RECREATION IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.[1]
Recreation and Character.By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.October, 1906.
Recreation and Character.
By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.
October, 1906.
1A paper written for the Church Congress, and read at its meeting at Barrow-in-Furness by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Truro, the late C. W. Stubbs.
1A paper written for the Church Congress, and read at its meeting at Barrow-in-Furness by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Truro, the late C. W. Stubbs.
A people’splay is a fair test of a people’s character. Men and women in their hours of leisure show their real admiration and their inner faith. Their “idle words,” in more than one sense, are those by which they are judged.
No one who has reached an age from which he can overlook fifteen or twenty years can doubt but that pleasure-seeking has greatly increased. The railway statistics show that during the last year more people have been taken to seaside and pleasure resorts than ever before. On Bank Holidays a larger number travel, and more and more facilities are annually offered for day trips and evening entertainments.
The newspapers give many pages to recording games, pages which are eagerly scanned even when, as in the case of the “Daily News,” the betting on their results is omitted.
Face to face with these facts we need some principles to enable us to advise this pleasure-seeking generation what to seek and what to avoid. To arrive at principles one has to probe below the surface, to seek the cause of the pleasure given by various amusements. Briefly, what persons of allages seek in pleasure is (1) excitement, (2) interest, (3) memories. These are natural desires; no amount of preaching or scolding, or hiding them away will abolish them. It is the part of wisdom to recognize facts and use them for the uplifting of human nature.
May I offer two principles for your consideration?
1. Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement; it should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its foundation on greed or gain.
2. Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase capacities for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being, enrich memory and call forth effort.
If these principles have a basis of truth, the questions arise, “Are the common recreations of the people such as to encourage our hope of English progress? Do they make us proud of the growth of national character, and give us a ground of security for the high place we all long that England shall hold in the future?” The country may be lost as well as won on her playing fields.
Recreation means the refreshment of the sources of life. Routine wears life, and “It is life of which our nerves are scant”. The excitement which stirs the worn or sleeping centres of a man’s body, mind or spirit, is the first step in such refreshment, but followed by nothing else it defeats its own ends. It uses strength and creates nothing, and if unmixed with what endures it can but leave the partaker the poorer. The fire must be stirred, but unless fuel be supplied the flames will soon sink in ashes.
It behoves us then to accept excitement as a necessary part of recreation, and to seek to add to it those things which lead to increased resources and leave purer memories. Such an addition is skill. A wise manager of a boys’ refugeonce said to me that it was the first step upwards to induce a lad to play a game of skill instead of a game of chance. Another such addition is co-operation, that is a call on the receiver to give something. It is better for instance to play a game than to watch a game. It may, perhaps, be helpful to recall the principle, and let it test some of the popular pleasures.
Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement; it should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its foundation on greed or gain.
This principle excludes the recreations which, like drink or gambling, stir without feeding, or the pleasures which are blended with the sorrows of the meanest thing that feels. It excludes also the dull Museum which feeds without stirring, and makes no provision for excitement. Tried by this standard, what is to be said of Margate, Blackpool, and such popular resorts, with their ribald gaiety and inane beach shows? Of music halls, where the entertainment was described by Mr. Stead as the “most insufferable banality and imbecility that ever fell upon human ears,” disgusting him not so much for its immorality as by the vulgar stupidity of it all. Of racing, the acknowledged interest of which is in the betting, a method of self-enrichment by another’s impoverishment, which tends to sap the very foundations of honesty and integrity; of football matches, which thousands watch, often ignorant of the science of the game, but captivated by the hope of winning a bet or by the spectacle of brutal conflict; of monster school-treats or excursions, when numbers engender such monopolizing excitement that all else which the energetic curate or the good ladies have provided is ruthlessly swallowed up; shooting battues, where skill and effort giveplace to organization and cruelty; of plays, where the interest centres round the breaking of the commandments and “fools make a mock of sin”.
Such pleasures may amuse for the time, but they fail to be recreative in so far as they do not make life fuller, do not increase the powers of admiration, hope and love; do not store the memory to be “the bliss of solitude”. Of most of them it can be easily foretold that the “crime of sense will be avenged by sense which wears with time”. Such pleasures cannot lay the foundation for a glad old age.
Does this sound as if all popular pleasures are to be condemned? No! brought to the test of our second principle, there are whole realms of pleasure-lands which the Christian can explore and introduce to others, to the gladdening, deepening, and strengthening of their lives. May I read the principle again?
Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase the capacity for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being, enrich memory and call forth effort and co-operation.
Music, games of skill, books, athletics, foreign travel, cycling, walking tours, sailing, photography, picture galleries, botanical rambles, antiquarian researches, and many other recreations too numerous to mention call out the growth of the powers, as well as feed what exists; they excite active as well as passive emotions; they enlist the receiver as a co-operator; they allow the pleasure-seekers to feel the joy of being the creating children of a creating God.
As we consider the subject, the chasm between right and wrong pleasures, worthy and unworthy recreations, seems to become deeper and broader, often though crossed by bridges of human effort, triumphs of dexterity, evidences of skill wrought by patient practice, which, though calling for no thought in the spectator, yet rouses his admiration andprovides standards of executive excellence, albeit directed in regrettable channels.
Still, broadly, recreations may be divided between those which call for effort, and therefore make towards progress, and those which breed idleness and its litter of evils; but (and this is the inherent difficulty for reformers) the mass of the people, rich and poor alike, will not make efforts, and as the “Times” once so admirably put it—“They preach to each other the gospel of idleness and call it the gospel of recreation”.
The mass, however, is our concern. Those idle rich, who seek their stimulus in competitive expenditure; those ignorant poor, who turn to the examples of brute force for their pleasure; those destructive classes, whose delight is in slaying or eliminating space; they are all alike in being content to be “Vacant of our glorious gains, like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains”.
What can the clergymen and the clergy women do? It is not easy to reply, but there are some things they need not do. They need not promote monster treats, they need not mistake excitement for pleasure, and call their day’s outing a “huge success,” because it was accompanied by much noise and the running hither and thither of excited children; they need not use their Institutes and Schoolrooms to compete with the professional entertainer, and feel a glow of satisfaction because a low programme and a low price resulted in a full room; they need not accept the people’s standard for songs and recitations, and think they have “had a capital evening,” when the third-rate song is clapped, or the comic reading or dramatic scene appreciated by vulgar minds. Oh! the waste of curates’ time and brain in such “parish work”. How often it has left me mourning.
What the clergymen and women can do is to show the people that they have other powers within them for enjoyment, that effort promotes pleasure, and that the use of limbs, with (not instead of) brains, and of imagination, can be made sources of joy for themselves and refreshment for others. Too often, toys, playthings, or appliances of one sort or another are considered necessary for pleasure both of the young and the mature. Might we not concentrate efforts to provide recreation on those methods which show how people can enjoythemselves, their own powers and capacities? Such powers need cultivation as much as the powers of bread-winning, and they include observation and criticism. “What did you think of it?” should be asked more frequently than “How did you like it?” The curiosity of children (so often wearying to their elders) is a natural quality which might be directed to observation of the wonders of Nature, and to the conclusion of a story other than its author conceived.
“From change to change unceasingly, the soul’s wings never furled,” wrote Browning; and change brings food and growth to the soul; but the limits of interest must be extended to allow of the flight of the soul, and interests are often, in all classes, woefully restricted. It is no change for a blind man to be taken to a new view. Christ had to open the eyes of the blind before they could see God’s fair world, and in a lesser degree we may open the eyes of the born blind to see the hidden glories lying unimagined in man and Nature. In friendship also there are sources of recreation which the clergy could do much to foster and strengthen, and the introduction and opportunities which allow of the cultivation of friendship between persons of all classes with a common interest, is peculiarly one which parsons have opportunities to develop.
And last but not least, there are the joys which comefrom the cultivation of a garden—joys which continue all the year round, and which can be shared by every member of the family of every age. These might be more widely spread in town as well as country. Municipalities, Boards of Guardians, School Managers, and private owners often have both the control of people and land. If the Church would influence them, more children and more grown-ups might get health and pleasure on the land. I must not entrench on the subject of Garden Cities and Garden Suburbs—but the two subjects can be linked together, inasmuch as the purest, deepest, and most recreative of pleasures can be found in the gardens which are the distinctive feature of the new cities and suburbs.
If the clergy knew more of the people’s pleasures they would yearn more over their erring flocks and talk more on present-day subjects. Take horse-racing for instance, who can defend it? Who can find one good result of it, and its incalculable evils of betting, lying, cheating, drinking? Yet the clergy are strangely loth to condemn it! Is it because King Edward VII (God bless him for his love of peace) encourages the Turf? The King has again and again shown his care for his people’s good, and maybe he would modify his actions—and the world would follow his lead—if the Church would speak out and condemn this baneful national pleasure.
It is not for me to preach to the clergy, but they have so often preached to me to my edification, that I would in gratitude give them in return an exhortation; and so I beg you good men to give more thought to the people’s pleasures; and then give guidance from the Pulpit and the Press concerning them.
Henrietta O. Barnett.
Henrietta O. Barnett.