mentioned--namely, the sensational news in the papers and the distresses
and misdemeanours in the village itself--supply practically all that the
average cottager gets to touch his sentiments and emotions into life;
and it is plain enough that from neither of these sources, even when
supplemented by a fine traditional family life, can a very desirable
spiritual nourishment be obtained. "Real" enough the fare is, in all
conscience; but, as usual with realities of that sort, it wants
choiceness. It provides plenty of objects for compassion, for anxiety,
for contempt, for ridicule even, but very little for emulation, for
reverence. The sentiments of admiration and chivalry, the enthusiastic
emotions, are hardly ever aroused in man or woman, boy or girl, in the
village. Nothing occurs in the natural course to bring what is called
"good form" into notice and make it attractive, and at the same time the
means of bringing this about by art demand more money, more leisure and
seclusion, more book-learning too, than the average labourer can obtain.
In the middle-classes this is not the case. It is true that the
middle-classes have little to boast of in this respect, but generous
ideas of modesty and reverence, and of "playing the game," and of public
duty, and of respect for womanhood, have at least a chance of spreading
amongst boys and girls, in households where art and books are valued,
and where other things are talked of than the sordid scandals of the
valley and of the police-courts. The difference that the want of this
help may make was brought forcibly home to me one day. I came upon a
group of village boys at play in the road, just as one of them--a fellow
about thirteen years old--conceived a bright idea for a new game. "Now
I'll be a murderer!" he cried, waving his arms ferociously.
There are other circumstances that tend to keep the standard of
sentiment low. As the boys begin to work for money at so early an age,
the money-value of conduct impresses itself strongly upon them, and they
soon learn to think more of what they can get than of what they can do
or are worth. And while they have lost all the steadying influence that
used to flow from the old peasant crafts, they get none of the
steadiness which would come from continuity of employment. The work they
do as errand-boys calls neither for skill in which they might take pride
nor for constancy to any one master; but it encourages them to be
mannish and "knowing" long before their time. Of course the more
generous sentiments are at a discount under such conditions.
Then, too, there can be little doubt that the "superior" attitude of
the employing classes has its injurious effect upon the village
character. The youth who sees his father and mother and sisters treated
as inferiors, and finds that he is treated so too, is led unconsciously
to take a low view of what is due either to himself or to his friends.
The sort of view he takes may be seen in his behaviour. The gangs of
boys who troop and lounge about the roads on Sundays are generally being
merely silly in the endeavour to be witty. They laugh loudly, yet not
humorously and kindly (one very rarely hears really jolly laughter in
the village), but in derision of one another or of the wayfarers--girls
by preference. So far as one can overhear it, their fun is always of
that contumacious character, and it must be deadly to any sentiment of
modesty, or honour, or reverence.
It requires but little penetration to see how these circumstances react
upon the village girls. The frolicsome and giddy appear to enjoy
themselves much as the boys do, but the position must be cruel to those
of a serious tendency. To be treated with disrespect and be made the
subjects of rough wit as they go about is only the more acute part of
their difficulty. One may suppose that at home they find little
appreciation of any high sentiments, but are driven, in self-defence, to
be rather flippant, rather "worldly." The greater number of house
mistresses, meanwhile, if one may judge from their own complacent
conversation, behave in a way most unlikely to contribute to their
servants' self-respect. It is hard to believe that any really high
sentiment is to be learnt from women who, for all the world as if they
were village louts, make light of a girl's feelings, and regard her
love-affairs especially as a proper subject for ridicule or for
suspicion.
XX
THE CHILDREN'S NEED
As one of the managing committee of the village schools for a good many
years, I have had considerable opportunity of watching the children
collectively. The circumstances, perhaps, are not altogether favourable
to the formation of trustworthy opinions. Seen in large numbers, and
under discipline too, the children look too much alike; one misses the
infinite variety of their personalities such as would appear in them at
home. On the other hand, characteristics common to them all, which might
pass unnoticed in individuals, become obvious enough when there are many
children together.
In the main the "stock" has always seemed to me good, and to some extent
my impression is supported by the results of the medical inspection now
undertaken at the schools by the County Council. Such defects as the
doctor finds are generally of no deep-seated kind: bad teeth, faulty
vision (often due, probably, to improper use of the eyes in school),
scalp troubles, running ears, adenoids, and so on, are the commonest.
Insufficient nutrition is occasionally reported. In fact the medical
evidence tells, in a varied form, much the same tale that school
managers have been able to read for themselves in the children's
dilapidated boots and clothes, and their grimy hands and uncared-for
hair, for it all indicates poverty at home, want of convenience for
decent living, and ignorance as well as carelessness in the parents. All
this we have known, but now we learn from the doctor that the evil
effects of these causes do not stop at the clothes and skin, but go a
little deeper. Yet probably they have not hurt the essential nature of
the children. Congenital defects are rare; the doctor discovers even a
high average of constitutional fitness, due, it may be, to severe
"natural" selection weeding out the more delicate. It is certain that
the village produces quite a fair proportion of really handsome
children, besides those of several of the old families, who are wont to
be of exceptional beauty. Unhappily, before the school-years are over,
the fineness usually begins to disappear, being spoilt, I suspect,
partly by the privations of the home-life and partly by another cause,
of which I will speak by-and-by.
I think, further--but it is only a vague impression, not worth much
attention--that as regards physique the girls are as a rule more
thriving and comely than the boys. The latter appear very apt to become
knottled and hard, and there is a want of generosity in their growth, as
though they received less care than the girls, and were more used to
going hungry, and being cold and wet. But if my impression is right,
there are two points to be noticed in further explanation of it. The
first point relates to the early age at which the boys begin to be
useful at work. It has been already told how soon they are set to earn a
little money out of school-hours; but even before that stage is reached
the little boys have to make themselves handy. On the Saturday holiday
it is no uncommon thing to see a boy of eight or nine pushing up the
hill a little truck loaded with coal or coke, which he has been sent to
buy at the railway yard. Smaller ones still are sent to the shops, and
not seldom they are really overloaded. Thus at an age when boys in
better circumstances are hardly allowed out alone, these village
children practise perforce a considerable self-reliance, and become
acquainted with the fatigue of labour. Some little chaps, as they go
about their duties--leading lesser brothers by the hand perhaps, or
perhaps dealing very sternly with them, and making them "keep up"
without help--have unawares the manner of responsible men.
That is one point which may help to account for the apparent physical
disparity between the boys and girls of the village. The other is a
subject of remark amongst all who know the school-children. There is no
doubt about it; whether the girls are comelier of growth than the boys
or not, they are in behaviour so much more civilized that one might
almost suppose them to come from different homes. To my mind this might
be sufficiently explained by the fact that they are usually spared those
burdensome errands and responsibilities which are thrust so soon upon
their brothers; but the schoolmaster has another explanation, which
probably contains some truth. His view is that at home the girls come
chiefly under the influence of their mothers, whose experience of
domestic service gives them an idea of manners, while the boys take
pattern from their fathers, whose work encourages roughness. Whatever
the cause, the fact remains: the boys may be physically as sound as the
girls, but they certainly have less charm. It is not often delightful to
see them. They do not stand up well; they walk in a slouching and
narrow-chested way; and, though they are mischievous enough, there is
strangely wanting in them an air of alertness, of vivacity, of delight
in life. There is no doubt that their heavily-ironed and ill-fitting
boots cause them to walk badly; yet it is only reasonable to suppose
that this is but one amongst many difficulties, and that, in general,
the conditions in which the boys live are unfavourable to a good
physical growth.
As regards intellectual power, in boys and girls too, the evidence--to
be quite frank--does not bear out all that I wish to believe; for, in
spite of appearances, I am not yet persuaded that these cottage children
are by birth more dull of wit than town-bred children and those in
better circumstances. It must be remembered that in this village, so
near as it is to a town, there has been little of that migration to
towns which is said to have depleted other villages of their cleverer
people. A few lads go to sea, more than a few into the army; some of the
girls marry outside, and are lost to the parish. But it would be easy to
go through the valley and find, in cottage after cottage, the numerous
descendants of old families that flourished here, and were certainly not
deficient in natural brain-power, two generations ago, although it was
not developed in them on modern lines. Nor need one go back two
generations. To be acquainted with the fathers and mothers of the
school-children is to know people whose minds are good enough by nature,
and are only wanting in acquired power; and when, aware of this, one
goes into the school and sees the children of these parents, some of
them very graceful, with well-shaped heads and eyes that can sparkle and
lips that can break into handsome, laughing curves, it is very hard to
believe that the breed is dull. The stupidity is more likely due merely
to imperfect nurture; at any rate, one should not accept an explanation
of it that disparages the village capacity for intelligence until it is
made clear that the state of the children cannot be explained in any
other way.
Leaving explanations aside, however, there is the fact, not to be
gainsaid, that the children in general are slow of wit. One notes it in
the infant school first, and especially in the very youngest classes.
There, newly come from their mother's care, the small boys and girls
from five to six years old have often a wonderfully vacant expression.
There is little of that speculative dancing of the eyes, that evident
appetite for perceptions and ideas, which you will find in well-to-do
nurseries and playrooms. And whereas in the latter circumstances
children will take up pencil or paintbrush confidently, as if born to
master those tools, the village infant is hesitating, clumsy, feeble.
Upon the removal of a child to the upper or "mixed" school, a certain
increase of intelligence often seems to come at a bound. The
circumstance is highly suggestive. The "infant" of seven is suddenly
brought into contact with older scholars already familiarized with
particular groups of ideas, and those ideas are speedily absorbed by the
little ones, while the swifter methods of teaching also have their
quickening effect, for a time. But after this jump has been made and
lost sight of--that is to say amongst the older scholars, who do not
again meet with such a marked change of environment--one is again aware
of considerable mental density throughout the school. The children
resemble their parents. They are quick enough to observe details, though
not always the details with which the teacher is concerned, but they
have very little power of dealing with the simplest abstractions. They
are clumsy in putting two thoughts together for comparison; clumsy in
following reasons, or in discussing underlying principles. In short,
"thinking" is an art they hardly begin to practise. They can learn and
apply a "rule of thumb," a folk-rule, so to speak--but there is no flow,
nor anything truly consecutive, in the movement of their ideas.
Elsewhere one may hear children of six or seven--little well-cared-for
people--keep up a continual stream of intelligent and happy talk with
their parents or nursemaids; but to the best of my belief this does not
happen amongst the village children, at any age.
Observations of them at play, in the cottage gardens or on the road,
throw some light on their condition. It would appear that they are
extremely ill-supplied with subjects to think about. In the exercise of
imagination, other children fall naturally into habits of consecutive
thought, or at any rate of consecutive fancy; but these of the labouring
class have hardly any ideas which their young brains could play with,
other than those derived from their own experience of real life in the
valley, or those which they hear spoken of at home. Hence in their
histrionic games of "pretending" it is but a very limited repertory of
parts that they can take. Two or three times I have come upon a little
group of them under a hedgerow or sun-warmed bank, playing at school;
the teacher being delightfully severe, and the scholars delightfully
naughty. And now and again there is a feeble attempt at playing
soldiers. Very often, too, one may see boys, in string harness, happy in
being very mettlesome horses. In one case a subtle variant of this game
inspired two small urchins to what was, perhaps, as good an imaginative
effort as I have met with in the village. The horse, instead of being
frisky, was being slow, so that the driver had to swear at him. And most
vindictive and raucous was the infant voice that I heard saying, "Git
up, you blasted lazy cart-'orse!" Other animals are sometimes
represented. With a realistic grunt, a little boy, beaming all over his
face, said to his companion, "Now I'll be your pig." Another day it
puzzled me to guess what a youngster was doing, as he capered furiously
about the road, wearing his cap pushed back and two short sticks
protruding from beneath it over his forehead; but presently I perceived
that he was a "bullick" being driven to market. Excepting the case
already mentioned, of the boy who proposed to "be a murderer," I do not
recall witnessing any other forms of the game of "pretending" amongst
the village children, unless in the play of little girls with their
dolls. There was one very pretty child who used to prattle to me
sometimes about her "baby," and how it had been "bad," that is to say,
naughty, and put to bed; or had not had its breakfast. This little girl
was an orphan who lived with her grandfather and a middle-aged aunt, and
was much petted by them. She was almost alone too, amongst the village
children of that period, in being the possessor of a doll, for no more
than five or six years ago one rarely saw such a thing in the village.
Christmas-trees have since done something to make up the deficiency. A
month or two ago I saw a four-year-old girl--a friend of mine from a
neighbour's cottage--solemnly walking down a by-lane alone, carrying a
rag-doll half as big as herself. I stopped, and admired; but, in spite
of her pride, she took a very matter-of-fact view of her toy. "It's head
keeps comin' off," was all that she could be persuaded to say.
"Matter-of-fact" is what the children are, for the most part. One autumn
evening, after dark, titterings and little squeals of excitement sounded
from a neighbour's garden, where a man, going to draw water from his
well, and carrying a lantern, was accompanied by four or five children.
In the security of his presence they were pretending to be afraid of
"bogies." "If a bogie was to come," I heard, "I should get up that
apple-tree, and then if he come up after me I should get down t'other
side." An excited laugh was followed by the man's contemptuous
remonstrance, "_Shut_ up!" which produced silence for a minute or two,
until the party were returning to the cottage; when a very endearing
voice called softly, "Bo-gie! Bo-gie! Come, bogie!" This instance of
fancy in a cottage child stands, however, alone in my experience. I have
never heard anything else like it in the village. The children romp and
squabble and make much noise; they play, though rarely, at
hide-and-seek; or else they gambol about aimlessly, or try to sing
together, or troop off to look at the fowls or the rabbits. The bigger
children are as a rule extremely kind to the lesser ones. A family of
small brothers and sisters who lived near me some time ago were most
pleasant to listen to for this reason. The smallest of them, a
three-year-old boy commonly called "'Arry," was their pet. "Look, 'Arry;
here's a _dear_ little flow-wer! A little 'arts-ease--look, 'Arry!"
"'Ere, 'Arry, have a bite o' this nice apple!" They were certainly
attractive children, though formidably grubby as to their faces. I heard
them with their father, admiring a litter of young rabbits in the hutch.
"O-oh, en't that a _dear_ little thing!" they exclaimed, again and
again. Sunday was especially delightful to them because their father was
at home then; and I liked to hear him playing with them. One
particularly happy hour they had, in which he feigned to be angry and
they to be defiant. They jumped about just out of his reach, jeering at
him. "Old Father Smither!" they cried, as often as their peals of
laughter would let them cry anything at all. But it struck me as very
strange that their sing-song derision was not going to the right tune
and rhythm; for there is a genuine folk-tune which I thought
indissolubly wedded to this derisive formula. Beginning in a long drawl,
it throws all the weight on the first and fourth syllables: "_Old_
Father _Smith_-er." But these children, apparently ignorant of it, had
invented a rhythm of their own, in which the first syllable, "Old," was
almost elided, and the weight was thrown on the next. I could not help
wondering at the breach which this indicated with the ancient folk
traditions.
If it were necessary, plentiful other evidence could be produced of the
children's great need for more subjects upon which to exercise their
thoughts and fancies. For one example: some years ago a little
maidservant from this village was found, when she went to her first
"place" in the town, never to have seen a lamb, or a pond of water. This
was an extreme case, perhaps; but it suggests how badly the children are
handicapped. As recently as last year, when a circus was visiting the
town, I asked two village boys on the road if they had seen the
procession. They had not; nor had they ever in their lives seen a camel
or an elephant; but one of them "thought he should know an elephant, by
his trunk." He was probably eight years old; and it is worth noting that
he must have owed his enlightenment to books or pictures seen at school;
indeed, there is nothing of the sort to be learnt at home, where there
are no books, and where the parents, themselves limited to so narrow a
range of experience and therefore of ideas, are not apt to encourage
inquisitiveness in their children. A man who lived near me a few years
ago could often be heard, on Sundays and on summer evenings, chiding
his little son for that fault. "Don't you keep on astin' so many
questions," was his formula, which I must have heard dozens of times.
One can sympathize: it would be so much easier to give the child a bun,
or the cottage equivalent, and order him to eat it; but that does not
satisfy the child's appetite for information. Probably the great
difficulty is that the children's questions can hardly any longer turn
upon those old-fashioned subjects which the parents understand, but upon
new-fangled things. And, apart from all this, I suspect that in most of
the cottages the old notion prevails that children should be kept in
their place, and not encouraged to bother grown-up people with their
trumpery affairs.
From the contrast between the talk of the village youngsters and that of
children who are better cared for, I inferred just now a want of "flow"
in the thoughts of the former, as though the little scrappy ideas
existed in their brains without much relationship to one another. Of
course it is possible that the brain activity is far greater than one
would surmise, and that it only seems sluggish because of the
insufficiency of our village speech as a means of expression, for
certainly the people's vocabulary is extremely limited, while they have
no habit of talking in sentences of any complexity. Yet where a language
has neither abundant names for ideas, nor flexible forms of
construction to exhibit variations of thought, it is hard to believe
that the brain-life itself is anything but cramped and stiff.
And if the crude phrasing indicates poverty in the more definite kinds
of ideas, I cannot help thinking that another feature of the children's
talk betrays no less a poverty, in respect to those more vague ideas
which relate to behaviour and to perception of other people's position
and feelings. It was since beginning this chapter that I happened to be
walking for some distance in front of four children--three girls and a
boy--from a comfortable middle-class home. It was a Sunday morning, and
they were chatting very quietly, so that their words did not reach me;
but I found it very agreeable to hear the variety of cadence in their
voices, with occasionally pauses, and then a resumption of easy talk, as
if they had got a subject to consider in serious lights, and recognized
each other's right to be heard and understood. Indeed, it bordered on
priggishness, and perhaps over-stepped the border; but nevertheless it
made me feel jealous for our village children, for in the conversation
of village children one never hears that suggestion of a considerate
mental attitude towards one another. The speech is without flexibility
or modulation of tone; harsh, exclamatory, and screaming, or guttural
and drawling. Rarely, if ever, does one derive from it an impression
that the children are growing to regard one another's feelings, or one
another's thoughts. A further point must be mentioned. I hinted that
there might be an additional cause, besides physical privations, for the
loss of the children's attractiveness in many cases even before they
leave school. My belief is that, as they approach the age when ideas of
a sensitive attitude towards life should begin to sway them,
unconsciously moulding the still growing features into fineness, those
ideas do not come their way. The boys of eight begin to look, at times,
like little men; and the girls of eleven and upwards begin to show signs
of acquaintance with struggling domestic economies; but neither boys nor
girls discover, in the world into which they are growing up, any truly
helpful ideas of what it is comely to be and to think. Lingering peasant
notions of personal fitness and of integrity keep them from going
viciously wrong, so that when they come to puberty their perplexed
spirits are not quite without guidance; yet, after all, the peasant
conditions are gone, and seeing that the new wage-earning conditions do
not, of themselves, suggest worthy ideas of personal bearing, the
children's faculties for that sort of thing soon cease to unfold, and
with a gradual slackening of development the attractiveness disappears.
The want is the more to be regretted in that, at a later time of life,
when the women have been moulded by motherhood and the men by all the
stress and responsibility of their position, such composure and strength
often appear in them as to justify a suspicion that these uncared-for
people are by nature amongst the very best of the English.
V
THE FORWARD MOVEMENT
XXI
THE FORWARD MOVEMENT