Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and CountryEscott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)
History
Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country
Escott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)
Great Britain -- Civilization -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
If none of these things have to be done the lads may be called into the
chamber which serves the resident for the purpose of study and pupil-room.
It is, in fact, just such another den as very likely may have been
occupied by our graduate a couple of years ago when he was an Eton master
and saw his private pupils at his quarters in Keate's Lane. It by no means
follows that the subject of his conversation with these East End lads is
primarily scholastic or strictly educational. The University resident at
the East End has brought with him the taste for athletics of all kinds
which he acquired on the Isis or the Cam. He devotes as much time to
teaching his East End pupils cricket or oarsmanship as to awakening and
satisfying their interest in learning or letters. He and his party are
therefore very likely to be seen taking the omnibus or rail if the
afternoon be fine, to Putney or Hammersmith, where the spectators on the
bank will soon be cheering a Bethnal Green four practising starts with a
Leander or a University crew.
The building of whose interior a glance has been given is probably the
hired house in which two or three members of the Academic or Public School
settlement live. It may be one of the many clubs for adults, for boys or
girls, which to-day are scarcely less common in the purlieus of Poplar
than are clubs of a different sort in St James's or Pall Mall. These
institutions are among the chief instruments of civilization on which the
new settlers rely. No one now doubts the service to the manners and the
morals of the upper classes rendered by the joint-stock caravanserais of
the West End. Three bottle men, as readers of Thackeray may see for
themselves, lasted throughout the epoch of coffee houses. They very
generally disappeared with the replacement of coffee houses by clubs, and
with the early adjournment from the dinner table to the smoking room. A
club-man in his cups was found to be a nuisance. A new public opinion was
created against an old vice. Protracted potations rapidly became, as
Hamlet desired, more honoured in the breach than in the observance, till a
toper in St James's became as rare as a bishop in a billiard room. An
analogous reform in the East End as in the West has been worked by a like
agency. The fittings and the environments of the institution differ in the
two regions. Their moral influence is identical in both. In this matter,
too, as in so many other modes of social improvement, the Metropolis
followed the lead of the provinces. East End clubs, in contradistinction
to boozing-dens, existed indeed long before University settlements were
known, or before Edward Denison's first visit to Whitechapel was paid; but
not before at Lancaster in 1860, the Working Men's Mutual Improvement and
Recreation Society had flourished for some little time. In like manner,
the University settlements now spoken of, had been preceded by the
organized efforts of the Rev. F. D. Maurice, Thomas Hughes, and other
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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