LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A WORD FOR PROVINCIAL LONDON.
[TO TIIII EDITOR Or Tfih "SPROTATOIC1 Sin,—Permit me to say something in reply to the charges brought against Londoners by a Scotehman in your last week's number. Nino or ten years ago, on coming from the North to reside in Lon- don, I received that impression of its provincialism which your correspondent so feelingly describes. I find, however, that residence in London has insensibly modified my first opinions. I believe that a great deal of what strikes us at first as provincial is not really of that character, that there is far more " culture " in some of the classes your correspondent speaks of than he supposes, and that the marvellous grasp of special subjects which he notices in really an excellence worth the sacrifice of some of that general culture whose absence your correspondent laments. As Londoners, not without cause, are apt enough to think that we Scotchmen plume ourselves upon our many superiorities, I should like to move an arrest of their judgment by showing that we are not above learning what they can teach us, But first let me show that your correspondent does not justify his impression. His indictment may be put in three counts,—first, the narrowness of the shopkeeping classes, illustrated by Chelsea ignorance of Thomas Carlyle ; second, the narrowness of sharp City men ; and third, the provincialism of the daily press. Reduced to this form, I submit that his observation shows time characteristic defect of a first impression. The points observed are too few to justify general remarks on a great and miscellaneous metropolis. Those who know London will at once see that your correspondent has not come into contact with its characteristic life, with the political and professional classes who congregate in London, and make it the intellectual metropolis which provincials worship. As those classes, and those who associate with them, besides forming the metropolitan world which is heard of afar, make imp no inconsiderable part of the actual numbers of the population, an observation which passes by them in necessarily very misleading. But I doubt also whether your correspondent's facts justify his inferences on the points observed. Ile is much too hard, in the first place, on the Chelsea shopkeepers, as compared with the same class in the North. His experience may be different from mine, but with not a little knowledge of the shop- keeping class in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, I venture to affirm that you could not search among them days on end without finding five who did not know the name of Thomas Carlyle. Only let your correspondent try his luck in the big drapers' shops in the Trongate and Argyll Street of Glasgow, and I am sure his experi- ence would enlighten him. I should be the last person to defend the ordinary London shopkeeper, whom, in common with all Lon. doners, I consider a most offensive personage, but the gulf between him amid the shopkeeper of the North is not so very deep. I must de- precate, too, your correspondent's mode of emphasizing the ignorance of the people he met in Chelsea by contrasting it with their vicinity to the residence of the groat man. It is quite a provincial idea, if I may say so, that this vicinity should make any difference. From causes which are well known, there is no local knowledge in London of any kind, and it is quite inconceivable that almost any name, however great, should make a bruit in its immediate neigh- bourhood. 'Within a mile of where I write there are celebrities by the score, any one of whose names would be the talk of a provincial town, if they lived there, so that all would know where they lived, and have heard of them ; but in London we do not hear of thorn quei, neighbours. But the capital error in the reference to the Chelsea shopkeepers is the fact which your correspondent probably did not know, that shopkeepers do not occupy in England the same relative position to other classes that they do in Scotland. They are socially out of the pale in a way that a Seotehman is quite puzzled to understand when he lives in London. But whatever be the cause, this essential dif- ference in the relative position of the class selected for observa- tion in the two countries cuts the ground from any inference, based upon a knowledge of that class only, as to the entire communities compared. For the purposes of his comparison, the " tradesmen " were a specially unfortunate class to select.
With regard to the sharp City men, who form the subject of the second count of the indictment, I am afraid that in part your correspondent has been unlucky in his specimens, and, in part, has not quite caught the type of man he describes. I know the City pretty well, and having entered it with an impression similar to what your correspondent expresses, I am constrained to say that the first impression is erroneous.
There is certainly a very high ideal as to the knowledge of his busi- ness which a man must possess to get on in the City ; but the widen- ing effect on the mind of having to deal with multifarious interests and great varieties of character is quite perceptible in the City man. At a certain stage of his career, especially when he is learn- ing his business, the marvellous grasp of it will be very obtrusive to an outsider, and may at all times be HO ; but in reality be takes an intelligent interest in many things outside his business, and not least in politics. The City view of politics, I admit, is not likely to strike an outsider very favourably. It is curiously mixed up with calculations as to the effect of certain events on business, and with conservative prejudices of all kinds, which seem very silly to Scotchmen ; but the interest is vivid in the extreme, the judg- ment as to the way things are going most shrewd, and the im- pression as to what should be done on many subjects always worth understanding. The difficulty of a Scotch- man in quickly catching the nature of the political knowledge he meets in the City is the apparent absence of the reasoning faculty. He has been accustomed to argufy everything from infancy, and he cannot quite follow an intuitional and in- stinctive mode of dealing with such subjects. Bat the knowledge and interest are nevertheless there. Another difficulty arises from the cosmopolitanism of view which obtains in the City. I do not doubt that City men might be found very weak in reasoning out the pros and cons of the ballot and other internal questions on which the provinces are mad. The magnitude of the business they conduct, which they feel will go on all the same, whichever way ballot is settled, has a tendency to dwarf such questions. Like Londoners in general, they have little immediate weight on present politics, which they criticize from the outside in a depreciatory tone, whereas in the provinces the interest is more keen ; but this tone is itself defensible, is bringing about great political changes, and is not to be treated as showing any political incapacity. I suspect that if your correspondent had talked the politics about which Londoners care, he would, after a time at least, have been able to perceive that the views were not provincial, and that there were real knowledge and opinions to be obtained from those he con- versed with.
The count respecting our daily newspapers is difficult to deal with. But I do not see the point of the charge of provincialism. They are badly conducted, most of them, as regards almost all news, but that does not show provincialism. A provincial know- ing that things done in the provinces of national interest are. neglected, is apt to think that the neglect is owing to the provin- cial narrowness of the conductors and readers ; but it is pure managerial stupidity, and nothing more, the conductors being equally guilty in other departments. They give us too little of London news, and for my own part, I read the provincial news- papers diligently, so as to be properly posted up.
I think, then, your correspondent would have some difficulty in maintaining his charge of provincialism against Londoners by the facts he describes. And any particular case which an individual Seotchman from the North could draw up would probably be easily disposed of in a similar manner. Though the fact that the imprea- sion is so general is, of course, evidence, so far as it goes, unless Beene general causes can be pointed out for the common error, yet thia difficulty of proof when Scotchmen are brought to book is itself a reason for suspending judgment. Looking back, I can see that many of the reasons on which my own impression was based were unsound. Some members of what I may call the metropoli- tan classes of Loudon with whom I came into contact did strike me as provincial, while the narrowness of mind in other classes appeared as shocking as your correspondent describes. But I have had reason to see since, especially as respects the professional and literary class, how accidental were some of my facts. I had fallen in with provincially disposed minds, though I can understand now how much eircuesstauces had done to make them really less provincial than they would otherwise have been. But besides getting to know more facts, and uaderetand them better, it is DOW my deliberate opiniou that on coming from the provinces we mistake for " provincial " in London what is not really so,—thet we expect things to be included in the general knowledge of cultivated Eng- lishmen which there was no really good reason for their knowing. I was shocked, for instance, on meeting a literary gentleman who knew only in a general way that the people in Scotland were Presbyterian, who did not know that the Presbyterians were split up into three principal bodies, and had never heard of the great disruption in 1843. Some of these matters, I thought, and others like them, were really of more general interest than small Loudon topics, about which he was fluent, and it implied a provincial mind to profess indifference about them. But I do not think now that the premisses justified the conclusion. No doubt it would be a good thing if most cultivated Englishmen were a little better informed about the North, but none of the points were in any sense essential, and might well seem trivial to a man occupied with the higher literature of the day, and living more in contact with the metropolitan circles of France and Germany than with the provincial districts of his own country. I find it difficult enough to keep myself au courant of many Scotch affairs which I once thought of national interest, but which have gradually faded away in the presence of what I maintain to be wider interests. When Europe is discussing Darwinism, we may be excused for forgetting that in Scotland they are in convulsions about a union of Free and U.P. It must always be the characteristic of the metropolis to ignore a good deal of what is thought of national interest in the leisure of the provinces, and the countryman will set down to metropolitan narrowness what is really due to a much wider range of vision.
Another reason for much that strikes a thoughful countryman as provincial in the metroplia is our metropolitan habit of having everything brought to us for judgment, so.that one becomes rather indifferent to outside experience. Not to care for experiments elsewhere seems to an intelligent provincial the height of narrow- mindedness. Sometimes the results may be unfortunate, but in reality the Londoner is justified by long experience in expecting that most things will come to him, and in caring little for them till they are tried in London. Things of value do come and get tried, and he is, at least, always ready to test them on their merits. But this apparent narrow-mindedness is only a habit born of the great privilege of being metropolitan, and is not the same thing as the narrow-mindedness of the provinces.
I hope I have given some reasons why Scotehmen should think London provincial, and yet London be quite different. I am sure your correspondent would not live many years here without being satisfied, as I am, and as all old resident Scotch men here I know are satisfied, that there is no place equal in its educational power to London, and that in respect of metropolitan tastes and ways of thought and general culture, its inhabitants are quite equal to the position they claim. Only he must take care to know the metropolitan classes, and take time to know them. If he goes below a certain stratum, he will meet with much that will surprise and shock him, for the simple reason that the English masses have not the book-learning of the Scotch. Their ignorance will strike him as shameful, "provincial," compared with similar classes at home. But perhaps some years' experience would con- vince him here too that the state of matters is not so bad as a first impression makes thein,—that it is wonderful how much has been learnt with inferior means, and that there is an openness of mind due to a metropolitan atmosphere which is contributing most powerfully to a change.—I am, Sir, &c., It. G.
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