THE GOSPEL OF AMUSEMENT.
IS not the theory that amusement is an indispensable part of life getting pushed nowadays a little too far ? It has always existed among us. of course, since the days of that early sage who declared, amidst the applause of the whole schoolboy world, that " all work and no ploy makes Jack a dull boy ;" but it seems of late years to have come to the front with a sort of rush. All persons who speak in public, including all Nonconformist ministers, feel bound to assert, with a sort of deprecating glance at the democracy, that they must not be supposed to be unfriendly to amusement, " which is necessary to relax the overstrung bow," and that they only desire amusement to be purified. Established clergymen, with Bishops at their head, write solemn letters advocating more amusement, and journalists comment on their utterances with a latent or expressed sense that " at last the thick walls of prejudice are giving way." Mr. Walter Besant, who, if not the most popular of modern novelists, is certainly the most effective—at least, we know of no other who has induced mankind to subscribe £100,000 for an unselfish object—makes of the doctrine of amusement a new gospel, and preaches it in all bis stories almost as zealously as Charles Dickens used to preach his panacea of good feeling and more punch. Finally, here is "A London Vicar" who thinks comic songs and acrobatic performances instruments of good, complains aloud in the Times that the people are too " dull," and appeals to the County Council, which has no money not derived from a taxation already felt to be oppressive, " to seize this oppor- tunity, while the public mind is interested in the matter, to lay down the lines of some large constructive policy which shall aim not merely at sweeping away the abuses of the pre- sent system, but at encouraging the gradual establishment among us of a new order of music-halls (call them concert- halls, ca, a-chaniants, or what you will), which shall cater for the public at large, not for any limited section of it, and to which all classes of the community—not, I hope, excluding the parsons—may be able to resort in search of that amuse- ment of which we all stand so much in need in the stress• of the life of this great city. Why should not each parish in time have its own concert-hall, and each park and open space its own band P Why should not the recreation of the people come in time to be considered as important a matter as their education P Why should not something be done now, if it be only the free discussion of the whole question, to remove from London the shame of being the dullest city in Europe, and to enable us Londoners to use once more that good old phrase, Merry England,' without a secret sense that we are talking nonsense ?"
London would need, to carry out this idea, say, to be moderate, fifty People's Palaces, which, at £150,000 for each, would cost seven millions sterling, while their maintenance would involve, let us say, as a minimum, £500,000 a year. That is rather an extensive order, and as we are all to be taxed for it, it cannot be unadvisable, before the order is given, to have our minds fairly clear. In the first place, are we certain that, in order to breed up a great people, or even a contented people, it is indispensable to provide evening amuse- ment It is not day amusement, be it noted, that is suggested, for that would be inconsistent with regular work ; Mr. Besant, we think, always reckoned the cost of gas as one of his fixed data, and even the Vicar, though he has his head full of " merrie England "—a phrase which did not, we believe, mean " mirth- ful England," but "pleasant England," being the equivalent
of " la belle France "—does not venture to suggest a revival of the " games, sports, and pastimes," all out-of-doors, which our forefathers, who lived indoors among stenches, draughts, and poisonous vapours from the ponds into which their sewage drained, rightly thought essential to health and manly training.
It is evening amusement, which benefits no man's body, that is held to be indispensable; and, of course, it is not permitted to us, or any one else, to say dogmatically that it is not so. Genera- tions have appeared in Europe which could not live without fighting; one appeared in England to which masques and such- like ponderous spectacles seemed acutely pleasant ; and this generation may be unable to live comfortably without hearing comic songs, as the Vicar suggests, and seeing the contortions of acrobats. All we would venture to suggest is that the
English country population grows up healthy and strong and fitted for duty without any public amusement after dark, and that the country population of the rest of the world shares its fate. The Germans, in particular, just now at the top of the world, lead in their villages lives of an exquisite dullness, unbroken by the constant holidays of the Latin peoples ; and even the French, outside the cities, have no public amuse- ments. There is, however, a better example than either. Our Radical friends worship Americans ; and the race which really made America, the strong, God-fearing, energetic men who reclaimed the wilderness, and swept away the Indians, and secured freedom and comfort for all white men, never amused themselves at all, and would have regarded Mr. W. Besant's People's Palaces as temples of the Devil to be summarily suppressed. During the fifty years in which the strongest race that Massachusetts will ever see grew up on her lean soil, Mr. Besant, if he had preached his doctrine, would have been publicly whipped or set to hard bodily labour, and any unlucky fathers of families who accepted it would have been "boycotted," as we say now—they used the phrase "excommunicated" then—with terrible effect. Even among ourselves, the sections of the community which, on the whole, succeed best, the grave-minded sections, what- ever the cause of their gravity, look askance upon amusement, except for the very young; and if they are dull, which they often are, bear dullness as they bear the truly English weather of the past week, partly as discipline, partly as something not to be avoided. They have even a feeling that life, to be " consistent " and regular, should have in it much of that monotony which of all things sweetens toil, by making of it a conscious and enjoyable relief from the sameness of all other life. That seems to the viva- cious a very stupid state of affairs, and so it is ; but then, it is the state in which the very utmost of good work gets itself accomplished, and in England good work has been held in even too much esteem. It seems, in presence of such examples, a little unwise to pitch the tone of appreciation for the new cultus quite so high, or to talk quite so much nonsense about " amusement," which means amusement taken in hordes and gangs, as " indis- pensable" to a civilised society. It is not indispensable at all to the best majority, any more than it was to Sir Cornewall Lewis; and a community might exist, did exist for fifty years in Massachusetts, healthy, happy, contented, and successful, in which no such thing was known except as a temptation. There is not the slightest necessity for men to be cheerful in order to do the work of life, and to say they cannot do it and remain grave men, men even with a tinge of melancholy in them, is to tell falsehoods. They can do it, and whenever they are much in earnest they do do it, and beat the cheerful people in every walk of life, comic acting included, if we may trust the Lives of Liston and Grimaldi, without an effort. The truth about amusement is that to some men it is pleasant in itself and by itself, and that on an immense majority it has some of the effect of wine taken in moderation, and distracts them from their usual cares or thoughts. It is alcohol for the mind, and nothing else. There is no objection to that, if moderation is observed ; and if caterers for public amusement can secure mental alcohol by any innocent means whatever, there should be no obstacle thrown in their way. If the rich like to build fifty Palaces for the People as they have built one, they will have no opposition from us, and, indeed, we hope they will be entirely successful, and help to produce some of that social content of which in Paris, and Vienna, and Berlin, and the other much-amused cities of the Continent, there is no vestige whatever. We see no objection to making of public halls Museums in the ancient not the modern sense, or in the rich making it easier for the citizens at large to assemble themselves under the cover necessary in this climate, and to disport or distract -themselves in any orderly and civilised way they please. It seems even a little odd to us, who have a fancy that voters entrusted with the future of some fifty countries should not be treated as children, to forbid the visitors to People's Palaces a glass of beer or a game of cards, lest they should get drunk or gamble. They will not be greatly amused, we fear, the gravity of the English being the result of race, climate, and modes of thinking, and not of a paucity of theatres ; and even if amused, they will not be much better or stronger; bat that is their own affair. If they think acrobats delight them, let them see -acrobats by all means, it being easy for those not so delighted to stay away. But we object very much to pay for all this out of rates or loans; for that will mean, in the long-run, the taxation of the woikers for the benefit of the idle, and a constant demand on the Municipality to make its amuse- ments more attractive, to take out of them that element of " dullness " which even now preserves the People's Palace from the overpowering rush by which, on the hypothesis, it ought to be nightly filled. If the need of amusement is so great, and the people wish to be amused in great singing-shops, they can keep them up for themselves very well, or, at any rate, with the help which, as the example of the People's Palace showed, the rich are quite willing to afford. The State would be as foolish to begin affording it as to begin setting up public-houses for the poor, or finding them, in addition to music-halls, pretty clothes to wear when they visit them, and refreshments, lest they should be bored by the performances. And we protest, whatever is ultimately done in the matter, against the use of such very large epithets for amusement, and assumptions that society will be regenerated by giving it variety entertainments every night. There will be no such consequence, even if the working masses go to the entertainments, which at present they do not do. If they do, whence the complaint ? If the County Council accepts the advice of the London Vicar, and spends on enter- tainments as it spends on education—a million, is it not, a year P—and succeeds in inducing Englishmen to feel amused— a feat never accomplished yet—London will be a little livelier, a little more attractive to the millions around it, and in a short time a good deal bigger and more difficult to provide with wages, clothes, and food. If those grow scarce—and if all the projects pressed on the Council are carried out, wages, at all events, will be pretty sharply docked by rent—the variety entertainments, even if they are as numerous as the gin-shops, will not produce an amount of general hilarity insupportable by grave men. There is no harm in amusement by itself, and
just as much good as there is in alcohol, which the modern philanthropists do not reckon at a very great amount.
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