Crosland, Suburbans

Thomas Crosland, The Suburbans. London: John Long 1905.

[Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (1865-1924) gave out visiting cards which announced his occupation as: “jobbing poet … N.B. Funerals Attended.” But verse was only one of his literary outlets: he was a hard-bitten, combative journalist. One of his many enemies described him as “a huge, bloated verminous creature like a cockroach,” with a mouthful of teeth “like a bombed graveyard.” Crosland specialised in writing pieces of social observation that were as malicious as they were diverting. His first two books, The Unspeakable Scot (1902) and Lovely Woman (1903) are said to have sold 100,000 copies each.]

[From Chapter III “How to Get There”]

Indeed, for most men who are not excessively rich, philosophy is a snare and a delusion. There never was a philosophy yet—that is to say, a philosophy for poor men—that did not in the long-run teach that whatever is, is best. It is this assumption which saps away the spirit and courage of the large mass of mankind. It is this assumption that makes Suburbia content, and even proud to be Suburbia. It is this assumption that has induced in the bosoms of the suburbans a sublime appreciation of red-brick villas, seven-guinea saddle-bag suites,[1] ceraceous fruit in glass shades, pampas grass, hire-system gramophones, anecdotal oleographs,[2] tinned soups, music in the parks, and kindred horrors.

Despite their peevishness and touchiness and want of conduct, despite their backbitings and slanderings and petty squabblings, despite their financial stringencies and the general narrowness of their affairs, domestic and otherwise, it cannot be denied that the suburbans do contrive to extract from life feelings of security, complacency, and completeness. For the individual suburban of our own time this is fortunate. (35)

From Chapter IV “The Male Suburban”]

You can tell the male suburban wherever you meet him. Consider him. Look at the unscrupulous respectability of him. Regard his well-brushed silk hat, his frock-coat with the pins in the edge of the lapel (they are always there)[3] and the short sleeves, the trousers that are forever about to have a fringe on them, the cuffs with paper protectors and a pocket-handkerchief stuffed up one of them, the “gamp” and its valuable case,[4] the cheap ring, the boisterous watch-chain, the dainty side-whiskers, and the blue shaven jowl. The man’s coats decline to sit properly on his back, because, truth to tell, he is all back; his trousers bag at the knees, because he is largely knees; and his boots burst at the sides, because he always buys them too small. If it were a case of neglect or scorn of appearances, the male suburban might conceivably be pardoned. But there is something in the preposterous air of the man which convinces you at sight that, so far from being a scorner of appearances, he is a zealous, assiduous, and never-flagging worshipper of them. He believes himself to be the glass of fashion and the mould of form.[5] If he were otherwise, he thinks he might die. His tailor has guaranteed him “West End cut and style.” Inside his twelve-and-sixpenny silk topper you may read “Extra best quality,” and beneath, “West End finish.” The fact that the whole contrivance might with accuracy be described as “late property of a nobleman”[6] does not occur to him. (37-39)

[1] Furniture upholstered in fabric resembling that used to make camel saddlebags in the East; popular with those who shared the “Arts and Crafts” taste for the home-made in the 1890s.

[2] A print imitating an oil painting. Genre paintings, which told a story with a moral message, were popular.

[3] To protect his lapels from fraying.

[4] Slang for an umbrella, named after the one owned by Sairey Gamp in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit. The “valuable case” is sarcastic.

[5] An allusion to Ophelia’s admiring description of Hamlet: “The glass of fashion and the mould of form,/Th’observ’d of all observers.”

[6] That is, the clothes look as though they are the used garments of some nobleman’s servant, who has sold his late master’s property to a second-hand dealer.