talking to an old man whom I had long known: a little wrinkled old man,
deservedly esteemed for his integrity and industry, full of experience
as well as of old-world notions sometimes a little "grumpy," a little
caustic in his manner of talking, but on the whole quite kindly and
tolerant in his disposition. You could often watch in his face the
habitual practice of patience, as, with a wry smile and a contemptuous
remark, he dismissed some disagreeable topic or other from his thoughts.
He had come down in the world. His father's cottage, already mortgaged
when he inherited it, had been sold over his head after the death of the
mortgagee, so that thenceforth he was on no better footing than any
other of the labourers. Gradually, as the demand failed for his
old-fashioned forms of skill--thatching, mowing, and so on--his position
became more and more precarious; yet he remained good-tempered, in his
queer acid way, until he was past seventy years old. That evening, when
he startled me, he had been telling of his day's work as a road-mender,
and he was mightily philosophical over the prospect of having to give up
even that last form of regular employment, because of the exposure and
the miles of walking which it entailed. Nobody could have thought him a
vindictive or even a discontented man so far. By chance, however,
something was said about the uncultivated land in the neighbourhood,
covered as it is with fir-woods now; and at that he suddenly fired up.
Pointing to the woods, which could be seen beyond the valley, he said
spitefully, while his eyes blazed: "I can remember when all that was
open common, and you could go where you mind to. Now 'tis all fenced in,
and if you looks over the fence they'll lock ye up. And they en't got no
more _right_ to it, Mr. Bourne, than you and me have! I should _like_
to see they woods all go up in flames!"
That was years ago. The woods are flourishing; the old man is past doing
any mischief; but I remember his indignation. And it was the sole case I
have met with in the parish, of animosity harboured not so much against
persons as against the existing position of things. This one man was
alive to the injustice of a social arrangement; and in that respect he
differed from the rest of my neighbours, unless I am much deceived in
them. Of course there may be more of envious feeling abroad in the
village than I know about. It is the sort of thing that would keep
itself secret; and perhaps this old man's contemporaries, who shared his
recollections, silently shared his bitterness too. But if so, I do not
believe that they have passed the feeling on to their children. The
impression is strong in me that the people have never learnt to look
upon the distribution of property, which has left them so impoverished,
as anything other than an inevitable dispensation of Providence. If they
thought otherwise, at any rate if the contrary view were at all
prevalent amongst them, they must be most gifted hypocrites, to go about
with the good temper in their eyes and the cheerfulness in their voices
that I have been describing.
To what should it be attributed--this power of facing poverty with
contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching,
although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day.
Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a
tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations
there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty
religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation,
courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity of soul of the
more sedate villagers must be ascribed to this traditional influence,
whose effects are attractive enough, in the character and outlook of
many an old cottage man and woman.
Yet there is much more in the village temper than can be accounted for
by this cause alone. In most of the people the cheerfulness does not
suggest pious resignation, in the hope of the next world; it looks like
a grim and lusty determination to make the best of this world. It is
contemptuous, or laughing. As I have shown, it has a tendency to be
beery. It occasionally breaks out into disorder. In fact, if the folk
were not habitually overworked they would be boisterous, jolly. Of
course it may all proceed from the strong English nature in them; and in
that case we need seek no other explanation of it. Yet if one influence,
namely, a traditional Christianity, is to be credited--as it certainly
should be--with an effect upon the village character in one direction,
then probably, behind this other effect in another direction, some other
influence is at work. And for my part I make no doubt of it. The
cheerfulness of the cottagers rests largely upon a survival of the
outlook and habits of the peasant days before the common was enclosed.
It is not a negative quality. My neighbours are not merely patient and
loftily resigned to distress; they are still groping, dimly, for an
enjoyment of life which they have not yet realized to be unattainable.
They maintain the peasant spirits. Observe, I do not suggest that they
are intentionally old-fashioned. I do not believe them to be sympathetic
at all to those self-conscious revivals of peasant arts which are now
being recommended to the poor by a certain type of philanthropists. They
make no aesthetic choice. They do not deliberate which of the ancestral
customs it would be "nice" for them to follow; but, other things being
equal, they incline to go on in the way that has been usual in their
families. It is a tendency that sways them, not a thought-out scheme of
the way to live. Now and again, perhaps, some memory may strengthen the
tendency, as they are reminded of this or that fine old personality
worthy of imitation, or as some circumstance of childhood is recalled,
which it would be pleasant to restore; but in the main the force which
bears them on is a traditional outlook, fifty times more potent than
definite but transient memories. This it is that has to be recognized in
my neighbours. Down in their valley, until the "residents" began to
flock in, the old style of thinking lingered on; in the little cottages
the people, from earliest infancy, were accustomed to hear all
things--persons and manners, houses and gardens, and the day's
work--appraised by an ancient standard of the countryside; and
consequently it happens that this evening while I am writing, out there
on the slopes of the valley the men and women, and the very children
whose voices I can just hear, are living by an outlook in which the
values are different from those of easy-going people, and in which,
especially, hardships have never been met by peevishness, but have been
beaten by good-humour.
III
THE ALTERED CIRCUMSTANCES
VIII
THE PEASANT SYSTEM
The persistence into the twentieth century--the scarcely realized
persistence--not so much of any definite ideas, as of a general temper
more proper to the eighteenth century, accounts for all sorts of
anomalies in the village, and explains not only why other people do not
understand the position of its inhabitants to-day, but why they
themselves largely fail to understand it. They are not fully aware of
being behind the times, and probably in many respects they no longer are
so; only there is that queer mental attitude giving its bias to their
view of life. Although very feebly now, still the momentum derived from
a forgotten cult carries them on.
But, having noticed the persistence of the peasant traditions, we have
next to notice how inadequate they are to present needs. Our subject
swings round here. Inasmuch as the peasant outlook lingers on in the
valley, it explains many of those peculiarities I have described in
earlier chapters; but, inasmuch as it is a decayed and all but useless
outlook, we shall see in its decay the significance of those changes in
the village which have now to be traced out. The little that is left
from the old days has an antiquarian or a gossipy sort of interest; but
the lack of the great deal that has gone gives rise to some most serious
problems.
For, as I hinted at the outset, the "peasant" tradition in its vigour
amounted to nothing less than a form of civilization--the home-made
civilization of the rural English. To the exigent problems of life it
furnished solutions of its own--different solutions, certainly, from
those which modern civilization gives, but yet serviceable enough.
People could find in it not only a method of getting a living, but also
an encouragement and a help to live well. Besides employment there was
an intense interest for them in the country customs. There was scope for
modest ambition too. Best of all, those customs provided a rough
guidance as to conduct--an unwritten code to which, though we forget it,
England owes much. It seems singular to think of now; but the very
labourer might reasonably hope for some satisfaction in life, nor
trouble about "raising" himself into some other class, so long as he
could live on peasant lines. And it is in the virtual disappearance of
this civilization that the main change in the village consists. Other
changes are comparatively immaterial. The valley might have been invaded
by the leisured classes; its old appearance might have been altered; all
sorts of new-fangled things might have been introduced into it; and
still under the surface it would have retained the essential village
characteristics, had but the peasant tradition been preserved in its
integrity amongst the lowlier people; but with that dying, the village,
too, dies where it stands. And that is what has been happening here. A
faint influence from out of the past still has its feeble effect; but,
in this corner of England at least, what we used to think of as the
rural English are, as it were, vanishing away--vanishing as in a slow
transformation, not by death or emigration, not even by essential change
of personnel, but by becoming somehow different in their outlook and
habits. The old families continue in their old home; but they begin to
be a new people.
It was of the essence of the old system that those living under it
subsisted in the main upon what their own industry could produce out of
the soil and materials of their own countryside. A few things,
certainly, they might get from other neighbourhoods, such as iron for
making their tools, and salt for curing their bacon; and some small
interchange of commodities there was, accordingly, say between the
various districts that yielded cheese, and wool, and hops, and charcoal;
but as a general thing the parish where the peasant people lived was the
source of the materials they used, and their well-being depended on
their knowledge of its resources. Amongst themselves they would number a
few special craftsmen--a smith, a carpenter or wheelwright, a shoemaker,
a pair of sawyers, and so on; yet the trades of these specialists were
only ancillary to the general handiness of the people, who with their
own hands raised and harvested their crops, made their clothes, did much
of the building of their homes, attended to their cattle, thatched their
ricks, cut their firing, made their bread and wine or cider, pruned
their fruit-trees and vines, looked after their bees, all for
themselves. And some at least, and perhaps the most, of these economies
were open to the poorest labourer. Though he owned no land, yet as the
tenant, and probably the permanent tenant, of a cottage and garden he
had the chance to occupy himself in many a craft that tended to his own
comfort. A careful man and wife needed not to despair of becoming rich
in the possession of a cow or a pig or two, and of good clothes and
household utensils; and they might well expect to see their children
grow up strong and prosperous in the peasant way.
Thus the claim that I have made for the peasant tradition--namely, that
it permitted a man to hope for well-being without seeking to escape from
his own class into some other--is justified, partially at least. I admit
that the ambition was a modest one, but there were circumstances
attending it to make it a truly comforting one too. Look once more at
the conditions. The small owners of the parish might occupy more land
than the labourers, and have the command of horses and waggons, and
ploughs and barns, and so on; but they ate the same sort of food and
wore the same sort of clothes as the poorer folk, and they thought the
same thoughts too, and talked in the same dialect, so that the labourer
working for them was not oppressed by any sense of personal inferiority.
He might even excel in some directions, and be valued for his
excellence. Hence, if his ambition was small, the need for it was not
very great.
And then, this life of manifold industry was interesting to live. It is
impossible to doubt it. Not one of the pursuits I have mentioned failed
to make its pleasant demand on the labourer for skill and knowledge; so
that after his day's wage-earning he turned to his wine-making or the
management of his pigs with the zest that men put into their hobbies.
Amateurs the people were of their homely crafts--very clever amateurs,
too, some of them. I think it likely, also, that normally even
wage-earning labour went as it were to a peaceful tune. In the elaborate
tile-work of old cottage roofs, in the decorated ironwork of decrepit
farm-waggons, in the carefully fashioned field-gates--to name but a few
relics of the sort--many a village of Surrey and Hampshire and Sussex
has ample proofs that at least the artisans of old time went about their
work placidly, unhurriedly, taking time to make their products comely.
And probably the same peaceful conditions extended to the labouring
folk. Of course, their ploughing and harvesting have left no traces; but
there is much suggestiveness in some little things one may note, such
as the friendly behaviour of carter-men to their horses, and the
accomplished finish given to the thatch of ricks, and the endearing
names which people in out-of-the-way places still bestow upon their
cows. Quietly, but convincingly, such things tell their tale of
tranquillity, for they cannot have originated amongst a people
habitually unhappy and harassed. But whether the day's work went
comfortably or no, certainly the people's own home-work--to turn to that
again--must often have been agreeable, and sometimes delightful. The
cottage crafts were not all strictly useful; some had simple aesthetic
ends. If you doubt it, look merely at the clipped hedges of box and yew
in the older gardens; they are the result of long and loving care, but
they serve no particular end, save to please the eye. So, too, in
general, if you think that the folk of old were inappreciative of
beauty, you have but to listen to their names of flowers--sweet-william,
hearts-ease, marigold, meadow-sweet, night-shade--for proof that English
peasant-life had its graceful side.
Still, their useful work must, after all, have been the mainstay of the
villagers; and how thoroughly their spirits were immersed in it I
suppose few living people will ever be able to realize. For my part, I
dare not pretend to comprehend it; only at times I can vaguely feel what
the peasant's attitude must have been. All the things of the countryside
had an intimate bearing upon his own fate; he was not there to admire
them, but to live by them--or, say, to wrest his living from them by
familiar knowledge of their properties. From long experience--experience
older than his own, and traditional amongst his people--he knew the soil
of the fields and its variations almost foot by foot; he understood the
springs and streams; hedgerow and ditch explained themselves to him; the
coppices and woods, the water-meadows and the windy heaths, the local
chalk and clay and stone, all had a place in his regard--reminded him of
the crafts of his people, spoke to him of the economies of his own
cottage life; so that the turfs or the faggots or the timber he handled
when at home called his fancy, while he was handling them, to the
landscape they came from. Of the intimacy of this knowledge, in minute
details, it is impossible to give an idea. I am assured of its existence
because I have come across surviving examples of it, but I may not begin
to describe it. One may, however, imagine dimly what the cumulative
effect of it must have been on the peasant's outlook; how attached he
must have grown--I mean how closely linked--to his own countryside. He
did not merely "reside" in it; he was part of it, and it was part of
him. He fitted into it as one of its native denizens, like the hedgehogs
and the thrushes. All that happened to it mattered to him. He learnt to
look with reverence upon its main features, and would not willingly
interfere with their disposition. But I lose the best point in talking
of the individual peasant; these things should rather be said of the
tribe--the little group of folk--of which he was a member. As they, in
their successive generations, were the denizens of their little patch of
England--its human fauna--so it was with traditional feelings derived
from their continuance in the land that the individual peasant man or
woman looked at the fields and the woods.
Out of all these circumstances--the pride of skill in handicrafts, the
detailed understanding of the soil and its materials, the general effect
of the well-known landscape, and the faint sense of something venerable
in its associations--out of all this there proceeded an influence which
acted upon the village people as an unperceived guide to their conduct,
so that they observed the seasons proper for their varied pursuits
almost as if they were going through some ritual. Thus, for instance, in
this parish, when, on an auspicious evening of spring, a man and wife
went out far across the common to get rushes for the wife's hop-tying,
of course it was a consideration of thrift that sent them off; but an
idea of doing the right piece of country routine at the right time gave
value to the little expedition. The moment, the evening, became enriched
by suggestion of the seasons into which it fitted, and by memories of
years gone by. Similarly in managing the garden crops: to be too late,
to neglect the well-known signs which hinted at what should be done,
was more than bad economy; it was dereliction of peasant duty. And thus
the succession of recurring tasks, each one of which seemed to the
villager almost characteristic of his own people in their native home,
kept constantly alive a feeling that satisfied him and a usage that
helped him. The feeling was that he belonged to a set of people rather
apart from the rest of the world--a people necessarily different from
others in their manners, and perhaps poorer and ruder than most, but yet
fully entitled to respect and consideration. The usage was just the
whole series or body of customs to which his own people conformed; or,
more exactly, the accepted idea in the village of what ought to be done
in any contingency, and of the proper way to do it. In short, it was
that unwritten code I spoke of just now--a sort of _savoir vivre_--which
became part of the rural labourer's outlook, and instructed him through
his days and years. It was hardly reduced to thoughts in his
consciousness, but it always swayed him. And it was consistent
with--nay, it implied--many strong virtues: toughness to endure long
labour, handiness, frugality, habits of early rising. It was consistent
too--that must be admitted--with considerable hardness and "coarseness"
of feeling; a man might be avaricious, loose, dirty, quarrelsome, and
not offend much against the essential peasant code. Nor was its
influence very good upon his intellectual development, as I shall show
later on. Yet whatever its defects, it had those qualities which I have
tried to outline; and where it really flourished it ultimately led to
gracefulness of living and love of what is comely and kindly. You can
detect as much still, in the flavour of many a mellow folk-saying, not
to mention folk-song; you may divine it yet in all kinds of little
popular traits, if once you know what to look for.
In this particular valley, where the barren soil challenged the people
to a severer struggle for bare subsistence, the tradition could not put
forth its fairer, its gentler, features; nevertheless the backbone of
the village life was of the genuine peasant order. The cottagers had to
"rough it," to dispense with softness, to put up with ugliness; but by
their own skill and knowledge they forced the main part of their living
out of the soil and materials of their own neighbourhood. And in doing
this they won at least the rougher consolations which that mode of life
had to offer. Their local knowledge was intensely interesting to them;
they took pride in their skill and hardihood; they felt that they
belonged to a set of people not inferior to others, albeit perhaps
poorer and ruder; and all the customs which their situation required
them to follow sustained their belief in the ancestral notions of good
and evil. In other words, they had a civilization to support them--a
poor thing, perhaps, a poor kind of civilization, but their own, and
entirely within the reach of them all. I have no hesitation in affirming
all this; because, though I never saw the system in its completeness, I
came here soon enough to find a few old people still partially living by
it. These old people, fortunate in the possession of their own cottages
and a little land, were keepers of pigs and donkeys, and even a few
cows. They kept bees, too; they made wine; they often paid in kind for
any services that neighbours did for them; and with the food they could
grow, and the firing they could still obtain from the woods and heath,
their living was half provided for. The one of them I knew best was not
the most typical. Shrewd old man that he was, he had adapted himself so
far as suited him to a more commercial economy, and had grown suspicious
and avaricious; yet if he could have been translated suddenly back into
the eighteenth century, he would scarce have needed to change any of his
habits, or even his clothes. He wore an old-fashioned "smock frock,"
doubtless home-made; and in this he pottered about all day--pottered, at
least, in his old age, when I knew him--not very spruce as to personal
cleanliness, smelling of his cow-stall, saving money, wanting no
holiday, independent of books and newspapers, indifferent to anything
that happened farther off than the neighbouring town, liking his pipe
and glass of beer, and never knowing what it was to feel dull. I speak
of him because I knew him personally; but there were others of whom I
used to hear, though I never became acquainted with them, who seem to
have been hardly at all tainted with the commercial spirit, and were
more in the position of labourers than this man, yet lived almost
dignified lives of simple and self-supporting contentment. Of some of
them the middle-aged people of to-day still talk, not without respect.
But in writing of such folk I have most emphatically to use the past
tense; for although a sort of afterglow from the old civilization still
rests upon the village character, it is fast fading out, and it has not
much resemblance to the genuine thing of half a century ago. The direct
light has gone out of the people's life--the light, the meaning, the
guidance. They have no longer a civilization, but only some derelict
habits left from that which has gone. And it is no wonder if some of
those habits seem now stupid, ignorant, objectionable; for the fitness
has departed from them, and left them naked. They were acquired under a
different set of circumstances--a set of circumstances whose
disappearance dates from, and was caused by, the enclosure of the
common.
IX
THE NEW THRIFT
One usually thinks of the enclosure of a common as a procedure which
takes effect immediately, in striking and memorable change; yet the
event in this village seems to have made no lasting impression on
people's minds. The older folk talk about things that happened "before
the common was enclosed" much as they might say "before the flood," and
occasionally they discuss the history of some allotment or other made
under the award; but one hears little from them to suggest that the
fateful ordinance seemed to them a fateful one at the time.
It may be that the stoical village temper is in part accountable for
this indifference. As the arrangement was presumably made over the heads
of the people, they doubtless took it in a fatalistic way as a thing
that could not be helped and had better be dismissed from their
thoughts. Were this all, however, I think that I should have heard more
of the matter. Had sudden distress fallen upon the valley, had families
been speedily and obviously ruined by the enclosure, some mention of the
fact would surely have reached me. But the truth appears to be that
nothing very definite or striking ensued, to be remembered. The change
was hardly understood, or, at any rate, its importance was not
appreciated, by the people concerned.