Bringing out Individuality in the Poor

For children who could not be placed out, barrack schools, if they were to be kept, urgently needed reforming. Here, too, Barnett focused on the harm done to the children in their personal development. One of the earlier articles under scrutiny in the present study attacked the strict discipline imposed in pauper schools. It tended to suppress any vestiges of individual personality in the children. “[D]iscipline too often begins to be admired for its own sake“, Barnett stated, “and in certain schools one is shown, with pride, the children drilled into moving, even to eating and praying simultaneously, while order, cleanliness, and tidiness have become ends in themselves instead of means of education.”⁵⁰¹ Such discipline, she argued, crushed individuality and left no room for personal growth. It tended to make the pupils dull, sullen and mechanical, depriving them both of the joy of childhood and of subsequent strength in manhood. What child could be childlike, she asked, who lived by rules, who obeyed not for love's sake, but for necessity's sake; who had no room for choice or adventure, no experience for imagination? And what child, so drilled, could develop mechanisms and gather the strength necessary to hold impulse and passion in check?⁵⁰² Barnett proposed several small changes which, in her eyes, would considerably improve barrack school education.

Her proposals underscore her supreme concern for a child's individuality. She recommended calling the children by their Christian names instead of by numbers⁵⁰³. Swimming lessons, musical lessons and field trips might all serve to spark new interests in a child and to develop individual talent and preference. In her article on barrack schools, Barnett related the story of a girl who, when confronted over the theft of a brooch from the cook, replied that she “did not mean to keep it, but (...) had never had one, and (...) wanted it for a bit”⁵⁰⁴. Barnett suggested to allow the children to keep possessions and to be given their own clothes, hoping that ownership would help to strengthen self-respect in the children and encourage habits such as tidiness and care. True to her belief in personal contact across the boundaries of class, she asked to enlist the services of lady visitors and girl volunteers, for instance in the school library, in Sunday School or for teaching games in the playground. Personal contact and friendship with the guests would, Barnett hoped, help to strengthen self-respect. Not least of all, the women would provide an example of “the good life”

501 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.112

502 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.128

503 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.120

504 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.112

and offer contacts outside the school in higher classes of society⁵⁰⁵. Barnett aimed at bringing out a child's personality for the sake, first and foremost, of its inborn humanity. But she also hoped to derive benefits for the entire nation from her holistic approach to education which aimed at strengthening a child's inherent interests and capacities. Ultimately, Barnett envisaged, even the tiniest growth in individual character would add to the cultural and social stock of the nation and benefit the community as a whole.

Barnett's grasp of the young psyche was very advanced in that she considered play a necessity for children; in her articles on the barrack schools, she asked for working hours to be limited in order to make room for games ⁵⁰⁶. For her, play constituted in itself a moral education. With the help of lady volunteers, Barnett hoped to teach games to children on the playground in order to impart lessons of fairness, unselfishness, adherence to rules and care for the weaker and younger⁵⁰⁷. She dreamed of turning the London play yards into “what the playing fields of Eton and Harrow are – the places where the best seeds of character take root and sprout”⁵⁰⁸.

But not only the nation's children required, in Barnett's eyes, room for play and recreation in order to develop their full potential. She believed that adults needed as much opportunity for edification, constructive re-creation and self-enlargement as did the child. Evening classes, as offered for instance at Toynbee Hall, public libraries and foreign travel might all contribute to personal – and national – growth. So did athletics clubs and gymnasiums. “A people's play is a fair test of a people's character”, she wrote. “Their recreation more than their business or their conquests settle the nation's place in history.”⁵⁰⁹

Barnett deplored the consumerist attitude to leisure which she detected in the rush on music halls and popular theatres, in the new phenomenon of spectator sports and in the popularity of sea-side pleasure resorts She understood the need for excitement which led the less educated classes to betting, gambling, drinking, card-games or the occasional trip to Margate. The endless, tiring, monotonous hours in the factory or workshop left the working man and woman weary and killed off personal initiative. For them, the mostly effortless excitement of the above activities formed a relatively easy counter-balance to everyday drudgery. In Barnett's opinion, however, recreation must mean more than amusement and passing time; it meant the “refreshment of the sources of life”⁵¹⁰. The fire of excitement formed a necessary first step to activating a person's resources, but unless fuel – some substantial achievement and personal gain - was supplied, the flames would soon sink

505 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.118ff.

506 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.116

507 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.224

508 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.223

509 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.289

510 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.291

in ashes. Barnett believed that “pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase capacities for enjoyment”⁵¹¹. The people must be taught to enjoy themselves. She sought in leisure activities a strengthening of a man's whole being, the enrichment of memory, and the acquisition of skill.

Opportunities for such wholesome recreation she found in music, books, athletics, cycling, walking tours, photography or games of skill⁵¹². Among the leisure activities of which she approved, museums and picture galleries occupied a prominent place. Her belief in the ability of all, educated as well as uneducated, to understand and appreciate beauty prompted her to play an instrumental part in the opening of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The Gallery was designed to put into the reach of the poor means of self-enlargement which had hitherto been available almost exclusively to the rich⁵¹³. Art museums had wrongly been thought of chiefly as pleasure places for the educated, or as schools for the student. Barnett aimed to turn them into mission-halls for the degraded⁵¹⁴.

The success of the first two experimental exhibitions before the institution of a permanent gallery proved her right. More than 9000 people visited the first exhibition, the second was seen by almost 26.500 men, women and children from Whitechapel and the surrounding neighbourhoods⁵¹⁵.

“[Their] plain, direct method of looking at things enables them to go straight to the point”, Barnett related her impressions, “and perhaps to reach the artist's meaning more clearly than some of those art critics whose vision is obscured by thoughts of 'tone, harmony, and construction'.”⁵¹⁶ The capacity for perceiving the hidden meaning of art was, she believed, innate and schooled as much by life's experiences – of which the poor had more than enough - as by scholarship of which they had naturally very little. Barnett placed great hopes on art to inspire and “keep alive the nation's fading higher life”. Pictures spoke to the educated as well as the illiterate in a way which, she believed, went straight to the heart. “Words, mere words, fall flat on the ears of those whose imaginations are withered and dead”, she stated; “but art, in itself beautiful, in ideas rich, they cannot choose but to understand, if it be brought within their reach.”⁵¹⁷

511 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.290

512 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.293

513 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.175

514 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.97

515 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.177

516 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.178

517 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.187

6. The Edifying Effects of Nature

In her search for simple and easily accessible means of education and recreation, Barnett also explored the edifying effects of nature. Early on in her social activism, she showed leanings towards the back-to-the-land myth. While ignorance or lack of money kept many pleasures from the working classes, she reasoned that it was possible for the rich as well as the poor to enjoy the countryside with its natural beauty⁵¹⁸. Not the least of her achievements was her contribution to the founding of the Children's Country Holiday Fund. In the year 1893, which she gave as an example of the undertaking's success in one of her articles, the Fund sent approximately 30.000 children from London on a fortnight's holiday to the countryside⁵¹⁹. Barnett believed that the excursion would benefit the children in their personal development by schooling the powers of observation and awakening intellectual curiosity⁵²⁰ in a way impossible in the dreary grey city neighbourhoods.

“Children need to be taught to enjoy as much as they need to be taught to work”⁵²¹, she wrote.

Barnett considered nature the most apt and patient instructor to draw out a child's undiscovered powers. If teachers and hosts took the trouble to interest the children in what may be seen in a country lane, or to observe the birds and insects living on a pear tree, the children would, she believed, develop more lively minds and acquire the skills necessary to enjoy themselves, on their country holidays as well as back home in their often dull and uniform urban environment. She asked her readers to contribute to the scheme, either financially or by giving one's time and ideas, in order to “fill their country fortnights with thoughts, ideals, new games, play handicraft, and home occupations, which may not only make gladder the fortnight in the country, but help to enlarge their store-rooms of good memories and keep the children more out of the streets when again amid the four million town livers”⁵²².

Adults, too, Barnett envisaged, would benefit greatly from an introduction to nature. In an article entitled “At home to the Poor” she asked women from the higher strata of society to play host to groups of slum dwellers for a garden party at their country homes. “Believing that [the poor] had the same need of social intercourse as that felt by the rich, and taking for granted that the kind of country entertainment most prevalent among the rich was that most enjoyed, we based our parties on the same foundation”⁵²³, she wrote. Here again, Barnett considered the poor and the rich to be of

518 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.150

519 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.52

520 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.307

521 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.319

522 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Towards Social Reform, 1909, p.329

523 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.153

similar stock and to have similar needs and appetites. By way of entertainment at the garden parties, Barnett recommended food and drink and games like cricket or bowling. The greatest impression on the minds of the slum dweller, however, she expected from nature herself. “For people spending long years in the close courts and streets of ugly towns”, she predicted, “the mere sight of nature is startling and may awaken longings, to themselves strange and indescribable, but which are the stirrings of the life within.”⁵²⁴

With the idea of at homes in the country Barnett revealed herself as a faithful adherent to the idea that the land had a healing, reconstituting effect upon the town dweller. The sweetness of the air, the quiet, the colours and scent of flowers and trees, the very fact of strolling in the road on their way to their host's place without looking out to avoid being run over, all these little pleasures of the countryside provided a relief, Barnett believed, difficult to understand for those who did not live in close streets and amid noise and grinding hurry⁵²⁵. Nature's lure was stronger than poverty and destitution, Barnett held, and its positive effects unparalleled. Barnett told of terminally ill men and women who rose from their death beds to take up an invitation to an „at home". In her emphasis on the idea of natural beauty which contrasted urban ugliness and upon the healthy effects of sunshine and fresh air Barnett re-iterated aspects of the back-to-the-land movement.

True to her ideal of communion and personal relations between the classes, Barnett expected secondary benefits from such parties. The beauty and style of the country homes, she hoped, would have a civilising influence on the rough. Barnett recounted the tale of a fifteen-year old who, invited by her country hostess to see the whole house, excitedly exclaimed: “Look, mother, here's a bed with a room all to itself!”⁵²⁶ Well-kept mansions might, she endeavoured, encourage tidiness and cleanliness in many a woman slum dweller. Not least of all, Barnett believed that such parties would introduce rich and poor to one another, have them share experiences and subsequent memories, and provide a subject regarding which they could, at least for an afternoon, be of one mind and purpose⁵²⁷. “The wider interests, the seeds of culture, the introduction to simple recreations, the suggestion of ideal beauty, the possession of happy memories, the class relationships, are the advantages one can rapidly count off as accruing to the entertained, and as important are the gains to the entertainer”⁵²⁸, she listed. Rich and poor both had their virtues, and the division of classes constituted a loss to both, Barnett did not tire to emphasise. But given the greater means of the well-off, it was for them to take the first step towards knowing and being known.

524 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.95

525 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.155

526 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.159

527 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.161

528 Barnett, Samuel Augustus and Henrietta Octavia Rowland Barnett, Practicable socialism, 1894, p.164