AFTER THE SERVICE.
The village to which the reader has already paid a visit was sleepy and
healthy, but not without a certain rustic grace of its own. At one end,
the gates of the neighbouring park gave almost an aristocratic air to the
place. Far off among the trees was the parish church, as if it never
could be of any use to anybody, while the old red-brick meeting-house was
a formidable rival, inasmuch as it was nearer to the people, and
therefore more convenient of access. It had quite a history, that old
place. Norfolk and Suffolk have been the home of Nonconformists from the
earliest times. One of the first victims of the writ _De heretico
comburendo_ was a Norfolk man. Dr. Grosteste, afterwards Bishop of
Lincoln, a divine of great learning and courage, who is said to have
sympathised with Wycliffe, was born at Stradbrook, in Suffolk. The
earliest martyr of the Reformation, according to Fox, was William
Sawtree, parish priest of the church of St. Margaret in the town of Lynn,
and here, as elsewhere, the blood of the martyrs was not shed in vain.
Heresy continued to grow, and Mary, whom history calls the Bloody, owed
her throne in no small degree to the loyalty of the old Nonconformists of
Suffolk, who believed her to be the rightful heir to the Crown, and aided
her effectually in asserting her rights, only stipulating that they
should be unmolested in the exercise of their religion. But Mary had
learnt of her Popish priests to keep no faith with heretics, and in
Suffolk the race of martyrs never failed. Many Protestants fled from
this fierce persecution, and some found an asylum in Frankfort.
When Elizabeth came to the throne the people still required a reformation
in the Puritan sense, but Elizabeth, a Ritualist herself, had no sympathy
with them. In 1592, when an Act was passed for the punishment of persons
obstinately refusing to come to church, Sir Walter Raleigh declared his
conviction that the Brownists at that time were not less than twenty
thousand, chiefly in Norfolk and Suffolk. Their idea was that, in the
language of their founder, ‘The Church planted or gathered is a company
or number of Christians and believers, which, by a willing covenant made
with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and keep His
laws in one communion. The Church government is the lordship of Christ
in the communion of His offices, whereby His people obey His will, and
have mutual use of their graces and callings to further their goodliness
and welfare.’ Such was the teaching of old Browne. In the good old
times he was persecuted for saying it, and people were sent to gaol for
believing it. Nay, more, Barrow and Greenwood, for doing so, were hanged
at Tyburn. In the village of which I write there had been many
Nonconformists, and tradition told how the preacher was hidden in a tree
while the people listened below. When fair times came, ejected ministers
continued their services in a more open manner. Wealthy individuals
befriended them, and chapels were built and endowed. In this way the
meeting-house of which I speak had come into existence. On the evening
of which I write it had been crowded. The one subject of conversation
all that night was the sermon. At that time all the cottagers took a
deep interest in theology. There was no end of theological disputations,
especially among the women, and as usual among the most illiterate of the
women. Some of them were hyper-Calvinists, and on a Sunday would walk
miles to the nearest town in which the doctrines they loved to hear were
preached. The old preacher at the Congregational chapel was not high
enough for them. They were God’s elect, and they needed to be preached
to as such. Then there were the Ranters, who loved to hear of a free
salvation—of instantaneous conversion—of how the Ethiopian had changed
his skin and the leopard his spots.
All had been to meeting that night, and all were delighted to find how
the young preacher had given utterance to their peculiar and somewhat
contradictory views. Then, there were the old steady friends, who feared
that the young man would be led away by people’s applause. He was said
to have talent, and that was not the one thing needful. He was said to
be fond of human larnin’, and that was a mockery and a snare. The more
narrow-minded preponderated, as they always do in religious circles, or,
at any rate, as they did then. They believed that ‘Ignorance was the
mother of devotion.’ They were a stumbling-block in many a promising
career, ever ready to censure, ever ready to take offence, ever ready to
find fault, ever ready to hint a doubt and hesitate dislike. How many
have such kept away who might have been useful members of the Church!
How many have they driven into doubt and scepticism and despair! How
true is it that against stupidity the gods fight in vain!
It is a mistake to suppose a village life dull. It has its public
opinion—its hopes, its fears, its joys. Its little life in its way is as
intense as that of London or Paris. Our great men and oracles and
dictators—many of our best men—come from our country villages. They are
our national nurseries. We cannot breed men or women in the foul air of
towns, where soul and body alike wither away. If England is to flourish,
we must get back the people to the villages.
The other night Hodge paid me a visit, and to me, revolving these things
in my mind, as Cicero was wont to say, the Lord Brougham after him, it
seemed that it was worth putting in print Hodge’s opinions about things
in general, and farming in particular. Hodge is a Liberal, and will vote
for the Gladstonian candidate. Not that he takes much interest in
Ireland, or has any particular acquaintance with Irish affairs. Hodge
told me he did not read the newspapers, solely because he can’t read at
all. He left school before he had mastered the elements, and the cause
of his leaving was this: He had, as boys will do, played truant, and the
next day the schoolmaster took him to the door of the school to give him
a flogging. Unfortunately, the master had left his stick behind, and
when he was gone, Hodge, who had his cap in his pocket, thought he might
as well run away. He did so, and went to a farmer to give him a job.
The farmer set him to scare the crows, and after that Hodge never went to
school again. At a proper age he went to ploughing, and a ploughman he
has been ever since. He married early, of course. I told him that was a
pity; but, as he said, what was he to do? He had no father nor mother,
and he wanted a home of his own, and, though his wife worked in a
brickyard, she is as natty and tidy a little woman as you could wish to
see anywhere, and the children are neat and orderly. He lives in a
red-brick cottage with four rooms, for which he pays £4 a year, and has a
nice little bit of garden, which produces most of the food consumed by
the family—for he can’t afford butcher’s meat. Now and then, though, he
buys a few bones of the butcher, or a few scraps such as a butcher has
always to dispose of at the rate of sixpence a pound. He can’t eat fat
pork, and he can’t smoke. He is tall, but not stout, and has a fine
colour on his face, as if his occupation was healthy. His wages are 13s.
6d. a week—not a bad wage in Essex. His hours are long—from six in the
morning till half-past five in the evening. On a Sunday morning he has
to look after the horses; when he has done that he walks over to have a
chat with his father-in-law.
He never goes to church, because he doesn’t like the goings-on in the
church and the white gowns. When he goes anywhere, it is to a barn where
a Primitive Methodist preaches; him he can understand, but not the Church
parson; and the Methodist preaches well and does not take a sixpence.
That is why he likes the Methodist preacher.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘the parson makes a poor-rate in the church.’
‘What do you mean?’ said I.
‘Why, I’ve seen the farmers go round with the plates and collect money.’
‘Oh no,’ I replied; ‘that is the offertory, and the parson gives the
money to the poor.’
‘Does he?’ said Hodge. ‘I’ve never heard of his giving any money away,
and he has never been near me, though I’ve lived five years in his
parish.’
I explained that the late parson was old and infirm, but that the new
parson would do better; and then Hodge admitted that he had heard as how
he had called on a neighbour who was ill, and had left two half-crowns.
Hodge is not a teetotaler, but drinks a table-beer which his wife brews.
As to public-house beer, he declares it is poison, and never touches a
drop. He pays to the Foresters five-and-sixpence a quarter, and shilling
for his wife, and that secures him in case of sickness ten shillings a
week and medical attendance for his wife and family. He goes to bed at
nine o’clock, and that means a good deal of saving in the matter of coals
and candles. He frankly admitted that he had made, and could make, no
provision for old age. He had one grievance. His master was a Liberal,
but he had told him now that schooling was free he must pay two shillings
more for his rent; ‘and that ain’t very liberal,’ he said.
Then we talked about the farmers. They were very hard on the men. When
harvest time came, that was the miserablest time of the year, for the big
farmer goes round to the small farmers and tells them what he is going to
pay, and then the men stand out, and are idle and walking about, while a
lot of foreigners—that is, people from parts adjacent—come, who are bad
workers and get drunk, and are very disagreeable to have anything to do
with. There ought to be no large farmers who cannot properly attend to
the farms, and who keep hunters and go out hunting. He would have no
hunting at all, as it destroyed the crops to have a lot of men galloping
over them. Farmers could not make their farms pay, as they did not keep
enough men to pull up the weeds, and he had seen fields where the
thistles were as high again as the barley, and instead of carting barley
the farmer had to cart weeds, and that could not pay. Again, he thought
it was madness to send the manure of towns into the sea when it was
wanted on the land. Farmers were very unreasonable, and that was a pity.
How could a farmer expect his men to work well if they were paid
starvation wages? They even starved the horses. Many a farmer on a
Sunday, or when the horses were idle, took off a feed of corn from the
horses. Why, did not a farmer want his dinner on a Sunday when he was
not working, and was it not the same with the horses? He had seen some
farmers hunting, and their horses were nothing but bags of bone.
‘Well, what do you think of allotments of two or three acres?’ said I.
Hodge evidently had a poor opinion of them. If he had one, he would not
have the time nor the strength to work on it, though his wife might help
him, as she was used to outdoor work; and then there was the ploughing,
how could that be done? Could not, I asked, a farm be cut up into
allotments, and one person make a living by ploughing for the others?
No, he did not think that could be done, as you could never get a lot of
people to be all of one mind in that respect. It was not much use giving
an agricultural labourer more than forty rods to attend to. He did not
keep bees, as his master did not like them, but his father-in-law did,
and he made a good deal of money by them. One thing he did by which he
made a little money, and that was to breed canaries. Once upon a time he
caught a blackbird and took it home. Then he sold it for five shillings,
and when his wife missed the bird he put a shilling to it and bought a
canary. His master’s brother gave him another; and as they laid eggs and
hatched them he sold canaries, and thus made a little.
Hodge is an active politician, and attends all the Liberal gatherings of
the district; but his politics are of the dimmest kind. He is attracted
by the word Liberal—that is all. What he desires is to see a better
understanding between the masters and men. He has got beyond the Church
parson, evidently, but the farmer may yet win him back. I question
whether the farmer will have sense enough to take the trouble to do that,
easy though the task may be. In the majority of cases it is only a
question of a shilling a week and a few kind words. Hodge has no wish to
be driven off the land. He would rather remain where he is. He knows
very little of the town, and is rather afraid of its wickedness and its
filthy slums. All he requires is a little more consideration, a little
more kindly treatment on the part of his employer. He is a good fellow,
and he deserves it. But one sighs as one thinks
‘Of the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun.’
But this is a digression. I now return to the Hodge of half a century
ago.
It was late that night before the villagers went to bed, everyone had so
much to say. There had not been such an excitement there since old
Campbell, missionary to Africa, had told the people all about the poor
Hottentots.
Half-way down the High Street stood the Spread Eagle—as times went, a
respectable public-house, licensed to let post-horses, and warranted to
provide suitable accommodation for man or beast. It is true, on the
outside was painted a fierce creature, intended for a bird, with an eye
and a beak enough to frighten anyone, but all was peace and harmony
within. The landlady had a way of serving up mulled porter at all hours
which seemed particularly attractive to her customers, especially in
winter, and as the coach to London changed horses there, a good many
people were in the habit of dropping in ‘quite promiscuous,’ as some of
us say. On the evening of the sermon, the bar-parlour was unusually
full. The landlady’s niece had been to hear the young divine, and her
verdict was favourable.
‘Here’s a pretty go,’ said the Rector, who had dropped in quite
accidentally, as he joined the group: ‘that young Wentworth is going to
drive the people crazy. As I came past I saw all the parish there. I am
sure Sir Thomas’ (the owner of the next village) ‘will be very angry when
he hears of it.’
‘Right you are!’ cried the surgeon; ‘but the young fellow won’t stop here
long, you may depend upon it. He is far too good for the meetingers.’
‘I wish the whole pack of them would clear off,’ continued the Rector;
‘they give me no end of trouble. If I go into a cottage, I find they
have been there before me. It is just the same with the schools; they
get all the children. My predecessor did not mind it, but I do.’
‘Ah,’ said the landlady, ‘I’ve heard my mother speak of him. He and the
clerk had always a hot supper here on a Sunday night. Ah, he was a
gentleman, and behaved as such.’
‘Rare times, them was,’ said an old farmer, joining in the conversation.
‘I remember how we used to pelt them meetinger parsons with rotten eggs.
It was rare fun to break their windows while they were preaching, and to
frighten the women as they came out. One day we were going to burn the
parson’s house down.’
‘And why did you not?’ asked the surgeon.
‘Because the Rector’s wife was ill,’ was the reply, ‘and the Rector asked
us not to make a noise near the house. But I was sorry we did not then
finish the job outright. They’d all have gone. Says I, if you want to
get rid of the wasps, burn their nests. I’ve no patience with a lot of
hypocrites, professing to be better than other people.’
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the landlady’s niece, a privileged person, as she
was both young and good-looking, ‘all I can say is, young Mr. Wentworth
preached a capital sermon to-night. A better sermon I never heard.
There was no reading out of a book. It was all life-like. There was no
drawling or hesitation. He spoke out like a man.’
The aunt looked solemn. This would never do. The Spread Eagle had
always supported Church and State, and she was not going to change at her
time of life. It was too bad to find heresy in her own flesh and blood.
‘Well,’ said she, ‘of course I don’t go to meetin’, and I’m very sorry to
hear what I’ve heard to-night.’
‘Well, we will forgive the young lady,’ said the Rector condescendingly,
with a familiar nod, ‘on condition that she does not do it again.’
‘Agreed,’ said the surgeon. ‘I go to church,’ he continued, ‘because
it’s respectable; because my father went there before me; because, if I
did not, I should never be asked to dine at the Hall; because, as it is,
I find it hard to make both ends meet, and should lose all my practice if
I went to meeting.’
‘Besides,’ added the Rector, ‘it is your duty to support the institutions
of your country, and to set the people a good example. I am not much of
a Churchman myself. I had rather have been a country squire, but my
father said I must either take the family living or starve, so, as
starving is not in my way, here I am.’
‘And a better parson we don’t want,’ said the old farmer
enthusiastically.
‘Well, I try to do my duty in the situation in which Providence has
placed me,’ said the Rector, with a truly edifying air.
‘We knows that,’ said the farmer, ‘You’ve allus a bottle for a friend,
and you give us short sermons, and when we want to get up a race or a bit
of sport, you are always ready to lend us a helping hand, and that is
more than the meetingers ever do. I hates ’em like p’ison. All their
talk is of eddication and religion—good things in their way, but not to
be overdone. My best ploughman can’t read a bit, and what good will
larnin’ do him, I should like to know.’
And here the farmer, red in the face, paused for a reply. In the
meanwhile the Rector called for the Sunday paper, which had reached there
that evening. The surgeon set off to attend a patient in labour—his
principal employment in that healthy district, where the people kept good
hours and breathed good air—and the bar-parlour of the Spread Eagle
resumed its Sabbatic quiet. Only one should-be sleeper lay awake that
night, and that was the village pastor’s son. He was to go on probation
to Sloville. There was no minister there, and the people wanted one.
Was he to succeed? Did he sufficiently realize the import of his
message? Had he so mastered the truth that he could commend it in all
its fulness and beauty to others? These were questions which gave him—as
they do all in such a position—great searchings of heart. At college
Wentworth had difficulties which were only to be put away, said his
teachers, by Christian work. They, good people, had had doubts
themselves, but they had lived them down, and so they went to their daily
task quite satisfied, and they reaped the benefit of acquiescence as they
became more and more celebrated for wisdom and piety, and as more and
more they lost the meaning of Scriptural language in conventional and
orthodox formula. Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles was not
imposed on the young divine; but he was expected, nevertheless, to adopt
a certain creed, and repeat it. Students at his college were not
expected to study truth, but only as it appeared in a human, rather than
a Divine, form. Any attempt at independent inquiry was rejected as
heresy of the most odious kind. Happy were they who never had their
minds darkened by doubt, who, according to their own ideas, were taught
of the Spirit; who found every difficulty solved by prayer: to whom Deity
revealed Himself, as He did to the Jews of old, as a pillar of cloud by
day and of fire by night; who felt that their God was a jealous God,
consuming with eternal fire the reprobate; who believed that God was
angry with them if they took a walk in the fields on a Sunday, or kept
studying secular affairs one moment after twelve (Greenwich time) on a
Saturday night. To this class Wentworth did not belong. He was wont to
regard the Creator of the world as a Father in heaven—as a God of
love—who had filled all this wide earth with beauty for man to grasp and
enjoy. Pious people said he lacked unction. But he was anxious for
action, as all young men are, for real life and real work, and desirous
‘to settle,’ as the phrase is. His father was poor, and could not afford
to keep him at home. He had finished his college career—with acceptance.
No one had a word to say against him, and none doubted his ability. At
Sloville the people were supposed to be profoundly orthodox. It was hard
indeed to send such a young man there, yet it was agreed that Wentworth
should go there on probation.