Part 26

Presently the band struck up again, and the procession returned to the wicket-gate, through which I now gained an entrance on payment of 1s. towards the club funds, one of the best investments of the kind I have ever made, for inside is the most perfect miniature village green I should think in the world, take it all in all. It is a natural terrace about one hundred yards long, by (perhaps) forty broad, on the side of the steep, finely wooded hill, with the station down below, and the church and village above. The valley, which runs up into the Welsh hills to the west, is here narrow, with a bright trout-stream dancing along between emerald meadows out into the great Cheshire plain, over which, in the distance, rise the cathedral towers and the castle and spires of Chester. One can fancy the hungry eyes with which many a Welshman has looked over that splendid countryside from this perch on the hillside when Hugh Lupus and his successors were keeping the border, with short shrift for cattle-lifters. It is well worth the while of any of your readers who may be passing Gresford Station this autumn, to stop over a train, and go up and spend an hour there. But I must get back to the ladies’ club, who now, at 6 P.M., opened the three hours’ dance on the green, the great feature of the gathering. It began with a country-dance, at which we males could only gaze and admire. As before, the squire’s wife and the senior member led off, and went down the thirty or forty couples. What wonderful women are these Welsh! I was fascinated by the next senior, a dear old soul, who had only missed this dance twice in more than sixty years, and was in such a hurry to get under way, that she started before the leading couple had got properly ahead, rather thereby confusing the subsequent saltations. When the music at last stopped, she sat herself on a bench, a picture of joyous old age, and declared that if she had been a rich woman, she should have spent all her substance in keeping a band. After the country-dance came polkas, in which I noted that for some time the men, by way of reprisals, I suppose, danced together; but this did not last long, and presently the couples were sorted in the usual manner, and when the station-bell warned me to speed down the hill, I left them all as busy on the green as the elves (perhaps) may be in the moonlight, or Pan’s troop in the days before his lamented decease. On my way home I mused on the cheering evidence the day had afforded of the healthy progress of the great task which has been laid on this generation, and’ which it seems to be taking hold of so strenuously and hopefully. I do not know that I ever saw so entirely satisfactory a blending of all classes in common enjoyment, which to some extent I attribute to the custom of the procession, and the sorting of honorary and regular members above noticed. During the whole afternoon I never heard a word which might not have been spoken in a drawing-room, and in spite of the rigorous exclusion of tobacco, there was no lack of young men. I question whether it would be possible to see the like in any exclusive gathering, either of the classes or the masses. The club is as prosperous financially, I am glad to hear, as it is socially, having a reserve fund of some £600, while the subscriptions are very moderate. No doubt the political and industrial atmosphere is dark with heavy clouds both’ at home and abroad; but I do begin to think that this white lining of a truer and fuller blending of our people than has ever been known before in England, or anywhere else, is going to do more than compensate for whatever troubles may be in store for us from wars or other convulsions, and that we shall be in time to meet them as a united people.

Then let us pray that come it may--

As come it will for a’ that--

That man to man, the warld o’er,

Shall brithers be for a’ that.

The “Victoria,” New Cut.

Of all the healthy signs of real social progress in this remarkable age, I know of none more striking, or, I will add, more thankworthy in a small way, than the contrast of the present condition of the big People’s Theatre in Southwark with that which middle-aged men can remember. Probably many of my readers who in the fifties and sixties held it to be part of the whole duty of man to attend the University boat-race at Putney, or the Oxford and Cambridge match at Lord’s, will be able to call up in their memories the “Vic.” of those days. For my own part, I always felt that the big costermonger’s theatre suffered unfairly in reputation--as many folk and places before it have done--for the casual notice of a man of genius. “Give us the Charter,” Charles Kingsley makes his tailor-hero exclaim in 1848, “and we’ll send workmen into Parliament who shall find out whether something better can’t be put in the way of the boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution, than the tender mercies of the Victoria.” I do not pretend to anything more than a casual acquaintance with the “Vic.” in those days; but my memory would not bear out Parson Lot in denouncing it as “a licensed pit of darkness.”, That description would far better designate the Cider Cellars, the Coal Hole, and other fashionable resorts on the north side of the Thames, in which a working man’s fustian jacket and corduroys were never seen. I should say that one evening spent at Evans’s in those days, or at the mock Court (the judge and jury) presided over by Baron Nicholson, as that rotund old cynic was called, would have done any youngster far more harm than half a dozen at the “Vic.” At the one you might sit smoking cigars and drinking champagne, if you were fool enough, and hear everything that was sacred and decent slily or openly ridiculed and travestied, in the company of M.P.’s, barristers, and others, all well-dressed people. At the “Vic.” you could rub shoulders with costers and longshoremen, noisy, rowdy, and prone to fight on the slightest provocation, while the entertainment was more than coarse enough, but quite free from the subtle poison of a crim.-con. trial presided over by Baron Nicholson. With this saving, however, I am bound to admit that the old “Vic.” was not a place which could have been looked on without serious misgivings by any one in the remotest degree responsible for peace or decency in South London. The influence which it exercised, to put it mildly, though undoubtedly powerful, could by no possibility have had any elevating effect on the intellect or morals of any human being; but for all that, it was always a favourite place of resort, and had a strong hold on the dense population who earn a scanty and precarious living in the New Cut and the Old Kent Road. How it was that the lease of the old “Vic.,” with seventeen years still to run, came into the market some eight years back, I am not aware; but so it happened, and it was purchased by a financial Company, who, with the best intentions, embarked on the risky experiment of running the “Royal Victoria Hall,” as it was now called, as a coffee-tavern and place of entertainment, against the neighbouring music-halls in which drink was sold. In eight months the Company lost £2800, and the Victoria was closed, with every chance of drifting back, on the next change of ownership, into the old ruts. Happily for South London, a better fate was in store for the “Vic.,” for there were those who had eyes to see its value if properly handled, not, indeed, as a commercial speculation, but as a power for lifting the social life of the neighbourhood on to a higher level. A committee was formed, with the late Mr. Samuel Morley as chairman, and Miss Cons as honorary secretary and manager, a guarantee fund was raised, and the Hall reopened. It has been a hard fight; but with a chairman whose speech in the darkest hour rang, “We don’t mean to let this thing fall to the ground,” and a lady of unsurpassed experience and devotion amongst the poor, whose whole life was from the first freely and loyally given to the work, the field has been won. I say deliberately “won,” and if any one doubts my word, let him walk over Waterloo Bridge any evening (for the “Vic.” is always open), and look at this thing fairly; let him go into the coffee-tavern, the theatre, the big billiard and smoking-rooms, the reading and class-rooms at the top, and the gymnasium in the basement, and keep his ears and eyes wide open all the time,--and then go home and thank God that such work is going on in the very quarter of our huge city in which the need is sorest. I say, let him go any evening, but for choice I would advise a Tuesday, for on Tuesdays the “Penny Science Lectures” are given, which are, of course, less popular than the variety entertainments and the ballad concerts which occur whenever the funds allow, or some first-rate artist, such as Sims Beeves, volunteers to come and sing to the Hew Cut. To return to the “Penny Science Lectures,” the wonder is, not that eminent men should be ready to go over to Southwark and give them without payment--that note of our day has become too common to surprise--but that an average of over five hundred, mostly of the _gamin_ age, from the Hew Cut, should be ready to pay their penny and come, and listen, and appreciate.

It was on May Day that I visited the old “Vic.,” almost by chance, and without a notion of what I was likely to see or hear. The lecture was on “The Foundation-Stones of London,” and proved to be a geological, not an archæological one. Mr. H. Kimber, M.P. for the neighbouring division of South London, was in the chair, and the lecturer was Professor Judd, F.R.S., who, in a clear, terse address, aided by excellent dissolving views projected by limelight on the huge drop-scene of the stage, showed the gravel, clay, chalk, and lower strata, with the fossils found in each, with admirable clearness. The big theatre was not, of course, full, but there was a large audience, quite up to the average of upwards of five hundred, and any one at all used to such scenes could see how keenly interested they were, and how quick to seize the lecturer’s points. Most of the men were in their working clothes, but clean and brushed up, and no lecturer could have wished for a better audience. The only thing that brought back to my mind the slightest remembrance of the old “Vic.” was, that by a coster in the centre of the front row of the pit sat a big brindled bull-terrier of the true fighting type. Strange to say, he remained looking at the views with perfect gravity till the lecturer made his bow, when he jumped quietly down at once, and trotted about the pit to find friends, as though he had learned all he could, and wanted to talk it over with pals, but was not interested in the formal vote-of-thanks business. On the three following Tuesdays, as the bills informed me, “The Moon,” “The Circulation of the Blood,” and “The Backbone of England,” were the subjects, all, again, illustrated by dissolving views. And these lectures are kept up on every Tuesday, such speakers as the Dean of Westminster, Sir John Lubbock, Professor Seeley, taking their turn with the purely scientific men, and drawing as good attendances.

You must find room for one specimen of the quick humour of this New Cut audience. Dr. Carpenter, in one of his experiments, dispensed with a prism, explaining to his audience that the objects would now appear inverted, and they must “put them right way up” in their minds,--“or stand on yer ’eds,” came the prompt suggestion from the gallery. Out of these lectures science-classes have grown in the last three years, encouraged by a committee, selected from the Council, of some hundred ladies and gentlemen. Of these I have no space to speak; but one fact will indicate the thoroughness of the work done at them. Dr. Fleming’s report for 1887 tells us that out of forty students who went in for examination in the several classes, seven obtained first-class, and eighteen second-class certificates. I have only touched on what, after all, is an outgrowth, which has developed naturally from the original scheme, but was no part of it. This was rational and hearty and clean amusement. The Council were determined to test whether an answer could not be found to the straight question of “Poor Potlover” in Punch:--

“Where’s this cheap and respectable fun

To be spotted by me? There’s the kink!

Don’t drink? All serene, if you’ll p’int me to summat that’s better

than drink.

To that “summat” the Victoria Hall Council, all honour to them, have pointed with quite encouraging success. There is no department of the Hall which is not in a healthy condition, and the fact that £1800 was taken in pennies and twopences for admissions during 1887, though the Hall was closed in the summer for repairs, may well encourage the Council and their devoted manager to take courage and persevere in their present effort to purchase the freehold as a fitting memorial to Mr. Samuel Morley. There was no part of his wide work of philanthropy which that fine old English merchant valued more than this. He supported it lavishly during his life, and had he lived till the freehold came into the market, there would have been little difficulty in raising the necessary sum, £17,000. Of this, £3500 has already been promised by members of the Council, and I cannot believe that the opportunity will be allowed to slip, and the deposit-money of £500 already paid to be forfeited. It seems that the Charity Commissioners have let it be known that the old “Vic.” will be accepted by them as one of the People’s Palaces for South London, if the freehold can only be obtained; and I cannot for a moment doubt that this will be done if the facts are only fairly known. The teetotalers ought to do all that remains to be done, in gratitude for the best story in their quiver, which they owe to the “Vic.” A short meeting is held, called the “Temperance Hour,” _outside_ the house on Friday nights, at which working men are the speakers. One of them, a carter, stuck fast at the bottom of a hill in the suburbs one day. Another man who was passing, unhitched his own team and helped him up. On an offer to pay being made, the good Samaritan declared he had been paid beforehand. “Why, I never saw you before in my life, did I?” “I’ve seen you, though,” said the other; “I heard you speak one night outside the ‘Vic.’ and I went in and took the pledge--me and my family has been happy ever since!”

Whitby and the Herring Trade, 30th August 1888.

Any fresh herrings for breakfast, sir? Four a penny this morning, sir!” Such was my greeting this day, as I turned out of my lodgings for an early lungs’-full of this inspiring air. I had almost broken out on that fish-wife with, “Why, you abominable old woman, you asked me twopence for three yesterday”; but restraining my natural, if not righteous indignation, I replied meekly, “Four a penny! Why, what makes them so cheap, ma’am?”

“T’ boats all full--ha’n’t had sech a catch this summer,” which news gladdened me almost as much as if the catch had been my own. No one can watch these grand fellows, the Dogger Bank fishermen, and not feel, a sort of blood-relationship to them, and the keenest sympathy with their heroic business on the great waters. So, thinks I, I’ll go down to the quay directly after breakfast, and see them all at their best, those hard-handed, big-bearded, soft-hearted sea-kings from all the East and South Coast towns of England, from Sunderland to Penzance. When they are such grand, silent, kindly creatures on every day in the week, even when the catch has been poor and light, what will they be to-day?

I had spent most of my mornings for some days on the quay, watching the fish-market there with much interest. It goes on nearly all the forenoon on the pavement, just above that part of the harbour-wall to which the herring-boats run when they come in from their night’s work on the Dogger Bank. A simple, hand-to-mouth kind of business, the auction; but well adapted, at any rate, to clear the boats, and get their daily contents to market in the quickest and cheapest way. As soon as a boat comes to the quay, one of the crew (generally numbering five men, or four men and a boy) comes on shore with a basket half-full of herrings, and turns them out on the pavement. The fish-broker who acts for that boat comes up, looks at the sample, and makes an offer for the ship’s take by “the lash” or ten thousand. If this is accepted, the unloading begins at once; but if not, as is oftenest the case, the take is put up to auction. The broker rings a bell, which soon brings round him the seven or eight other brokers like himself, and other buyers (if any) who are within hearing. Up goes the first last of ten thousand at once, and no time is lost or talk thrown away. In very few minutes the whole is sold, and a cart or lorry from the railway is standing by to carry off the barrels in which the herrings are packed then and there. Now, on the previous day I had heard the prices ranging from £7: 10s. to £8 for “the last,” and had not remarked that only some six boats of the whole fleet had come back from the fishing-grounds, and that none of these had made anything like a big catch. Consequently, I came down prepared to hear something like the same prices ruling, and to see most of the crews drawing at least from £15 to £20 for their night’s work.

Well, in a long life I don’t remember ever to have been more hopelessly wrong or unpleasantly surprised. I could see at once that all was not right by the faces of the men and women in the small groups scattered about the market, which now drew together as the broker’s bell rang for the sale of the herrings, which lay, a lovely, gleaming mass, at least three feet deep in the uncovered hold of the _Mary Jane_, as she rocked gently on the harbour swell, some twenty feet down below us. I could scarcely believe my ears as I heard the bids slowly rising by 5 s. at a time till they reached 30s. the last, and there stopped dead. The hammer fell, and the whole catch of the _Mary Jane_ passed to the purchaser in about two minutes at that figure. The next boat, and next but one, did no better. Broker after broker knocked his client’s catch down at 30s. Once only I heard an advance on that figure, and this was by private contract. The handsome Hercules, in long leather boots and blue jersey, who represented one of the Whitby boats, appealed in my hearing to the broker, who relented with no very good grace, and agreed to give £2 per last of ten thousand of the catch of Hercules’s boat.

It was a depressing sight, I must own, even in the bright sunshine of this most picturesque of English harbours, and Sam Weller’s earnest inquiry to his master, “Ain’t somebody to be wopped for this?” rose vividly in my mind as the fittest comment on the whole business. Just then a tug which had been getting up steam was ready to leave the harbour, and two Hartlepool smacks, whose freights of herrings were still unsold, hitched on, to be towed out to sea and then run home, in the hope of finding a better market in the Durham port. An old salt stood next me, whose fishing days were well over, and who had just taken a good bite of the blackest kind of pigtail to comfort himself. I looked inquiringly at him as the tug steamed out between the two lighthouses, with the smacks in tow; but he shook his head sorrowfully. “Well, but they can’t do worse than here,” I remonstrated; “herrings maybe scarcer in the colliery district.” He jerked his head towards the little group of brokers and buyers,--“They’d know the prices at Hartlepool in five minutes,” he said. This telegraphing was to his mind the worst thing that had happened for fishermen in his time. “Did prices often go up and down like this?” I asked. “Yes,” and worse than this. He had known them as low as 15s. and as high as £15 within a few days. No, he couldn’t see what was “to odds it” much for the better. Last time he was across at Liverpool he had stopped at a big fish-shop where he saw barrels standing which he recognised. “What’s the price of those herrings?” he asked. “Eight for 6d.” the man answered. “So I told him I saw they was from Whitby, and that he got them at Whitby for 6d. a hundred.”

Whitby and the Herring Trade, 31st August 1888.

I had got thus far last night, and posted down again early this morning to the market, which has a sombre kind of attraction for me. Only two boats in, with light catches of from one and a half to two lasts each. The first sold at £5: 5s., which price the second boat refused. Theirs were a first-rate lot, and they shouldn’t go under £6, for which they were holding out when I had to leave, and there seemed to be a general belief that they would get it. This was puzzle enough for any man, to see under his own eyes the same fish sold on three consecutive summer days for £7:10s., £1:10s., and £5:5s.!--a sort of thing no fellow can understand. To add to my bewilderment, I learnt that at Great Grimsby yesterday (the £1:10s. day here) the last had sold for upwards of £15! So that my old salt’s view as to the telegraph doesn’t quite hold water, and the two smacks which shook the water off their bows and sailed for Hartlepool, may have made a good day’s work of it, after all. Indeed, a sailor on the quay declared that they had sold at £5, so that, after paying £2 apiece for the tug, which had towed them all the way, they still got £3 a last, or double the price they would have realised at Whitby. “So it comes to this, that the more fish you catch, the less pay you get,” I said to my informant. “Yes,” he seemed to think that was mostly the case, adding that to his mind it was the railways that made all the money out of fish--

Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.

It is an old story enough, but scarcely less true or sad in 1888 than when most of the world’s hardest work was done by slaves. However there are, happily, signs in the air that, here in England at any rate, we are waking up to the truth, that if we can find no better way of organising industry than competition run mad, we are going to have real bad times. Royal Commissions on the sweating system; Toynbee Hall interventions in great strikes; co-operative effort springing up all over the country, and finding its most zealous and devoted advocates at least as much amongst those who don’t work with their hands as those who do,--all go to prove that the reign of king _laissez faire_, with his golden rule of “cash payment the sole _nexus_ between man and man,” is over. Indeed, our danger may soon be from too much meddling with and mothering industry. Nevertheless, no one can spend a few hours on the quay here in the herring season and not long for some one--scholar, philanthropist, political economist (new style), co-operator--to come along and teach these fine fellows to read their sphinx riddle. It would not be, surely, such a difficult task as it looks at first sight. There is no need to begin with the vast herring-fishing industry, with its distant markets at Billingsgate, Liverpool, and Manchester. The reform might begin at once on a modest scale. Beside the herrings, one sees every morning other fish lying on the quay--skate, cod, ling, whiting, rock-salmon--brought in by the smaller and less venturesome boats by dozens, not by lasts of ten thousand. Take the cod as the most valuable of these fish. I saw four fine cod-fish sold by auction yesterday on the quay for 5s. 3d. Within a few hundred yards, and all over the town, cod was selling at the shops at 6d. the pound. Surely a very moderate amount of organising ability would enable those who catch these fish to get the retail prices prevailing on the same day in the home market, and then the experience gained might assist materially in the solution of the larger problem.