HOW WE LIVED
The most common objection to country life is what is called its
dulness. When I used to suggest to my town acquaintances the
advantages of a holiday in purely rustic scenes, I was always met by
the remark: 'Oh, there would be nothing to do there!' No doubt if a
holiday is devoted to lounging, it is much more difficult to lounge at
a solitary farm than at some crowded seaside resort. But my holidays
in the country had never been of this description. I am
constitutionally unfitted for a lounger. I like to have my days
planned out, and to live them fully. A country holiday for me had
always meant incessant occupation of one kind or another, fishing,
climbing, boating, long cycling excursions, and an industrious
endeavour to explore all scenes of interest within a reasonable
compass. Now that I had come to live in the country, I felt more than
ever the need of incessant occupation, for I fully realised that the
worst enemy of human happiness is ennui.
During the first three months, while I was busy in getting settled,
there was no danger of ennui. I was constantly interested, and I was
constantly at work. I learned how to do carpentering and joiner's jobs
with a fair proficiency; I dug nearly an acre of land at the back of my
house with my own spade; made paths, and planted fruit trees; all the
turf for my lawn I laid myself, with a few hours' assistance from a
farm-hand; and there was no night when I did not go to bed with aching
muscles and often with bruised hands. If my bill for labour was
absurdly moderate, it was partly because I did so much myself.
For instance, I employed no one to hang papers or to whitewash ceilings
or paint woodwork. With the willing help of my wife and my boys this
was done with complete satisfaction. One result of these labours was
the pride and love for our little homestead which they created. In
modern civilised life we get too many things done for us, and this is
not merely an economical but an ethical mistake. It is difficult to
feel any real pride in a home which is the creation of other people.
In a true state of civilisation no man will pay another to do what he
can do himself. Not only does he preserve his independence by such a
rule, but he creates a hundred new objects of interest for himself.
The paper which I had hung with my own labour gave me a pleasure which
a much finer paper hung by paid labour could not have given me. The
lawn which I had laid with my own hands seemed more intimately mine
than if I had paid some one else to make it. The more I reflect upon
the matter the more am I convinced that one of the great curses of
civilisation is the division of labour which makes us dependent upon
other people to a degree which destroys individual efficiency. Thrown
back upon himself as a dweller in a wilderness, any man of ordinary
capacity soon develops efficiency for kinds of work which he would
never have attempted in a city, simply because a city tempts him at
every point to delegate his own proper toil to others. I can conceive
of few things that would do more to create a genuine pride of home than
to insist that no man should possess a house except by building it for
himself, after the old primitive principle of the earliest social
communities. To build thus is to mix sentiment with the mortar, and
the house thus created is a place to which affections and memories
cling; whereas the mere tenancy of a cube of rotten bricks, thrown
together by the jerry-builder--of which we know no more than the amount
of rent which is charged for it--is incapable of nourishing any
sentiment, and is, in any case, not a home but a lodging.
This idea is no doubt chimerical; for in a vast city, where the great
object is to escape starvation, no one has time to interest himself
deeply in the kind of house he occupies, and still less has he the
opportunity to build a house which is the expression of his own taste
and labour. But in the country the idea is not only practicable, it is
urgent. Independence is made necessary because there are fewer people
on whom we can become dependent. I soon found that if I wanted
potatoes and cabbages, I must grow them; if a pipe burst there was no
plumber to mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range
of occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance. The
immortal Captain Davis, of the _Sea Ranger_, remarks to the incompetent
landsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the _Farralone_,
'There ain't nothing _to_ sailoring when you come to look it in the
face,' and I am inclined to think that the observation is true of other
things besides navigation. There is nothing in ordinary gardening,
carpentering, or work about a house that any intelligent man cannot
learn in a month by giving his mind to it. Intelligence, industry, and
a deft hand will take any man of capacity through any of the ordinary
employments of life with moderate credit, or at least without disgrace.
When once the right handling of tools is learned, the rest is merely a
matter of intelligence. At all events, I had to learn how to be
proficient in the handling of many strange tools, because there was no
one within reach to handle them for me. The experience was salutary
for me in every way. It taught me to be ashamed of that kind of
inefficiency which in towns is reckoned the hall-mark of gentility. It
taught me the virtue of that independence which makes a man equal to
his own needs. It also saved me from ennui. I found myself living a
much busier life than I had ever lived. I had never worked so hard,
and yet there was not a single part of my work that did not add to my
delight. And I worked for direct results, for things I could see, and
things which I might justly claim as my own, since I had created them.
I shall perhaps fall under the suspicion of morbid sensitiveness when I
confess that I never took my weekly wage in London without a qualm and
a compunction, for I could never make myself believe that I had really
earned it. What had I done? I had simply performed a few arithmetical
processes which any schoolboy might have done as well. My labour, such
as it was, was absorbed instantly in the commercial operations of a
great firm. I could not trace it, and I had no means of estimating its
value. The money I took for it seemed therefore to come to me by a
sort of legerdemain. That some one thought it worth while to pay me
was ostensible proof that my work was really worth something; but so
little able was I to penetrate the processes that resulted in this
judgment, so vivid was the sense of some ingenious jugglery in the
whole business, that I did not know whether I had been cheated or was a
cheat, in living by a kind of labour that cost me so little. How
different was my feeling now! At the end of an hour's spade-work, I
saw something actually done, of which I was the indisputable author.
When I laid down the saw and plane and hammer, and stretched my aching
back, I saw something growing into shape, which I myself had created.
There was no jugglery about this; there was immediate intimate relation
between cause and effect. And thence I found a kind of joy in my work,
which was new and exquisite to me. I stood upon my own feet,
self-possessed, self-respecting, efficient for my own needs, and
conscious of a definite part in the great rhythm of infinite toil which
makes the universe. It is only when a man works for himself that this
kind of joy is felt. So enamoured was I of this new joy, that had it
been possible I would have possessed nothing that was not the direct
result of my own labour. I would have liked to have spun the wool for
my own clothes, and have tanned the leather for my own boots. I would
have liked to grow the corn for my own bread, and have killed my own
meat, as the savage or the primitive settler does. In this respect the
savage or the primitive settler approaches much nearer the true ideal
of human life than the civilised man, for the true ideal is that every
man shall be efficient for his own needs, with as little dependence as
possible on others.
Under natural conditions there is enough faculty in a man's ten fingers
to supply his own needs, and all the avocations needful to life may
meet under one hat. The familiar illustration of the number of men
required to make a pin is typical of that contemptible futility to
which what is called civilisation reduces men by mere dispersal of
labour. Such dispersal develops single faculties, but paralyses men.
It is like developing some single part of the human organism, such as a
finger-tip, to high sensitiveness, by drawing away the sensitiveness
from all the rest. To do this reduces life to barrenness; it makes it
meagre in energy and pleasure; it makes work a disease. But in such a
life as I now lived, it was not a finger-tip that worked but the whole
man. The cabbage I cut for dinner was fashioned from my own substance,
for my sweat had nourished it. The butter I ate was part of my own
energy, spent over the churn, come back to me in the freshness and
firmness of edible gold. My bread was baked in a flame kindled at my
own heart [Transcriber's note: hearth?], and it was the sweeter for it.
When I lay down at night I was quits with Nature. I had paid so much
energy into her bank, and had a right to the dividend of rest she gave
me.
Apart from all other things, the economy of this mode of life will be
at once perceived. My expenses sank steadily month by month. I made a
good many mistakes, of course, for there is more than meets the eye in
remunerative gardening, chicken farming, and bee-keeping, as there is
in most human occupations which appear delusively simple. It took me
some time to rectify these mistakes, but before a year had passed I
found myself raising all my own garden produce, well supplied with eggs
and poultry for my own table, and able to earn a little by the sale of
my superfluous stock. Some articles, such as coal, were excessively
dear; but then, as a set-off, I could have all the wood I required for
next to nothing, and we burned more wood than coal. Groceries I
purchased in wholesale quantities from a Manchester store, so that in
spite of carriage I paid less for them than I had paid in London, and
secured the best quality. My trout rod served my breakfast table, and
my gun brought me many a dinner. In short, I found that small as was
the sum of money which I had earned, yet it was more than enough for my
needs.
Winter is, of course, the trying time for a resident in the country.
About the beginning of December the weather broke, and there was a week
of driving rain. A fortnight of grey weather followed, and then came
three days of heavy snow. From the moment that the snow ceased winter
became delightful. No words of mine can describe the glory of these
winter days. It is only of late years that people have discovered that
Switzerland is infinitely more beautiful in winter than in summer; some
day they will discover the same truth about the Lake District. It
happened one day in midwinter that business took me as far as Keswick,
and I shall never forget the astonishment and delight of that visit.
Skiddaw was a pure snow mountain, a miniature Mont Blanc; Derwentwater
was blue as polished steel, covered with ice so clear that it was
everywhere transparent; the woods were plumed with snow, and over all
shone the sun of June, and the keen air tingled in the veins like wine.
Beside the road the drifts ran high, hollowed by the wind into a
hundred curves and cavities, and in each the reflected light made a
tapestry of delicate violet and rose. Those who imagine that snow is
only white--dead, cold white--have never seen the pure new-fallen snow,
when the stricture of the frost begins to bind it; such snow has every
colour of the rainbow in it, and where it is beaten fine it is like a
dust of diamonds. Under a hard grey sky snow appears dead white; but
under such a sun as this it glowed and sparkled with all the glories of
an ice cave. And then came the sunset, a sunset to be dreamed of.
Skiddaw was a pyramid of rosy flame; great saffron seas of light lay
over the Catbells, the immense shoulders of Borrowdale were purple, and
the lake was truly a sea of glass and fire. Nor was this a singular
and unmatched day. For a whole month the pageant of the snow lasted.
Close to my own door were glories scarcely inferior to those of
Borrowdale and Derwentwater. The glen was rich with all the fantastic
arabesque of the frost, the moor was like a frozen sea, and four miles
away lay Buttermere, ringing from morn to night with the sound of
skates. There is no greater error than to suppose winter a drear and
joyless season in the country. It has delights of its own unimagined
by the townsman, to whom winter means burst pipes and slushy streets,
and snow that is soiled even as it falls. But among mountains winter
has its own incomparable glories, and holds a pageant not inferior to
summer's.
But even in days of rain life had its pleasures. However bad the
weather might be there were few days when we could not be abroad for
some hours, and none when the mountains had not some peculiar beauty to
reveal. At the end of a day of rain there were often splendid
half-hours, just before sunset, when the mountains glowed with richest
colour; when through the rift of thinning clouds some vast peak named
like a torch, and the mist blew out like purple banners, and the
watercourses sparkled like ropes of brilliants hung on the scarred
rocks, and the air was fresh and fragrant with all the perfume of
health. Fog we seldom had, and when it came, it rarely lasted beyond
midday. And then there were the warm delights of winter evenings, when
the wood fire blazed upon the hearth, and the gale roared against the
windows.
I have already remarked that books read in the solitude of the country
always make a deeper impression on my mind than books read in the
uneasy leisure of towns. I found this doubly true when I came to live
in the country. I came to my books with a keener and healthier brain.
The great masters of literature resumed their sway over me; Scott,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, long-neglected, took powerful hold upon my
mind. It is not to dwellers in the town that great writers ever make
their full appeal. They are too occupied with the trivial dramas of
life among a crowd, too disturbed by the eddy and rush of the life
around them. But for the dweller in solitude these great writers erect
a theatre, which is the only theatre he knows. He is able to attend to
the drama presented to him, and to be absorbed by it. He discusses the
actors and their doings as though they were real personages. Effie
Deans and Varley, Ophelia and Don Quixote, were for us creatures whom
we knew. It was the same with later writers. Byron's poetry once more
appealed to me by its revolutionary note, Shelley was interpreted
afresh to me by these mountains which he would have loved. One
incident I recollect which may serve to illustrate this new hold which
imaginative literature took upon me. I opened one evening _Great
Expectations_, and began to read it aloud. The next morning, at five
o'clock, my two boys were contending for the book. For a month Pip sat
beside our hearth, and Joe Gargery winked at us, and 'that ass'
Pumblechook mouthed his solemn platitudes. We were continually
reminding each other never to forget 'them as brought us up by hand.'
Could any book have laid hold of us after this fashion if it had been
read in the hurried leisure of a city life? It was the very absence of
incident in our quiet lives that made these imaginary incidents
delightful. We lingered over the books we read, extracting from them
all their charm, all their wisdom, and there was more good talk, more
discriminating criticism heard in my cottage in a month than would be
heard in a London drawing-room in a year. And the explanation is
simple. We had no trivialities to talk about; none of those odds and
ends of gossip that do duty for conversation in cities; and thus such
talk as we had concerned itself with real thoughts, and the thoughts of
wise men and great writers.
One of the principal occupations of my first winter was the education
of my boys. After the approved modern fashion I had intrusted this
task to others, upon the foolish assumption that what I paid heavily
for must needs be of some value. I discovered my delusion the moment I
came to look into the matter for myself. I found that they knew
nothing perfectly: certain things they had learned by rote, and could
recite with some exactitude, but of the reasons and principles that
underlie all real knowledge they knew nothing. I believe this to be
characteristic of almost all modern education, especially since
competitive examinations have set the pace. The brain is gorged with
crude masses of undigested fact, which it has no power to assimilate.
Fragments of knowledge are lodged in the mind, but the mind is not
taught to co-ordinate its knowledge, or, in other words, to think and
reason. The yearly examination papers of public schools and
universities afford ample and often amusing illustrations of this
condition of things. I remember an Oxford tutor, who set papers for a
certain Theological College, telling me that one year he put this
question: 'Give some account of the life of Mary, the mother of our
Lord.' This was a question which obviously required some power of
synthesis, some exercise of thought and skill in narrative. One bright
youth, after a feeble sentence or two in which the name of Mary was at
least included, went on to say, 'At this point it may not be out of
place to give a list of the kings of Israel.' Here was something he
did know, and it was something not worth knowing. I found that my boys
had been educated on much the same principle. They could do a simple
problem of mathematics after a fashion; that is, they could recite it;
but it had never once been suggested to them as an exercise of reason.
It was the same with history; they could recite dates and facts, but
they had no perception of principles. It may be imagined that I had to
go to school again myself before I could attempt to instruct them. I
had to take down again my long disused Virgil and Cicero, and work
through many a forgotten passage. At first the task was distasteful
enough, but it soon became fascinating. My love of the classics
revived. I began to read Homer and Thucydides, Tacitus and Lucretius,
for my own pleasure. It was delightful to observe what interest my
boys took in Virgil, as soon as they discovered that Virgil was not a
mere task-book, but poetry of the noblest order. By avoiding all idea
of mere unintelligent task-work, I soon got them to take a real
interest in their work, until at last they came to anticipate the hour
of these common studies. I took care also to never make the burden of
study oppressive. Two hours of real study is as much as a young boy
can bear at a time. He should rise from his task, not with an
exhausted, but with a fresh and quickened, mind. On very fine days it
was understood that no books should be opened. Such days were spent in
fishing, in mountain-climbing, or in long cycling excursions, and the
store of health laid up by these days gave new vigour to the mind when
the work of education was resumed.
When the summer came on, life became a daily lyric of delight. By five
in the morning, sometimes by four, we were out fishing. In the narrow
part of the glen there was a place where the rocks met in a wild
miniature gorge, and through them the water poured into a large
circular rock-basin, about forty feet in diameter. This was our
bathing-pool, and the cool shock and thrill of those exquisitely pure
and flowing waters runs along my nerves still as I write. We often
spent more than an hour there in the early morning, swimming from side
to side of our natural bath, diving off a rock which rose almost in the
centre of the pool, passing to and fro under the cascade, or sitting
out in the sun, till sheer hunger drove us home to breakfast. Writers
who boast a sort of finical superiority will no doubt disdain these
barbarian delights, and wonder that memory should be persistent over
mere physical sensations. But I am not sure that these physical
sensations are not recollected with more acuteness than mental ones,
and there is no just reason why they should be despised. I have
forgotten a good many aesthetic pleasures which at the time gave me
keen delight--some phrase in oratory, some movement in concerted music,
and such like--but I never forget the sensation of wind blowing over my
bare flesh as I coasted down a long mountain road on a broiling day in
August, nor the poignant thrill of that rushing water in my morning
bathes. And mixed with it all is the aromatic scent of the pines
beside the stream, the freshness of the meadows, and the song of
falling water. Sometimes, when the river was in summer flood, there
was just that spice of danger in our bathing which gave it a memorable
piquancy. On such occasions we had to use skill and coolness to avoid
disaster; we were tossed about the boiling water like bubbles;
incredible masses of water flowed over us, warm and strong, in a few
seconds, and we came out of the roaring pool so beaten and thrashed by
the violence of the stream that every nerve quivered. Breakfast was a
great occasion after these adventures. Then came a stroll round our
small estate, and an hour or so over books. Matthew Arnold's _Thyrsis_
was a favourite poem with us all on these mornings. It breathed the
very spirit of the life we lived, but for its sadness--this we did not
feel. But we did appreciate its wonderfully exact and beautiful
interpretation of Nature, and we had but to look around us to see the
very picture Arnold painted when he wrote:
Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweetwilliam with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow:
Roses that down the alley shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening star.
Such was the life we lived. If we looked back at all to the life we
had left, it was with that sort of sick horror which a prisoner may
feel who has endured and survived a long term of imprisonment. It
seemed to us that we had never really lived before. The past was a
dream, and an evil dream. We had moved in a world of bad enchantment,
like phantoms, barely conscious of ourselves. We had now recovered
proprietorship in our own lives. Work, that had been a curse, was a
blessing. Life, that had gone on maimed feet, was now virile in every
part. This mere fulness of health was in itself ample compensation for
the loss of a hundred artificial pleasures which we had once thought
necessary to existence. We knew that we had found a delight in mere
living which must remain wholly incredible to the tortured hosts that
toil in cities; and we knew also that when at last we came to lie down
with kings and conquerors in the house of sleep, we should carry with
us fairer dreams than they ever knew amid all the tumult of their
triumph.