OCTAVIA HILL.
WE had only time last week to say of Miss Octavia Hill that for nearly fifty years she laboured effec- tively to solve the housing problem on the basis of " personal service combined with business methods." This was only one of the directions in which her many- sided devotion to good works showed itself. But it was to this that her first enthusiasm turned, and this that claimed the largest share of her time and thought to the end. Octavio, Hill never wavered in her reasoned preference for individual over State effort. Too often schemes begun, perhaps, as well as hers have been abandoned in disheartenment at the small results achieved, and their authors have turned away to movements for enlisting Parliament on their side. So long as this diversion is limited to the removal of obstacles to individual enter- prise, no harm is done. But when the obstacles have been got out of the way, it too often happens that the personal zeal for which legislation was invoked to give a wider field is no longer forthcoming. Reliance on State aid is a very catching malady. The very people who, in the first instance, looked to Parliament for help in their work turn to it in the end to get their work done for them. Octavio. Hill's zeal was that of a missionary. She desired to enlist and train new workers like-minded with herself. Her leading principle was the influence of personal sympathy between landlord and tenant. She was herself the land- lord of her houses, and though in the end many helpers were associated. with her, she took care that they should all be inspired by her ideas and taught to work on her lines. Ruskin was the first to place money in her hands, and though their friendship became clouded he wished it always to be remembered that she had paid him 5 per cent. upon it regularly, entirely with- out salary, and in pure kindness to the tenants. " My own part in the work," he went on to say, " was in taking 5, instead of 10, per cent., which the houses would have been made to pay to another landlord ; and in pledging myself neither to sell the property nor raise the rents, thus enabling Miss Hill to assure the tenants of peace in their homes, and encourage every effort in the improvement of them."
It was on these methods that all the additions to this first enterprise were uniformly carried on. In Octavio, Hill's mind philanthropy and business were not ideas destined to remain for ever at variance. Philanthropy left to itself might have wanted either to charge no rent or to forgive the rent charged whenever the tenants pleaded inability to pay it. The weak point of such a plan is that under it the tenants grow thoroughly demoralized. The money that is forgiven them works no improvement in their condition. They only become more shiftless the more they are excused from paying a just debt. For that they can pay it, as a rule, is shown by the fact that their neighbours manage to give more for rooms which are neither as wholesome nor in such good repair as their own. It is a second fault in the purely philanthropic plan that those who find the money soon grow tired of giving it. Free lodging is quite as demoral- izing as free food, and when the benevolent donors discover this they naturally close their ears against experiments which uniformly end in failure. Octavia Hill aimed at making benevolent outlay possible by a plan which brought the cost within reasonable limits and improved instead of injuring the tenants' characters. She did but ask people to forgo the profit which bad house property often yields, and to be satisfied with a return which would content them in the case of an ordinary investment. Ruskin got only his 5 per cent., but he had the gain of knowing that the tenants of his houses were better off physically and morally than those whose rents were calculated on the simple plan of getting the most out of them. If more money had been given her, Octavia Hill's plan could have been tried over a con- stantly growing area, and so long as her principle was maintained there is no reason to doubt that the results would have been equally encouraging. Her tenants were helped in every way that did not make them less willing to help themselves. The cleaning of the passages and stair- cases fell to the landlord, but the work was done wherever possible by the elder girl in the tenants' families. The necessary repairs were done in the first instance by any tenants who happened to be out of work. With these advantages—advantages which were strictly dependent on the payment of the rent—it is no wonder that punctuality in this particular became a rule rarely broken. Larger housing schemes have now come to the front, and the State or the municipality is being put in the place of the individual landlord. Naturally in the presence of these imposing projects the landlord goes to the walL But the State can only care for the improvement of the houses, and in Octavia Hill's opinion this was of little value unless it led to a corresponding improvement in the inmates. The secret of her success lay in the intimate personal relation between landlord and tenant which it was her constant object to maintain. It may well be questioned whether the labours of the Government and the County Council officials will do the same kind of good. She was the first worker in this particular field, and there is much reason to fear that she will also be the last.
But it was not the only field on which she has left her mark. She was a member of the Poor Law Commission, and three years ago she signed the Majority Report. But her signature was qualified by a memorandum to which " W.,' writing in the Times of Tuesday, very opportunely calls attention. In this she objected to handing over the administration of the Poor Law to "a Statutory Committee of the already over-worked County Council," and to any scheme calculated to open the door too widely to free medical relief or to " extend the voting power of those dependent on public funds." She opposed the pro- vision of artificial work by the State or the municipalities on the ground that it " has never yet been successful, whether financially, industrially, or in its influence on character." Relief works are not started solely to relieve distress. The men who receive the benefits are in part the creators of the body which provides them, and in this way the danger of corruption becomes real, though at present it is one of the last that is guarded against, or even noticed. From this memorandum" W." makes a quotation so much to the purpose that we make no apology for trans- ferring it to our own columns : " If, as I believe, we must trust to the energy, resolution, and keen, practical sense of our people to find the places where they are wanted, and to fit themselves for the work which is needed ; if we must look to them to provide against times of crisis by foresight, insurance, and savings, we must not buoy them up by visions of State or municipal employment—schemes specially devised to meet their capacity instead of develop- ing their power to do what is really wanted." This single passage contains the whole philosophy of social reform, and it will be an evil day when the lesson it reads is rejected.
Outside this, her original, field of work, Octavia Hill had others in abundance. She was an active member of the Charity Organization Society, and was in full sympathy with its objects and methods. She helped to start, and throughout her life took a keen interest in, the Southwark Cadet Corps, which eventually became the 1st Cadet Battalion of the City of London Regiment. And most of all, perhaps, next to her housing schemes, she cared ,for the work of the National Trust for Preserving Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty. But for the vigilance of this society some of the finest scenery in England would have been spoiled, and the inhabitants of London and of the great northern cities been deprived of a chief opportunity of spending a holiday wisely. She was fully alive to the educational value of wide prospects and natural beauty, and, as Canon Rawnsley tells us, " it was as great a delight to her to know that some new property in the Lake Country bad been acquired for the rest and recreation of the workers in our northern town as it was to feel that another spur of the Weald of Kent had been obtained for the health and enjoyment of Londoners." Hers was indeed a life spent in promoting the best interests of the poor, for whom she cared so well and so wisely ; and we can but hope that the lesson it conveys, now so generally forgotten by social reformers, will yet find some to revive and apply it.
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