meal." This pleasing postulate was, I believe, in the first instance
evolved from the bitter experience of a hungry mathematician who, at
this season of the year, sought change of air and scene at Margate or
Herne Bay. But to-day I use the word "Boarding-House" in that more
restricted sense which signifies a Master's house for the accommodation
of boys at a Public School. My reason for discussing the subject is
that a stray sentence in my last chapter, about the profits derived
from such Boarding-Houses, caused dire offence. I am the most docile
creature alive, and the rebukes which I have incurred caused me, as the
French say, to make a return upon myself. I subjected my conscience
to severe cross-examination. I asked whether what I had written was
wholly or even approximately true, or entirely false; and whether, if
true, it was offensive or indelicate. Here is the sentence in all its
unglossed brutality: "The proprietors of Boarding-Houses at the Public
Schools buy villas in the Riviera and build pineries and vineries at
home." Now, of course, a Schoolmaster is nothing if not critical, and,
in superintending the studies of his young friends, he rightly insists
on the most scrupulous accuracy of phrase and figure. Not for the
construing boy is the plea, dear to Biblical critics, that "the wider
divergence is the higher unity." The calculating boy must not, if he
values his peace, mistake inference for demonstration. Woe betide the
excuse-making boy if he protests that he has spent an hour over his
lesson when his tutor can show that he could only have spent fifty-five
minutes. This Chinese exactness is all very well in the schoolroom, but
tends to become a bore in the intercourse of social life. An Assistant
Master, stung into activity by my recent strictures on Public Schools,
has swooped down upon me with all the fierce alacrity which he would
display in detecting a false quantity or an erroneous deduction.
"Villas in the Riviera! Who buys Villas in the Riviera? Give, name,
date, and place by return of post, or--write out five hundred lines."
"What do you mean by Pineries and Vineries? I and my colleagues at St.
Winifred's only grow cucumbers; and the Composition-Master, though he
has large private means, gets his grapes from the Stores. Retract and
apologize, or be for ever fallen."
Now really, when I read all this virtuous indignation, I am
irresistibly reminded of the Bishop in "Little Dorrit," who, when all
the guests were extolling Mr. Merdle's wealth, spoke pensively about
"the goods of this world," and "tried to look as if he were rather poor
himself." In vain I protested that I meant no injurious allusion to
Monte Carlo, and proposed to substitute "Mansions in the Isle of Wight"
for "Villas in the Riviera." The substitution availed me nothing.
"You say 'Mansions.' Do you really know more than one? And how do you
know that the schoolmaster who bought it did not marry a wife with
a fortune? You cannot investigate his marriage settlements, so your
illustration counts for nothing." In the same conciliatory spirit, I
urged that "Pineries and Vineries" was a picturesque phrase invented
by Lord Randolph Churchill to describe the amenities of a comfortable
country house, not of the largest order; but my pedagogue was not to be
pacified. "If you didn't mean Pineries and Vineries, you shouldn't have
said so. It creates a bad impression in the parents' minds. Of course
no reasonable person could object to one's having gardens, or stabling,
or a moderate shooting, or a share of a salmon river; but parents don't
like the notion that we are living in luxury. They have a nasty way of
contrasting it with the nonsense which their boys tell them about tough
meat and rancid butter."
At this point I began to see some resemblance between my correspondent
and Matthew Arnold's critic in the _Quarterly_ of October 1868--"one
of the Eton Under-Masters, who, like Demetrius the Silversmith,
seems alarmed for the gains of his occupation." For, in spite of
all corrections and deductions, I cannot help regarding Public
Schoolmasters as a well-paid race. Of course, it is true that their
incomes are not comparable to those of successful barristers or
surgeons, or even Ministers of State; but, on the other side, their
work is infinitely easier; their earnings begin from the day on which
they embark on their profession; and no revolution of the wheel of
State can shake them from their well-cushioned seats. I am quite
willing to admit that, on the figures supplied by my correspondent,
he and his colleagues at St. Winifred's are not making so much money
as their predecessors made twenty or thirty years ago. But, as far
as I can understand, this diminution of incomes does not arise from
diminution of charges, but only from the fact that the force of public
opinion has driven schoolmasters to recognize, rather more fully than
in days gone by, some primary needs of boy-nature. When the Royal
Commission of 1862 was enquiring into the boarding arrangements of a
famous school, one of the Commissioners was astonished to find that,
in spite of the liberal charge for board, the boys got nothing but
tea and bread and butter for breakfast. Apparently wishing to let the
masters down easy, he suggested that perhaps eggs also were provided.
To this suggestion the witness's answer was monumental: "Eggs, indeed,
are not provided, but in some houses a large machine for boiling eggs
is brought in every day; so that, if the boys bring their eggs, they
are boiled for them." Surely the Master who first conceived this
substitution of hardware for food deserved a permanent place among
Social Economists; but "the bigots of this iron time," though they may
not actually "have called his harmless art a crime," have resolved
that, when a father pays £200 a year for his boy's schooling, the
boy shall have something more substantial than bread and butter for
breakfast. This reform alone, according to my correspondent, knocked
some hundreds a year off each House-Master's income.
Then, again, as regards Sanitation. Here, certainly not before it was
wanted, reform has made its appearance, and the injured House-Master
has had to put his hand in his pocket. When I was at a Public School,
in that Golden Age of Profits to which my correspondent looked back so
wistfully, the sanitary arrangements were such as to defy description
and stagger belief. In one Pupil-Room there was only the thickness of
the boarded floor between the cesspool and the feet of the boys as
they sat at lessons. In my own house, containing forty boarders, there
were only two baths. In another, three and even four boys were cooped
together, by day as well as by night, in what would, in an ordinary
house, be regarded as a smallish bedroom. Now all this is changed.
Drainage is reconstructed; baths are multiplied; to each boy is secured
a sufficient air-space at lessons and in sleep. The Sanitary Engineer
is let loose every term--
"What pipes and air-shafts! What wild ecstasy!"
But the "ecstasy" is confined to the bosom of the Engineer as he draws
up his little account, and the House-Master moans, like Mr. Mantalini,
over the "Demnition Total."
Yet another such deduction must be borne in mind. Volumes of nonsense
have been written about the Fagging System. Sentimental writers have
gushed over the beautiful relation which it establishes between
Fag-Master and Fag. Some, greatly daring, have likened it to the
relation of elder and younger brothers. Others, more historically
minded, have tried to connect it with the usages of Chivalry and the
services rendered by the Page to the Knight. As a matter of fact, it
was, as "Jacob Omnium," himself an Old Etonian, pointed out fifty years
ago, "an affair of the breeches pocket." As long as younger boys could
be compelled (by whatever methods) to clean lamps and brush clothes and
toast sausages and fill tubs for elder boys it was obvious that fewer
servants were required. One of the most brilliant Etonians now living
has said that "to see a little boy performing, with infinite pains and
hopeless inadequacy, the functions of a domestic servant, might have
moved Democritus to tears and Heraclitus to laughter." That Fagging
has its uses, more especially in the case of spoilt boys brought up
in purse-proud homes, few Public Schoolmen will deny; but the British
Parent tends increasingly to draw a distinction between the duties of a
fag and those of a footman; and the wages-bill becomes an increasingly
important item in the House-Master's expenditure.
What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is, as I have
repeatedly said, that a Boarding-School, whether public or private,
is not the ideal method of educating boys; but, pending that great
increase of Day-Schools for the sons of the upper classes which Dr.
Warre foresees, it is the only method practically available for the
great majority of English parents. Whether the instruction imparted
in the Public Schools is or is not worth the amount which it costs is
a matter of opinion; and, indeed, as long as the parent (who, after
all, has to pay) is satisfied, no one else need trouble himself about
the question. As to domestic arrangements and provision for health and
comfort, it may be frankly conceded that the Schoolboy of to-day is
much better off than his father or even his elder brother was; and that
the improvements in his lot have tended to diminish the profits on
which the House-Master used to grow rich.
* * * * *
_P.S._--Having the terrors of the ferule before my eyes, let me hasten
to say, with all possible explicitness, that in my account of my
correspondence with the outraged Schoolmaster, I have aimed at giving a
general impression rather than a verbal transcript.
XVII
SQUARES
All true lovers of Lewis Carroll will remember that Hiawatha, when he
went a-photographing, "pulled and pushed the joints and hinges" of his
Camera,
"Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid."
But it is not of squares in the mathematical sense that I speak to-day,
but rather of those enclosed spaces, most irregularly shaped and
proportioned, which go by the name of "Squares" in London.
It is in sultry August that the value of these spaces is most clearly
perceived; for now the better-disposed owners fling open the gates of
their squares and suffer them to become, at least temporarily, the
resting-places of the aged and decrepit, and the playgrounds of the
children. To extend these benefits more widely and to secure them in
perpetuity are objects for which civic reformers have long striven; and
during the present session of Parliament[6] (for, as Dryasdust would
remind us, Parliament is not prorogued but only adjourned) two Acts
have been passed which may do something at least towards attaining the
desired ends. One of these Acts provides that, in cases where "Open
Spaces and Burial Grounds" are vested in Trustees, the Trustees may
transfer them to the Local Authorities, to be maintained for the use
and service of the public. The other forbids for all time the erection
of buildings on certain squares and gardens which belong to private
owners, those owners having consented to this curtailment of their
powers. The conjunction of "Burial Grounds" with "Open Spaces" in the
purview of the former Act has a rather lugubrious sound; but in reality
it points to one of the happiest changes which recent years have
brought to London.
[6] August 1906.
"A hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant
diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and
sisters who have not departed--here, in a beastly scrap of ground
which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would
shudder at, they bring 'our dear brother here departed' to receive
Christian burial. With houses looking on, on every side, save where a
reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with
every villainy of life in action close on death and every poisonous
element of death in action close on life,--here they lower our dear
brother down a foot or two; here sow him in corruption, to be raised
in corruption; an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside; a shameful
testimony to future ages that civilization and barbarism walked this
boastful island together."
When Dickens wrote that hideous description, worthy to be illustrated
by Hogarth in his most realistic mood, he did not exaggerate--he could
not exaggerate--the obscenity of burial-grounds in crowded cities.
To-day they are green with turf and bright with flowers, and brighter
still with the unconquerable merriment of childhood at play among the
dim memorials of the forgotten dead. What is true of the particular
spot which Dickens described is true all over London; and the
resting-places of the departed have been made oases of life and health
in this arid wilderness of struggling and stifled humanity.
Though so much has been done in the way of making the Churchyards
available for public uses, comparatively little has been done with the
Squares; and philosophers of the school erroneously called Cynical
might account for this difference by the fact that, whereas the
churchyards were generally in the hands of official trustees, such as
Rectors, Churchwardens, Overseers, or Vestries, the principal squares
of London are the private property of individual owners. Even the
London Squares and Enclosures Act, just passed, illustrates the same
principle. The preamble of the Act sets forth that in respect of every
Square or Enclosure with which it deals the consent of the owner has
been obtained. In each case, therefore, the owner has consented to
legislation which will prevent himself or his successors from building
on what are now open spaces, and, so far, each owner concerned has
shown himself a patriotic citizen and a well-wisher to posterity. But,
when we come to examine the schedule of properties to which the Act
applies, it is interesting to compare the number belonging to private
persons with the number belonging to public bodies. The Act applies
to sixty-four properties; of these fifty-five belong to public bodies
such as District Councils, Governors of Hospitals, and Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, and nine to private persons, among whom it is pleasant
to reckon one Liberal M.P., Sir John Dickson-Poynder, and, by way of
balance, one Conservative peer, Lord Camden.
A further study of the Schedule reveals the instructive fact that,
with two exceptions in the City of Westminster and one in the Borough
of Kensington, none of the scheduled properties lie within areas
which could by any stretch of terms be called wealthy, fashionable,
or aristocratic. Public authorities in such districts as Camberwell
and Lewisham--private owners in Islington and Woolwich--have willingly
surrendered their rights for the benefit of the community; but none of
the great ground landlords have followed suit. The owners of Belgrave
Square and Grosvenor Square and Portman Square and Cavendish Square
and Berkeley Square--_the_ Squares, _par excellence_, of fashionable
London--have kept their seigniorial rights untouched. Pascal told us
of some very human but very unregenerate children who said "This dog
belongs to _me_," and "That place in the sun is _Mine_," and Pascal's
comment was, "Behold, the beginning and the image of all usurpation
upon earth!" Similarly, the human but unregenerate landowners of
fashionable London say, as they survey their possessions, "This Square
belongs to _me_," "That place in the shade is _Mine_," while the
August sun beats down on the malodorous street, and tottering paupers
peer wistfully at the benches under the plane trees, and street-boys
flatten their noses against the iron railings and madly yearn for
cricket-pitches so smooth and green.
Although these fashionable Squares are so sedulously guarded against
the intrusion of outsiders, they are very little used by those who have
the right of entrance. "Livery Servants and Dogs not admitted" is a
legendary inscription which, in its substance, still operates. Here and
there a nurse with a baby in her arms haunts the shade, or a parcel of
older children play lawn-tennis or croquet to an accompaniment of chaff
from envious street-boys. But, as a general rule, for twenty hours out
of the twenty-four and for ten months out of the twelve the Squares
are absolutely vacant; and one of the most reasonable reforms which I
could conceive would be to convert them from private pleasure-grounds
to public gardens, and to throw the cost of maintaining them in order
and beauty on the London County Council.
As I said before, some Square-owners have, without waiting for legal
compulsion, taken tentative steps towards this reform. The Trustees
of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest and the shadiest of all London
Squares, have made them over to the County Council, and, in the hot
months of declining summer, the juvenile populations of Holborn and
St. Giles play their breathless games where Babington was hanged and
Russell beheaded. It was there that, on the 20th of July 1683, Sir
Ralph Verney, riding out from London to his home in Buckinghamshire,
"saw the scaffold making ready against Lord Russell's execution
to-morrow--God help him, and save the country."
But if once we leave the utilities and amenities of the London Squares
and begin to meddle with their antiquities, we shall soon overflow all
reasonable limits. Bloomsbury Square still reeks (at least for those
who know their "Barnaby Rudge") with the blood which was shed in the
Gordon Riots. Grosvenor Square--the last district of London which clung
to oil-lamps in hopeless resistance to the innovation of gas--embodies
the more recent memory of the Cato Street Conspiracy. In Berkeley
Square (from what is now Lord Rosebery's house) Sarah Child eloped,
and annexed the name and the banking-house of Child to the Earldom
of Jersey. In Portman Square Mrs. Montagu presided over her court of
Bluestockings and feasted the chimney-sweeps on May-day. In Manchester
Square, under the roof which now houses the Wallace Collection, the
dazzling beauty of Isabella Lady Hertford stirred the fatuous passion
of George IV. In Cavendish Square, under the portico of Harcourt House,
lately demolished, Disraeli said good-bye for ever to his confederate
Lord George Bentinck. In Hanover Square, Chantrey's stately statue of
William Pitt has looked down on a century of aristocratic weddings,
ascending and descending the steps of St. George's Church. Sir George
Trevelyan, commenting on a Valentine written by Macaulay for Lady Mary
Stanhope, a great-niece of Pitt's, declares that "the allusion to the
statue in Hanover Square is one of the happiest touches that can be
found in Macaulay's writings," and that is a sufficient justification
for quoting it:--
"Prophetic rage my bosom swells;
I taste the cake, I hear the bells!
From Conduit Street the close array
Of chariots barricades the way
To where I see, with outstretched hand,
Majestic, thy great kinsman stand,
And half unbend his brow of pride,
As welcoming so fair a bride."
XVIII
SUNDAY IN LONDON
It is the middle of August, and there is nobody in London--except, of
course, some four millions of people who do not count. There is nobody
in London; and, most specially and noticeably, there is nobody in
Church. Be it far from me to suggest that the Country Cousin and the
Transatlantic Brother, who flood London in August and September, are
persons of indevout habits. But they have their own methods and places
of devotion (of which I may speak anon), and do not affect the Parish
Churches, with which I am now concerned. I have excellent opportunities
of judging; for, year in year out, in tropical heat or Arctic cold,
my due feet never fail to walk the round of our Stuccovian churches,
and I can testify that in August and September Vacancy and Depression
reign unchallenged. Seats are empty. Galleries are locked. Collections
sink to vanishing-point. The Vicar of St. Ursula's, Stucco Gardens,
accompanied by his second wife, is sitting under a white umbrella
at Dieppe, watching the aquatic gambols of his twofold family. The
Senior Curate is climbing in the Alps. The Junior Curate, who stroked
his College Boat last year and was ordained at Trinity, officiates in
agonies of self-conscious shyness which would draw tears from a stone.
A temporary organist elicits undreamt-of harmonies. The organ-blower is
getting his health in the hopfields. The choirboys are let loose--
"On Brighton's shingly beach, on Margate's sand,
Their voice out-pipes the roaring of the sea."
The congregation represents the mere dregs and remnants of Stuccovia's
social prime. Poor we have none, and our rich are fled to Scotland
or Norway, Homburg or Marienbad. The seats are sparsely tenanted by
"stern-faced men" (like those who arrested Eugene Aram), whom business
keeps in London when their hearts are on the moors; over-burdened
mothers, with herds of restless schoolboys at home for the holidays and
craving for more ardent delights than Stucco Gardens yield; decayed
spinsters of the type of Volumnia Dedlock, who, having exhausted the
hospitable patience of their ever-diminishing band of friends, are
forced to the horrid necessity of spending the autumn in London. The
only cheerful face in the church belongs to the Pewopener, who, being
impeded in the discharge of her function by arthritic rheumatism, is
happiest when congregations are smallest and there are no week-day
services to "molest her ancient solitary reign."
* * * * *
Evensong is over. The organist is struggling with an inconceivable tune
from "The English Hymnal" (for at St. Ursula's we are nothing if not
up to date). The Curate, sicklied o'er with that indescribable horror
which in his boating days he would have described as "The Needle,"
is furtively reperusing his manuscript before mounting the pulpit,
and does not detect my craven flight as I slip through the baize door
and disappear. It is characteristic of St. Ursula's that, even when
empty, it is fusty; but this need surprise no one, for the architect
was strong on a "scientific system of ventilation," and that, as we
all know, means very little ventilation and an overwhelming amount of
system.
However, my courageous flight has delivered me from asphyxiation, and,
before returning to my modest Sunday supper of Paysandu Ox-tongue and
sardines, I think that I will reinflate my lungs by a stroll round Hyde
Park. There is a lovely redness in the western sky over the Serpentine
Bridge, but it is still broad daylight. The sere and yellow turf of the
Park is covered by some of those four millions who do not count and
do not go to church, but who, apparently, are fond of sermons. At the
end of each hundred yards I come upon a preacher of some religious,
social, or political gospel, and round each is gathered a crowd of
listeners who follow his utterances with interested attention. When I
think of St. Ursula's and the pavid Curate and my graceless flight, I
protest that I am covered with shame as with a garment. But the wrong
done in the church can be repaired in the Park. I have missed one
sermon, but I will hear another. Unluckily, when these compunctious
visitings seized me I was standing by a rostrum of heterodoxy. For
all I know the preacher may have followers among my readers; so, as I
would not for the world wound even the least orthodox susceptibilities,
I forbear to indicate the theory which he enounced. As he spoke, I
seemed to live a former life over again; for I had once before been
present at an exactly similar preaching, in company, either bodily
or spiritual, with my friend Mr. James Payn, and his comments on the
scene revived themselves in my memory, even as the remote associations
of Ellangowan reawoke in the consciousness of Harry Bertram when he
returned from his wanderings, and gazed, bewildered, on his forgotten
home. (Henceforward it is Payn that speaks.) The preacher of Heterodoxy
was entirely without enthusiasm, nor did his oratory borrow any
meretricious attractions from the Muse. It was a curious farrago of
logic without reason and premisses without facts, and was certainly
the least popular, though not the least numerously attended, of
all the competing sermons in the Park. Suddenly the preacher gave
expression to a statement more monstrous than common, on which an
old lady in the crowd, who had heretofore been listening with great
complacency, exclaimed in horror, "I'm sure _this_ ain't true Gospel,"
and immediately decamped. Up to that point, she had apparently been
listening under the impression that the preacher belonged to her own
blameless persuasion, and was in the blankest ignorance of all that he
had been driving at.