I had experienced, poured themselves out in poetical effusions,
outbursts, ejaculations—I know not what to call them. Sometimes lying
full length in the train coming home at midnight from some lecture
engagement, hardly able to move; sometimes in the morning with a sense
of restoration, flying over the fields in the sunlight; sometimes in my
little lodging; sometimes on a long country walk—I wrote just what the
necessity of my feelings compelled—formless scraps, cries, prophetic
assurances—in no available metre, or shape, just as they came. In no
shape that they could be given to the world; but they were a relief to
me, and a consolation.
Afterwards, when I found as it were the keynote which harmonized these
disjointed utterances, I made use of them; and they were mostly embodied
and embedded and adapted into the structure of _Towards Democracy_.
I say my nerves had come to such a pass of dislocation, that I was
nearly breaking down; and I had sworn a great oath to myself to mend
matters somehow. The year 1879 was in many ways the dim dawn or
beginning of a new life to me.
Early in that year I made my first valid essays in the direction of a
reform in diet. I may have tentatively experimented in vegetarianism
before that, but ineffectually and in ignorance. Once I remember boldly
dining off nothing but a vegetable marrow. Of course, disastrous defeat
and dismay immediately followed! Practically I had always lived along
the usual régime, of plentiful meat, washed down with beer or wine; and
probably the sick headaches and nervous tension of my early years were
to a considerable extent due to this excess of stimulation. Now, the
vegetarian ideal, for many reasons, began to commend itself to me; and
though I did not abandon meat at once, I gradually pushed along this
line—slowly as my way is, but steadily—so that after four or five years,
that is, by ’83 or ’84, I practically was able to dispense with meat
(and alcoholics) altogether—and did so dispense, often for months at a
time.
A word here about my vegetarian practice generally. I find now [1899]
that though I have lived, as said, for months at a time without meat or
fish of _any kind_, and have enjoyed in so doing infinitely better
health than ever before—and though I feel as if I could continue in this
diet indefinitely and much prefer it—I have yet never made any absolute
rule against flesh-eating, and have as a matter of fact eaten a very
little every now and then—just, as it were, to see how it tasted, or to
avoid giving trouble in Philistine households, and so forth. Having a
strong (perhaps a too strong) objection to _principles_ generally, I
have disliked the idea of making any absolute rule in the matter.
Briefly I find the vegetarian diet—fruit and grains and vegetables,
nuts, eggs, and milk—pleasant, clean, healthful in every way, and
grateful to one’s sense of decency and humanity. It is a real pleasure
to live among those who adopt it. But having spent my time for the most
part embedded among folk who favour meat, I have not always kept to my
own choice, but have given in at times to a supposed convenience or
necessity. Perhaps I should have done better, for myself and others, if
I had been more resolute, but such are the facts.
In the year 1879 also the absolute necessity for a more open-air life
began to make itself felt. I had always lived in towns, and though fond
of the country I looked on the town as my natural home. Now I began to
long for a country home. I took long walks round Sheffield, and bitterly
regretted having to come _back_ in the evening, instead of staying
permanently outside. I began to revolve how a change might be possible.
Manual work, too, in contradistinction to the mere ‘exercise’ (riding or
cricket or athletics) which takes the place of work among the well-to-do
classes, began to have a fascination for me. I think it was in this
summer [1879] that being at Brighton, I worked for a couple of months in
a joiner’s shop, regularly, from 6.30 to 8.30 every morning; I used to
make panel doors, and got a good experience, so far, of the trade.
Also as I continued to make Sheffield the headquarters of my lectures, I
was taking definite root there, and reaching down partly through my
classes, partly through explorations of my own, into the actual society
of the manual workers; and beginning to knit up alliances more
satisfactory to me than any I had before known. Railway men, porters,
clerks, signalmen, ironworkers, coach-builders, Sheffield cutlers, and
others came within my ken, and from the first I got on excellently and
felt fully at home with them—and I believe, in most cases, they with me.
I felt I had come into, or at least in sight of, the world to which I
belonged, and to my natural _habitat_.
It was about this time that I made the acquaintance of a man who for
some years after was a good deal associated with me—Albert Fearnehough.
He came up one evening after a lecture, and gave me his name (I remember
thinking how strange it was) and address; and asked me if I would come
and see him some time. Later, meeting me in the street, he renewed the
request, telling me that his friend who came with him to the lectures
was a young farmer who was well up in ‘book-learning’ (which he himself
was not)—that they both lived in the country, he in a cottage on the
farm of which Fox, his friend, was owner; and that they would both
gladly entertain me any time that I cared for a country walk. Here was
exactly my opportunity. I accepted the invitation, and not long
afterwards went to visit the two friends at the little hamlet of
Bradway, four or five miles from Sheffield, on the charming outskirts of
Beauchief Abbey.
[Illustration:
ALBERT FEARNEHOUGH AND “BRUNO.”
]
Fearnehough was a scythe-maker, a riveter, a muscular, powerful man of
about my age, quite ‘uneducated’ in the ordinary sense (since indeed at
the age of nine he had pushed a handcart about the streets of Sheffield)
but well-grown and finely built, with a good practical capacity though
slow brain, and something of the latent fire and indomitableness of the
iron-worker—a man whose ideal was the rude life of the backwoods, and
who hated the shams of commercialism. Indeed he was always getting into
coils with his employers because he would not scamp and hurry over his
work, as occasion demanded; and with his workmates because he would not
countenance their doing so. In many ways he was delightful to me, as the
one ‘powerful uneducated’ and natural person I had as yet, in all my
life, met with. Moreover there was a touch of pathos in his inarticulate
ways and in his own sense of inability to compete with the cheapjack
commercialism of the day. He lived in a tiny little cottage, on Fox’s
farm as I have said, with his wife, a good patient worker, and two
children. And many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon I came up there and
had tea with them, or roamed about the fields.
Charles Fox was a very singular character—a bachelor, with a good brain,
curiously fond of mathematics in his boyhood, quite an original thinker
in his way—yet to look at, a mere clodhopping farmer with inexpressive
face, humped shoulders, and beetle-like gait. He was not ill-looking,
but decidedly quaint, with his florid, shaven face, and only the sharp
gleam of his eye to show you his shrewdness. Most of the country-folk
thought him a little touched in the head, for his odd Socratic humour;
and never fathomed in the least his real ability. He lived on the farm
left him by his father, with an unmarried cousin of his, Miss Fox, for
housekeeper, and with _her_ son Teddie for his farm-lad and helper; and
with a brother, Owen, who certainly _was_ weak in the head and feeble,
and of no practical use in the establishment. Between Teddie and his
uncle quite an affection existed; but of the household, and especially
of Charles Fox I have given some account in a separate paper, under the
title of _Martin Turner_[11]; and what I have there said I need not
repeat.
My acquaintance with these two men had its inevitable effect on me. I
saw at last my way of escape out of that dingy wilderness, that _selva
oscura_, in which I had wandered lost, from childhood even down to the
very middle of life’s journey. They represented at any rate for me a
deliverance from the idiotic fatuous life I had been submerged in all my
boyhood at Brighton, and more or less ever since. They represented, if
nothing more, a life close to Nature and actual materials, shrewd,
strong, manly, independent, not the least polite or proper, thoroughly
human and kindly, and spent for the most part in the fields and under
the open sky.
My visits to little Bradway and the farm became more and more frequent.
I was accepted cordially by both households. I joined in the farm work,
and spent long evenings with the boy and his uncle in the cowhouse or
with the two families round their kitchen fire—quaint scenes of fun and
merriment which are graven on my mind, but which it would take too long
to recount here. I soon formed a plan of coming to live if possible with
these good people, and carrying on my lectures even from this distance
out in the country.
It took a little time to arrange anything, but after some months it was
agreed that Fearnehough should move into another cottage a little
distance off (since the one he occupied was so small) and that I should
lodge with him for a time. Accordingly (in May 1880) he migrated with
his family to the neighboring parish of Totley, and I joined them there;
but in March of the following year, the adjacent cottage to the old one
on Fox’s land having become vacant, and Fox having thrown the two into
one, we returned to Bradway and resumed our old relations on the farm.
I had managed to carry on my lectures from Totley—indeed I had added a
new course, on the “History of Music,” and one that interested me much,
to my former ones; but it was certainly inconvenient, carrying on the
work from such a distance in the country; and new interests and forces
were growing within me.
The life, especially since our return to Bradway, was so different from
anything to which I had before been accustomed, it was so congenial in
many respects, so native, so unrestrained, it seemed to liberate the
pent-up emotionality of years. All the feelings which had sought, in
suffering and in distress, their stifled expression within me during the
last seven or eight years, gathered themselves together to a new and
more joyous utterance. My physical health was every day becoming better.
There was a new beauty over the world. Everywhere I paused, in the lanes
or the fields, or on my way to or from the station, to catch some magic
sound, some intimation of a perpetual freedom and gladness such as earth
and its inhabitants (it seemed to me) had hardly yet dreamed of. I
remember that, all that time, I was haunted by an image, a vision within
me, of something like the bulb and bud, with short green blades, of a
huge hyacinth just appearing above the ground. I knew that it
represented vigour and abounding life. But now I seem to see that, in
the strange emblematic way in which the soul sometimes speaks, this
image may have been a sign of the fact that my life had really at last
taken root, and was beginning rapidly to grow.
Another thing happened about this time. On the 25th January 1881 my
mother died. Her death affected me profoundly. Though there had been (as
I have explained elsewhere) so little in the way of spoken confidences
between us, we were united by a strong invisible tie. For months, even
years, after her death, I seemed to feel her, even see her, close to
me—always figuring as a semi-luminous presence, very real, but faint in
outline, larger than mortal. It was an inexpressibly tender and
consoling relation. Gradually, in the course of years, the presence, or
the sense of it, faded away, becoming less and less objective, into the
background of my mind, where it remains now, more as it were an actual
part of myself than it was then.
Her death at this moment exercised perhaps a great etherealizing
influence on my mind, exhaling the great mass of feelings, intuitions,
conceptions, and views of life and the world which had formed within
me, into another sphere. The _Bhagavat Gita_ about the same time
falling into my hands gave me a keynote. And all at once I found
myself in touch with a mood of exaltation and inspiration—a kind of
super-consciousness—which passed all that I had experienced before,
and which immediately harmonized all these other feelings, giving to
them their place, their meaning and their outlet in expression.
And so it was that _Towards Democracy_ came to birth. I was in fact
completely taken captive by this new growth within me, and could hardly
finish my course of lectures for the preoccupation. Already I was
speculating how I could cut myself free. No sooner were the lectures
over (about the end of April 1881) than I began writing _Towards
Democracy_. It seemed all ready there. I never hesitated for a moment.
Day by day it came along from point to point. I did not hurry: I
expressed everything with slow care and to my best; I utilized former
material which I had by me; but the one illuminating mood remained and
everything fell into place under it; and rarely did I find it necessary
to remodel, or rearrange to any great extent, anything that I had once
written.
I soon saw that the whole utterance would take a long time. I decided to
give up my lecturing work so as to be quite unhampered. And I did so.
What with my savings from Cambridge days, and a small income of fifty or
sixty pounds a year springing from them, I knew I could live well enough
for a few years—and so I felt supremely happy. It became necessary also
to have some place in which to sit many hours a day writing—and so I
knocked together a kind of wooden sentinel-box, placed it in a quiet
corner of the garden, overlooking far fields, and thither resorted all
through the summer, and into the autumn, and far away through the
winter.
What sweet times were those! all the summer to the hum of the bees in
the leafage, the robins and chaffinches hopping around, an occasional
large bird flying by, the men away at work in the fields, the consuming
pressure of the work within me, the wonderment how it would turn out;
the days there in the rain, or in the snow; nights sometimes, with
moonlight or a little lamp to write by; far far away from anything
polite or respectable, or any sign or symbol of my hated old life. Then
the afternoons at work with my friends in the fields, hoeing and
singling turnips or getting potatoes, or down in Sheffield on into the
evenings with new companions among new modes of life and work—everything
turning and shaping itself into material for my poem. There was a sense
to me of inevitableness in it all, and of being borne along, which gave
me good courage, notwithstanding occasional natural doubts; and a sense
too of unspeakable relief and deliverance, after all those long years of
gestation, as of a woman with her child.
In about a year, that is, by early in 1882, _Towards Democracy_—that is
the long first poem which bears that name—was completed except for some
technical revisions. The child, conceived and carried in pain and
anguish, was at last brought into the world.
Some further details with regard to the genesis of _Towards Democracy_
were given in a short paper in the _Labour Prophet_ for May 1894, and
are now reprinted as a Note to the editions of _Towards Democracy_; and
the history of its publication is given in Chapter XI below.
[Illustration:
E. C. (1887), AGE 43.
]
VI
MANUAL WORK AND MARKET-GARDENING
In April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land
of dreams into a very different sphere. It became necessary for me to
return home, to Brighton, and handle, as executor, a considerable
estate—divisible among ten children. The investments were chiefly in
American securities—and they gave a lot of trouble! I stayed at Brighton
four or five months, dealing with solicitors, brokers, officials,
relatives—selling, negotiating, dividing, transferring without end—doing
the work of a lawyer’s clerk in fact. Indeed our solicitor remarked one
day, perhaps rather plaintively, that it was lucky I had had the time to
spare, as it had saved the family no doubt some hundreds of pounds! Of
course the work was not really finished for three or four years, but the
thick of it was got through that summer, and after that I returned to my
beloved Bradway.
My forced stay at Brighton brought out into strong relief the contrast
between the old life and the new. I felt more than ever the futility and
irksomeness of the old order. I missed my companions of the North, I
grieved more than ever over the wasted lives around me in the South—but
it was with a new sense, the knowledge that there was something better.
I employed my spare time in writing shorter pieces in the style of
_Towards Democracy_ and revising what I had already written, using my
new surroundings again as a point of view under the great light of my
main inspiration. My unmarried sisters remained on for a few years at
Brighton after my father’s death, keeping the house together much as of
old. Then they removed to London, and at last (in 1886) the old house
and furniture were sold and its doors closed on the family who had
occupied it for forty years.
At the end of the summer of which I am speaking—about September 1882—I
returned to my home at Bradway. My father’s death had left me (more or
less prospectively) possessor of about £6,000—which with my little
savings of earlier years, seemed quite a large fortune—too large
indeed—it rather weighed on my mind![12] My lectures were over and done
with; some years of literary work were before me, but obviously not of a
paying sort, either in the way of wages or fame. The question was What
should I do?
I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I
really don’t know exactly why I didn’t. But the fancy for manual work
had seized me, and for some reason or other, nothing but a life of that
kind would satisfy me—only it must be in the open air. No sooner had my
father died than I made up my mind to buy a piece of land and work on it
as a market-gardener.
No doubt it was a healthy instinct. The motive was in the main a purely
personal one. I felt (and rightly) the need of physical work, of
open-air life and labour—something primitive to restore my overworn
constitution. I felt the need directly and instinctively, not as a thing
argued out and intellectually concluded. I have sometimes been credited
with making this move onto the land in pursuance of some great theory or
scheme of social salvation! But it was not so. There was no idea of this
kind in it, or if there was, it was of a very secondary character. My
thought was my own need. But I may have had some feeling that a life of
this kind was more honest than the alternative, and I think also that I
felt it would bring me more decisively into touch with the great body of
the people (a strong motive at the time)—and so far I believe these two
motives had some secondary play.
At any rate I never felt much doubt about the move. I persuaded
Fearnehough, after a little time, to join me if I should settle
anywhere; and then I set looking out for a bit of land. But that was not
easy to find. At intervals for many months I scoured the country in the
neighborhood of Sheffield, but could find nothing there except the small
holding at Millthorpe, which though good land and in a lovely situation,
with water, etc., seemed too far from town to be available for market
purposes. Then I went down into Worcestershire; but in truth the
difficulty of finding a small freehold anywhere in England—especially
with good soil and near a market—is great; and being no more successful
in Worcestershire I returned to Sheffield. Ultimately and being (as
usual in such things) more compelled by necessity than of my own choice,
I fell back on the seven acres at Millthorpe which I now occupy. Of
course I could not help rejoicing in the lovely necessity of living in
such a place—the charming brook running at the foot of my three fields,
the beautiful wooded valley, and the close proximity, a mile or so off,
of the open moors. But I had some misgiving, not only about the market
side of the question, but about living so completely gulfed in the
country—eight or nine miles from a town centre—for I had never tried
anything of the kind before.
I spent the winter of ’82 and ’83 mostly at Bradway, continuing my
writing and other life there, in the intervals of the search for land.
About Easter ’83 I came to terms for the purchase of the three fields at
Millthorpe, and soon after that I set to house-building. The house was
finished by the end of the summer, and in October ’83 the Fearnehoughs
and I moved in. About the same time I published through John Heywood of
Manchester, my first poem _Towards Democracy_.
It was a small thin volume of 110 pages, meant for the pocket. It was
sent out to the Press, but excited very little comment, except as the
ravings of some anonymous author. Yet after a time, faithful to its
charge, it came back to me, bringing dear and true friends from all
sorts of unlikely places and distant parts of the world; and has not
ceased to do so since. Not long after its publication Havelock Ellis
picked it up on a second-hand bookstall in London, and wrote to me; and
he again brought me into communication with Olive Schreiner, whose
_African Farm_ was then beginning to attract attention.
That winter, of ’83–’84, was spent in hard work, getting the house and
the yard and out-buildings in order, laying out the garden ground,
digging up the grass-land, planting fruit and other trees, etc. And so
were the summers and winters following, for four or five years.
That strange œstrum of hard manual work, and digging down to the very
roots of things, spurred me on. I hardly know how to account for it. It
possessed me. Every habit, every custom or practice of daily
life—house-arrangement, diet, dress, medicine, etc., was overhauled and
rigorously scrutinized. I worked for hours and for whole days together
out in the open field, or garden, or digging drains with pick and
shovel, or carting along the roads; going into Chesterfield and loading
and fetching manure, or to the coalpit for coal, grooming and bedding
down the horse, or getting off to market at 6 a.m. with vegetables and
fruit, and standing in the market behind a stall till 1 or 2 p.m.; I was
not satisfied but I must do everything that was necessary to be done,
myself.
It was a considerable strain. With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to
be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often
irksome. Yet a consuming passion drove me on—a desire to know, to do
something real, an evil conscience perhaps of the past unreality of my
existence. I was compelled to eat it all out.
I carried on, for those first three or four years, the superintendence
(of course with the help of my friend and his wife) of house and garden,
with their manifold points of detail. I went on with my writing—adding
essays on social subjects (“England’s Ideal” and others) to my poems;
and I started lecturing on similar topics.