Part 7

If the Toynbee Hall aim is to help to make it possible that men should carry out the command given long ago of “Be ye perfect,” and if, as a modern lover of righteousness has put it, “the power of social life and manners is one of the great elements in our humanization, and unless we cultivate it we are incomplete”; then it is not an error that “pictures, pianos, and parties” should be pressed into service to fill up some of the incompleteness in the East London dweller’s life, and to help him to “save his soul alive”.

It is one of the saddest facts of life in this crowded, busy, tiring, and hurried part of London that it is more difficult to keep one’s soul (like one’s plants) alive than it is in gentler places, where folk get the aid of some of nature’s beauties, and some moments of that outside quiet which help to make it possible to fancy “the peace which passeth all understanding”. But because Whitechapel is Whitechapel and Toynbee Hall is in its midst, more artificial methods for gaining and keeping life must be adopted.

It is true that the Entertainment Committee prefer those gatherings which can take place out of doors in the country, where the guests gain all that comes from the charm of being graciously entertained under “the wider sky”; but still town parties are not to be despised, and, judging from the glad acceptance of those many who “cannot bid again,” they are generally enjoyed.

The method of food entertainment is very simple, so simple that it sometimes wars against the generous instincts of the hosts; but, after careful thought, it has been decided that the object of Toynbee Hall entertainments and parties will be more surely gained if “plain living and high thinking” can be maintained--not to mention the more mundane consideration that more friends can be welcomed as guests, if each is not so expensive. So the pleasure to be gained from rich or dainty food is neglected, and the guests are summoned in order to give them pleasures by increasing their interests. And among the means of doing this may be reckoned the fine thoughts of the great dumb teachers, the artists, of which those who care can learn as they turn over the portfolios, look at the photograph books, or study the gift pictures on the walls. The great in the musical world are called upon for offerings as the musically generous among the friends of Toynbee Hall pass on the plaintive ideas of Schumann, or the grand soul-stirring aspirations of Beethoven and Mozart.

To give pleasure is now almost universally considered to be a righteous duty, and when it is taken into consideration that the homes of most East Londoners are too narrow, their daily labour too great, and their resources too limited to permit them taking pleasure by entertaining in their own houses, it cannot but be considered as a gladdening sight when the Toynbee reception rooms are full of a happy, an amused, and an enjoying company.

To increase interests is not perhaps as yet recognized as so deep a human need, but it may be so, none the less for this; and to the young or to the much tempted, this opportunity of increasing their interests is of untold value.

Most young folk are better educated than their parents, and, with a keen sense of enjoyment, a belief in their own powers of self-guidance, and a happy blank on their page of disappointments, they are eager for “fuller life,” and will take its pleasure in some guise, warn their elders never so wisely. To give it them free from temptation, and in such a form that when the first novelty is worn off, it will still be true that “the best is yet to be”; to increase interests, until a self-centred and self-seeking existence shows itself in its true and despicable colours; to increase scientific interests with microscopes, magic lanterns, and experiments; literary interests with talks on books, recitations from the poets, scenes from Shakespeare; to increase musical interests with the aid of glee clubs, string quartettes, and solo and chorus songs; to increase interests on all sides is the aim of the Entertainment Committee, hoping that thus for some “all earth will seem aglow where ’twas but plain earth before”.

“The cultivation of social life and manners is equal to a moral impulse, for it works to the same end.... It brings men together, makes them feel the need of one another, be considerate of one another, understand one another.” So teaches Matthew Arnold. And the introduction of the guests to each other is no neglected feature in the Toynbee Hall gatherings. It is for this reason that guests of all classes are summoned together, that the hand-worker may have sympathy with the head-labourer, that the eager reformer may gather hints from the clear-visioned thoughts of the untried lad, or that the boy living a club life far removed from women’s power, may be introduced to a “ladye faire,” who may (if she will) become to him a “sheltering cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,” guiding him safely through stonier wastes than ever the old Israelites weathered. It is no slight duty this, to introduce one human being to another--to help them to pass quickly along the dull road of acquaintanceship and out into the sweet valley of knowledge and friendship, and there gain, the comfort, refreshment, and inspiration, without which it almost seems impossible to believe in and hold on to an ideal good.

The highest and noblest thing yet revealed to man is the human creature’s soul, “the very pulse of the machine,” and if Toynbee Hall parties do something to reveal the depths of one creature to another; if they do a little to keep alive and weld into solidarity the floating hopes and aspirations, which idly live in every human heart, but, alas! so often die from loneliness; if they do something to help people to care for one another and to see the higher vision; and if those thus caring are stirred to take thought for the growth and development of the larger, sadder world, then, perhaps, the “pictures, pianos, and parties” will not so ill have played their part in the work of Toynbee Hall.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

EASTER MONDAY ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

April, 1905.

[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.

Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath sets moving many thoughts. No drunkenness, no bad temper, no brutal rowdiness--but where are the family parties? Three-quarters of the people seem to be under twenty years of age. Where are the family groups such as are found in France or in the colder Denmark making pleasure by talk, or by gaiety, singing, or dancing, or acting--finding interest in things beautiful or new? There were, indeed, some families at Hampstead, and perambulators were driven through the thickest crowd, every one making room for the baby. But the father often looked bored and the mother worried. They were doing their duty, giving the children pleasure, and getting fresh air. The crowd was a young persons’ crowd--boys by themselves, girls by themselves, and a smaller number paired. They had come to be amused, and the caterers of amusement had established by the roadside the shows and shooting-galleries and swings such as are to be found within the reach of most crowded neighbourhoods. Organ-grinders played, sweets were exposed for sale, and the Heath Road was as packed with people as Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning. The people wandered over the Heath, but while they wandered they seemed listless, or on the watch for anything to occupy their attention. A few children dancing as every day they dance in Whitechapel at once drew together a crowd. Golder’s Hill Park, which was never more radiant in its beauty, was comparatively empty. The road outside, where public-houses had provided various attractions, was packed, not by people who were customers but by people watching one another and waiting for something to happen. But inside the park, where the County Council’s restaurant had spread its tables for tea, where from the Terrace there is a view of unequalled beauty, where the gardens are rich in flowers, there were only a few scattered groups.

The holiday is not a feast of brutality or drunkenness. No one need have been offended by sight or sound. The Shows, thanks to the County Council regulations, were all decent, and there was everywhere the courtesy of good temper. An observer, thinking of twenty years ago, would say, “What an improvement!” but his next thought would be, “How much better things are possible!” In the first place, the arrangements for the supply of food might be different. In Golder’s Hill itself the regulation that no teas should be served on the grass for fear of its injury shows a curious ignorance of relative values when, for the want of very slight protection, boys are allowed to tear away the banks on the side of Spaniard’s Road. The injured grass would revive in a month; the torn banks are irreparably damaged. There is no reason why the London County Council’s restaurants both on Golder’s Hill and in other parts of the Heath should not attract people by the daintiness of their display, and why the people should not be held by music and singing. Family parties would be more likely to frequent the place if the elders could be assured of pleasant resting-places. How differently, how very much better, they manage feeding abroad! People are always hungry and thirsty on holidays, and from the public-house to the whelk-stall, from the tea-gardens to the coffee-stand, there was evidence of English incapacity to supply the most persistent of holiday needs. The first improvement possible is, therefore, more dainty and more frequent provision of refreshment. The next improvement, which especially applies to Golder’s Hill, is the addition of objects of interest. There might be an aviary, the greenhouses might be filled with flowers and opened, rooms in the house might be decorated with pictures of the neighbourhood or with a collection of local objects. People who are unconsciously taking in memories through their eyes need some illusion; they must think they are going to see something they understand, if they are to be led to see the better things beyond their understanding. Then, surely, some more care might be taken of the tender places on the Heath--there are acres of grass on which boys may play, who might thereby be kept from scouring the surface of the light sand soil, making highways through the gorse, opening waterways to starve the trees.

These improvements are possible at once. There are others longer in the doing which are also necessary. People must be educated not only to be wage-earners but to enjoy their being. They too much depend on stimulants, on some outside excitement always liable to excess. They might find pleasure in themselves, in the use of their own faculties, in their powers of observation or activity, in their own intelligence and curiosity. They might with better education be “good company” for themselves and for one another. The people possess in Hampstead Heath a property a king might envy, but they only partially enjoy its opportunities.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

HOLIDAYS AND SCHOOLDAYS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

July, 1911.

[1] From “The Daily Telegraph”. By permission of the Editor.

Holidays, as well as schooldays, help to form the minds of the citizens. Habits, tastes, friendships, are fixed in the hours when restraints are relaxed, and the Will takes its shape when it is most free. Our school holidays, when in play we commanded or obeyed, when we learnt to know the country sights and objects, when, with different companions, we travelled to new places, have been largely responsible for such satisfaction as we have found in life.

Men and women are what their holidays have made them, and a nation’s use of its holidays may almost be said to determine its position in the world’s order of greatness. A nation whose pleasures are coarse and brutal, whose people delight in the excitement of their senses by actions in which their minds take no part, and where solitude is unendurable, can hardly do great things. It is not likely that it will be remembered, as the poets are remembered, by its care for any principle of action. It will hardly be generous in its foreign policy or happy in its homes.

The use of holidays is thus most important, and everywhere there are signs of their increase. The schools for the richer classes lengthen the period of their vacations till they extend, in some cases, to a quarter of the year. The King asked that his Coronation year may be marked by an extra week of exemption from school. Business people shorten hours of business, and workmen’s organizations demand more time for holidays. Seaside resorts grow up which live mainly by the pleasures of the people, and a vast and increasing body of workers find employment in the provision of amusement.

More time and more money are being given to holidays. Their use or misuse is a matter of importance, and it is reasonable to demand that more thought should also be given to this subject. People--this fact is often forgotten--need to be taught to play as they need to be taught to earn or to love. Leisure is as likely to produce weariness as joy, and the Devil still finds most of his occupation among the idlers.

The public schoolboy who has eight weeks’ vacation, and this year an extra week, will hardly be happy if he acquires habits of loafing at the seaside shows or picks up acquaintance with despisers of knowledge, or comes to think that learning is a “grind,” and he certainly will not in after years bless his holiday givers. The workman who obtains holidays and shorter hours will hardly be the better if he spends them in eating and sleeping, or in exciting himself over a match or race where he does not even understand the skill, or in watching an entertainment which calls for no effort of his mind.

Rich people, who can do what they like in the time they themselves choose, add excitement to excitement; they invent new methods of expenditure; they go at increasing speed from place to place; they come nearer and nearer to the brinks of vice; they have what they like; and yet, like the millionaire in the American tale, they are not happy. People need to be taught the use of leisure. The question is, how is such teaching practicable?... I would offer two suggestions: one which may be applied to the schools of the rich and of the poor, and the other to the free provision of means of recreation:--

1. As to schools. The authorities may, it seems to me, keep in mind the fact that the children are meant to enjoy life as well as to make a living. Enjoyment comes largely by the use of the power of imagination. We enjoy ourselves before the beauty of nature, before a work of art, in listening to music, and in imagining the life of other climes and countries. How little is done in any school to develop this power of imagination! The great public schools, though often they are established in buildings of much beauty, rarely do anything to develop in the boys any understanding of the beauty. There is but little art in the schoolrooms and little attempt to teach the value of pictures. There are few flowers about the windows and very often the time given to music is grudged by the chief authorities.

The elementary schools have not even the advantage of beauty in their buildings, and although the children may be taught art, they have their lessons in rooms made ugly by decorations, or wearying by untidiness. What wonder is it that boys and girls become destructive of the beauty in the admiration of which they and others might have found pleasure?

The authorities might thus do something by the curriculum to make leisure time a happy time, but they might do more by making holiday arrangements. Richer parents may justly be expected to care for their own children, and many seize the opportunity of becoming their playmates, so that holiday times develop the memories that bind together old and young. But few parents can take themselves from business for eight or nine weeks together, and not all parents have the knowledge or the sympathy to lead the young in their pleasures. A solution might be the arrangement by the school authorities of travelling parties--such as those organized at Manchester Grammar School; or of walking tours with some object, such as the collection of specimens or the investigation of places of interest,--or of holiday homes in the school houses or elsewhere, where, under the guidance of sympathetic teachers, the children could enjoy freer life and more varied interests than are possible in school, or of the interchange of visits between the children of English and foreign homes. Once let it be realized that the long holiday period--if necessary for the teachers--is full of danger for the children, and something will be done to make that period healthy as well as happy.

For the children in elementary schools it is easy to make arrangements. During the three summer months the curriculum might be like that of the Vacation Schools. The buildings, often the only pleasant place in a crowded neighbourhood--would thus be in continuous use, while the children and teachers could get away for their country or foreign holiday, without breaking into any school routine. The children would then go into the country prepared to see and enjoy its interests, not only in the month of August, but at times when they might play in the hayfields, pick the spring flowers, and hear the birds sing. The teachers could have, not four, but six weeks’ vacation, in which there would be time for a foreign visit when the hotels were less crowded. The children, at the end of their fortnight in the country, would return, not just to loaf about the streets amid the dirt and the noise and degrading temptation, but to take their places in the open and pleasant surroundings of the school, with its manifold interests.

The end of the summer would, if this arrangement could be carried out, find teachers and children alike refreshed and ready for the hard work of the ordinary school routine; and, greatest gain of all, the children would have learned how to enjoy their leisure. They would have planted memories which would call for refreshment; they would have developed powers of admiration which would need to be used; they would have found interests to occupy their thoughts, and they would look forward to holidays in which to go to the country--not to play “Aunt Sally,” or even to find fresh air from town pursuits, but to visit old haunts, discover more secrets of nature and taste its quiet. They would, as men and women, make “good company” for one another, and learn to require some distinction of quiet or beauty to make a British holiday. They would find, in the appreciation of English scenery, new reasons for being patriots.

Satisfying pleasure, it must always be remembered, comes from within, and not from without a man. Outside stimulants always fail at last, whether they be drink, shows, sensational tales, or games of chance; but the pleasures which come from the activity of head, or heart, or of limbs last as long as strength and life last.

This leads to the other practicable suggestion which I would offer. The Community might provide freely the means which would give the people the pleasures which come from culture. Much has been done in this direction. Open spaces in our great towns have been made more common, but their use has not been developed as has been done in American cities, where superintendents teach the children how to play, and the playgrounds become centres of common enjoyments. Museums and picture galleries are sometimes provided, but they are still rare and often dull. Personal guidance is necessary if the objects in a museum are to have any meaning for the ordinary visitor, and the pictures in a gallery need to be changed frequently if attention is to be held. The Japanese wisely, even in their private rooms, have a succession of pictures, relegating those not hung to the seclusion of the “Godown”. Music is given in the parks and sometimes in the town halls, but the best is not made common, and much is so poor that it fails to reach or express the thoughts which, if deeply buried, are to be found in the hearts of common people.

No attempts are made to open dull ears, to listen to good music, though teachers in public schools report how it is possible by a few talks to make athletes enthusiastic for Beethoven. The total amount of good free music is very small and certainly not enough to raise the common taste and attract minds capable of thought and admiration.

The duty of the Community to provide means of recreation is recognized, but too often it has seemed enough if it provides amusement which can be measured by popular applause. The duty should, I submit, have for its aim the provision of such recreation as would gradually lead the people in the way of enjoyment, and raise the character of all holidays by making them more satisfying to the higher demands of human nature.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE FAILURE OF HOLIDAYS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

May, 1912.

[1] From “The Daily Telegraph,” May, 1912. By permission of the Editor.

Eight hundred thousand children are every August turned out of the airy and spacious Schools which London has built for their use, and for four weeks they can do what they like. To the people whose opinions form public opinion, “to do what one likes” seems the very essence of a holiday. The forgotten fact is that the majority of these children do not know what they like. All children, indeed, need to be taught to enjoy themselves, just as they are taught to earn for themselves; and children whose parents are without money to take them to the country or the seaside, where nature would give them playmates, and without leisure to be referees in their first attempts at games, miss the necessary teaching. They get tired of trying to find out what they like, tired of waiting for the sensation of a street fight or accident, tired of aimless play in the parks, tired even of doing what they had been told not to do. A few--40,000 of the 800,000--are sent by the Children’s Country Holiday Fund to spend a fortnight of the month in country cottages; a few others go to stay with friends or accompany their parents, but the greater number--it is said that 480,000 children never sleep one night out of London during the year--have no other break than a day treat, which, with its intoxicating excitements and its distracting noises, can hardly claim to be a lesson in the art of enjoyment or to be a fair introduction to country pleasures. The August holiday under present conditions, cannot be described as a time in which working-class children store up memories of childhood’s joys, nor does it prepare them as men and women to make good use of the leisure gained by shorter hours of labour.

The use of leisure has not, I think, been sufficiently considered from a National point of view. It concerns the happiness, the health, and also the wealth of the nation. If their leisure dissipates the strength of men’s minds, leaves them the prey to stimulants, and at the same time absorbs the wages of work, there is a continual loss, which must at last be fatal. The children’s August holiday, with its dullness and its dependence on chance excitements, prepares the way for Beanfeasts where parties of men find nothing better to do amid the beauty of the country than to throw stones at bottles, or for the vulgar futilities of Margate sands, Hampstead Heath and the music hall, or for the soul-numbing variety of sport.