|
It
was on a fine Sunday evening in the early autumn of 1884 that I first
saw Merton. The years in their passing,
as London has marched steadily outwards,
have pressed a heavy foot on the half
rustic little village of my memory; so heavy
and heedless that only its beautiful
Church, and the few acres that lie within the influence of its brooding
quiet, have escaped the feverish touch of our
social progress.
I should be half mistrustful that my memory of that Sunday evening
might owe as much to childish fancy as to actual happening were it not that
walking hand in hand with my Father in the September sunset glow a little
Cockney child's dream of the country melted away and left in its place the
delicate reality of Merton with its lanes, stiles, farms, fieldpaths and
hedgerows.
The general outward trek from
London
proper to its more rural suburbs
was only just beginning when my family removed to
Wimbledon
from Islington.
Children dislike a reality that disturbs a secret dream as much as they
resent the slightest
variation in the telling of a familiar story, so I suppose it is not
surprising that little Merton, fast in the spell of that Sabbath evening
quiet, was something of a disappointment because it seemed to discredit
those rustic idylls of Miss Kate Greenaway which were such a delightful
feature of our Victorian picture-books,
and in which my thoughts of the country were moulded
-
my awakening dates
from my admission to Merton School in 1885.
I suppose the educational opportunities of the neighbourhood were
comparable with those of other suburbs of the same character. Merton,
Morden,
and
-
by act of grace
-
parts of Wimbledon, Tooting and Mitcham shared
Merton Schools where there was accommodation for 100 boys, 100 girls, and 50
infants. Wimbledon had three or four private schools, but parents who could
not afford the high fees of these rather exclusive establishments or the
services
of a private governess had only the alternative of the disliked Board School
unless they were fortunate enough to find a coveted vacancy in Merton where
the usages of village school life held on with surprising tenacity. I do not
know what
was the proportion of
Wimbledon
children in my time, but these outsiders were never allowed to forget their
alien condition by the strong Merton faction, most of whose parents had
inherited their cottages and small holdings from past
generations of their families. I think it was this stability in a world
growing restless
and mobile as travel and change became easier that made the Merton children
so interesting to their
Wimbledon
neighbours. Some of them had never been out of
their own parish
-
Kingston Road
and
Morden Road
were for them the frontiers of the world. Once or twice, it is true,
enterprising individuals, not knowing Merton, tried to tempt its inhabitants
to Tooting in a one-horse bus. But Merton did not want to go to Tooting
-
why should it?
-
and
so the service had to be withdrawn.
Top of page |
