The "walks" already spoken of, at a time when life had little or no
other pleasure for us on account of poverty and ill-health, were taken
at pretty regular intervals two or three times a year. It all depended
on our means; in very lean years there was but one outing. It was
impossible to escape altogether from the immense unfriendly wilderness
of London simply because, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to be the
only place in the wide world where our poor little talents could earn us
a few shillings a week to live on. Music and literature! but I fancy the
nearest crossing-sweeper did better, and could afford to give himself a
more generous dinner every day. It occasionally happened that an
article sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so many
rejections to have one accepted and paid for with a cheque worth several
pounds was a cause of astonishment, and was as truly a miracle as if the
angel of the sun had compassionately thrown us down a handful of gold.
And out of these little handfuls enough was sometimes saved for the
country rambles at Easter and Whitsuntide and in the autumn. It was
during one of these Easter walks, when seeking for a resting-place for
the night, that we met with another adventure worth telling.
We had got to that best part of Surrey not yet colonized by wealthy men
from the City, but where all things are as they were of old, when, late
in the day, we came to a pleasant straggling village with one street a
mile long. Here we resolved to stay, and walked the length of the street
making inquiries, but were told by every person we spoke to that the
only place we could stay at was the inn--the "White Hart." When we said
we preferred to stay at a cottage they smiled a pitying smile. No, there
was no such place. But we were determined not to go to the inn, although
it had a very inviting look, and was well placed with no other house
near it, looking on the wide village green with ancient trees shading
the road on either side.
Having passed it and got to the end of the village, we turned and walked
back, still making vain inquiries, passing it again, and when once more
at the starting-point we were in despair when we spied a man coming
along the middle of the road and went out to meet him to ask the weary
question for the last time. His appearance was rather odd as he came
towards us on that blowy March evening with dust and straws flying past
and the level sun shining full on him. He was tall and slim, with a
large round smooth face and big pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, and he
walked rapidly but in a peculiar jerky yet shambling manner, swinging
and tossing his legs and arms about. Moving along in this disjointed
manner in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of a
big flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the wind. This
unpromising-looking person at once told us that there was a place where
we could stay; he knew it well, for it happened to be his father's
house and his own home. It was away at the other end of the village. His
people had given accommodation to strangers before, and would be glad to
receive us and make us comfortable.
Surprised, and a little doubtful of our good fortune, I asked my young
man if he could explain the fact that so many of his neighbours had
assured us that no accommodation was to be had in the village except at
the inn. He did not make a direct reply. He said that the ways of
the villagers were not the ways of his people. He and all his house
cherished only kind feelings towards their neighbours; whether those
feelings were returned or not, it was not for him to say. And there was
something else. A small appointment which would keep a man from want for
the term of his natural life, without absorbing all his time, had
become vacant in the village. Several of the young men in the place were
anxious to have it; then he, too, came forward as a candidate, and all
the others jeered at him and tried to laugh him out of it. He cared
nothing for that, and when the examination came off he proved the best
man and got the place. He had fought his fight and had overcome all his
enemies; if they did not like him any the better for his victory, and
did and said little things to injure him, he did not mind much, he could
afford to forgive them.
Having finished his story, he said good-bye, and went his way, blown, as
it were, along the road by the wind.
We were now very curious to see the other members of his family; they
would, we imagined, prove amusing, if nothing better. They proved a good
deal better. The house we sought, for a house it was, stood a little way
back from the street in a large garden. It had in former times been an
inn, or farm-house, possibly a manor-house, and was large, with many
small rooms, and short, narrow, crooked staircases, half-landings and
narrow passages, and a few large rooms, their low ceilings resting on
old oak beams, black as ebony. Outside, it was the most picturesque and
doubtless the oldest house in the village; many-gabled, with very tall
ancient chimneys, the roofs of red tiles mottled grey and yellow with
age and lichen. It was a surprise to find a woodman--for that was
what the man was--living in such a big place. The woodman himself, his
appearance and character, gave us a second and greater surprise. He was
a well-shaped man of medium height; although past middle life he looked
young, and had no white thread in his raven-black hair and beard. His
teeth were white and even, and his features as perfect as I have seen in
any man. His eyes were pure dark blue, contrasting rather strangely with
his pale olive skin and intense black hair. Only a woodman, but he might
have come of one of the oldest and best families in the country, if
there is any connection between good blood and fine features and a noble
expression. Oddly enough, his surname was an uncommon and aristocratic
one. His wife, on the other hand, although a very good woman as we
found, had a distinctly plebeian countenance. One day she informed us
that she came of a different and better class than her husband's.
She was the daughter of a small tradesman, and had begun life as a
lady's-maid: her husband was nothing but a labourer; his people had been
labourers for generations, consequently her marriage to him had involved
a considerable descent in the social scale. Hearing this, it was hard to
repress a smile.
The contrast between this man and the ordinary villager of his class was
as great in manners and conversation as in features and expression. His
combined dignity and gentleness, and apparent unconsciousness of any
caste difference between man and man, were astonishing in one who had
been a simple toiler all his life.
There were some grown-up children, others growing up, with others that
were still quite small. The boys, I noticed, favoured their mother, and
had commonplace faces; the girls took after their father, and though
their features were not so perfect they were exceptionally good-looking.
The eldest son--the disjointed, fly-away-looking young man who had
conquered all his enemies--had a wife and child. The eldest daughter was
also married, and had one child. Altogether the three families numbered
about sixteen persons, each family having its separate set of rooms, but
all dining at one table. How did they do it? It seemed easy enough to
them. They were serious people in a sense, although always cheerful and
sometimes hilarious when together of an evening, or at their meals. But
they regarded life as a serious matter, a state of probation; they
were non-smokers, total abstainers, diligent at their work, united,
profoundly religious. A fresh wonder came to light when I found that
this poor woodman, with so large a family to support, who spent ten or
twelve hours every day at his outdoor work, had yet been able out of his
small earnings to buy bricks and other materials, and, assisted by his
sons, to build a chapel adjoining his house. Here he held religious
services on Sundays, and once or twice of an evening during the week.
These services consisted of extempore prayers, a short address, and
hymns accompanied by a harmonium, which they all appeared able to play.
What his particular doctrine was I did not inquire, nor did I wish for
any information on that point. Doubtless he was a Dissenter of some kind
living in a village where there was no chapel; the services were for
the family, but were also attended by a few of the villagers and some
persons from neighbouring farms who preferred a simpler form of worship
to that of the Church.
It was not strange that this little community should have been regarded
with something like disfavour by the other villagers. For these others,
man for man, made just as much money, and paid less rent for their
small cottages, and, furthermore, received doles from the vicar and his
well-to-do parishioners, yet they could not better their position, much
less afford the good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant things
which the independent woodman bestowed on his family. And they knew why.
The woodman's very presence in their midst was a continual reproach,
a sermon on improvidence and intemperance, which they could not avoid
hearing by thrusting their fingers into their ears.
During my stay with these people something occurred to cause them a very
deep disquiet. The reader will probably smile when I tell them what
it was. Awaking one night after midnight I heard the unusual sound of
voices in earnest conversation in the room below; this went on until
I fell asleep again. In the morning we noticed that our landlady had a
somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale faces, with
purple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept their mother company in
some sorrowful vigil. We were not left long in ignorance of the cause
of this cloud. The good woman asked if we had been much disturbed by
the talking. I answered that I had heard voices and had supposed that
friends from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat up
talking to a late hour. No--that was not it, she said; but someone had
arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and who had been absent
for some days on a visit to relations in another county. When they
gathered round him to hear his news he confessed that while away he
had learnt to smoke, and he now wished them to know that he had well
considered the matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong nor
harmful to smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco. They
had talked to him--father, mother, brothers, and sisters--using every
argument they could find or invent to move him, until it was day and
time for the woodman to go to his woods, and the others to their several
occupations. But their "all-night sitting" had been wasted; the stubborn
youth had not been convinced nor shaken. When, after morning prayers,
they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon them, they
had made a last appeal with tears in their eyes, and he had refused to
give the promise they asked. The poor woman was greatly distressed. This
young fellow, I thought, favours his mother in features, but mentally he
is perhaps more like his father. Being a smoker myself I ventured to
put in a word for him. They were distressing themselves too much, I told
her; smoking in moderation was not only harmless, especially to those
who worked out of doors, but it was a well-nigh universal habit, and
many leading men in the religious world, both churchmen and dissenters,
were known to be smokers.
Her answer, which came quickly enough, was that they did not regard
the practice of smoking as in itself bad, but they knew that in some
circumstances it was inexpedient; and in the case of her son they
were troubled at the thought of what smoking would ultimately lead to.
People, she continued, did not care to smoke, any more than they did to
eat and drink, in solitude. It was a social habit, and it was inevitable
that her boy should look for others to keep him company in smoking.
There would be no harm in that in the summer-time when young people like
to keep out of doors until bedtime; but during the long winter
evenings he would have to look for his companions in the parlour of the
public-house. And it would not be easy, scarcely possible, to sit long
among the others without drinking a little beer. It is really no more
wrong to drink a little beer than to smoke, he would say; and it would
be true. One pipe would lead to another and one glass of beer to
another. The habit would be formed and at last all his evenings and all
his earnings would be spent in the public-house.
She was right, and I had nothing more to say except to wish her success
in her efforts.
It is curious that the strongest protests against the evils of the
village pubic, which one hears from village women, come from those who
are not themselves sufferers. Perhaps it is not curious. Instinctively
we hide our sores, bodily and mental, from the public gaze.
Not long ago I was in a small rustic village in Wiltshire, perhaps the
most charming village I have seen in that country. There was no inn
or ale-house, and feeling very thirsty after my long walk I went to a
cottage and asked the woman I saw there for a drink of milk. She invited
me in, and spreading a clean cloth on the table, placed a jug of new
milk, a loaf, and butter before me. For these good things she proudly
refused to accept payment. As she was a handsome young woman, with a
clear, pleasant voice, I was glad to have her sit there and talk to me
while I refreshed myself. Besides, I was in search of information and
got it from her during our talk. My object in going to the village was
to see a woman who, I had been told, was living there. I now heard that
her cottage was close by, but unfortunately, while anxious to see her, I
had no excuse for calling.
"Do you think," said I to my young hostess, "that it would do to tell
her that I had heard something of her strange history and misfortunes,
and wished to offer her a little help? Is she very poor?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "Please do not offer her money, if you see her.
She would be offended. There is no one in this village who would take a
shilling as a gift from a stranger. We all have enough; there is not a
poor person among us."
"What a happy village!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps you are all total
abstainers."
She laughed, and said that they all brewed their own beer--there was not
a total abstainer among them. Every cottager made from fifty to eighty
gallons, or more, and they drank beer every day, but very moderately,
while it lasted. They were all very sober; their children would have to
go to some neighbouring village to see a tipsy man.
I remarked that at the next village, which had three public-houses,
there were a good marry persons so poor that they would gladly at any
time take a shilling from any one.
It was the same everywhere in the district, she said, except in that
village which had no public-house. Not only were they better off, and
independent of blanket societies and charity in all forms, but they were
infinitely happier. And after the day's work the men came home to spend
the evening with their wives and children.
At this stage I was surprised by a sudden burst of passion on her part.
She stood up, her face flushing red, and solemnly declared that if
ever a public-house was opened in that village, and if the men took
to spending their evenings in it, her husband with them, she would
not endure such a condition of things--she wondered that so many women
endured it--but would take her little ones and go away to earn her own
living under some other roof!