Part 18

The holiday of early summer is Whit-Monday, which is also a movable feast, and falls seven weeks after Easter, so that it is due on some day between May 12th and June 12th. I have already observed that the cold east wind, which retards our spring, generally ceases before the middle of May, though in our climate nothing is certain—not even hot weather in July and August. When it falls reasonably late, say in the first week of June, there is some probability that the day will be warm, even though there may be showers; that the woods will be resonant with warblers, the fields golden with buttercups, the hedges bright with spring flowers, the bushes white and pink with May blossom, and the orchards glorious with the pink of the apple and the creamy white of the cherry and the pear. On this day the East Londoner goes farther afield; he is not content with Hampstead Heath, and he will not remain under cover at the Crystal Palace. Trains convey him out of London. He goes down to Southend, at the mouth of the Thames; there, at low tide, he can gaze upon a vast expanse of mud or he can walk down a pier a mile and a half long, or, if it is high tide, he may delight in the dancing waters with innumerable boats and yachts. Above all, at Southend he will find all the delights that endear the seaside to him; there is the tea with shrimps—countless shrimps, quarts and gallons of shrimps; he is among his own kind; there is no one to scoff when, to the music of the concertina, he takes out his companion to dance in the road; he sings his music-hall ditties unchecked; he bawls the cry of the day, and it is counted unto him for infinite humor. Southend on Whit-Monday is a place for the comic man and the comic artist; it is also the place for the humorist.

One must not be hard upon the Whit-Monday holiday-maker. He is at least good-humored; there is less drunkenness than one would expect; there is very little fighting, but there is noise—yes, there is a good deal of noise. These children of nature, if they feel happy, instinctively laugh and shout to proclaim their happiness. They would like the bystanders to share it with them; they cannot understand the calm, cold and unsympathetic faces which gaze upon them as they go bawling on their way. They would like a friendly chorus, a fraternal hand upon the shoulder, an invitation to a drink. Let us put ourselves in their place and have patience with them.

I have already mentioned Epping Forest in connection with the cockney hunt of Easter Monday. But to be seen in the true splendor of its beauty Epping Forest must be visited in early June. It is the East Londoner’s forest; fifty years ago he had two; on the east of Epping Forest lay another and a larger, called Hainault Forest. It was disforested and cleared and laid out in farms in the year 1850. Epping, however, remains. It is about sixteen miles north of the river; encroachments have eaten into its borders, and almost into its very heart. For a long time no one paid any attention. Suddenly, however, it was discovered that the forest, which had once covered twelve thousand acres, now covered only three thousand. Three fourths had been simply stolen. Then the City of London woke up, appointed a verderer and rangers, drew a map of what was left, and sternly forbade any more encroachments. What is left is a very beautiful wild forest; deer roam about its glades; for the greater part of the year it is quite a lonely place, only receiving visitors on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. It is a narrow, cigar-shaped wood about a mile broad and eight miles long. There are outlying bits on the north and on the south. The ancient continuity of the forest is gone, but there are tangles of real wood and coppice here and there; the central point of the forest, that which attracts most people, is a small bit of wild wood lying on a hill. Here the ground is rough and broken; everywhere are oaks, elms, beeches, and hornbeams, with a veritable jungle of wild roses, sloes, thorns, and brambles. The woods are filled with singing birds; the ground is covered with wild flowers. Imagine the joy of the East Londoner on Whit-Monday when he plunges up to his knees in the buttercups, the wild anemones, and the flowering grasses, while the lark sings overhead, and thrush and blackbird call from the woods around him, and the sun warms him and the sweet air refreshes him. Such an one I followed once and watched. He was a young fellow of twenty-one or so, with his wife, a girl of nineteen, behind him. He had taken the pipe out of his mouth; instinctively he felt that the pipe was out of place; he threw himself down upon the grass and clasped his hands under his head. “Gawspel truth, old gal!” he cried, out of the fullness of his heart. “It’s fine! It’s fine!”

It was fine, and it was Whit-Monday, and a hundred thousand others like unto this young fellow and his bride were wandering about the forest that day.

There are not many students of archæology in East London, which is a pity, since there are many points of interest within their reach. All round the forest, for instance, and within the forest there are treasures. To begin with, there are two ancient British camps still in good preservation; there is a most picturesque deserted church, called old Chingford church; there is the ancient Saxon church, whose walls are oaken trunks, put up to commemorate the halt of those who carried St. Cuthbert’s bones; there is Waltham Abbey, where King Harold lies buried; and if you take a little walk to the east you will find yourself at Chigwell, and you may dine at the inn where, in the Gordon troubles, as presented in “Barnaby Rudge,” the landlord found a trifle of glass broken. But the joy in things ancient has not yet been found out by the London workman. Now and again he is a lover of birds or a student of flowers; for such an one Epping is a haunt of which he can never tire, for it is the only place near London where he can watch heron, hawk, kingfisher, and the wild water-fowl.

Or the people go farther afield by cheap excursion trains. Their coming is not welcomed by the inhabitants of the towns which are their destination. They go to Brighton or to Hastings; they sit in long rows, side by side, upon the shingle idly watching the waves; they go to Portsmouth and sit on Southsea beach watching the ships. They even get across to the Isle of Wight. Last year I was at a little town in that island called Yarmouth. I there made the acquaintance of an ancient mariner who was employed by Lloyd’s to take the names of all the ships which passed into the Solent, here a narrow strait. He told me in conversation that I ought to see their church, which is old and beautiful. I replied that I had attempted to do so, but found the door shut. Upon which he gave me the following remarkable reason for this apparent want of hospitality. I quote his words to show the local opinion of the tripper. “You see,” he said, “it’s all along of they London trippers. One Whit-Monday they came here and they found the church doors open and in they went, nosebags and cigarettes and all. Then the parson he came along, and he looked in. ‘Well,’ says the parson, ‘Dash my wig!’ he says. ‘Get up off of them seats,’ he says, ‘and take your ’ats off your ’eads,’ he says, ‘and take they stinkin’ bits o’ paper out of your mouths,’ he says, ‘and get out of the bloomin’ church,’ he says. And he puts the key in his own pocket, and that’s why you can’t get into the church.” The remarkable language attributed to the parson on this occasion illustrates the depth of local feeling about East London out on a holiday.

The August bank-holiday is a repetition of Whit-Monday, without the freshness of that early summer day. By the end of July the foliage of the trees has become dark and heavy; the best of the flowers are over in field as well as garden; the sadness of autumn is beginning. All through the summer, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, the excursion trains are running in all directions, but especially to the seaside; the excursion steamers run to Southend, Walton, Margate, and Ramsgate. For those who stay at home there are the East-End parks, Victoria Park, West Ham Park, Finsbury Park, Clissold Park, Wanstead Park. They are thronged with people strolling or sitting quietly along the walks. All these parks are alike in their main features; they are laid out in walks and avenues planted with trees; they contain broad tracts of green turf; there is an inclosure for cricket; sometimes there is a gymnasium, and there is an ornamental water, generally very pretty, with rustic bridges, swans, and boats let out for hire. Where there is no park, as at Wapping and Poplar by the riverside, there are recreation grounds. In all of them a band of music plays on stated evenings.

This restoration of the garden to the people is a great feature of modern attempts at civilization; it seems terrible that there should be no place anywhere for children to play except the streets, or for the old people to sit except in the public house. London is now dotted with parks, chiefly small and covered with gardens. Nearly all the churchyards have been converted into gardens; the headstones are ranged along the walls; they might just as well be taken away; one or two “altar tombs” are left. The rest of the ground is planted with flowering shrubs—lilac, laburnum, ribes, the Pyrus Japonica, and the like; the walks are asphalted, and seats are provided. Nearly all the year round one may see the old people walking about the paths or sitting in the sun; part of the ground is given to the children. It is difficult, indeed, to exaggerate the boon conferred upon a crowded city by these breathing-places, where one can be quiet. The summer amusements of the people, you will observe, are not all made up of noisy crowds and musical trippers; add the summer evening walk in the park and, all the year round, the rest in the garden that is a disused burial-ground.

For the children there is the day in the country. Every summer day long caravans of wagons filled with children, singing and shouting as they go, drive along the roads to the nearest country place, or excursion trains crammed with children are carried off to the nearest seaside places. They run about on the seashore, they bathe, they sit down to a tea of cake and buns, and they are taken home at night tired out but singing and shouting to the end. This summer “day out” is the one great holiday for the children; they scheme to get put on the lists of more than one excursion; they look forward to it; they count upon it. Every year vigorous appeals are made in the papers for help to send the children away upon their annual holiday; these appeals are of course pitched extravagantly high; they talk a conventional jargon about the little ones who grow up without ever gazing upon a green leaf or a tree. Rubbish! There is not a street anywhere in London where a garden, if it is only a disused burial-ground, is not accessible if the children choose to go there. Mostly the very little ones prefer the dirt pies in the gutter, but even for them the wagonette comes now and then to carry them off for the whole day to the grass of Victoria Park. Still, it is a very great thing that they should, once at least in the year, be carried away into real country and have a glimpse of meadows, woods, and cows and sheep.

When they grow older they are still better off. It is quite common now for young men who carry on the Settlements and the boys’ clubs to get the lads under their care to save up week by week until they have amassed the sum of five shillings. On this capital, with management, they are enabled to get a week’s holiday by the seaside. It is a glorious time for them. A convenient place is found; it must be on the seashore; it should be quite free from any town or village; there must be no temptations of any kind; the lads are there to breathe fresh air and life, quite cut off from any suggestion of town life. They sleep, every boy in his own rug, on dry, clean straw in a barn, which is also their refectory, their lecture-hall, their concert and their singing-room. On the seashore there are boats for them; they row and sail and they go deep-sea fishing; they bathe every day, and they have swimming matches; on the sands they run races; in the evening they sing, they box, they look at dissolving views, and they lie down on the straw to rest. Their food is plain; it consists principally of boiled beef and potatoes, with cocoa and coffee and bread and butter. Of course this magnificent holiday demands a head and leader and obedience. But there is hardly ever any hitch or breakdown or row among the lads.

The hopping, considered as an amusement, should be placed next, but we have already shown the place it takes in the year of the factory girl. It is indeed amusement to all concerned, especially if the weather be fine; it is amusement with profit; the hoppers come home with a pocket full of money; they have left their pasty cheeks in the country, and they bring back rosy cheeks and freckled noses and sunburned hands, with the highest spirits possible. The hopping, I confess, is not always idyllic. Last autumn it was reported that Maidstone Gaol was filled with hoppers charged with being disorderly; their camps might be conducted with more care for cleanliness; London roughs should not be allowed to come down on Sunday and mar this Arcadia. But the complainant, a well-known clergyman of the district, spoke with moderated condemnation. A more careful classification of the families in each encampment, he thinks; some check on the Sunday drink, which now flows at the sweet will of the people; some hindrance to the incursion of the Sunday rough; a more careful system of inspection—these things would go far to remove all reproach from the hopping. Meantime, as a proof of the substantial results of the work the roadway outside the principal station for their return was this year observed to be strewn with the old boots discarded by the hoppers when they bought new ones on their way home.

The river Lea, which, according to some, is the natural boundary of East London,—but it has leaped across that boundary,—is part of the summer amusements. The stream at its mouth, where it is a tributary to the Thames, is a black and murky river indeed. Higher up above the works it is a pleasant little river, winding along at leisure through a broad, marshy valley. The ground is soft and easy to be worked, the incline is so gradual that it might easily and at small expense be made an ornamental stream, moderately broad and able to carry racing boats, flowing beside gardens and under summer-houses and between orchards from its source to its mouth. Instead of this, it has been mercilessly divided into “cuts,” channels, and mill-streams running off at wide angles, joining again lower down, separating again into other cuts and channels, again to unite. On its way it receives the refuse of mills, the refuse of towns; it passes Ware and Ryehouse, Tottenham, Clapton, and Hackney; its course unfortunately lies for the most part through a broad level of soft earth—marshy and low—which permits these cuttings and humiliations. It is accused of being a sewer; young men row upon it; boys bathe in it, but with remonstrance and complaint. The stream is, it must be confessed, in its lower reaches, offensive. Sore throats are caught beside its banks; sometimes people write indignantly about it to the papers. There is a little fuss, summer passes, in the winter no one goes near the river Lea, things are forgotten, and all goes on as before.

It is not possible for a river to flow for thirty miles without having lovely stretches and picturesque corners. The Lea, with all its drawbacks, does possess these inevitable lapses into beauty. But in these pages we cannot stop to point them out. Where the Lea is beautiful it is outside the widest limits assignable to East London. Where the Lea is ugly, dirty, and disreputable, it used to form the eastern boundary to East London.

In the brief sketch of the summer amusements I have said nothing of the bicycle. Now, all the roads outside London are on Saturday and Sunday dotted with the frequent bicycle. It goes out in companies of twenty and thirty; it goes out by twos and threes; it goes out singly. On one Sunday twenty-five thousand bicycles were counted crossing one bridge over the Thames and making for the country beyond. And it seems that there are none so poor as not to afford a bicycle. The secret is, I believe, that a second-hand bicycle, or a bicycle of the last fashion but one, or a damaged bicycle, may be purchased of its owner for a mere trifle, and these lads learn very quickly how to repair the machine themselves.

But the summer all too quickly draws to an end. By the middle of September twilight falls before seven. There are no more evening spins ten miles out and back again; by the end of October twilight falls at five; then there are no more Saturday afternoons on the road. The weather breaks, the roads are heavy, the bicycle is laid aside for the next four months, perhaps for more, because the cold east wind of early spring does not make the roads pleasant except for the hardiest and the strongest. The winter amusements begin. For the factory girls and the dockers we have seen what they are: the street first and foremost; always the street, imperfectly lit, the pavement crowded; always the street, in which the girls march up and down three or four abreast. Their laugh is loud, but it is not forced; their jokes and their badinage with the lads are commonplace and coarse, but they pass for wit; they enjoy the quick pulse when all the world is young; they are as happy as any girls in any other class; they need not our pity; youth, if it has enough to eat and its evening of amusement, is always happy.

They have, then, the boulevard without the café, the street with the public house and the invitation from youth, prodigal of its pence, to step in and have a drink. In addition, they have the music-hall and the theater. For some there is the club; but only a few, comparatively, can be persuaded to go into the club for an hour or two every evening. Most of them have no desire for a quiet place; they are obliged to be quiet in the factory; at night they like to make up for the day’s long silence.

So with their companions, the casual hands, the factory lads, the Hooligans, the children of the kerb, they rejoice in the days of their youth.

Let us mount the social scale; we come to the craftsman in steady work, to the small clerk, to the small shopkeeper. Not that these are of equal rank. The working-man consorts with other working-men; the small clerk calls himself a gentleman; the small shopkeeper is a master. What have they for amusements? The small shopkeeper seems to get along altogether without any amusement. He keeps his “place” open till late in the evening; he shuts it, takes his supper, and goes to bed. His social ambitions are limited by the distinctions to be acquired in his chapel; he reads a halfpenny journal for all his literature.

As for what is offered to those who will accept these gifts, there are lectures first and foremost; there are the lectures offered every winter at Toynbee Hall. These lectures are not, if you please, given by the “man in the street”; the lecturers are the most distinguished men in their own lines to be found; there is no talking “down” to the Whitechapel audience; those serious faces show that they are here to be taught, if the lecturer has anything to tell them, or to receive suggestions and advice; they are all of the working-class; they are far more appreciative than the audiences of the West End; they read and think; they have been trained and encouraged to read and think by Canon Barnett for many years; they are very much in earnest, and they do not come with vacuous minds; as Emerson said of the traveler so we may say of a man who listens to a lecture—he takes away what he brought with him. About the Settlements and the gifts which they offer, with full hands, to the people, I speak in the next chapter.

What Barnett and Toynbee Hall have done for the intellectual side the People’s Palace has done for the musical side. Its cheap concerts have led the people, naturally inclined to music, insensibly into ways of good taste; the palace was fortunate, at first, in getting a musical director who knew how to lead the people on; one of the most gratifying successes of this institution has been its music. They have now their own orchestra, vocal and instrumental. At the same place are held exhibitions, from time to time, of East London industries, of pictures, of arts and crafts of all kinds. Here is the finest gymnasium in London, and here are many clubs—for foot-ball, cricket, and games of all kinds.

One omission in the amusements of London must be noted. There are no public dancing-halls. I see no reason at all why a public dancing-hall should not be carried on with as much attention to good behavior as a private dance, or a theater, or any other place where people assemble together. It requires only the coöperation of the people themselves, without the aid of the police. Meantime, there is no form of exercise, to my mind, so delightful to the young and so healthful as dancing; nothing that more satisfies the restlessness of youth than the rapid and rhythmic movement of the limbs in the dance. Nature makes the young long to jump about; education should take in hand their jumping and make it part of the orderly recreation which we are substituting for the old brutal sports. Dancing was tried at the People’s Palace; it was a great success; the balls given in the Queen’s Hall were crowded, and the people were as orderly as could be desired. But, indeed, the whole feeling of the assembly was in favor of order.

The theater and the music-hall claim, and claim successfully, their supporters; concerning the former one has only to recognize that it may be a school of good manners, as well as of good sentiments, and that it is also an institution capable of ruining a whole generation. The pieces given at the theaters of East London are, so far as I have observed, chiefly melodramas. The music-halls are places frankly of amusement, and for the most part, I believe, vulgar enough, but not otherwise mischievous.

And there is the public billiard-room, with all that it means—the betting man, the professional player, the proximity to the bar, the beer and the tobacco, and the talk. It attracts the young clerk more readily than the young craftsman. It is his first step downward. If it does not plunge him beneath the waves after the fashion that we have witnessed, it will keep him where he is and what he is—a writing machine, a machine on hire at a wage not so very much better than a typewriting instrument, all his life. Let us rather contemplate the thousands of lads who attend the classes at the palace, the polytechnics, and the Settlements; let us rather think of those who crowd into the concerts, sit as students at the lectures and listen and look on while the guide leads them round the exhibitions.

In this long list of amusements I must have omitted some, perhaps many. For instance, I have not spoken of reading or of literature. The craftsman of East London has not yet begun to read books; at present he only reads the paper; his children read the penny dreadfuls, and are beginning to read books.