with him to-day; he shovelled about half a ton of coals into his mouth,
and Ebenezer Llewellyn and I had a sight of trouble in getting him to
disgorge.”
“You take my advice as a sensible man,” said the surgeon. “It is, first,
if you value the child, to give it more sun and air; it wants it. Sun and
air are more than beef and bread. If the little chap were not as black as
a hedgehog, curled up there at your back, I should say it was bleached
like sea-kale. It won’t do, Shone. The child now must be brought up upon
another system; that is, if you desire it to live and be healthy and
happy—unless you have insured its life, and want to get it under ground
altogether, so as to pocket the insurance money.”
Evans turned as blank as he could, considering the grime on his face. His
jaw dropped.
“But wherever am I to put him?” he asked.
“Now, I have been wanting to see you about this for some while,” said
the surgeon, who was a thoroughly good-hearted man, and who valued and
admired Shone. “There is Shian Thomas, the dressmaker, as good and steady
a wench as I know. She is very badly off. She has been caring for her
poor little crippled sister for several years. Now the child is dead, and
she has had heavy expenses, what with doctor’s bill—mine, you know——”
“Ah!” said Evans, “I know better than that. You were never hard on the
widow or the orphan. What is hard, is to get you to take anything for
your trouble when folks are in need themselves.”
“Well, well! there was the funeral and the mourning,” said the doctor,
laughing and colouring at the same time. “Now Shian [Jane] mopes for
the loss of her sister, and I am sure—I am as sure of this as of
anything—that if you confided the young shaver to her, it would be good
for her, good for the child, and”—he said the last words as he turned
away—“in the end might be good for you.”
Evans walked on his way meditatively. He did not act at once. He waited
a day or two. But as the acquisitiveness of the babe became more
pronounced, he resolved to put it beyond temptation, where it could not
devour coals; and so he arranged with Shian Thomas that she should look
after his child at such time, day and night, as he was at work. But as
soon as ever he returned from the pit, whether in the very early morning
before dawn, or whether in the afternoon, he was to reclaim the child
and carry it home with him. He would not be in the house without it; but
he brought himself to admit that now it was advisable, if not necessary,
that it should no longer go down the pit with him till, as he said, “he
comes of age and takes it upon himself.”
He undertook to make a small payment to Shian for her trouble, which was
of assistance to her in her then straitened circumstances.
“And you may reckon on this, Shone,” said she, “I’ll take every bit as
much care of him as if he were my own. There is an empty place in my
house, and in my heart, since I have lost Bessie, and I will put the
little man there.”
A couple of weeks under the care of Shian told on the child. He put on
fat, became more merry, crowed, chirped, and waxed rosy.
It was a delight to his father to see him, and he did not always return
from the pit alone. One day he brought with him Ebenezer Llewellyn
to criticise the babe and judge whether the improvement was real or
fictitious. He, a father of fourteen children, ten of whom he had reared,
after weighing the little one and turning down his lips to see if the
colour were red, gave verdict that was favourable. Then came what Shian
called “the committee,” a body of workmen on the shift with Shone, to
see with their own eyes that all was going on well with the “shaver.” He
belonged to the pit, and all the men felt an interest in him, and all
wanted to be satisfied that the child was flourishing. All wished to have
their say about him, and to give Shian advice as to how he was to be
dieted and clothed.
More critical than the rest was Shone, and the dressmaker was obliged to
be forbearing with him, for his criticism became at times captious. As,
for instance, on one occasion when he came to resume the child and found
she had cut out for its amusement a score of dancing men and women, the
latter with tall Welsh hats, holding hands, capering vigorously—she had
cut them with her scissors out of a sheet of folded paper—Shone put on a
grave face.
“I think you should not have encouraged levity in the boy,” said he. “I
wouldn’t have the idea put into his head that men and women are created
to dance.”
“But, Shone, they are only paper.”
“Paper or flesh and blood is all the same. They are dancing. I don’t
like it. You can’t be too careful with a child. It’s just when they’re
young that they take in ideas, as they do nourishment—they suck it in in
buckets.”
“How would you have me cut them out?—walking to chapel?”
“That would be better.”
“Shone, if I do that, I must make them prance. One cannot cut out these
paper men and women without giving them high action. You would not have a
whole train of them prancing to church like war-horses!”
The fact of the case was that Shone was slightly jealous. His child
had taken to Shian, he clung to her, dabbed his little mouth over her
cheek—in kisses, and was distinctly more happy with her than with his
father.
Shone was conscious of it, and fought against it. He reasoned with
himself; but could not reason himself out of his jealousy.
Had his child not put on fat, not gained in colour—had it become peevish,
he would have blamed the young woman, and taken it away. But when not
only Ebenezer, but also the “committee,” and his own consciousness
assured him that all was well with the infant—better than it had been
when it lived half its time underground—then he could not withdraw it
from Shian, save for those hours when he was free from work.
So matters went on for a while, and then the situation became aggravated,
for the child began to cry when he took it in his arms to remove it, and
stretched forth its little hands to Shian, and sobbed, and would not be
comforted by the father. It fretted when at home, it screamed, moaned,
was restless. Shone thought it must be ill, and consulted a doctor; he
battled against the assurance that nothing ailed the child, save its
temporary separation from the woman who was as a mother to it.
He worked himself into excitement against Shian; she was stealing
his child’s heart from him. But his good sense returned. She was not
willingly doing this. It was due to the irresistible. The natural nurse
of a babe is a woman, and not a man, and the child instinctively clings
to the nurse.
“I pay her six shillings for it,” grumbled Shone. “He ought to understand
that she is a hireling and not his mother.”
This he said to the doctor, to whom, perhaps unguardedly, he had let out
what embittered his heart.
“Quite so, Evans,” answered the surgeon. “But as the child has not as
yet reached the age of reason in which it can draw such distinctions, why
do you not make Shian its mother?”
Shone opened his eyes, stared at his adviser, turned his back, and walked
away.
But the advice stuck.
Here was a solution to the difficulty, yet not one very pleasing to the
collier. He brooded over his wrong, and also over the redress that lay
open to him. Not a word could be said against Shian. She was a quiet,
hard-working, steady girl.
Shone had taken to her stockings to be darned, garments to be mended, and
had paid her for her work. He was obliged occasionally to call in the
aid of a charwoman to do his washing, and also to clean up his house.
As to his bit of cooking, he did that himself, but was not skilful at
the fire and oven. He fared poorly, and was not infrequently out of
sorts—the cause, his own bad cooking. Now all these inconveniences would
be rectified had he a wife—and yet—and yet——Shone shook his head.
Then an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out in the Dulais Valley. Shone
was frightened. For the sake of his child he considered what was to be
done. Some provision must be made. If the little one sickened, who was
to attend to it?—and attention it would need day and night. The proper
person would be Shian—a stranger would never do. But Shian—he could not
bid her nurse the child in his house, and to have it throughout the long
sickness in hers, and he not with it—that would never do. Besides, she
was a dressmaker. She could not take in needlework when there was risk of
infection in her house. Shone stamped. What was to be done?
“How is it?” he asked, as he came back from the pit.
“Very well, Shone. As usual, very cheerful.”
“No signs of a sore throat? Have you looked?”
“None at all.”
“But suppose he were to get it?”
“Get what?”
“The scarlatina.”
“You need not suppose it. He is quite well.”
“We must provide against the worst.”
“The worst, Shone!”
“Oh!” with a shiver, “I do not mean the worst at all—God forbid; but
against his catching the fever.”
“Well, what will you do?”
“Do, Shian? There is nothing else to be done but for you to marry me. You
see—I do it for the babe’s sake, and because of the infection.”
She was surprised—a little amused.
“And,” put in Shone, a little apologetically, “there are my stockings
want mending. But, really, for the child’s sake, I wish it.”
“I suppose, Shone, if the poor little chap were to be taken ill, he’d be
removed from here?”
“No doubt of it. The sanitary officer wouldn’t allow it here.”
“Nor could I nurse it?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, then, Shone, for the scarlatina’s sake I don’t mind if I do take
you.”
“Then,” said Shone, “we must look sharp. Let me see his throat. He might
have it come on sudden. I’ll get a license.”
It was certainly an odd proposal and a queer acceptance, and no expense
was spared.
“Bless me,” said Shone, “for the child’s sake, and because of the scarlet
fever, I will stump up a guinea for the license.”
So Shone and Shian were married; and the child did not get scarlatina—so
that all this trouble and expense were, in Shone’s eyes, thrown away.
“Might just as well have chucked it all down a disused coalpit!” said he.
Positively he became grumpy and querulous because his child showed no
signs of drowsiness, sore throat, and eruption. Not that he wished it to
be ill, but he wanted a justification of his marriage.
Shian did her utmost to make him comfortable. She brought the cottage to
a condition of scrupulous cleanliness; she took in hand all his clothes,
she mended them, and made some that he had discarded as neat as new. She
did the washing in a manner very different from that of the charwoman.
Above all, she cooked really-appetising meals that made Shone’s face
relax.
No sooner did he return from the pit than at once she put the child in
his arms. She made no attempt to stand between it and the father. On
the contrary, she talked to the little creature of its daddy when he
was away, and encouraged it to look out for his return. Indeed, as he
came up the street every day, he could see Shian at the door holding up
the child; he could see its arms extended, and the hands clapping with
pleasure at his appearance.
Shian felt that she was an accessory, not a prime factor in the house and
in the well-being of Shone—the baby was the monarch, engrossing all his
affection, occupying all his thoughts. She was accepted as a necessity,
as conducing to the health and happiness of the child—one who could be
and would be dispensed with unless needed for the child’s sake. But she
was a patient, sweet, and uncomplaining woman. She was not a little sad
at heart, and the tears often filled her eyes. She coveted some of the
kisses, some of the endearing terms lavished on the child—some, also,
of the glow of love that lit up the father’s eyes as he watched his
babe. Oh, if only, as he returned from the pit, he had looked at her a
little—just a little—instead of fixing his eyes, from the first moment he
saw it till he had it in his arms, on the child. But she had been taken
into the house, had become Shone’s wife, for the sake of the child; and
she submitted to be regarded with just so much consideration as behoved a
dutiful servant to the little one.
Time went on. Shone began to mend in spirits. He looked more respectable
on Sundays; his digestion was better; he had no more unpleasant attacks
after a meal of what might have been beef, but was leather, which had
troubled him at one time. He had now Yorkshire pudding dipped in gravy;
he had not that in the days of his widowership.
He began to have words for Shian relative to other topics than the baby.
She caught him, by the firelight—as he smoked in the evening and she
knitted—observing her attentively.
Then came Christmas Day.
Now there were sprigs of holly stuck in the windows and about the
mantelpiece. The fire blazed, and was reflected in the burnished Bristol
ware that shone on the dresser as though real copper. And there was a
savoury smell in the house.
“Goose!” exclaimed Shone. “By the powers—goose! And sage and onions,”
said he, after a pause—“I smell them. Goodness me, I wish the boy were
old enough to enjoy it all.”
“Here, father,” said Shian, as she laid the dinner—“here you are—goose,
yes; onion and sage—yes. You would not have goose alone, surely?”
“Well,” said Shone, and his face beamed with peace and goodwill,
“well—to—be—sure.”
“And”—when the first course was over—“I have another pleasure in store
for you.”
“That is——”
“See!” Shian introduced a little Christmas tree, manufactured out of a
branch of fir, and to it were hung two—just two—articles: a cap lined
with swansdown, and trimmed with cherry ribbons, and a long pair of
newly-knitted stockings. “There,” said Shian, “for baby and you—your
Christmas presents. I bring it now, whilst he is awake, that he may enjoy
it with us.”
“Well,” gasped Shone, “this is delightful! How lovely the child will
look in such a glorious bonnet. And how warm my legs will be in these
beautiful stockings.”
“That is not all,” said Shian.
“What more can there be?”
“This!” And she dished up a real Christmas plum-pudding.
When Shone saw this the tears came into his eyes.
“Why, Shian!” he said, and felt a pinch of the heart, “you have thought
for every one but yourself!”
“No, no, father,” said she. “I have had some of the goose, and shall of
the plum-pudding.”
“Some—some!” said he impatiently. “But there is nothing for yourself
particularly.”
Then he jumped up, ran behind her at table, caught her head in his arms,
pressed her face to his heart, and covered brow and lips with kisses.
“O Shian! You have my love—my very heart!”
“Because of—baby?”
“No, not only; because——”
“Of the goose?”
“No—no, not only; because——”
“Of the plum-pudding?”
“No—no; I mean——”
“Because of the long stockings?”
“No, Shian; because of yourself, your own dear, sweet self—the best in
the world!”
“That is my Christmas box, Shone! You could not have given me a better.”
HENRY FROST
HENRY FROST
There is no myth relative to the manners and customs of the English that
in my experience is more tenaciously held by the ordinary Frenchman,
than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is an habitual and an
accepted fact in English life.
It is—so far as my experience goes—quite useless to assure a Frenchman
that such transfer of wives is not a matter of every-day occurrence and
is not legal; he replies, with an expression of incredulity, that of
course English people endeavour to make light of, or deny a fact that is
“notorious.”
In a book by the antiquary Colin de Plancy, on Legends and Superstitions
connected with the Sacraments, he gives up some pages to an account of
the prevalent English custom.
When I was in France a few years ago, in a town church in the south, I
heard an abbé once preach on marriage, and contrast its indissolubility
in Catholic France with the laxity in Protestant England, where “any
one, when tired of his wife, puts a halter round her neck, takes her to
the next market town and sells her for what she will fetch.” I ventured
to call on this abbé and remonstrate, but he answered me he had seen
the fact stated in books of the highest authority, and that my disputing
the statement did not prove that his authorities were wrong, but that my
experience was limited, and he asked me point-blank whether I had never
known such cases. There, unhappily, he had me on the hip. And when I was
obliged to confess that I _did_ know of one such case, “Mais, voilà, mon
Dieu,” said he, and shrugged his shoulders with a triumphant smile.
Now it must be allowed that such sales have taken place, and that this is
so is due to rooted conviction in the rustic mind that such a transaction
is legal and morally permissible.
The case I knew was this.
There lived a tall, thin man in the parish when I was a boy, who was the
village poet. Whenever an event of any consequence took place within the
confines of the parish, such as the marriage of the squire’s daughter,
he came down to the manor-house with a copy of verses he had composed on
the occasion, and was then given his dinner and a crown. Now this man had
actually bought his wife for half-a-crown. Her husband had led her into
Okehampton and had sold her there in the market. The poet purchased her
for half the sum he had received for one of his poems, and led her home
with him, a distance of twelve miles, by the halter, he holding it in his
hand, she placidly, contentedly, wearing the loop about her neck.
The report that Henry Frost was leading home his half-crown wife preceded
the arrival of the couple, and when they entered the village all the
inhabitants turned out to see the spectacle.
Now this arrangement was not very satisfactory to either squire or
rector, and both intervened. Henry Frost maintained that Anne was his
legitimate wife, for “he had not only bought her in the market, but had
led her home, with the halter in his hand, and he’d take his Bible oath
that he never took the halter off her till she had crossed his doorstep
and he had shut the door.”
The parson took down the Bible, the squire “Burn’s Justice of Peace,”
and strove to convince Harry that his conduct was warranted by neither
Scripture nor the law of the land. “I don’t care,” he said, “her’s my
wife, as sure as if we was spliced at the altar, for and because I paid
half-a-crown, and I never took off the halter till her was in my house;
lor’ bless yer honours, you may ask any one if that ain’t marriage, good,
sound, and Christian, and every one will tell you it is.”
Mr. Henry Frost lived in a cottage that was on lives, so the squire was
unable to bring compulsion to bear on him.
When I call the man Frost, I am not employing his real name, because his
relatives are alive, and I know them very well.
Frost, as already intimated, was village bard or poet. I remember well
his coming down to the house with a poem on a transaction of my father’s,
the advisability of which I now greatly doubt.
In our village, the “revel” was kept up every year on the first Sunday
after Trinity Sunday, and the week following. A revel in Devonshire
is the equivalent of the wake in other parts of England, and of the
feast in Cornwall. It used to be celebrated on the day of the saint
to whom the parish church is dedicated. But when the new style came
into use, the conservative rustic mind resisted the change and adhered
to the computation according to the unrevised calendar. Accordingly,
in most places the feast or revel is eleven days after the day of the
patron saint. In some places, however, it is movable. Now our church is
dedicated to St. Peter, accordingly our revel ought to be on the nearest
Sunday after June 29. It is rare indeed that the first Sunday after
Trinity should fall so late, and impossible, I believe, that it could
synchronise with old-style St. Peter’s Day. In 1899 the first Sunday
after Trinity was on June 4—twenty-five days before new-style St. Peter’s
Day, and thirty-six before the feast reckoned by the old style.
There is, however, some reason to believe that the earlier dedication was
to St. Petrock, whose day is June 4, and that the title of the church
was altered in 1261, when reconsecrated. The bishops of Exeter always
endeavoured to get rid of the patron saints when belonging to the Celtic
Church, and substitute for them some who were in the Roman calendar.
The revel at Lew Trenchard agreed much more closely with St. Petrock’s
Day than with that of St. Peter the Apostle.
However, this is neither here nor there. The revel was kept up with
shows, a fair, and horse-races, and it must be allowed there was some
drunkenness.
My father, as squire, and in those days an autocrat, disapproved of the
revel and abolished it, and substituted for it a cottage garden show, on
no very determined date. The revel has never recovered, and the flower
show, after living for two years, died a natural death.
I do not myself believe in the destruction of any ancient institution.
Let it be reformed, but never abolished.
Well, now to the point.
Henry Frost appeared on the occasion of the first flower show with a poem
composed to celebrate the birth of the cottage garden exhibition and the
burial of the revel. It was very laudatory of my father, and every verse
concluded with the refrain—
“For he had a most expansive mind.”
He had used incredible effort to obtain suitable rhymes. In one verse he
had—
“In laudable efforts he was not behind,
For, &c.”
Another ran—
“To drunken abuses never was blind,
For, &c.
Another, in doubtful grammar, ran—
“Among his comperes greatly he shined,
For, &c.”
“Ah,” said my father, “all Henry Frost thinks of in his innermost mind
is that I should have a most expansive pocket, and that he may be able to
get drunk on what he draws from it in reward for his poem.”
When Anne died, then a difficulty arose: under what name was she to be
entered in the register? The parson insisted that he could not and he
would not enter her as Anne Frost, for that was not her legal name. Then
Henry was angry, and carried her off to be buried in another parish,
where the parson was unacquainted with the circumstances. I must say that
Anne proved an excellent “wife.” She was thrifty, clean, and managed a
rough-tempered and rough-tongued man with great tact, and was generally
respected. She died in or about 1843.
Much later than that there lived a publican some miles off, whom I knew
very well; indeed he was the namesake of and first cousin to a carpenter
in my constant employ. He bought his wife for a stone two-gallon jar
of Plymouth gin, if I was informed aright. She had belonged to a
stonecutter, but as he was dissatisfied with her, he put up a written
notice in several public places to this effect—
NOTICE.
This here be to hinform the publick as how G⸺ C⸺ be dispozed to
sell his wife by Auction. Her be a dacent, clanely woman, and
be of age twenty-five ears. The sale be to take place in the ⸺
Inn, Thursday next at seven o’clock.
In this case also I do not give the names, as the woman is, I believe,
still alive. I believe—as I was told—that the foreman of the works
remonstrated, and insisted that such a sale would be illegal. He was
not, however, clear as to the points of law, and he asserted that it
would be illegal unless the husband held an auctioneer’s license, and
if money passed. This was rather a damper. However, the husband was
very desirous to be freed from his wife, and he held the sale as he had
advertised, making the woman stand on a table, and he armed himself with
a little hammer. The biddings were to be in kind and not in money. One
man offered a coat, but as he was a small man and the seller was stout,
when he found that the coat would not fit him he refused it. Another
offered a “phisgie,” _i.e._ a pick, but this also was refused, as the
husband possessed a “phisgie” of his own. Finally the landlord offered a
two-gallon jar of gin, and down fell the hammer with “gone.”
I knew the woman; she was not bad looking. The new husband drank, and
treated her very roughly, and on one occasion when I was lunching at
the inn she had a black eye. I asked her how she had hurt herself. She
replied that she had knocked her face against the door, but I was told
that this was a result of a domestic brawl. Now, the remarkable feature
in these cases is that it is impossible to drive the idea out of the
heads of those who thus deal in wives that such a transaction is not
sanctioned by law and religion. In a parish register in my neighbourhood
is the following entry—
1756. Robert Elford was baptized, child of Susanna Elford by
her sister’s husband; she was married with the consent of her
sister, the wife, who was at the wedding.