SECTION II. RECREATION.

The Children’s Country Holiday Fun’—Recreation of the People—Hopes of the Hosts—Easter Monday on Hampstead Heath—Holidays and School days—The Failure of Holidays—Recreation in Town and Country.

THE CHILDREN’S COUNTRY HOLIDAY FUN’.^[1]

By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.

April, 1912.

Five thousand two hundred and eighty Letters, 872 Sketches, 199 Collections, all in parcels neatly tied up, the name, age, and sex of the writer, artist, or collector clearly written on the first page of the covering paper. There they lie, all around me, stack upon stack. The sketches are crude but extraordinarily vivid and unaffected; the collections are very scrappy but show affectionate care; the letters are written in childish unformed characters, and are of varying lengths, from a sheet of notepaper to ten pages of foolscap, but one and all deal with the same subject. What that subject is shall be told by a maiden of nine years old:—

“On one Thursday morning my Mother woke me and said, ‘To-day is Country Holiday Fun,’ so I got up and put my cloes on”.

On that Thursday morning, 27 July, 22,624 happy children left London and its drab monotonous streets, and went for a fortnight’s visit into the country, or by the sea. Oh! the joy, the preparation, the excitement, the hopes, the fears, the anxieties lest anything should prevent the start; but at last, by the superhuman efforts of all concerned, the Committee, the ladies, the teachers, and the railway officials, the whole gay, glad, big army of little people were successfully got off. It is from these 22,624 children, and 21,756 more who took their places two weeks later, that my 5,280 letters come; for only those who really choose to write are encouraged to do so.

In almost all cases the journey is fully described, the ride in the ’bus, the fear of being late, the parcel and how “it fell out,” the gentlemen at the station, the porter who gave us a drink of water “cause we were all hot,” the gentleman who gave the porter 6d. because he said: “This 6d. is for you for thinking as how the children would be thirsty”. The number that managed to get in each carriage, the boy who lost his cap “for the wind went so fast when my head was outside looking,” the hedges, the cows, the big boards with —— Pills written on them, how “it seemed as if I was going that way and the hills and cows and trees were going the other way”. It is all told with the fresh force of novelty and youth. The names of the Stations and the mileage is often noted, as well as the noise. “We shouted for joy,” writes a boy of eleven. “We told them it was rude to holler so,” writes a more staid girl. “I got tired of singing and went to sleep,” records a boy of eight; but the journey over there follows the description, often given with some awe, of how,—

“We all went and were counted together, and there were the ladies waiting for us, and the gentleman read out our names and our lady’s name and then we went home with our right ladies,”

and then, almost without exception, comes the bald but important statement, “and then we had Tea”. Indeed, all through the letters there is frequent mention of the gastronomic conditions, which appear to occupy a large place among the memories of the country visit. Evidently the regularity of the meals makes a change which strikes the imagination.

“I got up, washed in hot water and had my breakfast. It was duck’s egg. I then went out in the fields till dinner was ready. I had a good dinner and then took a rest. We had Tea. My lady gave us herrings and apple pie for tea, then we went on the Green and looked about and then came home and had supper and went to bed.”

Some letters, especially those written after the first visit to the country, contain nothing but the plain unvarnished tale of the supply of regular food. One girl burns with indignation because

“We girls was sent to bed at 7·30 and got no supper, but the boys was let up later and got bread and a big thick bit of cheese”.

A boy of eight chronicles that

“I had custard for my Tea and some jelly which was called corn flour”.

One small observer had apparently discovered the importance of meal-times even to the sea itself, for he writes: “The sea always went out at dinner time and came back when Tea was ready”. I can see my readers smile, but to those of us who know intimately the lives of the poor, the significance of meals and their regularity occupying so large a place in a child’s mind is more pathetic than comic.

From all the letters the impression is gathered of the generosity of the poor hostesses to the London children. For 5s. a week (not 9d. a day) a growing hungry boy or girl is taken into a cottager’s home, put in the best bed, cared for, fed three or four times a day, and often entertained at cost of time, thought, or money.

“I like the day which was Bank lolyiday Monday because it was a very joyafull day. My Lady took me to a Flower Show. It was 3d. to go in but she paid, and I had swings and saw the flowers, and then we had bought Tea, and a man gave away ginger beer.”

Another girl of eleven writes:—

“My lady took me to Windsor Castle. The first thing I saw was the Thames. I went and had a paddled and then I went in the Castle and saw a lot of apple trees.”

The visits to Windsor are modern-day versions of the old story of the Cat who went to see the King and saw only “Mousey sitting under the Chair,” for another child records:—

“There were plenty of orchards with apple trees in it. But we would not pick them, or else we would be locked up but I went in the Castle and I saw a very large table with fifty chairs all round it and a piano and a looking glass covered up on the wall.”

One boy who was taken to the lighthouse, though only ten, was evidently eager for useful information. He writes:—

“I asked the man how many candlepowers it was but I forgot what he said——”

an experience not unknown to his elders and betters!

This child records that “when playing on the beach I made Buckingham Palace but a big boy came along and trod it and so we went home to bed”—an unconscious repetition of the often-recorded conclusion of Pepys’ eventful days.

One of the small excursionists was taken by her hostess to see Tonbridge, and writes: “We went to the muzeam wear we saw jitnoes of different people”.

The hospitality of the clergymen and their families and the goodness of doctors is also often mentioned. Some of the children write so vividly that the country vicarage and its sweet-smelling flowers, the hot curate and the active ladies, rise up as a picture, the “atmosphere” of which is kindness and “the values” incalculable. Other children merely record the facts—in some cases anticipating time and establishing an order of clergywomen.

“We asked the Vicar Miss Leigh if we could swim and she said No because one boy caught a cold.”

“We all went to the Reveren to a party.” “Saturday mornings we went to the Rectory haveing games, swings, sea sawes and refreshments.” “The party by the Church was fine.” “They had a Church down there called the Salvation Army. I thought there was only one Salvation Army.”

One of the Vicars hardly conveyed the impression he intended, for the boy writes:—

“We went to Church in the morning and in the afternoon for a walk as the Clergyman told us not to go to Sunday School as he wanted us to enjoy ourselves”.

One wonders if the Sunday School organization and the “intolerable strain” which would be put on it by London visitors was in that vicar’s mind.

The letter that is sent by the Countryside Committee to the children before they leave London tells them in simple language something about the trees and flowers and creatures which they will see during their holiday, and asks them to write on anything which they themselves have observed or which gave them pleasure to see. This request is granted, for the children wrote:—

“The trees seemed so happy they danced”.

“The wind was blowing and the branches of the trees was swinging themselves.”

“The rainbow is made of raindrops and the sun, tears and smiles.”

“It was nice to sit on the grass and see the trees prancing in the breeze.”

These extracts show, in the four small mortals who had each spent the ten years of their lives in crowded streets, an almost poetic capacity, and the beginning of a power of nature sympathy that will be a source of unrecorded solace. The sights of the night impress many children, the sky seen for the first time uninterrupted by gas lamps.

“When I (aged eleven) looked into the sky one night you could hardly see any of the blue for it was light up with stars.”

“I saw a star shoot out of the sky and then it settled in a different place.”

“One night I kept awake and looked for the stars and saw the Big Bear of stars.”

“At night the moon looked as if it were a Queen and the stars were her Attendants.”

“The clouds are making way for the moon to come out.”

The sun, its rising and setting, is also frequently mentioned. One child had developed patriotism to such an extent as to write:—

“One day I looked up to the Sky and saw the sun was rising in the shape of the British Isles”.

Alas! What would the Kaiser think?

Another of my correspondents expressed surprise that “the moon came from where the sky touched the Earth,” an evidence of street-bound horizon.

In other letters the writers record:—

“I saw the sun set it was like a big silver Eagle’s wing laying on a cliff”.

“When the sun was setting out of the clouds came something that looked like a County Council Steamer”.

That must have been a rather alarming sunset, but hardly less so than “the cloud which was like Saint Paul’s Cathedral coming down on our heads”.

The animals gave great pleasure and created wonder:—

“The cows made a grunting noise, the baa lambs made a pretty little shriek”.

“The cows I saw were lazy, they were laying. One was a bull who I daresay had been tossing somebody.”

“I heard a bird chirping it was make a noise like chirp chirp twee.”

“I saw a big dragon fly. It was like a long caterpillar with long sparkling transparent wings.”

“The birds are not like ourn they are light brown.”

“There were wasps which was yellow and pretty but unkind.”

“I (aged eleven) saw a little blackbird—its head was off by a Cat. I made a dear little grave and so berreyed it under the Tree.”

The flowers, of course, come in for the greatest attention and after them the trees are most usually referred to:—

“I (aged nine) know all the flowers that lived in the garden, but not all those who lived in the field”.

“Stinging nettles are a nuisance to people who have holes in their boots.”

“The Pond is all covered with Rushes. These had flowers like a rusty poker.”

“I picked lots of flowers and always brought them home—”

shows influence of the Selborne Society in teaching children not to pick and throw away what is alive and growing.

“The Cuckoo dines on other birds.”

“There was one bird called the squirrel.”

“Only gentlemen are allowed to shoot pheasants as they are expensive.”

“We caught fish in the river some were small others about 2 feet long.”

“Butterflies dont do much work.”

“The trunk of the oak is used for constructing furniture, coffins and other expensive objects.”

But my readers will be weary, so I will conclude with the pregnant remark of a little prig, who writes:—

“I think the country was in a good condition for I found plenty of interesting things in it.”

One or two of my small correspondents show an early disposition to see faults and remember misfortunes.

“There was no strikes on down there but there was a large number of wasps,” was the reflection of one evidently conscious of the fly in every ointment. Another (aged ten) writes:—

“Dear Madam,—When I was down in the country I was lying on the couch and a wasp stung me. As I was on the common a man chased me, and I fell head first and legs after into the prickles, and the prickles dug me and hurt me.... I was nearly scorched down in the country.... One day when I fed the Pigs the great big fat pig bit a lump out of my best pinafore. One morning when I was in bed the little boy brought the cat up and put it on my face. When I was down in the country the Common caught a light for the sun was always too hot. So I must close with my love.”

Was there ever such a catalogue of misfortunes compressed into one short fortnight? Still, in the intervals she seems to have noticed a considerable number of trees, of which she makes a list, and adds: “I did enjoy myself”. Poor little maiden! Perhaps her elders had graduated in the school of misfortunes, and she had learnt the trick of complaining.

A good many children, both boys and girls, were very conscious of the absence of their home responsibilities.

“I did not see a babbi. I mean to mind it all the time.”

“The ladys girl dont mind the baby as much as me at home. It stops in the garden.”

It opens up a whole realm of matters for reflection: the baby not dragged hither and thither in arms too small and weak for its comfort, and then plumped down on cold or damp stones while its over-burdened nurse snatches a brief game or indulges in a scamper; the clouding of the elder child’s life by unremitting responsibilities, and the effortful labour which sometimes wears out love, though not so often as could be expected, so marvellous is human nature, and its capacity for care and tenderness. “I didn’t have to mind no twins,” writes one small boy of nine, “I think thems a neusence. I wish Mother had not bought them.” But the baby left in a garden! opening its blinking eyes to the wonders of sky and flowers and bees and creatures, while its elder brothers and sister do their share of work and play. This makes a foundation of quiet and pleasure on which to build the strenuous days and anxious years of the later life of struggle and effort.

The reiteration of the kindness of the cottage hostesses would be almost wearisome if one’s imagination did not go behind it and picture the scenes, the hard-worked country woman accepting the suggestion of a child guest with a lively appreciation of the usefulness of the 5s.’s which were to accrue, but that thought receding as the enjoyment of the town child became infectious, until the value given for the value received became forgotten, and generous self-costing kindnesses were showered profusely.

“My lady she was always doing kind to me.” “Mrs. P. washed my clothes before I came home to save Mother doing it.” “My lady told Mr. S. to shake her tree for our apples.” “The person that Boarded me gave me nice thing to bring back.”

In some cases the thrifty, tidy ways of the country hostesses conveyed their lessons.

“She use to make browan bread and She use to make her own cakes and apple turn overs and eggloes and current cake.” “The wind came in my room and blew me in the night.” “We always had table clothes where I was.” “I washed myself well my lady liked it.” “We cleaned our teeth down in the country ever morning.”

Sometimes examples on deeper matters were observed and approved of.

“Every morning and dinner and tea we say grace.” “The lady told us Sunday School was nice and we went.” “We had Church 3 times. Morning noon and night”—

is not reported with entire approval, but the letter ends:—

“I loved my holidays very much and hope that I can go next year to live with the same lady”.

A boy writes:—

“The lady was very kind she never said any naughty words to me”.

And another lad reports:—

“I was fed extremely well and treated with the best respect”.

One little girl had clear views on the proper position of man.

“My ladie,” she writes, “had a big pig 4 little ones, 2 cats. some hens a bird in a cage a apple tree a little boy and a Huband.”

Sometimes the history of the place has been impressed on the children.

“I (aged eleven) was very glad I went to Guildford because Sir Lancelot and Elaine lived there but its name was then Astolat.”

“When I (aged eleven) reached Burnham Thorp I felt the change of air and I heard the birds sing—and then I knew that I should see the place where our great English sailor Lord Nelson was born,”—

he being a character so indissolubly associated with innocent country joys.

The letters both begin and end in a variety of ways, for though I do not write all the letters which are issued to the children by the Countryside Committee of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, it is considered better for me as Chairwoman to sign them, so as to give a more personal tone to the lengthy printed chat, which the teachers themselves open, kindly read and talk about to the children, and a copy of which each child can have if it so wishes. Thus the reply letters are all sent to me, and the vast majority begin “Dear Madam”; but some are less conventional, and I have those commencing, “Dear Mrs. Barnett,” “Dear Country Holdday Site Commtie,” “Dear friend,” “Dear Miss,” while the feeling of personal relation was evidently so real to one small boy that he began his epistle with “Dear Henrietta”—I delight in that letter! Among the concluding words are the following: “Your affectionate little friend,” “Your loving pupil,” “From one who enjoyed,” “Yours gratefully,” “Yours truly Friend”.

Some of the regrets at leaving the country are very pathetic:—

“I wish I was in the country now”. “I shall never go again; I am too old now.” “I think in the fortnight I had more treats than ever before in all my life.” “The blacking berries were red then and small. They will be black now and big.” “I wish I was with my lady’s baker taking the bread round.” “I enjoyed myself very much, I cannot explain how much. Please God next year I will come again. As I sit at school I always imagine myself roaming in the fields and watching the golden corn, and when I think of it it makes me cry.”

And those tears will find companions in some of the hearts which ache for the joyless lives of our town children, weighted by responsibilities, crippled by poverty, robbed of their birthright of innocent fun. The ecstatic joy of children in response to such simple pleasures tells volumes about their drab existence, their appreciation of adequate food, their warm recognition of kindness, represent privation and surprise. In a deeper sense than Wordsworth used it, “Their gratitude has left me mourning”.

I know, and no one better, the countless servants of the people who are toiling to relieve the sorrows of the poor and their children, but until the conditions of labour, of education, and of housing are fearlessly faced and radically dealt with, their labour can only be palliative and their efforts barren of the best fruit; but articles, as well as holidays, must finish, and so I will conclude by another extract:—

“We had a bottle of Tea and cake and it was 132¾ miles. I saw all sorts of things and come to Waterloo Station and thank you very much.”

Henrietta O. Barnett.

THE RECREATION OF THE PEOPLE.^[1]

By Canon Barnett.

July, 1907.

Work may, as Carlyle says, be a blessing, but work is not undertaken for work’s sake. Work is part of the universal struggle for existence. Men work to live. But the animal world early found that existence does not consist in keeping alive. All animals play. They let off surplus energy in imitating their own activities, and they recreate exhausted powers by change of occupation. Man, as soon as he came into his inheritance of reason, recognized play as an object of desire, and as well as working for his existence, and perhaps even before he worked to obtain power and glory, he worked to obtain recreation. A man, according to Schiller’s famous saying, is fully human only when he plays.

Work, then, let it be admitted, is undertaken not for work’s sake but largely for the sake of recreation. England has been made the workshop of the world, its fair fields and lovely homesteads have been turned into dark towns and grimy streets, partly in the hope that more of its citizens may have enjoyment in life. Men toil in close offices under dark skies, not just to increase the volume of exports and imports, and not always to increase their power, or to win honour from one another; they dream of happy hours of play, they picture themselves travelling in strange countries or tranquilly enjoying their leisure in some villa or pleasant garden. Men spend laborious days as reformers, on public boards or as public servants, very largely so as to release their neighbours from the prison house of labour, where so many, giving their lives “to some unmeaning taskwork, die unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest”.

Recreation is an object of work. The recreations of the people consume much of the fruit of the labour of the people. Their play discloses what is in their hearts and minds and to what end they will direct their power. Their use of leisure is a sign-post showing whether the course of the nation is towards extinction in ignorance and self-indulgence, or towards greater brightness in the revelation of character and the service of mankind. By their idle words and by the acts of their idle times men are most fairly judged.

The recreation of the people is therefore a subject of greater importance than is always remembered. The country is being lost or saved in its play, and the use of holidays needs as much consideration as the use of workdays.

Would that some Charles Booth could undertake an inquiry into “the life and leisure of the people” to put alongside that into their life and work! Without such an inquiry the only basis for the consideration which I invite is the impression left on the minds of individuals, and all I can offer is the impression made on my mind by a long residence in East London.

People during the last quarter of a century have greatly increased their command of leisure. The command, as Board of Trade inspectors remind us, is not sufficient as long as the rule of seventy or even sixty hours of work a week still holds in some trades. But the weekly half-holiday has become almost universal, some skilled trades have secured an eight or nine hours’ day, many workshops every year close for a week, and the members of the building trades begin work late and knock off early during the winter months. There is thus much leisure available for recreation. What do the people do? How do these crowds who swarm through the streets on Saturday afternoons spend their holiday?

Many visit the public-houses and try to drink themselves out of their gloom. “To get drunk,” we have been told, is “the shortest way out of Manchester,” and many citizens in every city go at any rate some distance along this way. They find they live a larger, fuller life as, standing in the warm bright bar, they drink and talk as if they were “lords”. The returns which suggest that the drink bill of a workman’s family is 5s. or 6s. a week prove how popular is this use of leisure, and they who begin a holiday by drinking probably spend the rest of it in sleeping. The identification of rest with sleep is very common, and a workman who knows he has a fair claim to rest thinks himself justified in sleeping or dozing hour after hour during Saturday and Sunday. “What,” I once asked an engineer, “should I find most of your mates doing if I called on Sunday?” His answer was short: “Sleeping”.

Another large body of workers as soon as they are free hurry off to some form of excitement. They go in their thousands to see a football-match, they yell with those who yell, they are roused by the spectacle of battle, and they indulge in hot “sultry” talk. Or they go to some race or trial of strength on which bets are possible. They feel in the rise and fall of the chance of winning a new stirring of their dull selves, and they dream of wealth to be enjoyed in wearing a coat with a fur collar and in becoming owners of sporting champions. Or they go to music halls—1,250,000 go every week in London—where if the excitement be less violent it still avails to move their thoughts into other channels. They see colour instead of dusky dirt, they hear songs instead of the clash of machinery, they are interested as a performer risks his life, and the jokes make no demands on their thoughts. The theatres probably are less popular, at any rate among men, but they attract great numbers, especially to plays which appeal to generous impulses. An audience enjoys the easy satisfaction of shouting down a villain. The same sort of excitement is that provided on Sunday mornings in the clubs, where in somewhat sordid surroundings, a few actors and singers try to stir the muddled feelings of their audience by appeals, which are more or less vulgar.

There is finally another large body of released workers who simply go home. They are more in number than is generally imagined, and they constitute the solid part of the community. They are not often found at meetings or clubs. Their opinions are not easily discovered. Large numbers never vote. They go home from work, they make themselves tidy, they do odd jobs about the house, they go out shopping with their wives, they walk with the children, they, as a family party, visit their friends, they sleep, and they read the weekly paper. All this is estimable, and the mere catalogue makes a picture pleasant to the middle-class imagination of what a workman’s life should be. The workers get repose, but from a larger point of view it cannot be said they return to work invigorated by new thoughts and new experiences, with new powers and new conceptions of life’s use. Repose is sterilized recreation.

These, it seems to me, are the three main streams which flow from work to leisure—that towards drink, that towards excitement, and that towards home repose.

There are other workers—an increasing number, but small in comparison with those in one of the main streams—who use their leisure to attend classes, to study with a view to greater technical skill or to read the books now so easily bought. There are some who take other jobs, forgetting that the wages which buy eight hours’ work should buy also eight hours’ sleep and eight hours’ play. There are many who bicycle, some it may be for the excitement of rapid motion, but some also for the joy of visiting the country and of social intercourse. There are many who play games and take vigorous exercise. There are a few—markedly a few—who have hobbies or pursuits on which they exercise their less used powers of heart or head or limb.

Such is the general impression which long experience has left on my mind as to the recreations of the people. It is, however, possible to give a closer inspection to some popular forms of amusement.

Consider first one of the seaside resorts during the month of August. Look at Blackpool, or Margate, or Weston. On the Saturday before Bank Holiday £100,000 was drawn out of the banks at Blackburn and £200,000 from the banks at Oldham, to be spent in recreation, mostly at Blackpool. How was it spent?

The sight of the beach of one of these resorts is familiar. There is the mass of people brightly coloured and loudly talking, broken into rapidly changing groups. There are the nigger singers, the buffoons, the acrobats; there are the great restaurants and hotels inviting lavish expenditure on food. There are bookstalls laden with trashy novels. There are the overridden beasts and the overworked maid-servants; there is the loafing on the pier, and the sleep after heavy meals. Nothing especially wicked, much that shows good-nature, but everything so vulgar—so empty of interest, so far below what thinking men and women should enjoy, so unworthy the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds earned by hard work.

Consider again the music hall. Mr. Stead has lent his eyes. “If,” he says, “I had to sum up the whole performance in a single phrase I should say, ‘Drivel for dregs’. For three and a half hours I sat patiently listening to the most insufferable banality and imbecility which ever fell on human ears. There was neither beauty nor humour, no appeal to taste or to intelligence, nothing but vulgarity and stupidity to recreate the heirs of a thousand years of civilization and the citizens of an empire on which the sun never sets.” And in one year there are some 70,000,000 admissions to music halls in London! Consider, too, the football fields or the racecourses. The crowd of spectators is often 100,000 to 200,000 persons. What can they find worthy the interest of a reasonable creature? Would they be present if it were not for the excitement of gambling, the mind-destroying pleasure of risking their money to get their neighbours’ money? “If,” as Sir James Crichton-Browne says, “you would see the English physiognomy at its worst, go to the platform of a railway station on the day of a suburban race meeting when the special trains are starting. On most of the faces you detect the grin of greed, on many the leer of low cunning, on some the stamp of positive rascality.”

Consider once more the crowds who go to the country in the summer. “One of the saddest sights of the Lake District during the tourist season,” says Canon Rawnsley, “is the aimless wandering of the hard-worked folk who have waited a whole year for their annual holiday, and, having obtained it, do not know what to do with it. They stand with Skiddaw, glorious in its purple mantle of heather, on one side and the blue hills of Borrowdale and the shining lake on the other, and ask ‘Which is the way to the scenery?’” The people, according to this observer, are dull and bored amid the greatest beauty. The excursionist finds nothing in nature which is his; he reads the handwriting of truth and beauty, but understands not what he reads.

But enough of impressions of popular recreations. There are brighter sides to notice. There is, for instance, health in the instinct which turns to the country for enjoyment. There is hope in the prevalent good temper, in the untiring energy and curiosity which is always seeking something new. There are better things than have been mentioned and there are worse things, but as a general conclusion it may, I think, be agreed that the recreations of the people are not such as recreate human nature for further progress. The lavish expenditure of hardly earned wages on mere bodily comfort does not suggest that the people are cherishing high political ideals, and the galvanized idleness which characterizes so much popular pleasure does not promise for the future an England which will be called blessed or be itself “merrie”.

England in her great days was “Merrie England”. Many of our forefathers’ recreations were, judged by our standard, cruel and horribly brutal. They had, however, certain notable characteristics. They made greater demands both on body and mind. When there were neither trains nor trams nor grand stands people had to take more exertion to get pleasure, and they themselves joined in the play or in the sport. Their delight, too, was often in the fellowship they secured, and “fellowship,” as Morris says, “is life and lack of fellowship is death”. Our fathers’ sports, even if they were cruel—and the “Book of Sports” shows how many were not cruel but full of grace—had often this virtue of fellowship. Their pageants and spectacles—faithfully pictured by Scott in his account of the revels of Kenilworth, were not just shows to be lazily watched; they enlisted the interest and ingenuity of the spectators, and stirred their minds to discover the meaning of some allegory or trace out some mystery.

The recreations which made England “merrie” were stopped in their development by the combined influence of puritanism and of the industrial revolution. Far be it from me to consider as evil either the one or the other. In all progress there is destruction. The puritan spirit put down cruel sports such as bull baiting and cock fighting, and with them many innocent pleasures. The industrial revolution drew the people from their homes in the fields and valleys, established them in towns, gave them higher wages and cheaper food. Under the combined influence work took possession of the nation’s being. It ruled as a tyrant, and the gospel of work became the gospel for the people.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century signs of reaction are apparent. Sleary, in Dickens’s “Hard Times,” urges on the economist the continual refrain: “The people, Squire, must be amused,” and Herbert Spencer, returning from America in 1882, declares the need of the “Gospel of Recreation”. Recreation has since increased in pace. The right to shorter and shorter hours of labour is now admitted, and the provision of amusement has become a great business. The demand which has secured shorter hours may safely be left to rescue further leisure from work; but demand has not, as we have seen, been followed by the establishment of healthy recreation. A child knows a holiday is good, but he needs also to know how to enjoy it or he will do mischief to himself or others. The people also need, as well as leisure, the knowledge of what constitutes recreation.

The subject is not simple, and Professor Karl Groos, in his book “The Play of Man,” has with Teutonic thoroughness analysed the subject from the physiological, the biological, and the psychological standpoints. The book is worthy of study by students, but it seems to me that recreation must involve (1) some excitement, (2) some strengthening of the less used fibres of the mind or body, (3) the activity of the imagination.

(1) Recreation must involve some excitement, some appeal to an existing interest, some change, some stirring of the wearied or sleeping embers of the mind. Routine work, tending to become more and more routine, wears life. It is “life of which our nerves are scant,” and recreation should revive the sources of life. Most people, as Mr. Balfour, look askance at efforts which, under the guise of amusing, aim to impart useful culture. Recreation must be something other than repose—something more stirring than sleep or loafing—it must be something attractive and not something undertaken as a duty.

(2) Recreation must involve the strengthening of the less used fibres of the mind and the body; the embers which are stirred by excitement need to be fed with new fuel, or the flames will soon sink into ashes. Gambling and drink, sensational dramas, and exciting shows stir but do not strengthen the mind. Mere change—the fresh excursion every day, the spectacle of a contest—wears out the powers of being. “The crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time.” On the other hand, games well played fulfil the condition, and there is no more cheering sight than that of playing-fields where young and old are using their limbs intent on doing their best. Music, foreign travel, congenial society, reading, chess, all games of skill, also fulfil the condition, as they make a claim on the activity of heart or mind, and so strengthen their fibres. A good drama is recreation if the spectator is called to give himself to thought and to feeling. He then becomes in a sense a fellow creator with the author, he has what Professor Groos says satisfies every one, “the joy of being a cause,” or, as he explains in another passage, “it is only when emotion is in a measure our own work do we enjoy the result”. Recreation must call out activity, it fails if it gives and requires nothing. We only have what we give. He that would save his life loses it.

(3) The last and most notable mark of recreation is the use of the imagination. Recreation comes from within and not from without the man. It depends on that a man is and not upon what a man has. A child grows tired of his toys, a man wearies of his possessions, but there is no being tired of the imagination which leaps ahead and every day reveals something new. Sleary was wrong when he said, “People must be amused”. He should have said, “People must amuse themselves”. Their recreation must, that is, come from the use of their own faculties of heart and mind. “The cultivation of the inner life,” it was truly said in a discussion on the hard lot of the middle classes, “is the only cure for the commercial tyrannies and class prejudices of that class.” The Japanese are the best holiday takers I have ever met; they have in themselves a taste for beauty, and they go to the country to enjoy the use of that taste. A man who because he is interested in mankind sets himself on his holiday to observe and study the habits of man; or, because he cares for Nature, looks deeper into her secrets by the way of plants or rocks or stars; or, because he is familiar with history, seeks in buildings and places illustrations of the past; a holiday maker who in such ways uses his inner powers will come home refreshed. His pleasure has come from within; he, on the other hand, who has lounged about a pier, moved from place to place, travelled from sight to sight, looking always for pleasure from outside himself, will come home bored.

If such be the constituents of recreation one reflection stands out clearly, and that is the importance of educating or directing the demand for amusement. Popular demand can only choose what it knows; it could not choose the pictures for an art gallery or the best machines for the workshop, neither can it settle the amusements which are recreative. Children and young people are with great care fitted for work and taught how to earn a living; there is equal need that the people be fitted for recreation, and taught how to enjoy their being. They must know before they can choose. Education, and not the House of Lords, is the safeguard of democratic government.

Mr. Dill’s “History of Social Life in the Towns of the Roman Empire during the First and Second Centuries” shows that there is a striking likeness between the condition of those times to that which prevails in England. The millionaires made noble benefactions, there were magnificent spectacles, there were contests which roused lunatic excitement as one of the combatants succeeded in some brutal strife, there was lavish provision of games and great enjoyment in feasting. The amusement was provided by others’ gifts, and, as Mr. Dill remarks, the people were more and more drawn from “interest in the things of the mind”. The games of Rome were steps in the decline and fall of Rome.

The lesson which modern and ancient experience offers is that people must be as thoughtfully and as seriously prepared for their recreation as for their work.

The first illusion which must, I think, be destroyed is that a holiday means a vacation or an empty time. It is not enough to close the school and let the children have no lessons. It is not enough to enact an eight hours’ day and leave the people without resources. If the spirit of toil be turned out of men’s lives and they be left swept and garnished, there are spirits of leisure that will return which may be ten times worse. It is a pathetic sight often presented in a playground, when after some aimless running and pushing, the children gradually grow listless, fractious, and quarrelsome. They came to enjoy themselves and cannot. Many a boy for want of occupation for his leisure has taken to crime. It is not always love of evil or even greed which makes him a thief, it is in the pure spirit of adventure that he stalks his prey on the coster’s cart, risks his liberty and dodges the police. It is because they have no more interesting occupation that eager little heads pop out of windows when the police make a capture, and eager little tongues tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes have seen. The empty holiday is a burden to a child, and every one has heard of the bus driver who could think of nothing better to do on his off day than to ride on a bus beside a mate. The idea that, given leisure, the people will find recreation is not justified. A kitten may be satisfied with aimless play, but a spark disturbs mankind’s clod and his play needs direction.

The other illusion which must be dissipated is that amusement should call for no effort on the part of those to be amused. It is the common mistake of benevolence that it tries to remove difficulties, rather than strengthen people to surmount difficulties. The gift which provides food is often destructive of the powers which earn food. In the same way the benevolence which, as among the Romans, provides shows, entertainments, and feasts, destroys at last the capacity for pleasure. Toys often stifle children’s imaginations and develop a greed for possession; children enjoy more truly what they themselves help to create, so that a bit of wood with inkspots for eyes, which they themselves have made, is more precious than an expensive doll. Grown people’s amusements to be satisfying must also call out effort.

The shattering of these two illusions leaves society face to face with the obligation to teach people to play as well as to work. It is not enough to give leisure and leave amusement to follow. Neither is it enough to provide popular amusement. James I was not a great King but he was a collector of wisdom, and he laid down for his son a guide for his games as well as for his work. Teachers and parents with greater experience might, like the King, guide their children.

(1) It is not, I think, waste of time to watch infants when at play, to encourage their efforts, to welcome their calls to look, and to enter into their imaginings. This watching, so usual among the children of the richer classes, is missed by the children of the poorer and often leaves a gap in their development.

(2) It would not either be wasted expenditure to employ game-teachers in the elementary schools, who, on Saturdays and out of school hours would teach children games, indoor and outdoor, conduct small parties to places of interest, and organize country walks or excursions such as are common in Swiss schools.

(3) It is, I think, reasonable to ask that the great school buildings and playgrounds should be more continually at the children’s service. They have been built at great expense. They are often the most airy and largest space in a crowded neighbourhood. Why should they be in the children’s use for only some twenty-five hours a week? Why should they be closed during two whole months? The experience gained in the vacation schools advocated by Mrs. Humphry Ward gives an object lesson in what might be done. During the afternoon hours between five and seven, and in the summer holidays, the children, with the greatest delight to themselves, might be drawn to see new things, to use new faculties of admiration or develop new tastes. Every child might thus be given a hobby. Recreation means, as we have seen, change. If the children ended their school days with more interests, with eyes opened to see in the country not only a nest to be taken but a brood of birds to be watched, with hands capable not only to make things but to create beauty, the limits within which they could find change would be greatly enlarged.

If I may now extend my suggestion to parents I would say that those of all classes might do more in planning holidays for their children. There is now a strong disposition to leave all responsibility to the teachers, and parents are in the danger of losing parental authority. In the holidays is their chance of regaining authority; for every day they could plan occupation, put aside time to join in some common pursuit, arrange visits, and make themselves companions of their own children. The teacher may be held responsible, but his work is often spoiled in the idle hours of a holiday, when bad books are read, vulgar sights enjoyed, low companions found, and habits of loafing developed. But it is not only teachers and parents by whom children are guided. There is a host of men and women who plan treats, excursions, and country holidays. Their efforts could, I think, be made more valuable. The monster day treats, which give excitement and turn the children’s minds in a direction towards the excitements of crowds and of stimulants from without, might be exchanged for small treats where ten or twenty children in close companionship with their guide would enjoy one another’s company, find new interests, and store up memories of things seen and heard. Tramps through England might be organized for elder boys and girls in which visits might be paid to historic fields and scenes of beauty, and objects of interest sought. Children about to be sent to the country by a Holiday Fund might, as is now very happily done by a committee in connexion with the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, by means of pictures and talk be taught what to look for and be encouraged to tell of their discoveries. Habits of singing might be developed, as among the Welsh or the Swiss. And in a thousand ways thought might be drawn to the observation of nature. Good people might, if I may say so, give up the provision of those entertainments which now, absorbing so much of the energy of curates and laywomen, seem only to prepare the children to look for the entertainment of the music halls. They might instead teach children one by one to find amusement, each one in his own being.

The hope of the future lies obviously in the training of the children, but the elder members of the community might also have more chances of growth. Employers, for instance, might more generally substitute holidays of weeks for holidays of days, and so encourage the workpeople to plan their reasonable use. They might also enlarge their minds by informing them about the material on which they work, whence it comes and whither it goes. Miss Addams tells of a firm in Ohio where the hands are gathered to hear the reports of the travellers as they return from Constantinople, Italy, or China, and learn how the goods they have made are used by strange people. In the same firm lantern lectures are given on the countries with which the firm has dealings, and generally the hands are made partners in the thoughts of the heads. “This,” as Miss Addams says, “is a crude example of the way in which a larger framework may be given to the worker’s mind,” and she adds, “as a poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, so the workman needs some one to bathe his surrounding with a human significance.” Employers also, following the example of Messrs. Cadbury, might require their young people not only to attend evening classes to make them fitter for work, but also to attend one class which will fit them to ride hobbies, which will carry them from the strain and routine of work into other and recreating surroundings. Municipal bodies have in these latter days done much in the right direction by opening playing fields, picture galleries, and libraries, and by giving free performances of high-class music. They might perhaps do more to break up the monotony of the streets, introducing more of the country into town, and requiring dignity as well as healthiness in the great buildings. Such variety adds greatly to the joy of living, diverts the minds of weary workers, and stimulates the admiration which is one-third of life.

But, after all, improvement starts from individuals, and it is the action of individual men and women which will reform popular reaction. They must, each one as if the reform depended on him alone, be morally thoughtful about the amusements they encourage or patronize, and be considerate in preparing for their own pleasure. Each one must develop his own being, and stir up the faculties of his own mind. Each one must practise the muscles of his mind as a racer practises the muscles of his legs.

The most completely satisfying recreation is possibly in the intercourse of friends, and it is a sad feature in English holidays that men and their wives, who are naturally the closest friends, seem to find so little pleasure in one another’s company. They walk one behind the other in the country, they are rarely found together at places of entertainment, and they are seldom seen talking with any vivacity. The fault lies in the fact that they have not developed their own being, they have neither interests nor hobbies nor ideas, and so have nothing to talk about save wages, household difficulties, and the shortest way home.

Enough, however, in the way of suggestion as to what may be done in guiding people towards recreation. Under guidance recreations would take another than their present character. People, having a wider range of interests, would find change within those interests, and cease to turn from sensation to sleep and from sleep to sensation. People having active minds would look to exercise their minds in a game of skill, in searching Nature’s secrets, in spirited talk, in some creative activity, in following a thought-provoking drama, in the use, that is, of their highest human faculties. The forms of recreation would be changed. Much of the difficulty about what seems Sunday desecration would then vanish. The play of the people would no longer be fatal to the quiet of the day, or inconsistent with the worship which demands the consecration of the whole being. It is not recreation so much as the form of recreation which desecrates Sunday. This, however, is part of another subject.

As a conclusion of the whole matter I would say how it seems to me that Merrie England need be not only in the past. The present time is the best of times. There are to-day resources for men’s enjoyment such as never existed in any other age or country. There are fresh and pure capacities in human nature which are evident in many signs of energy, of admiration, and of good will. If the resources were used, if the capacities were developed, there would soon be popular recreations to attract human longings, and encourage the hope of a future when the glory of England shall not be in its possessions of gold and territory, but in a people happy in the full use of their powers of heart and of head.

Samuel A. Barnett.

THE HOPES OF THE HOSTS.^[1]

By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.

January, 1886.

Certainly a great deal of entertaining goes on in Toynbee Hall. From the half-hours spent in the little room, where its Entertainment Committee meets, there issue some prominent if not exactly big results, and, perhaps, its members are not without a hope that deep consequences as well may follow. This method of helping people has not been without its critics, one of whom uttered the opinion, “that the Toynbee Hall plan was to save the people’s souls alive by pictures, pianos, and parties,” and though the remark was made derisively, there may be some doubt if it was altogether without truth: only the speaker should have added that it was one of the Toynbee Hall plans, instead of using only the definite article.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The recent report issued by the London County Council tells the result of an experiment in a better use of the holiday by means of Vacation Schools. The word “School” may suggest restraint, and put off some of my readers, who are apt to think of “heaven as a place where there are no masters”. They will say, “Let the children alone”. But they do not realize what “letting alone” means for children whose homes have no resources in space or interests. They do not remember that the schoolhouse is the Mansion of the neighbourhood, and that the Vacation School curriculum includes visits to the parks and to London sights, such as the Zoological Gardens, Hampton Court, and the Natural History Museum; manual occupations in which really useful things are made, painting and cardboard modelling, by which the children’s own imaginations have play; lessons on nature, illustrated by plants and by pictures, readings from interesting books, about which the teachers are ready to talk, and organized games. When relieved from the trouble of having to choose at what to play, the children find untroubled enjoyment. Vacation Schools thus understood have no terror, but let the children themselves give evidence whether they prefer to be let alone.

In a Battersea Vacation School there was an average attendance of 91·6 per cent, and on one day 153 children out of 154 on the roll voluntarily attended. “The high rate of actual attendance at the Vacation Schools, which compares not unfavourably with that of the ordinary day schools, in spite of the fact that compulsion is completely absent from the former, may be taken as an indication that the London child does not know what to do during the long vacation, and is anxious and ready to take advantage of any opportunity that may be afforded for work and play under conditions more healthy and congenial than the street or his home can offer.” In another school the teachers report: “We had been asked to do our best to keep up the numbers. Our difficulty was to keep them down.” “The discipline of the boys specially surprised the staff; a hint of possible expulsion was quite sufficient in dealing with two or three boys reported during the month.”

The children, by their attendance, give the best evidence that the Vacation School is in their opinion a good way of spending a holiday and the report gives greater detail as to the reason. The teachers tell how “listless manners give place to animation and energy, and how the tendency prevalent among the boys to loaf or aimlessly to idle away their holidays was checked by the introduction of an objective, the absence of which is chiefly responsible for the loafing tendency.... The absence of restraint appears to lead to more honourable and more thoughtful conduct, and little acts of courtesy and politeness increased in frequency as the holidays drew to an end.... Educationally the children benefit in increased manual dexterity, by the creation of motive, the training of the powers of observation, and the development of memory and imagination.... In many cases ... new capabilities were discovered, and talents awakened by the more congenial surroundings. Some children, who at first appeared dull and inattentive, brightened up and became most interested in one or more of their varied occupations.... Little chats on the Excursions revealed a marked widening of outlook.”

In such testimony as this it is quite easy to find the reason why the children so greatly enjoyed themselves. They had a variety of new interests and they had the sense of “life” which comes in the exercise of new capacities. They were never bored and they felt well. The parents, whose burden during holidays is often forgotten, seem to have expressed great appreciation at the provision for the children’s care, and as for the teachers, one goes so far as to say that “the kind of experience gained is a teacher’s liberal education and training”.

The Report as a result of such testimony, naturally recommends an extension of the plan of Vacation Schools, so that this summer a greater number may be provided. I would, however, submit that the testimony justifies something more thorough.

The proposals of the Report assume that holidays must fall in the month of August. Now there are many parents whose occupation keeps them in town during that month, and who cannot therefore take their children to the country. August too, is the period when all health resorts are most crowded and expensive. And lastly, if holidays are taken only in this autumn season the country of the spring and summer, with its haymaking, its flowers and its birds, remains unknown to the children. The obvious change—so obvious that one wonders why it has not long ago been adopted—is to let some schools take their holidays in the months of June and July. But I would myself suggest the best plan would be to keep all, or most, of the school in session during the whole summer, establishing for the three months a summer curriculum on the lines of those adopted in the Vacation Schools. The children would then be able to go with their friends, or through the Children’s Country Holiday Fund for their Country Holiday without any interference with the regular school regime; and all, while they were at home, would have those resources in the school hours which have proved to be powerful to attract them from the streets. The teachers, free at last to take some of their holidays in June or July, would be able to benefit by the lower charges, to get, perhaps, a recreative holiday in the Alps instead of one at the English seaside in the somewhat stale companionship of a party of fellow-teachers.

This more thorough plan would do for all London children everything which Vacation Schools attempt, and it has the further advantage that it would put refreshing country visits within the reach of more children and teachers.

Middle-class families recognize the necessity of an annual visit to the sea or country, as a consequence of which great towns exist almost wholly as holiday resorts. The necessity of the middle class is much more the necessity of the working class, whose children have less room in their houses and fewer interests for their leisure. A pressure which cannot be resisted will insist that for their health’s sake and for the child’s sake, who is the father of the man, the children shall have each year the opportunity of breathing for at least a fortnight country air, and of learning to be Nature’s playmates. The only practicable way in which such holidays may be provided is by the extension of the holiday period to include other than the month of August.

The plan I have suggested would make such extension practicable with the least possible interference with school work, while it would secure for all children some guidance in the use and enjoyment of the leisure, which the experiment of Vacation Schools has proved to be so acceptable. That guidance, by widening children’s minds and awakening their powers of taking notice, would make the country visits more full of interests, and develop a love of Nature, to be a valuable resource in later life. If the Council’s Report succeeds in moving London opinion it may mark a new departure in the use and enjoyment of holidays.

It almost seems as if the education given at such cost ran to waste during the holidays. There is a call for another Charles Booth, to make an inquiry into “the life and leisure of the people” which might be as epoch-making as that into “the life and labour of the people”. Such an inquiry would show, I believe, the need of energetic effort if leisure is to be a source of strength and not of weakness to national life, a way to recreation and not to demoralization.

Samuel A. Barnett.

RECREATION IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.^[1]

Recreation and Character.

By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.

October, 1906.

A people’s play 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 all ages 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.

The Quality of English Playing.

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’ refuge once 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.

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 give place 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 and provides 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”.

Our Church and Recreation.

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 enjoy themselves, 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.