SQUARES

All true lovers of Lewis Carroll will remember that Hiawatha, when he went a-photographing, "pulled and pushed the joints and hinges" of his Camera,

"Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid."

But it is not of squares in the mathematical sense that I speak to-day, but rather of those enclosed spaces, most irregularly shaped and proportioned, which go by the name of "Squares" in London.

It is in sultry August that the value of these spaces is most clearly perceived; for now the better-disposed owners fling open the gates of their squares and suffer them to become, at least temporarily, the resting-places of the aged and decrepit, and the playgrounds of the children. To extend these benefits more widely and to secure them in perpetuity are objects for which civic reformers have long striven; and during the present session of Parliament[6] (for, as Dryasdust would remind us, Parliament is not prorogued but only adjourned) two Acts have been passed which may do something at least towards attaining the desired ends. One of these Acts provides that, in cases where "Open Spaces and Burial Grounds" are vested in Trustees, the Trustees may transfer them to the Local Authorities, to be maintained for the use and service of the public. The other forbids for all time the erection of buildings on certain squares and gardens which belong to private owners, those owners having consented to this curtailment of their powers. The conjunction of "Burial Grounds" with "Open Spaces" in the purview of the former Act has a rather lugubrious sound; but in reality it points to one of the happiest changes which recent years have brought to London.

"A hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed—here, in a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they bring 'our dear brother here departed' to receive Christian burial. With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy of life in action close on death and every poisonous element of death in action close on life,—here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two; here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption; an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside; a shameful testimony to future ages that civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together."

When Dickens wrote that hideous description, worthy to be illustrated by Hogarth in his most realistic mood, he did not exaggerate—he could not exaggerate—the obscenity of burial-grounds in crowded cities. To-day they are green with turf and bright with flowers, and brighter still with the unconquerable merriment of childhood at play among the dim memorials of the forgotten dead. What is true of the particular spot which Dickens described is true all over London; and the resting-places of the departed have been made oases of life and health in this arid wilderness of struggling and stifled humanity.

Though so much has been done in the way of making the Churchyards available for public uses, comparatively little has been done with the Squares; and philosophers of the school erroneously called Cynical might account for this difference by the fact that, whereas the churchyards were generally in the hands of official trustees, such as Rectors, Churchwardens, Overseers, or Vestries, the principal squares of London are the private property of individual owners. Even the London Squares and Enclosures Act, just passed, illustrates the same principle. The preamble of the Act sets forth that in respect of every Square or Enclosure with which it deals the consent of the owner has been obtained. In each case, therefore, the owner has consented to legislation which will prevent himself or his successors from building on what are now open spaces, and, so far, each owner concerned has shown himself a patriotic citizen and a well-wisher to posterity. But, when we come to examine the schedule of properties to which the Act applies, it is interesting to compare the number belonging to private persons with the number belonging to public bodies. The Act applies to sixty-four properties; of these fifty-five belong to public bodies such as District Councils, Governors of Hospitals, and Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and nine to private persons, among whom it is pleasant to reckon one Liberal M.P., Sir John Dickson-Poynder, and, by way of balance, one Conservative peer, Lord Camden.

A further study of the Schedule reveals the instructive fact that, with two exceptions in the City of Westminster and one in the Borough of Kensington, none of the scheduled properties lie within areas which could by any stretch of terms be called wealthy, fashionable, or aristocratic. Public authorities in such districts as Camberwell and Lewisham—private owners in Islington and Woolwich—have willingly surrendered their rights for the benefit of the community; but none of the great ground landlords have followed suit. The owners of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Square and Portman Square and Cavendish Square and Berkeley Square—the Squares, par excellence, of fashionable London—have kept their seigniorial rights untouched. Pascal told us of some very human but very unregenerate children who said "This dog belongs to me," and "That place in the sun is Mine," and Pascal's comment was, "Behold, the beginning and the image of all usurpation upon earth!" Similarly, the human but unregenerate landowners of fashionable London say, as they survey their possessions, "This Square belongs to me," "That place in the shade is Mine," while the August sun beats down on the malodorous street, and tottering paupers peer wistfully at the benches under the plane trees, and street-boys flatten their noses against the iron railings and madly yearn for cricket-pitches so smooth and green.

Although these fashionable Squares are so sedulously guarded against the intrusion of outsiders, they are very little used by those who have the right of entrance. "Livery Servants and Dogs not admitted" is a legendary inscription which, in its substance, still operates. Here and there a nurse with a baby in her arms haunts the shade, or a parcel of older children play lawn-tennis or croquet to an accompaniment of chaff from envious street-boys. But, as a general rule, for twenty hours out of the twenty-four and for ten months out of the twelve the Squares are absolutely vacant; and one of the most reasonable reforms which I could conceive would be to convert them from private pleasure-grounds to public gardens, and to throw the cost of maintaining them in order and beauty on the London County Council.

As I said before, some Square-owners have, without waiting for legal compulsion, taken tentative steps towards this reform. The Trustees of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest and the shadiest of all London Squares, have made them over to the County Council, and, in the hot months of declining summer, the juvenile populations of Holborn and St. Giles play their breathless games where Babington was hanged and Russell beheaded. It was there that, on the 20th of July 1683, Sir Ralph Verney, riding out from London to his home in Buckinghamshire, "saw the scaffold making ready against Lord Russell's execution to-morrow—God help him, and save the country."

But if once we leave the utilities and amenities of the London Squares and begin to meddle with their antiquities, we shall soon overflow all reasonable limits. Bloomsbury Square still reeks (at least for those who know their "Barnaby Rudge") with the blood which was shed in the Gordon Riots. Grosvenor Square—the last district of London which clung to oil-lamps in hopeless resistance to the innovation of gas—embodies the more recent memory of the Cato Street Conspiracy. In Berkeley Square (from what is now Lord Rosebery's house) Sarah Child eloped, and annexed the name and the banking-house of Child to the Earldom of Jersey. In Portman Square Mrs. Montagu presided over her court of Bluestockings and feasted the chimney-sweeps on May-day. In Manchester Square, under the roof which now houses the Wallace Collection, the dazzling beauty of Isabella Lady Hertford stirred the fatuous passion of George IV. In Cavendish Square, under the portico of Harcourt House, lately demolished, Disraeli said good-bye for ever to his confederate Lord George Bentinck. In Hanover Square, Chantrey's stately statue of William Pitt has looked down on a century of aristocratic weddings, ascending and descending the steps of St. George's Church. Sir George Trevelyan, commenting on a Valentine written by Macaulay for Lady Mary Stanhope, a great-niece of Pitt's, declares that "the allusion to the statue in Hanover Square is one of the happiest touches that can be found in Macaulay's writings," and that is a sufficient justification for quoting it:—

"Prophetic rage my bosom swells;
I taste the cake, I hear the bells!
From Conduit Street the close array
Of chariots barricades the way
To where I see, with outstretched hand,
Majestic, thy great kinsman stand,
And half unbend his brow of pride,
As welcoming so fair a bride."