a burial-ground in Whitechapel and one in Bermondsey, which would
be available as gardens, and which they have not yet sold; and also
because I am not aware that they have decided how they will deal with
the small portion of the Bunhill Fields ground which they cannot build
over, where they have re-buried their unearthed dead. Have any of you
influence with them, or can anything be done? The Whitechapel ground,
though not nearly so central and important as Bunhill Fields, is well
worth preserving. It is overlooked by the workhouse, in the chronic
wards of which there must be many who would rejoice to look out over
trees and flowers, and who will never see them again unless this ground
is planted with them. On the east side of the ground, too, is a wall;
only to pull down that wall and put a railing instead, would give light
and air to a whole street. Yet though Mr. Lefevre, on behalf of the
Commons Preservation Society, has twice asked them to say whether, and
if so on what terms, they would arrange for the ground to be put in
order and used as a garden for the people, they give evasive answers,
and I believe have it in contemplation to sell it for building.
The rector of Whitechapel has written to them, the guardians have
memorialised them. They make no responsive sign. I make these remarks
in no spirit of hostility to the Quakers; some of my oldest and best
friends are Quakers, and I have the deepest respect for them as a body,
and well know they have been leaders in much that is good, thoughtful,
and liberal in times past, to the poor to a remarkable degree, and I
know the value of such gardens is only beginning to attract notice; but
I think the facts as concerning the land should be well known to the
whole Society and to the public, and I only hope that the Society will
consider them thoroughly at their yearly meeting this month. Within
the last few days I have received letters from leading Quakers, asking
me to bring the question before their yearly meeting; but I think I
must really leave it in their own hands; the responsibility is wholly
theirs. Their best ground is now almost gone, the facts are well before
them, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's offer is not only well known to the whole
Society, but the correspondence between him and their committee has
been published in _The Friend_ newspaper.
There is another body which I hope will swiftly become aware of
their opportunities for doing good with land which is under their
control--the London School Board. They have in all fifty-seven acres of
playground, which they entirely close on the children's one holiday,
Saturday, and during the summer evenings. It seems almost incredible,
does it not? But so it really is. Of course the fact is that the Board
has not considered how to manage the supervision. But surely that
difficulty ought to be met either by the Board itself paying for it,
if that is within its powers, or by some society, such as that which
has summoned us here to-day, or by individual donors. Having the ground
which, however small, is at least available for games for a certain
number of children selected by the masters, it seems ridiculous not to
use it. A deputation from this Society will wait on the School Board
on May 30, to press the opening of the ground upon them--for that
deputation influential support is much needed. If any of you can help,
I hope you will communicate with Miss Lankester. I spoke of the very
corrupting influence of the streets, though I did so with reference
to the small companies of children who might be brought together for
quiet pastimes in our churchyard-gardens of the future. The School
Board playgrounds would afford scope for the more active games. Surely
this should be afforded by anybody who realises how very beneficial
athletic exercise and active play would be to the children's health,
and how happy it would make them. Why, I have seen two swings make
children so happy, I have been ashamed to think how few we have in
London. They don't take much space, and what delight they give!
A clergyman near here is about to fit up a yard as a gymnasium for the
men belonging to a workmen's club, and doubtless others will do the
same.
The uses to which even a small playground in London may be put would
take long to describe. I have charge of two, where, besides opening
them every Saturday and in the summer evenings, every May we have a
real maypole--flowers from the country in thousands, flags flying, band
playing, swings, and see-saws fully used, children marching, dancing,
and skipping, and a kind and able body of ladies and gentlemen who know
them amusing them, keeping order, and increasing by their presence the
sense of festivity. The trustees of Lincoln's Inn Fields have, for
the last two or three years, kindly granted to me leave to take in a
company of the children of our tenants one afternoon each summer. It is
a pleasant sight. The square is larger, I believe, than any in London,
and the trees are most beautiful. They have also just given permission
to the boys from the Refuge in Great Queen Street to exercise there two
mornings a week from seven to nine o'clock. But this is a small amount
of use to make of one of the largest, and most beautiful, and most
central spaces of the metropolis, where there are few or no residents
to be disturbed or interfered with at the hours when the ground would
be most valuable; and it is to be earnestly hoped that the trustees
will soon extend the privileges that they have hitherto kindly accorded
to us to others. It appears to me to be simply a question of adequate
supervision, and for this there are people who would be willing to pay.
It is well known that the Temple and Lincoln's Inn Gardens are now
opened regularly on summer evenings to children. Why the managers
limit the privilege to children I cannot think. Surely older people
need the air, and surely they would help unconsciously to keep order
too. The more of such places that are open, the less will the grass
in each be worn--the better the people will learn to behave. I have
sometimes heard it urged against opening places to the poor that there
is a chance of their conveying infection to children of a higher class.
Setting aside the fact that out of doors is the last place people are
likely to take infection, and that I presume the richer children would
be under supervision as to playing with strangers, I ask you seriously
to consider who ought to monopolise the few spaces there are in this
metropolis for outdoor amusements. Is it the children whose parents
take them to the sea, or the country, or the Continent, when the
summer sun makes London unbearable? Is it the children who, if their
little cheeks look pale, or their strength flags after an illness,
are at once sent under careful supervision to Hastings or Malvern?
Is it even the children whose sturdy and vigorous father has amassed
a little money, and delights to take them by train on a Saturday
afternoon to Richmond, Bushey, or Erith? Or is it not rather the tiny
child of the hard-working widow, whose frail form seems almost to grow
smaller year by year instead of larger? Is it not the pale child with
great sunken eyes, just discharged from the hospital, the bed being
wanted, convalescent, but to whom fresh air and a little quiet are
still so needful? Is it not to the careful, motherly, little elder
sister, patient nurse of eight or nine years old, hugging the heavy,
round-cheeked baby, with two or three other children clinging to her
dress, she who cannot get as far as the park? Is it not the sturdy
urchin, son of a costermonger perhaps, whose hardy and energetic
spirit scorns the bounds of the narrow court, and seeks wider fields
with freer power of movement, but who has no chance, even when July
comes, of climbing cliffs or jumping ditches? Should not the few spaces
be available for these latter to the very utmost of your power? And
again, do you really think now, people who live in comfortable houses,
that you do or can escape infection by any precautions if small-pox
and fever rage in the back courts of your city? You take all manner
of precautions, I know (except, perhaps, what I should call the best
of all), but you have no idea how near you, how all round you, this
infection is, if it be indeed the subtle thing doctors say. The shops
you enter, the cabs you travel in, the clothes you wear, the food you
eat, all bring you into communication with those who are coming in
contact with patients whenever disease is rife. Depend on it, your best
chance of escape is to make the places inhabited by the poor healthy,
to let them have open space where the fresh wind may blow over them
and their clothes, places where they may be less crowded and gain
health. You never will, or can, really separate yourselves from your
neighbours; accept then the nobler aim of making them such that you
shall desire not separation--but union.
Among the small open spaces which we must hope to see thrown open to
the people in the time to come in a greater or less degree are the
squares. Of course I know that the ground in the square gardens is the
property of the freeholder, and that with the leases of the surrounding
houses are granted certain privileges with regard to the gardens, which
neither can nor ought to be arbitrarily withdrawn. But I hope the day
is not far distant when it may dawn upon the dwellers in our West End
squares that during August and September not one in fifty of their
families is in town, and that it is a rather awful responsibility to
lock up the only little bit of earth which is unbuilt over, which is
within reach of the very old, the very feeble, or the very young; and
that when they leave town they will, in their corporate capacity, grant
such discretionary power to those who stay in town, to admit the poor
to sit under the trees, as may seem consistent with their rights as
leaseholders, interpreted perhaps a little liberally, as they contrast
the utmost they _can_ give in the somewhat dingy, early dried-up,
London plane-tree, with the wealth of magnificent foliage of wood,
or park, or mountain, to which they and their rejoicing family, baby
and all, grandmother and all, go before the autumn sun dries up poor
scorched London.
Also, oh, you rich people, to whom the squares belong, some few of
whom too own private gardens actually in London, adjoining Hyde Park
or Regent's Park, or saved on some great estate round the landowner's
house, I think you might have a flower-show or large garden-party,
once a year, for the poor of your neighbourhood, while you are in
town to meet them. I have seen such things done in squares with
delightful results. A whole district gathered together, old friends
and new, in happy fellowship under the trees, the band playing, and
the place looking its gayest. I have seen tents filled with flowers
reared in the houses of the poor, each in itself a poor plant, yet,
gathered together, looking quite bright and flourishing; and friends
whom circumstances had parted, former clergymen, former visitors,
meeting the poor friend whom else it might have been difficult to
see. Have such a party once a year if you can; one afternoon in the
summer will never be missed by the dwellers in the square, while the
memories of many a poor neighbour may be enriched by the thought of
the bright gathering in the soft summer air. I never was present at
the flower-shows at Westminster Abbey, nor do I know how far they grew
out of previous intercourse with the poor; but I feel sure that is
the way to use any open space in London. The more the festivals can be
connected with previous work the better; but those few who own ground
easily accessible to the people will do well to put the ground once
yearly at the service of those who _do_ know the poor for a flower-show
or garden-party. I know nothing that with less trouble gives more joy,
or more thoroughly brings corporate life into a parish.
There are, besides the grander squares, some, I think, which are
deserted by the rich, where "life"--that is, plenty going on--would be
more acceptable than quiet; where the residents would be actually glad
to have the gates thrown open, the beds set with bright flowers, the
seats available for all, as in Leicester Square. I think even a band
on a Saturday afternoon might be thought a gain. It is a pity these
deserted wildernesses, with their poverty-stricken privet-hedges, are
not by some common consent made to adapt themselves to the needs of the
neighbourhood.
I have thus far dwelt mainly on open spaces as affecting the health
or social life of our people, but there is another way in which such
spaces might be made most valuable to them. That is, if they could
be made really beautiful. Londoners are surrounded with the most
depressing ugliness; the richer ones try with more or less good taste
to mitigate this by decoration indoors; but those who have little or
no superfluous wealth, and far less refinement, to lead them to spend
any part of it in this way, are, at home and abroad, from year's end to
year's end, surrounded by ugliness. If we could alter this, it would
go far to refine and civilise them. Now it would be difficult to do
this in their own homes at once; besides, that is a sphere where each
should do it for his own family; but wherever a common meeting-place
is arranged, within doors or without, there it seems to me that rich
people might find a really useful scope for spending money. The poor
man's independence does not demand that he should plant trees and
flowers for himself, or decorate with colour wall or door, still less
does it require that he should provide such beautiful things for the
public, rich or poor. My sister has founded a society, called, after
the Man of Ross, the Kyrle Society, which has for its object to bring
beauty into the haunts of the poor; it has met with much support, and
I hope the day may come when hospitals, mission-rooms, school-rooms,
workmen's clubs, and, in fact, all common meeting-places of the poor,
may be enriched by beautiful things given by it. It is dealing also
with open spaces, is not only planting and bringing plants to the poor,
but it is trying in other ways to beautify these spaces, and I am not
without hope that gradually either mural decorations, inscriptions in
tiles, or possibly cloisters, might be given by those who cared to
obtain for their fellow-citizens, not only space, but beauty. This
is being done in some cases. I will read you a short poem now being
painted on zinc by a lady, to put up on a wall of a tiny little garden
in a court in Whitechapel which is under my care.
SONG OF THE CITY SPARROW.
When the summer-time is ended
And the winter days are near;
When the bloom hath all departed
With the childhood of the year;
When the martins and the swallows
Flutter cowardly away,
Then the people can remember
That the sparrows always stay.
That although we're plain and songless,
And poor city birds are we,
Yet before the days of darkness
We, the sparrows, never flee.
But we hover round the window,
And we peck against the pane,
While we twitteringly tell them
That the spring will come again.
And when drizzly dull November
Falls so gloomily o'er all,
And the misty fog enshrouds them
In a dim and dreary pall;
When the streets all fade to dreamland,
And the people follow fast,
And it seems as though the sunshine
Was for evermore gone past;
Then we glide among the house-tops,
And we track the murky waste,
And we go about our business
With a cheerful earnest haste.
Not as though our food were plenty,
Or no dangers we might meet;
But as though the work of living
Was a healthy work and sweet.
When the gentle snow descendeth,
Like a white and glistening shroud,
For the year whose life hath ended,
Floated upwards like a cloud;
Then although the open country
Shineth very bright and fair,
And the town is overclouded,
Yet we still continue there.
Even till the spring returneth,
Bringing with it brighter birds,
Unto whom the city people
Give their love and gentle words,
And we yet again, descended
To become the least of all,
Take our name as "only sparrows,"
And are slighted till we fall.
Still we're happy, happy, happy,
Never minding what we be;
For we have a work and do it,
Therefore very blithe are we.
We enliven sombre winter,
And we're loved while it doth last,
And we're not the only creatures
Who must live upon the past.
With a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,
We let all the slights go by,
And we do not feel they hurt us,
Or becloud the summer sky.
We are happy, happy, happy,
Never minding what we be,
For we know the good Creator
Even cares for such as we.
Is it not pleasant to think of the children having those words to
read--painted in pretty colours, too--rather than looking at a blank
wall? Sometimes I think we might even hope to carry with us the hearts
of people by setting up for them deliberately very solemn and beautiful
words indeed, coloured richly in lasting tiles. I do not see why at any
rate our churches should not bear on their face some message to the
outside world. I was fancying the other day, as I looked at the great,
blank, dirty, dead side wall of a London church, which was seen from a
principal thoroughfare, and which bounded the graveyard, long disused,
but full of graves, how beautiful it would be to put in coloured tiles,
along the whole length of the wall, Kingsley's words:
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,
One grand, sweet song.
The words are simple, and would go home to the hearts of every
passer-by; the bright colours, the look of expensive care bestowed on
them, the fact that they are on the wall of a church, would give them
a look of serious purpose, too great, it seems to me, for any sense
of jar as to their publicity to be felt for a moment. It seemed to
me that as the hurrying crowd went its way along the thoroughfare,
the words might recall to someone high purposes once entertained and
long forgotten, either in the struggle of life or the more deadening
influence of success or ease--startle him to memories, at least, of a
greater, nobler life than he was leading; to the weary and dejected
it seemed to me they might point to the continuance in that great
hereafter of all we seem to lose here, and all the while the words
would be felt to be keeping watch over the dead, whose sudden silence
is so hard to bear, but the harmony of whose grand, sweet song in that
vast for-ever we catch now and again when we _are_ doing noble things,
and so tuning our hearts into more perfect sympathy with the music of
God's universe.
I have spoken mainly of making open spaces, because I think the
usefulness of the parks and the embankment is much more generally
known. I am rather afraid of their being supposed to supersede the need
of small open spaces quite near the homes of the poor, than of their
value being underrated. The old and the very young cannot get to them
often, nor from all parts of London. But I ought hardly to pass them
over in absolute silence; they certainly do meet a quite distinct want
on the part of the stronger portion of the community, who can get some
sense of power of expansion, can see the fair summer sun going down
behind the towers of Westminster Abbey, a space of sky being visible,
so rarely seen from the streets or courts. Let us be very thankful for
them.
Also when I undertake to speak to you about open spaces, though I
cannot to-day dwell on them at length, I dare not omit all reference to
those which are perhaps most precious of any, and which are by no means
secured to us as yet as the parks are--our commons--the only portion of
the land of England which remains in a living sense of the birthright
of the people of England, and which, bit by bit, gradually and
insidiously is filched away, under this and that pretext, by one big
landowner after another, quietly surrounded by his effectual railing,
and added to his park or field. Often is this done under shadow of
law, often without any legal right, but just because no one is careful
enough, or rich enough, or brave enough to oppose. My friends, there
is a society which has done much good work, much unpopular work, which
this session even saved you from encroachments on Mitcham and Barnes
Commons; it is little known, it wants money support, and it deserves
your full support of every kind--the Commons Preservation Society. Note
down its address, 1, Great College Street, Westminster, give it what
support you can, but above all if ever you see a common threatened,
or a piece of one inclosed, write and ask the Society whether it is
legally done--what chance of redress there is. The Society has set
itself to fortify local effort by advice, by parliamentary support,
sometimes by money; it watches over the interests of Englishmen in the
small amount of uninclosed land yet remaining to them. While house is
being added to house and field to field, while one small farm after
another is being swallowed up in the big estate, there are yet left
for the common inheritance of Englishmen who have small chance of
ever owning even a little garden of their very own, some few moorland
spaces, set with gorse and heather, fringed by solemn rank of guardian
fir-trees, where in the sandy banks their children yet may hollow
caves, where the heath-bell waves in the faint evening breeze, and from
which--oh, wondrous joy to us Londoners--still the far blue distance
may be seen, witness to us for ever, as it lies there still, and calm,
and bright, that the near things which overshadow us, which seem so
tremendous, like tall London houses, built by man, and covering so
large a portion of our horizon and sky, hemming us in with terrible
oppressive sense of dreariness, may fade back and back from us in
distance, till they become even lovely in God's fair sunlight, little
jagged peaks only against His calm sky, and all softened into sweetest
colour by the light He sheds over them.
Keep those fair, far, still places for your children, and your
children's children, if you can: the more cities increase, the more
precious they will be; for the more man's soul will long for the
beauty, for the quiet, which the city does not, cannot give.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] Read at a meeting of the National Health Society, May 9, 1877.
VII.
EFFECTUAL CHARITY.[9]
Tender pity for the poor has been a growing characteristic of this age;
a better sign of it still is the increased sense of duty to them, not
only as _poor_ men, but as _men_. There needs, however, it appears to
me, something still before our charity shall be effectual for good. The
feeling is there, the conscience is there, but there is wanting the
wise thought and the resolute, because educated, will.
Our charity, if by the word we mean our loving-kindness, has been
good in itself, but if we mean by the word, alms-giving, can we
flatter ourselves that it has been productive of a satisfactory
state of things? We have taught our poor to live in uncertainty as
to their resources, which is producing among them a reckless want of
forethought, which is quite appalling. The most ordinary occurrences of
their lives--the regular winter frost which stops the work of some men
year by year; the changes in the labour market, caused by the London
season; the expenses attending illness; the gradual approach of old
age--are not dwelt on now usually among the poor as reasons for trying
to provide a fund to meet them. Thus there are hundreds of our people
living on the extremest brink of pauperism or starvation, learning more
and more to be dependent on the chance coal-ticket, or half-crown, or
blanket; and if it does not happen to be given at the moment when it
is wanted, how forlorn is the position of the improvident man? But
look also on the even more important question of their spirit, and of
their relation to those above them in class. Can there be energy,
independence, vigour, healthy activity among them? Can there be between
them and the donors any of that happy manly interchange of thought, by
which the possessors of education, refinement, leisure, might help,
or be helped by, the active, self-reliant working-man, with his large
capacity for fresh vigorous joy, and his store of power accumulated
during a long period of endurance and patient effort? If different
classes, like different people, have separate characters which are
meant to act and react one on the other, are we not, by allowing the
help to be one of a dole of money, destroying the possibility of the
better help that might have been?
And is our money doing any good? Did you ever see the district--the
family--the individual that was richer for this repeated alms-giving?
Has it ever been powerful, even for outside good, to be recipients?
Is the bed better covered in the long run for the lent blankets, or
the children better fed for the free distribution of soup? Or is it
consistent with our ideal that there should be this body of people
dependent for the most ordinary necessities of life on the gifts of
another class? Rely upon it, if we foster this state of things it will
continue to increase.
Here we are, however, in the midst of this alms-giving, aimless,
thoughtless, ineffectual to achieve any object its donors had in view.
It is a gigantic system, or rather no system, which has grown up around
us. What is our duty with regard to it? Specially what is the duty of
those of us who are, in any sense of the word, trustees of charitable
funds?
There is a society which you all know well enough by name--the Charity
Organisation Society--which has set itself to help distributors of
alms in two important ways. First, it has offered to examine, free
of all charge, carefully, for anyone who wants to learn about them,
the circumstances and character of applicants for relief. Donors
cannot decide what help it is wise to give until they know all about
an applicant; the Society can learn such facts in a far more complete
way than donors possibly can. Clearly then, to my mind, donors or
distributors of gifts ought to accept this proffered help.