“Will you mock at an ancient tradition?”—Henry V.

When one speaks of the Bourgeois, one means the class which Matthew Arnold was never tired of ridiculing as without culture, ideals, or standards. For my own part, I think it would be more useful to recognise, first, that there are certain occupations in life which can be carried on very well without ideals; that the advent or genesis of ideas among certain people would inevitably spoil them for their humble work; and that it is sufficient for the State if they remain on the side of order, with due respect to law and justice. Now, whatever the short-comings of these people with respect to culture, no one can complain of them with respect to their love of order.

A craftsman—a man who makes anything—may cultivate himself to the highest, and remain a craftsman; he may be an artist; he may be a poet; he may nourish himself upon the noblest thoughts, and yet remain a craftsman. Out of the trade of shoemakers have sprung poets, artists, and actors. Cobblers have been fierce politicians. But a man who sells the shoes which another man makes cannot, in the nature of things, cultivate lofty standards or Æsthetic ideals. His occupation, which has in it something servile, forbids it. And I have here to speak of the English tradesman, and to show the transformation which has fallen upon him too.

Let us consider the daily life of a London shopkeeper early in the present century. He had a shop in Cheapside. The shop occupied the front part of the ground-floor: at the back was the “parlour,” the family living-room, which looked out upon a small churchyard, in which funerals were conducted almost daily; the ground was covered with bones and bits of coffins; once a month or so the sexton made a bonfire of the wood. Upstairs were the bedrooms—the best bedroom in front, which nobody ever occupied because there were no guests. Here the tenant of the house lived, he and his family; they had no change, and desired none, from day to day. An apprentice lived with them, slept under the counter, and made himself useful in the house as well as in the shop—washing plates and dishes after meals and running errands for his mistress. One servant was kept; she and the daughters and the mistress of the house were all occupied perpetually in making things; they made puddings, cakes, jam, preserves, pickles, cordials, perfumes, washes, and home-made wines—thin and pallid fluids named after cowslip, primrose, raspberry, and currant. When they were not making or cooking they were sewing; all the women of the house sewed perpetually—they were slaves to the needle: they sat round the table in the parlour, with a single candle, and sewed in silence all through a winter evening. The girls had been to school; they went to a private school in the suburbs, where they learned various small feminine accomplishments; they learned from their mother certain maxims which should regulate the conduct of every maiden. And on Sunday they turned out for church in toilettes whose splendour highly gratified the pride of their father, because they seemed to challenge all Cheapside to spend more money upon the daughters’ dress. Yet he knew, and all the neighbours knew, that this finery was all contrived at home—hats trimmed, ribbons and streamers put in place, and the lovely sleeve designed by the girls themselves. At church they enjoyed a service which we should call lugubrious. The psalms were read, two hymns were sung but slowly, and the sermon, an hour long, was an argument on doctrine; but there was the pleasure of sitting in the Sunday best, which made one forget the doctrine and enjoy the hymns.

All day long in the week, and during a good part of the evening, the good man served in his shop. It was a shop of which survivals may still be found in various parts of London—a shop with a round window furnished with many small panes of glass; the window was not garnished with the choicest wares which this dealer had to sell—not at all; he prided himself on keeping much better things within than those which he chose to show. After dark the window was illumined by two or three candles.

He breakfasted, for the most part, on tea and toast; he dined at one o’clock, plentifully if not luxuriously; it was not the custom, among his class, to invite friends to dinner. The house, in fact, was regarded as a kind of sacred harem, to which no one was invited. Friends, however, were taken to the tavern. Unless he was a Dissenter, this citizen was a member of the Vestry, and served all the parish offices. On Sunday he dined more plentifully than on a week day: he was a member of a club which met once a week; there he exchanged sentiments which we should call commonplace, but they were expected; any other sentiments would have affected his friends painfully, with doubt and misgiving.

These sentiments were based upon convictions fixed and unalterable. He believed—long before any Reform Bill—that the only land of liberty was Great Britain; that British armies were irresistible, and British fleets were ever victorious; that the greatest enemy to mankind was the Pope; that the greatest crime conceivable was not to pay your debts, especially debts contracted with a tradesman of Cheapside; that the greatest disgrace was to become bankrupt. A debtor’s prison he regarded as the chief safeguard and stay of British trade; he would listen to no sentimental nonsense about locking up debtors—every debtor ought to be locked up, ought to be flogged, ought to be hanged!

He entertained no sympathy with trades unions: the working-man was the servant of his employer; it was not for him to regulate his own wages and his hours; he was to take what he could get, what the generosity of his master, what the conditions of trade, allowed him to have.

This man, of whom there were many hundred thousands in the country, read no books; he was quite ignorant of what we call everything, that is, of literature, science, art, music, history. Something he knew of what was going on, because there were newspapers at the tavern, which he sometimes read. But he took in no newspaper, and he read no books. There were no books in his house at all; his girls read no books. A book of Family Prayers there was; and for Church purposes, Prayer Books and Bibles, but no books. And so this man, with all his household, lived and died, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, without culture, without ideals, without standards, without aspirations.

He had become, after the Mob Riots of the eighteenth century, a prodigious coward. Formerly, as in 1715, when a mob appeared in the street, he had run to the mug-house or tavern, seized a club, and sallied forth to disperse that mob. Gradually he lost courage; he stayed at home; he was sleek and fat and unwarlike; when the mob came along he put up his shutters, locked his door, and sat behind it trembling. However, the establishment of the New Police sufficiently repressed the mob, and made the question of the civic valour no longer necessary.

For holidays, he had none, that is to say, he felt no need of any change year after year; he lived the daily routine, and would not alter it if he could. Some of his neighbours—a few—had begun to go in the summer to Brighton or to Margate. Not our friend; he stayed where he was, with his nose over the churchyard, and said that London air was best. Once a year he might take his family to Bagnigge Wells or over to Vauxhall; on summer evenings he would walk with them in the pleasant fields outside the city walls; he wanted no other holiday. Nor did his people. His daughters married and left him; but he and his wife kept on where they were until the end.

The man himself, ill-educated, vulgar, incapable of understanding anything except that which lies on the surface, unfortunately stood in the eyes of the world to represent the City: the trading merchants had gradually withdrawn from the Corporation, leaving it to the shopkeepers, so that for a time the Mayor and Corporation of the greatest city of the world were drawn from a narrow, vulgar part of the community. Not only the city, but trade itself fell into contempt during this interval. You may remember that Thackeray is filled with contempt of trade, with his Alderman Gobble and the purse-proud merchants.

One point must be acknowledged in favour of this man. He was a great stickler for what he called morals—not including that part of morals which deals with the treatment of dependents. Private character he expected of his friends: a young man who came courting his daughters had to bring with him an unsullied private character. You may note, if you please, because the virtue is the foundation of all trade, that in his private expenditure he was thrifty.

How, then, has this man been affected by the changes of sixty years?

First, his trade is entirely altered. The extension of machinery has affected every line of trade. In watchmaking, for instance, the best watches were made in Clerkenwell: they cost from six pounds to a hundred and twenty pounds; a machine-made watch can now be obtained for twenty shillings. So with stuffs, velvets, silks, ribbons, everything: machinery has largely increased the production and as largely diminished the cost. This means, as one effect, that less capital is required to embark in trade. Free Trade, which has done such great things for this country, though we make no converts, has largely affected the retail trade.

Apart from his trade the English tradesman’s private life has been completely changed. He no longer lives next to a noisome burial-ground in the city; he has a villa in a suburb; he goes into town every morning and comes out in the evening; the old evenings with the city cronies are things of the past. In his suburb there is very little social life even for his children; for himself there is none. He does not frequent theatres or concerts; he stays at home. In the morning he reads a newspaper; in the evening he reads books and plays cribbage. As for his children they have forgotten the former stage; they are well educated; they go into the professions; they are artistic and become Art students; they are as well read as can be desired; they are in the stream of modern ideas.

Not only this, but the social position of the tradesman has been raised: here and there one may find a huge palace devoted to the sale of everything; the palace has been created by the genius of one man, and is controlled by the mind of one man. It is impossible to feel anything but respect and admiration for a man of such great ability, who has created interests so vast and so commanding.

The shopkeeper has, for the most part, abandoned the Corporation; he no longer seeks office in the city; when he does, he is a man who can hold his own with the merchants who have once more taken over the municipality; the City is the gainer by the change, and so is the London tradesman, because what advances the reputation of the City also advances him.

The forces which have changed the common people have also acted upon himself and his family: the widening of the world, improved communication, and cheap postage and the rest. His young people are not concerned with the polytechnics, but they are moved by the spirit of athletics that drag all the youth of this country into the playing-fields. They career over the country on bicycles; they play golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football; they are not shut out from suburban society by the old exclusiveness with which “wholesale people” formerly regarded “retail people.” The playing-field is a leveller; there is no rank in a football team.

Let us not forget to remark how large a knowledge of geography is possessed by our friend of Cheapside. You would be amazed at the extent: sure and certain I am that the average American citizen cannot compare with my man in this respect. He has learned this knowledge by following day after day the wars and rumours of wars which assail the country continually. Since the accession of Queen Victoria, we have carried on war in Canada, at the Cape, in India, in New Zealand, on the West Coast of Africa, in the Crimea, in Egypt, in China, in Abyssinia, in Dahomey, in Burmah, in Afghanistan, in Chitral, and I know not where beside. This good man, with his newspaper and his atlas, gets up his geography from day to day and from war to war.

There is perhaps a “seamy” side to trade of every kind. With that I have no concern whatever; I have only to show here how the events of sixty years have affected the London tradesman, and this, I venture to hope, I have succeeded in doing. Again, it must be understood that I am talking of the better class—not necessarily the richer class—of London retail dealers. There are, I believe, those who live for making money, and have no other care or thought. For them order, law, peace, justice exist for no other purpose than to allow the most perfect freedom for the besting of the customer. The old Cheapside trader was narrow and stupid; these people are neither narrow nor stupid; they are sharp; they exist in every trading city; they are purse-proud and ostentatious; they flourish their wealth at the “Grand Hotels”; they wear the finest fur and the richest silk—and, if you please, we will say no more about them.