All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story. Walter Besant
When all our works are in full blast, we make quantities of money. See us on Sundays, we are not a bad-looking lot; healthy, well-dressed, and tolerably rosy. But we have no pleasures."
"There must be some."
"A theatre and a music-hall in Whitechapel Road. That has to serve for two millions of people. Now, if this young heiress wanted to do any good, she should build a Palace of Pleasure here."
"A Palace of Pleasure!" she repeated. "It sounds well. Should it be a kind of a Crystal Palace?"
"Well!" It was quite a new idea, but he replied as if he had been considering the subject for years. "Not quite – with modifications."
"Let us talk over your Palace of Pleasure," she said, "at another time. It sounds well. What else should she do?"
"That is such a gigantic thing that it seems enough for one person to attempt. However, we can find something else for her – why, take schools. There is not a public school for the whole two millions of East London. Not one place in which boys – to say nothing of girls, can be brought up in generous ideas. She must establish at least half a dozen public schools for boys and as many for girls."
"That is a very good idea. Will you write and tell her so?"
"Then there are libraries, reading-rooms, clubs, but all these would form part of the Palace of Pleasure."
"Of course. I would rather call it a Palace of Delight. Pleasure seems to touch a lower note. We could have music-rooms for concerts as well."
"And a school for music." The young man became animated as the scheme unfolded itself.
"And a school for dancing."
"Miss Kennedy," he said with enthusiasm, "you ought to have the spending of all this money! And – why, you would hardly believe it – but there is not in the whole of this parish of Stepney a single dance given in the year. Think of that! But perhaps – " He stopped again.
"You mean that dressmakers do not, as a rule, dance? However, I do, and so there must be a school for dancing. There must be a great college to teach all these accomplishments."
"Happy Stepney!" cried the young man, carried out of himself. "Thrice happy Stepney! Glorified Whitechapel! Beautiful Bow! What things await ye in the fortunate future!"
He left her at the door of Bormalack's, and went off on some voyage of discovery of his own.
The girl retreated to her own room. She had now hired a sitting-room all to herself, and paid three months in advance, and sat down to think. Then she took paper and pen and began to write.
She was writing down, while it was hot in her head, the three-fold scheme which this remarkable young workman had put into her head.
"We women are weak creatures," she said with a sigh. "We long to be up and doing, but we cannot carve out our work for ourselves. A man must be with us to suggest or direct it. The College of Art – yes, we will call it the College of Art; the Palace of Delight; the public schools. I should think that between the three a good deal of money might be got through. And oh! to think of converting this dismal suburb into a home for refined and cultivated people!"
In blissful revery she saw already the mean houses turned into red brick Queen Anne terraces and villas; the dingy streets were planted with avenues of trees; art flourished in the house as well as out of it; life was rendered gracious, sweet, and lovely.
And to think that this result was due to the suggestion of a common working-man!
But then, he had lived in the States. Doubtless in the States all the working-men – But was that possible?
CHAPTER VI.
A FIRST STEP
With this great programme before her, the responsibilities of wealth were no longer so oppressive. When power can be used for beneficent purposes, who would not be powerful? And beside the mighty shadow of this scheme, the smaller project for which Bunker was finding a house looked small indeed. Yet was it not small, but great, and destined continually to grow greater?
Bunker came to see her from day to day, reporting progress. He heard of a house here or a house there, and went to see it. But it was too large; and of another, but it was too small; and of a third, but it was not convenient for her purpose; and so on. Each house took up a whole day in examination, and Bunker's bill was getting on with great freedom.
The delay, however, gave Angela time to work out her new ideas on paper. She invoked the assistance of her friend the cabinet-maker with ideas; and, under the guise of amusing themselves, they drew up a long and business-like prospectus of the proposed new institutions. First, there were the High Schools, of which she would found six – three for boys and three for girls. The great feature of these schools was to be that they should give a liberal education for a very small fee, and that in their play-grounds, their discipline, and, as far as possible, their hours, they were to resemble the great public schools.
"They must be endowed for their masters' and mistresses' salaries, and with scholarships; and – and – I think the boys and girls ought to have dinner in the school, so as not to go home all day; and – and – there will be many things to provide for each school."
She looked as earnest over this amusement, Harry said, as if she were herself in possession of the fortune which they were thus administering. They agreed that when the schools were built, an endowment of £70,000 each, which would yield £2,000 a year, ought to be enough, with the school fees, to provide for the education of five hundred in each school. Then they proceeded with the splendid plan of the new college. It was agreed that learning, properly so called, should be entirely kept out of the programme. No political economy, said the Newnham student, should be taught there. Nor any of the usual things – Latin, Greek, mathematics, and so forth – said the young man from the United States. What, then, remained?
Everything. The difficulty in making such a selection of studies is to know what to omit.
"We are to have," said Harry, now almost as enthusiastic as Angela herself, "a thing never before attempted. We are to have a College of Art. What a grand idea! It was yours, Miss Kennedy."
"No," she replied, "it was yours. If it comes to anything, we shall always remember that it was yours."
An amiable contest was finished by their recollecting that it was only a play, and they laughed and went on, half ashamed, and yet both full of enthusiasm.
"The College of Art!" he repeated; "why, there are a hundred kinds of art; let us include accomplishments."
They would; they did.
They finally resolved that there should be professors, lecturers, or teachers, with convenient class-rooms, theatres and lecture-halls in the following accomplishments and graces: Dancing, but there must be the old as well as the new kinds of dancing. The waltz was not to exclude the minuet, the reel, the country dance, or the old square dances; the pupils would also have such dances as the bolero and the tarantella, and other national jumperies. Singing, which was to be a great feature, as anybody could sing, said Angela, if they were taught. "Except my Uncle Bunker!" said Harry. Then there were to be musical instruments of all kinds. Skating, bicycling, lawn tennis, racquets, fives, and all kinds of games; rowing, billiards, archery, rifle-shooting. Then there was to be acting, with reading and recitation; there were to be classes on gardening, on cookery, and on the laws of beauty in costume.
"The East End shall be independent of the rest of the world in fashion," said Angela; "we will dress according to the rules of Art!"
"You shall," cried Harry, "and your own girls shall be the new dressmakers to the whole of glorified Stepney."
Then there were to be lectures, not in literature, but in letter-writing, especially in love-letter writing, versifying, novel-writing, and essay-writing; that is to say, on the more delightful forms of literature – so that poets and novelists should arise, and the East End, hitherto a barren desert, should blossom with flowers. Then there was to be a Professor of Grace, because a graceful carriage of the body is so generally neglected; and Harry, who had a slim figure and long legs, began to indicate how the professor would probably carry himself. Next there were