John T. Emmett

“ Such was the character of life on freehold tenure; but of late, on leaseholds, men are never free in sentiment or elevated or enlarged at home. Their 'mean' houses are a gathering of torture chambers, and they enter them with the habitual instinctive expectation of removing at the earliest opportunity. 'Bees, by the instinct of nature, do love their hives, and birds their nests;' but men can have, by nature, no instinctive love for leasehold houses. ”

“ For more than forty years there has been lamentable want of a conservative, foreseeing care for public works in London. A full quarter of a century after the necessity for arterial drainage, for the Thames Embankment, and for the Holborn Viaduct, had been obvious to all the world, these works at length were undertaken; a whole generation having been denied the use of them, and left in needless danger and discomfort. Each work is, for a metropolis, an ordinary undertaking, save indeed in its excessive costliness and show. ”

“ This, in household practice and economy is, however, most distinctly inhumane. A house should never be a thing of commerce to its occupants. It should be made a generous sacrifice to their well being, physical and moral; and thus, sacred in its character and dedication, it would become an object of affection and respect and loving care.
’There is about the inner life of a humble home a something one may almost say of sanctity, which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in splendid mansions. ”

“ And yet the public also may be well excused. The leasehold custom has been no invention of the present generation; they were all born to it, and are constantly debilitated by its influence. Leaseholds have denied them some of the most grateful sentiments and fortifying circumstances of domestic life. To occupy a freehold house confers upon its owner a peculiar sense of freedom, clears his mind of vanities, and gives him, consequently, force of understanding: it induces firmness and stability of character, and sets around a man a healthy limit to his aims, if he is wise enough to recognize it. ”

“ To invite a chosen, well-conditioned few to his own home would be absurd. He has no home: the place is but a cupboard, or is possibly a stye. In one small room all culinary and domestic operations must be carried on; the men would therefore be entirely in the way: or if there is another cupboard, called the best front parlour, all its little floor is occupied by quasi-fashionable table, sofa, easy-chair, and chiffonier, the necessary demonstrations of gentility; and not a yard of width is left for movement and for social comfort and companionship. ”

“ Our market gardeners understand all this: they do not rest when they have drained the land and regulated the manure, nor do they place their shrubs as close as possible upon the ground. They arrange, judiciously, to give each plant its share of sunlight and of air, and even open out the centres of their trees and bushes to the sun: they cherish health, and, constantly observing nature's laws, they look for multiplied and healthy fruit. ”

“ Now let the truth be known: with all the great defects of modern houses and the multiplied delinquencies of builders, these men will, in all things that concern the domicile, bear fair comparison with the occupants themselves, who are absurdly ignorant of everything connected with the scene of their domestic life. The thing that, more than any other, must affect their comfort and their health, they never understand. They trouble all the world with their complaints, instead of thoughtfully considering why they suffer, and determining to get complete and permanent relief. ”

“ In such ‘rooms,’ quite inappropriately named, two millions of the London population are compelled to pass their lives; and the effect upon the social habits and the moral character of men and women is deplorable. A man and wife can live perhaps in quiet in these little dens; but when the family begins to grow, and children multiply, and move and play, as children do, the father finds himself a surplusage at home, and goes for peace and quiet to the public-house, to join his fellow-sufferers from leasehold tenure. ”

“ The bankruptcies and 'compromises' by one generation of the speculating builders about London are, it has been said, more numerous than the men themselves. We seldom hear of speculating builders who have been remarkably successful, but occasionally, after lives of care and scampish work, they make, perhaps by some mere accident, what they esteem a fortune; or more probably they sink in middle age, exhausted, out of sight below the lowest level even of a leasehold tenure. ”

“ The reason of it all is Leasehold Tenure. The inhabitants of London have no pride or satisfaction in the place; they only wish to make their fortunes by its help, and then to get away from it as soon as possible. But why not move at once? Of the four millions who inhabit greater London not a thousandth part have any permanent, substantial interest in the land or buildings. The whole population suffer from an evil custom which some hundreds only are persisting in to their own hurt, not knowing why, and which they never care to make the subject of inquiry. ”

“ As business men report, their occupation is not so entirely healthy that no change and no relief could be desired. They say—we quote from varied and extensive testimony—that the trades, and even the professions, are but few in which a scrupulous regard is shown for genuine, as distinct from legal, honesty. It really seems then that some little intermission might be advocated, and accepted by the saner portion of the world. A wholesome change of occupation might improve the moral tone, and possibly revive the spirit of our business men. ”

“ Thus everything about the families and homes of working men is now a travesty of the pernicious follies of the middle class, as these again are imitators of the social ranks above them. People do not spend their money to secure convenient healthy homes, but to appear to be above their sphere, to be acquainted with the fashion, and to assert their right and interest in the foolish custom of the day. The cost and outlay that all this requires are quite sufficient to reduce the circumstances of the people from financial affluence to habitual penury ”

“ When the public execrate their painful leasehold houses their chief outcry is against the speculating builders; but these builders are not half as much to blame as their accusers, who, without these men, it seems, would have no houses to complain of. Speculating builders are but a result of public folly. As a class they are not culpably successful at the public cost, nor are they so beholden to mankind that they should sacrifice themselves to architectural philanthropy. ”

“ But now there is no general opportunity for intellectual and social intercourse; the public-house is but a dram-shop, parlours are unknown, there is, in fact, 'no house,' but only what is called a bar, where men and women go all day to stand and drink, and drown the memory of their miserable homes. ”

“ It is transmuted money. There is no poetry; if hearts are moved by it, it is not in that fashion or to that issue that it touches them. Quite different is it with the humble home. There every object seems to have a pleasing history. The care that is taken of it tells you how hard it had been come by. ”

“ The freeholder, for whose behoof the system was invented, has a claim for special pity. He may possibly have been a blissful, unsophisticated, pastoral proprietor, but, in an evil hour, his men of business tell him that his quiet fields have been developed into building land; and then his misery begins. He seems to see before him the potentiality of wealth without exertion. He is called, by reason of this building land, a man of property; and hearing, and of course believing this, he far too often calculates his expectations as realities, and so begins to live, apart from fact, in dreamy hope. ”

“ Those who have special insight into the domestic life of London families, and know more than the world at large about their income and expenditure, can give a curious account of their condition. A proportion, whether large or small we will not say, though it is fairly calculable, are careful people, and habitually honest, but the rest proceed upon a constant system of indebtedness. Young men who seldom fail to spend their money quite as quickly as they earn it, marry on their income, and expect, without a thought of calculation, that enough will come whenever more is wanted. ”

“ Freeholders, for instance, never seem to understand their actual position, but unlearnedly imagine that as they hold their land in fee they have control of that which other people, builders, place upon it; that when they let their freehold land for building they obtain a freehold price by way of rental, and that the reversion, after ninety years or so, is worth consideration and of present value. These all are fallacies: the freeholder's control is very superficial, and his ground rents, even on the large estates in Westminster and Bloomsbury, are an economic error, a financial waste. ”

“ With such homely, customary house-building there would be no abject deference of ignorance to clever experts; people generally would understand whatever might be recommended for the public good, and would themselves see clearly how it is to be obtained.
But some may say that business is so urgent, and its regular engagements so engross their time, that they have none to spare for architectural diversion. True enough, no doubt, particularly when these persons are successful, and are rising in the world. But what is business that it should be so engrossing? ”

“ To be social, 'given to hospitality,' the great majority of Londoners must get away from home; they can have no 'church in their house,' they must 'forsake the assembling of themselves together'—quite a different thing, it may be here explained, from modern church attendance—and they 'treat' their fellows at the tavern bar; or in the reeking gin-shop, or the beer and brandy tea-garden, seek such enjoyment as excitement and indifferent companionship will give, in place of all the dignified and solid comforts of a home. ”

“ We have given to working men the suffrage, and they vote in liberty on our political affairs; might we not also set them free to build, with genuine artisan intelligence, their own and other people's houses? ”

“ They discover that their customers are seldom satisfied with a substantial and convenient, unpretending house, in which the income of the occupant might with propriety be economized, and his display would be within his actual means. The builders see that just the contrary of this is the ambition of the world, and that if some men have the gift of self-respect above the customary reverence for wealth, this class is not the one on which they must rely. ”

“ This would be possible if freeholds were at hand and easily procurable; but if the only method to secure a house is either to become a speculator in a bastard tenure, or to buy a rickety, dishonest place of misery, a compound of the Pozzi and Piombi and the Bridge of Sighs, with every association of discredit and of disrepute, young men will hardly practise self-denial to attain so pitiful an end. No man is intelligently proud of any leasehold house ”

“ When the spirit of gentility has taken hold of men and women, peace of mind escapes, desire is paramount, beneficence becomes almost or quite impossible, and honesty is honoured as a name. A clerk sees little in the business system of the present day to make him think that practical regard for other people's rights and property and interest is any mark of wisdom, or a thing that can with credit be avowed. He has been taught to make things safe, and for security to disregard the scrupulosities of rectitude. Success, according to the world and just within the law, is the great aim ”

“ Every house appears, indeed, a thing to be avoided; and each tenant feels that what he calls his house is not a home, but something made for 'style.' It was not made for him, nor can it be: he is unsettled, apprehensive, constantly expectant, never satisfied. The consequence has been that every year there is increased mobility among the London population. Their full average length of residence in one house is not three years, and this, in houses of the middle class, is now the ordinary length of term for occupants' agreements. ”

“ The more a room is furnished 'in the modern taste' the worse it is. The motive and idea of modern furniture are vanity and affectation, and it seems that for the present every one must yield to these to some extent, or have no furniture at all. But what is very grievous is the fact that all this failing so reflects the public mind. The intellectual deficiency, the epidemic moral weakness, clearly evident in occupants of leasehold houses, is indeed well understood and recognized by men of trade, who learn to know their customers. ”

“ The proprietors can still retain their piles of halfburnt clay and matchwood; and in a ghastly wilderness of hollow, empty houses, they may sit at gaping doors and melancholy windows, and in sorrow beg their bread as showmen and joint fabricators of the biggest and the ugliest folly that has been inflicted on the world. ”

“ Certainly, the builders cannot be the losers; and, in brief, the public pays. When to this dead loss are added all the multiplied and heavy untaxed costs of ‘architects’ and lawyers, the insurance profit, twenty-five per cent, or even thirty, for the tradesmen, and the constant outlay that the rickety and unsound work requires, it must be clear that leasehold house providing is a most extravagant and wasteful system, which, when they learn to understand it, men of sense will not endure. ”

“ Thus the system is continually acting and reacting on the public, and on the houses they inhabit. It induces flimsy-mindedness; men fatuously accept the evil which by leasehold tenure they are made to suffer, and their domiciles reflect the weakness and the want of individuality of those who occupy them. The result is perfectly well known. Though it is said that one half of the world can hardly know how the remainder live, a long experience in London does enable some to form a tolerable estimate of the condition of its sad and quiet-looking people. ”

“ The money that might build or buy an unpretending, spacious, well-constructed house is spent in worthless ‘elegance’ and ornament; and the small, ill-ventilated hired rooms are crammed with cumbrous furniture and finery that make habitual cleanliness and health impossible, and phthisis has become the national disease. ”

“ To those who have immediate observation of the present system it is clear that leasehold tenure is the cause of the increasing badness of all building work. The greater showiness of modern houses is but a screen or cover-misery. Each year there is more architectural display, and yet more meanness. The idea that workmen undirected should reform our system of house-building does perhaps to people of the present day appear absurd ”

“ In milder climates men can live in public in the open air, and consequently suffer little from small pièces or appartements; but in London such extensive freedom is impossible. For ten months in the year all social meetings must be under cover, and as people cannot make their little cupboards serve as 'rooms,' they meet elsewhere. The crowds that gather round the gin-shop doors towards one o'clock on Sunday show the natural result: as long as London houses are not made for men, men will avoid them, and will go where they have space and light and company and welcome, and they then must drink. ”

“ Streets at the rate of fifty miles a year have been constructed, not as thoroughfares however, but as ’frontages,' and with regard alone to each small plot of land which is described as an 'estate.' There is no thought about the gradients and continuity of roads and streets, or of an avenue or great highway. The only things considered are the rentals and the Building Acts. Suburban London is a tangle of small streets that lead to nothing but the score or two of houses in each line of frontage; and in many places for a mile each way no leading and continuous thoroughfare occurs. ”

“ The cottagers are not allowed to take care of themselves, and, in true artistic rivalry, to build on their own freehold land according to the general progress of intelligence, for comfort and with due regard for health, their plans and work improving year by year as they gain practical experience; but the proprietor becomes a special providence, and plans these little chambers so that they may bring the calculated interest. His cottages are then by others, and himself perhaps, esteemed to be a boon to working people. What the labourers who occupy them say and feel is quite another matter ”

“ All ranks are injured by it: the nobility and West End residents as well as City clerks and working men. All suffer in domestic comfort; but to those whose state and dignity are held to be their great distinction leasehold influences must be specially obnoxious. To have lost the amplitude and individuality of a town house, and to be numbered in a row of compo-fronted slips of leasehold work, to be the subject of a common building speculation, with its transient fashions and vulgarities, is not consistent with the notion of an ancient aristocracy. ”

“ The richer classes can have no idea of the powerful influence that narrow houses have on working people. They, by their wealth, can keep themselves sufficiently removed from contact with their own domestic architectural surroundings, which indeed are, practically, distant from them, suites of wide and lofty and well-lined enclosures; and, if all is not agreeable, the upholsterer has ample opportunity and scope for his devices. But for the working man there is at home no intermediate distance, and no space for such appliances of furniture for ease and comfort. ”