Walter Besant
All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PALACE OF DELIGHT
There lies on the west and southwest of Stepney Green a triangular district, consisting of an irregular four-sided figure – what Euclid beautifully calls a trapezium – formed by the Whitechapel Road, the Commercial Road, Stepney Green, and High Street, or Jamaica Street, or Jubilee Street, whichever you please to call your frontier. This favored spot exhibits in perfection all the leading features which characterize the great Joyless City. It is, in fact, the heart of the East End. Its streets are mean and without individuality or beauty; at no season and under no conditions can they ever be picturesque; one can tell, without inquiring, that the lives led in those houses are all after the same model, and that the inhabitants have no pleasures. Everything that goes to make a city, except the means of amusement, is to be found here. There are churches and chapels – do not the blackened ruins of Whitechapel Church stand here? There are superior "seminaries" and "academies," names which linger here to show where the yearning after the genteel survives; there is a board school, there is the great London Hospital, there are almshouses, there are even squares in it – Sidney Square and Bedford Square, to wit – but there are no gardens, avenues, theatres, art galleries, libraries, or any kind of amusement whatever.
The leading thoroughfare of this quarter is named Oxford Street, which runs nearly all the way from the New Road to Stepney Church. It begins well with some breadth, a church and a few trees on one side, and almshouses with a few trees on the other. This promise is not kept; it immediately narrows and becomes like the streets which branch out of it, a double row of little two-storied houses, all alike. Apparently, they are all furnished alike; in each ground-floor front there are the red curtains and the white blind of respectability, with the little table bearing something, either a basket of artificial flowers, or a big Bible or a vase, or a case of stuffed birds from foreign parts, to mark the gentility of the family. A little farther on, the houses begin to have small balconies on the first floor, and are even more genteel. The streets which run off north and south are like unto it but meaner. Now, the really sad thing about this district is that the residents are not the starving class, or the vicious class, or the drinking class; they are well-to-do and thriving people, yet they desire no happiness, they do not feel the lack of joy, they live in meanness and are content therewith. So that it is emphatically a representative quarter and a type of the East End generally, which is for the most part respectable and wholly dull, and perfectly contented never to know what pleasant strolling and resting-places, what delightful interests, what varied occupation, what sweet diversions there are in life.
As for the people, they follow a great variety of trades. There are "travelling drapers" in abundance; it is, in fact, the chosen quartier of that romantic following; there are a good many stevedores, which betrays the neighborhood of docks; there are some who follow the mysterious calling of herbalist, and I believe you could here still buy the materials for those now forgotten delicacies, saloop and tansy pudding. You can at least purchase medicines for any disease under the sun if you know the right herbalist to go to. One of them is a medium as well; and if you call on him, you may be entertained by the artless prattle of the "sperruts," of whom he knows one or two. They call themselves all sorts of names – such as Peter, Paul, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Byron – but in reality there are only two of them, and they are bad actors. Then there are cork-cutters, "wine merchants' engineers" – it seems rather a grand thing for a wine merchant, above all other men, to want an engineer; novelists do not want engineers – sealing-wax manufacturers, workers in shellac and zinc, sign-painters, heraldic painters, coopers, makers of combs, iron hoops, and sun-blinds, pewterers, feather-makers – they only pretend to make feathers; what they really do is to buy them, or pluck the birds, and then arrange the feathers and trim them; but they do not really make them – ship-modelers, a small but haughty race; mat-dealers, who never pass a prison without using bad language, for reasons which many who have enjoyed the comforts of a prison will doubtless understand. There are also a large quantity of people who call themselves teachers of music. This may be taken as mere pride and ostentatious pretence, because no one wants to learn music in this country, no one ever plays any music, no one has a desire to hear any. If any one called and asked for terms of tuition, he would be courteously invited to go away, or the professor would be engaged, or he would be out of town. In the same way, a late learned professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge was reported always to have important business in the country if an Arab came to visit the colleges. But what a lift above the stevedores, pewterers, and feather pretenders to be a professor of music!
Angela would plant her Palace in this region, the most fitting place, because the most dreary; because here there exists nothing, absolutely nothing, for the imagination to feed upon. It is, in fact, though this is not generally known, the purgatory prepared for those who have given themselves up too much to the enjoyment of roses and rapture while living at the West End. How beautiful are all the designs of Nature! Could there be, anywhere in the world, a more fitting place for such a purgatory than such a city? Besides, once one understands the thing, one is further enabled to explain why these grim and sombre streets remain without improvement. To beautify them would seem, in the eyes of pious and religious people, almost flying in the face of Providence. And yet, not really so; for it may be argued that there are other places also fitted for the punishment of these purgatorial souls – for instance, Hoxton, Bethnal Green, Battersea, and the Isle of Dogs.
Angela resolved, therefore, that on this spot the Palace of Joy should stand. There should be, for all who chose to accept it, a general and standing invitation to accept happiness and create new forms of delight. She would awaken in dull and lethargic brains a new sense, the new sense of pleasure; she would give them a craving for things of which as yet they knew nothing. She would place within their reach, at no cost whatever, absolutely free for all, the same enjoyments as are purchased by the rich. A beautiful dream! They should cultivate a noble discontent; they should gradually learn to be critical; they should import into their own homes the spirit of discontent; they should cease to look upon life as a daily uprising and a down-sitting, a daily mechanical toil, a daily rest. To cultivate the sense of pleasure is to civilize. With the majority of mankind the sense is undeveloped, and is chiefly confined to eating and drinking. To teach the people how the capacity of delight may be widened, how it may be taught to throw out branches in all manner of unsuspected directions, was Angela's ambition. A very beautiful dream!
She owned so many houses in this district that it was quite easy to find a place suitable for her purpose. She discovered upon the map of her property a whole foursquare block of small houses, all her own, bounded north, south, east, and west by streets of other small houses, similar and similarly situated. This site was about five minutes west of Stepney Green, and in the district already described. The houses were occupied by weekly tenants, who would find no difficulty in getting quarters as eligible elsewhere. Some of them were in bad repair; and what with maintenance of roofs and chimneys, bad debts, midnight flittings, and other causes, there was little or no income derived from these houses. Mr. Messenger, indeed, who was a hard man, but not unjust, only kept them to save them from the small owner like Mr. Bunker, whose necessities and greed made him a rack-rent landlord.
Having fixed upon her site, Angela next proceeded to have interviews – but not on the spot, where she might be recognized – with lawyers and architects, and to unfold partially her design. The area on which the houses stood formed a pretty large plot of ground, ample for her purpose, provided that the most was made of the space and nothing wasted. But a great deal was required; therefore she would have no lordly staircases covering half the ground, nor great ante-rooms, nor handsome lobbies. Everything, she carefully explained, was to be constructed for use and not for show. She wanted, to begin with, three large halls: one of them was to be a dancing-room, but it might also be a children's play-room for wet weather; one was to be used for a permanent exhibition of native talent, in painting, drawing, wood and ivory-carving, sculpture, leather-work, and the like, everything being for sale at low prices; the last was to be a library, reading and writing room. There was also to be a theatre, which would serve as a concert and music room, and was to have an organ in it. In addition to these there were to be a great number of class-rooms for the various arts, accomplishments, and graces that were to be taught by competent professors and lecturers. There were to be other rooms where tired people might find rest, quiet, and talk – the women with tea and work, the men with tobacco. And there were to be billiard-rooms, a tennis-court, a racket-court, a fives-court, and a card-room. In fact, there was to be space found for almost every kind of recreation.
She did not explain to her architect how she proposed to use this magnificent place of entertainment; it was enough that he should design it and carry out her ideas; and she stipulated that no curious inquirers on the spot should be told for what purpose the building was destined, nor who was the builder.
One cannot get designs for a palace in a week: it was already late in the autumn, after Harry had taken up his appointment, and was busy among the legs of stools, that the houses began to be pulled down and the remnants carted away. Angela pressed on the work; but it seemed a long and tedious delay before the foundations were laid and the walls began slowly to rise.
There should have been a great function when the foundation-stone was laid, with a procession of the clergy in white surplices and college caps, perhaps a bishop, Miss Messenger herself, with her friends, a lord or two, the officers of the nearest Masonic Lodge, a few Foresters, Odd Fellows, Buffaloes, Druids, and Shepherds, a flag, the charity children, a dozen policemen, and Venetian masts, with a prayer, a hymn, a speech and a breakfast – nothing short of this should have satisfied the founder. Yet she let the opportunity slip, and nothing was done at all; the great building, destined to change the character of the gloomy city into a City of Sunshine, was begun with no pomp or outward demonstration. Gangs of workmen cleared away the ignoble bricks; the little tenements vanished; a broad space bristling with little garden-walls gaped where they had stood; then the walls vanished; and nothing at all was left but holes where cellars had been; then they raised a hoarding round the whole, and began to dig out the foundation. After the hoarding was put up, nothing more for a long time was visible. Angela used to prowl round it in the morning, when her girls were all at work, but fearful lest the architect might come and recognize her.
As she saw her palace begin to grow into existence, she became anxious about its success. The first beatific vision, the rapture of imagination, was over, and would come no more; she had now to face the hard fact of an unsympathetic people who perhaps would not desire any pleasure – or if any, then the pleasure of a "spree," with plenty of beer. How could the thing be worked if the people themselves would not work it? How many could she reckon upon as her friends? Perhaps two or three at most. Oh, the Herculean task, for one woman, with two or three disciples, to revolutionize the City of East London!
With this upon her mind, her conversations with the intelligent young cabinet-maker became more than usually grave and earnest. He was himself more serious than of old, because he now occupied so responsible a position in the brewery. Their relations remained unchanged. They walked together, they talked and they devised things in the drawing-room, and especially for Saturday evenings.
"I think," he said, one evening when they were alone except for Nelly in the drawing-room, "I think that we should never think or talk of working-men in the lump, any more than we think of rich men in a lump. All sorts and conditions of men are pretty much alike, and what moves one moves all. We are all tempted in the same way; we can all be led in the same way."
"Yes, but I do not see how that fact helps."
They were talking, as Angela loved to do, of the scheme of the palace.
"If the palace were built, we should offer the people of Stepney, without prejudice to Whitechapel, Mile End Bow, or even Cable Street, a great many things which at present they cannot get and do not desire. Yet they have always proved extremely attractive. We offer the society of the young for the young, with dancing, singing, music, acting, entertainments – everything except, which is an enormous exception, feasting; we offer them all for nothing; we tell them, in fact, to do everything for themselves; to be the actors, singers, dancers, and musicians."
"And they cannot do anything."
"A few can; the rest will come in. You forget, Miss Kennedy, the honor and glory of acting, singing, and performing in public. Can there be a greater reward than the applause of one's friends?"
"It could never be so nice," said Nelly, "to dance in a great hall among a lot of people as to dance up here, all by ourselves."
The palace was not, in these days, very greatly in the young man's mind. He was occupied with other things: his own work and position; the wisdom of his choice; the prospects of the future. For surely, if he had exchanged the old life and got nothing in return but work at a lathe all day at tenpence an hour, the change was a bad one. Nothing more had been said to him by Miss Kennedy about the great things he was to do, with her, for her, among his people. Was he, then, supposed to find out for himself these great things? And he made no more way with his wooing. That was stopped, apparently, altogether.
Always kind to him; always well pleased to see him; always receiving him with the same sweet and gracious smile; always frank and open with him; but nothing more.
Of late he had observed that her mind was greatly occupied; she was brooding over something; he feared that it might be something to do with the Associated Dressmakers' financial position. She did not communicate her anxieties to him, but always, when they were alone, wanted to go back to their vision of the palace. Harry possessed a ready sympathy; he fell easily and at once into the direction suggested by another's words. Therefore, when Angela talked about the palace, he too took up the thread of invention, and made believe with her as if it were a thing possible, a thing of brick and mortar.
"I see," he went on this evening, warming to the work, "I see the opening day, long announced, of the palace. The halls are furnished and lit up; the dancing-room is ready; the theatre is completed, and the electric lights are lit; the concert-rooms are ready with their music-stands and their seats. The doors are open. Then a wonderful thing happens."
"What is that?" asked Angela.
"Nobody comes."
"Oh!"
"The vast chambers echo with the footsteps of yourself, Miss Kennedy, and of Nelly, who makes no more noise than a demure kitten. Captain Sorensen and I make as much trampling as we can, to produce the effect of a crowd. But it hardly seems to succeed. Then come the girls, and we try to get up a dance; but, as Nelly says, it is not quite the same as your drawing-room. Presently two men, with pipes in their mouths, come in and look about them. I explain that the stage is ready for them, if they like to act; or the concert-room, if they will sing; or the dancing-room, should they wish to shake a leg. They stare and they go away. Then we shut up the doors and go away and cry."
"O Mr. Goslett, have you no other comfort for me?"
"Plenty of comfort. While we are all crying, somebody has a happy thought. I think it is Nelly."
She blushed a pretty rosy red. "I am sure I could never suggest anything."
"Nelly suggests that we shall offer prizes, a quantity of prizes, for competition in everything, the audience or the spectators to be judges; and then the palace will be filled and the universal reign of joy will begin."
"Can we afford prizes?" asked Angela the practical.
"Miss Kennedy," said Harry severely, "permit me to remind you that, in carrying out this project, money, for the first time in the world's history, is to be of no value."
If Newnham does not teach women to originate – which a thousand Newnhams will never do – it teaches them to catch at an idea and develop it. The young workman suggested her palace; but his first rough idea was a poor thing compared with Angela's finished structure – a wigwam beside a castle, a tabernacle beside a cathedral. Angela was devising an experiment, the like of which has never yet been tried upon restless and dissatisfied mankind. She was going, in short, to say to them: "Life is full, crammed full, overflowing with all kinds of delights. It is a mistake to suppose that only rich people can enjoy these things. They may buy them, but everybody may create them; they cost nothing. You shall learn music, and forthwith all the world will be transformed for you; you shall learn to paint, to carve, to model, to design, and the day shall be too short to contain the happiness you will get out of it. You shall learn to dance, and know the rapture of the waltz. You shall learn the great art of acting, and give each other the pleasure which rich men buy. You shall even learn the great art of writing, and learn the magic of a charmed phrase. All these things which make the life of rich people happy shall be yours; and they shall cost you nothing. What the heart of man can desire shall be yours, and for nothing. I will give you a house to shelter you, and rooms in which to play; you have only to find the rest. Enter in, my friends; forget the squalid past; here are great halls and lovely corridors – they are yours. Fill them with sweet echoes of dropping music; let the walls be covered with your works of art; let the girls laugh and the boys be happy within these walls. I give you the shell, the empty carcass; fill it with the spirit of content and happiness."
Would they, to begin with, "behave according"? It was easy to bring together half a dozen dressmakers: girls always like behaving nicely; would the young men be equally amenable? And would the policeman be inevitable, as in the corridors of a theatre? The police, however, would have to be voluntary, like every other part of the institution, and the guardians of the peace must, like the performers in the entertainments, give their services for nothing. For which end, Harry suggested, it would be highly proper to have a professor of the noble art of self-defence, with others of fencing, single-stick, quarter-staff, and other kindred objects.
CHAPTER XIX.
DICK THE RADICAL
In the early days of winter, the walls of the palace being now already well above the hoarding, Angela made another important convert. This was no other than Dick Coppin, the cousin of whom mention has been already made.
"I will bring him to your drawing-room," said Harry. "That is, if he will come. He does not know much about drawing-rooms, but he is a great man at the Stepney Advanced Club. He is a reddest of red-hot Rads, and the most advanced of Republicans. I do not think he would himself go a-murdering of kings and priests, but I fancy he regards these things as accidents naturally rising out of a pardonable enthusiasm. His manners are better than you will generally find, because he belongs to my own gentle craft. You shall tame him, Miss Kennedy."
Angela said she would try.
"He shall learn to waltz," Harry went on. "This will convert him from a fierce Republican to a merely enthusiastic Radical. Then he shall learn to sing in parts; this will drop him down into advanced Liberalism. And if you can persuade him to attend your evenings, talk with the girls, or engage in some art, say painting, he will become, quite naturally, a mere Conservative."
With some difficulty Harry persuaded his cousin to come with him. Dick Coppin was not, he said of himself, a dangler after girls' apron-strings, having something else to think of; nor was he attracted by the promise, held out by his cousin, of music and singing. But he came under protest, because music seemed to him an idle thing while the House of Lords remained undestroyed, and because this cousin of his could somehow make him do pretty nearly what he pleased.
He was a man of Harry's own age; a short man, with somewhat rough and rugged features – strong, and not without the beauty of strength. His forehead was broad; he had thick eyebrows, the thick lips of one who speaks much in public, and a straight chin – the chin of obstinacy. His eyes were bright and full; his hair was black; his face was oval; his expression was masterful; it was altogether the face of a man who interested one. Angela thought of his brother, the captain in the Salvation Army; this man, she felt, had all the courage of the other, with more common-sense; yet one who, too, might become a fanatic – who might be dangerous if he took the wrong side. She shook hands with him and welcomed him. Then she said that she wanted dancing men for her evenings, and hoped that he could dance. It was the first time in his life that Mr. Coppin had been asked that question, and also the first time that he had thought it possible that any man in his senses, except a sailor, should be expected to dance. Of course he could not, and said so bluntly, sticking his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, which is a gesture peculiar to the trade, if you care to notice so small a fact.
"Your cousin," said Angela, "will teach you. Mr. Goslett, please give Mr. Coppin a lesson in a quadrille. Nelly, you will be his partner. Now, if you will make up the set, I will play."
An elderly bishop of Calvinistic principles could not have been more astonished than was this young workman. He had not the presence of mind to refuse. Before he realized his position, he was standing beside his partner: in front of him stood his cousin, also with a partner; four girls made up the set. Then the music began, and he was dragged, pushed, hustled, and pulled this way and that. He would have resented this treatment but that the girls took such pains to set him right, and evidently regarded the lesson as one of the greatest importance. Nor did they cease until he had discerned what the mathematician called the Law of the Quadrille, and could tread the measure with some approach to accuracy.
"We shall not be satisfied, Mr. Coppin," said Angela, when the quadrille was finished, "until we have taught everybody to dance."
"What is the good of dancing?" he asked good-humoredly, but a good deal humiliated by the struggle.
"Dancing is graceful; dancing is a good exercise; dancing should be natural to young people; dancing is delightful. See – I will play a waltz; now watch the girls."
She played. Instantly the girls caught each other by the waist and whirled round the room with brightened eyes and parted lips. Harry took Nelly in the close embrace which accompanies the German dance, and swiftly, easily, gracefully, danced round and round the room.
"Is it not happiness that you are witnessing, Mr. Coppin?" asked Angela. "Tell me, did you ever see dressmakers happy before? You, too, shall learn to waltz. I will teach you, but not to-night."
Then they left off dancing and sat down, talking and laughing. Harry took his violin and discoursed sweet music, to which they listened or not as they listed. Only the girl who was lame looked on with rapt and eager face.
"See her!" said Angela, pointing her out. "She has found what her soul was ignorantly desiring. She has found music. Tell me, Mr. Coppin, if it were not for the music and this room, what would that poor child be?"
He made no reply. Never before had he witnessed, never had he suspected, such an evening. There were the girls whom he despised, who laughed and jested with the lads in the street, who talked loud and were foolish. Why, they were changed! What did it mean? And who was this young woman, who looked and spoke as no other woman he had ever met, yet was only a dressmaker?
"I have heard of you, Mr. Coppin," this young person said, in her queen-like manner, "and I am glad that you have come. We shall expect you, now, every Saturday evening. I hear that you are a political student."
"I am a Republican," he replied. "That's about what I am." Again he stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
"Yes. You do not perhaps quite understand what it is that we are doing here, do you? In a small way – it is quite a little thing – it may interest even a political student like yourself. The interests of milliners and dressmakers are very small compared with the House of Lords. Still – your sisters and cousins – "
"It seems pleasant," he replied, "if you don't all get set up with high notions. As for me, I am for root-and-branch Reform."
"Yes: but all improvement in government means improvement of the people, does it not? Else, I see no reason for trying to improve a government."
He made no reply. He was so much accustomed to the vague denunciations and cheap rhetoric of his class that a small practical point was strange to him.
"Now," said Angela, "I asked your cousin to bring you here, because I learn that you are a man of great mental activity, and likely, if you are properly directed, to be of great use to us."
He stared again. Who was this dressmaker who spoke about directing him? The same uncomfortable feeling came over him – a cold doubt about himself, which he often felt when in the society of his cousin. No man likes to feel that he is not perfectly and entirely right, and that he must be right.
"We are a society," she went on, "of girls who want to work for ourselves; we all of us belong to your class: we therefore look to you for sympathy and assistance. Yet you hold aloof from us. We have had some support here already, but none from the people who ought most to sympathize with us. That is, I suppose, because you know nothing about us. Very well, then. While your cousin is amusing those girls, I will tell you about our association."
* * * * * * *
"Now you understand, Mr. Coppin. You men have long since organized yourselves – it is our turn now; and we look to you for help. We are not going to work any longer for a master: we are not going to work long hours any longer; and we are going to get time every day for fresh air, exercise, and amusement. You are continually occupied, I believe, at your club, denouncing the pleasures of the rich. But we are actually going to enjoy all those pleasures ourselves, and they will cost us nothing. Look round this room – we have a piano lent to us: there is your cousin with his fiddle, and Captain Sorensen with his; we are learning part-songs, which cost us three-halfpence each; we dance; we play; we read – a subscription to Smith's is only three guineas a year; we have games which are cheap: the whole expense of our evenings is the fire in winter and the gas. On Saturday evenings we have some cake and lemonade, which one of the girls makes for us. What can rich people have more than society, lights, music, singing, and dancing?"
He was silent, wondering at this thing.
"Don't you see, Mr. Coppin, that if we are successful we shall be the cause of many more such associations? Don't you see, that if we could get our principle established, we should accomplish a greater revolution than the overthrow of the Lords and the Church, and one far more beneficial?"
"You can't succeed," he said. "It's been tried before."
"Yes – by men: I know it. And it has always broken down because the leaders were false to their principles and betrayed the cause."
"Where are the girls to get the money to start with?"
"We are fortunate," Angela replied. "We have this house and furniture given to us by a lady interested in us. That, I own, is a great thing. But other rich people will be found to do as much. Why, how much better it is than leaving money to hospitals!"
"Rich people!" he echoed with contempt.
"Yes: rich people, of whom you know so little, Mr. Coppin, that I think you ought to be very careful how you speak of them. But think of us – look at the girls. Do they not look happier than they used to look?"
He replied untruthfully, because he was not going to give in to a woman, all of a sudden, that he did not remember how they used to look, but that undoubtedly they now looked very well. He did not say – which he felt – that they were behaving more quietly and modestly than he had ever known them to behave.
"You," Angela went on, with a little emphasis on the pronoun, which made her speech a delicate flattery – "you, Mr. Coppin, cannot fail to observe how the evening's relaxation helps to raise the whole tone of the girls. The music which they hear sinks into their hearts and lifts them above the little cares of their lives; the dancing makes them merry; the social life, the talk among ourselves, the books they read, all help to maintain a pure and elevated tone of thought. I declare, Mr. Coppin, I no longer know these girls. And then they bring their friends, and so their influence spreads. They will not, I hope, remain in the workrooms all their lives. A woman should be married; do not you think so, Mr. Coppin?"
