general struggle to live in the valley, the sheer wear and tear of
temper and spirits involved in the daily grappling with that problem.
Everywhere one comes across symptoms of it--partial evidences--but the
most complete exposition that I have had was given, some years ago now,
by a woman who had no intention of complaining. She came to me with a
message from a neighbour who was ill, but, in explanation of her part in
helping him, she began to speak of her own affairs. With some of these
affairs I was already acquainted. Thus I knew her to be the mother of an
exceptionally large family, so that her case could not be quite typical.
But I also knew that her husband had been in constant work for many
years, so that, in her case, there had been no period when the income
at her disposal ceased altogether, as in the case of so many other women
otherwise less handicapped than she. I was aware, too, that she herself
helped out the family earnings by taking in washing.
To these items of vague knowledge she added a few particulars. As to
income, I learnt that her husband--a labourer on a farm some three miles
away--earned fifteen shillings a week during the winter, and rather more
in the summer months, when he was allowed to do "piece-work." The
piece-work had the further advantage of permitting him to begin so early
in the day--four o'clock was his time in summer--that he usually got
home again by four in the afternoon, and was able to do better than most
men with his garden. Amongst other things, he raised flowers for sale.
He was wont to send to a well-known nursery in Norfolk for his
seeds--china-asters and stocks were his speciality--and he reared his
plants under a little glass "light" which he had made for himself out of
a few old window-sashes. His pains with these flowers were unsparing.
Neighbours laughed at him (so his wife assured me, with some pride)
because he went to the plants down on his hands and knees, smoking each
one with tobacco to clear it from green aphis. He also raised fifty or
sixty sticks of celery every year, which sold for threepence apiece.
Meanwhile he by no means neglected his main business as a
cottage-gardener--namely, the growing of food-crops for home use. By
renting for five shillings a year an extra plot of ground near his
cottage, he was able to keep his large family supplied with potatoes for
quite half the year. It was much to do. They wanted nearly a bushel of
potatoes a week, the wife said; and if that was so, the man was adding,
in the shape of potatoes at half a crown a bushel, the value of more
than three pounds a year to his income. No doubt he grew other
vegetables too--parsnips, carrots, turnips, and some green-stuff--but
these were not mentioned. A little further help was at last coming from
the family, the eldest daughter having begun to pay half the rent out of
her earnings as a servant-girl.
Help certainly must have been welcome. There were two other girls in
service, and therefore off their parents' hands; but six children--the
youngest only a few months old--were still at home, dependent on what
their father and mother could earn. Of these, the eldest was a boy near
thirteen. "I shall be glad when he's schoolin's over," the mother said;
and she had applied for a "labour certificate" which would allow him to
finish school as a "half-timer," and to go out and earn a little money.
Since their marriage, twenty-three years earlier, the couple had
occupied always the came cottage, at a rental of three shillings a week.
After the first twenty years--the property then changing owners--the
first few repairs in all that long period had been undertaken. That is
to say, the outside woodwork was painted; a promise was given to do up
the interior; the company's water was laid on; and--the rent was raised
to three-and-sixpence. The woman thought this a hardship; but she said
that her husband, looking at the bright side of things, rejoiced to
think that now the water from the old tank, hitherto so precious for
household uses, might be spared for his flowers.
After the rent was paid--with the daughter's help--there were about
fourteen shillings left. But the man was an "Oddfellow," and his
subscription was nine shillings a quarter, or eightpence halfpenny a
week. In prudence, that amount should perhaps have been put by every
week, but apparently prudence often had to give way to pressing needs.
"When the club money's due, that's when we finds it wust," the woman
remarked. "Sometimes I've said to 'n, 'I dunno how we be goin' to git
through the week.' 'Oh,' he says, 'don't you worry. We shall get to the
end of 'n somehow.'"
But she did not explain, nor is it easy to conceive, how it was done.
For observe, the weekly bushel of potatoes did not feed the family, even
for half the year. "A gallon of potatoes a day, that's what it is," she
had said; and then she had enumerated other items. "A gallon of bread a
day," was needed too, besides a gallon of flour once a week "for
puddings." In other words, bread and flour cost upwards of six shillings
weekly. Seeing that this left but eight shillings for eight people, it
is small wonder that the club-money was rarely put by, and great wonder
how the family managed at all when the club-money was wanted in a lump.
It must have been that they went short that week. For instance, they
would do without puddings, and so save on flour and firing; and the man
would forego his tobacco--he had never any time to visit the
public-house, so that there was nothing to be saved in that direction.
Yet assuming all this, and assuming that the eldest daughter advanced a
few extra shillings, still the situation remains baffling. On what could
they save, out of eight shillings? Probably one or other of the
children, or may be the mother herself, would make an old pair of boots
serve just one more week, until there was money in hand again; and that
would go far to tide the family over. Yet the next week would then have
to be a pinched one; for, said the woman, "boots is the wust of all. It
wants a new pair for one or t'other of us purty near every week."
So far this woman's testimony. It is corroborated by what other
cottagers have told me. A man said, looking fondly at his children: "I
has to buy a new pair o' shoes for one or other of us every week. Or if
I misses one week, then next week I wants two pair." Others, again, have
told of spending five to six shillings a week on bread. But of the less
essential items one never hears. Even of clothes there is rarely any
talk, and of coal not often; nor yet often of meat, or groceries. I do
not suggest that meat and groceries are foresworn, but it would appear
that they come second in the household expenses. They are luxuries, only
to be obtained if and when more necessary things have been provided.
With regard to firing--a little coal is made to go a long way in the
labourer's cottage; and with regard to clothes--it is doubtful if
anything new is bought, in many families, from year's end to year's end.
At "rummage sales," for a few pence, the women are now able to pick up
surprising bargains in cast-off garments, which they adapt as best they
can for their own or their children's wear. Economies like this,
however, still hardly suffice to explain how the scanty resources are
really spread out. Apart from a few cases of palpable destitution, it is
not obvious that any families in the village suffer actual want; and
seeing that inquiries in the school in recent winters have failed to
discover more than two or three sets of children manifestly wanting
food, one is led to conclude that acute poverty is of rare occurrence
here. On the other hand, all the calculations suggest that a majority
perhaps of the labouring folk endure a less intense but chronic poverty,
in which, at some point or other every day, the provision for bare
physical needs falls a little short.
VII
GOOD TEMPER
In view of their unpromising circumstances the people as a rule are
surprisingly cheerful. It is true there are never any signs in the
valley of that almost festive temper, that glad relish of life, which,
if we may believe the poets, used to characterize the English village of
old times. Tested by that standard of happiness, it is a low-spirited,
mirthless, and all but silent population that we have here now. Of
public and exuberant enjoyment there is nothing whatever. And yet,
subdued though they may be, the cottagers usually manage to keep in
tolerable spirits. A woman made me smile the other day. I had seen her
husband a week earlier, and found him rheumatic and despondent; but when
I inquired how he did, she conceded, with a laugh: "Yes, he had a bit o'
rheumatism, but he's better now. He 'ad the 'ump then, too." I inferred
that she regarded his dejection as quite an unnecessary thing; and this
certainly is the customary attitude. The people are slow to admit that
they are unhappy. At a "Penny Readings" an entertainer caused some
displeasure by a quite innocent joke in this connection. Coming through
the village, he noticed the sign of one of the public-houses--The Happy
Home--and invented a conundrum which he put from the platform: "Why was
this a very miserable village?" But the answer, "Because it has only one
Happy Home in it," gave considerable offence. For we are not used to
these subtleties of language, and the point was missed, a good many folk
protesting that we have "a _lot_ o' happy homes" here.
That they should be so touchy about it is perhaps suggestive--pitifully
suggestive--of a suspicion in them that their happiness is open to
question. None the less, the general impression conveyed by the people's
manners is that of a quiet and rather cheery humour, far indeed from
gaiety, but farther still from wretchedness. And in matters like this
one's senses are not deceived. I know that my neighbours have abundant
excuses for being down-hearted; and, as described in an earlier chapter,
I sometimes overhear their complainings; but more often than not the
evidence of voice-tones and stray words is reassuring rather than
dispiriting.
Notice, for instance, the women who have done their shopping in the town
early in the morning, and are coming home for a day's work. They are out
of breath, and bothered with their armfuls of purchases; but nine times
out of ten their faces look hopeful; there is no sound of grievance or
of worry in their talk; their smiling "Good-morning" to you proves
somehow that it is not a bad morning with them. One day a woman going
to the town a little late met another already returning, loaded up with
goods. "'Ullo, Mrs. Fry," she laughed, "you be 'bliged to be fust,
then?" "Yes; but I en't bought it _all_, I thought you'd be comm', so I
left some for you." "That's right of ye. En't it a _nice mornin'_?"
"Jest what we wants! My old man was up an' in he's garden...." The words
grow indistinguishable as you get farther away; you don't hear what the
"old man" was doing so early, but the country voices sound for a long
time, comfortably tuned to the pleasantness of the day.
This sort of thing is so common that I seldom notice it, unless it is
varied in some way that attracts attention. For instance, I could not
help listening to a woman who was pushing her baby in a perambulator
down the hill. The baby sat facing her, as bland as a little image of
Buddha, and as unresponsive, but she was chaffing it. "Well, you _be_ a
funny little gal, _ben't_ ye? Why, you be goin' back'ards into the town!
Whoever heared tell o' such a thing--goin' to the town _back_'ards. You
_be_ a funny little gal!" To me it was a funny little procession, with a
touch of the pathetic hidden away in it somewhere; but it bore
convincing witness to happiness in at least one home in our valley.
It is not so easy to discover, or rather to point out, the corresponding
evidence in the demeanour of the men, although when one knows them one
is aware that their attitude towards life is quite as courageous as the
women's, if not quite so playful. I confess that I rarely see them until
they have put a day's work behind them; and they may be more lightsome
when they start in the morning, at five o'clock or soon after it. Be
that as it may, in the evenings I find them taciturn, nonchalant rather
than cheerful, not much disposed to be sprightly. Long-striding and
ungainly, they walk home; between six o'clock and seven you may be sure
of seeing some of them coming up the hill from the town, alone or by
twos and threes. They speak but little; they look tired and stern; very
often there is nothing but a twinkle in their eyes to prove to you that
they are not morose. But in fact they are still taking life seriously;
their thoughts, and hopes too, are bent on the further work they mean to
do when they shall have had their tea. For the more old-fashioned men
allow themselves but little rest, and in many a cottage garden of an
evening you may see the father of the family soberly at work, and liking
it too. If his wife is able to come and look on and chatter to him, or
if he can hear her laughing with a friend in the next garden, so much
the better; but he does not stop work. Impelled, as I shall show later,
by other reasons besides those of economy, many of the men make
prodigiously long days of it, at least during the summer months. I have
known them to leave home at five or even four in the morning, walk five
or six miles, do a day's work, walk back in the evening so as to reach
home at six or seven o'clock, and then, after a meal, go on again in
their gardens until eight or nine. They seem to be under some spiritual
need to keep going; their conscience enslaves them. So they grow thin
and gaunt in body, grave and very quiet in their spirits. But sullen
they very rarely are. With rheumatism and "the 'ump" combined a man will
sometimes grow exasperated and be heard to speak irritably, but usually
it is a very amiable "Good-evening" that greets you from across the
hedge where one of these men is silently digging or hoeing.
The nature of their work, shall I say, tends to bring them to quietness
of soul? I hesitate to say it, because, though work upon the ground with
spade or hoe has such a soothing influence upon the amateur, there is a
difference between doing it for pleasure during a spare hour and doing
it as a duty after a twelve hours' day, and without any prospect of
holiday as long as one lives. Nevertheless it is plain to be seen that,
albeit their long days too often reduce them to a state of apathy, these
quiet and patient men experience no less often a compensating delight in
the friendly feeling of the tool responding to their skill, and in the
fine freshness of the soil as they work it, and in the solace, so varied
and so unfailingly fresh, of the open air. Thus much at least I have
seen in their looks, and have heard in their speech. On a certain June
evening when it had set in wet, five large-limbed men, just off their
work on the railway, came striding past me up the hill. They had sacks
over their shoulders; their clothes and boots, from working in gravel
all day, were of the same yellowish-brown colour as the sacks; they were
getting decidedly wet; but they looked enviably easy-going and
unconcerned. As they went by me one after another, one sleepy-eyed man,
comfortably smoking his pipe, vouchsafed no word or glance. But the
others, with friendly sidelong glance at me, all spoke; and their placid
voices were full of rich contentment. "Good-night"; "Nice _rain_";
"G'd-evenin'"; and, last of all, "_This_'ll make the young taters grow!"
The man who said this looked all alert, as if the blood were dancing in
him with enjoyment of the rain; his eyes were beaming with pleasure. So
the five passed up the hill homewards, to have some supper, and then,
perhaps, watch and listen to the rain on their gardens until it was time
to go to bed.
I ought to mention, though I may hardly illustrate, one faculty which is
a great support to many of the men--I mean the masculine gift of
"humour." Not playful-witted like the women, nor yet apt, like the
women, to refresh their spirits in the indulgence of sentiment and
emotion, but rather stolid and inclined to dim brooding thought, they
are able to see the laughable side of their own misadventures and
discomforts; and thanks to this they keep a sense of proportion, as
though perceiving that if their labour accomplishes its end, it does not
really matter that they get tired, or dirty, or wet through in doing
it. This is a social gift, of small avail to the men working alone in
their gardens; but it serves them well during the day's work with their
mates, or when two or three of them together tackle some job of their
own, such as cleaning out a well, or putting up a fowl-house. Then, if
somebody gets splashed, or knocks his knuckles, and softly swears, his
wrath turns to a grin as the little dry chuckle or the sly remark from
the others reminds him that his feelings are understood. It is well
worth while to be present at these times. I laugh now to think of some
of them that I have enjoyed; but I will not risk almost certain failure
in trying to describe them, for their flavour depends on minute details
into which I have no space to enter.
But whatever alleviations there may be to their troubles, the people's
geniality is still noteworthy. In circumstances that contrast so
pitifully with those of the employing classes, it would seem natural if
they were full of bitterness and envy; yet that is by no means the case.
Being born to poverty and the labouring life, they accept the position
as if it were entirely natural. Of course it has its drawbacks; but they
suppose that it takes all sorts to make a world, and since they are of
the labouring sort they must make the best of it. With this simple
philosophy they have contrived hitherto to meet their troubles calmly,
not blaming other people for them, unless in individual cases, and
hardly dreaming of translating them into social injustice. They have no
sense of oppression to poison their lives. The truth which economists
begin to recognize, that where there are wealthy and idle classes there
must as an inevitable result be classes who are impoverished and
overworked, has not found its way into the villager's head.
So, supported by an instinctive fatalism, the people have taken their
plight for granted, without harbouring resentment against the more
fortunate. It may be added that most of them are convinced believers in
those fallacies which cluster around the phrase "making work." It were
strange if they were not. The labourer lives by being employed at work;
and, knowing his employer personally--this or that farmer or tradesman
or villa-resident--he sees the work he lives by actually being "made."
Only very rarely does it occur to him that when he goes to the shop he,
too, makes work. In bad times, perhaps, he gets an inkling of it; and
then, when wages are scarce, and the public-house landlord grumbles,
old-fashioned villagers will say, "Ah, they misses the poor man, ye
see!" But the idea is too abstract to be followed to its logical
conclusion. The people do not see the multitudes at work for them in
other counties, making their boots and ready-made clothes, getting their
coal, importing their cheap provisions; but they do see, and know by
name, the well-to-do of the neighbourhood, who have new houses built and
new gardens laid out; and they naturally enough infer that labour would
perish if there were no well-to-do people to be supplied.
Against the rich man, therefore, the labourers have no sort of
animosity. If he will spend money freely, the richer he is the better.
Throughout the south of England this is the common attitude. I remember,
not long ago, on a holiday, coming to a village which looked rarely
prosperous for its county, owing, I was told, to the fact that the
county lunatic asylum near by caused money to be spent there. In the
next village, which was in a deplorable state, and had no asylum, the
people were looking enviously towards this one, and wishing that at
least their absentee landlords would come and hunt the neighbourhood,
though it appeared that one of these gentlemen was a Bishop. But the
labouring folk were not exacting as to the sort of person--lunatics,
fox-hunters, Bishops--anybody would be welcome who would spend riches in
a way to "make work." And so here. This village looks up to those who
control wealth as if they were the sources of it; and if there is a
little dislike of some of them personally, there has so far appeared but
little bitterness of feeling against them as a class.
I do not say that there has never been any grumbling. One day, years
ago, an old friend of mine broke out, in his most contemptuous manner,
"What d'ye think Master Dash Blank bin up to now?" He named the owner of
a large estate near the town. "Bin an' promised all his men a blanket
an' a quarter of a ton o' coal at Christmas. A _blanket_, and a _quarter
of a ton o' coal_! Pity as somebody hadn't shoved a brick down his
throat, when he _had_ got 'n open, so's to _keep_ 'n open!" The
sentiment sounds envious, but in fact it was scornful. It was directed,
not against the great man's riches, but against the well-known meanness
he displayed anew in his contemptible gifts.
A faint trace of traditional class animosity sounds in one or two
customary phrases of the village, for instance in the saying that there
is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Yet this has become
such a by-word as to be usually stated with a smile; for is it not an
old acquaintance amongst opinions? The older people even have a humorous
development of it. According to their improved version, there are not
two only, but three kinds of law: one kind for the rich, one for the
poor, and one "the law that nobody can't make." What is this last? Why,
the law "to make a feller pay what en't got nothink." By such witticisms
the edge of bitterness is turned; the sting is taken out of that sense
of inequality which, as the labourer probably knows, would poison his
present comfort and lead him into dangerous courses if he let it rankle.
With one exception, the angriest recognition of class differences which
I have come across amongst the villagers was when I passed two women on
their way home from the town, where, I surmised, they, or some friend of
theirs, had just been fined at the County Court or the Petty Sessions.
"Ah!" one was saying, with spiteful emphasis, "_there'll_ come a great
day for they to have _their_ Judge, same as we _poor_ people." Yet even
there, if the emotion was newly-kindled, the sentiment was too
antiquated to mean much. For it is a very ancient idea--that of getting
even with one's enemies in the next world instead of in this. So long as
the poor can console themselves by leaving it to Providence to avenge
them at the Day of Judgment, it cannot be said that there is any
virulent class-feeling amongst them. The most that you can make of it is
that they occasionally feel spiteful. It happened, in this case, to be
against rich people that those two women felt their momentary grudge;
but it was hardly felt against the rich as a class; and if the same kind
of offence had come from some neighbour, they would have said much the
same kind of thing. In the family disputes which occur now and then over
the inheritance of a few pounds' worth of property, the losers put on a
very disinterested and superior look, and say piously of the gainers:
"Ah, they'll never prosper! They _can't_ prosper!"