30 MAY 1885, Page 10

THE ENNUI OF THE RAGAMUFFINS.

MISS DOROTHY TENNANT, in her amusing and admirably illustrated article in the English Illustrated Magazine, on " The London Ragamuffin," makes the interesting remark that there is no disease commoner to the London ragamuffin than that of which we hear so much amongst the rich,—ennui. Food, and warmth, and novelty as regards objects of interest, are not, she says, in all cases nearly sufficient to tempt the London ragamuffin back into her studio, if he is expected to remain there and to keep quiet for any length of time. One child, whom she loaded with all kinds of treasures, —with boxes, a scrap-book, fruit, and cakes,—assured her on leaving, " No, I ain't coming here never no more," confessing that his true reason for that resolve was that he had found it " so plaguy dull." " I could multiply," says Miss Tennant, "cases of boys who find sitting still for a few minutes, at longest a quarter of an hour, quite unbearable ; and to lure them back there is no ingenuity or device I have not resorted to." In one respect this is the most cheering of Miss Tennant's statements, for one cannot help seeing that a lot which we should most of us think unbearable, must have its alleviations, if the change from the filth, and exposure, and want, of the streets to the inviting meals and various treasures of Miss Tennant's studio, is not regarded as a change for the better but a change for the worse, at least where the price to be paid is the self-control necessary to sit quiet for a quarter of an hour at a time. Of course we are aware that from another point of view this assurance of Miss Tennant's is not so cheering. The ennui of sitting still for a few minutes at a time in a comfortable studio, with a rich prospect of treasures to take home afterwards, could not possibly be so great as in many cases it certainly is, were not the little ragamuffin who feels it, sensible of being so entirely unused to self-control that it seems to him the least tolerable of all earthly states. Hunger, and cold, and want of all kinds are little to him compared with the pain of restraining his own restlessness. He would rather suffer and be able to express his suffering in the way most natural to him, than hold himself still even when the only uneasiness involved in doing so is the uneasiness of denying himself the refreshment of constant change. It is obvious that children who find selfrestraint for even a few minutes at a time simply intolerable, are incapable of almost any kind of training, and therefore incapable of the first stop to better things. Still, looked at merely as a measure of the suffering involved in a ragamuffin's life, the reluctance of the ragamuffin to obtain what he values most, at the cost of exercising a few minutes' self-restraint two or three times in as many hours, is a very satisfactory guarantee that the misery which an average ragamuffin suffers in an average day is not of the highest order. If it were, be would long ago have learnt willingness to purchase its remission at the cost even of a much larger effort of self-restraint than Miss Tennant has ever required of him.

It is curious to think of ennui as one of the greatest of the ordinary ragamuffin's troubles ; yet that is exactly what Miss Tennant's article teaches us that it really is. Indeed, there is another trouble among the ragamuffins very closely allied to their tendency to ennui. Even amongst themselves their games are very little satisfaction to them. They are very irregularly played, without any kind of strict rule, and are, indeed, as Miss Tennant puts it, for the most part, " worn-out traditions." Miss Tennant thinks that no one could do the London ragamuffins a greater service than to teach them a few true games and the strict rules under which they are played. For it is the absence of rule, the disorganised character of such games as they have, which renders these games so inadequate even for purposes :of amusement. Play itself, to be genuinely interesting, requires a certain fixity of regulation. You must play under conditions recognised by all parties, or the game will not be worth playing ; no one will know what be has to do to win, or what must involve his defeat, unless all who play at the game abide by the same rules, and keep faith to each other in doing so. The real reason why ragamuffins themselves =dissatisfied with their sports, is that they have lostalltrne hold

of the rules of their sports,—that they have ceased to be capable even of the self-restraint requisite to enforce the constitution of a game of play. Miss Tennant tells us that, " Watching some halfa-dozen boys disporting themselves in our garden, I was struck by the irregularity of their play, which consisted chiefly in running after one another, knocking down the weakest, kneeling upon him, and rolling over and over like puppies." Even when she taught them games herself, it was a long time before she could manage to enforce enough respect for the rules of the game, to render it possible for them to play alone. In other words, the intolerableness of self-restraint, which caused them to find it so " plaguy dull" in her studio, destroyed the pleasure even of their games, until she managed to teach them the value of self-restraint in play. It is in part the necessary presence of strict rule which makes gambling the passion of these little ragamuffins. Of course, at a game at which something, as they call it, "worth playing for " can be won, the rules, however simple they may be, must be followed, else no one would stake anything on the game. And, partly for that reason,—though, of course, we do not deny the intrinsic attractions of gambling for every lover of excitement,— gambling games supersede all other games. There at least there must be an absolute rule, or no one would give up or risk his stake. And the absoluteness of the rule by which it is played lends every game a great part of its interest. Games in which the rules are loosely observed can never be of real interest, for they cannot be played under conditions of real equality. The players who only half observe the rules, have an incalculable advantage,—an advantage which nobody can weigh,— over those who observe them strictly.

Miss Tennant's spirited sketches,—both those with the pencil and those with the pen,—of the London ragamuffin, show us that the boy about town has a very close relation indeed to the man about town. It is true they belong to very different classes, and that the man about town is much more capable of temporary self-restraint than the ragamuffin. The former is not less devoted to amusements than the latter, but his amusements are all strictly organised, for he has learnt the importance of strict organisation to amusement, which the gamin has not. Still, the worst dread of the man about town,—that of being "plaguy dull," as Miss Tennant's ragamuffin called it, —is the same as the ragamuffin's ; his devotion to gambling is the same; his ease and presence of mind in the small external emergencies of life are the same ; and his extraordinary dependence on society and extreme dislike of being thrown on his own resources are the same. Of course, the habit of living in society can never quite kill the solitary resources of a man who has learnt to read and to value literature, as it can and does kill the solitary resources of these little ragamuffins who have never learned to enjoy reading at all, even when they have learned to read. To the ragamuffin the only relief from ennui is society ; to the man about town there is at least the resource of a double kind of society,—the society he lives in, and the society he reads about. It is this chiefly which makes the ennui of the ragamuffin so much the more serious of the two. The rivalries with his comrades, the ingenuities by which he escapes the police, the little excitements even of losing and burying his relatives,—Miss Tennant tells us of the relief from ennui which the expectation of the funeral of an aunt caused to one of her ragamuffins,—are the only resources he has, for he has not yet learned to take any pleasure in the imaginary life of those who reflect his wants and surpass him in the interest of their adventures. And his ennui is worse than that of the mere pleasure-seeker in the classes above him,—deep as that ennui is,—in another respect. He never seems to have the least hope of improving his position, of rising in life, of becoming something more than he is. " Not the least touching trait about these ragamuffins," says Miss Tennant, "is their indifference to and acceptance of the evils which weigh upon them. The genuine ragamuffin will never complain. He never expects or even hopes that his condition will improve ; he is as much a fatalist as the Turk. I once asked an interesting little boy, with a pale, care-worn face and an intelligent expression, if he had ever wondered why it was that he had nothing but rags ; why it was that he had no boots, and sometimes no bread to eat, while I had plenty of everything? He looked up at me with a calm, patient expression, as much as to say, I have never wondered at such things.'—' Tell me,' I said ; have you ever thought about this difference P'—' It's the Lord's will,' he replied, tritely ; but he seemed reluctant when I pressed him to explain what he understood by the Lord's will. At last, in a timid, harried voice, he said, It is all the Lord's doing this way ; you are grand-like, and dress nice, and lives in a big house, and you have a planner, and—and,'—here he looked round the room that he might enumerate all our titles to consideration,—' and a soft'; so the Lord sees as how you are gentlefolks, and He thinks lots of such like as you. But we are very poor, we are; mother pawns the blankets, and father beats mother, and swears awful. We ain't got no Sunday things ; we're all raggety, so the Lord don't take much notice on us.' " A more striking evidence that the ragamuffin considers his being a ragamuffin part of the very constitution of things, could hardly be imagined. We are apt to think that it is only comfort which seems so natural to people that they cannot admit the mere notion of ever losing their hold of it; but here we see that there is even a deeper ennui than the ennui of comfortable pleasureseekers,—namely, the ennui of miserable pleasure-seekers, who regard their misery as part and parcel of that ultimate condition of things which makes the Lord unfavourable to them. Probably on this background of hopeless ennui there shine gleams of enjoyment keener because so much fresher than those which visit the pleasure-seeker of a higher class. But the ennui from which they suffer is certainly deeper, because it has so much less ground for anything like substantial hope. The fatalism which is due to the sense that you are at the very bottom of the social scale is a far deeper fatalism than any which a fatalist creed can inspire. Some clever woman defined the secret of civilisation as " progressive desire." The London ragamuffin has his desires, but no feeling at all that his desires can ever be so far satisfied as to become progressive. His ennui proceeds in great measure from the extreme tenuity of his hopes and his ambitions. Beyond the next game of play, the next chancy he gets of dodging the policeman in his gambling, the next halfpenny-worth of sweets, he has no desire ; and hence his ennui is of a deeper shade than that even of the man about town, who has but half the ragamuffin's vitality though double his hope.