SECTION V.

SOCIAL SERVICE.

Of Town Planning--The Mission of Music--The Real Social Reformer--Where

Charity Fails--Landlordism Up-to-date--The Church and Town Planning.

OF TOWN PLANNING.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

January, 1911.

[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By kind permission of the Editor.

Much has been said lately about town planning. Conferences have been

held, speeches have been made, articles have been written, papers have

been read, and columns of newspaper-notices have appeared, and yet I am

daring to occupy eleven pages of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE to try and add a

few more remarks to what has already been so well and so forcibly put

forth.

But in apology for the presumption, it can be said that what I want to

say does not entrench upon the province of the architect, the surveyor,

or the artist. The questions of traffic-congestion, density of

population, treatment of levels, arrangement of trams, water or gas,

relation of railway termini or docks to thoroughfares, organization of

periodic excess of street usage, relative positions of municipal

buildings, harmony of material and design, standardization of streets

and road grading, appreciation of scale; on these matters I will not

write, for on them contributions, interesting, dull, suggestive, or

learned, have been abundantly produced, and “are they not written in the

Book of the Chronicles” of the great Conference held last month under

the auspices of the Royal Institute of British Architects? And are not

their potentialities visible beneath the legal phraseology of Mr. John

Burns’ Town-planning Act of last Parliament?

It is so delightful to realize that some of the best brains of this and

other countries are turning their thoughts to the solution of what Mr.

T. S. Horsfall (who for many years was a voice crying in the wilderness)

demanded as the elemental right of every human being, “the conditions of

a healthy life”. It is comforting to know that others are doing the

thinking, especially when one is old, and can recall one’s passionate,

youthful indignation at the placid acceptance of stinking courts and

alleys as the normal homes for the poor, when the memory is still vivid

of the grand day when one portion of the network of such courts, in St.

Jude’s parish, was swept away, and a grave, tall, carefully planned

tenement building, erected by the public-spirited kindness of the late

Mr. George M. Smith, arose in its stead, “built to please Barnett as an

experiment”.

Some five-and-twenty years ago, when old Petticoat Lane was pulled down,

my husband sent in to the Local Authority a suggestion of laying the

area out so that Commercial Road should be continued right through to

Bishopsgate; the letter and plans were merely acknowledged and the

proposal ignored. Five years ago we filled one of the rooms in the

Whitechapel Exhibition with plans of how East London might be improved,

but it elicited only little interest, local or otherwise; and now last

month, but a few years later, all the walls of Burlington House were

covered with town-planning exhibits, drawings, plans, and designs, and

its floor space amply supplied with models from all parts of the world.

And the thought given is so fresh, so unconventional, and so full of

characteristics, that one came away from a careful study of that great

Exhibition with a clear sense of the individualities of the various

nations, as they had stated their ideals for their towns. Some in broad

avenues, great piazzas, parallel streets, careful to adopt Christopher

Wren’s ideal, that “gardens and unnecessary vacuities ... be placed out

of the town”. Some in fairy cities, girt with green girdles of open

space, tree-lined roads, parks designed for quiet as well as for play,

waterways used for pleasure locomotion as well as for business traffic,

contours considered as producers of beauty, the view as well as the

shelter planned for. Some with scrupulous care for the history of the

growth of the city, its natural features, the footmarks left by its

wars, each utilized with due regard to modern requirements and the

tendencies of the future. Some glorying in the preservation of every

scrap which could record age or civic history, others blatantly

determined to show that the old was folly, and that only of the

brand-new can it be said “the best is yet to be”.

The imagination is stirred by the opportunities which the Colonies

possess, and envy is mixed with gratitude that they will have the chance

of creating glorious cities warned by the Old Country’s mistakes, and

realizing by the progress of economic science that the flow of humanity

is ever towards aggregation. The “Back-to-the-land” cry falls on ninety

irresponsive ears to ten responsive ones, for the large majority of

human beings desire to live in juxtaposition with mankind. It behoves

thinkers all the more, therefore, to plan beautiful cities, places to

live as well as to work in, and enough of them to prevent a few becoming

so large as to absorb more than a healthy share of national life and

wealth.

But if all of us may think imperially, it is given to most of us only to

act locally, and, therefore, I will convey your minds and mine back from

the visions of town planning amid the plains of Canada, the fiords and

mountains of British Columbia, the high lands and broad velds of Africa,

the varied beauties of wood, hill, and sea of Australia and New Zealand,

back from the stimulating, almost intoxicating, vision of the work lying

before our great Colonies, to the sobering atmosphere of a London or a

Manchester suburb, with its miles of mean streets already built, or its

open fields and new-made roads, laid out as if under the ruler of the

office-boy.

Whoever undertakes the area to be laid out, whether it is the

municipality or a public land company, should see that the planning is

done on a large scale. The injury wrought to towns hitherto has been

often due to the narrowness of personal interests and the limitation of

the acres dealt with, both of which dim the far sight. The almost

unconscious influence of dealing with a wide area is shown in existing

schemes, which have been undertaken by owners of large estates, whether

the area be planned for an industrial village, such as Mr. Lever’s at

Port Sunlight, or for a housing-reform scheme like Mr. Cadbury’s at

Bournville; or to accommodate the leisured, as the Duke of Devonshire’s

at Eastbourne, or the artistic, as Mr. Comyns Carr’s at Bedford Park; or

to create a fresh commercial city, as conceived by Mr. Ebenezer Howard

at Letchworth; or to house all classes in attractive surroundings as at

the Hampstead Garden Suburb. Whatever be the purpose, the fact of a

large area has influenced them all. It has had, as it were, something of

the same effect as the opportunity of the Sistine Chapel had on Michael

Angelo. The population to be accommodated was large enough to require

its own places of worship, public halls, or clubs, its schools, and

recreation-grounds. So the lines were drawn with a generous hand, and

human needs considered, with a view to their provision within the

confines of the estate, instead of being treated as the organ-grinder,

and advised to seek satisfaction in the next street--or accommodation on

neighbouring land.

The idea of town or suburb planning has not yet found its way into the

minds which dominate local Public Authorities, but a few examples will

doubtless awaken them to the benefits of the Act, if not from the

æsthetic, yet from the economic point of view, and then borough or ward

boundaries will become as unnoticeable for town-planning purposes as

ecclesiastical parish ones now are for educational administration.

Foremost among the problems will be the allotment of different positions

of the area under consideration to different classes of society, or

perhaps it would be better to say different standards of income.

No one can view with satisfaction any town, whether in England, America,

or the Colonies, where the poor, the strenuous, and the untutored live

as far as possible removed from the rich, the leisured, and the

cultivated. The divorce is injurious to both. Too commonly is it

supposed that the poor only suffer from the separation, but those who

have the privilege of friendships among the working-people know that the

wealthy lose more by not making their acquaintance than can possibly be

computed.

“I often advise you to make friends,” said the late Dr. Jowett to a body

of undergraduates assembled in Balliol Hall to hearken to my husband and

Mr. C. S. Loch, as they spoke of the inhabitants of East or South London

in the early ’seventies, but “now I will add further advice: Make some

of your friends among the poor.”

Excellent as the advice is, it is hardly possible to follow when certain

classes live at one end of the town, and other classes dwell in the

extreme opposite district. It may be given to the few to create

artificial methods of meeting, but to the large mass of people, so long

as they live in separate neighbourhoods, they must remain ignorant of

each other to a very real, if undefinable, loss--the loss of

understanding, mutual respect, and that sense of peace which comes when

one sits in the parlour and knows the servants are doing their best, or

works in the kitchen and knows that those who govern are directed by a

large-hearted sympathy. Again and again in 1905-6, when the idea of

provision being made for all classes of society in the Hampstead Garden

Suburb was being submitted to the public, I was told that the cultivated

would never live voluntarily in the neighbourhood of the industrial

classes, but I was immensely surprised when I laid the scheme before a

leading workman and trade-unionist to be told:--

“It is all very nice as you say it, Mrs. Barnett, but I’m mistaken if

you will find any self-respecting workman who cares to bring his family

to live alongside of the rich. They’re a bad example with their

pleasure-loving sons and idle, vain daughters, always thinking of

dressing, and avoiding work and natural duties as if they were sins.”

The acceptance of society newspaper paragraphs and divorce reports as

accurate and exhaustive accounts of the lives of the leisured, even by

thinking workmen, serves as an additional evidence of the need of common

neighbourhood to correct so dangerous and disintegrating a view.

There can be no doubt but that Part III of the Housing Act of 1890 is,

in so far as it affects recent town development, responsible for much of

this lamentable ignorance, for under its powers provision can only be

made to house the industrial classes, and thus whole neighbourhoods have

grown up, as large in themselves as a small provincial town occupied by

one class, or those classes the range of whose difference is represented

by requiring two or three bedrooms, a “kitchen,” or a “parlour cottage”.

That this segregation of classes into distinct areas is unnecessary as

well as socially dangerous, is evidenced by many small English towns,

such as Wareham, Godalming, Huntingdon, where the grouping together of

all sorts of people has taken place under normal conditions of growth,

as well as in the Garden Suburb at Hampstead, where the areas to house

people of various degrees of income were clearly defined in the original

plan, and have been steadfastly adhered to. In that estate the rents

range from tenements of 3s. 3d. a week to houses standing in their own

gardens of rentals to £250 a year, united by cottages, villas, and

houses priced at every other figure within that gamut. The inhabitants

can dwell there as owners, or by renting their dwellings, or through the

welcoming system and elastic doors of the co-partners, or as weekly

tenants in the usual way. No sort of difficulty has arisen, and the

often-expressed fears have proved groundless. Indeed, the result of the

admixture of all classes has been a kindlier feeling and a richer

sympathy, as people of varied experience, different educational

standards, and unequal incomes feel themselves drawn together in the

enjoyment of good music, in the discussion of social problems, in the

preparation by their children of such a summer’s day festival as the

“Masque of Fairthorpe,” or to enjoy the unaffected pleasure of the

public open spaces and wall-less gardens.

In England we have not yet reached the gorgeous, riotous generosity of

the Americans, who plan parks by the mile, and cheerfully spend, as

Boston did, £7,500,000 for a girdle of parks, woods, meadows, sea and

lake embankments; or vote, as Chicago did, £3,600,000 for the creation

of a connected system of twenty-two parks; but we in humbler England

have some ground for congratulation, that, as a few years ago a

flowerless open space was counted adequate, now a well-kept garden is

desired; but on the definition of their uses and the difficulties of

their upkeep something has yet to be said.

Every one has seen derelict open spaces, squares, crescents,

three-angled pieces of ground deliberately planned to create beauty, but

allowed to become the resting places of too many weary cats or disused

household utensils, the grass neither mown, protected, nor re-sown. “The

children like it kept so,” people say, but I doubt if they do. In

Westminster there are two open spaces, one planted and cared for, the

other just an unkept open space. Both face south, both overlook the

river, both are open free, but the children flock into the garden,

leaving the open space drearily empty. It is to be regretted, for their

noise, even when it is happy shouting and not discordant wrangling, is

disturbing to those whose strenuous lives necessitate that they take

their exercise or rest without disturbance. But, on the other hand, the

children are entitled to their share of the garden, and those

“passionless reformers,” order, beauty, colour, may perhaps speak their

messages more effectually into ears when they are young.

The solution of the difficulty has been found by the Germans in their

thoughtful planning of parks, and few things were more delightful in the

Town-planning Exhibition than the photographs of the children paddling

in the shallow pools, making castles (I saw no sign of fortifications!)

in the sand, playing rough running games on gravel slopes, or quieter

make-believes in the spinneys, all specially provided in specially

allocated children’s areas. Isolated instances of such provision are

existent in our English parks, but the principle, that some people are

entitled to public peace as well as others to public play, is not yet

recognized, and that there should be zones in which noise is permitted,

and zones in which silence must be maintained is as yet an inconceivable

restriction. So the children usually shout, race, scream, or squabble

amid the grown-ups, kept even in such order as they are by the fear of

the park-keeper, whom their consciences encourage them to credit with

supernatural powers of observation. He is usually a worthy, patient man,

but an expensive adjunct, and one who could sometimes be dispensed with

if the children’s “sphere of influence” were clearly defined. The

promiscuous presence of children affects also both the standard of cost

of the upkeep of open spaces, although the deterioration of their

standard is more often due to the lapse of the authority who created

them.

It is because the changes of circumstances so frequently affect

disastrously the appearance of public spaces that I would offer for

consideration the suggestion that they should be placed under the care

of the municipality, under stringent covenants concerning their uses,

purposes, maintenance, and reservation for the inhabitants of special

dwellings. This step would not, of course, be necessary where the owner

or company still holds the land, but in cases where the houses for which

the square or joint garden was provided have each strayed into separate

ownership, and their ground-rents treated only as investments, then

everyone’s duty usually becomes no one’s duty, and the garden drops into

a neglected home for “unconsidered trifles”. I could quote instances of

this, not only in East London, but in Clifton, Reading, Ventnor, York,

or give brighter examples of individual effort and enthusiasm which have

awakened the interest of the neighbours to take pride in the appearance,

and pay towards the upkeep, of their common pleasance.

The arguments in favour of the municipality having the care of these

publicly enjoyed or semi-private open spaces would be the advantages of

a higher gardening standard, the economy of interchange of roots, seeds,

and tools, the benefit of a staff large enough to meet seasonal needs,

the stimulating competition of one garden against another, and the

additional gift of beauty to the passers-by, who could thus share

without intrusion the fragrance of the flowers and the melody of

symphonies in colour.

“But how can the public enjoy the gardens when they are usually behind

walls?” I hear that delightful person, the deadly practical man, murmur;

and this brings me to another question, “Are walls round open spaces

necessary?”

English people seem to have adopted the idea that it is essential to

surround their parks and gardens with visible barriers, perhaps because

England is surrounded by the sea--a very visible line of demarcation;

but, in the stead of a dancing joy, a witchful barrier, uniting while it

separates, they have put up grim hard walls, ugly dividing fences,

barriers which challenge trespass, and make even the law-abiding citizen

desire to climb over and see what is on the other side.

It is extraordinary how firmly established is the acceptance of the

necessity of walls and protection. Nearly thirty-five years ago, when

the first effort was made to plant Mile End Road with trees, and to make

its broad margins gracious with shrubs and plants, we were met by the

argument that they would not be safe without high railings. I recall the

croakings of those who combated the proposal to open Leicester Square to

the public, and who of us has not listened to the regrets of the

landowner on the expense entailed by his estate boundary fences?

If you say, “Why make them so high, or keep them up so expensively, as

you do not preserve your game? Why not have low hedges or short open

fences, over which people can see and enjoy your property?” he will look

at you with a gentle pity, thinking of you as a deluded idealist, or

perhaps his expression will change into something not so gentle as it

dawns on him that, though one is the respectable wife of a respectable

Canon, yet one may be holding “some of those--Socialist theories”.

Not long ago I went at the request of a gentleman who owned property,

with his agent to see if suggestions could be made to improve the

appearance of his estate and the happiness of his tenants. The gardens

were small enough to be valueless, but between and around each were

walls, many in bad repair.

“The first thing I should do would be to pull down those walls, and let

the air in; things will then grow, self-respect as well as flowers,” I

said.

“What!” exclaimed the agent, “pull down the walls? Why, what would the

men have to lean against?” thus conjuring up the vision one has so often

seen of men leaning listlessly against the public-house walls, a sight

which the possession of a garden, large enough to be profitable as well

as pleasurable, ought to do much to abolish.

It is difficult to find arguments for walls. In many towns of America

the gardens are wall-less, the public scrupulously observing the rights

of ownership. In the Hampstead Garden Suburb all the gardens are

wall-less, both public and private. The flowers bloom with the

voluptuous abundance produced by virgin soil, but they remain untouched,

not only by the inhabitants, which, of course, is to be expected, but by

the thousands of visitors who come to see the realization of the

much-talked-of scheme, and respect the property as they share its

pleasures.

In town-planning literature and talk much is said about houses, roads,

centre-points to design, architectural features, treatment of junctions,

and many other items both important and interesting; but the tone of

thought pervading all that I have yet read is that it is the healthy and

happy, the respectable and the prosperous, for whom all is to be

arranged. It takes all sorts to make a world, and the town planner who

excludes in his arrangements the provision for the lonely, the sick, the

sorrowful, and the handicapped will lose from the midst of the community

some of its greatest moral teachers.

The children should be specially welcomed amid improved or beautiful

surroundings, for the impressions made in youth last through life, and

on the standards adopted by the young will depend the nation’s welfare.

A vast army of children are wholly supported by the State, some 100,000,

while to them can be added nearly 200,000 more for whom the public purse

is partly responsible. In town planning the needs of these children

should be considered, and the claims of the sick openly met.

Hospitals are intended to help the sick poor, so, in planning the town

or its growth, suitable sites should be chosen in relation to the

population who require such aid; but in London many hospitals are

clustered in the centre of the town, are enlarged, rebuilt, or improved

on the old positions, though the people’s homes and workshops have been

moved miles away; thus the sick suffer in body and become poorer in

purse, as longer journeys have to be undertaken after accidents, or when

as out-patients they need frequent attention.

The wicked, the naughty, the sick, the demented, the sorrowful, the

blind, the halt, the maimed, the old, the handicapped, the children are

facts--facts to be faced, facts which demand thought, facts which should

be reckoned with in town planning--for all, even the first-named, can be

helped by being surrounded with “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever

things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good report”.

Every one who has been to Canada must have been struck with the evidence

of faith in educational appreciation which the Canadians give in the

preparation of their vast teaching centres.

“What impressed me greatly,” said Mr. Henry Vivian in his speech at the

dinner given in his honour on his return from the Dominion, “was the

preparation that the present people have made for the education of the

future people,” and he described the planning of one University, whose

buildings, sports-grounds, roads, hostels, and gardens were to cover

1300 acres. Compare that with the statement of the Secretary of a

Borough Council Education Authority, who told me the other day, with

congratulatory pleasure, that long negotiations had at last obtained one

acre and a quarter for the building of a secondary school and a

hoped-for three acres some distance off for the boys’ playground.

The town planning of the future will make, it is to be hoped, generous

provision for educational requirements, and not only for the inhabitants

of the immediate locality. As means of transit become both cheaper and

easier, it will be recognized as a gain for young people to go out of

town to study, into purer air, away from nerve-wearing noise, amid

flowers and trees, and with an outlook on a wider sky, itself an

elevating educational influence both by day and night.

The need of what may be called artificial town addition can only concern

the elder nations, who have, scattered over their lands, splendid

buildings in the centre of towns that have ceased to grow. As an

example, I would quote Ely. What a glorious Cathedral! kept in dignified

elderly repair, its Deans, Canons, Minors, lay-clerks, and choir, all

doing their respective daily duties in leading worship; but, alas! there

the population is so small (7713 souls) that the response by worshippers

is necessarily inadequate--the output bears no proportion to the return.

Beauty, sweetness, and light are wasted there and West Ham exists, with

its 267,000 inhabitants, its vast workshops and factories, its miles of

mean streets of drab-coloured “brick boxes with slate lids”--and no

Cathedral, no group of kind, leisured clergy to leaven the heavy dough

of mundane, cheerless toil.

If town planning could be treated nationally, it might be arranged that

Government factories could be established in Ely. Army clothiers,

stationery manufactories, gunpowder depôts would bring the workers in

their train. A suitable expenditure of the Public Works Loans money

would cause the cottages to appear; schools would then arise, shops and

lesser businesses, which population always brings into existence, would

be started; and the Cathedral would become a House of Prayer, not only

to the few religious ones who now rejoice in the services, but for the

many whose thoughts would be uplifted by the presence in their midst of

the stately witness of the Law of Love, and whose lives would be

benefited by the helpful thought and wise consideration of those whose

profession it is to serve the people.

Pending great changes, something might perhaps be done if individual

owners and builders would consider the appearance, not only of the house

they are building, but of the street or road of which it forms a part. A

few months ago, in the bright sunshine, I stood on a hill-top, facing a

delightful wide view, on a newly developed estate, and, pencil in hand,

wrote the colours and materials of four houses standing side by side.

This is the list:--

No. 1 HOUSE.--Roof, grey slates; walls, white plaster with red brick;

yellow-painted woodwork; red chimneys.

No. 2 HOUSE.--Roof, purpley-red tiles; walls, buff rough cast;

brown-painted woodwork; yellow chimneys.

No. 3 HOUSE.--Roof, orangey-red tiles; walls, grey-coloured rough cast;

white-painted woodwork; red chimneys.

No. 4 HOUSE.--Roof, crimson-red tiles; walls, stone-coloured rough cast;

peacock-blue paint; red chimneys.

This bare list tells of the inharmonious relation of colours, but it

cannot supply the variety of tones of red, nor yet the mixture of lines,

roof-angles, balcony or bow projections, one of which ran up to the top

of a steep-pitched roof, and was castellated at the summit. The road was

called “Bon-Accord”. One has sometimes to thank local authorities for

unconscious jokes.

My space is filled, and even a woman’s monologue must conclude some

time! But one paragraph more may be taken to put in a plea for space for

an Open-air Museum. It need not be a large and exhaustive one, for there

is something to be said for not making museums “too bright and good for

human nature’s daily food”. There might be objects of museum interest

scattered in groups about the green girdle which the young among my

readers will, I trust, live to see round all great towns; or an open-air

exhibit on a limited subject might be provided, as the late Mr. Burt

arranged so charmingly at Swanage; or the Shakespeare Gardens, already

started in some of the London County Council parks, might be further

developed; or the more ambitious schemes of Stockholm and Copenhagen

intimated; but whichever model is adopted the idea of open-air museums

(which might be stretched to include bird sanctuaries) is one which

should find a place in the gracious environment of our well-ordered

towns when they have come under the law and the gospel of the

Town-planning Act.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE MISSION OF MUSIC.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

July, 1899.

[1] From “International Journal of Ethics”. By permission of the

Editor.

“We must have something light or comic.” So say those who provide music

for the people, and their words represent an opinion which is almost

universal with regard to the popular taste. The uneducated, it is

thought, must be unable to appreciate that which is refined or to enjoy

that which does not make them laugh and be merry.

Opinions exist, especially with regard to the tastes and wants of the

poor, by the side of facts altogether inconsistent with those opinions.

There are facts within the knowledge of some who live in the East End of

London which are sufficient, at any rate, to shake this general opinion

as to the people’s taste in music.

In Whitechapel, where so many philanthropists have tried “to patch with

handfuls of coal and rice” the people’s wants, the signs of ignorance

are as evident as the signs of poverty. There is an almost complete

absence of those influences which are hostile to the ignorance, not,

indeed, of the mere elements of knowledge (the Board Schools are now

happily everywhere prominent), but to the ignorance of joy, truth, and

beauty. Utility and the pressure of work have crowded house upon house;

have filled the shops with what is only cheap, driven away the

distractions of various manners and various dresses, and made the place

weary to the body and depressing to the mind.

Nevertheless, in this district a crowd has been found willing, on many a

winter’s night, to come and listen to parts of an oratorio or to

selections of classical music. The oratorios have sometimes been given

in a church by various bodies of amateurs who have practised together

for the purpose; the concerts have been given in schoolrooms on Sunday

evenings by professionals of reputation. To the oratorios men and women

have come, some of them from the low haunts kept around the city by its

carelessly administered charity, all of them of the class which, working

for its daily bread, has no margin of time for study. Amid those who are

generally so independent of restraint, who cough and move as they will,

there has been a death-like stillness as they have listened to some fine

solo of Handel’s. On faces which are seldom free of the marks of care,

except in the excitement of drink, a calm has seemed to settle and tears

to flow, for no reason but because “it is so beautiful!” Sometimes the

music has appeared to break gradually down barriers that shut out some

poor fellow from a fairer past or a better future than his present: the

oppressive weight of the daily care lifts, other sights are in his

vision, and at last, covering his face or sinking on his knees, he makes

prayers which cannot be uttered. Sometimes it has seemed to seize one on

business bent, to transport him suddenly to another world, and, not

knowing what he feels, has forced him to say, “It was good to be here”.

A church filled with hundreds of East Londoners, affected, doubtless, in

different ways, but all silent, reverent, and self-forgetful, is a sight

not to be forgotten or to be held to have no meaning. To the concerts

have crowded hard-headed, unimaginative men, described in a local paper

as being “friends of Bradlaugh”. These have listened to and evidently

taken in difficult movements of Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin. The

loud applause which has followed some moments of strained, rapt

attention has proclaimed the universal feeling.

With a knowledge of the character of the music, the applications for

admission have increased, and the announcement of a hope that the

concerts might be continued the following winter, and possibly also

extended to weekday evenings, has brought from some of those present an

expression of their desire for other high-class music. The poor quarters

of cities have been too long treated as if their inhabitants were

deficient in that which is noblest in human nature. Human beings want

not something which will do, but the best.

If it be asked what proof there be that such music has a permanent

effect on the hearers, the only answer is that people do not always know

how they have been most influenced. It is the air unconsciously breathed

which affects the cure much more often than the medicine so consciously

taken. Music may most deeply and permanently affect those who themselves

can express no appreciation with their words or show results in their

lives. Like the thousand things which surrounds the child and which he

never notices, music may largely serve in the formation of character and

the satisfaction of life. That the performance of this music in the East

End is not followed by expressions of intelligent appreciation or by

immediate change of life is no proof of its failure to influence. The

fact that crowds come to listen is sufficient to make the world

reconsider its opinion that the people care only for what is light or

laugh-compelling. There is evidently in the highest music something

which finds a response in many minds not educated to understand its

mysteries nor interested in its creation. This suggests that music has

in the present time a peculiar mission.

“Man doth not live by bread alone,” expresses a truth which even those

will allow who profess themselves careless about present-day religion.

There is in human beings, in those whom the rich think to satisfy by

increased wages and improved dwellings, a need of something beyond. The

man who has won an honourable place, who by punctuality, honesty, and

truthfulness has become the trusted servant of his employer, is often

weary with the very monotony of his successful life. He has bread in

abundance, but, unsatisfied, he dreams of filling quite another place in

the world, perhaps as the leader daring much for others, perhaps as the

patriot suffering much for his class and country, or perhaps as the poet

living in others’ thoughts. There flits before him a vision of a fuller

life, and the vision stirs in him a longing to share such life. The

woman, too, who in common talk is the model wife and mother, whose days

are filled with work, whose talk is of her children’s wants, whose life

seems so even and uneventful, so complete in its very prosaicness, she,

if she could be got to speak out the thoughts which flit through her

brain as she silently plies her needle or goes about her household

duties, would tell of strange longings for quite another sort of life,

of passions and aspirations which have been scarcely allowed to take

form in her mind. There is no one to whom “omens that would astonish

have not predicted a future and uncovered a past”.

Beyond the margin of material life is a spiritual life. This life has

been and may still be believed to be the domain of religion, that which

science has not known and can never know, which material things have not

helped and can never help. It has been the glory of religion to develop

the longing to be something higher and nobler by revealing to men the

God, Who is higher than themselves.

Religion having abdicated this domain to invade that of science has

to-day suffered by becoming the slave of æsthetic and moral precepts.

Her professors often yield themselves to the influence of form and

colour or boast only of their morality and philanthropy.

It is no wonder, therefore, that many who are in earnest and feel that

neither ritualism nor philanthropy have special power to satisfy their

natures, reject religion. But they will not, if they are fair to

themselves, object to the strengthening of that power which they must

allow to have been a source of noble endeavour and of the very science

whose reign they acknowledge. The sense of something better than their

best, making itself felt not in outward circumstance but inwardly in

their hearts, has often been the spring of effort and of hope. It is

because the forms of present-day religion give so little help to

strengthen this sense, that so many now speak slightingly of religion

and profess their independence of its forms. Religion, in fact, is

suffering for want of expression.

In other times men felt that the words of the Prayer Book and phrases

now labelled “theological” did speak out, or at any rate did give some

form to their vague, indistinct longing to be something else and

something more; while the picture of God, drawn from the Bible history

and Bible words, gave an object to their longing, making them desire to

be like Him and to enjoy Him for ever.

In these days, however, historical criticism and scientific discoveries

have made the old expressions seem inadequate to state man’s longings or

to picture God’s character. The words of prayers, whether the written

prayers of the English Church or that rearrangement of old expressions

called “extempore prayer,” do not at once fit in with the longings of

those to whom, in these later days, sacrifice has taken other forms and

life other possibilities. The descriptions of God, involving so much

that is only marvellous, jar against minds which have had hints of the

grandeur of law and which have been awed not by miracles but by

holiness. The petitions for the joys of heaven do not always meet the

needs of those who have learnt that what they are is of more consequence

than what they have, and the anthropomorphic descriptions of the

character of God make Him seem less than many men who are not jealous,

nor angry, nor revengeful.

Words and thoughts alike often fail to satisfy modern wants. While

prayers are being said, the listless attitude and wandering gaze of

those in whose souls are the deepest needs and loftiest aspirations,

proclaim the failure. Religion has not failed, but only its power of

expressing itself. There lives still in man that which gropes after God,

but it can find no form in which to clothe itself. The loss is no light

one. Expression is necessary to active life, and without it, at any

rate, some of the greater feelings of human nature must suffer loss of

energy and be isolated in individuals. Free exercise will give those

feelings strength; the power of utterance will teach men that they are

not alone when they are their best selves.

The world has been moved to many a crusade by a picture of suffering

humanity, and the darkness of heathenism calls forth missionaries of one

Church and another. Almost as moving a picture might be drawn of those

who wanting much can express nothing. Here are men and women, bone of

our bone, flesh of our flesh: they have that within them which raises

them above all created things, powers by which they are allied to all

whom the world honours, faculties by which they might find unfailing

joy. But they have no form of expression and so they live a lower life,

walking by sight, not by faith, giving rein to powers which find their

satisfaction near at hand, and developing faculties in the use of which

there is more of pain than joy. The power which has been the spring of

so much that is helpful to the world seems to be dead in them; that

sense which has enabled men to stand together as brothers, trusting one

another as common possessors of a Divine spark, seems to be without

existence. A few may go on walking grimly the path of duty, but for the

mass of mankind life has lost its brightness. Dullness unrelieved by

wealth, and loneliness undispersed by dissipation, are the common lot.

In a sense more terrible than ever, men are like children walking in the

night with no language but a cry. He that will give them the means once

more to express what they really are and what they really want will

break the bondage.

The fact that the music of the great masters does stir something in most

men’s natures should be a reason for trying whether music might not, at

any rate partially, express the religious life of the present day.

There is much to be said in favour of such an experiment. On the one

side there is the failure of existing modes of expression. The

prettinesses of ritualism and the social efforts of Broad Churchism,

even for the comparatively small numbers who adopt these forms of

worship, do not meet those longings of the inner life which go beyond

the love of beauty and beyond the love of neighbours. The vast majority

of the people belong to neither ritualism nor Broad Churchism; they

live, at best, smothering their aspirations in activity; at worst, in

dissipation, having forsaken duty as well as God. Their morality has

followed their religion. In the East End of London this is more

manifest, not because the people of the East are worse than the people

of the West, but because the people of the East have no call to seem

other than they are. Amid many signs hopeful for the future there is

also among East Londoners, unblushingly declared at every street-corner,

the self-indulgence which robs the young and weak of that which is their

right, education and protection; the vice which saps a nation’s strength

is boasted of in the shop and flaunted in the highways, and the

selfishness which is death to a man is often the professed ground of

action.

Morality for the mass of men has been dependent on the consciousness of

God, and with the lack of means of expression the consciousness of God

seems to have ceased. On this ground alone there would be reason for

making an experiment with music, if only because it offers itself as a

possible means of that expression which the consciousness of God

supports. And, on the other side, there is the natural fitness of music

for the purpose.

In the first place, the great musical compositions may be asserted to

be, not arrangements which are the results of study and the application

of scientific principles, but the results of inspiration. The master,

raised by his genius above the level of common humanity to think fully

what others think only in part, and to see face to face what others see

only darkly, puts into music the thoughts which no words can utter and

the descriptions which no tongue can tell. What he himself would be, his

hopes, his fears, his aspirations, what he himself sees of that holiest

and fairest which has haunted his life, he tells by his art. Like the

prophets, having had a vision of God, his music proclaims what he

himself would desire to be, and expresses the emotions of his higher

nature.

If this be a correct account of the meaning of those great masterpieces

which may every day be performed in the ears of the people, it is easy

to see how they may be made to serve the purpose in view. The greatest

master is a man with much in him akin to the lowest of the human race.

The homage all pay to the great is but the assertion of this kinship,

the assertion of men’s claim to be like the great when the obstructions

of their mal-formation and mal-education shall be trained away. Men

generally will, therefore, find in that which expresses the thoughts of

the greatest the means of expressing their own thoughts. The music which

enfolds the passions that have never found utterance, that have never

been realized by the ordinary man, will somehow appeal to him and make

him recognize his true self and his true object. Music being itself the

expression of the wants of man, all who share in man’s nature will find

in it an expression for longings and visions for which no words are

adequate. It will be what prayers and meditations now so often fail to

be, a means of linking men with the source of the highest thoughts and

efforts, and of enabling them to enjoy God, a joy which so few now

understand.

More than this, the best existing expression of that which men have

found to be good has been by parables, whose meanings have not been

limited to time or place but are of universal application. Heard by

different people and at different times, parables have given to all

alike a conception of that which eye cannot see nor voice utter; each

hearer in each age has gained possibly a different conception, but in

the use of the same words all have felt themselves to be united. The

parable of the prodigal son has represented the God who has been won to

love by the sacrifice of Christ and also the God who freely forgives.

Such forms of expression it is most important to have in an age when

movement is so rapid that things become old as soon as they are new,

separating to-morrow those who have stood together to-day, and when at

the same time the longing for unity is so powerful that the thought of

it acts as a charm on men’s minds.

In some degree all art is a parable, as it makes known in a figure that

which is unknown, revealing the truth the artist has felt to others just

in so far as they by education and surroundings have been qualified to

understand it. Titian’s picture of the Assumption helped the mediæval

saint to worship better the Virgin Mother, and also helps those of our

day to realize the true glory of womanhood.

But music, even more than painting and poetry, fulfils this condition.

It reveals that which the artist has seen, and reveals it with no

distracting circumstance of subject, necessary to the picture or the

poem. The hearer who listens to a great composition is not drawn aside

to think of some historical or romantic incident; he is free to think of

that of which such incidents are but the clothes. Age succeeds to age;

the music which sounded in the ears of the fathers sounds also in the

ears of the children. Place and circumstance force men asunder, but

still for those of every party or sect and for those in every quarter of

the world the great works of the masters of music remain. The works may

be performed in the West End or in the East End--the hearers will have

different conceptions, will see from different points of view the vision

which inspired the master, but will nevertheless have the sense that the

music which serves all alike creates a bond of union.

Music then would seem fitted to be in this age the expression of that

which men in their inmost hearts most reverence. Creeds have ceased to

express this and have become symbols of division rather than of unity!

Music is a parable, telling in sounds which will not change of that

which is worthy of worship, telling it to each hearer just in so far as

he by nature and circumstance is able to understand it, but giving to

all that feeling of common life and assurance of sympathy which has in

old times been the strength of the Church. By music, men may be helped

to find God who is not far from any one of us, and be brought again

within reach of that tangible sympathy, the sympathy of their

fellow-creatures.

There is, however, still one other requisite in a perfect form of

religious expression. The age is new and thoughts are new, but

nevertheless they are rooted in the past. More than any one acknowledges

is he under the dominion of the buried ages. He who boasts himself

superior to the superstitions of the present is the child of parents

whose high thoughts, now transmitted to their child, were intertwined

with those superstitions. Any form of expression therefore which aims at

covering emotions said to be new must, like these emotions, have

associations with the past. A brand new form of worship, agreeable to

the most enlightened reason and surrounded with that which the present

asserts to be good, would utterly fail to express thoughts and feelings,

which, if born of the present, share the nature of parents who lived in

the past. It is interesting to notice how machines and institutions

which are the product of the latest thought bear in their form traces of

that which they have superseded; the railway carriage suggests the

stage-coach, and the House of Commons reminds us of the Saxon

Witanagemot. The absolutely new would have no place in this old world,

and a new form of expression could not express the emotions of the inner

life.

Music which offers a form in which to clothe the yearnings of the

present has been associated with the corresponding yearnings of the

past, and would seem therefore to fulfil the necessary condition. Those

who to-day feel music telling out their deepest wants and proclaiming

their praise of the good and holy, might recognize in the music echoes

of the songs which broke from the lips of Miriam and David, of Ambrose

and Gregory, and of those simple peasants who one hundred years ago were

stirred to life on the moors of Cornwall and Wales.

The fact that music has been thus associated with religious life gives

it an immense, if an unrecognized power. The timid are encouraged and

the bold are softened! When the congregation is gathered together and

the sounds rise which are full of that which is and perhaps always will

be “ineffable,” there float in, also, memories of other sounds, poor

perhaps and uncouth, in which simple people have expressed their prayers

and praises; the atmosphere, as it were, becomes religious, and all feel

that the music is not only beautiful, but the means of bringing them

nearer to the God after Whom they have sought so long and often

despaired to find.

For these reasons music seems to have a natural fitness for becoming the

expression of the inner life. The experiment, at any rate, may be easily

tried. There is in every parish a church with an organ, and arrangements

suitable for the performance of grand oratorios; there are concert halls

or schoolrooms suitable for the performance of classical music. There

are many individuals and societies with voices and instruments capable

of rendering the music of the masters. Most of them have, we cannot

doubt, the enthusiasm which would induce them to give their services to

meet the needs of their fellow-creatures.

Money has been and is freely subscribed for the support of missions

seeking to meet bodily and spiritual wants; music will as surely be

given by those who have felt its power to meet that need of expression

which so far keeps the people without the consciousness of God. Members

of ethical societies, who have taught themselves to fix their eyes on

moral results, may unite with members of churches who care also for

religious things. Certain it is that people who are able to realize

grand ideals will be likely in their own lives to do grand things, and

doing them make the world better and themselves happier.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE REAL SOCIAL REFORMER.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

January, 1910.

[1] From “The Manchester Weekly Times”. By permission of the Editor.

The world is out of joint. Reformers have in every age tried to put it

right. But still Society jerks and jolts as it journeys over the road of

life. The rich fear the poor, the poor suspect the rich, there is strife

and misunderstanding; children flicker out a few days’ life in sunless

courts, and honoured old age is hidden in workhouses; people starve

while food is wasted in luxurious living, and the cry always goes up,

“Who will show us any good?”

The response to that cry is the appearance of the Social Reformer.

Philanthropists have brought forward scheme after scheme to relieve

poverty, and politicians have passed laws to remove abuses. Their

efforts have been magnificent and the immediate results not to be

gainsaid, but in counting the gains the debit side must not be

forgotten. Philanthropists weaken as well as strengthen society; law

hinders as well as helps. When a body of people assume good doing as a

special profession, there will always be a tendency among some of their

neighbours to go on more unconcerned about evil, and among others to

offer themselves as subjects for this good doing. The world may be

better for its philanthropists, but when after such devotion it remains

so terribly out of joint the question arises whether good is best done

by a class set apart as Social Reformers.

There is an often-quoted saying of a monk in the twelfth century: “The

age of the Son is passing, the age of the Spirit is coming”. He saw that

the need of the world would not always be for a leader or for a class of

leaders, but rather for a widely diffused spirit.

The present moment is remarkable for the number of societies, leagues,

and institutions which are being started. There never were so many

leaders offering themselves to do good, so many schemes demanding

support. The Charities Register reveals agencies which are ready to deal

with almost any conceivable ill, and it would seem that anyone desiring

to help a neighbour might do so by pressing the button of one of these

agencies. The agencies for each service are, indeed, so many, that other

societies are formed now for their organization, and the would-be

good-doer is thus relieved even from inquiring as to that which is the

best fitted for his purpose.

The hope of the monk is deferred, and it seems as if it were the

leaders and not the spirit of the people which is to secure social

reform. The question therefore presses itself whether the best

social reformers are the philanthropists. Specialists always make

a show of activity, but such a show is often the cover of widely

spread indolence. Specialists in religion--the ecclesiastics--were

never more active than when during the fifteenth century they built

churches and restored the cathedrals, but underneath this activity

was the popular indifference which almost immediately woke to take

vengeance on such leaders. Specialists in social reform to-day--the

philanthropists--raise great schemes, but many of their supporters are

at heart indifferent. It really saves them trouble to create societies

and to make laws. It is easier to subscribe money--even to sit on a

committee--than to help one’s own neighbour. It is easier to promote

Socialism than to be a Socialist. Activity in social reform movements

may be covering popular indifference, and there is already a sign of

the vengeance which awakened indifference may take in the cry dimly

heard, “Curse your charity”.

Better, it may be agreed, than great schemes--voluntary or legal--is the

individual service of men and women who, putting heart and mind into

their efforts, and co-operating together, take as their motto “One by

One”; but again the same question presses itself in another form: Should

the individual who aspires to serve his generation separate himself from

the ordinary avocations of Society, and become a visitor or teacher?

Should the business man divide his social reforming self from his

business self, and keep, as he would say, his charity and his business

apart?

The world is rich in examples of devoted men and women who have given

up pleasure and profit to serve others’ needs. The modern Press

gives every day news of both the benefactions and the good deeds of

business men who, as business men, think first, not of the kingdom of

heaven, but of business profits. This specialization of effort--as the

specialization of a class--has its good results; but is it the best,

the only way of social reform? Is it not likely to narrow the heart of

the good-doer and make him overkeen about his own plan? Will not the

charity of a stranger, although it be designed in love and be carried

out with thought, almost always irritate? Is it not the conception

of society, which assumes one class dependent on the benevolence of

another class, mediæval rather than modern? Can limbs which are out

of joint be made to work smoothly by any application of oil and not

by radical resetting? Is it reasonable that business men should look

to cure with their gifts the injuries they have inflicted in their

business, that they should build hospitals and give pensions out of

profits drawn from the rents of houses unfit for human habitation, and

gained from wages on which no worker could both live and look forward

to a peaceful old age? Is it possible for a human being to divide his

nature so as to be on the one side charitable and on the other side

cruel?

The question therefore as to the best Social Reformer, still waits an

answer. Before attempting an answer it may be as well to glance at the

moral causes to which social friction is attributed. Popular belief

assumed that the designed selfishness of classes or of individuals lies

at the root of every trouble. Bitter and fiery words are therefore

spoken. Capitalists suspect the aspiring tyranny of trade unions to be

compassing their ruin, workmen talk of the other classes using “their

powers as selfish and implacable enemies of their rights”. Rich people

incline to assume that the poor have designs on their property, and the

poor suspect that every proposal of the rich is for their injury. The

philosophy of life is very simple. “Every one seeketh reward,” and the

daily Press gives ample evidence as to the way every class acts on that

philosophy. But nevertheless experience reveals the good which is in

every one. Mr. Galsworthy in his play, “The Silver Box,” pictures the

conflict between rich and poor, between the young and the old. The pain

each works on the other is grievous, there is hardness of heart and

selfishness, but the reflection left by the play is not that anyone

designed the pain of the other, but that for want of thought each

misunderstood the other, and each did the wrong thing.

The family whose members are so smugly content with the virtue which has

secured wealth and comfort, whose charities are liberally supported, and

kindness frequently done, where hospitality is ready, would feel itself

unfairly charged if it were abused because it lived on abuses, and

opposed any change which might affect the established order. The labour

agitator, on the other hand, feels himself unfairly charged when he is

attacked as designing change for his own benefit and accused of enmity

because of his strong language. It may be that his words do mischief,

but in his heart he is kindly and generous. There are criminals in every

class, rich men who prey on poor men, and poor men who prey on rich men,

but the criminal class is limited and the mass of men do not intend

evil. The chief cause of social friction is, it may be said, not

designed selfishness so much as the want of moral thoughtfulness. The

rogue of the piece is not the criminal, but--you--I--every one.

The recognition of this fact suggests that the best Social Reformer is

not the philanthropist or the politician so much as the man or the woman

who brings moral thoughtfulness into every act and relation of daily

life.

There is abundance of what may be called financial thoughtfulness, and

people take much pains, not always with success--to inquire into the

soundness of their investments and the solvency of their debtors. The

Social Reformer who feels the obligation of moral thoughtfulness will

take as much pains to inquire whether his profits come by others’ loss.

He may not always succeed, but he will seek to know if the workers

employed by his capital receive a living wage and are protected from the

dangers of their trade. He will look to it that his tenants have houses

which ought to make homes.

There is much time spent in shopping, and women take great pains to

learn what is fashionable or suited to their means. If they were morally

thoughtful they would take as much pains to learn what sweated labour

had been used so that things might be cheap; what suffering others had

endured for their pleasure. They might not always succeed, but the fact

of seeking would have its effect, and they would help to raise public

opinion to a greater sense of responsibility.

Pleasure-seekers are proverbially free-handed, they throw their money to

passing beggars, they patronize any passing show which promises a

moment’s amusement; greater moral thoughtfulness would not prevent their

pleasure, but it would prevent them from making children greedy, so that

they might enjoy the fun of watching a scramble, and from listening to

songs or patronizing shows which degrade the performer. Gwendolen, in

George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda,” did not realize that the cruelty of

gambling is taking profit by another’s loss, and so she laid the

foundation of a tragedy. Pleasure-seekers who make the same mistake are

responsible for some of the tragedies which disturb society.

The Social Reformers who will do most to fit together the jarring joints

of Society are, therefore, the man and woman who, without giving up

their duties or their business, who without even taking up special

philanthropic work are morally thoughtful as to their words and acts.

They are, in old language, they who are in the world and not of the

world. If any one says that such moral thoughtfulness spells bankruptcy,

there are in the examples of business men and manufacturers a thousand

answers, but reformers who have it in mind to lead the world right do

not begin by asking as to their own reward. It is enough for them that

as the ills of society come not from the acts of criminals who design

the ills, but from the thousand and million unconsidered acts of men and

women who pass as kindly and respectable people, they on their part set

themselves to consider every one of their acts in relation to others’

needs.

The real Social Reformer is therefore the business man, the customer,

the pleasure-seeker, who in his pursuits thinks first of the effect of

those pursuits on the health and wealth of his partners in such

pursuits. The spirit of moral thoughtfulness widely spread among rich

and poor, employers and employed, better than the power of any leader or

of any law, will most surely set right a world which is out of joint.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

WHERE CHARITY FAILS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

January, 1907.

[1] From “Pearson’s Weekly”. By permission of the Editor.

I do not think that anyone will dispute the fact that our charity, taken

as a whole, is administered in a somewhat wasteful and haphazard

fashion. At the same time, however, I question whether the public is

alive to the full extent of the evil arising from the utter lack of

system in our administration of charity.

For it is not merely the question of the waste of the public’s money,

though that is bad enough; it is the far graver matter of the

depreciation of our greatest national asset, character, by injudicious

and indiscriminate philanthropy.

Owing to the absence of any supreme charitable board or authority, and

the lack of co-operation between charitable bodies, it is very tempting

to a poor man to tell a lie to draw relief from many sources. He gets

his food and loses his character.

Indeed, I have no hesitation in saying that the present system directly

encourages mendacity and mendicity, and, unless remedied, must

inevitably affect the moral fibre of the nation.

The want of co-operation already alluded to is, of course, at the root

of the evil, so far as waste of money is concerned, and I am often asked

why charitable bodies will not co-operate. My answer is that it is very

often a case of pride in results. Officials do not wish to share the

credit of their work; they want to be able to claim to their subscribers

that they have spent more money or relieved more cases than their rival

round the corner, just as hospitals are led to regard the number of

patients they treat as the criterion of their usefulness.

However, although I hold that hospitals might well extend their sphere

from the cure to the prevention of disease, by taking more part in

teaching people the laws of health and influencing them to keep such

laws in their homes, I am not concerned with that question here, and

mention hospitals only to introduce my first suggestion for charity

reform.

The operations for the King’s Hospital Fund have shown what can be done

to check waste by bringing about a saving of £20,000 a year in the

hospitals’ bills for provisions, etc.

Until the King’s Hospital Fund was instituted there was no general

knowledge of the comparative expenditure of hospitals on food, etc.,

with the result that some paid exorbitant prices for certain articles

and some for others. The action of the King’s Fund has equalized

expenditure, with the result I have stated.

Now it occurs to me that another board like the King’s Hospital Fund

would be able to bring about a similar saving in the administration of

other charities which now compete to the loss of money subscribed by the

public for the public, and, as I have said, to the detriment of

character.

Such a Board would check waste and extravagance engendered by

competition, and it could be brought into being as swiftly and

effectively as was the King’s Hospital Fund.

So much for an immediate measure, but I suggest as a more certain method

that every twenty-five years or so there should be an inquiry by some

authority, either national or local, into every philanthropic

institution.

The terms of reference of such inquiry might be: firstly, the economic

and business-like character of the management; secondly, the way in

which co-operation was welcomed, and whether something more could not be

done for further co-operation; and lastly, the institution might be

tried by the standard of its usefulness to its surroundings. For,

remember, every charity which really exists for the public good ought to

test itself by this question, “Is our aim that of self-extinction?” The

truest charity, that is to say, should aim to remove the causes, not the

symptoms of evil.

But many shirk this self-inquisition, and linger on breeding mendicity,

after their place has been taken by State or municipal organizations, or

after they have ceased to fulfil any useful purpose.

It may be that this public authority I suggest would not at once effect

very much, but a public inquiry provides facts for public opinion to

work upon, and thus inevitably brings reform.

My final words, however, must again be as to the mischief liable to be

done to character by thoughtless charity. People should think most

carefully and solemnly before they give, lest they do more harm than

good, and until our charity is properly organized and supervised, I fear

that much money will be wasted on undeserving cases and in unnecessary

and extravagant expenses of administration.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

LANDLORDISM UP TO DATE.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

August, 1912.

[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.

“The position of landlord and tenant is often one of opposing

interests.” This remark from the first number of the “Record” of the

Hampstead Garden Suburb must commend itself as true to all readers of

the daily Press. The “Record,” however, in two most interesting

articles, shows that with landlordism up to date it need no longer be

true. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, of which Mr. Alfred Lyttelton

is president, and Mrs. S. A. Barnett hon. manager, is the landlord of

263 acres--shortly to be increased by another 400 acres, most of which

will be worked in conjunction with the Co-Partnership Tenants. To meet

the needs of the 25,000 people who will ultimately be housed on this

unique estate the whole has been laid out with a view to the comfort of

the people, including in the idea of “comfort” not only well-built

houses with gardens, but also the opportunities for the interknowledge

of various classes which alike enriches the minds of rich and poor. A

visit to the estate suggests the multitudinous interests which have been

considered. The houses are grouped around a central square, on which

stand the church, the chapel, and the institute, and it is so planned

that from the cottages at 5s. 6d. a week, as from the mansions with

rentals of from £100 to £250 a year, the inhabitants alike enjoy beauty

either of gardens, tree-planted streets, public open spaces, or glimpses

over the distant country.

The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, as the leading article in the

“Record” says, “has done what any other far-seeing and enlightened

landlord has done,” with the difference that its pecuniary interest in

the financial success of the scheme is limited by a self-obtained Act of

Parliament to 5 per cent. In a summary, which it is well to quote, the

doings of this up-to-date landlord are gathered together:--

“As a landlord the Trust has laid out and maintains the open

spaces, the tennis courts, the wall-less gardens with their

brilliant flowers, the restful nooks, the village green, which,

with the secluded woods, can be enjoyed in common by rich and

poor, simple and learned, young and old, sources of ‘joy in widest

commonalty spread’.

“As a landlord the Trust has given the sites for both the

Established Church and the Free Church, each standing on the

Central Square in equally prominent positions, worthy of the

beautiful buildings their respective organizations have erected.

“As a landlord the Trust has given the site for the elementary

school, and has spared no pains to obtain a building adapted to the

best and most carefully thought-out methods of modern education.

“As a landlord the Trust has built the first section of the

Institute, with the conviction that their hope of bringing into

friendly relations all classes of their tenants will be furthered

by the provision of a centre where residents and neighbours can be

drawn together by intellectual interests. Although the Institute

is not yet two years old, the Trust has already organized and

maintained many activities, a full report of which is to be found

in subsequent pages of the ‘Record’.

“As a landlord the Trust has built three groups of buildings which

they counted necessary towards the completion of their civic

ideal: (_a_) Staff cottages, so that the men employed on the estate

should be housed suitably and economically; (_b_) a group of homes

where the State-supported children and others needing care and

protection should live under suitable and adequate administration,

and share the privileges and pleasures of the suburb; (_c_)

motor-houses, with dwellings for the drivers, so that the richer

people may have their luxury, and the poorer their habitations near

their work.

“As a landlord the Trust conceives ideas for the public good

and presses them on companies and others in the hope of their

achievement. It was thus that the Improved Industrial Dwellings

Company, Limited, built (from Mr. Baillie Scott’s designs) the

beautiful quadrangle of Waterlow Court, where working ladies find

the advantages of both privacy and a common life.

“As a landlord the Trust is pushing forward negotiations with a

view to obtaining a first-rate Secondary School, the directors

believing that the provision of high-class education meets a need

not usually considered when an estate is being developed, and that

the school site should not be limited to the minimum necessary

ground subsequently bought at an inflated price.

“As a landlord the Trust welcomes the public spirit and civic

generosity of any of their tenants, taking special pride, perhaps,

in the beautiful shops, the ‘Haven of Rest’ for the old and

work-weary, and the club house (so admirably planned and alive with

social and pleasurable activities), the tennis courts, the bowling

greens, the children’s gardens, the skating rink--each and all

established and held for co-operative pleasure and joint use by

their chief tenants, the co-partners.”

This record of what has already been done prepares the reader to read

with new interest the second article, “An Ideal--and After,” by Mr.

Raymond Unwin, who now stands at the head of “town-planners”. He shows

the great principles which have to be considered in planning town

extensions, which principles have generally been forgotten in the growth

of London suburbs. He then gives a plan of the 412 acres which lie

between the Finchley and the Great North Road, and are about to be

incorporated in the Hampstead Garden Suburb. He shows what direction the

roads should take so as to secure readiness of access to the railway

stations, and at the same time leave the Central Square with its fine

buildings dominating and giving beauty to the whole neighbourhood. He

shows also how other heights should be occupied by churches or public

buildings, and he proposes that another centre (and another will be

needed when it is remembered that the estate is nearly four miles long)

“should approximate more nearly to the Market Place or Forum, where the

main lines of traffic will meet, and to which access from all parts will

be made easy”. The articles make fascinating reading and lay hold of

that pioneer instinct which has helped to make Englishmen such good

Colonists. If the reading arouses some indignation at the lost chances

of London, the fact that Mr. Unwin, on behalf of the Trust, and the

co-partnership tenants are dealing with this great estate, in

conjunction with the Finchley District Council, gives some hope. In

years to come our children will see that the Hampstead Garden Suburb

Trust as a pioneer landlord did notable work in avoiding current

mistakes and in pointing the way for other metropolitan districts to

follow. Out of eighty-two authorities in Greater London only

twenty-seven have so far started to avail themselves of the powers of

the Housing and Town-Planning Act, and meanwhile the jerry-builder is at

large, uncontrolled, and very actively at work.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE CHURCH AND TOWN PLANNING.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

August, 1912.

[1] From “The Guardian”. By permission of the Editor.

Every year we are told that so many churches have been added to London.

Every year a volume is published by the Bishop of London’s Fund with

pictures of these churches--buildings of conventional character, showing

in their mean lines and sterile decoration the trail of the order to

limit their cost to £8000 or £9000. Every year we see London extending

itself in long straight ranks of small houses, where no tower or spire

suggests to men the help which comes of looking up, and no hall or

public building calls them to find strength in meeting together.

Town-planning is much discussed, and the discussion has taken shape in

an Act of Parliament; but meantime the opportunities are being lost for

doing what the discussions and the Act declare to be necessary for

health and happiness. Hendon is probably the most highly favoured

building land nearest to London. It has undulating ground, where gentle

hills offer a wide prospect towards the west; it has fine trees whose

preservation might secure grace and dignity to the neighbourhood; and it

has also a large sheet of water, the reservoir of the Brent, whose banks

offer to young and old recreation for body and for spirit. A few years

ago town-planning might have secured all these advantages, and at the

same time provided houses and buildings which would have helped to make

social life a fair response to the physical surroundings. But while talk

is spent on the advantages of variety in buildings, of the importance of

securing a vista which street inhabitants may enjoy, and of the value of

trees and open spaces, straight roads are being cut at right angles

across the hills, trees are being felled, and nothing has been done to

prevent what will soon become slum property extending alongside the

lake. Willesden, as it may be seen from Dollis Hill--a chess-board of

slate roofs--is an object lesson as to the future of London if builders

and owners and local authorities go on laying out estates with no

thought but for the rights of private owners.

What, however, it may be asked, can the Church do? “Agitate--protest?”

Yes, the Church, familiar with the lives of inhabitants of mean streets,

can speak with authority. It can tell how minds and souls are dwarfed

for want of outlook, how pathetic is the longing for beauty shown in the

coloured print on the wall of the little dark tenement, how hard it is

to make a home of a dwelling exactly like a hundred other dwellings, how

often it is the dullness of the street which encourages carelessness of

dirt and resort to excitement--how, in fact, it is the mean house and

mean street which prepare the way for poverty and vice. The voice of joy

and health is not heard even in the dwellings of the righteous. The

Church might help town-planning as it might help every other social

reform, by charging the atmosphere of life with unselfish and

sympathetic thought. But the question I would raise is whether the

Church is not called to take more direct action in the matter of

town-building. Its policy at present seems to build a church for every

4,000 or 5,000 persons as they settle on the outskirts of London. The

site is generally one given by a landlord whose interests do not always

take in those of the whole neighbourhood. The building itself aims

primarily at accommodating so many hundreds of people at a low cost per

seat, and outside features are regarded as involving expenses too great

for present generosity. This policy which has not been changed since

Bishop Blomfield set the example of building the East London district

churches, is, I believe, prejudicial to Church interests, as it

certainly is to the dignity of the neighbourhood in which they stand.

The Church might help much in town-planning if it would change its

policy, and, instead of dropping unconsidered and trifling buildings at

frequent intervals over a new suburb, build one grand and dominant

building on some carefully chosen site to which the roads would lead.

The Directors of the Hampstead Garden Suburb as a private company have

shown what is possible. They have crowned the hill at the base of which

20,000 people will soon be gathered, with the Church, the Chapel, and

the public Institute. This hill dominates the landscape for miles round,

and is the obvious centre of a great community of people. The Church by

adopting a like policy would at once give a character to a new suburb,

the convergence of roads would be marked, and order would be brought

into the minds of builders planning out their different properties. The

architects would be conscious of the centre of the circle in which they

worked, and the houses would fall into some relation with the central

building. Every one would feel such a healthy pride in the grandeur of

the central church that it would be more difficult for things mean and

unsightly to be set up in its neighbourhood. The church buildings in the

City of London, or those which are seen towering over some of the newer

avenues in Paris, or those familiar in our country towns and in

villages, often seem as if they had brought together the inhabitants and

were presiding over their lives. They look like leaders and suggest that

the world is a world of order. The Bishop of London’s Fund, or the

authorities who direct the principal building policy, and spend annually

thousands of pounds in its pursuit, have thus a great opportunity of

giving direction to the expansion of London. They might by care in the

selection of sites, and by generous expenditure at the direction of a

large-visioned architect, do for the growing cities or towns of to-day

what the builders of the past did for the cities and towns of their

time. The Church by its direct action might thus give a great impetus to

town planning, the need of which is in the mouths of all reformers.

But it may be asked whether the Church ought to contribute to the making

of beauty at the cost of its own efficiency. Has not the State one duty

and the Church another? Without answering the question it is I think

easy to show that a new policy would cost less money, and be more

efficient in promoting worship. It is obviously no more costly to build

one magnificent building for £25,000 or £30,000 than to build three

ordinary buildings at £8000 or £9000 each, while the maintenance of the

three, with the constant expense of repairs, must be considerably

greater.

And if it be asked whether one grand and generous and dignified building

will attract more worshippers than three of the ordinary type, my answer

is “Yes, and the worshippers will be assisted to a reverent mind and

attitude”. I speak what I know as a vicar for thirty years of a district

church in East London. The building was always requiring repair, its

fittings were oppressively cheap, and there were twelve other churches

within much less than “a Sabbath day’s journey”. There is no doubt that

the people preferred and were more helped by worship in the finer and

better served parish churches. I used to feel what an advantage it would

have been if the parish church, endowed and glorified with some of the

money spent on the district churches, could have been the centre of a

large staff of clergy, and have offered freely to all comers the noblest

aids to worship. A feeling of patronage is incompatible with a feeling

of worship, and the district church, with its constant need of money and

its mean appearance, is always calling for the patronage of the people.

The grandly built and imposing building, which gives the best and asks

for nothing, provokes not patronage but reverence. There is, I believe,

great need for such places of worship, as there is also need for meeting

halls where in familiar talk and with simple forms of worship the clergy

might lead and teach the people; but I do not see the need for the cheap

churches, which are not dignified enough to increase habits of

reverence, and often pretend to an importance which provokes

impertinence.

The Church has been powerful because it has called on its members to put

their best thought and their best gifts into the buildings raised for

the worship of God. It owes much to the stately churches and sumptuous

cathedrals, for the sake of which men of old made themselves poor; and

to-day the hearts of many, who are worn by the disease of modern

civilization, are comforted and uplifted as in the greatness of these

buildings they forget themselves. The Church is as unwise as it is

unfaithful when it puts up cheap and mean structures. It is not by

making excuses--whether for its members who keep the best for their own

dwellings or for itself when it takes an insignificant place in the

streets--that the Church will command the respect of the people. It must

prove its faith by the boldness of its demand. But I have said enough to

show that the Bishop of London’s Fund would serve its own object of

providing the best aid to worship, if it would respond to the call of

the present and seize the opportunity of taking a lead in town-planning.

Church policy--as State policy--is often best guided by the calls which

rise for present needs, and if our leaders, distrusting “their own

inventions,” would set themselves to assist in town-planning it might be

given them to do the best for the Church as well as for the health and

wealth of the people.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.