"Well," said the old man, shifting in his chair, "you must get on with
your questions, Guest; I have been some time answering this first one."
Said I: "I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education;
although I gathered from Dick that you let your children run wild and
didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your
education, that now you have none."
"Then you gathered left-handed," quoth he. "But of course I understand
your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when
'the struggle for life,' as men used to phrase it (_i.e._, the struggle
for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-
holders' privilege on the other), pinched 'education' for most people
into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be
swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or
not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested
over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve
it out to other people who didn't care about it."
I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: "Well, _you_
were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off
you a little."
"True, true," said he, smiling. "I thank you for correcting my
ill-temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we may
be speaking. But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to
see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age
conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying
faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard
to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of 'learning.'
My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact
of _growth_, bodily and mental? No one could come out of such a mill
uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have
the spirit of rebellion strong in them. Fortunately most children have
had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached
our present position. Now you see what it all comes to. In the old
times all this was the result of _poverty_. In the nineteenth century,
society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which
it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody. The
whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to
shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of
torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no
use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty
forbade anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and
the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations
impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become
wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow."
"Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the
information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do:
suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics;
you can't force him when he _is_ grown; can't you force him while he is
growing, and oughtn't you to do so?"
"Well," said he, "were you forced to learn arithmetic and mathematics?"
"A little," said I.
"And how old are you now?"
"Say fifty-six," said I.
"And how much arithmetic and mathematics do you know now?" quoth the old
man, smiling rather mockingly.
Said I: "None whatever, I am sorry to say."
Hammond laughed quietly, but made no other comment on my admission, and I
dropped the subject of education, perceiving him to be hopeless on that
side.
I thought a little, and said: "You were speaking just now of households:
that sounded to me a little like the customs of past times; I should have
thought you would have lived more in public."
"Phalangsteries, eh?" said he. "Well, we live as we like, and we like to
live as a rule with certain house-mates that we have got used to.
Remember, again, that poverty is extinct, and that the Fourierist
phalangsteries and all their kind, as was but natural at the time,
implied nothing but a refuge from mere destitution. Such a way of life
as that, could only have been conceived of by people surrounded by the
worst form of poverty. But you must understand therewith, that though
separate households are the rule amongst us, and though they differ in
their habits more or less, yet no door is shut to any good-tempered
person who is content to live as the other house-mates do: only of course
it would be unreasonable for one man to drop into a household and bid the
folk of it to alter their habits to please him, since he can go elsewhere
and live as he pleases. However, I need not say much about all this, as
you are going up the river with Dick, and will find out for yourself by
experience how these matters are managed."
After a pause, I said: "Your big towns, now; how about them? London,
which--which I have read about as the modern Babylon of civilization,
seems to have disappeared."
"Well, well," said old Hammond, "perhaps after all it is more like
ancient Babylon now than the 'modern Babylon' of the nineteenth century
was. But let that pass. After all, there is a good deal of population
in places between here and Hammersmith; nor have you seen the most
populous part of the town yet."
"Tell me, then," said I, "how is it towards the east?"
Said he: "Time was when if you mounted a good horse and rode straight
away from my door here at a round trot for an hour and a half; you would
still be in the thick of London, and the greater part of that would be
'slums,' as they were called; that is to say, places of torture for
innocent men and women; or worse, stews for rearing and breeding men and
women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere
ordinary and natural life."
"I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently. "That was what was; tell
me something of what is. Is any of that left?"
"Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I am
glad of it. Once a year, on May-day, we hold a solemn feast in those
easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of Misery, as it
is called. On that day we have music and dancing, and merry games and
happy feasting on the site of some of the worst of the old slums, the
traditional memory of which we have kept. On that occasion the custom is
for the prettiest girls to sing some of the old revolutionary songs, and
those which were the groans of the discontent, once so hopeless, on the
very spots where those terrible crimes of class-murder were committed day
by day for so many years. To a man like me, who have studied the past so
diligently, it is a curious and touching sight to see some beautiful
girl, daintily clad, and crowned with flowers from the neighbouring
meadows, standing amongst the happy people, on some mound where of old
time stood the wretched apology for a house, a den in which men and women
lived packed amongst the filth like pilchards in a cask; lived in such a
way that they could only have endured it, as I said just now, by being
degraded out of humanity--to hear the terrible words of threatening and
lamentation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips, and she unconscious
of their real meaning: to hear her, for instance, singing Hood's Song of
the Shirt, and to think that all the time she does not understand what it
is all about--a tragedy grown inconceivable to her and her listeners.
Think of that, if you can, and of how glorious life is grown!"
"Indeed," said I, "it is difficult for me to think of it."
And I sat watching how his eyes glittered, and how the fresh life seemed
to glow in his face, and I wondered how at his age he should think of the
happiness of the world, or indeed anything but his coming dinner.
"Tell me in detail," said I, "what lies east of Bloomsbury now?"
Said he: "There are but few houses between this and the outer part of the
old city; but in the city we have a thickly-dwelling population. Our
forefathers, in the first clearing of the slums, were not in a hurry to
pull down the houses in what was called at the end of the nineteenth
century the business quarter of the town, and what later got to be known
as the Swindling Kens. You see, these houses, though they stood
hideously thick on the ground, were roomy and fairly solid in building,
and clean, because they were not used for living in, but as mere gambling
booths; so the poor people from the cleared slums took them for lodgings
and dwelt there, till the folk of those days had time to think of
something better for them; so the buildings were pulled down so gradually
that people got used to living thicker on the ground there than in most
places; therefore it remains the most populous part of London, or perhaps
of all these islands. But it is very pleasant there, partly because of
the splendour of the architecture, which goes further than what you will
see elsewhere. However, this crowding, if it may be called so, does not
go further than a street called Aldgate, a name which perhaps you may
have heard of. Beyond that the houses are scattered wide about the
meadows there, which are very beautiful, especially when you get on to
the lovely river Lea (where old Isaak Walton used to fish, you know)
about the places called Stratford and Old Ford, names which of course you
will not have heard of, though the Romans were busy there once upon a
time."
Not heard of them! thought I to myself. How strange! that I who had seen
the very last remnant of the pleasantness of the meadows by the Lea
destroyed, should have heard them spoken of with pleasantness come back
to them in full measure.
Hammond went on: "When you get down to the Thames side you come on the
Docks, which are works of the nineteenth century, and are still in use,
although not so thronged as they once were, since we discourage
centralisation all we can, and we have long ago dropped the pretension to
be the market of the world. About these Docks are a good few houses,
which, however, are not inhabited by many people permanently; I mean,
those who use them come and go a good deal, the place being too low and
marshy for pleasant dwelling. Past the Docks eastward and landward it is
all flat pasture, once marsh, except for a few gardens, and there are
very few permanent dwellings there: scarcely anything but a few sheds,
and cots for the men who come to look after the great herds of cattle
pasturing there. But however, what with the beasts and the men, and the
scattered red-tiled roofs and the big hayricks, it does not make a bad
holiday to get a quiet pony and ride about there on a sunny afternoon of
autumn, and look over the river and the craft passing up and down, and on
to Shooters' Hill and the Kentish uplands, and then turn round to the
wide green sea of the Essex marsh-land, with the great domed line of the
sky, and the sun shining down in one flood of peaceful light over the
long distance. There is a place called Canning's Town, and further out,
Silvertown, where the pleasant meadows are at their pleasantest:
doubtless they were once slums, and wretched enough."
The names grated on my ear, but I could not explain why to him. So I
said: "And south of the river, what is it like?"
He said: "You would find it much the same as the land about Hammersmith.
North, again, the land runs up high, and there is an agreeable and well-
built town called Hampstead, which fitly ends London on that side. It
looks down on the north-western end of the forest you passed through."
I smiled. "So much for what was once London," said I. "Now tell me
about the other towns of the country."
He said: "As to the big murky places which were once, as we know, the
centres of manufacture, they have, like the brick and mortar desert of
London, disappeared; only, since they were centres of nothing but
'manufacture,' and served no purpose but that of the gambling market,
they have left less signs of their existence than London. Of course, the
great change in the use of mechanical force made this an easy matter, and
some approach to their break-up as centres would probably have taken
place, even if we had not changed our habits so much: but they being such
as they were, no sacrifice would have seemed too great a price to pay for
getting rid of the 'manufacturing districts,' as they used to be called.
For the rest, whatever coal or mineral we need is brought to grass and
sent whither it is needed with as little as possible of dirt, confusion,
and the distressing of quiet people's lives. One is tempted to believe
from what one has read of the condition of those districts in the
nineteenth century, that those who had them under their power worried,
befouled, and degraded men out of malice prepense: but it was not so;
like the mis-education of which we were talking just now, it came of
their dreadful poverty. They were obliged to put up with everything, and
even pretend that they liked it; whereas we can now deal with things
reasonably, and refuse to be saddled with what we do not want."
I confess I was not sorry to cut short with a question his glorifications
of the age he lived in. Said I: "How about the smaller towns? I suppose
you have swept those away entirely?"
"No, no," said he, "it hasn't gone that way. On the contrary, there has
been but little clearance, though much rebuilding, in the smaller towns.
Their suburbs, indeed, when they had any, have melted away into the
general country, and space and elbow-room has been got in their centres:
but there are the towns still with their streets and squares and market-
places; so that it is by means of these smaller towns that we of to-day
can get some kind of idea of what the towns of the older world were
like;--I mean to say at their best."
"Take Oxford, for instance," said I.
"Yes," said he, "I suppose Oxford was beautiful even in the nineteenth
century. At present it has the great interest of still preserving a
great mass of pre-commercial building, and is a very beautiful place, yet
there are many towns which have become scarcely less beautiful."
Said I: "In passing, may I ask if it is still a place of learning?"
"Still?" said he, smiling. "Well, it has reverted to some of its best
traditions; so you may imagine how far it is from its nineteenth-century
position. It is real learning, knowledge cultivated for its own sake--the
Art of Knowledge, in short--which is followed there, not the Commercial
learning of the past. Though perhaps you do not know that in the
nineteenth century Oxford and its less interesting sister Cambridge
became definitely commercial. They (and especially Oxford) were the
breeding places of a peculiar class of parasites, who called themselves
cultivated people; they were indeed cynical enough, as the so-called
educated classes of the day generally were; but they affected an
exaggeration of cynicism in order that they might be thought knowing and
worldly-wise. The rich middle classes (they had no relation with the
working classes) treated them with the kind of contemptuous toleration
with which a mediaeval baron treated his jester; though it must be said
that they were by no means so pleasant as the old jesters were, being, in
fact, _the_ bores of society. They were laughed at, despised--and paid.
Which last was what they aimed at."
Dear me! thought I, how apt history is to reverse contemporary judgments.
Surely only the worst of them were as bad as that. But I must admit that
they were mostly prigs, and that they _were_ commercial. I said aloud,
though more to myself than to Hammond, "Well, how could they be better
than the age that made them?"
"True," he said, "but their pretensions were higher."
"Were they?" said I, smiling.
"You drive me from corner to corner," said he, smiling in turn. "Let me
say at least that they were a poor sequence to the aspirations of Oxford
of 'the barbarous Middle Ages.'"
"Yes, that will do," said I.
"Also," said Hammond, "what I have been saying of them is true in the
main. But ask on!"
I said: "We have heard about London and the manufacturing districts and
the ordinary towns: how about the villages?"
Said Hammond: "You must know that toward the end of the nineteenth
century the villages were almost destroyed, unless where they became mere
adjuncts to the manufacturing districts, or formed a sort of minor
manufacturing districts themselves. Houses were allowed to fall into
decay and actual ruin; trees were cut down for the sake of the few
shillings which the poor sticks would fetch; the building became
inexpressibly mean and hideous. Labour was scarce; but wages fell
nevertheless. All the small country arts of life which once added to the
little pleasures of country people were lost. The country produce which
passed through the hands of the husbandmen never got so far as their
mouths. Incredible shabbiness and niggardly pinching reigned over the
fields and acres which, in spite of the rude and careless husbandry of
the times, were so kind and bountiful. Had you any inkling of all this?"
"I have heard that it was so," said I "but what followed?"
"The change," said Hammond, "which in these matters took place very early
in our epoch, was most strangely rapid. People flocked into the country
villages, and, so to say, flung themselves upon the freed land like a
wild beast upon his prey; and in a very little time the villages of
England were more populous than they had been since the fourteenth
century, and were still growing fast. Of course, this invasion of the
country was awkward to deal with, and would have created much misery, if
the folk had still been under the bondage of class monopoly. But as it
was, things soon righted themselves. People found out what they were fit
for, and gave up attempting to push themselves into occupations in which
they must needs fail. The town invaded the country; but the invaders,
like the warlike invaders of early days, yielded to the influence of
their surroundings, and became country people; and in their turn, as they
became more numerous than the townsmen, influenced them also; so that the
difference between town and country grew less and less; and it was indeed
this world of the country vivified by the thought and briskness of town-
bred folk which has produced that happy and leisurely but eager life of
which you have had a first taste. Again I say, many blunders were made,
but we have had time to set them right. Much was left for the men of my
earlier life to deal with. The crude ideas of the first half of the
twentieth century, when men were still oppressed by the fear of poverty,
and did not look enough to the present pleasure of ordinary daily life,
spoilt a great deal of what the commercial age had left us of external
beauty: and I admit that it was but slowly that men recovered from the
injuries that they inflicted on themselves even after they became free.
But slowly as the recovery came, it _did_ come; and the more you see of
us, the clearer it will be to you that we are happy. That we live amidst
beauty without any fear of becoming effeminate; that we have plenty to
do, and on the whole enjoy doing it. What more can we ask of life?"
He paused, as if he were seeking for words with which to express his
thought. Then he said:
"This is how we stand. England was once a country of clearings amongst
the woods and wastes, with a few towns interspersed, which were
fortresses for the feudal army, markets for the folk, gathering places
for the craftsmen. It then became a country of huge and foul workshops
and fouler gambling-dens, surrounded by an ill-kept, poverty-stricken
farm, pillaged by the masters of the workshops. It is now a garden,
where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the necessary
dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up and down the country, all
trim and neat and pretty. For, indeed, we should be too much ashamed of
ourselves if we allowed the making of goods, even on a large scale, to
carry with it the appearance, even, of desolation and misery. Why, my
friend, those housewives we were talking of just now would teach us
better than that."
Said I: "This side of your change is certainly for the better. But
though I shall soon see some of these villages, tell me in a word or two
what they are like, just to prepare me."
"Perhaps," said he, "you have seen a tolerable picture of these villages
as they were before the end of the nineteenth century. Such things
exist."
"I have seen several of such pictures," said I.
"Well," said Hammond, "our villages are something like the best of such
places, with the church or mote-house of the neighbours for their chief
building. Only note that there are no tokens of poverty about them: no
tumble-down picturesque; which, to tell you the truth, the artist usually
availed himself of to veil his incapacity for drawing architecture. Such
things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery. Like the
mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright; as
people always do when they have any sense of architectural power; because
then they know that they can have what they want, and they won't stand
any nonsense from Nature in their dealings with her."
"Besides the villages, are there any scattered country houses?" said I.
"Yes, plenty," said Hammond; "in fact, except in the wastes and forests
and amongst the sand-hills (like Hindhead in Surrey), it is not easy to
be out of sight of a house; and where the houses are thinly scattered
they run large, and are more like the old colleges than ordinary houses
as they used to be. That is done for the sake of society, for a good
many people can dwell in such houses, as the country dwellers are not
necessarily husbandmen; though they almost all help in such work at
times. The life that goes on in these big dwellings in the country is
very pleasant, especially as some of the most studious men of our time
live in them, and altogether there is a great variety of mind and mood to
be found in them which brightens and quickens the society there."
"I am rather surprised," said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that
after all the country must be tolerably populous."
"Certainly," said he; "the population is pretty much the same as it was
at the end of the nineteenth century; we have spread it, that is all. Of
course, also, we have helped to populate other countries--where we were
wanted and were called for."
Said I: "One thing, it seems to me, does not go with your word of
'garden' for the country. You have spoken of wastes and forests, and I
myself have seen the beginning of your Middlesex and Essex forest. Why
do you keep such things in a garden? and isn't it very wasteful to do
so?"
"My friend," he said, "we like these pieces of wild nature, and can
afford them, so we have them; let alone that as to the forests, we need a
great deal of timber, and suppose that our sons and sons' sons will do
the like. As to the land being a garden, I have heard that they used to
have shrubberies and rockeries in gardens once; and though I might not
like the artificial ones, I assure you that some of the natural rockeries
of our garden are worth seeing. Go north this summer and look at the
Cumberland and Westmoreland ones,--where, by the way, you will see some
sheep-feeding, so that they are not so wasteful as you think; not so
wasteful as forcing-grounds for fruit out of season, _I_ think. Go and
have a look at the sheep-walks high up the slopes between Ingleborough
and Pen-y-gwent, and tell me if you think we _waste_ the land there by
not covering it with factories for making things that nobody wants, which
was the chief business of the nineteenth century."
"I will try to go there," said I.
"It won't take much trying," said he.