Octavia Hill

“ A great deal of life is necessarily spent in getting its surroundings into order, and in London here, this machinery of ours, all the tangible things round us, need a great deal done to them; it tests us better than any words can do. It is very difficult—impossible, I believe—to make the things of this world fair and orderly, to arrange them justly, to govern them rightly, without living very nobly. The right use of money, the laws affecting houses and lands, involve principles which test the sincerity of a man or a nation ”

“ The clergy have all that is pitiful, all that is generous in the hearts of their richer parishioners on their side—the power of calling out workers from among them, the power of directing a large part of their alms, the distribution of money, the leadership of the men. Besides these they have the enormous accumulated knowledge of the poor, gathered in long years of intimate observation of them in their homes—a mass of information over which they may not have much time to brood, and from which they may not be in the habit of generalising, yet what might not the theorists learn from it? ”

“ I have heard persons who give their whole time to the poor speak a little disparagingly of these fleeting visits, and young girls themselves, fevered with desire to do more, talk rather enviously of those who can give their time wholly to such work; but have they ever thought how much is lost by such entire dedication?—or, rather, how much is gained by her who is not only a visitor of the poor, but a member of a family with other duties? It is the families, the homes of the poor, that need to be influenced. ”

“ Is humanity, is nationality, is citizenship too large for our modern love or [Pg 91] charity to embrace, and shall it in the future be limited to our family, our successful equals, or our superiors? Are we going to look out and up, but never down? The love of our Master Christ, the love of St. Francis, the love of Howard, the love of John Brown, the burning love of all who have desired to serve others, has been a mighty, all-embracing one, and specially tender, specially pitiful. All modern forms of alms-giving may pass and change, but this love must endure while the world lasts. ”

“ To walk merely along the roads, if these roads pass between parks or fields barricaded from entrance, frets the human love of freedom which makes us want to wander farther, to escape the dusty prescribed track, to break away over the hills, or pause in the meadow by the pool or the river, or gather the flowers in the wood. ”

“ Even if they formed a slightly different estimate of the relative advantages of a few more rooms and a garden, I own to an amazed sorrow that the Quakers rejected a scheme by which the land might have been rendered a blessing to the living, without doing violence to what seems to me to be a natural instinct of reverence, ineradicable in every human heart, for whatever has been associated with the loved, or the great and noble who are no longer with us. ”

“ Is the influence of the rich and powerful so slight that we should let it be thus silently strengthened? Is the knowledge just brought so prominently before us that one quarter of the land in England is owned by only seven hundred and ten persons so satisfactory that we will stand by and see quietly absorbed those few spots which are our common birthright in the soil? ”

“ For what is it that we look forward to as our people gradually improve? Not surely to dealing with them as a class at all, any more than we should tell ourselves off to labour for the middle class, or aristocratic class, or shop-keeping class. Our ideal must be to promote the happy natural intercourse of neighbours—mutual knowledge, mutual help, of a kind, certainly, but not this professed devotion of a life; and it will be better from the beginning to mould our system so that it shall bear witness of what it ought to become. ”

“ When I see people all struggling to get up higher, they seem to me like people in a siege, who should all rush to defend the breach for the glory and renown of it, and trample one another to death, and leave little doors unwatched all round the town; and I can't help wondering sometimes why more of them don't pray Marion Erle's prayer when she leaves the wedding-dress unfinished to go and nurse the fever-stricken patient, "Let others miss me, never miss me, God." ”

“ It has been accepted in this and other ages by men ready to meet poverty, toil, scorn, death, rather than be false to it; it has been accepted with acclaim by multitudes who felt in it the answer to their difficulties, the great good news for their lives. The lowest natures, when they have received it, have done so through the noble feelings which are latent in the worst of us. It is only through appeal to these—their fortitude, their reverence—that it can come home to them. I cannot believe that God's truth has ever entered one human heart wrapped up in a bribe. ”

“ There are, besides the grander squares, some, I think, which are deserted by the rich, where "life"—that is, plenty going on—would be more acceptable than quiet; where the residents would be actually glad to have the gates thrown open, the beds set with bright flowers, the seats available for all, as in Leicester Square. I think even a band on a Saturday afternoon might be thought a gain. It is a pity these deserted wildernesses, with their poverty-stricken privet-hedges, are not by some common consent made to adapt themselves to the needs of the neighbourhood. ”

“ But if, on reflection, we decide to withhold gifts of any kind whatsoever, it is only to be done for the sake of the people themselves. If doles, or bread-tickets, or coal-tickets, are proved to help the people, we are bound to give them to the extent of our power. If they are proved to injure them, we are bound not to give them, however pleasant it may be, however easy, however it may seem to pave the way for other influences. Do we want to make the poor depend on relief, which is ready at a moment's notice, instead of having the fortitude to save a little to meet a sudden emergency? ”

“ And yet every one of those living beings, crowding almost under your feet, having to move from doorway or stair as you enter, has a human form, a human character too; somebody knows and loves him, some mother, father, sister, brother, child, watches for that face among the many, and would feel a great gap left in the world if that one came never any more up the court. Even the reeling drunkard would be missed. ”

“ But do not think there is no scope for beneficent gifts of money because soup-kitchens and free dormitories are not beneficent. There is abundant scope for large gifts, large enough to please the proudest of you. Are there no great gifts of open spaces to be made for the rich and poor to share alike in the time to come—spaces which shall be to the child no more corrupting than the mountain to the Highlander, or the long sea horizon to the fisherman's lad? ”

“ If we establish a system of professed workers, amateur or paid, we shall [Pg 27] quickly begin to hug our system, and perhaps to want to perpetuate it even to the extent of making work for it. Well, here we have then our wonderful company of visitors full of real care for the people, with time and intelligence to apply the wisest principles, did they but know them, with fullest thought, to individual cases; capable of inspiring confidence, of winning allegiance; of getting those whom they visit to understand what is best for their future, and to make up their minds to do it. ”

“ I will only point out now that as guardians or vestrymen the most influential sphere of work presents itself. If you try to get into Parliament, many men of equal education, high principles, and refinement probably contest the place with you; if you succeed they fail; if you try to make a name among the fashionable or wealthy circles, you may or may not succeed; but if you fail no one misses you much. ”

“ Mere intercourse between rich and poor, if we can secure it without corrupting gifts, would civilise the poor more than anything. See, then, that you do not put your lives so far from those great companies of the poor which stretch for acres in the south and east of London, that you fail to hear each other speak. See that you do not count your work among them by tangible result, but believe that healthy human intercourse with them will be helpful to you and them. Seek to visit and help in parishes in which this is recognised as an end in itself. ”

“ Wherever such help has been forthcoming the poor have been well served, and the old-fashioned donors have been in some measure won to wiser courses of action. But many more such honorary secretaries are needed, and that imperatively and immediately. Are there no men of leisure, with intellect and heart, who will come forward? I have known no such urgent need as this in the many years I have spent face to face with the poor since I came to London—the need of advice, of sympathy, of thoughtful decision for poor man after poor man, as he comes up to our offices at a crisis in his life. ”

“ Each family cannot hope to own a small piece of cultivated land as in France—no inaccessible mountain-ranges exist for our people to learn to love as in Switzerland—but it may be that in our common-land we are meant to learn an even deeper lesson:—something of the value of those possessions in which each of a large community has a distinct share, yet which each enjoys only by virtue of the share the many have in it ”

“ Are there, moreover, none of those many works to achieve, which a nation, a municipality, a vestry, first needs to see done, to learn the use of by using, though finally such a community may prize them more by making an effort to establish similar ones? For instance, no one would dwell more urgently than I on the need of making healthy houses for the poor remunerative; and now the problem of doing so has been in a great measure solved. But do we not owe this to the efforts of a body of men in earlier time who were content to lose money in experiments and example? ”

“ If the poor had at that time not learned to trust to them, if they came straight from the loving hands of those who cared to step aside from beaten tracks to know and serve the poor they must have had very different results from any they have now, when people have learned to depend on them, when they are almost the fashion, and often the relief for the consciences of those who don't feel quite easy, if they give no time, no heart, no trouble, nor any money to the poor. I have no manner of doubt, that just now gifts of necessaries are injurious. ”

“ Can we wonder if the eyes of poor men are often fixed rather on the immediate money value to themselves than on the effect of changes for their descendants? Should we stand by, we who ought to see farther, and let them part with what ought to be a possession to the many in the future? ”

“ Is the whole duty fulfilled when the head of a firm draws a cheque for donations to the local charity, and are the gentle ministrations of the ladies of the family to be confined to the few pampered poor near their house? It is our withdrawal from the less pleasant neighbourhood to build for ourselves substantial villas with pleasant gardens, which has left these tracts what they are. ”

“ Have you any picture before you of the parts of London where for acres and acres the ground is covered with the dwellings of the poor alone, where no landlord can afford many feet of space unbuilt over at the back of his house; where the clergyman toils on almost singlehanded, for unrefreshed year after unrefreshed year; where curates will hardly go and work; where no gay life enlivens the monotony of toil, which is interrupted only by the wild unholy carousal of a Bank holiday ”

“ Of course it is difficult to distinguish between the actions which come from the radiant outpouring of every species of good gift in mere wealth of joyful human love springing from vivid sense of Divine love, which we see in earnest preachers of all ages, from the gift which is meant to be, and felt to be, a bribe. In many cases, probably, the gifts comprise a mixture of love and a purpose to attract, which it would be impossible to separate. ”

“ It is not a question which ought longer to be left to a comparatively few zealous men; it ought to be supported by, and its machinery used by, everyone who cares to keep the common land open. If legal decisions are to be arrived at, if landowners are to be made to feel that they will be called to account for any inclosures made by them, the matter cannot be left in the hands of individuals, and it is only by combination, and under good legal advice, that the undertakings can be rightly and wisely begun and brought to a successful issue. ”

“ I know well what may be urged on the ground of individual friendships formed with dwellers in your neighbourhood, on the score of want of strength and time, and the claims of your own parish. Weigh these by all means, but think of the other side too, if by chance you can realise it. Friendship with poor old women in your district! Respect its claims; but are there no times when it may be worth while to make a change in work, even if it cause one to see less of friends? ”

“ I may have forgotten many a poor man, and done as careless a thing as anyone, but I cannot help thinking that to give oneself rather than one's money to the poor is not exactly turning one's face from him. ”