The large churchyard in the Waterloo Road is in process of being turned into a garden. The Rev. Arthur Robinson has collected £290, and is laying it out more like a country garden, and less like a place planned by a Board of Works, than any other I have seen. He has stumps prepared for ferns to grow on (and wants some, by-the-way, which some of you might send him); he has a nice bank, winding walks between the turf, knows which side of the church his wisteria will grow, spoke with hope of getting the large blue clematis to flower, wants numberless creepers to coverthe church walls, and to wreathe around and make beautiful the few tombs which he leaves unmoved because relatives are still living and care to retain them. I understand he purposes applying to the vestry for help, and in view of the many churchyards there are to deal with, this would seem the right thing to do in general. At the same time, I can see we should get a more country-like garden, the more the planning of it could be left in the hands of a man of culture, who loves plants and colour.
I believe St. Pancras Churchyard is now open as a garden; Limehouse is, I understand, thus utilised as far as the tombstones allow. The Rev. W. Allen has got his parishioners to memorialise the vestry to take some steps towards opening the ground in Bermondsey, but hitherto without success, and there may be others either now laid out or in progress—I earnestly hope there are—of which I have no knowledge.
I regret to say that an attempt to induce the Quakers to appropriate to the same purpose a burial-ground belonging to them in Bunhill Fields has utterly failed. The ground was one which would have been of almost more value for the purpose than any I know in London. It is close to Whitecross Street, which some of you may know as a street quite swarming with costermongers; the houses there are tunnelled every few yards with archways leading to as crowded courts as I know anywhere. Many houses of the poor actually overlooked the ground. In Coleman Street, which bounds the ground on the north, is a factory from which crowds of workmen turn out daily at dinner-time, many, no doubt, to adjourn to the public-house. But one hot day last summer, when I was there, dozens of them were sitting on the dusty pavement, their backs leaning against the great, dead, heated wall, which hid from them the space occupied by the burial-ground. There is not a tombstonein it, and it might have been planted and thrown open easily. Last summer I wrote to the Quakers, hearing they were about to sell the ground for building, laying before them the reasons for devoting it to the public as a garden. After urging them to give it thus to the poor themselves, I added a request that if they did not see their way to do this, they would at least pause to enable me and my friends who were interested in such undertakings to see whether we could not raise enough money to secure it for the poor, even if they determined to exact for it full building-land value. I certainly could hardly believe that Quakers could thus sell land once devoted to their dead, and which had never brought them in rent, but I thought it just possible they might hesitate to give what belonged to the Society all to the poor. At any rate, I was determined no want of effort on my part should lose for the people so valuable and unique a space lying in the heart of a crowdedneighbourhood. My letter was never even considered by the meeting. The company in treaty for the ground did not purchase it then, because they thought it irreverent to disturb the dead. Yet although I have again and again seen and written to leading Quakers about it, and addressed several letters to their organ,The Friend, they have deliberately just sold it for building. No builder could be found who liked to buy the ground and disturb the bodies, and the Quakers themselves employed workmen to accomplish the most ghastly unearthing of the contents of the graves, uprooting five thousand bodies, which, I should think, never was undertaken before. They are selling the land for dwellings for the poor, and are excusing themselves by harping on the need of dwellings; but the immediate neighbourhood is to be dealt with under the Artisans Dwellings Bill, by means of which a large number of healthy homes for the poor will be erected, while I fear there is no chanceof any other garden being made in their midst. And, especially as only a portion of the Quakers' burial-ground is to be devoted to workmen's dwellings, the number of rooms provided in the district will not be sensibly affected. They have excused themselves, too, because they have not dug up George Fox, but only some of their lesser leaders and their nameless dead. Even if they formed a slightly different estimate of the relative advantages of a few more rooms and a garden, I own to an amazed sorrow that the Quakers rejected a scheme by which the land might have been rendered a blessing to the living, without doing violence to what seems to me to be a natural instinct of reverence, ineradicable in every human heart, for whatever has been associated with the loved, or the great and noble who are no longer with us. Nor could I have borne, if I had been they, to draw so marked a distinction between the unknown, who had surely been loved, and the known,who had been famous, as to uproot five thousand bodies and spare George Fox's grave. I am sorry English workmen were called in to "separate those who had lain side by side for two centuries," that "the bones of young and old were" by them "placed in coarse deal boxes and re-interred in a large hole at the other end of the ground." That "many of them, while awaiting this fresh burial, were piled in a rude heap in a corner," with carbolic acid poured over them. Is this the lesson our workmen are to learn? Are they, too, valueless because so nameless? These poor bodies now mouldering away were once animated by spirits of beloved men and women. That which was once the form which embodied any human soul, named or unnamed, would have seemed to me worth a little gentler care. Better have let it mingle quietly with the dust and feed the trees and the daisies, keeping the resting-place of the dead one also for the weary and the poor.
I deal with the matter thus at length because the Quakers still have a burial-ground in Whitechapel and one in Bermondsey, which would be available as gardens, and which they have not yet sold; and also because I am not aware that they have decided how they will deal with the small portion of the Bunhill Fields ground which they cannot build over, where they have re-buried their unearthed dead. Have any of you influence with them, or can anything be done? The Whitechapel ground, though not nearly so central and important as Bunhill Fields, is well worth preserving. It is overlooked by the workhouse, in the chronic wards of which there must be many who would rejoice to look out over trees and flowers, and who will never see them again unless this ground is planted with them. On the east side of the ground, too, is a wall; only to pull down that wall and put a railing instead, would give light and air to a whole street. Yet though Mr.Lefevre, on behalf of the Commons Preservation Society, has twice asked them to say whether, and if so on what terms, they would arrange for the ground to be put in order and used as a garden for the people, they give evasive answers, and I believe have it in contemplation to sell it for building. The rector of Whitechapel has written to them, the guardians have memorialised them. They make no responsive sign. I make these remarks in no spirit of hostility to the Quakers; some of my oldest and best friends are Quakers, and I have the deepest respect for them as a body, and well know they have been leaders in much that is good, thoughtful, and liberal in times past, to the poor to a remarkable degree, and I know the value of such gardens is only beginning to attract notice; but I think the facts as concerning the land should be well known to the whole Society and to the public, and I only hope that the Society will consider them thoroughly at their yearlymeeting this month. Within the last few days I have received letters from leading Quakers, asking me to bring the question before their yearly meeting; but I think I must really leave it in their own hands; the responsibility is wholly theirs. Their best ground is now almost gone, the facts are well before them, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's offer is not only well known to the whole Society, but the correspondence between him and their committee has been published inThe Friendnewspaper.
There is another body which I hope will swiftly become aware of their opportunities for doing good with land which is under their control—the London School Board. They have in all fifty-seven acres of playground, which they entirely close on the children's one holiday, Saturday, and during the summer evenings. It seems almost incredible, does it not? But so it really is. Of course the fact is that the Board has not considered how to manage the supervision. But surely thatdifficulty ought to be met either by the Board itself paying for it, if that is within its powers, or by some society, such as that which has summoned us here to-day, or by individual donors. Having the ground which, however small, is at least available for games for a certain number of children selected by the masters, it seems ridiculous not to use it. A deputation from this Society will wait on the School Board on May 30, to press the opening of the ground upon them—for that deputation influential support is much needed. If any of you can help, I hope you will communicate with Miss Lankester. I spoke of the very corrupting influence of the streets, though I did so with reference to the small companies of children who might be brought together for quiet pastimes in our churchyard-gardens of the future. The School Board playgrounds would afford scope for the more active games. Surely this should be afforded by anybody who realises how very beneficialathletic exercise and active play would be to the children's health, and how happy it would make them. Why, I have seen two swings make children so happy, I have been ashamed to think how few we have in London. They don't take much space, and what delight they give!
A clergyman near here is about to fit up a yard as a gymnasium for the men belonging to a workmen's club, and doubtless others will do the same.
The uses to which even a small playground in London may be put would take long to describe. I have charge of two, where, besides opening them every Saturday and in the summer evenings, every May we have a real maypole—flowers from the country in thousands, flags flying, band playing, swings, and see-saws fully used, children marching, dancing, and skipping, and a kind and able body of ladies and gentlemen who know them amusing them, keeping order, and increasing by their presence the sense of festivity. The trusteesof Lincoln's Inn Fields have, for the last two or three years, kindly granted to me leave to take in a company of the children of our tenants one afternoon each summer. It is a pleasant sight. The square is larger, I believe, than any in London, and the trees are most beautiful. They have also just given permission to the boys from the Refuge in Great Queen Street to exercise there two mornings a week from seven to nine o'clock. But this is a small amount of use to make of one of the largest, and most beautiful, and most central spaces of the metropolis, where there are few or no residents to be disturbed or interfered with at the hours when the ground would be most valuable; and it is to be earnestly hoped that the trustees will soon extend the privileges that they have hitherto kindly accorded to us to others. It appears to me to be simply a question of adequate supervision, and for this there are people who would be willing to pay.
It is well known that the Temple and Lincoln's Inn Gardens are now opened regularly on summer evenings to children. Why the managers limit the privilege to children I cannot think. Surely older people need the air, and surely they would help unconsciously to keep order too. The more of such places that are open, the less will the grass in each be worn—the better the people will learn to behave. I have sometimes heard it urged against opening places to the poor that there is a chance of their conveying infection to children of a higher class. Setting aside the fact that out of doors is the last place people are likely to take infection, and that I presume the richer children would be under supervision as to playing with strangers, I ask you seriously to consider who ought to monopolise the few spaces there are in this metropolis for outdoor amusements. Is it the children whose parents take them to the sea, or the country, or the Continent, when the summer sun makesLondon unbearable? Is it the children who, if their little cheeks look pale, or their strength flags after an illness, are at once sent under careful supervision to Hastings or Malvern? Is it even the children whose sturdy and vigorous father has amassed a little money, and delights to take them by train on a Saturday afternoon to Richmond, Bushey, or Erith? Or is it not rather the tiny child of the hard-working widow, whose frail form seems almost to grow smaller year by year instead of larger? Is it not the pale child with great sunken eyes, just discharged from the hospital, the bed being wanted, convalescent, but to whom fresh air and a little quiet are still so needful? Is it not to the careful, motherly, little elder sister, patient nurse of eight or nine years old, hugging the heavy, round-cheeked baby, with two or three other children clinging to her dress, she who cannot get as far as the park? Is it not the sturdy urchin, son of a costermonger perhaps, whose hardy andenergetic spirit scorns the bounds of the narrow court, and seeks wider fields with freer power of movement, but who has no chance, even when July comes, of climbing cliffs or jumping ditches? Should not the few spaces be available for these latter to the very utmost of your power? And again, do you really think now, people who live in comfortable houses, that you do or can escape infection by any precautions if small-pox and fever rage in the back courts of your city? You take all manner of precautions, I know (except, perhaps, what I should call the best of all), but you have no idea how near you, how all round you, this infection is, if it be indeed the subtle thing doctors say. The shops you enter, the cabs you travel in, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, all bring you into communication with those who are coming in contact with patients whenever disease is rife. Depend on it, your best chance of escape is to make the places inhabited by the poor healthy, to letthem have open space where the fresh wind may blow over them and their clothes, places where they may be less crowded and gain health. You never will, or can, really separate yourselves from your neighbours; accept then the nobler aim of making them such that you shall desire not separation—but union.
Among the small open spaces which we must hope to see thrown open to the people in the time to come in a greater or less degree are the squares. Of course I know that the ground in the square gardens is the property of the freeholder, and that with the leases of the surrounding houses are granted certain privileges with regard to the gardens, which neither can nor ought to be arbitrarily withdrawn. But I hope the day is not far distant when it may dawn upon the dwellers in our West End squares that during August and September not one in fifty of their families is in town, and that it is a rather awful responsibility to lock up the only little bit of earthwhich is unbuilt over, which is within reach of the very old, the very feeble, or the very young; and that when they leave town they will, in their corporate capacity, grant such discretionary power to those who stay in town, to admit the poor to sit under the trees, as may seem consistent with their rights as leaseholders, interpreted perhaps a little liberally, as they contrast the utmost theycangive in the somewhat dingy, early dried-up, London plane-tree, with the wealth of magnificent foliage of wood, or park, or mountain, to which they and their rejoicing family, baby and all, grandmother and all, go before the autumn sun dries up poor scorched London.
Also, oh, you rich people, to whom the squares belong, some few of whom too own private gardens actually in London, adjoining Hyde Park or Regent's Park, or saved on some great estate round the landowner's house, I think you might have a flower-show or large garden-party, once a year, for the poor of yourneighbourhood, while you are in town to meet them. I have seen such things done in squares with delightful results. A whole district gathered together, old friends and new, in happy fellowship under the trees, the band playing, and the place looking its gayest. I have seen tents filled with flowers reared in the houses of the poor, each in itself a poor plant, yet, gathered together, looking quite bright and flourishing; and friends whom circumstances had parted, former clergymen, former visitors, meeting the poor friend whom else it might have been difficult to see. Have such a party once a year if you can; one afternoon in the summer will never be missed by the dwellers in the square, while the memories of many a poor neighbour may be enriched by the thought of the bright gathering in the soft summer air. I never was present at the flower-shows at Westminster Abbey, nor do I know how far they grew out of previous intercourse with the poor; but I feel sure that isthe way to use any open space in London. The more the festivals can be connected with previous work the better; but those few who own ground easily accessible to the people will do well to put the ground once yearly at the service of those whodoknow the poor for a flower-show or garden-party. I know nothing that with less trouble gives more joy, or more thoroughly brings corporate life into a parish.
There are, besides the grander squares, some, I think, which are deserted by the rich, where "life"—that is, plenty going on—would be more acceptable than quiet; where the residents would be actually glad to have the gates thrown open, the beds set with bright flowers, the seats available for all, as in Leicester Square. I think even a band on a Saturday afternoon might be thought a gain. It is a pity these deserted wildernesses, with their poverty-stricken privet-hedges, are not by some common consent made to adapt themselves to the needs of the neighbourhood.
I have thus far dwelt mainly on open spaces as affecting the health or social life of our people, but there is another way in which such spaces might be made most valuable to them. That is, if they could be made really beautiful. Londoners are surrounded with the most depressing ugliness; the richer ones try with more or less good taste to mitigate this by decoration indoors; but those who have little or no superfluous wealth, and far less refinement, to lead them to spend any part of it in this way, are, at home and abroad, from year's end to year's end, surrounded by ugliness. If we could alter this, it would go far to refine and civilise them. Now it would be difficult to do this in their own homes at once; besides, that is a sphere where each should do it for his own family; but wherever a common meeting-place is arranged, within doors or without, there it seems to me that rich people might find a really useful scope for spending money. The poor man'sindependence does not demand that he should plant trees and flowers for himself, or decorate with colour wall or door, still less does it require that he should provide such beautiful things for the public, rich or poor. My sister has founded a society, called, after the Man of Ross, the Kyrle Society, which has for its object to bring beauty into the haunts of the poor; it has met with much support, and I hope the day may come when hospitals, mission-rooms, school-rooms, workmen's clubs, and, in fact, all common meeting-places of the poor, may be enriched by beautiful things given by it. It is dealing also with open spaces, is not only planting and bringing plants to the poor, but it is trying in other ways to beautify these spaces, and I am not without hope that gradually either mural decorations, inscriptions in tiles, or possibly cloisters, might be given by those who cared to obtain for their fellow-citizens, not only space, but beauty. This is being done in some cases. I will readyou a short poem now being painted on zinc by a lady, to put up on a wall of a tiny little garden in a court in Whitechapel which is under my care.
SONG OF THE CITY SPARROW.
When the summer-time is endedAnd the winter days are near;When the bloom hath all departedWith the childhood of the year;When the martins and the swallowsFlutter cowardly away,Then the people can rememberThat the sparrows always stay.That although we're plain and songless,And poor city birds are we,Yet before the days of darknessWe, the sparrows, never flee.But we hover round the window,And we peck against the pane,While we twitteringly tell themThat the spring will come again.And when drizzly dull NovemberFalls so gloomily o'er all,And the misty fog enshrouds themIn a dim and dreary pall;When the streets all fade to dreamland,And the people follow fast,And it seems as though the sunshineWas for evermore gone past;Then we glide among the house-tops,And we track the murky waste,And we go about our businessWith a cheerful earnest haste.Not as though our food were plenty,Or no dangers we might meet;But as though the work of livingWas a healthy work and sweet.When the gentle snow descendeth,Like a white and glistening shroud,For the year whose life hath ended,Floated upwards like a cloud;Then although the open countryShineth very bright and fair,And the town is overclouded,Yet we still continue there.Even till the spring returneth,Bringing with it brighter birds,Unto whom the city peopleGive their love and gentle words,And we yet again, descendedTo become the least of all,Take our name as "only sparrows,"And are slighted till we fall.Still we're happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be;For we have a work and do it,Therefore very blithe are we.We enliven sombre winter,And we're loved while it doth last,And we're not the only creaturesWho must live upon the past.With a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,We let all the slights go by,And we do not feel they hurt us,Or becloud the summer sky.We are happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be,For we know the good CreatorEven cares for such as we.
When the summer-time is endedAnd the winter days are near;When the bloom hath all departedWith the childhood of the year;When the martins and the swallowsFlutter cowardly away,Then the people can rememberThat the sparrows always stay.That although we're plain and songless,And poor city birds are we,Yet before the days of darknessWe, the sparrows, never flee.But we hover round the window,And we peck against the pane,While we twitteringly tell themThat the spring will come again.And when drizzly dull NovemberFalls so gloomily o'er all,And the misty fog enshrouds themIn a dim and dreary pall;When the streets all fade to dreamland,And the people follow fast,And it seems as though the sunshineWas for evermore gone past;Then we glide among the house-tops,And we track the murky waste,And we go about our businessWith a cheerful earnest haste.Not as though our food were plenty,Or no dangers we might meet;But as though the work of livingWas a healthy work and sweet.When the gentle snow descendeth,Like a white and glistening shroud,For the year whose life hath ended,Floated upwards like a cloud;Then although the open countryShineth very bright and fair,And the town is overclouded,Yet we still continue there.Even till the spring returneth,Bringing with it brighter birds,Unto whom the city peopleGive their love and gentle words,And we yet again, descendedTo become the least of all,Take our name as "only sparrows,"And are slighted till we fall.Still we're happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be;For we have a work and do it,Therefore very blithe are we.We enliven sombre winter,And we're loved while it doth last,And we're not the only creaturesWho must live upon the past.With a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,We let all the slights go by,And we do not feel they hurt us,Or becloud the summer sky.We are happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be,For we know the good CreatorEven cares for such as we.
When the summer-time is endedAnd the winter days are near;When the bloom hath all departedWith the childhood of the year;
When the summer-time is ended
And the winter days are near;
When the bloom hath all departed
With the childhood of the year;
When the martins and the swallowsFlutter cowardly away,Then the people can rememberThat the sparrows always stay.
When the martins and the swallows
Flutter cowardly away,
Then the people can remember
That the sparrows always stay.
That although we're plain and songless,And poor city birds are we,Yet before the days of darknessWe, the sparrows, never flee.
That although we're plain and songless,
And poor city birds are we,
Yet before the days of darkness
We, the sparrows, never flee.
But we hover round the window,And we peck against the pane,While we twitteringly tell themThat the spring will come again.
But we hover round the window,
And we peck against the pane,
While we twitteringly tell them
That the spring will come again.
And when drizzly dull NovemberFalls so gloomily o'er all,And the misty fog enshrouds themIn a dim and dreary pall;
And when drizzly dull November
Falls so gloomily o'er all,
And the misty fog enshrouds them
In a dim and dreary pall;
When the streets all fade to dreamland,And the people follow fast,And it seems as though the sunshineWas for evermore gone past;
When the streets all fade to dreamland,
And the people follow fast,
And it seems as though the sunshine
Was for evermore gone past;
Then we glide among the house-tops,And we track the murky waste,And we go about our businessWith a cheerful earnest haste.
Then we glide among the house-tops,
And we track the murky waste,
And we go about our business
With a cheerful earnest haste.
Not as though our food were plenty,Or no dangers we might meet;But as though the work of livingWas a healthy work and sweet.
Not as though our food were plenty,
Or no dangers we might meet;
But as though the work of living
Was a healthy work and sweet.
When the gentle snow descendeth,Like a white and glistening shroud,For the year whose life hath ended,Floated upwards like a cloud;
When the gentle snow descendeth,
Like a white and glistening shroud,
For the year whose life hath ended,
Floated upwards like a cloud;
Then although the open countryShineth very bright and fair,And the town is overclouded,Yet we still continue there.
Then although the open country
Shineth very bright and fair,
And the town is overclouded,
Yet we still continue there.
Even till the spring returneth,Bringing with it brighter birds,Unto whom the city peopleGive their love and gentle words,
Even till the spring returneth,
Bringing with it brighter birds,
Unto whom the city people
Give their love and gentle words,
And we yet again, descendedTo become the least of all,Take our name as "only sparrows,"And are slighted till we fall.
And we yet again, descended
To become the least of all,
Take our name as "only sparrows,"
And are slighted till we fall.
Still we're happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be;For we have a work and do it,Therefore very blithe are we.
Still we're happy, happy, happy,
Never minding what we be;
For we have a work and do it,
Therefore very blithe are we.
We enliven sombre winter,And we're loved while it doth last,And we're not the only creaturesWho must live upon the past.
We enliven sombre winter,
And we're loved while it doth last,
And we're not the only creatures
Who must live upon the past.
With a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,We let all the slights go by,And we do not feel they hurt us,Or becloud the summer sky.
With a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,
We let all the slights go by,
And we do not feel they hurt us,
Or becloud the summer sky.
We are happy, happy, happy,Never minding what we be,For we know the good CreatorEven cares for such as we.
We are happy, happy, happy,
Never minding what we be,
For we know the good Creator
Even cares for such as we.
Is it not pleasant to think of the children having those words to read—painted in pretty colours, too—rather than looking at a blank wall? Sometimes I think we might even hope to carry with us the hearts of people by setting up for them deliberately very solemn and beautiful words indeed, coloured richly in lasting tiles. I do not see why at any rate our churches should not bear on their face somemessage to the outside world. I was fancying the other day, as I looked at the great, blank, dirty, dead side wall of a London church, which was seen from a principal thoroughfare, and which bounded the graveyard, long disused, but full of graves, how beautiful it would be to put in coloured tiles, along the whole length of the wall, Kingsley's words:
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,One grand, sweet song.
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,One grand, sweet song.
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,One grand, sweet song.
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,
One grand, sweet song.
The words are simple, and would go home to the hearts of every passer-by; the bright colours, the look of expensive care bestowed on them, the fact that they are on the wall of a church, would give them a look of serious purpose, too great, it seems to me, for any sense of jar as to their publicity to be felt for a moment. It seemed to me that as the hurrying crowd went its way along the thoroughfare, the words might recall to someone high purposes once entertained and long forgotten, either in thestruggle of life or the more deadening influence of success or ease—startle him to memories, at least, of a greater, nobler life than he was leading; to the weary and dejected it seemed to me they might point to the continuance in that great hereafter of all we seem to lose here, and all the while the words would be felt to be keeping watch over the dead, whose sudden silence is so hard to bear, but the harmony of whose grand, sweet song in that vast for-ever we catch now and again when wearedoing noble things, and so tuning our hearts into more perfect sympathy with the music of God's universe.
I have spoken mainly of making open spaces, because I think the usefulness of the parks and the embankment is much more generally known. I am rather afraid of their being supposed to supersede the need of small open spaces quite near the homes of the poor, than of their value being underrated. The old and the very young cannot get to them often,nor from all parts of London. But I ought hardly to pass them over in absolute silence; they certainly do meet a quite distinct want on the part of the stronger portion of the community, who can get some sense of power of expansion, can see the fair summer sun going down behind the towers of Westminster Abbey, a space of sky being visible, so rarely seen from the streets or courts. Let us be very thankful for them.
Also when I undertake to speak to you about open spaces, though I cannot to-day dwell on them at length, I dare not omit all reference to those which are perhaps most precious of any, and which are by no means secured to us as yet as the parks are—our commons—the only portion of the land of England which remains in a living sense of the birthright of the people of England, and which, bit by bit, gradually and insidiously is filched away, under this and that pretext, by one big landowner after another, quietly surrounded byhis effectual railing, and added to his park or field. Often is this done under shadow of law, often without any legal right, but just because no one is careful enough, or rich enough, or brave enough to oppose. My friends, there is a society which has done much good work, much unpopular work, which this session even saved you from encroachments on Mitcham and Barnes Commons; it is little known, it wants money support, and it deserves your full support of every kind—the Commons Preservation Society. Note down its address, 1, Great College Street, Westminster, give it what support you can, but above all if ever you see a common threatened, or a piece of one inclosed, write and ask the Society whether it is legally done—what chance of redress there is. The Society has set itself to fortify local effort by advice, by parliamentary support, sometimes by money; it watches over the interests of Englishmen in the small amount of uninclosed land yet remaining to them.While house is being added to house and field to field, while one small farm after another is being swallowed up in the big estate, there are yet left for the common inheritance of Englishmen who have small chance of ever owning even a little garden of their very own, some few moorland spaces, set with gorse and heather, fringed by solemn rank of guardian fir-trees, where in the sandy banks their children yet may hollow caves, where the heath-bell waves in the faint evening breeze, and from which—oh, wondrous joy to us Londoners—still the far blue distance may be seen, witness to us for ever, as it lies there still, and calm, and bright, that the near things which overshadow us, which seem so tremendous, like tall London houses, built by man, and covering so large a portion of our horizon and sky, hemming us in with terrible oppressive sense of dreariness, may fade back and back from us in distance, till they become even lovely in God's fair sunlight, little jagged peaks only againstHis calm sky, and all softened into sweetest colour by the light He sheds over them.
Keep those fair, far, still places for your children, and your children's children, if you can: the more cities increase, the more precious they will be; for the more man's soul will long for the beauty, for the quiet, which the city does not, cannot give.
FOOTNOTE:[8]Read at a meeting of the National Health Society, May 9, 1877.
[8]Read at a meeting of the National Health Society, May 9, 1877.
[8]Read at a meeting of the National Health Society, May 9, 1877.
Tender pity for the poor has been a growing characteristic of this age; a better sign of it still is the increased sense of duty to them, not only aspoormen, but asmen. There needs, however, it appears to me, something still before our charity shall be effectual for good. The feeling is there, the conscience is there, but there is wanting the wise thought and the resolute, because educated, will.
Our charity, if by the word we mean our loving-kindness, has been good in itself, but if we mean by the word, alms-giving, can weflatter ourselves that it has been productive of a satisfactory state of things? We have taught our poor to live in uncertainty as to their resources, which is producing among them a reckless want of forethought, which is quite appalling. The most ordinary occurrences of their lives—the regular winter frost which stops the work of some men year by year; the changes in the labour market, caused by the London season; the expenses attending illness; the gradual approach of old age—are not dwelt on now usually among the poor as reasons for trying to provide a fund to meet them. Thus there are hundreds of our people living on the extremest brink of pauperism or starvation, learning more and more to be dependent on the chance coal-ticket, or half-crown, or blanket; and if it does not happen to be given at the moment when it is wanted, how forlorn is the position of the improvident man? But look also on the even more important question of their spirit, and of theirrelation to those above them in class. Can there be energy, independence, vigour, healthy activity among them? Can there be between them and the donors any of that happy manly interchange of thought, by which the possessors of education, refinement, leisure, might help, or be helped by, the active, self-reliant working-man, with his large capacity for fresh vigorous joy, and his store of power accumulated during a long period of endurance and patient effort? If different classes, like different people, have separate characters which are meant to act and react one on the other, are we not, by allowing the help to be one of a dole of money, destroying the possibility of the better help that might have been?
And is our money doing any good? Did you ever see the district—the family—the individual that was richer for this repeated alms-giving? Has it ever been powerful, even for outside good, to be recipients? Is the bed better covered in the long run for the lentblankets, or the children better fed for the free distribution of soup? Or is it consistent with our ideal that there should be this body of people dependent for the most ordinary necessities of life on the gifts of another class? Rely upon it, if we foster this state of things it will continue to increase.
Here we are, however, in the midst of this alms-giving, aimless, thoughtless, ineffectual to achieve any object its donors had in view. It is a gigantic system, or rather no system, which has grown up around us. What is our duty with regard to it? Specially what is the duty of those of us who are, in any sense of the word, trustees of charitable funds?
There is a society which you all know well enough by name—the Charity Organisation Society—which has set itself to help distributors of alms in two important ways. First, it has offered to examine, free of all charge, carefully, for anyone who wants to learn about them, the circumstances and character ofapplicants for relief. Donors cannot decide what help it is wise to give until they know all about an applicant; the Society can learn such facts in a far more complete way than donors possibly can. Clearly then, to my mind, donors or distributors of gifts ought to accept this proffered help.
But the Society offers a second advantage; it will give an opinion on the case of an applicant. When the facts respecting his condition and character are ascertained, the problem is simply this. How can he be so helped that the help may soon be needed no longer; how placed speedily out of the reach of want, in an honourable useful place where he can help himself? Or if his need be necessarily chronic, how can he be provided for adequately and regularly—so regularly that he shall be tempted neither to begging nor extravagance? It is very difficult to set a man up again in the world; and the main hope of doing it is to pause deliberately over his case, to bring tobear upon it all the collected information, all the practised experience, and intelligent thought of men and women accustomed to think out such problems, and to watch the results of many attempts to solve them. The ordinary district visitor has no qualifications for forming an opinion on the best way of meeting the difficulties of the case, nor usually has the busy clergyman much more. The visitor has very rarely even a glimmering notion that there is such a way of dealing with the poverty she pities, she hardly dreams that it is possible to attack it at its roots, and so she gives the ticket or the shilling. The clergyman usually feels that this is an unsatisfactory way of treating the matter; but he knows probably no more than the visitor, in what part of the country there may be an opening for work for the man whose trade is slack in London; nor what training would enable the invalid girl who can only use her hands, and lies bed-ridden and helpless, to contribute somethingto the common income; nor what institution would receive, and how the guardians might pay for, the cripple who is made an excuse for begging for the whole family, and how he might learn a trade, and in the future honourably support himself. It is only a body accustomed to deal with many such cases, to devote attention to practical questions mainly, that acquires the knowledge of what measures can be taken under different circumstances, and knows the latest news as to the labour market, and the opportunities open to the needy.
I am far from saying that the Charity Organisation Society has, as yet, in each of the thirty-eight divisions of London, a committee capable of giving a valuable opinion on a case; nor even that in every district the committee has realised that to give such an opinion is its real end and aim. But I do say that this is the intention of the Society, and that on the committee, if anywhere, you will in each neighbourhood find the men and women mostalive to the importance of fulfilling this duty; for more and more of the district committees are finding members who set before themselves the necessity of learning to execute it.
I know little of your own Charity Organisation Committee, but I would ask you to remember that it is not a separate society coming from afar and settling down among you. It is what you workers among the poor make it; it is you who ought to form it. And that which I said above you separately were not able to do, collectively you, and none but you, can do—decide what help it is wise to give to every poor man or woman who comes before you at a crisis in life. A representative from every local charity, a few men conversant with the work of every great metropolitan charity, two or three active guardians, the clergy and ministers of all denominations, or some leading member of their staff or congregations, these should form your district committee. After careful investigationby a skilled paid officer, the case of an applicant for charity, when it comes before such a committee as that, has a fair chance of really effectual treatment. Either someone present will know of work that needs to be done; or, if the applicant's wants can only be met by distinct gift, then, all the givers or their representatives being present, the gift can after due deliberation be made without chance of overlapping, with certainty that it is sufficient and its object well thought out.
District visitors will find it valuable to study with the district committee many questions respecting relief. The work of visitors is one in which I have long taken the deepest interest; their gentle influence in their informal visits is just what is wanted to bridge over the great chasm which lies open between classes. Rich and poor should know one another simply and naturally as friends, and the more visitors can enter into such real friendship the better. When, however, they attempt to dealwith cases of relief, I feel that they possess few of the qualifications requisite for doing it wisely, and I would most seriously urge them, either to leave this branch of help entirely to others, or with deliberate purpose to set themselves to learn all that it is essential to them to know before they can do it well. For there is more at stake, a great deal more, than the wasting of their own or their friends' money: that would matter comparatively little if the effect of mistake in its use were not positively disastrous to the poor. But it is disastrous. We go into the house of a young working-man; we meet with ready gift the first need as it arises; we do not pause to remember how the effort to meet that need was a duty for the young husband and father. We discourage the quiet confidence, the careful forethought which would have made a man of him; we diminish his sense of responsibility; the way he spends his earnings begins toappear to him a matter of smaller moment—he dissipates them in the public-house; he gets into the habit of doing so; we, or succeeding visitors, feel the hopelessness of help increase; not only does the drag upon our purse become heavier and heavier, but it becomes clearer to us that the money we give does not adequately feed the wife and children, while it does lead the husband to hope that if he yields to the strongly increased temptation to drink, some lady will help, some charity interpose, the children won't quite starve. We have weakened the natural ties, broken the appointed order, and the neat, tidy little home has sunk into the drunkard's desolate room.
Or we take up the case of a widow, and instead of once for all considering how much she can do for her own and her children's support, and deliberately uniting our forces to relieve her once for all of that part of the cost which she cannot meet, we let her come up to our house whenever she cannot fulfilher engagements, and we give her, when her story or tears move us, a few shillings. We ease our own feelings by doing this, but what besides have we done. We have not fortified her for the battle of life; we have not cultivated in her the habit of deliberate arrangement as to the best expenditure of her scanty means. We have done something to teach her how easy it is, if she gets into debt and the brokers are put in, to go round to one house after another and get a few shillings from each, and having met the difficulty for the moment to begin involving herself in another. Look at her a few years later. The sincere grief of the widowed mother has been degraded into a means of begging; the ready tears come, or appear to come, at call; the sacred grief is for everyone to see in hopes someone may alleviate it with half-a-crown. The sense of a right to be helped has grown, the sense of her own duty has diminished. Work has not paid so well that it has been steadilypersevered in. The easily begged money has been easily spent; the powers of endurance, the habits of industry are gone; grief is her stock-in-trade; its frequent use has diminished the power of feeling strongly and sincerely. Perhaps she has discovered that professions of piety are rewarded with half-crowns, and expressions, once sincere, have become cant phrases. We are shocked at her; we say we were glad enough to help her when she was working, and was feeling simply and strongly, but now it is different. My friends, who made it different? God gave her the sacred sorrow and the difficulties of her life to soften and to train her. It might have been well that we should like true friends have stood by her, and so far diminished her difficulty as to make it just within her power to meet it; it might have been well for us to support one child, to pay school-fees, or to help in some other way by some one distinct payment, so regular as to become very natural to her, butin some way we ought to have left her responsibilities to have been met by her own energies. Then we should have been able to take and keep the position of friends; she would not have learned to watch our faces to see what expression on her part extorted pity or shillings best, but would have come to us when the memories of the past were too heavy to bear alone, and the words of hope in God's mercy and wisdom would have been spoken from the heart to the heart.
Let visitors be friends, and nothing else, leaving money help to others; or else study seriously all wise effectual ways of help, that they may not be driven to miserable doles of half-crowns and bread-tickets, which are surely destructive of vigorous life in the poor, and of natural healthy relation between friends. I could, you could yourselves, multiply instances of this a hundredfold. It will be more profitable to study how in the future they may be avoided.
A marked advantage of district committees is that, while doing nothing to weaken local action, they present a larger area to the sympathy of their members. When parishes were first constituted, each parish must in general have had its own rich and poor. But this has ceased to be so in many cases, owing to the large population dwelling in a small area. The tendency of late has been to subdivide ecclesiastical districts. The rich are not anxious to have the poor living in very close proximity to them, and every class is more and more driven into quarters appropriated exclusively to itself. The consequence of this is—and increasingly—that if a rich man says, "I will help in my own parish," there are vast numbers of poor living perhaps near to him, probably within what in the country would be considered easy walking distance, and certainly in the same town, whose lives he does not touch. I cannot tell you how terrible to me appear thesevast spaces of ground covered with houses inhabited by persons at one dead level of poverty; sometimes the tracts appropriated to the houses of the wealthy seem to me in another way more terrible. All good gifts, for which we are bound to lift our hearts in praise to God, seem to retain their sanctity only when they are shared; and it seems to me often as if the luxury, the ease, the splendour, yes, even the fair spaces of lawn and terrace were almost ghastly when they are enjoyed by those who never consider the poor, in whom no spirit of self-sacrifice leads to resolute appropriation of some large share of the good things to those who are out of the way. There are few who do not recognise the duty of giving or sharing in some measure; but the subdivision of districts, leaving one poor and another rich, the ever-extending size of London making the poor farther and farther off from the rich, has a tendency to shut out many poor from this sympathy.
The Charity Organisation Society has done something to mitigate this evil, to make you feel that you are parts of a larger whole than your ecclesiastical parish. The poor-law has compulsorily made you feel it. When it became clear that it was intolerably unjust to throw the burden of the largest number of paupers on the poorest ratepayers, poor-law areas were enlarged so as to unite rich and poor neighbourhoods; also, certain expenditure was charged to a metropolitan rate. That poor-law arrangement, however, never touched your hearts. It is doubtful whether the dwellers in Fitzroy Park feel more united with those in Somer's Town because they are both in St. Pancras parish, nor much added tenderness for the sick man in Poplar, because if he has small-pox he is carried to a hospital supported by a metropolitan rate. The alteration has done good because it has equalised burdens, and enforced the fulfilment of a duty. Butthe Charity Organisation Society does more—it asks you to accept this duty as a privilege, and voluntarily and gladly to help, remembering the less favoured districts which are near you, or which, though farther off, still belong to the same city. It has taken the poor-law boundary to mark its area; it has asked all charitable people within that area to meet and consult about their charities; it has arranged that the working expenses of office and agent shall be shared by a large district, it has formed a meeting-place, where workers for the poor shall be able to learn each what the other is doing, even at the farther extremes of a long parish like this. You will certainly enlarge your sympathies if thus you meet; for when there come before you the stories of living men and women wanting help in districts where funds are not abundant, when you learn to know the clergy and others labouring in poorer places, you will begin to interpret the word "neighbour" in a large and liberal sense.
Do you realise how limited is our notion of it now, and what it has brought us to? Have you any picture before you of the parts of London where for acres and acres the ground is covered with the dwellings of the poor alone, where no landlord can afford many feet of space unbuilt over at the back of his house; where the clergyman toils on almost singlehanded, for unrefreshed year after unrefreshed year; where curates will hardly go and work; where no gay life enlivens the monotony of toil, which is interrupted only by the wild unholy carousal of a Bank holiday; where the clergyman's wife can hardly sleep because of the wild mirth of the surrounding streets? We talk of the claims of parish and neighbourhood, and they should be seriously remembered; but are they not sometimes urged rather from a lazy desire not to take the trouble to go farther, or from the easy agreeable wish to oblige the neighbouring minister, who calls to ask a new resident forhelp in the Sunday school or district? If, indeed, the decision is a deliberate choice of a near duty distinctly seen, rather than of a far off one less realised, one may respect it. But we must remember there are other claims than those arising out of proximity, and that it may be our duty to realise what is not brought under our eyes. We live upon the labours of the poor in districts far from our homes. Our fathers and brothers may have chambers, factories, offices right down among them. We are content to draw our wealth from these. Does this imply no duty? Is the whole duty fulfilled when the head of a firm draws a cheque for donations to the local charity, and are the gentle ministrations of the ladies of the family to be confined to the few pampered poor near their house? It is our withdrawal from the less pleasant neighbourhood to build for ourselves substantial villas with pleasant gardens, which has left these tracts what they are. Even when thereis nothing sensationally terrible in the wickedness or destitution of a place, when it is covered with little houses of laundresses or small shopkeepers, are we who have advantages of education or refinement not needed there? Have we no bright flowers to take to the people, no books to lend, no sweet sympathy and young brightness to carry among them? Ought we not to be accumulating those memories which will give us a place near them as real friends if the time of loss and trial comes?
I would urge you all who are inhabitants of a large parish, markedly divided into poor and rich districts, as citizens of a city fearfully so divided, to weigh well your duties; and, never forgetting the near ones to home and neighbourhood, to remember also that when Europe is sacrificed to England, England to your own town, your own town to your parish, your parish to your family, the step is easy to sacrifice your family toyourself. Whereas if you try to accept the duty as our Lord showed it, and to carry with you joyfully in such acceptance those who are nearest and dearest to you, you will find that a large and true imagination will show you the place which every duty should hold in your lives; you will not find any human being so away but that your sympathy will reach, and your desire to help will tell in due degree if the need of help comes. Your life, be it shadowed ever so much by individual loss or pain, will be full and blessed; for all God's children will be dear to you, and His earth sacred; you will have no real conflict of duties, nor long doubt about their relative importance; no pain shall overwhelm, nor doubt confound you; for the blessing of guidance shall be yours, and you will assuredly learn what those words mean, "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee." "Though the Lord give theethe bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more; but thine eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a word saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand or when ye turn to the left."