Part 9 (2/2)
My diary for Sat.u.r.day, October 16, 1897, duly records that ”D. and Miss Churcher and I went to the Settlement at ten to superintend the children's play-hour, which we are now going to have every Sat.u.r.day in the big hall. It was a perfect pandemonium this time, as we hadn't prepared any sort of organization, and there were at least 120 children to deal with. We also had to give each child a pair of list slippers to put on over its own boots, and this was a tremendous business and took over half an hour. Miss Neal made them a little speech before we began the games, and then we all formed rings and played Looby Loo and others of that stamp for nearly an hour more.”
From these unpromising beginnings sprang the whole of the ”organized recreation” for children which gradually arose at the new Settlement, with the object of attracting the child population of the district away from the streets after school hours. Mrs. Ward guided and inspired the movement, though she left the actual carrying on of the cla.s.ses to younger and more robust members of her group; but she formed a special committee (the Women's Work Committee), of which she was chairman, to watch over it all, and generally supplied the motive force, the sense of its being worth while, which inspired the ever-growing band of our helpers. One cla.s.s, too, she kept as her very own--a weekly reading aloud for boys between eleven and fourteen, in the course of which she read them a great deal of Stevenson and Kipling, or brought them photographs of her travels in Italy, or talked to them sometimes of the events of the day. About thirty boys came regularly to these readings, and always behaved well with her, while she on her side came to know them individually and felt a strong affection for many of them. Where are they now, those thirty boys? How many have left their bones in the mud of Flanders, or on the heights that look towards Troas, across the narrow sea? Mrs. Ward herself was often possessed with that thought through the years of the Great War, but never, so far as I know, heard any direct news of them. All were of that fatal age that Death reaped with the least pity.
After the Sat.u.r.day morning play-rooms--which fortunately improved in discipline after that first ”pandemonium,” and increased so much in popularity that we had to divide them into two, taking in close upon 400 children in a morning--we launched out into musical drill-cla.s.ses for bigger and smaller children, story-telling for the little ones, gymnastic cla.s.ses for girls and boys, a children's hour in the library, dancing and acting cla.s.ses, and finally history lectures with lantern slides, designed to supplement the very meagre teaching of history that the children received in the elementary schools around. How much one learnt by hard experience, in the course of it all, of the art of keeping the children's attention--whether in teaching them a new singing-game on Sat.u.r.days, or in the story-telling to the ”under elevens,” or in the exciting task of going over Oliver's battles with the young ladies and gentlemen of the fifth to seventh standards! For even these, if one lost their attention for a moment, were not above calling out ”Ole Krujer!” at a somewhat forbidding slide of Sir Thomas Fairfax, while the ”under elevens” would often be swept by gusts of coughing and talk that fairly drowned the voice of the story-teller, if she suffered them to lose the thread of the Princess's adventures by too gorgeous a description of the dragon. But usually they were as good as gold, sitting there packed tight on the rows of chairs (136 children on seventy-six chairs was one of our records), while the ”little mothers”
hugged their babies and no sound was to be heard save the sucking of toffee or liquorice-sticks.
All these occupations took place in the late afternoon, from 5.30 to 7, during the hours when the children of London, discharged from school and tea, drift aimlessly about the streets, often actually locked out from home (in those days at least) owing to the long hours worked by mother as well as father at ”charing” or at the local factory. The instant response made by the child-population of St. Pancras to Mrs. Ward's piping showed that she had, as it were, stumbled upon a real and vital need of our great cities, and as a larger and larger band of helpers was drawn into our circle and more and more of the cheerful Settlement rooms came into use, the attendances of the children went up by leaps and bounds. One year after the opening they had grown to some 650 per week; by October, 1899, to 900, and in the next three or four years they touched the utmost capacity of the building by reaching 1,200. The schools in the immediate neighbourhood co-operated eagerly in the new effort, though the selection of children for our special cla.s.ses often involved extra labour for the teachers; but they rose to it with enthusiasm, and would sometimes steal in to watch their children enjoying the story-telling or the library, removed from the restraint of day-school discipline, and yet ”giving no trouble,” as they wonderingly recognized. Mrs. Ward made friends with many of these teachers, especially with those from Manchester Street and Prospect Terrace Schools, for it was her way to establish natural human relations with every one with whom she came in contact, and the hard-working London teacher always appealed to her in a peculiar way. An incident that gave her special pleasure was the pa.s.sing of a vote of thanks to the Settlement by a neighbouring Board of Managers, ”for the work done among the children of this school.” How she was loved and looked up to by every one concerned--by helpers, teachers and, more dimly, by the children themselves--is not, perhaps, for me to say; but this was the note that underlay all the busy hum of the Settlement building in the children's hour, as indeed in all the other hours of its day.
Occasionally, however, some critic would observe, ”Well, this is all very fine for the children, but what do the parents say about it? What becomes of _home influence_ when you encourage the children to come out in this way at an hour when they ought to be at home?” The answer, of course, was that the parents themselves, and especially the more anxious and hard-working among them, were the foremost in blessing the Settlement (or the ”Pa.s.smore,” as it was affectionately dubbed in the neighbourhood) for the good care that it took of Sidney or Alf or Elsie; that they knew, better than anyone else, how little they could do in the miserable rooms that served them for a home for the growing boys and girls, and yet that ”the streets” were full of dangers from which they longed to preserve their little ones. One or two of them became voluntary helpers at the ”Recreation School,” as it came to be called; many joined the ”Parents' Guild” that Mrs. Ward formed from among them, and that met periodically at the Settlement for music and rest, or for a quiet talk with her about the children's doings; while all were to be seen at the summer and winter ”Displays” in the big hall or in the garden, their tired faces beaming with pride at the performance of their offspring. Perhaps indeed it is the bitterest reproach of all against our civilization that in the homes of the poor, ”where every process of life and death,” as Mrs. Ward once put it, ”has to be carried on within the same few cubic feet of s.p.a.ce,” there is no room for the growing children, who, as baby follows baby in the crowded tenement, get pushed out into the world almost before they can stand upon their feet. Mrs.
Ward knew only too well the conditions of life in the mean streets of St. Pancras or the East End; her sister-in-law, Miss Gertrude Ward, who had become a District Nurse after the eight years of her life with us, had frequently taken her to certain typical dens where such ”processes of life and death” were going on, and her own researches for _Sir George Tressady_ had done the rest. Add to this her intense power of imagination and of realization acting like a fire within her, and the children's work at the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement is all explained. She yearned to them and longed to make them happy: that was all.
Mr. Tatton, the Warden, would often say that the Recreation School was growing to be the most important side of the Settlement work, and himself, bachelor as he was, delighted to watch it; but Mrs. Ward would not willingly have admitted this, even if it were true, for the many developments of the normal work for adults were always immensely interesting to her. Whenever she was in London (and often from Stocks too!) she contrived, in spite of ill-health and the many claims upon her time, to be at the Settlement three or four times a week, attending Council meetings and committees, showing the building to friends, talking to ”a.s.sociates,” old and new, or listening with delight to the wonderful concerts that took place in the big hall on Sat.u.r.day evenings.
For it had always been intended that music should play a very special part in the life of the Settlement, and the Council had been fortunate in securing as Musical Director Mr. Charles Williams, who, in partners.h.i.+p with Miss Audrey Chapman's Ladies' Orchestra, gave concerts of quite extraordinary merit there during the first year or two of the Settlement's existence. He would take his audience into his confidence, explaining, before the music began, the part of each instrument in the whole symphony, and all with so happy a touch that even untrained listeners felt transported into a world where they understood--for the moment--what Beethoven or Mozart would be at. Those evenings remain in memory as occasions of pure joy, and did much to reconcile the older a.s.sociates of Marchmont Hall to the magnificence of the new building--a magnificence which otherwise weighed rather sadly upon their spirits!
Some of them, amid the growing activity of the new life around them, confessed that they could not help regretting the old shabby days of pipe-sucking at Marchmont Hall, where the dingy premises were ”a poor thing, but mine own.” Mrs. Ward was distressed by this feeling, and sought to draw them in in every way to the life and government of the place; but one of the unforeseen features of the work was that the new a.s.sociates who joined the Settlement in considerable numbers were for the most part young people, rather than the contemporaries and friends of the Marchmont Hall a.s.sociates. Shop a.s.sistants and clerks were also on the increase, desiring to take advantage of the many facilities, social and educational, offered by the new building; and though the new-comers were looked on with distrust by the older members, no definite rule could be laid down excluding them. Admission to the a.s.sociate body might be strictly reserved to ”workmen and working women”
from a definite area, but it was difficult to prove that a shopman or a clerk did not work. One thing, however, was insisted upon--that the new candidates should read over and digest the confession of faith which Mrs. Ward had drawn up in the early days of Marchmont Hall, a creed which put in simple form the aspirations of the Settlement:
”We believe that many changes in the conditions of life and labour are needed, and are coming to pa.s.s; but we believe also that men, without any change except in themselves and in their feelings towards one another, might make this world a better and happier place.
”Therefore, with the same sympathies but different experiences of life, we meet to exchange ideas and to discuss social questions, in the hope that as we learn to know one another better, a feeling of fellows.h.i.+p may arise among us.”
And though some of the younger candidates seemed to have joined the Settlement rather to dance at the Social Evenings than to ”exchange ideas and to discuss social questions,” let alone to attend the lectures and cla.s.ses, still the leaven worked, so that at the end of three years the Warden could report that ”an increasing number of a.s.sociates use the opportunities of the Settlement to the utmost, and are always to the front when service and help are needed. Such a.s.sociates, both men and women, are a chief source of whatever power for good the Settlement may exert.”
And indeed, with what life and movement the whole building hummed on any evening of the week, in those first exciting years! Apart altogether from the children's work, the attendances of adults during the busy winter terms reached some 1,400 a week, and must surely have represented, when translated into terms of human aspiration or enjoyment, much lightening of the burdens and monotonies of life in the dull streets that surrounded the Settlement. Mrs. Ward herself, in an appeal in favour of the work issued in 1901, summed up in these words her feeling on the place that Settlements might fill in the life of London's workers:
”Stand in the street now and look back at the 'Community House'--the Settlement building and its surroundings. The high windows s.h.i.+ne; in and out pa.s.s men and women, boys and girls, going to cla.s.s, or concert, or drill, to play a game of chess or billiards, or merely to sit in a pleasant and quiet room, well lit and warmed, to read a book or listen to music. To your right stretches the densely peopled district of King's Cross and Gray's Inn Road, Clerkenwell. Behind the Settlement runs the busy Euston Road, and the wilderness of Somers Town. Immediately beside you, if you turn your head, you may see the opening of a narrow street and the outline of a large block of model dwellings, whence many frequenters of the Settlement have been drawn. Carry your minds into the rooms of these old tenement houses which fill the streets east of Marchmont Street, the streets, say, lying between you and Prospect Terrace Board School. No doubt the aspect of these rooms varies with the character of the occupants. But even at their best, how cramped they are, how lacking in s.p.a.ce, air, beauty, judged by those standards which a richer cla.s.s applies to its own dwellings as a matter of course! and though we may hope that a reforming legislation may yet do something for the dwellings of the London working-cla.s.s in the essential matters of air and sanitation, it is not easy to foresee a time when the workman's house shall do more than supply him with the simplest necessaries--with shelter, with breathing-room, sleeping-room, food-room. Yet, as we fully realize, the self-respecting and industrious artisan has instincts towards the beauties and dignities of life. He likes s.p.a.cious rooms, and soft colour, and pictures to look at, as much as anyone else; he wants society, art, music, a quiet chair after hard work, stimulus for the brain after manual labour, amus.e.m.e.nt after effort, just like his neighbour in Mayfair or Kensington. The young men and maidens want decent places other than the streets and the public-house in which to meet and dance and amuse each other. They need--as we all need--contact with higher education and gentler manners. They want--as we all ought to want--to set up a social standard independent of money or occupation, determined by manners in the best sense, by kindness, intelligence, mutual sympathy, work for the commonweal. They want surroundings for their children after school hours which, without loosening the home-tie, shall yet supplement their own narrow and much-taxed accommodation; which shall humanize, and soften, and discipline. They want more physical exercise, more access to the country, more organization of holidays. All these things are to be had in or through the House Beautiful--through the Settlement, the 'Community' or 'Combination'
house of the future. The Socialist dreams of attaining them through the Collectivist organization of the State. But at any rate he will admit that his goal is far, far distant; probably he feels it more distant now than he and his fellows thought it thirty years ago.
Let him, let all of us work meanwhile for something near our hands, for the deepening and extension of the Settlement movement, for the spread, that is, of knowledge of the higher pleasures, and of a true social power among the English working-cla.s.s.”
How instinct are these words with the idealisms of a bygone generation, a generation that knew not Communism or Proletarian Schools! No doubt, nowadays, we have gone beyond all that; we may not speak of the ”self-respecting and industrious artisan”; cla.s.s-war is the word of power instead of cla.s.s-appeas.e.m.e.nt. So far on the onward road have we travelled since 1901!
For the rest, Mrs. Ward's main task during these early years was to use her gifts of understanding, of patience and of human sympathy in keeping all the workers at the Settlement together, in straightening out the differences that would arise among so varied a crew of energetic people, and in pus.h.i.+ng forward the work in ever new directions. All difficulties were referred to her by Residents, by a.s.sociates, by Warden and Treasurer. On her also rested the responsibility for raising the necessary money. Much helped by the Duke of Bedford, who remitted the ground-rent, and also gave a considerable subscription, she prospered beyond all rational probability in the latter task. Her many friends were touched by her infectious enthusiasm, and gladly helped her to the best of their ability, so that the deficits on each year's working turned out to be far less than the prudent had expected. Such a letter as the following was not uncommon--though the amount enclosed did not always reach so round a figure:--
_May 25, 1898._
DEAR MRS. HUMPHRY WARD,--
I shall be very happy to dine with you on the 14th of June.
You once said that the P. Edwards Settlement would not be disdainful of subscriptions, and I had not anything to give at the time. I can now send you with pleasure a cheque for 100. I am sure you will find some good use for it.
Yours very truly, NORTHBROOK.
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