in." Mr. Lowell, the
American Ambassador during the 'eighties, had been a frequent visitor at
Russell Square, while his successors, Hay, Bayard and Choate, were all
on friendly terms with Mrs. Ward. Comrades in her own trade whom it
always pleased her to see were Mr. Gilder, editor of the _Century
Magazine_, welcome whether he came as publisher or friend; Mr. Godkin,
of the _Evening Post_, the most intellectual among American journalists;
Mr. S. S. McClure, who had first tracked down Mrs. Ward at Borough Farm,
and remained ever afterwards on cordial, not to say familiar, terms with
her; Charles Dudley Warner, Mrs. Wharton, the William James's, and many
more. But the most intimate of all were certain women: that inseparable
and delightful pair, Mrs. Fields and Miss Sarah Orne Jewett (the writer
of New England stories), who twice found their way to Stocks, and many
times to Grosvenor Place, and lastly that other Bostonian, Miss Sara
Norton, whose friendship for Dorothy made her almost as another daughter
during her visits to Stocks, to Levens, or to the Villa Bonaventura.
But it was not by any means only for the "distinguished," whether from
home or abroad, that Grosvenor Place laid itself out. One of its
principal functions was that of making the head-quarters in London for
all the younger members of Mrs. Ward's own family, as well as for the
grandchildren who began about this time to find their way to her knee.
For to all such young people she was mother, fairy godmother and friend
rolled into one. Settlement workers and Associates, teachers and many
"dim" people of various professions would find her as accessible as her
strenuous hours of labour would allow. All she asked of those who came
to her house was that they should have something real to contribute--and
if possible that they should contribute it without egotism. Certainly
she did not suffer bores gladly; an ordinary bore was bad enough, but an
egotistic bore would produce a peculiar kind of nervous irritation in
her which we who watched could always detect, however manfully she
strove to conceal it. Nor could she ever bring herself to observe the
strict rules of London etiquette, so that to "go calling" was an unknown
occupation in her calendar, and in spite of two daughters and a
secretary her social lapses and forgetfulnesses sometimes plunged her in
black despair. When she had hopelessly missed Mrs. So-and-So's party, to
which she had fully meant to go, she would sorrowfully declare that the
motto of the Ward family ought to be: "Never went and never wrote."
It is needless to point out how exhausting this London life became to
one who pressed so much into it as Mrs. Ward. For although she could
rarely write her books in London, being far too distracted by the
demands of the hungry world upon her time, it was mainly at Grosvenor
Place that she hammered out her schemes for the welfare of London's
children, talking them over with members of the School Board or the
County Council, driving about to some of the poorest districts to see
with her own eyes the conditions under which they lived, and planning
out the details in mornings of hard work with Miss Churcher. The
development of the Cripples' Schools, both in London and the Provinces,
was very much on her shoulders at this time, for she felt the imperative
need for extending them to other parts of the country, and undertook
many arduous missionary journeys on their behalf during the few years
that followed their establishment in London. There, as the schools grew
and spread under the fostering care of the L.C.C., it was the auxiliary
services of after-care, feeding and training that claimed the principal
share of her attention. But she had a very efficient committee to assist
her in these matters, under the chairmanship of Miss Maude Lawrence, so
that gradually her responsibility for the London cripples grew less
heavy, and she was able to turn to other schemes that now began to
simmer in her mind for the welfare of the whole as well as the halt
among London's children.
For the remarkable success of the Children's Recreation School at the
Settlement, which by the year 1904 had attendances of some 1,700
children a week (all, of course, wholly voluntary), led Mrs. Ward to
feel that some effort might be made to carry the civilizing effect of
such centres of play into the remoter and still more squalid regions of
the East and South. Already the Children's Happy Evenings' Association
held weekly or fortnightly "Evenings" in some eighty or ninety schools,
giving much pleasure to the children wherever they went, but Mrs. Ward's
plan was for something on a more intensive scale than this, something
that might exert a continuous influence over the lives of large numbers
of children in any given district, as the occupations and delights of
the "Passmore" did over the children of St. Pancras. She founded a small
committee, in October, 1904, to go into the matter and to lay proposals
before the Education Committee of the London County Council: proposals
to the effect that the "Play Centres Committee" should be allowed the
free use of certain schools after school hours on five evenings a week,
from 5.30 to 7.30, and also on Saturday mornings, for the purpose of
providing games, physical exercises and handwork occupations for the
children of that district. The Council readily gave its consent, and
Mrs. Ward applied herself to the task of raising sufficient funds for
the maintenance of eight "Evening Play Centres" in certain school
buildings, to be carried on for a year as an experiment. She obtained
promises amounting to nearly £800, largely from the same friends as had
watched her work at the Settlement, and with this she felt that she
could go forward. After careful inquiry, four schools in the East End
were selected, with one in Somers Town and two in Lambeth and Walworth
respectively, while Canon Barnett offered Toynbee Hall itself as the
scene of an eighth Centre. Mrs. Ward devoted special pains to the
selection of the eight Superintendents who were to have charge of these
Play Centres, for she rightly felt that on their wisdom and skill in
handling the large numbers of children who would pass through their
hands would largely depend the success of the adventure. Gymnastic
instructors, handwork teachers and many voluntary helpers were also
secured and assigned to the various Centres, so that the staff in each
case consisted of a _cadre_ of paid and professional workers, assisted
by as many volunteers as possible. Mrs. Ward's long experience at the
Settlement had convinced her that this nucleus of paid workers was
essential to the smooth and continuous working of any such scheme, since
although the best volunteers were invaluable in supplying an element of
initiative and originality in the working out of new ideas, still there
was also an element of irregularity in their attendance which detracted
much from their usefulness! And in proportion as the Centres succeeded
in their object of attracting the children from the streets, so much the
more disastrous would it be if large numbers of them were left
shepherdless on foggy evenings because Miss So-and-So had a bad cold.
Mrs. Ward was much criticized in certain quarters for bringing the
"professional element" into her Play Centres, but she knew better than
her critics how far the voluntary element might safely be trusted, and
how far it must be supplemented by the professional. She was playing all
the time for a _big thing_, with possibilities of expansion not only in
London but in the great industrial towns as well, besides which she
always hotly resented the suggestion that the paid worker must be
inferior in quality to the volunteer. On the contrary, it interested her
immensely to see how the professional teachers, both men and women,
would often reveal new and unsuspected qualities in the freer atmosphere
of the Play Centre, while the greater intimacy that they acquired with
their children was--as they often acknowledged--of the greatest value to
them in their day-school work.
The first eight Play Centres opened their doors to the children on the
first Monday in February, 1905, and it may be imagined with what anxiety
and delight Mrs. Ward watched their development during these first
weeks. The children had been secured in the first instance by
invitations distributed through the Head Teachers to those who, in their
opinion, stood most in need of shelter and occupation after school
hours, i.e. principally to those whose parents were both out at work
till 7 or 8 o'clock; but after the ice was broken, Alf would bring 'Arry
and Edie would bring Maud, till the utmost capacity of the classes was
reached, and Mrs. Ward's heart was both gladdened and saddened by the
tale that her staff had as many children as they could possibly cope
with, and that many had of necessity been turned away. By the end of the
year the weekly attendance at the eight Centres amounted to nearly
6,000, and a year later, with ten Centres instead of eight, they had
risen to over 10,000. This meant that Mrs. Ward had struck upon a real
need of the wandering, loafing child-population of our greatest city--a
need that will in fact be perennial so long as the housing of the miles
upon miles of bricks and mortar that we call the working-class districts
remains what it is. "It all grows steadily beyond my hopes," wrote Mrs.
Ward to Mrs. Creighton in October, 1906, "and I believe that in three or
four years we shall see it developing into an ordinary part of
education, in the true sense. There is no difficulty about money--the
difficulty is to find the time and nerve-strength to carry it on, even
with such help as Bessie Churcher's."
But the burden of raising the increasing sums required was, in truth,
very great, so that Mrs. Ward, with her belief in the future of the
movement, was already at work to get the Play Centre principle
recognized and embodied in an Act of Parliament. The opportunity arose
on Mr. Birrell's ill-fated Bill of 1906, but although Mrs. Ward's
clause, enabling any Local Education Authority "to provide for children
attending a public elementary school, Vacation Schools, Play Centres, or
means of recreation during their holidays or at such other times as the
Local Education Authority may prescribe," was accepted by the
Government, and passed the House of Lords in December, 1906, the Bill
itself was dropped soon afterwards, having been wrecked on the usual
rocks of sectarian passion. Fortunately, however, Mr. McKenna, who
succeeded Mr. Birrell at the Board of Education, was able to carry a
smaller measure, known as the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act,
in the summer of the next year (1907). This Act duly contained the Play
Centres clause, as well as the provisions for the medical inspection and
treatment of school-children which have since borne such beneficent
fruit. Already in the previous summer, when the clause was first before
the House of Commons, Mr. Sydney Buxton had said at the opening of the
Settlement Vacation School that he felt sure it would go down to history
as the "Mary Ward Clause."
But this victory had not been won except at the cost of considerable
friction with the only other body that attempted to cater in any
systematic fashion for the needs of London's children in the evening
hours--I mean the Children's Happy Evenings' Association. The
Association, which embodied the "voluntary principle" in its purest
form, could not tolerate the idea that the Public Education Authority
might in the future come to encroach upon a field which they regarded as
their own--even though their "Evenings" were avowedly held only once a
week, sometimes only once a fortnight, and could not touch more than the
barest fringe of the child population of each district. They disliked
the professional worker, and they abhorred the bare idea that public
money might eventually be spent upon the recreation of the
children--ignoring the experience of America, where the public authority
was doing more each year for the playtime of its children, and
forgetting, perhaps, that at the "preparatory schools" to which their
own little boys were sent, almost more time and thought were spent upon
their games than upon their "education" proper. And so they sent a
deputation to Mr. Birrell to oppose Mrs. Ward's clause, and their
workers attacked Mrs. Ward and her precious Play Centres in other ways
and on other occasions as well; but they found that she was a shrewd
fighter, for even though during the summer of 1906 she was laid low by
that most disabling complaint, a terrible attack of eczema, she
compelled herself to write from her bed a trenchant letter to _The
Times_ in defence of the professional worker, and also a very
conciliatory letter to her friend Lady Jersey, the President of the
Happy Evenings' Association.
"It is most unwelcome to me," she wrote, "this dispute over a
public cause--especially when I see or dream what could be done by
co-operation. What I _wish_ is that you would join the Evening Play
Centres Committee, and see for yourself what it means. There is
nothing in our movement which is necessarily antagonistic to yours,
but I think we may claim that ours is more in sympathy with the
general ideas on the subject that are stirring people's minds than
yours."
The affair ended in the acceptance by the Government of an amendment to
Mrs. Ward's clause, authorizing the Local Education Authorities to
"encourage and assist the continuance or establishment of Voluntary
Agencies" in any exercise of powers under the new Act. The two
associations--the Happy Evenings and the Play Centres--continued to
exist side by side until the inevitable march of events led, under the
stress of war, to the issue of Mr. Fisher's authoritative Memorandum
(January, 1917), admitting the obligation of the State in the matter of
the children's recreation, and announcing that in future the Board would
undertake half the "approved expenditure" of Evening Play Centre
committees. The Children's Happy Evenings' committee thereupon decided,
in dignified fashion, that their work was ended, and dissolved their
Association. Peace be to its ashes! It had given joy, much joy, to many
thousands of London children, as Mrs. Ward always most fully recognized,
and if in the end it stood in the way of the new and younger power which
was capable of giving an almost indefinite extension to the children's
pleasure, could it but have a free field, the reluctance of the
Association to cede any ground was only, after all, a very natural
affair.
But once the new Act was passed, Mrs. Ward was to be disappointed in her
hopes that the London Education Authority would take advantage of the
powers conferred upon it in order to assist the movement financially.
Certain members of the Council elected in 1907 (in which the majority
was overwhelmingly Moderate) urged her to present an appeal to the
Education Committee, asking that the cost of the Handwork, Drill and
Gymnastic classes held at the Play Centres might be defrayed by the
Council; this she did in a statement which she drew up and presented in
October, 1907, weaving into it with all the practised skill that she
knew so well how to throw into such documents firstly a picture of the
child-life of such districts as Hoxton, Walworth and Notting Dale in the
winter evenings, when the children were too often "turned out after tea
into the streets and told not to come home till bedtime"; then a brief
account of the small beginnings and immense growth of the Children's
Recreation School at the Passmore Edwards Settlement, with its
offshoots, the ten Play Centres held in the London schools, and finally
a striking list of individual cases, showing how the Centres had already
attracted to themselves scores of boys and girls whose conditions of
life were leading them into idling and vagabondage of all sorts, through
the mere lack of anything to do in the dark hours.
"Perhaps the most striking revelation of the whole work," wrote
Mrs. Ward, "has been the positive hunger for hand-occupation which
exists among the older children. The attendances at the handwork
classes drop off a little when June begins, and from June to
October they are better discontinued in favour of cricket, swimming
and outdoor games in general. But from October onwards through the
whole winter and up to the end of May, the demand for handwork
never slackens. Two or three times the number of children who are
now being taught would eagerly come to classes if they were opened.
Basket-work, wood-work and cobbling are unfailing delights, and it
is here that we ask most earnestly for the help of the County
Council. Rough boys, who would soon, if left to themselves, become
on leaving school a nuisance to the community and to the police,
can be got hold of through handwork, and in no other way. And when
once the taste has been acquired, there remains the strong
probability that after school is over they will be drawn into the
net of Evening Classes and Polytechnics, and so rescued for an
honest life."
But the Education Committee, burdened as it was in that year with the
first arrangements for medical inspection and treatment, as well as with
the demand for the feeding of necessitous children, did not feel able to
undertake this further responsibility, although its reception of Mrs.
Ward's memorandum was extremely sympathetic. All that the Council would
do at this stage was to remit the charges previously made for cleaning
and caretaking of the schools during Play Centre hours, a concession
which amounted to a grant of about £20 a year per Centre.
Mrs. Ward was therefore thrown back upon her own resources for the
financing of her great experiment. No thought of reduction or even of
standing still could be admitted, for with the growing fame of the
Centres, appeals began to come in from Care Committees, from School
Managers, from Clergy, and from hard-worked Magistrates, begging that
Centres might be opened in their districts, while the owner of a jam
factory in South London offered to pay part of the cost of a Centre if
it could be opened near his works, _because the children used to come
down to the factory gates in the evenings and cry till their mothers
came out_. Mr. Samuel's Children's Act of 1908 created the post of
Probation Officer for the supervision of "first offenders"; the first
two or three of these were appointed, on Mrs. Ward's recommendation,
from among her Play Centre Superintendents, since the intimate knowledge
they possessed of the children's lives gave them special qualifications
for their task. It soon became the practice of all Probation Officers to
refer their lawless little charges (often aged only nine or ten!) to the
nearest Play Centre as "every-night children," there to forget their
wild or thieving ways in the fascinations of cobbling, or wood-work, or
games, or military drill. But in order to respond to these growing
appeals Mrs. Ward had to undertake an ever-increasing burden of
financial responsibility, as well as of organization. In 1905 the first
eight Centres had cost a little over £900; in 1908, with twelve Centres
and total attendances of 620,000, the bill had risen to £3,000; in 1911,
with seventeen Centres and attendances of 1,170,000, it was £4,500; in
1913, with twenty Centres and attendances of 1,500,000, it was £5,700.
How she succeeded in raising these large sums in addition to her efforts
for the Settlement; how she found time, on the top of her literary work
and her many semi-political interests, for the close attention that she
gave, week in, week out, to the progress of each individual Centre and
the peculiarities of every Superintendent, will always remain a mystery.
Her unconquerable optimism, which became a more and more marked trait of
her character as the years went on, helped her through every crisis,
while her joy in the children's happiness acted both as a tonic and a
spur. Every winter she would issue her eloquent Report, sending it out
with irresistible personal letters to a large number of subscribers;
many a London landlord was made to stand and deliver for the children of
meaner streets than those which paid him rent; many a factory owner was
persuaded to follow the example of the jam-manufacturer above-mentioned.
Yet when all was done there would usually remain a deficit of several
hundred pounds, which must be wiped out in order to avert a bankers'
strike; then Mrs. Ward would gather up all the outstanding facts of the
year's work and present them in one of those remarkable letters to _The
Times_ of which she possessed the secret, charming the cheques for very
shame out of the pockets of the kind-hearted. And thus, with incredible
toil and with many moments of despair, the organization was kept going
and the indispensable funds supplied; but it was a labour of Hercules,
and her letters throughout these years bear witness to the exhausting
nature of the task.
Once more, in 1913, Mrs. Ward hoped that the recognition of her long
effort was not far off, for both Government and County Council expressed
themselves, through the mouths of two distinguished leaders, as very
warmly in sympathy with it. She had organized an exhibition of Play
Centre hand-work at the Settlement--toy models of all sorts, baskets,
dolls, needlework, cobbled boots and shoes--and invited her old friend
Lord Haldane, then Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Cyril Cobb, Chairman of the
Education Committee, L.C.C., to speak at the opening ceremony. Both
speakers emphasized the fact that Mrs. Ward had now proved her case, and
that, as Lord Haldane said, the Play Centre movement had "reached a
stage in which it must be recognized as one, at least, of the elements
in a national system of education, as one of the things that must come
within the scope and observance of the Board of Education. Such a
movement must begin by voluntary effort. It has already reached a stage
in which I hope it is going to attract a great deal of official
attention." Such words could not but encourage Mrs. Ward to hope that
help was near, for by that time the Board of Education had already
inaugurated the system of giving aid to voluntary societies, if their
aims and methods were approved, by a proportional grant on their
expenditure. Yet 1913 passed away and nothing came of it. One may
perhaps shrewdly suspect, in looking back, that the authorities knew
well enough when a thing was a "going concern" and needed no effort of
theirs to help it up the hill. Mrs. Ward was their willing horse; they
continued, with the instinct of _laissez-faire_ which has so often
preserved the British Constitution, to let her pull her own load. But a
time was at hand when _laissez-faire_ and all other comfortable
doctrines were to be swept away in the shock that set the whole fabric
of our society reeling. The outbreak of war, which seemed at first to
threaten the very existence of such things as Play Centres, was in fact
to reveal and establish their necessity. After two more years of heroic
effort to keep them going amid the flood of war appeals, Mrs. Ward had
her reward at last in Mr. Fisher's Memorandum of January, 1917. The
State had recognized the principle that in the children lay the best
hope of England, and Mrs. Ward had her way. Thence-forward the Board of
Education undertook to pay half the "approved expenditure" of the
Evening Play Centres committee.
* * * * *
But the establishment and growth of the London Play Centres, heavy and
exacting as was the toil that it involved, did not by any means exhaust
Mrs. Ward's efforts to improve the lot of London's children during these
years. In 1908 she opened two additional Vacation Schools in the East
End; one in a school with a "roof-playground" in Bow, the other in an
ordinary school in Hoxton.
"On Friday I had a field-day at the Bow Vacation School," she wrote
to J.P.T. in August, 1908. "The air on the roof-playground was like
Margate, and the children's happiness and good-temper delightful to
see. There were flowers all about, and sunny views over East
London to distant country, and round games, and little ones happy
with toys, and all sorts of nice things. Downstairs a splendid game
of hand-ball in the playground, and a cool hall full of boys
playing games and reading. As for the Settlement, it has never been
so enchanting. There are 1,150 children daily, and all the teachers
say it is better than ever. The Duke's sand-heap and the new
drinking-fountain are great additions. Hoxton goes to my heart! It
is _too_ crowded, and there is nothing but asphalt playgrounds,
with no shade till late. Yet the children swarm, and when you see
them sitting listlessly, doing absolutely nothing, in the broiling
dirty streets outside you can't wonder. I am having the playground
shelter scrubbed out with carbolic daily, lined with some flowers
in pots, and filled with small tables and chairs for the little
ones. They have 800 children, and we have been obliged to give
extra help."
Then in the next year, besides maintaining the roof-playground, she
opened another experimental Holiday-school near by for a small number of
delicate and ailing children whose names were on the "necessitous" list,
and who were therefore eligible for free dinners. Mrs. Ward delighted in
continuing and improving the free dinners for these little waifs during
the holidays, as well as in providing suitable occupations for their
fingers, and it was with real pride that she returned them to their
regular school at the end of the holidays, thriving, and with a record
of increased weight in almost every case. But the very success of these
attempts, together with the ever-increasing size and attractiveness of
the Settlement Vacation School, filled her with distress at the wasted
opportunities presented by the empty playgrounds of the ordinary London
schools during the August holiday, for she well knew from her own
experience and from that of New York, which she had closely studied,[27]
that it only needed the presence of two or three active kindergarten
teachers and a supply of toys and materials to attract to these open
spaces all the hot and weary children from the neighbouring streets and
there to make them happy. Her fingers itched to do it, tired though
they were with so many other labours. It was not, however, till the
spring of 1911 that she was able to take this work in hand, but then she
addressed herself to it with all her usual energy, presenting a scheme
to the L.C.C. for the "organization" of both the boys' and the girls'
playgrounds at twenty-six London schools during the summer holiday. The
Council met her once more with complete confidence, lending all the
larger equipment required; Mrs. Ward raised a special fund of nearly
£1,000, and devoted much attention to the engagement of the
Superintendents for the girls' grounds and the Games Masters for the
boys'. Then, just before the end of term, notices were distributed in
the neighbouring schools announcing that such and such a playground
would be opened for games and quiet occupations during the holidays, and
the result was awaited with some quaking. Would there be a crowd or a
desert? and if the former, would the Superintendents be able to keep
order? The answer was not long in coming. "I let in 400 boys," wrote one
of the Games Masters after his first session, "and the street outside
was still black with them." But in spite of the eager crowds which
everywhere made their appearance, order _was_ kept most successfully.
Mrs. Ward herself visited the playgrounds constantly, and at the end of
the month wrote her joyous report to _The Times_:
"Inside one came always upon a cheerful scene. In the girls'
playgrounds, during those hottest August days, one saw crowds of
girls and babies playing in the shade of the school buildings, or
forming happy groups for reading or sewing, or filling the trestle
tables under the shelters, where were picture-books to be looked
at, beads to thread, paints and paper to draw with, or wool for
knitting, or portable swings where the elder girls could swing the
little ones in turn. Then, if you asked the schoolkeeper to pass
you through a locked door, you were in the boys' playground, where
balls were whizzing, and the space was divided up by a clever
Superintendent between the cricket of the bigger boys--very near,
often, to the real thing--and the first efforts, not a whit less
energetic, of the younger ones. In one corner, also, there would be
mats and jumping-stands; in another a group playing tennis with a
chalked line instead of a net, while the shelters were full, as in
the girl's ground, of all kinds of quiet occupations. Management
was everything. It was wonderful what a Superintendent with a real
turn for the thing could make of his ground, what a hold he got
upon his boys, and how well, in such cases, the boys behaved. There
was a real loyalty and _esprit de corps_ in these grounds; and
when, in the last week, 'sports' and displays were organized for
the benefit of the parents, it was really astonishing to see with
what ease a competent man or woman could handle a crowded
playground, how eagerly the children obeyed, how courteous and
happy they were."
The number of attendances had been prodigious--424,000 for the whole
month, or 106,000 per week--and the gratitude of the parents who had
pressed in to see the final displays was touching to hear. In the next
year Mrs. Ward persuaded the L.C.C. to share the experiment with her,
the Council opening "organized playgrounds" in twenty schools and she
herself in twenty more; this time the organization was in many points
improved, and the results still more satisfactory. But although the
Council gave her to understand that they would undertake to carry on the
experiment in future, being convinced of its necessity, no further
action was taken, and the playgrounds of London, in spite of Mrs. Ward's
object-lesson, have been suffered to relapse into that condition of
uselessness and sometimes of positive danger to the children's morals
from which her efforts in 1911 and 1912 had sought to rescue them.
* * * * *
The story of Mrs. Ward's activities for the welfare of London's children
has taken us far beyond the period of her life at which we had otherwise
arrived. To return briefly to her literary work, it may be said, I
think, that those two novels of London life, _Lady Rose's Daughter_ and
_William Ashe_, had marked its highest point in sheer brilliance and
success; after these the long autumn of her novel-writing began, which,
like all mellow autumns, had its moments of more true and delicate
beauty than the full summer had possessed. The first of these autumn
novels, if I may use the term, was _Fenwick's Career_, which appeared in
May, 1906; it was not a great popular success, like the previous two,
but to those who read it in these after-times its sober excellence of
workmanship, as shown especially in the scenes at Versailles and at the
Westmorland cottage where husband and wife meet again after their long
separation, are perhaps more attractive than all the brilliance of poor
Kitty Bristol or of the shifting groups in Lady Henry's house in Bruton
Street. Mrs. Ward had been criticized in the case of these three novels
for having made use of the persons and incidents of the past without any
definite acknowledgment, but she defended herself vigorously, in a short
Preface to _Fenwick's Career_, in words that I cannot do better than
reproduce:
"The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field, so long as he
sacredly respects what other artists have already made their own by
the transmuting processes of the mind. To draw on the conceptions
or the phrases that have once passed through the warm minting of
another's brain, is for us moderns at any rate, the literary crime
of crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is recorded of
the real life of men, as well as all that his own eyes can see, is
offered for the enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and simple
principle; yet it has been often denied. To insist upon it is, in
my belief, to uphold the true flag of Imagination, and to defend
the wide borders of Romance."
The cottage on the "shelf of fell" in Langdale, whence poor Phœbe
Fenwick set forth on her mad journey to London, had also a solid
existence of its own, though no "acknowledgment" is made to it in
Foreword or text. "Robin Ghyll" stands high above the road on the
fell-side, between a giant sycamore and an ancient yew, close by the
ghyll of "druid oaks" whence it takes its name--resisting with all the
force of the mountain stone of which it is built the hurricanes that
sweep down upon it from the central knot of those grim northern hills.
The view from its little lawn of Pikes, Crinkle Crags and Bow Fell has
perhaps no equal in the Lake District. Sunshine and storm have passed
over it for 200 years or more, since the valley folk first built it as a
small statesman's farm or shepherd's cottage. At the time of which I
write the little place was occupied by a poetically minded resident who
had added two pleasant rooms.
Mrs. Ward and her daughter Dorothy noticed Robin Ghyll as they drove up
Langdale with "Aunt Fan" one summer day in 1902, and fell in love with
it. Two years later it actually fell vacant, so that Mrs. Ward could
take it in the name of her daughter and share with her the joy of
furnishing and then inhabiting its seven rooms. But though Mrs. Ward
loved Robin Ghyll and fled to it occasionally for complete retirement,
it belonged in a more particular sense to her daughter, and derived from
her its charm. Thither she would go at Whitsuntide or in September,
refreshing body and mind by contact with its solitudes. Not often indeed
could she be spared from the absorbing life of Stocks, or Italy, or
Grosvenor Place, where so much depended upon her. But though life limped
at Stocks during Dorothy's brief absences, she always returned from
Robin Ghyll with strength redoubled for the arduous service of love
which she rendered to her mother all her life long, and from which both
giver and receiver derived a sacred happiness.