THE CHARM OF THE SUBURBS.
IT is the fashion among a number of persons to look down upon the suburbs and dwellers in the suburbs. The word " suburban " conveys, or is often used to convey, a certain contemptuous meaning. A suburban villa; a sub- urban concert ; a suburban theatre,—the adjective nearly always means a good deal more than simply "near the town " ; perhaps " in the town and yet not of it," or "in the country and not of it either," is the underlying thought. At all events, of the word " suburban " one thing can be said with certainty,—that it is never used in praise. People talk of a town house or a country house with pride and apprecia- tion ; but did any one ever hear a glowing description of the charms of a suburban villa?
Perhaps the description—it is only the description—" a suburban villa" does deserve a little contempt. It reminds the listener of auctioneers' placards, and of a certain amount of make-believe and puffery. But none the less "a house in the suburbs" and "suburban life" are not as a rule regarded as things peculiarly desirable; though exactly why that should be so it is not, to some dwellers in the suburbs at least, easy to understand. You mean to live in the suburbs ? My dear fellow, you cannot mean that. To go right away from the heart of things ; to lose sight of all your friends' (this is an almost certain comment) ; to live in a poky little house and see poky people, and never be able to get up to the theatres, or go to dances; of what can you be thinking ? I could understand any one wishing to live in the country altogether—in Sussex, for instance, or Norfolk, dr Devonshire ; and I can understand any one liking to live in
London itself—of course, one has to get away now and then. But the suburbs !' Is not that something like the general run of criticism ? And is it justified by what are the facts?
It is at all events certainly not justified by what might be the possibilities of suburban life. Those possibilities may be realised at some future period; but the facts of to-day are perhaps sufficient for present consideration.
If we are to try to find as complete an answer as possible to the decrier of suburban life—of the thing that is half-ancl- half, neither one thing nor the other, neither the fish of Berkeley Square, nor the fowl of the wolds of Derbyshire, nor the good red herring of the Cromwell Road—we can get it best perhaps by the consideration of a particular case. It is the case of the man who would like to live in the country but who has to live in town,—or at least as near his town business as possible. We will suppose, to go a step further, that he was born and brought up and has lived most of his life in the country, playing cricket and foot- ball at school, and spending his holidays in shooting, fishing, hunting, gardening,—anything you please that he can do every day in the country. He is not to be supposed, of course, to be absolutely ignorant of London; but the few days he has spent in it from time to time have usually meant for him nothing much more than a change; a change, let us say, to rather later hours, and two or three theatres and a couple of dances in a week, instead of the ordinary early" turn in" he hag been accustomed to. But of what London life really means he knows nothing. When he first contemplates the idea of living always in London he does not realise what it means. He has found life so easy a thing to get on with in the past that he does not realise how hard it may be to get on with in the future ; he thinks that he will adapt himself easily to it, and it to him, as it has done in the past. But his expecta- tions seldom come true. He finds, instead, that bricks and mortar week after week are a very different thing from theatres and drawing-rooms taken in small doses once or twice per annum. He begins to look forward with the intensity only the country-bred man knows to his holidays, when he can get back to the life which, if everything were ordered for the perpetual satisfaction of everybody, he would have been able always to lead; be is pathetically anxious for fine weather on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, take a man of such a kind and of inclinations such as these—he is, of course, an ex- treme ease, but we want an extreme case to make our point— take him and doom him for six years, week in, week out, to the crush of the City pavement, the sulphur of the Under- ground Railway, the rattling jolt of the omnibus, the per- petual side-street, the sting of blind fogs,—and then, to prove our argument, ask him a question. Ask him whether, granting that money has to be made, and that he must of necessity spend half of every day where he now is, he would not choose that the other half should be spent under the con- ditions of the country life he has led in the past. Of course, there is only one answer. But, equally of course, it is true that you could not offer him what you sagged tp him. Still, if you could offer him only part of what. you suggest, would he not take it ? And the frame of mind in which he takes your offer is surely the real apologia pro vita, suburband,—if sensible men believed such were needed.
He cannot get everything, but he takea what he can get. Even as things are he can get a good deal. Half-an-hour's railway journey—an hour spent in the train out of the day of twenty-four—brings him down to a road of gardens instead of a road of houses. The gardens are small, no doubt, as the Louses are small; but the gardens are there. And if we have taken as the extreme case we spoke of as needed the man who has been used to the atmosphere of large gardens, of heather and hillside and river, still there is, we think, a sort of desideriwrn of the land deep somewhere in the hearts of most English people, and our extreme case is meant to typify in exaggeration the general desire of others. If it pleases an average London business man to be able to come back from Bedford Row or Mincing Lane to the pruning of roses at Brockwell Park or Beckenham, and if he cannot live further away from the Monument than, say, Richmond, can any Englishman laugh at him sincerely P More, if he can add to the possibilities of his life the contemplation of the ferns and sands of Hampstead Heath, or the peace of the wonderful sweeps of the Kew lawns, has he not, after all, something really valuable to put to his account,—something, perhaps, even better than the man who is content with the reflection that "he has dined to-day" ? He is, of course, limited. He cannot go every night to a theatre without the discomfort of travelling ; he cannot always—most blissful of resources—call a hansom cab. But even to-day he, in Ealing, Chiswick, Norwood, Twickenham, has the engineer, . if not the cabman, on his side,—the engineer who will help him in the days to come far more than he can help the man nearer Charing Cross. Within the next few years the engineer will run his electric railways and tramways to pass within a hundred yards of his door, and he will be transported quietly, quickly, and cleanly from his suburban garden, his trees, and his pure air to the telephones of the office, and quietly, quickly, and cleanly hack again, while his partner, who prefers the town, will have still to be content with the omnibus and the "Inner Circle." Or if he lives near the river, he may look forward—why should he not, for the river can yet be made into a highway, and some day will be made so ?—to an electric steamer, capaciously decked and salooned, in which he can breakfast leisurely at nine o'clock on a summer's working day, and in which he can get the oxygen he needs after a day's writing and bargaining on the return passage in the evening. He will get it all some day,— let him keep to his suburban garden. It is only the lack of facilities of transport which prevents him even now from enjoying to the full all that the out-and-out town-dweller enjoys; when those facilities increase, as they will increase, the word " suburbs " will, of course, mean more. But mean- while he is in the right place; he should not be afraid of the word "suburban."
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