must be wanting in "delicacy" to countenance such things. There are
other aspects of the matter which are better worth considering.
Approaching it, for instance, from an opposite point of view, one
perceives that the average country labourer can talk with less restraint
because he has really less to conceal than many men who look down upon
him. He may use coarse words, but his thoughts are wont to be cleanly,
so that there is no suspicion of foulness behind his conversation, rank
though it sound. A woman consequently may hear what he says, and not be
offended by suggestion of something left unsaid. On these terms the
jolly tale is a jolly tale, and ends at that. It does not linger to
corrupt the mind with an unsavoury after-flavour.
But more than this is indicated by the want of conventional manners in
the village. The main fact is that the two sexes, each engaged daily
upon essential duties, stand on a surprising equality the one to the
other. And where the men are so well aware of the women's experienced
outlook, and the women so well aware of the men's, the affectation of
ignorance might almost be construed as a form of immodesty, or at any
rate as an imprudence. It would, indeed, be too absurd to pretend that
these wives and mothers, who have to face every trial of life and death
for themselves, do not know the things which obviously they cannot help
knowing; too absurd to treat them as though they were all innocence, and
timidity, and daintiness. No labouring man would esteem a woman for
delicacy of that kind, and the women certainly would not like to be
esteemed for it. Hence the sexes habitually meet on almost level terms.
And the absence of convention extends to a neglect--nay, to a
dislike--of ordinary graceful courtesies between them. So far as I have
seen they observe no ceremonial. The men are considerate to spare women
the more exhausting or arduous kinds of work; but they will let a woman
open the door for herself, and will be careless when they are together
who stands or who sits, or which of them walks on the inside of the
path, or goes first into a gateway. And the women look for nothing
different. They expect to be treated as equals. If a cottage woman found
that a cottage man was raising his hat to her, she would be aflame with
indignation, and would let him know very plainly indeed that she was not
that sort of fine lady.
In general, the relations between the sexes are too matter-of-fact to
permit of any refinement of feeling about them, and it is not surprising
that illegitimacy has been very common in the village. But once a man
and a woman are married, they settle down into a sober pair of comrades,
and instead of the looseness which might be looked for there is on the
whole a remarkable fidelity between the married couples. I have no
distinct memory of having heard during twenty years of any certain case
of intrigue or conjugal misbehaviour amongst the cottage folk. The
people seem to leave that sort of thing to the employing classes. It
scandalizes them to hear of it. They despise it. Oddly enough, this may
be partly due to the want of a feminine ideal, such as is developed by
help of our middle-class arts and recognized in our conventions. True,
the business of making both ends meet provides the labourer and his wife
with enough to think about, especially when the children begin to come.
Then, too, they have no luxuries to pamper their flesh, no lazy hours in
which to grow wanton. The severity of the man's daily labour keeps him
quiet; the woman, drudge that she is, soon loses the surface charm that
would excite admirers. But when all this is said, it remains probable
that a lowliness in their ideal preserves the villagers from temptation.
They do not put woman on a pedestal to be worshipped; they are
unacquainted with the finer, more sensitive, more high-strung
possibilities of her nature. People who have been affected by long
traditions of chivalry, or by the rich influences of art, are in another
case; but here amongst the labouring folk a woman is not seen through
the medium of any cherished theories; she is merely an individual
woman, a man's comrade and helper, and the mother of his family. It is a
fine thing, though, about the unions effected on these unromantic terms,
that they usually last long, the man and wife growing more affectionate,
more tender, more trustful, as they advance in years.
Of course, the marriages are not invariably comfortable or even
tolerable. One hears sometimes of men callously disappearing--deserting
their wives for a period, and going off, as if for peace, to distant
parts wherever there is work to be picked up. One man, I remember, was
reported to have said, when he ultimately reappeared, that he had gone
away because "he thought it would do his wife good." Another, who had
openly quarrelled with his wife and departed, was discovered months
afterwards working in a Sussex harvest-field. He came back by-and-by,
and now for years the couple have been living together, not without
occasional brawls, it's true, but in the main good comrades, certainly
helpful to one another, and very fond of their two or three children. A
bad case was that of a bullying railway navvy, who, having knocked his
wife about and upset his old father, went off ostensibly to work. In
reality he made his way by train to a town some ten miles distant, and
from there, in a drunken frolic, sent a telegram home to his wife
announcing that he was dead. He had given no particulars: a long search
for him followed, and he was found some days later in a public-house of
that town vaingloriously drinking. I remember that Bettesworth, who told
me this tale, was full of indignation. "Shouldn't you think he could be
punished for that?" he asked. "There, if I had my way he should have
twelve months reg'lar _hard labour_, and see if that wouldn't dummer a
little sense into 'n." There was no suggestion, however, of "a woman in
the case," to explain this man's ill-treatment of his wife; it appears
to have been simply a piece of freakish brutality.
When disagreements occur, it is likely that the men are oftener to blame
than their wives. Too often I have seen some woman or other of the
village getting her drunken and abusive husband home, and never once
have I seen it the other way about. Nevertheless, in some luckless
households the faults are on the woman's side, and it is the man who has
the heartache. I knew one man--a most steady and industrious fellow, in
constant work which kept him from home all day--whose wife became a sort
of parasite on him in the interest of her own thriftless relatives. In
his absence her brothers and sisters were at his table eating at his
expense; food and coals bought with his earnings found their way to her
mother's cottage; in short, he had "married the family," as they say. He
knew it, too. In its trumpery way the affair was an open scandal, and
the neighbours dearly wished to see him put a stop to it. Yet, though he
would have had public opinion to support him in taking strong measures,
his own good nature deterred him from doing so. Probably, too, his own
course was the happier one. Thrive he never could, and gloomy enough and
dispirited enough he used to look at times; yet to see him with his
children on Sundays--two or three squalid, laughing urchins--was to see
a very acceptable sight.
Returning to the main point, if anyone has a taste for ugly behaviour,
and thinks nothing "real" but what is uncomfortable too, he may find
plenty of subjects for study in the married life of this parish; but he
will be ridiculously mistaken if he supposes the ugliness to be normal.
A kind of dogged comradeship--I can find no better word for it--is what
commonly unites the labouring man and his wife; they are partners and
equals running their impecunious affairs by mutual help. I was lately
able to observe a man and woman after a removal settling down into their
new quarters. It was the most ordinary, matter-of-fact affair in the
world. The man, uncouth and strong, like a big dog or an amiable big
boy, moved about willingly under his wife's direction, doing the various
jobs that required strength. One evening, in rain, his wife stood
watching while he chopped away the wet summer grass that had grown tall
under the garden hedge; then she pointed out four or five spots against
the hedge, where he proceeded to put in wooden posts. Early the next
morning there was a clothes-line between the posts, and the household
washing was hanging from it. Nothing could have been more commonplace
than the whole incident, but the commonness was the beauty of it. And it
was done somehow in a way that warmed one to a feeling of great liking
for those two people.
Very often it seems to be the woman who supplies the brains, and does
the scheming, for the partnership. When old Bettesworth was on his last
legs, as many as half a dozen different men applied to me for his job,
of whom one, I very well remember, apologized for troubling me, but said
his "missus" told him to come. Poor chap! it was his idea of courtesy to
offer an apology, and it was the Old Adam in him that laid the blame on
his wife, for really he desired very much to escape from his arduous
night-work on the railway. At the same time there is not the least doubt
that what he said was true; that he and his wife had talked the matter
over, and that, when he proved timid of interviewing me, she forced him
to come. Again, two or three winters ago, a man despairing of work in
England got in touch with some agency to assist him in emigrating to
Canada. It was his wife then who went round the parish trying to raise
the few extra pounds that he was to contribute. That was a case to fill
comfortable people with uncomfortable shame. The woman, not more than
five-and-twenty, would have been strikingly handsome if she had ever in
her life had a fair chance; but as it was she looked half-starved, and
she had a cough which made it doubtful if she would ever live to follow
her husband to Canada. Still, she was playing her part as the man's
comrade. As soon as he could save enough money he was to send for her
and her baby, she said; in the meantime she would have to earn her own
living by going out to day-work.
During the South African War there was many a woman in the village
keeping things together at home while the men were at the front. They
had to work and earn money just as they do when their men are beaten
down at home. There was one woman who received from her husband a copy
of verses composed by him and his companions during their occupation of
a block-house on the veldt. Very proud of him, she took the verses to a
printer, had them printed--just one single copy--and then had the
printed copy framed to hang on the bedroom wall in her cottage. Her
husband showed it to me there one day, mightily pleased with it and her.
Probably the people behind the counters at the provision shops in the
town could tell many interesting things about the relations between
married people of this class, for it is quite the common thing in the
villages for a man and wife to lock up their cottage on a Saturday
evening, and go off with the children to do the week's shopping
together. On a nice night the town becomes thronged with them, and so do
the shops, outside which, now and then, a passer-by may notice little
consultations going on, and husband or wife--sometimes one, sometimes
the other--handing over precious money to the other to be spent. And if
it is rather painful to see the faces grow so strained and anxious over
such trifling sums, on the other hand the signs of mutual confidence and
support are comforting. Besides, anxiety is not the commonest note. The
majority of the people make a little weekly festivity of this Saturday
night's outing; they meet their friends in the street, have a chat, wind
up with a visit to the public-house, and so homewards at any time
between seven and ten o'clock, trooping up the hill happily enough as a
rule. Now and then one comes across solitary couples making one another
miserable. Thus one night I heard a woman's voice in the dark, very
tired and faint, say, "It's a long hill!" to which the surly tones of a
man replied: "'Ten't no longer than 'twas, is it?" Brutishness like
this, however, is quite the exception.
As a sample of what is normal, take the following scraps of talk
overheard one summer night some years ago. The people were late that
night, and indeed, it was pleasant to be out. Not as yet were there any
of those street lamps along the road which now make all nights alike
dingy; but one felt as if walking into the unspoiled country. For though
it was after ten, and the sky overcast, still one could see very clearly
the glimmering road and the hedgerows in the soft midsummer twilight.
Enjoying this tranquillity, I passed by a man and woman with two
children, and heard the man say invitingly: "Shall I carry the basket?"
The wife answered: "'E en't 'eavy, Bill, thanks.... Only I got this 'ere
little Rosy to git along."
Her voice sounded gentle and cheerful, and I tried to hear more,
checking my pace. But the children were walking too slowly. I was
getting out of earshot, missing the drift of the peaceful-sounding
chatter, when presently the woman, as if turning to the other child,
said more loudly: "Come along, Sonny!" The man added: "Hullo, old man!
Come along! You'll be left behind!"
The children began prattling; their father and mother laughed; but I was
leaving them farther and farther behind. Then, however, some other
homeward-goer overtook the little family. For the talk grew suddenly
louder, the woman beginning cheerily: "Hullo, Mr. Weatherall! 'Ow's your
poor wife?... I didn't see as 'twas you, 'till this here little Rosy
said...."
What Rosy had said I failed to catch. I missed also what followed,
leading up to the woman's endearing remark: "This 'ere little Rosy,
she's a reg'lar gal for cherries!" The neighbour seemed to say
something; then the husband; then the neighbour again. And at that there
came a burst of laughter, loudest from the woman, and Mr. Weatherall
asked: "Didn't you never hear that afore?"
The woman, laughing still, was emphatic: "No; I'll take my oath as I
never knowed that."
"Well, you knows it now, don't ye?"
"I ain't sure yet. I ain't had time to consider."
After that the subject changed. I heard the woman say: "I've had six
gals an' only one boy--one out o' seven. Alice is out courtin'"; and
then they seemed to get on to the question of ways and means. The last
words that reached me were "Fivepence ... tuppence-ha'penny;" but still,
when I could no longer catch any details at all, the voices continued to
sound pleasantly good-tempered.
IV
MANIFOLD TROUBLES
Besides the unrelieved hardness of daily life--the need, which never
lifts from them, of making shift and doing all things for
themselves--there has always been another influence at work upon my
neighbours, leaving its indelible mark on them. Almost from infancy
onwards, in a most personal and intimate way, they are familiar with
harrowing experiences of calamity such as people who employ them are
largely able to escape. The little children are not exempt. There being
no nursemaids to take care of the children while fathers and mothers are
busy, the tiniest are often entrusted to the perilous charge of others
not quite so tiny, and occasionally they come to grief. Then too often
the older children, who are themselves more secure for a few years, are
eyewitnesses of occurrences such as more fortunate boys and girls are
hardly allowed even to hear of. Nor is it only with the gory or horrible
disaster that the people thus become too early acquainted. The
nauseating details of sickness are better known and more openly
discussed in the cottage than in comfortable middle-class homes. For it
is all such a crowded business--that of living in these cramped
dwellings. Besides, the injured and the sick, absorbed in the interest
of their ailments, are amiably willing to give others an opportunity of
sharing it. The disorder or the disablement is thus almost a family
possession. An elderly man, who had offered to show me a terrible ulcer
on his leg, smiled at my squeamishness, as if he pitied me, when I
declined the privilege. "Why, the little un," he said, pointing to a
four-year-old girl on the floor, "the little un rolls the bandage for me
every evening, because I dresses'n here before the fire." That is the
way in the labourer's cottage. Even where privacy is attempted for the
sufferer's sake there is no refuge for the family from the evidence of
suffering. The young people in one room may hardly avoid knowing and
hearing where a man is dying, or a woman giving birth to a child, just
the other side of a latched deal door.
In this connection it should be remembered how much more than their
share of the afflictions of the community falls to the labouring people.
The men's work naturally takes them where accidents happen, where
disease is contracted. And then, from ignorance or the want of
conveniences, from the need to continue wage-earning as long as
endurance will hold out, and also from the sheer carelessness which is a
part of their necessary habit, both the men and the women not seldom
allow themselves to fall into sickness which a little self-indulgence,
if only they dared yield to it, would enable them to avoid. I should
not know how to begin counting the numbers I have personally known
enfeebled for life in this way. Things are better now than they were
twenty years ago; there are many more opportunities than there used to
be of obtaining rest or nursing, but still the evil is widespread.
Without going out of my way at all, during the last fortnight I have
heard of--have almost stumbled across--three cases of the sort. The
first was that of a woman who had been taking in washing during her
husband's long illness. Meeting the man, who was beginning to creep
about again, I happened to ask how his wife was; and he said that she
was just able to keep going, but hardly knew how to stand because of
varicose veins in both legs. The second case, too, was a woman's. She
met me on the road, and on the off chance asked if I could give her a
letter of admission to the County Hospital, and so save her the pain of
going down to the Vicarage to beg for a letter there. What was the
matter? "I give birth to twins five months ago," she said, "and since
then dropsy have set in. I gets heavier every day. The doctor wants me
to go to the hospital, and I was goin' to the Vicar to ask for a letter,
but I dreads comin' back up that hill." As it was she had already walked
half a mile. In the third case a man's indifference to his own suffering
was to blame for the plight in which he found himself. Driving a van, he
had barked his shin against the iron step on the front of the van. Just
as the skin had begun to heal over he knocked it again, severely, in
exactly the same way, and he described to me the immense size of the
aggravated wound. But, as he said, he had supposed it would get well,
and, beyond tying his leg up with a rag, he took no further trouble
about it, until it grew so bad that he was obliged to see a doctor. His
account of the interview went in this way: "'How long since you done
this?' the doctor says. 'A month,' I says. 'Then you must be a damn fool
not to 'ave come to me afore,' the doctor says." The man, indeed, looked
just as likely as not to be laid up for six months, if not permanently
crippled, as a result of his carelessness.
Yet, common as such cases are now, they were commoner when I first knew
the village--when there was no cottage hospital, no proper accommodation
at the workhouse infirmary, no parish nurse, and when the parish
contained few people of means to help those who were in distress. I
remember once looking round in that early period, and noting how there
was hardly a cottage to be seen which had not, to my own knowledge, been
recently visited by trouble of some sort or another. True, the troubles
were not all of them of a kind that could be avoided by any precaution,
for some of them arose from the death of old people. Yet in a little
cottage held on a weekly tenancy death often involves the survivors of
the family in more disturbance, more privation too, than it does
elsewhere. Putting these cases aside, however, I could still see where,
within two hundred yards of me, there had been four other deaths--one
being that of an infant, and one that of a woman in child-birth. In the
other two cases the victims were strong men--one, a railway worker, who
was killed on the line; the other a carter, who died of injuries
received in an accident with his horse. The list of lesser misfortunes
included the illness of a man who broke down while at work, with
haemorrhage of the stomach, and the bad case of a bricklayer's labourer,
who lay for days raving from the effects of a sunstroke. In
pre-Christian times it might have been argued that the gods were
offended with the people, so thickly did disasters fall upon them, but
my neighbours seemed unaware of anything abnormal in the circumstances.
By lifelong experience they had learned to take calamity almost as a
matter of course.
For, as I said, the experience begins early. The children, the young
girls, have their share of it. During those earlier years I am
recalling, a little girl of the village, who was just beginning domestic
service in my household, was, within the space of six months, personally
concerned in two accidents to little children. She came from one of
half-a-dozen families whose cottages, for a wonder in this village,
stood in a row; and amongst scraps of her talk which were repeated to me
I heard how her little brother--only five years old, but strong at
throwing stones--threw at a girl playmate and knocked out one of her
eyes. That happened in the springtime. In the autumn of the same year a
mishap, if possible more shocking at the moment, befell another child in
that row of cottages. A man there one evening was trimming a low hedge.
His tool was a fag-hook--well sharpened, for he was one of the ablest
men in the village. And near by where he worked his children were at
play, the youngest of them being between three and four years old.
As he reached over the hedge, to chop downwards at the farther side,
this little one suddenly came running dangerously near. "Take care,
ducky!" he cried. "Don't come so close, 'r else perhaps father'll cut
ye."
He gave three more strokes, and again the child ran in. The hook fell,
right across the neck. I had these particulars from a neighbour. "If 't
had bin another half inch round, the doctor said, 'twould have bin
instant death.... The man was covered with blood, and all the ground,
too. I was at work when I heared of it, but I couldn't go on after that,
it upset me so.... And all this mornin' I can't get it out o' my mind.
There's a shiver all up that row. They be all talkin' of it. The poor
little thing en't dead this mornin', and that's all's you can say. They
bin up all night. Ne'er a one of 'em didn't go to bed."
So far the neighbour. Later the little maidservant, who had gone home
that evening, told me: "We was passin' by at the time--me and my older
sister.... She run in and wrapped a towel round its neck."
"Where, then, was the mother?"
"She was with its father. He'd fainted. So we went in. We thought p'raps
we could run for the doctor. But she went herself, jest as she was,"
carrying the child down to the town.
As for the girl's sister, who had behaved with some aplomb, "It made her
feel rather bad afterwards. She felt sick. All the floor was covered
with blood." The little maidservant had a curious look, half horror,
half importance, as she said this. She herself was not more than fifteen
at the time.