family with some very bright children who are “won’erful for’ard in
their larning,” “If I might be so bold, might I ask if you’ve really
_read_ all these grit books?” “No, Jabez; and I should be a bigger
dunce than I am if I ever tried to. I keep them to _use_; they’re my
tools, like your spade and hoe. What’s that thing called that I saw
in your hand the other day when you were working at the draining job?
You don’t often use that tool I think, do you?” “Well, no. But then we
don’t get a job o’ draining now same as we used. I mean to say as a man
may go ten years at a stretch and never lay a drain-tile.” “Well, then
how about the use of his tools all this time?” Jabez smiled, slowly
put his hand to his head, saw the point, and yet didn’t see it. “But,
lawk sir! that’s somehow different. I can’t see what yow _can du_ wi’ a
grit book like this here.” It was a massive volume of Littré’s great
dictionary, which I had just taken down to consult; it certainly did
look portentous. “Why, Jabez, that’s a dictionary--a French dictionary.
If I want to know all about a French word, you know, I look it up here.
Sometimes I don’t find exactly what I want; then I go to _that_ book,
which is another French dictionary; and if....” I saw by the blank look
in honest Jabez’ face that it was all in vain. “Want to know ... all
about ... words.... Why you ain’t agoing to fix no drain-tiles with
them sort o’ things. Now that du wholly pet me aywt, that du.”
I think no one who has not tried painfully to lift and lead others can
have the least notion of the difficulty which the country parson has
to contend with in the extreme thinness of the stratum in which the
rural intellect moves. Since the schools have given more attention
to geography, and since emigration has brought us now and then some
entertaining letters from those who have emigrated to “furren parts,”
the people have slowly learnt to think of a wider area of _space_
than heretofore they could imagine. Though even now their notions of
geography are almost as vague as their notions of astronomy; I have
never seen a map in an agricultural labourer’s cottage. But their
absolute ignorance of history amounts to an incapacity of conceiving
the reality of anything that may have happened in past time. What
their grandfathers have told them, that is to them history--everything
before that is not so much as fable; it is not romance, it is a
formless void, it is chaos. The worst of it is that they have no
curiosity about the past. The same is true of their knowledge of
anything approaching to the rudiments of physical science; it simply
does not exist. A belief in the Ptolemaic system is universal in
Arcady. I suspect that they think less about these things than they
did. “That there old Gladstone, lawk! he’s a deep un he is! He’s as
deep as the Pole Star he is!” said Solomon Bunch to me one day. “Pole
Star?” I asked in surprise, “Where is the Pole Star, Sol?” “Lawks! I
dunno; I’ve heard tell o’ the Pole Star as the deep un ever sin’ I was
a booy!”
It is this narrowness in their range of ideas that makes it so hard for
the townsman to become an effective speaker to the labourers. You could
not make a greater mistake than by assuming you have only to use plain
_language_ to our rustics. So far from it, they love nothing better
than sonorous words, the longer the better. It is when he attempts to
make his audience follow a chain of reasoning that the orator fails
most hopelessly, or when he comes to his illustrations. The poor people
_know_ so little, they read nothing, their experience is so confined,
that one is very hard put to it to find a simile that is intelligible.
“Young David stood before the monarch’s throne. With harp in hand he
touched the chords, like some later Scald he sang his saga to King
Saul!” It really was rather fine--plain and simple too, monosyllabic,
terse, and with a musical sibillation. Unfortunately one of the
worthy preacher’s hearers told me afterwards with some displeasure
that “he didn’t hold wi’ David being all sing-songing and scolding,
he’d no opinion o’ that.” The stories of the queer mistakes which our
hearers make in interpreting our sermons are simply endless, sometimes
almost incredible. Nevertheless, no invention of the most inveterate
story-teller could equal the facts which are matters of weekly
experience.
“As yow was a saying in your sarment, ’tarnal mowing won’t du wirout
’tarnal making--yow mind that! yer ses, an’ I did mind it tu, an’ we
got up that hay surprising!” Mr. Perry had just a little misconceived
my words. I had quoted from Philip Van Arteveldt. “He that lacks time
to mourn, lacks time to mend. Eternity mourns that.”
Not many months ago I was visiting a good simple old man who was
death-stricken, and had been long lingering on the verge of the dark
river. “I’ve been a thinking, sir, of that little hymn as you said
about the old devil when he was took bad. I should like to hear that
again.” I was equal to the occasion.
The devil was sick--the devil a saint would be;
The devil got well--not a bit of a saint was he!
[It was necessary to soften down the language of the original!]
“Is that what you mean?” Yes! it was that. “Well I’ve been a thinking,
if the old devil had laid a bit longer and been afflicted same as some
on ’em, as he’d a been the better for it. Ain’t there no more o’ that
there little hymn, sir?”
The religious talk of our Arcadians is sometimes very trying--trying I
mean to any man with only too keen a sense of the ludicrous, and who
would not for the world betray himself if he could help it.
It is always better to let people welcome you as a friend and
neighbour, rather than as a clergyman, even at the risk of being
considered by the “unco guid” as an irreverent heathen. But you are
often pulled up short by a reminder more or less reproachful, that if
you have forgotten your vocation your host has not; as thus:--
“Ever been to Tombland fair, Mrs. Cawl?” Mrs. Cawl has a perennial
flow of words, which come from her lips in a steady, unceasing,
and deliberate monotone, a slow trickle of verbiage with never the
semblance of a stop.
“Never been to no fairs sin’ I was a girl bless the Lord nor mean to
’xcept once when my Betsy went to place and father told me to take
her to a show and there was a giant and a dwarf dressed in a green
petticoat like a monkey on an organ an’ I ses to Betsy my dear theys
the works of the Lord but they hadn’t ought to be shewed but as the
works of the Lord to be had in remembrance and don’t you think sir as
when they shows the works of the Lord they’d ought to begin with a
little prayer?”
* * * * *
There is one salient defect in the East Anglian character which
presents an almost insuperable obstacle to the country parson who is
anxious to raise the _tone_ of his people, and to awaken a response
when he appeals to their consciences and affections. The East Anglian
is, of all the inhabitants of these islands, most wanting in native
courtesy, in delicacy of feeling, and in anything remotely resembling
romantic sentiment. The result is that it is extremely difficult,
almost impossible, to deal with a genuine Norfolk man when he is out of
temper. How much of this coarseness of mental fibre is to be credited
to their Danish ancestry I know not, but whenever I have noticed a
gleam of enthusiasm, I think I have invariably found it among those who
had French Huguenot blood in their veins. Always shrewd, the Norfolk
peasant is never tender; a wrong, real or imagined, rankles within him
through a lifetime. He stubbornly refuses to believe that hatred in
his case is blameworthy. Refinement of feeling he is quite incapable
of, and without in the least wishing to be rude, gross, or profane, he
is often all three at once quite innocently during five minutes’ talk.
I have had things said to me by really good and well-meaning men and
women in Arcady that would make susceptible people swoon. It would have
been quite idle to remonstrate. You might as well preach of duty to an
antelope. If you want to make any impression or exercise any influence
for good upon your neighbours, you must take them as you find them,
and not expect too much of them. You must work in faith, and you must
work upon the material that presents itself. “The sower soweth the
word.” The mistake we commit so often is in assuming that because we
sow--which is our duty--therefore we have a right to reap the crop and
garner it. “It grows to guerdon after-days.”
Meanwhile we have such home truths as the following thrown at us in
the most innocent manner.
“Tree score? Is that all you be? Why there’s some folk as ’ud take you
for a hundred wi’ that _hair_ o’ yourn!”
Mr. Snape spoke with an amount of irritation which would have made an
outsider believe I was his deadliest foe; yet we are really very good
friends, and the old man scolds me roundly if I am long without going
to look at him. But he has quite a fierce repugnance to grey hair.
“You must take me as I am, Snape,” I replied; “I began to get grey at
thirty. Would you have me dye my hair?” “Doy! Why that hev doyd, an’
wuss than that--thet’s right rotten thet is!”
Or we get taken into confidence now and then, and get an insight into
our Arcadians’ practical turn of mind. I was talking pleasantly to a
good woman about her children. “Yes,” she said, “they’re all off my
hands now, but I reckon I’ve had a expense-hive family. I don’t mean
to say as it might not have been worse if they’d all lived, and we’d
had to bring ’em all up, but my meaning is as they never seemed to die
convenient. I had twins once, and they both died, you see, and we had
the club money for both of ’em, but then one lived a fortnight after
the other, and so that took two funerals, and that come expense-hive!”
It is very shocking to a sensitive person to hear the way in which the
old people speak of their dead wives or husbands exactly as if they’d
been horses or dogs. They are _always_ proud of having been married
more than once. “You didn’t think, Miss, as I’d had five wives, now
did you? Ah! but I have though--leastways I buried five on ’em in the
churchyard, that I did--and _tree on ’em beewties_!”[3] On another
occasion I playfully suggested, “Don’t you mix up your husbands now
and then, Mrs. Page, when you talk about them?” “Well, to tell you
the truth, sir, I really du! But my third husband, he _was_ a man! I
don’t mix him up. He got killed, fighting--you’ve heerd tell o’ that I
make no doubt. The others warn’t nothing to him. He’d ha’ mixed them
up quick enough if they’d interfered wi’ him. Lawk ah! He’d ’a made
nothing of ’em!”
Instances of this obtuseness to anything in the nature of poetic
sentiment among our rustics might be multiplied indefinitely. Norfolk
has never produced a single poet or romancer.[4] We have no local
songs or ballads, no traditions of valour or nobleness, no legends of
heroism or chivalry. In their place we have a frightfully long list of
ferocious murderers: Thurtell, and Tawell, and Manning, and Greenacre,
and Rush, and a dozen more whose names stand out pre-eminent in the
horrible annals of crime. The temperament of the sons of Arcady is
strangely callous to all the softer and gentler emotions.
* * * * *
There still remains something to say. In the minor difficulties with
which the country parson has to deal, there is usually much that is
grotesque, and this for the most part forces itself into prominence.
When this is so, a wise man will not dwell too much upon the sad and
depressing view of the situation; he will try and make the best of
things as they are. There are trials that are, after all, bearable with
a light heart. Unhappily there are others that make a man’s heart very
heavy indeed, partly because he thinks they need not be, partly because
he can see no hope of remedy. It is of these I hope to speak hereafter.
II.
_THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON._
“Ther’s times the world does look so queer,
Odd fancies come afore I call ’em,
An’ then agin, for half a year,
No preacher ’thout a call’s more solemn.”
In speaking of the trials of the country parson’s life in my last
essay, I left much unsaid that needed saying. I rather shrank from
dealing with matters which are outside the range of my own experience,
and confined myself to such illustrations of the positions maintained
as my own personal knowledge could supply. There are, however, some
phases of the country parson’s life which I am perhaps less competent
to dwell on than others who have been all their lives _rustics_, and
because I would not willingly wound the feelings of those whom I honour
and respect, therefore I am inclined to hang back and hold my peace and
say nothing.
Why does not somebody else step in and take up the thread where I
dropped it, deliver his testimony, and give us the record of his larger
experience? Or shall we ask another question? How is it that people who
have much to tell, so often have no faculty of setting it down in words
and sentences? We boast of our advance in education, and yet what has
it done for us--what is it doing for us?
I mean my son to be _really_ educated. I mean him to be able to sit
down to an organ and satisfy his soul as he dreams his dreams or sends
forth his wail of aspiration, or sobs out his grief and penitence, or
laughs forth his ecstasy of rapture, now in a passion of melody, now
in subtle tangle of mysterious fugue, now in awful billows of harmony,
making full concert to the angelic symphony. I mean him to be able
to catch the laugh of the child, or the scowl of the ruffian, or the
smirk of the swindler, or the wonder and triumph and joy and pride of
the maiden who has just listened to her lover’s tale, or the sombre
beauty of the aged when the twilight deepens and they are thinking of
the dawn. I mean my son to have the power to catch these things, and to
_hold_ them and show them to me, saying, “Look! there they are for you
and me to dwell on when we will.” Then, and not till then, will that
lad of promise have begun to be educated. But we--or such as I--what
upstarts we are! We that talk badly, write worse, and fumble and bungle
miserably with that beggarly vehicle of communication between man and
man which we call language--that wretched _calculus_ which serves
just a very little way towards helping us to hold converse with men
as foolish as ourselves, but leaves us helpless to make the throstle
feel how much we love him, and which we fling aside as a mere burden
when our hearts are dying in us with what we call our loneliness or
our despair. Educated! Who is educated? Certainly not the man who,
having his memory full of a vast assemblage of odds and ends, can no
more bring them out and produce them in an intelligible shape than I
can produce on canvas the face of yonder old beldame with the square
jaw and the bushy brows and the blazing eyes, and that burlesque of a
bonnet, square and round and oval at one and the same moment, and no
more capable of being described in words than of being written out in
musical notation.
Yet it is undeniable that the knack of Mr. Gigadibs is a convenient
knack, and it is a pity that my friend Mr. Cadaverous has not got it;
he is “of those who know.” Gigadibs is of those who can juggle with
the parts of speech, and very pretty jugglery it is. I envy Gigadibs
whenever I am compelled to relate things at second hand; for who can
help lying when he tries to bear evidence upon what others have seen
and heard and felt--and worst of all--have reasoned about?
* * * * *
It may have been observed that when I began upon the subject of the
country parson’s trials, I dwelt first upon those annoyances and
positive wrongs which he is compelled to submit to at the hands of the
powers that be, and which may be classed under the head of Financial;
and, secondly, upon such as are inherent in his position as a personage
living a life apart from those among whom he has to discharge his
peculiar duties.
As far as regards the mere peasant, this isolation is only what any
one must expect who is brought into relations more or less intimate
with a class socially and intellectually below or above his own. But
there are villages and villages, and the differences between them
are as great as between the East End of London and the West, between
May Fair and Red Lion Square. The ideal village is a happy valley,
where a simple people are living sweetly under the paternal care of a
gracious landowner, benevolent, open-handed, large-hearted, devout, a
man of wealth and culture, his wife a Lady Bountiful; his daughters
the judicious dispensers of liberal charity; his house the home of all
that is refining, cheering, elevating. There the happy parson always
finds a cordial welcome, and all those social advantages which make
life pleasant and serene for himself and his family. Parson and squire
work together in perfect harmony, the rectory and the hall are but the
greater and the lesser parts of a well-adjusted piece of machinery
which moves on with no friction and never comes to a dead stop. This is
the ideal village.
How different are the real villages, and how various! Take the case of
my friend Burney’s parish. An oblong surface through which a high road
runs straight as a ruler--wide ditches dividing the fields, with never
a hedge and never a tree--nine square miles of land with a population
of 900 human beings, here and there collected into an ugly hamlet,
each with a central alehouse, and a few feeble poplars looking as if
they were ashamed of themselves. There is not a farmer in the parish
who occupies 300 acres of land. There is not a squire’s house within a
radius of eleven miles from the rectory door. The nearest market town
is six miles off, the nearest railway station five. Friend Burney has
his house and garden and perhaps £350 a year to spend--that is quite
the outside. Every morning he goes to his school a long mile off,
every afternoon he has some one to “look after,” to visit in sickness
or sorrow, to watch or advise or comfort. One year with another he
calculates that he has to walk at least 1,500 miles in the way of duty.
As to the mere Sunday work, that needs no dwelling on; take it all in
all, it is about the least _wearing_ and least troublesome part of the
parson’s duties, always provided he puts his heart into it, and has
some faculty for it. But in all that tract of country over which he
is sometimes cruelly assumed to be no more than a spiritual overseer,
among all those 900 people, there is not a single man, woman, or child
that cares to talk to him, or ever does talk to him, about anything
outside the parish and its concerns. Nay! I forgot the schoolmaster and
his wife. They are young, intelligent, hopeful, and they came out of
Yorkshire, and have something to say of their experience in the North.
But they are just a little--undeniably a _little_ sore, just a _little_
touchy: they have a grievance. When they first came down to X., Mrs.
Rector did not leave her card on Mrs. Petticogges. It was a slight. It
was hoity-toity, it was airified. That is not all; the farmers are not,
as you may say, _cordial_ with the schoolmaster; and Farmer Gay, the
big man who holds 700 acres in the next parish and gives lawn-tennis
parties, never had the grace to take any notice of the Petticogges,
does not in fact _know_ the Petticogges. Meanwhile, friend Burney is
manager of the school, and by far the largest contributor to the funds,
and day by day he is in and out, he and his daughters. But there is no
time to talk or confer. The Petticogges have their hands full; when
their day’s work is over they have had enough of it. Round and round
and round they go in the dreary mill; every now and then there is a new
regulation of My Lords to worry them, a new book to get up, a new code
to study. Then there are the pupil teachers to look after, and returns
to make up, and all the dull routine which has to be got through.
How _can_ an elementary schoolmaster in a remote country village be a
reading-man, or what motive has he to get out of the narrow groove in
which he has been brought up? The best teachers, as a rule, are they
who know their work best and very little indeed outside it. “How is it
that at Dumpfield they don’t get a larger grant?” I asked one day of
an inspector noted for his shrewdness and good sense. “Surely Coxe is
by far the ablest and most brilliant teacher for miles round; he is
almost a man of genius?” “Precisely so,” was the reply, “the man’s out
of place. These brilliant men with a touch of genius are a nuisance
in an elementary school. My dear fellow, never let a _man of views_
come into your school. Keep him out. Beware of the being who is for
revolutionizing spelling and grammar!”
Mr. Petticogge is not a man of genius, only a better sort of elementary
schoolmaster, and entirely absorbed in his work. He, too, as all
the members of his fraternity do, occupies a position of isolation,
and between him and the parson there is just so much in common as
to make each hold aloof from the other without making either of
them congenial to their other neighbours. As for the rest of friend
Burney’s neighbours, take them in the gross, and you may say of them
what the ticket-of-leave man said of the Ten Commandments; “They’re
rather a poor lot and you can’t make much out of ’em.” I know no class
of men who are less sociable than the smaller farmers, as we reckon
smallness in the East. I mean the men who hold a couple of hundred
acres and under. It has often been laid to the charge of the great
occupiers in West Norfolk and elsewhere that in the good times they
were lavish beyond all reason in their hospitalities. I believe there
never has been anything of the sort among the smaller men; they are
not unfriendly, they are not wanting in cordiality, but they are not
companionable.
It is my privilege to know some who are notable exceptions to the all
but universal rule. I have not far to go from my own door to find
one whom I never pay a visit to without pleasure and profit, one who
has for many years been a great reader of Lord Tennyson’s poems, has
strong opinions on politics and the questions of the day, a thoughtful,
resolute, and true-hearted woman, who farms a hundred acres of land
without a bailiff, and, among other evidences of her good taste and
intelligence, is a diligent reader of the _Spectator_. But such are few
and far between.
It is one of the trials of the country parson that, as soon as he
passes out of the stratum to which the labourer belongs, he finds
himself in a stratum where there is nothing that has any of the
interest of originality, picturesqueness, or even passion. The people
who live and move in that stratum are dismally like the ticket-of-leave
man’s ten commandments. My neighbours hardly believe me when I tell
them I can see, even among the smaller farmers, much to admire, much to
respect, and something to love; but I do not wonder that many a country
parson “can’t make much out of ’em.” These men are having rather a hard
life just now, but they have _not_ to learn the most elementary lessons
of thrift and frugality. As a class they have always practised these
virtues, and as a class they are far less complaining than those who
belong to the higher stratum; they bear their burdens silently, perhaps
too silently, and they tell you that it’s no good grumbling--“that,”
one of them said to me, “only makes things worse, ’cause it makes _you_
worse!” Take them all in all, they whom I have elsewhere called _the
little ones_ are usually those of his parishioners with whom the parson
seldom comes into unpleasant relations; they are usually very hard at
work, very practical, very straightforward, and very seldom indeed
prone to give themselves airs.