necessity the cottagers are under of doing everything for themselves
they often get into dire straits. Of some of the things that go on one
cannot hear with equanimity. The people are English; bone of our bone.
But we shut our eyes. I have heard of well-to-do folk in the parish who,
giving of their abundance to foreign missions, deny that there is
distress here at home. The most charitable explanation of that falsehood
is to suppose that across their secluded gardens and into their
luxurious rooms, or even to their back-doors, an average English
cottager is too proud to go. Yet it is hard to understand how all signs
of what is so constantly happening can be shut out. For myself, I have
never gone out of my way to look for what I see. I have never invited
confidences. The facts that come to my knowledge seem to be merely the
commonplaces of the village life. If examples of the people's troubles
were wanted, they could be provided almost endlessly, and in almost
endless diversity. But there is one feature that never varies. Year
after year it is still the same tale; all the extra toil, all the
discomfort, or horror, or difficulty, of dealing with sickness falls
immediately on the persons of the family where the sickness occurs; and
it sets its cruel mark upon them, so that the signs can be seen as one
goes about, in the faces of people one does not know. And the women
suffer most.
One winter evening a woman came to my door to see if she could borrow a
bed-rest. Her sister, she said, had been ill with pleurisy and
bronchitis for a week or more, and for the last two days had been
spitting a great deal of blood. The woman looked very poor; she might
have been judged needlessly shabby. A needle and thread would so soon
have remedied sundry defects in her jacket, which was gaping open at the
seams. But her face suggested that there were excuses for her.
I have never forgotten her face, as it showed that evening, although I
have since seen it looking happier. It was dull of colour--the face of
an overworked and over-burdened soul; and it had a sullen expression of
helplessness and resentment. The eyes were weary and pale--I fancied
that trouble had faded the colour out of them. But with all this I got
an impression of something dogged and unbeaten in the woman's temper.
She went away with the bed-rest, apologizing for coming to borrow it.
"'Tis so bad"--those were her words--"'tis so bad to see 'em layin'
there like that, sufferin' so much pain."
I had never seen her before--for it was years ago; and, knowing no
better then, I supposed her to be between forty and fifty years old. In
reality, she can hardly have been thirty. It was the stress of personal
service that had marred her so young. Did her jacket need mending? As I
have since learnt, at that period the youngest of her family was unborn,
and the oldest cannot have been more than eight or nine. Besides nursing
her sister, therefore, she had several children to wait upon, as well as
her husband--a man often ailing in health. For all I know she was even
then, as certainly she has been since, obliged to go out working for
money, so as to keep the family going; and, seeing that she was a
mother, it is probable that she herself had already known the extremity
of hardship.
Because, as scarcely needs saying, the principle of self-help is
strained to the uttermost at time of child-birth. Then, the other
members of the family have to shift for themselves as best they can,
with what little aid neighbours can find time to give; and where there
are young children in the cottage, it is much if they are sufficiently
fed and washed. But it is the situation of the mother herself that most
needs to be considered. Let me give an illustration of how she fares.
Several years ago there was a birth in a cottage very near to me. Only a
few hours before it happened the woman had walked into the town to do
her shopping for herself and carry home her purchases. As soon as the
birth was known, a younger sister, out at service, got a week's holiday,
so that she might be at hand to help, though there was no spare room in
the cottage where she could sleep. During that week, also, the parish
nurse came in daily, until more urgent cases occupied all her time.
After that the young mother was left to her own resources. According to
someone I know, who looked in from time to time, she lay in bed with her
new-born baby, utterly alone in the cottage, her husband being away at
work all day for twelve hours, while the elder children were at school.
She made no complaint, however, of being lonely; she thought the
solitude good for her. But she was worried by thinking of the fire in
the next room--the living-room, which had the only fireplace in the
house, there being none in her bedroom--lest it should set fire to the
cottage while she lay helpless. It seems that the hearth was so narrow
and the grate so high that coals were a little apt to fall out on to the
floor. Once, she said, there had almost been "a flare-up." It was when
she was still getting about, and she had gone no farther away than into
her garden to feed the fowls; but in that interval a coal fell beyond
the fender, and she, returning, found the place full of smoke and the
old hearthrug afire. The dread that this might happen again distressed
her now as she lay alone, unable to move.
I could furnish more pitiful tales than this, if need were--tales of
women in child-bed tormented with anxiety because their husbands are out
of work, and there is no money in the cottage, and no prospect of any;
or harassed by the distress of little children who miss the help which
the mother cannot give, and so on. But this case illustrates the normal
situation. Here there was no actual destitution, nor any fear of it, and
the other children were being cared for. The husband was earning a pound
a week at constant work, and the circumstances of the family were on the
whole quite prosperous. But one of the conditions of prosperity was that
the father of the family should be away all day, leaving the mother and
infant unattended.
From whatever sickness the woman suffers, there is always the same
piteous story to be told--she is destitute of help. The household drudge
herself, she has no drudges to wait upon her. The other day I was told
of a woman suffering from pleurisy. Her husband had left home at six
o'clock for his work; a neighbour-woman came in to put on a poultice and
make things comfortable; then she, too, had to go to her work. In the
afternoon a visitor, looking in by chance, found that the sick woman
had been alone for five hours; she was parched with thirst, and her
poultice had gone cold. For yet one more example. I mentioned just now a
man who was killed on the railway. His widow, quite a young woman then,
reared her three or four children, earning some eight or nine shillings
a week at charing or washing for people in the town; and still she keeps
herself, pluckily industrious. There is one son living with her--an
errand-boy--and there are two daughters both in service at a large new
house in the village. During last spring the woman had influenza, and
had to take to her bed, her girls being permitted to take turns in
coming home to care for her. Just as she, fortunately, began to recover,
this permission was withdrawn: both girls were wanted in "their place,"
because a young lady there had taken influenza. So they had to forsake
their mother. But by-and-by one of these girls took the infection. Her
"place," then, was thought to be--at home. She was sent back promptly to
her mother, and it was not long before the mother herself broke down
again, not being yet strong enough to do sick-nursing in addition to her
daily work.
It must be borne in mind that these acute and definite troubles spring
up from the surface of an ill-defined but chronic anxiety, from which
very few of the cottagers are free for any length of time. For though
there is not much extreme destitution, a large number of the villagers
live always on the brink of it; they have the fear of it always in
sight. In a later chapter I shall give some particulars as to their ways
and means; in this, I only wish it to be remembered that the question of
ways and means is a life-and-death one for the labourer and his wife,
and leaves them little peace and little hope of it. During the trade
depression which culminated in 1908-09 I was frequently made aware of
the disquiet of their minds by the scraps of talk which reached me as I
passed along the road, and were not meant for my hearing. From women who
were comparing notes with one another, this was the sort of thing one
would hear: "'En't had nothin' to do this six weeks; and don't sim no
likelihoods of it." "I s'pose we shall get through, somehow." "I'm sure
I dunno what 'tis a-comin' to." "'Tis bad 'nough now, in the summer;
what it'll be like in the winter, Gawd only knows." Again and again I
heard talk like this.
And all this was only an accentuation or a slight increase in volume of
a note of apprehension which in better times still runs less audibly as
a kind of undertone to the people's thought. I had stopped one day to
say good-morning to an old widow-woman outside her cottage. She was the
mother of that young man whose funeral was mentioned two chapters back;
but this was before his death, and while, in fact, he was still doing a
little occasional work. She spoke cheerfully, smiled even, until some
chance word of mine (I have forgotten what it was) went through the
armour of her fortitude, and she began to cry. Then she told me of the
position she was in, and the hopelessness of it, and her determination
to hold out. Some charitable lady had called upon her. "Mrs. Curtis,"
the lady had said, "if ever you are ill, I hope you'll be sure and send
to _me_." And Mrs. Curtis had replied: "Well, ma'am, if ever I sends,
you may be sure I _am_ ill." "But," she added, "they don't understand.
'Tis when you're on yer feet that help's wanted--not wait till 'tis too
late." With regard to her present circumstances--she "didn't mind saying
it to me--sometimes she didn't hardly know how they was goin' on," for
she hadn't a penny except what her son could earn. And "people seemed to
think it didn't matter for a single chap to be out o' work. They didn't
think he might have a mother to keep, or, if he was in lodgin's, he
couldn't live there for nothin'.... Sometimes we seems to be gettin' on
a little, and then you has bad luck, and there you are again where you
was before. It's like gettin' part way up a hill and fallin' down to the
bottom again, and you got it all to begin over again."
I said something--some platitude--turning to go away. Then she managed
to smile--a shining-eyed smile--saying: "Well, 'tis only for life. If
'twas for longer than that I don't know if we should hardly be able to
bear it."
This was but one old woman. Yet, if you have an ear for a folk-saying,
you will recognize one there in that "only for life" of hers. Be sure
that a by-word so compact as that was not one old woman's invention. To
acquire such brevity and smoothness, it must have been wandering about
the parish for years; and when it reached me at last it had been
polished by the despair of hundreds of other people, as a coin is
polished by passing through hundreds of hands.
V
DRINK
It will be understood, from what was said on the subject in the first
chapter, that the village population has its rough element, and that
drunkenness, or at any rate excessive drinking, is very common. It is
true that there are very few habitual drunkards in the parish--there are
not even many men, perhaps, who frequently take too much; but, on the
other hand, the majority are beer-drinkers, and every now and then one
or another of them, normally sober, oversteps the limit. Thus, possibly
every other family has had its passing experience of what drunkenness
means in the temporary lapse of father, or son, or brother. A rainy Bank
Holiday invariably leads to much mischief in this way, and so does a
sudden coming of hot weather in the summer. The men have too much to do
to spare time for the public-house in the ordinary weekdays, but on
Saturday and Sunday nights, when the strain is relaxed, they are apt to
give way too far.
The evils of drunkenness, however, are well enough known, and I do not
propose to dwell on that side of the matter. But there is another
aspect of it which must be considered, if only because it is so
thoroughly characteristic of the old village outlook. Incidentally, this
other aspect may be worth a little attention from temperance reformers.
For the truth is that the average villager's attitude towards drink and
temperance is not that of an unrepentant or rebellious sinner; rather,
it is the attitude of a man who has sound reasons for adhering to his
own point of view. If he grows restive under the admonitions of the
pharisaical, if he meets them defiantly, or if he merely laughs, as
often as not it is because he feels that his mentors do not understand
the situation so well as he does. How should they, who see it wholly
from the outside--they who never go near the public-house; they who have
no experience either of poverty or of hard work--how should they, who
speak from prejudice, be entitled to dictate to him, who has knowledge?
He resents the interference, considers it insulting, and goes his own
way, supported by a village opinion which is entirely on his side, and
certainly has its claims to respect. It is this village opinion which I
wish to examine now.
In the eyes of the older villagers or of the more old-fashioned ones
mere occasional drunkenness is a very venial fault. The people make a
distinction between the habitual drunkard and him who occasionally
drinks too much, and they are without compassion for the former. He is a
"low blackguard"; they look reproachfully if you talk of trying to help
him by giving him a job of work, or at any rate they pity your wasted
efforts. But for the occasional defaulter they have a friendly feeling,
unless, of course, he turns savage in his cups. As long as he is
cheerful he is rather a figure of fun to them than anything, or he is an
object of wondering interest. On a certain August Bank Holiday I saw one
of our villagers staggering up the hill--a middle-aged man, far gone in
drink, so that all the road was none too wide for him. Other wayfarers
accompanied and observed him with a philosophically detached air, and
between whiles a woman grabbed at his coat between the shoulders, trying
to steady him. But by and by, lurching free, he wobbled across the road
to within an inch of a perambulator with two children which another man
was pushing. The drunken man leant over it, poised like an impending
fate, and so hung for a few seconds before he staggered away, and it
might be supposed that at least the man with the perambulator would be
indignant. But not he. He merely remarked wonderingly: "You wouldn't ha'
thought it possible he could ha' done it, would ye?" The other wayfarers
laughed lightly, amongst them a young married woman with a refined face.
While the comic side of a man in drink makes its strong appeal to the
village folk, they are ready to see excuses for him, too. Anybody, they
argue, is liable to be overtaken before he knows, and where is the great
disgrace in an accident that may befall themselves, or me, or you?
There is at least no superiority in their outlook, no pharisaism.
Listen, for proof of it, to a talk of Bettesworth's about a neighbour
who had been working with the "ballast-train" on the railway all night.
"You," he began--and this first word showed how innocent he was of shame
in his own attitude, since he supposed that I must share his
amusement--"you'd ha' laughed if you'd ha' sin Isaac yest'day. He was
got fair boozed; an' comin' up the gully, thinkin' he was goin' straight
for 'ome, he run his head right into they bushes down by ol' Dame
Smith's. Then he got up the slope about a dozen yards, an' begun to go
back'ards 'till he come to Dame Smith's wall, and that turn'd 'n, and he
begun to go back'ards again down the gully. I did laugh. He bin at work
all night on the ballast-train, an' come back reg'lar fagged out, an'
hadn't had no vittles--an' a feller _wants_ something--and then the fust
glass he has do's for 'n. He bin workin' every night for a week, an'
Sundays, too. And Alice" ("Alice" is Isaac's wife) "is away hop-tyin'
all day, so, of course, Isaac didn't care 'bout goin' 'ome to lop about
there by hisself.... I've seed a many go like that. They works all
night, an' gets reg'lar fagged out, an' then the fust drop does 'em.
When Alice come 'ome, she looked at least to find the kettle boilin'.
'Stead o' that, she couldn't git in. At least, she had to fetch the key
from where she put 'n when she went away in the mornin'. I laughed at
her when I went down 'ome. 'Where is he now?' I says. 'Ah, you may
laugh,' she says, 'but I got to rouse 'n up about ten o'clock an' git 'n
a cup o' tea. He got to be at work again at eleven.' That's how they
do's. Begins about ten or eleven o'clock, and don't leave off again
afore six or seven, or p'raps nine or ten, next mornin'. Makes days an'
quarters for three an' ninepence. I've knowed a many like that come 'ome
an' git boozed fust glass, like old Isaac. I did laugh, though, and so
did Dame Smith when she was a-tellin' of me."
Inheriting from their forefathers such an unimaginative point of view,
most of the cottage folk have been, until quite lately, far from
regarding the public-house as a public nuisance. It had a distinct value
in their scheme of living. That fact was demonstrated plainly in an
outburst of popular feeling some years ago. The licensing magistrates of
the neighbourhood had taken the extreme, and at that time unprecedented,
course of refusing to renew the licenses of several houses in the town.
But while the example they had thus set was winning them applause all up
and down England, they were the objects, in this and the adjacent
villages, of all sorts of vituperation on account of what the cottagers
considered a wanton insult to their class. It must be admitted that the
action of the justices had some appearance of being directed against
the poor. Nobody could deny, for instance, that the houses frequented by
middle-class clients, and responsible for a good deal of middle-class
drinking, were all passed over, and that those singled out for
extinction served only the humblest and least influential. My neighbours
entertained no doubts upon the matter. They were not personally
concerned--at any rate, the public-houses in this village were left open
for them to go to--but the appearance of favouritism offended them. They
were as sure as if it had been officially proclaimed that the intention
was to impose respectability upon them against their will; their
pleasures were to be curtailed to please fanatics who understood nothing
and cared less about the circumstances of cottage folk. So, during some
weeks the angry talk went round the village; it was not difficult to
know what the people were thinking. They picked to pieces the character
of the individual magistrates, planning ineffective revenge. "That old
So-and-So" (Chairman of the Urban Council)--"they'd bin to his shop all
their lives, but he'd find he'd took his last shillin' from 'em now! And
that What's-his-Name--the workin' classes had voted for 'n at last
County Council election, and this was how he served 'em! He needn't
trouble to put up again, when his turn was up!" Then they commiserated
the suffering publicans. "Look at poor old Mrs. ----, what kept the house
down Which Street--always a most well-conducted house. Nobody couldn't
find no fault with it, and 'twas her livin'! Why should she have her
livin' took away like that, poor old gal?... They sims to think nobody
en't right 'xcep' jest theirselves--as if we poor people could live an'
go on same as they do. They can 'ave their drink at 'ome, and their
music, but where be we to go to if they shuts up the 'ouses?" Such were
the remarks I heard over and over again. It seemed to the poor that
there were to be no more cakes and ale, because Malvolio was virtuous,
or because their own manners were not refined enough.
In the light of subsequent political events I am prepared to believe
that some of this popular indignation was engineered from the
public-houses. But I do not think it required much engineering. It
sounded spontaneous at the time, and considering how the villagers are
placed, their resentment was not unnatural. As I have said, the
public-house has its value in their scheme of living. They have no means
of enjoying themselves at home, no room in their cottages for
entertaining friends, and they may well ask what they are to do if the
public-houses are closed to them.
One thing, at least, is sure. If the ordinary village inn were nothing
but the foul drink-shop which its enemies allege, if all that it
provided was an irresistible temptation to depravity, the majority of
the people who resort to it now would very soon leave it alone. And the
same is true of the little lowly places in the town. In the third
chapter I mentioned how the village women, with their men-folk and
their children, too--until the recent Act of Parliament shut the
children out--would make a Saturday-night call at some public-house
before going home from the weekly shopping expedition. But these are the
reverse of bad women. They are honest and self-respecting mothers of
families; women obviously innocent of anything approaching intemperance.
I have seen them chatting outside a public-house door, and then
smilingly pushing it open and going in, as happily unconscious of evil
as if they were going to a mothers' meeting. They see no harm in it.
They are away from home, they have far to go, and they want refreshment.
But it is perfectly certain that most of them would rather drop than
enter such places--for they are not afraid of fatigue--if there were
risk of anything really wrong within. The labouring-class woman, as
already explained, takes no hurt from a frank style of talk. She is not
squeamish, but she has a very strong sense of her own honour; and if you
remember how keen is the village appetite for scandal, you will perceive
that there can be no fear of scandal attaching to her because of a visit
to a public-house, or she would not go there. It should be noted, as
evidence of a strict public opinion regulating the custom, that these
same women seldom enter the public-houses in the village, and never any
others save on this one occasion. They require the justification of
their weekly outing, when supper is delayed, and the burden of living
can be forgotten amongst friends for an hour. At other times they would
consider the indulgence disgraceful; and though they enjoy it just at
these times, I do not remember that I have ever seen one of them showing
the least sign of having carried her enjoyment too far.