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[-200-]
XIV.
PLEBEIAN FLOWER SHOWS
A JULY afternoon sun was blazing down on. the Broad Sanctuary
when I turned beneath the shady archway that leads into Dean's Yard. Carriages
were rolling through it; carriages were setting down their freights at the gate
of the yard's quadrangle of grass and trees; outside the rails, gratefully
availing themselves of the flickering shade of overhanging plane-leaves, stood
waiting carriage-horses, champing their bits with foaming mouths, and
impatiently tossing off the pestering flies that presumed to light on their
proud heads and buzz about their aristocratic noses. The upper windows of the
houses that give upon the yard were thrown up, and amused eyes looked down
thence on the motley crowd that made a merry hubbub in the wontedly cleri-[-201-]cally
sedate enclosure. High up, on one side, the gilding of the Victoria Tower
flashed in the blue, cloudless sky; on another, the twin towers of the Abbey
rose above the roofs, seemingly almost as white and sharply-cut as if just fresh
from the pious hands of the builders of "the elder days of art." Out
of the low grey school, with its squat archways, gnawn like bones by time, and
the iron-grey, more ancient portion of its wall patched above with dingy brick,
like the ragged fringe of a dusty Welsh wig overlapping a hard-featured
veteran's forehead, "Westminsters" were trooping, as Westminsters have
trooped for nearly a decade more than three centuries: Westminsters, in the
"chimney-pot" which seems to be the modern regulation headgear of the
non-foundation public school-boy; Westminsters, arm-in-arm and four abreast, en
route for Vincent Square, in gay cricketing flannels; Westminsters, in
collegiate cap and gown and "white choker" - the tiniest, and most
solemnly self-important amongst them looking ludicrously like right reverend Tom
Thumbs. A few lingered at the palisades to peep at the show, or to chat with
fair young friends and beaming aunts and mammas within; one or two sauntered
over the grass-plat in collegiate costume, with a de-haut-en-bas-like
drawling gait (most aristocratic of mortals, in his own estimation, is the
English public schoolboy); [-202-] but
"charity-bobs," in muffin-caps and bands, and very seedy at the
elbows, boisterously chasing one another, and stray, sulphur-winged butterflies,
over the fast-yellowing lawn, littered with prematurely withered leaves, were
far more numerously represented in the enclosure. Plebeian small boys of all
kinds enjoyed a Saturnalia in the garden of the Dean's Yard. The little cockneys
crowded the seat of a reading-desk, placed in readiness for the noble
distributor of the prizes, as their holiday- making parents crowd a cab,
grinning applause, in constantly supplanted detachments, of a very humorous
"little vulgar boy," who thumped the lectern and favoured the public
with extemporaneous discourse as energetically as a ranter-preacher. The saucy
little varlets were not in the slightest degree awed by the presence of the
potent, grave, and reverend dignitaries who patrolled the grass in the well-
to-do, glossy-black sleekness, and sleepily-sly good-humour, which characterize
English rooks and English clergymen who have nests in the shadow of a cathedral.
The learned, variously- and-copiously gifted Dean was the only un-typical parson
in appearance there. "Which is the Dean?" I heard a good woman
anxiously ask of her Westminster friend, who was showing her the local lions.
"What, that pale little gentleman in the trousers?" was the
querist's disappointed rejoinder, when the [-203-] Dean
was pointed out. "I thought Deans was fat, red-faced gentlemen, as wore
breeches." The Westminster parishioner was scandalised by this irreverent
mode of discussing Dr. Stanley's claims to the character of (literal) Broad
Churchman, and answered, in a tone of loftily-indignant offence, "That's
all you know, then. He may well look pale, for he's allus a-readin' or a-writin',
or a-doin' sumfink or other good, as a parson ought to was. Other popular
critics expressed disappointed surprise that the lords and ladies who rubbed
shoulders with costermongers and charwomen on the ground, did not stand out with
unmistakable distinctness from the bulk of well-dressed people - so far as dress
went, indeed, were even less "splendacious" than anonymous assisters
at the show. In only one instance, however, so far as I could see, did these
criticisms take a form offensive to their subjects. An elderly
"strong-minded woman," of the Ida Pfeiffer type, elbowed her way
through the greasy throng with undaunted sang froid. Her petticoats of
somewhat peculiar cut, were kilted; a broad-brimmed hat shaded a bronzed face
and short-cut, grizzled, capless hair; the lady had also what might pass for a
beard and a moustache. "It's a man dressed up," whispered the women
through whose gossiping clusters the self-reliant "unprotected female"
forced her way [-204-] - loud enough for her to
hear. She smiled with grimly contemptuous compassion for her unenfranchised sex,
when she overheard the comment; to be taken for a mere man, she evidently
considered no compliment.
The general tone of the gathering, however, was mutual
good-temper and cheerful loyalty. At one corner of the enclosure a Union-Jack
lazily rustled in the fitful breeze; in another stood a, tent, wreathed with
leaves and flowers, from which young ladies, who worked harder than any "slavey,"
brought out unfailing supplies of tea and bread-and-butter, for the women and
children who were admitted in detachments to the seats enclosed in front of the
tent. The tea was poured from great battered urns of zinc, that looked like
exaggerated oil-cans, and its plenty, its strength, and the nature of the
attendance, quite excited the good women. They blushed with delight, and shook
with merriment, at the thought of being waited. on by smiling, soft-spoken young
ladies in silks and satins, gossamery muslins, and lace falls. "So you've
had some tea, have yen, Bob?" said a radiant grandmother to her
little grandson, as he issued from the privileged enclosure, wiping his freshly
greasy mouth on his antiquely greasy sleeve. "Well, now, it's sumfink like
a show," says I, "when they gives yer suinfink to heat and
drink!"
Meanwhile, strolling or reclining on the [-205-]
grass, and seated on very dusky rout-seats and rush-bottomed chairs beneath the
welcome shadow of the trees, the bulk of the company, gentle and simple,
listened to the music of a police band, whose puffing, thumping, and
cymbal-clashing members were watched proudly by their wives and children,
delighted at finding the populace-hated force figuring, for however short a
time, in a generally popular capacity. The show proper was contained in a
flag-decked marquee. "In everything give thanks, in leaves and
flowers," and "God save the Queen," in white letters on a red
ground, with a crown above the scriptural motto, were the appropriate, pious and
loyal, internal- decorations of the tent, erected, under clerical patronage, in
the shadow of one of the noblest fanes of the State Church. The fact that one of
the Princesses had been to see the flowers seemed to give huge satisfaction to
the exhibitors, who lingered about their exhibits, watching the glances, and
trying to catch the work, of those who inspected them, as anxiously, and as
jealously as a struggling artist notes the effect produced. by his
first-admitted picture. "Well, I don't think much on 'em - I've a-had
as good myself," was the uncomplimentary judgment passed upon the flowers
by a noncompetitor, possibly envious of the social distinction which her
exhibiting neighbours had attained. The proportion of blossom to stem [-206-]
and leaf was, perhaps, rather small on the average; but, considering the
places in. which the plants had been reared, the show, nevertheless, was
exceedingly pretty. Fuchsias and geraniums were most numerously represented: one
of the fuchsias, trained upon a frame, was quite a giant. There were ferns in
pot, and ferns in a handsome case. There were calceolarias, begonias, lobelias,
balsams, musk-plants, nasturtiums, lupins, sweet peas, and almost
solitarily-blossomed American marigolds - the precious flowers made prominent by
paper ruffs. The favourite creeper appeared to be the creeping Jenny, which hung
in pots all round the tent-pots which were constantly losing their equilibrium,
as the larking youngsters outside bulged in the canvas. A good many of the
exhibitors were school-children; some of the neatest of the plants came from
Westminster Hospital; and a pathetic detachment had been sent from the
Westminster Workhouse. A pauper window-gardener must regard his flower with a
very peculiar interest, as being almost the only property which he can claim.
The mode in. which the prizes had been assigned see med to give general
satisfaction, but, of course, there were some exceptions. "They did ought
to have guy a prize to that, I think," said the mother of a defeated
exhibitor, as she pointed out to a friend a creeping Jenny which her son had
trained round a Lilli-[-207-]putian summer-house of
wire. "And he've done another beauty, jest like the Prince of Wales's
plume." "Won't my little Jack be disappointed?" said
another mother of a "nowhere" son. "His brother have got a prize
for a plant jest the feller of his'n." The show of fruit consisted merely
in the strawberries and cherries exposed for sale, together with ices,
ginger-beers lemonade, cakes, and sweet-stuff, on the refreshment stall. The
small boys buzzed about this stall like flies - especially when they found that
their covetous eyes ever and anon induced pitying beholders to stand treat. One
urchin, a little charity-boy, I saw curtsying, in the excess of his
excited gratitude, to a lady who had promised him a choice geranium from her
greenhouses as an encouragement of his horticultural tastes.
The English reverence for a lord was amusingly manifested
when the earl who was to distribute the prizes made his appearance. He was
followed about at a respectful distance by a crowd of scrutinisers, who seemed
to think it an intensely interesting fact to discover that a nobleman. used a
pocket-handkerchiefs and shook bands with his acquaintances just like any common
mortal.
The company having crowded. round the rostrum, the
distribution of the prizes began - their value varying from ten shillings to
four. A policeman shouted out the name of the prize-[-208-]taker
in a stentorian voice, like a crier calling a witness into court. The
prize-taker appeared; the amount of his prize was handed up to the earl, and the
earl dropped it into the palm of the prize-taker. There was something funny in
the additional value which the money appeared to acquire in the recipients' eyes
from having passed through a nobleman's fingers. However, the object was to
gratify them, and it was certainly attained. In addition to their prizes each
received a little pamphlet on window-gardening from one of the ladies. The
prize-giving over, Lord Shaftesbury made a speech on the moral influence of
floriculture. Then the Dean made a speech, finishing off with a call for three
cheers for his lordship. The cheers having been duly given, a Canon mounted the
rostrum, and announced the gratifying fact that the receipts at the gate had
completely covered the expenses of the show. The tea, he said, had been given in
celebration of the release of the Abyssinian captives. "I trust that we
shall have no Abyssinian war next year - though, then, you will get no
tea," he added with a chuckle. The mirth which this mild, but most
successful joke provoked having subsided, and the obstreporous small boys having
temporarily been hushed, hats and helmets were taken off, and "Praise God
from whom all blessings flow, was somewhat quaveringly sung beneath the [-209-]
calrn evening sky. A good many of the vocalists, probably, were not much
used to psalm-singing. It was a pretty, soothing scene nevertheless, that crowd
of miscellaneous worshippers praising God in the island-like quiet of the Dean's
Yard, before they went out again into the boisterous London life that was
roaring on all sides. The exhibitors carried home their plants as carefully as
if they had been firstborn babies. One could hardly help pitying the plants,
borne away from the grass and trees, and comparatively fresh air, into close
confinement for another year.
An East-End Window
Garden Show, however, is even more striking than one whose Mark-Tapley-like
exhibits have striven hard and successfully to be joli under the very
"creditable circumstances" of growth in Westminster slums.
A dingy, crowded, East-End thoroughfare is broiling and
bustling in the dusty sunshine. Ponderous waggons labour along its stone-trains,
laden with sugar-hogsheads perspiring treacle; omnibuses rattle past, with
passengers stewing within, and passengers set out to bake in batches on the
knife-board. The dirty boots of cabmen, taking their siesta within, dangle from
the doors of battered cabs. An irrepressible longing for beer appears to have
seized [-210-] the majority of the population. The
bars are crowded, and people who have passed them, suddenly turn back and dive
in, taking off their hats and mopping their brows, and expressing aloud, as
though onlookers required an apology for their vacillating conduct, their
conviction that "A feller must have a swig on such a day as thisn."
Impecunious personages loaf about the taverns, on the look-out for familiar
friends and chance acquaintances, "safe to stand a pint." Sailors,
whose bronzed faces shew that they are familiar with tropical suns, seem -at any
rate so far as the necessity for extra drink is concerned - to have been quite
as much overcome as landsmen by the English heat. In red shirts that annoy the
eye like scarlet geraniums in a hot-house; in blue flannel and dreadnought, in
which they have doubled the Horn; in cooler duck and dungaree - they
"stagger" across the footpath, with glazed gaze, and idiotically
solemn lips, and are easily hauled into another series of beer- shops by their
hideous sirens, who are already abroad, without bonnets, and in low-necked white
dresses. Guardsmen from, the Mint and Tower booze sleepily in filthy bars,
nodding their caps, stuck on awry, and greasing their scarlet elbows, over
fish-porters' scaly knots and baskets; or stride along with tunic-tails tucked
back, loosened stocks, and flushed, fierce faces, as if inclined to run a muck
at all they [-211-] meet. In the doorways of the
stifling little drapers' shops, the master and his maidens gasp together in a
bower of drooping "crinolines"; too deliquescent to care whether
customers come or not - half hoping, indeed, that they may not be yet a while
forced to go again inside. Cross-legged Jew brokers doze stertorously in the
easiest easy-chairs to be found in their dusty stock, set out beneath most
welcome awnings. The sun-broiled "block ornaments," the blue-bottles,
the stagnantly loathsome atmosphere of the butchers' shops, are enough to make
you abjure meat for ever. There is some relief in seeing a street-fishmonger
break up a case, and haul out a big salmon from a bed of knobby ice; but, when
you note the flabby, sanguineous section of the wares already on his stall,
fish, too, seems likely, as the Scotch say, for ever after to "give you a
scunner." His neighbour is languidly watering, with a "rose" that
has half its holes stopped up, halfpenny slices of shrivelled, gritty cocoa-
nut, temptingly arranged on blue paper mottled with brown patches, on whose
greasy surface the water stands in dirty beads. Limp lettuces and wilted onions,
beyond the power of water to freshen, form the attractions of the next emporium.
The cherries on the fruit-stall are wrinkled and half baked; and the cheap
damaged strawberries are piled in an amorphous heap of dusty jam, out of which
sluggishly [-212-] trickles juice that looks like
semi-coagulated blood. Altogether, life in the East End seems a hopelessly
squalid form of existence, as you walk along that busy thoroughfare, and glance
up the suffocating lanes that give on it, with their inhabitants sitting in
slatternly dishabille upon their doorsteps, panting open-mouthed like dogs.
Suddenly, however, you get a glimpse of dewy stars in the
sultry East End gloom.
A white-and-red banner stretches across the mouth of one of
the lanes, announcing the "East London Flower-show." You dive down the
double row of meanly-built houses, of the colour of ginger-bread burnt in the
baking, or a negro afflicted with jaundice, and looking so peevishly weary of
having nothing better to stare at from week's end to week's end than their
uninteresting opposites. You pass a swarthy Colosseum of a gasometer, and see at
the bottom of the lane a pepper-and-salt church, and opposite it, a handsome
red-and-black schoolhouse. Across the road stretches a gay string of bunting.
Flags, too, flutter from the schoolhouse windows. In front of the door is
congregated a crowd of male and female infantry - every other little girl
nursing a child only a size smaller than herself, and all staring in solemn
silence at a couple of boardmen, stationed like mutes on either side of the
doorway. From the bills, you gather that [-218-] within
the school-house is to be opened a "window-garden" exhibition, to
which sixteen East End parishes have contributed. Ragged schools and workhouses
are amongst the exhibiters. Down one side of a lofty room on the ground-floor of
the school-house, sprawls an extemporised counter, covered with white cloths, on
which are somewhat sparsely spotted little archipelagoes of cheap refreshments.
Behind it stand extemporised waitresses in their Sunday best, with rosettes of
ribbon on their bosoms, and, though nobody as yet appears to require their
services, in a high state of gleeful excitement, caused by freedom from
everyday-work, and a sense of official importance. At the end of this ball are
displayed a few of the chief prize-plants; and some of them are downright
bushes. You pay your shilling to the money-taker, when he can spare a moment
from nicking the free-admission cards of exhibiters who are surging about his
desk, and struggle with them up some stiffish flights of steep stone stairs.
Every window in the room at the top of the house is open, and not without need,
for otherwise the temperature would be Black-holish. Flagstaffs are thrust out
of the windows, and through them you get glimpses of a prospect which is a
strange surrounding for a show of locally-reared flowers; a wilderness of smutty
tiles and stumpy chimneys, above which tower tall factory-stalks, gas-[-214-]works,
grimy steeples, and the masts of ships that appear completely hemmed in with
masonry. Their presence in such places is as puzzling as the flowers. Both would
seem to have dropped from the skies. The plants are ranged in sloping stands, on
all sides of the L-shaped room, with banners above, emblazoned with the names of
the exhibiting school, parish, and so forth. Sooth to say, the show, for
brilliant colour, is considerably more indebted to its bunting than its
blossoms. Besides these banners, there are others with texts of Scripture on
them; texts of Scripture stretch in parti-colour along the wood-work of the open
roof, and in the corners of the room flags fall in folds. A very pretty sight it
is; and as such, it is loudly appreciated by the little boys and girls who form
the majority of the spectators. They interrupt the reading of the prize-list,
and have to be silenced by reproachful hush, hush, hushes from the
chairman, and perspiring activity on the part of indignant schoolmasters and
mistresses, who dart hither and thither amid the throng, seizing on chief
offenders like collies in a wilfully confused flock of sheep. Some of the girls
are very stylishly got-up in white muslin mantles, gilt combs, and such-like
finery, and condescend to their less smartly-dressed school-fellows with an
evident consciousness of constituting a social elite. There are no swells
amongst the [-215-] boys, and fewer clean hands and
faces than could he wished for in little neighbours, whose bashful anxiety to
get out of your way generally results in their shoving some other little boy up
against you.
Seated in a horse-shoe are a dozen or more of those admirable
men, the "working clergy" of the East End. (By-the-bye, is there not
something either invidious or satirical in the epithet "working" so
distinctively applied? Ought there to be any clergy who do no work?) Their faces
are a pleasant study. To begin with : in spite of the unpleasant places in which
the lines of clerical life have fallen to them, they almost all look cheerful;
and gilding this habitual look, there is a gleam of abnormal excitement. The
peculiarity of their "business look" is also piquant. You can see that
they go heart and soul, and with a considerable sense of personal importance,
into what most men would consider the unprofitable and peddling details of
parochial book-keeping - the finance of "penny banks," and such like.
But their business has left no furrows of carking greed and unscrupulous
knowingness upon their countenances. They slave cheerfully for others, and as to
all extra-professional matters, look as unsophisticated as children. A good many
of the children with whom they come in contact, indeed, in their court
and alley visitations, have a much more "worldly aspect." [-216-]
Nearly one hundred prizes are announced, six shillings and eightpence being a
frequently recurring amount. Then the excellent chairman, who is looked upon
with affectionate awe as having written letters to the "Times" about
the show, makes a pleasant little speech, all the "points" of which
are rapturously applauded. Then the incumbent of the parish also makes a
pleasant little speech, which is similarly received. He praises the perspiring
chairman, but praises still more loudly the perspiring curate, and finishes off
by proposing a vote of thanks to him, which, of course, is carried unanimously;
the small boys holding up a couple of hands apiece. The curate returns thanks,
and is applauded. A layman proposes a vote of thanks to "our respective
chairman," and is applauded. The vote is unanimously carried amid great
applause. Everybody appears inclined to applaud everything; and when the
chairman, in returning thanks, announces that a real live member of parliament
will distribute the prizes in a day or two, the assembly becomes ecstatic.
Finally again amid great applause, the exhibition is formally declared to be
open, and the company begins to circulate to inspect it.
The show of blossom, as I have hinted, is comparatively
small; but that such fine healthy plants should have been reared in the mephitic
[-217-] air of the East End, appears astounding.
And if the show of blossom is small, what there is of it is brilliant. In
the whole exhibition, there is only one cluster with the faded, sickly look that
might be supposed typical of East End flowers. A few of the plants, moreover,
are in splendid blossom. There is a huge musk with almost as much gold as green
in it, and an appropriately named "Daniel Lambert" geranium that would
do credit to a conservatory. Balsams appear to he a favourite plant with the
East Enders, and still more, creeping Jennies. There are oak-leaf geraniums,
ivy-plants, a little fig-tree, and a Japanese honeysuckle. Some of the pots are
tastefully swathed in tissue-paper. That a large proportion of the plants are
literally the products of window-gardens, you can tell from their fan-like form.
The upper sides of the leaves all turn the same way. It is curious to remark the
long curved stalks which some of the geraniums have thrown out from behind in
their eagerness to drink in the light at every pore.
Every one first rushes to see his own plant. The officials
experience a little difficulty in explaining to disappointed competitors
how their "exhibits" could possibly have been excluded from the
prize list, and the explanation at last is evidently taken under protest. Still
the harmony of the meeting remains [-218-] unruffled.
The disappointed ones fully believe that the judges meant well, but are not
quite so firmly convinced as the successful ones of their infallibility, and
cherish more fondly than ever a silent faith in the unsurpassability of their
own pet products. Parochial feeling is strong in the parsons. They delightedly
clap prize-taking parishioners upon the back, and carry off their lady friends
in triumph to look at "our stand"; expatiating on the merits of
musks, as if they were most rare exotics. One clergyman sees a "highly
commended" ticket unappropriated, and sticks it into a parishioner's pot,
observing: "It may as well be there as doing nothing." The joy of the
youthful prize-takers is comically pompous. "Have you got a prize,
Jim?" asks a half- incredulous little girl of a beaming little boy.
"Yes," says Jim, curtly, trying to look as if he
had been certain of it.
"How much, Jim?"
"Oh, five bob," answers the boy with affected
indifference.
The little girl gazes on him with worshipful eyes, and is
quite proud of being seen in his company, and on sufficiently familiar terms
with such a public character as to be able to call him Jim. The mothers of the
Jims more plainly show their exultation. With big babies at their breasts, they
wander about, stopping every minute to talk over their sons' [-219-]
triumph with their gossips. Heat and happiness combined have made the
good women's faces as red as poppies. The men who are going round with syringes
to water the flowers, take pity on the flushed, hand-tied matrons, and hold up
great water-jugs to their lips, out of which they drink like horses out of
pails.
Altogether, it is a pretty scene of good- fellowship amongst
all; and the character of the show, no doubt, has something to do with this
good-fellowship. There is a humanising influence in the culture of flowers: they
remove cantankerousness from the moral atmosphere, as well as carbonic acid from
the air.
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