Rah!'
[1893.]
ART AND THE PEOPLE. [Paper read at the Birmingham Meeting of the
Social Science Congress.]
There is a passage in one of the letters of Edward Denison which
exactly interprets the dejection and oppression certain to fall upon
one who seriously considers and personally investigates, however
superficially, the condition of the poor in great cities. He writes
from Philpott Street, Commercial Road, East London, and he says: 'My
wits are getting blunted by the monotony and ugliness of the place. I
can almost imagine the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing
anything but the meanest and vilest of men and man's work, and of
complete exclusion from the sight of God's works.' The very
exaggeration of these words shows the profound dejection of the
writer, at a moment when his resolution to continue living in a place
where there was neither nature nor art, nor beauty anywhere, weighed
upon him like a penal sentence, so that the vileness of the
surroundings entered into his soul and made him feel as if the men and
women in the place, as well as their works, were all alike, mean,
vile, and sordid. Edward Denison wrote these words seventeen years
ago. The place in which he lived is still ugly and monotonous, a small
cross-street leading from the back of the London Hospital into the
Commercial Road, about as far from green fields and parks or gardens
as can be found anywhere in London; there are still a good many of the
vilest of man's works carried on in the neighbourhood, especially the
making of clothes for Government contractors, and the making of shirts
for private sweaters.
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