The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said:
I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' addresses. He
seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen
one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better than
one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has
given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our
conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns
and statistics much underlined--a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement
on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place for
everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the
Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local
habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more ingenious
than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to
follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method he
himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the
utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt--large
conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those
various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or
other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual,
single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that
in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental
methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as
germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world,
and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I
would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has been
explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon
Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open [Page: 113] space
which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all
that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton College
has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in
such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal
is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been
secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what
is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city"
idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an
exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in
connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea is
that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is
not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all
ideas--a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided
for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills is
not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the
good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be
followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the discussion
to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be
exceedingly glad.
MR. SWINNY said:
Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the
cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from
Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that thought
will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey
should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we
consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley,
are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared
in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem
that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there
in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole
of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English
city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to
consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its
peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary first
to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the
West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part
played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so
much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect
of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it
affected that city.