of the labourers on Jacobson's farm was a man named John Mitchel. He
lived in a cottage not far from us--a poor place consisting of two
rooms and a wash-house; they call it back'us there--and had to walk
nearly two miles to his work of a morning. Mitchel was a steady man
of thirty-five, with a round head and not any great amount of brains
inside it. Not but what he had as much brains as many labourers have,
and quite enough for the sort of work his life was passed in. There
were six children; the eldest, Dick, ten years old; and most of them
had straw-coloured hair, the pattern of their father's.
Just before the turn of harvest one hot summer, John Mitchel presented
himself at Mr. Jacobson's house in a clean smock frock, and asked a
favour. It was, that his boy, Dick, should be taken on as ploughboy. Old
Jacobson objected, saying the boy was too young and little. Little he
might be, Mitchel answered, but not too young--warn't he ten? The lad
had been about the farm for some time as scarecrow: that is, employed
to keep the birds away: and had a shilling a week for it. Old Jacobson
stood to what he said, however, and little Dick did not get his
promotion.
But old Jacobson got no peace. Every opportunity Mitchel could get, or
dare to use, he began again, praying that Dick might be tried. The boy
was "cute," he said; strong enough also, though little; and if the
master liked to pay him only fourpence a day, they'd be grateful for
it; 'twould be a help, and was wanted badly. All of no use: old
Jacobson still said No.
One afternoon during this time, we started to go to the Jacobsons' after
a one-o'clock dinner,--I and Mrs. Todhetley. She was fond of going
over to an early tea there, but not by herself, for part of the way
across the fields was lonely. Considering that she had been used to
the country, she was a regular coward as to lonely walks, expecting to
see tramps or robbers at every corner. In passing the row of cottages
in Duck Lane, for we took that road, we saw Hannah Mitchel leaning
over the footboard of her door to look after her children, who were
playing near the pond in the sunshine with a lot more; quite a heap
of the little reptiles, all badly clad and as dirty as pigs. Other
labourers' dwellings stood within hail, and the children seemed to
spring up in the place thicker than wheat; Mrs. Mitchel's was quite a
small family, reckoning by comparison, but how the six were clothed
and fed was a mystery, out of Mitchel's wages of ten shillings a week.
It was thought good pay. Old Jacobson was liberal, as farmers go. He
paid the best wages; gave all his labourers a stunning big portion of
home-fed pork at Christmas, with fuel to cook it: and his wife was
good to the women when they fell sick.
Mrs. Todhetley stopped to speak. "Is it you, Hannah Mitchel? Are you
pretty well?"
Hannah Mitchel stood upright and dropped a curtsey. She had a bundle in
her arms, which proved to be the baby, then not much above a fortnight
old.
"Dear me! it's very early for it to be about," said Mrs. Todhetley,
touching its little red cheeks. "And for you too."
"It is, ma'am; but what's to be done?" was the answer. "When there's
only one pair of hands for everything, one can't afford to lie by long."
"You seem but poorly," said Mrs. Todhetley, looking at her. She was
a thin, dark-haired woman, with a sensible face. Before she married
Mitchel, she had lived as under-nurse in a gentleman's family, where she
picked up some idea of good manners.
"I be feeling a bit stronger, thank you," said the woman. "Strength
don't come back to one in a day, ma'am."
The Mitchel children were sidling up, attracted by the sight of the
lady. Four young grubs in tattered garments.
"I can't keep 'em decent," said the mother, with a sigh of apology.
"I've not got no soap nor no clothes to do it with. They come on so
fast, and make such a many, one after another, that it's getting a hard
pull to live anyhow."
Looking at the children; remembering that, with the father and mother,
there were eight mouths to feed, and that the man's wages were the ten
shillings a week all the year round (but there were seasons when he did
over-work and earned more), Mrs. Todhetley might well give her assenting
answer with an emphatic nod.
"We was hoping to get on a bit better," resumed the wife; "but Mitchel
he says the master don't seem to like to listen. A'most a three weeks it
be now since Mitchel first asked it him."
"In what way better?"
"By putting little Dick to the plough, ma'am. He gets a shilling a week
now, he'd got two then, perhaps three, and 'twould be such a help to us.
Some o' the farmers gives fourpence halfpenny a day to a ploughboy, some
as much as sixpence. The master he bain't one of the near ones; but Dick
be little of his age, he don't grow fast, and Mitchel telled the master
he'd take fourpence a day and be thankful for't."
Thoughts were crowding into Mrs. Todhetley's mind--as she mentioned
afterwards. A child of ten ought to be learning and playing; not working
from twelve to fourteen hours a day.
"It would be a hard life for him."
"True, ma'am, at first; but he'd get used to it. I could have wished the
summer was coming on instead o the winter--'twould be easier for him to
begin upon. Winter mornings be so dark and cold."
"Why not let him wait until the next winter's over?"
The very suggestion brought tears into Hannah Mitchel's eyes. "You'd
never say it, ma'am, if you knew how bad his wages is wanted and the
help they'd be. The older children grows, the more they wants to eat;
and we've got six of 'em now. What would you, ma'am?--they don't bring
food into the world with 'em; they must help to earn it for themselves
as quick as anybody can be got to hire 'em. Sometimes I wonder why God
should send such large families to us poor people."
Mrs. Todhetley was turning to go on her way, when the woman in a timid
voice said: "Might she make bold to ask, if she or Squire Todhetley
would say a good word to Mr. Jacobson about the boy: that it would be
just a merciful kindness."
"We should not like to interfere," replied Mrs. Todhetley. "In any case
I could not do it with a good heart: I think it would be so hard upon
the poor little boy."
"Starving's harder, ma'am."
The tears came running down her cheeks with the answer; and they won
over Mrs. Todhetley.
Crossing the high, crooked, awkward stile--over which, in coming the
other way, if people were not careful they generally pitched head
first into Duck Lane--we found ourselves in what was called the square
paddock, a huge piece of land, ploughed last year. The wheat had been
carried from it only this afternoon, and the gleaners in their cotton
bonnets were coming in. On, from thence, across other fields and stiles;
we went a little out of our way to call at Glebe Cottage--a small white
house that lay back amidst the fields--and inquire after old Mrs. Parry,
who had just had a stroke.
Who should be at Elm Farm, when we got in, but the surgeon, Duffham:
come on there from paying his daily visit to Mrs. Parry. He and old
Jacobson were in the green-house, looking at the grapes: a famous crop
they had that year; not ripe yet. Mrs. Jacobson sat at the open window
of the long parlour, making a new jelly-bag. She was a pleasant-faced
old lady, with small flat silver curls and a net cap.
Of course they got talking about little Dick Mitchel. Duffham knew the
boy; seeing that when a doctor was wanted at the Mitchels', it was he
who attended. Mrs. Todhetley told exactly what had passed: and old
Jacobson--a tall, portly man, with a healthy colour--grew nearly purple
in the face, disputing.
Dick Mitchel would be of as good as no use for the team, he said, and
the carters put shamefully upon those young ones. In another year the
boy would be stronger and bigger. Perhaps he would take him then.
"For my part, I cannot think how the mothers can like their poor boys to
go out so young," cried the old lady, looking up from her flannel bag.
"A ploughboy's life is very hard in winter."
"Hannah Mitchel says it has to be one of two things--early work or
starving," said Mrs. Todhetley. "And that's pretty true."
"Labourers' boys are born to it, ma'am, and so it comes easy to 'em: as
skinning does to eels," cried Duffham quaintly.
"Poor things, yes. But it is very hard upon the children. The worst is,
all the labourers seem to have no end of them. Hannah Mitchel has just
said she sometimes wonders why God should send so many to poor people."
This was an unfortunate remark. To hear the two gentlemen laugh, you'd
have thought they were at a Christmas pantomime. Old Jacobson brought
himself up in a kind of passion.
What business, in the name of all that was imprudent, had these poor
people to have their troops of children, he asked. They knew quite well
they could not feed them; that the young ones would be three-parts
starved in their earlier years, and in their later ones come to the
parish and be a burden on the community. Look at this same man, Mitchel.
His grandfather, a poor miserable labourer, had a troop of children;
Mitchel's father had a troop, twelve; _he_, Mitchel, had six, and
seemed to be going on fair for six more. There was no reason in it. Why
couldn't they be content with a moderate number, three or four, that
might have a chance of finding room in the world? It was not much less
than a crime for these men, next door to paupers themselves, to launch
their tens and their dozens of boys and girls into life, and then turn
round and say, Why does God send them? Nice kind of logic, that was!
And so he kept on, for a good half-hour, Duffham helping him. _He_
brought up the French peasantry: saying our folks ought to take a lesson
from them. You don't see whole flocks of children over there, cried
Duffham. One, or two, or at most three, would be found to comprise the
number of a family. And why? Because the French were a prudent race.
They knew there was no provision for superfluous children; no house-room
at home, or food, or clothing; and no parish pay to fall back upon: they
knew that however many children they had they must provide for them:
they didn't set up, of themselves, a regiment of little famishing
mouths, and then charge it on Heaven; they were not so reckless and
wicked. Yes, he must repeat it, wicked; and the two ladies listening
would endorse the word if they knew half the deprivation and the
sufferings these poor small mortals were born to; he saw enough of it,
having to be often amongst them.
"Why don't you tell the parents this, doctor?"
Tell them! returned Duffham. He _had_ told them; told them till his
tongue was tired of talking.
Any way, the little things were grievously to be pitied, was what the
two ladies answered.
"I have often wished it was not a sin to drown the superfluous little
mites as we do kittens," wound up Duff.
One of the ladies dropped the jelly-bag, the other shrieked out, Oh!
"For their sakes," he added. "It's true, upon my word of honour. Of
all wrongs the world sees, never was there a worse wrong than the one
inflicted on these inoffensive children by the parents, in bringing them
into it. God help the little wretches! man can't do much."
And so they talked on. The upshot was, that old Jacobson stood to his
word, and declined to make Dick Mitchel a ploughboy yet awhile.
We had tea at four o'clock--at which fashionable people may laugh;
considering that it was real tea, not the sham one lately come into
custom. Mrs. Todhetley wanted to get home by daylight, and the summer
evenings were shortening. Never was brown bread-and-butter so sweet as
the Jacobsons': we used to say it every time we went; and the home-baked
rusks were better than Shrewsbury cake. They made Mrs. Todhetley put two
or three in her bag for Hugh and Lena.
Old Duff went with us across the first field, turning off there to
take the short-cut to his home. It was a warm, still, lovely evening,
the moon rising. The gleaners were busy in the square paddock: Mrs.
Todhetley spoke to some as we passed. At the other end, near the crooked
stile, two urchins stood fighting, the bigger one trying to take a small
armful of wheat from the other. I went to the rescue, and the marauder
made off as fast as his small bare feet would carry him.
"He haven't gleaned, hisself, and wants to take mine," said the little
one, casting up his big grey eyes to us appealingly through the tears.
He was a delicate-looking pale-faced boy of nine, or so, with light
hair.
"Very naughty of him," said Mrs. Todhetley. "What's your name?"
"It's Dick, lady."
"Dick--what?"
"Dick Mitchel."
"Dear me--I thought I had seen the face before," said Mrs. Todhetley to
me. "But there are so many boys about here, Johnny; and they all look
pretty much alike. How old are you, Dick?"
"I'm over ten," answered Dick, with an emphasis on the over. Children
catch up ideas, and no doubt he was as eager as the parents could be to
impress on the world his fitness to be a ploughboy.
"How is it that you have been gleaning, Dick?"
"Mother couldn't, 'cause o' the babby. They give me leave to come on
since four o'clock: and I've got all this."
Dick looked at the stile and then at his bundle of wheat, so I took it
while he got over. As we went on down the lane, Mrs. Todhetley inquired
whether he wanted to be a ploughboy. Oh yes! he answered, his face
lighting up, as if the situation offered some glorious prospect. It 'ud
be two shilling a week; happen more; and mother said as he and Totty and
Sam and the t'others 'ud get treacle to their bread on Sundays then.
Apparently Mrs. Mitchel knew how to diplomatize.
"I'll give him one of the rusks, I think, Johnny," whispered Mrs.
Todhetley.
But while she was taking it from the bag, he ran in with his wheat. She
called to him to come back, and gave him one. His mother had taken the
wheat from him, and looked out at the door with it in her hands. Seeing
her, Mrs. Todhetley went up, and said Mr. Jacobson would not at present
do anything. The next minute Mitchel appeared pulling at his straw hair.
"It is hard lines," he said, humbly, "when the lad's of a' age to be
earning, and the master can't be got to take him on. And me to ha'
worked on the same farm, man and boy; and father afore me."
"Mr. Jacobson thinks the boy would not be strong enough for the work."
"Not strong enough, and him rising eleven!" exclaimed Mitchel, as if
the words were some dreadful aspersion on Dick. "How can he be strong
if he gets no work to make him strong, ma'am? Strength comes with the
working--and nobody don't oughtn't to know that better nor the master.
Anyhow, if he _don't_ take him, it'll be cruel hard lines for us."
Dick was outside, dividing the rusk with a small girl and boy, all three
seated in the lane, and looking as happy over the rusk as if they had
been children in a fairy tale. "It's Totty," said he, pausing in the
work of division to speak, "and that 'un's Sam." Mrs. Todhetley could
not resist the temptation of finding two more rusks, which made one
apiece.
"He is a good-natured little fellow, Johnny," she remarked, as we went
along. "Intelligent, too: in that he takes after his mother."
"Would it be wrong to let him go on the farm as ploughboy?"
"Johnny, I don't know. I'd rather not give an opinion," she added,
looking right before her into the moon, as if seeking for one there. "Of
course he is not old enough or big enough, practically speaking; but on
the other hand, where there are so many mouths to feed, it seems hard
not to let him earn money if he can earn it. The root of the evil lies
in there being so many mouths--as was said at Mr. Jacobson's this
afternoon."
* * * * *
It was winter before I heard anything more of the matter. Tod and I got
home for Christmas. One day in January, when the skies were lowering,
and the air was cold and raw, but not frosty, I was crossing a field on
old Jacobson's land then being ploughed. The three brown horses at the
work were as fine as you'd wish to see.
"You'll catch it smart on that there skull o' yourn, if ye doan't keep
their yeads straight, ye young divil."
The salutation was from the man at the tail of the plough to the boy at
the head of the first horse. Looking round, I saw little Mitchel. The
horses stopped, and I went up to him. Hall, the ploughman, took the
opportunity to beat his arms. I dare say they were cold enough.
"So your ambition is attained, is it, Dick? Are you satisfied?"
Dick seemed not to understand. He was taller, but the face looked
pinched, and there was never a smile on it.
"Do you like being a ploughboy?"
"It's hard and cold. Hard always; frightful cold of a morning."
"How's Totty?"
The face lighted up just a little. Totty weren't any better, but she
didn't die; Jimmy did. Which was Jimmy?--Oh, Jimmy was after Nanny, next
to the babby.
"What did Jimmy die of?"
Whooping cough. They'd all been bad but him--Dick. Mother said he'd had
it when he was no older nor the babby.
Whether the whooping-cough had caused an undue absorption of Mitchel's
means, certain it was, Dick looked famished. His cheeks were thin, his
hands blue.
"Have you been ill, Dick?"
No, he had not been ill. 'Twas Jimmy and the t'others.
"He's the incapablest little villain I ever had put me to do with,"
struck in the ploughman. "More lazy nor a fattened pig."
"Are you lazy, Dick?"
I think an eager disclaimer was coming out, but the boy remembered in
time who was present--his master, the ploughman.
"Not lazy wilful," he said, bursting into tears. "I does my best: mother
tells me to."
"Take that, you young sniveller," said Hall, dealing him a good sound
slap on the left cheek. "And now go on: ye know ye've got this lot to go
through to-day."
He took hold of the plough, and Dick stretched up his poor trembling
hands to the first horse to guide him. I am sure the boy _was_ trying to
do his best; but he looked weak and famished and ill.
"Why did you strike him, Hall? He did nothing to deserve it."
"He don't deserve nothing else," was Hall's answer. "Let him alone, and
the furrows 'ud be as crooked as a dog's leg. You dun' know what these
young 'uns be for work, sir.--Keep 'em in the line, you fool!"
Looking back as I went down the field, I watched the plough going
slowly up it, Dick seeming to have his hands full with the well-fed
horses.
"Yes, I heard the lad was taken on, Johnny," Mrs. Todhetley said when I
told her that evening. "Mitchel prevailed with his master at last. Mr.
Jacobson is good-hearted, and knew the Mitchels were in sore need of the
extra money the boy would earn. Sickness makes a difference to the poor
as well as to the rich."
I saw Dick Mitchel three or four times during that January. The
Jacobsons had two nephews staying with them from Oxfordshire, and it
caused us to go over often. The boy seemed a weak little mite for the
place; but of course, having undertaken the work, he had to do it. He
was no worse off than others. To be at the farm before six o'clock, he
had to leave home at half-past five, taking his breakfast with him,
which was chiefly dry bread. As to the boy's work, it varied--as those
acquainted with the executive of a busy farm can tell you. Besides the
ploughing, he had to pump, and carry water and straw, and help with the
horses, and go errands to the blacksmith's and elsewhere, and so on.
Carters and ploughmen do not spare their boys; and on a large farm like
this they are the immediate rulers, not the master himself. Had Dick
been under Mr. Jacobson's personal eye, perhaps it might have been
lightened a little, for he was a humane man. There were three things
that made it seem particularly hard for Dick Mitchel, and those three
were under no one's control; his natural weakliness, his living so far
from the farm, and its being winter weather. In summer the work is
nothing like as hard for the boys; and it was a great pity that Dick had
not first entered on his duties in that season to get inured to them
before the winter. Mr. Jacobson gave him the best wages--three shillings
a week. Looking at the addition it must have seemed to Mitchel's ten, it
was little wonder he had not ceased to petition old Jacobson.
The Jacobsons were kind to the boy--as I can affirm. One cold day when I
was over there with the nephews, shooting birds, we went into the best
kitchen at twelve o'clock for some pea-soup. They were going to carry
the basins into the parlour, but we said we'd rather eat it there by the
big blazing fire. Mrs. Jacobson came in. I can see her now, with a soft
white woollen kerchief thrown over her shoulders to keep out the cold,
and her net cap above her silver curls. We were getting our second
basinfuls.
"Do have some, aunt," said Fred. "It's the best you ever tasted."
"No, thank you, Fred. I don't care to spoil my dinner."
"It won't spoil ours."
She laughed a little, and stood looking from the window into the
fold-yard, saying presently that she feared the frost was going to set
in now in earnest, which would not be pleasant for their journey.--For
this was the last day of the nephews' stay, and she was going home with
them for a week. There had been no very severe cold all the winter;
which was a shame because of the skating; if the ponds had a thin
coating of ice on them one day, it would all melt the next.
"Bless me! there's that poor child sitting out in the cold! What is he
eating?--his dinner?"
Her words made us look from the window. Dick Mitchel had put himself
down by the distant pig-sty, and seemed to be eating something that he
held in his hands. He was very white--as might be seen even from where
we stood.
"Mary," said she to one of the servants, "go and call that boy in."
Little Mitchel came in; pinched and blue. His clothes were thin, not
half warm enough for the weather; an old red woollen comforter was
twisted round his neck. He took off his battered drab hat, and put his
bread into it.
"Is that your dinner?" asked Mrs. Jacobson.
"Yes'm," said Dick, pulling the forelock of his light hair.
"But why did you not go home to-day?"
"Mother said there was nothing but bread for dinner to-day, and she give
it me to bring away with my breakfast."
"Well, why did you sit out in the cold? You might have gone indoors
somewhere to eat it."
"I were tired, 'm," was all Dick answered.
To look at him, one would say the "tired" state was chronic. He was
shivering slightly with the cold; his teeth chattered. Mrs. Jacobson
took his hand, and put him to sit on a low wooden stool close to the
fire, and gave him a basin of pea-soup.
"Let him have more if he can eat it," she said to Mary when she went
away. So the boy for once was well warmed and fed.
Now, it may be thought that Mrs. Jacobson, being a kind old lady, might
have told him to come in for some soup every cold day. And perhaps her
will was good to do it. But it would never have answered. There were
boys on the farm besides Dick, and no favour could be shown to one more
than to another. No, nor to the boys more than to the men. Nor to the
men on this farm more than to the men on that. Old Jacobson would
have had his brother farmers pulling his ears. Those of you who are
acquainted with the subject will know all this.
And there's another thing I had better say. In telling of Dick Mitchel,
it will naturally sound like an exceptional or isolated case, because
those who read have their attention directed to this one and not to
others. But, in actual fact, Dick's was only one of a great many; the
Jacobsons had employed ploughboys and other boys always; lots of them;
some strong and some weak, just as the boys might happen to be. For a
young boy to be out with the plough in the cold winter weather, seems
nothing to a farmer and a farmer's men: it lies in the common course of
events. He has to get through as he best can; he must work to eat; and
as a compensating balance there comes the warmth and the easy work of
summer. Dick Mitchel was only one of the race; the carter and ploughman,
his masters, had begun life exactly as he had, had gone through the same
ordeal, the hardships of a long winter's day and the frost and snow.
Dick Mitchel was as capable of his duties as many another had been.
Dick's father had been little and weakly in his boyhood, but he got over
that and grew as strong as the rest of them. Dick might have got over
it, too, but for some extraordinary weather that set in.