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
a day's manual work with an energy that would shame an undergraduate
returning from a wine party to read for his Schools. This, too, seems to
be the experience of American settlements as well, of Hull House, Chicago,
or of Andover House, Boston. In their capacity of schools of citizenship,
as well as of education, the American settlements have felt the immediate
benefit of the Oxford influence and example, incarnated not only in Arnold
Toynbee, but in the late T. H. Green, professor of mental and moral
philosophy, whose pupil Toynbee was; while Green in his turn had been the
disciple of Benjamin Jowett. Good citizenship was the ideal ever present
to the late Master of Balliol in his dealings with his pupils, just as it
had been present centuries earlier to Socrates in his discourses to Plato,
or in his conversations with Alcibiades. Green probably made the most
valuable of recent contributions to the speculative thought and science of
his University, of his country, or of his generation. He was, also, a
prominent and active member of the Oxford Town Council, and of other local
bodies. By their lessons in the theory and practice of citizenship, taught
more publicly than it fell to the lot of their master to teach, the Oxford
settlers at the East End have improved upon Green's example, with much of
his zeal, and not a little of his success. More than twenty years ago the
East End neighbourhoods now mentioned were first visited by the present
writer, to inform himself for those portions of an earlier work, relating
to that part of unfashionable London.[33] Thanks mainly to the influence
and teaching of the Rev. S. A., since Canon, Barnett, great improvements
in the domestic economy and material fittings of the humblest households
had begun, even then to be visible. The later experiences and their social
results, which have now been described, have made it possible for the
writer to contrast the East End of the later eighties with that of the
later nineties. The scale and the precise modes of manifestation are of
course widely different, but if due allowance be made for the social
disparity of Mayfair and Mile End, it is no exaggeration to say that the
increased attention to the prettinesses of life shown in the boudoirs and
drawing rooms of fashionable London is reflected in the parlours of those
purlieus now spoken of. These though their civilization be still
incomplete, have to a great extent under the agencies that have here been
examined, ceased to be manifestly poverty-stricken or repulsively hideous.
The discipline of character that the settlements provide for the settlers
is at least as salutary as the consequences they involve for the district,
whether it be in the East End, in Camberwell, or in Notting Hill, that the
settlement is made. The social education for the West End club-man of his
joint stock palace in Pall Mall is trivial in comparison with the training
that will be administered to him by a few visits to the East End club, of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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