George Adams in the villa-residence of a Sheffield manufacturer, where
he went first as knife and boot boy and afterwards as under-gardener.
The good people of the villa discovered his taste for drawing and
painting, and sent him to a School of Art for lessons; and so when at
the age of twenty or so he left ‘service’ and started for himself as an
insurance-collector (most depressing of occupations) he had a fair
knowledge of gardening and a fair artistic ability at his command. He
married, and joining the Socialist movement became one of our most
lively and adventurous spirits. The departure of the Fearnehoughs gave
me the opportunity of offering their place at Millthorpe to him (and his
family)—which he accepted as a joyful exchange from the dismal trade of
eternally dunning the needy denizens of mean streets for their funeral
and coffin monies.
With his arrival at Millthorpe things took on a more lively air there.
His knowledge of gardening was a decided help, and the financial side of
the venture—if not exactly a success from the purely commercial point of
view—did certainly under the circumstances (absence of any rent, etc.)
yield a small profit to the good. He took up cordially with the
sandal-making, which I had at first carried on alone, and which came in
useful in winter when the outdoor work was slack; and he added
bee-keeping to our activities. My literary work and connections were
increasing, and the place became more social, and more especially
socialistic, than it had been before—so much so indeed that the country
folk (or some of them at any rate) became a little alarmed!
A year or two after George Adams’ arrival the Parish Councils Act came
into operation, and the first election was the cause of much excitement
in the villages. Adams and I—though knowing perfectly well that we had
no chance of success—decided—chiefly for the fun of the thing—to come
forward as candidates; and almost a panic ensued among the larger
farmers and the parson as to what we might possibly do or propose.
Strange stories were circulated of the Socialist programme, and of the
expenses into which the community would certainly be plunged if it were
adopted. But the finishing touch to our chances was given by an election
address printed and circulated by one candidate of decidedly
Conservative type, in which he did not hesitate to say that “it is
reported publicly in Holmesfield that one of our opponents advocates the
burning of the Bible, and also working on the Sabbath Day.” After that
we had no prospect of success! _Which_ of us two was really pointed at
in this accusation we never quite knew, though we entered into a sort of
friendly rivalry for the honour. But the printed card containing the
address I retain to this day, and it is a treasured possession.
Adams was certainly not mealy-mouthed, and I am afraid he made very
blasphemous remarks at times, but his intense sense of fun and his
twinkling delight over ‘good stories’ quite redeemed any such
deficiencies. His courageous humour was all the more remarkable because,
poor thing, he was always suffering from ill-health. Dating from the
early life which I have described, his internal arrangements, as can
easily be imagined, never worked really properly; and at times he would
suffer a lot of pain, and become seriously emaciated. How he managed to
keep up his gardening and other activities in spite of frequent illness
was always a wonder; but his vivid imagination carried him on, and if he
were downcast at times, new plans and enterprises were sure to come in
and disperse the pessimistic mood.
The gardening work, however, at Millthorpe _was_ too much for his slight
frame; and after some five years’ stay there he elected to retire with
his family into a cottage not far off in the same parish and devote
himself to the sandal-trade and to the occasional sale of his
water-colour drawings. This he did; and after remaining for four or five
years moved on to the Letchworth Garden City where his labours and his
personality were much appreciated, and where he occupied a little home
of his own until his death in 1910.
The Adams’ left Millthorpe early in February ’98; and the next
day—trundling with the help of two boys all his worldly goods in a
handcart over the hills, and through a disheartening blizzard of
snow—George Merrill arrived. This extraordinary being, in many ways so
kindred a spirit to my own, had now been known to me for some years. I
had met him first on the outskirts of Sheffield immediately after my
return from India, and had recognized at once a peculiar intimacy and
mutual understanding. Bred in the slums quite below civilization, but of
healthy parentage of comparatively rustic origin, he had grown so to
speak entirely out of his own roots; and a singularly affectionate,
humorous, and swiftly intuitive nature had expanded along its own
lines—subject of course to some of the surrounding conditions, but
utterly untouched by the prevailing conventions and proprieties of the
upper world. Always—even in utmost poverty—clean and sweet in person and
neat in attire, he was attractive to most people; and children (of whom
he was especially fond) would congregate round him. Yet being by
temperament loving and even passionate—to a degree indeed which
sometimes scandalized the “unco’ guid”—he was, it may safely be said,
never ‘respectable.’ Fortunately he was either too careless or too
unconscious of public opinion to trouble much about that; and despite
the shafts of occasional criticism he remained always fairly assured of
himself—with the same sort of unconscious assurance that a plant or an
animal may have in its own nature. What struck me most, however, on my
first meeting with him, was the pathetic look of wistfulness in his
face. Whatever his experiences up to then may have been, it assured me
that the desire of his _heart_ was still unsatisfied.
To George Merrill the arrival at Millthorpe was the fulfilment of a
dream; and a blizzard ten times as bad as the actual one would not I
believe have daunted him. The departure of the Adams’ had left the house
largely denuded of furniture, and for some days we bivouacked with a
trestle table for meals and a sanded floor. By degrees we got things
into order, acquired the necessaries of life and comfort; and started
housekeeping on a new footing. For seven years the possibility of this
arrangement had I believe wavered before George’s eyes, and it had
certainly been considered by me. But we had hardly spoken about it. It
was too remote. On my side other arrangements and engagements precluded
the plan; on his, the various situations he had found—once in a
newspaper office, once in an hotel, and lastly in an ironworks—were not
to be lightly thrown aside. It was only now, when the Adams’ were
leaving and George at the same time was out of work, that the Fates
pointed favorably and the thing was done.
[Illustration:
GEORGE MERRILL.
(_Photo: Lena Connell._)
]
If the Fates pointed favorably I need hardly say that my friends (with a
few exceptions) pointed the other way! I knew of course that George had
an instinctive genius for housework, and that in all probability he
would keep house better than most women would. But most of my friends
thought otherwise. They drew sad pictures of the walls of my cottage
hanging with cobwebs, and of the master unfed and neglected while his
assistant amused himself elsewhere. They neither knew nor understood the
facts of the case. Moreover they had sad misgivings about the moral
situation. A youth who had spent much of his early time in the purlieus
of public-houses and in society not too reputable would do me no credit,
and would only by my adoption be confirmed in his own errant ways. Such
was their verdict. For myself if I entertained any of these misgivings
it was but very faintly. Of the fellow’s essential goodness I felt no
doubt. What rather troubled me was the question whether _he_ would be
able to endure the dulness and quiet of a country life.
With a remarkably good ear for music, and a sympathetic baritone voice,
he had a ready talent which would have taken him far on the music-hall
stage. In fact I hardly know how it was that he did not find a vocation
on that stage. Anyhow he was known in not a few circles for his musical
quips and his comic or sentimental songs; and was pretty familiar with
the doings and _personnel_ of the theatres. To take such an one away
into the depths of rustic life might have been a great mistake. Probably
if this had been the prevailing side of his character it _would_ have
been a mistake. As it was the move proved a complete success. In a few
months or a year my friend was quite acclimatized, and while enjoying
(like myself) a day or two in town was always genuinely glad to get back
again to our little home in Cordwell Valley.
As I have said, the families I had with me before were both kindly and
good sorts, and in their different ways helpful and useful. But a time
had come with the growing expansion of my work when it became quite
impossible to continue running things on the old footing, and quite
necessary for me to have the house really at my own command. The arrival
of George Merrill rendered this possible. And immediately a new order of
things began. Merrill from the first developed quite a talent for
housework. He soon picked up the necessary elements of cookery,
vegetarian or otherwise; he carried on the arts of washing, baking and
so forth with address and dispatch; he took pride in making the place
look neat and clean, and insisted on decorating every room that was in
use with flowers. I, for my part, finally gave up the market garden
business and contracted the garden ground into merely sufficient to
supply the needs of the house. This I cultivated partly myself and
partly with the occasional help of an outsider; and in addition I made
it a rule to dust my own study and light the fire in it every morning.
These little garden and household works—if not amounting to much—I have
still always found very helpful and rather pleasant—as giving the bodily
side of life some decent expression, and at the same time rendering the
mental perspective more just.
Thus we settled down, two bachelors: keeping the mornings intact for
pretty close and rigorous work; and the afternoons and evenings for more
social recreation. As a rule I find the housekeeper who is a little
particular and ‘house-proud’ is inclined, not unnaturally, to be
somewhat set against visitors—especially those who may bring some amount
of dirt and dishevelment with them. But George—though occasionally
disposed that way—was so genuinely sociable and affectionate by nature
that the latter tendency overcame the former. The only people he could
not put up with were those whom he suspected (sometimes unjustly) of
being pious or puritanical. For these he had as keen a _flair_ as the
orthodox witch-finder used to have for heretics; and I am afraid he was
sometimes rude to them. On one occasion he was standing at the door of
our cottage, looking down the garden brilliant in the sun, when a
missionary sort of man arrived with a tract and wanted to put it in his
hand. “Keep your tract,” said George. “I don’t want it.” “But don’t you
wish to know the way to heaven?” said the man. “No, I don’t,” was the
reply, “can’t you see that _we’re in heaven here_—we don’t _want_ any
better than this, so go away!” And the man turned and fled. Like the
archdeacon in Eden Phillpotts’ _Human Boy_ “he flew and was never heard
of again.”
No doubt his objection to the pious and puritanical was returned with
interest by their objection to him. Whatever faults or indiscretions he
may have been guilty of, they were occasionally (in true provincial
style) fastened on and magnified and circulated about as grave scandals.
It was on such occasions however that the real affection of the country
people for us showed itself, and they breathed slaughter against our
assailants. George in fact was accepted and one may say beloved by both
my manual worker friends and my more aristocratic friends. It was only
the middling people who stumbled over him; and they did not so much
matter! Anyhow our lives had become necessary to each other, so that
what any one said was of little importance.
It thus became possible to realize in some degree a dream which I had
had in mind for some time—that of making Millthorpe a _rendezvous_ for
all classes and conditions of society. I had by this time made
acquaintances and friends among all the tribes and trades of manual
workers, as well as among learned and warlike professions. Architects,
railway clerks, engine-drivers, signalmen, naval and military officers,
Cambridge and Oxford dons, students, advanced women, suffragettes,
professors and provision-merchants, came into touch in my little house
and garden; parsons and positivists, printers and authors, scythesmiths
and surgeons, bank managers and quarrymen, met with each other. Young
colliers from the neighboring mines put on the boxing-gloves with sprigs
of aristocracy; learned professors sat down to table with farm-lads.
Not, thank heaven! that this happened all in the lump; but little by
little and year by year my friends of various degrees and shades got to
know each other—and this was a real satisfaction to me. Many lady
friends also came to stay with us—some of them unmarried (which may, who
knows? have been a cause for scandal); and not a few married couples who
liked our way of life and enjoyed talking over questions of household
arrangement and simplification.
Of course, after reading Thoreau’s _Walden_, whatever simplifications I
may have effected in my own household management seemed very negligible
and unimportant. Still I felt that some move in that direction, and some
propaganda on the subject, was really needed. I tried hard to get some
lady friend or other—who would probably understand household affairs
much better than I—to write about the subject; but tried in vain. None
would take it up. And so ultimately I was reduced to writing on the
question myself—in _England’s Ideal_ and elsewhere.
To-day I feel the importance of the subject as much as—perhaps more
than—I did then. I certainly often wish that our household life, plain
as it is, was even more plain. But I find that Time—mere Time—has a
sinister effect in complicating life. Things arrive, and cannot so
easily be got rid of again. Presents are made by well-meaning people,
and cannot very well be returned to the donors; new habitudes of life
are grafted on the old ones without actually displacing the latter; the
wheel of life turns one way, like a ratchet, but will not turn back
again; and so the complications grow and the embarrassments
multiply—often to such a degree that they become almost unendurable; and
one realizes at last why Death came into the world, and how necessary as
a Deliverer of souls and a loosener of mortal knots he is. For myself I
can truly say that the Waste Paper Basket stands as a signal of one of
my greatest pleasures; and that when I feel depressed (which is not very
often) I go about the house and hunt up things to destroy or give
away—after which ritual act I feel ever so much better and happier.
Simplicity and plainness of life are necessary, on account of the
frightful waste of time and strength which the opposite policy entails—a
waste which is obviously becoming daily worse and worse. Nor is it
necessary to point out that if you employ _servants_ to keep all these
beggarly elements of life in order for you, instead of looking after
them yourself, you still only waste your time and strength in securing
(or appropriating in some way) the money with which you pay those
servants, as well as in the extra labour and anxiety of looking after
the said servants—a state of affairs probably worse than the first.
Plainness again is necessary from foundation considerations of humanity
and democracy. To live in opulent and luxurious surroundings is to erect
a fence between yourself and the mass-world which no selfrespecting
manual worker will pass. It is consequently to stultify yourself and to
lose some of the best that the world can give.
Thirdly, from mere considerations of health the thing is necessary. My
Japanese friend, Sanshiro Ishikawa, calls our houses _prisons_. Plain
food, the open air, the hardiness of sun and wind, are things
practically unobtainable in a complex ménage.
And lastly, and most important, the complexity of material possessions
and demands all around one almost inevitably has the effect of stifling
the life of the heart and of the spirit. “The thorns sprang up and
choked them.” The endless distraction of material cares, the endless
temptation of material pleasures, inevitably has the effect of
paralysing the great free life of the affections and of the soul. One
loses the most precious thing the world can give—the great freedom and
romance of finding expression and utterance for one’s most intimate self
in the glorious presence of Nature and one’s fellows.
X
MILLTHORPIANA
What I have just said might seem to suggest a sort of perpetual
garden-party going on at Millthorpe. But this of course was by no means
the case, and for weeks at a time we would often be quiet enough. A
distance of four miles from the nearest railway-station is a good
defence; especially in winter with snow on the ground; also the general
rule of not seeing visitors till the afternoon. Still we were liable to
incursions. To Job are ascribed the pregnant words (xxxi. 35) “O that
mine adversary had written a book!” And I am afraid that I had in some
such way laid myself open to attack. The ubiquitous American who (to
adopt the style of Bernard Shaw) only stayed in England to visit
Millthorpe and Stratford-on-Avon, was much in evidence. And faddists of
all sorts and kinds considered me their special prey. I don’t know what
I had done to deserve this—but so it was. Vegetarians, dress reformers,
temperance orators, spiritualists, secularists, anti-vivisectionists,
socialists, anarchists—and others of very serious mien and
character—would call and insist in the most determined way on my joining
their crusades—so that sometimes I had almost to barricade myself
against them. A friend suggested (and the idea was not a bad one) that I
should put up at the gate a board bearing the legend “To the Asylum” on
it. Then the real lunatics would probably avoid the neighborhood.
Nevertheless on the whole we got a good deal of fun out of these
incursions, and occasionally some real and solid advance.
On one occasion—it was when the Fearnehoughs were living with me—we were
sitting quietly at our humble dinner of carrots or what-not, in the
middle of the day, when I saw two young ladies pass the window. There
came a knock at the door, and I opened it. There stood a very
good-looking elegantly dressed girl of twenty-three or twenty-four, with
terracotta frock and gainsborough hat, rather Londony in style; with a
less showy companion beside her. Said number one: “Does Mr. Carp——” and
then breaking off, “Oh! I see you are Mr. Carpenter. You know, I heard
you once speak at the Fabian Society. I belong to the Fabian Society.
And my cousin and I were near here, and thought perhaps we might call.”
“Very glad to see you, I’m sure.”
“And is this _really_ where you carry on your Simplification of Life?
Oh! Madge! isn’t it interesting” (this last thrown in as an
interjection).
“I don’t know about that; but won’t you come in and sit down?”
“Thank you so much, I should be glad of a rest.”
“Will you have a bit of cake and a glass of milk?”
“Oh no! but I _should_ like a piece of dry bread.”
“Well, you need not ‘simplify’ so much as that.”
“Oh! but I am so _fond_ of dry bread!”
Then it came out that the Uncle and Aunt were waiting outside, so they
had to be got in, and ultimately the party were all safely landed in my
study—where after the simplification trouble had been got over, we made
a reasonable acquaintance with each other.
[Illustration:
MILLTHORPE COTTAGE AND ORCHARD.
(Holmesfield on the hill above.)
]
But I never afterwards quite forgot that expression “Is this where you
_carry on_ your?” etc.—as if one hung a flag out of the window.
On another occasion, it being summer-time, a party of forty
Spiritualists came over from Manchester to spend Sunday at a neighboring
farmhouse, and with the intention of digging me out in the course of the
afternoon. Providence however interposed and sent _pelting_ rain all
day, and the poor things having to walk several miles from the station
arrived at their farmhouse simply drenched; and when they had had their
dinner, and partially dried their clothes, were naturally in no mood or
condition to turn out again—with the exception of ten or twelve of the
more heroic, who came on and called on me. What I had done to merit this
honour I do not know, as I had had very little experience of
Spiritualism; but they sat round and told me all sorts of wonderful
stories. In the middle of it all, a plashing was heard outside in the
rain, a knock at the door, and a young lady _sandal_-enthusiast arrived.
She was a neatlooking well-made girl, in sandals, with bare,
unstockinged feet, and she wore a simple navy blue serge dress; but of
course she was wringing wet. We had not seen her before; her name was
Swanhilda Something (somehow it sounded appropriate); she had set out to
walk all the way from Sheffield (nine miles). On the way the rain had
come on, and the sandals had nearly come off. She had no umbrella or
waterproof; and she was decidedly more than damp. Mrs. Adams, who was
then in charge of our ménage, took her upstairs and gave her a change,
and she presently joined the Spiritualist party, looking it must be
confessed somewhat like a ghost; but full of spirit and pluck. Her pluck
(as I found afterwards) as a dress-reformer was really splendid. On this
occasion, after tea, she refused all offers of a bed for the night,
donned her still damp clothes and her sandals, and joining the forty
Spiritualists, they all splashed back across the hills to the station.
One of the pathetic things of the Socialist movement is the way in which
it has caused not a few people of upper class birth and training to try
and leave their own ranks and join those of the workers, when—by their
very birth and training being unable to bridge the gulf—the result has
been that they, belonging neither to one class nor the other, outcasts
from one, and more or less pitied or ridiculed by the other, have fallen
into a kind of limbo between. I have known several cases of young men of
this kind. One of them I may describe under the name of ‘Bryan.’ His
father, being a country squire, wanted Bryan to go into the army. The
boy had ideas of his own about the matter, and simply refused.
Differences ensued, and ultimately the father offered him £100 a year
for three years, and told him to find his _own_ way into life. The youth
drifted to London, fell in with the Socialists at a street corner,
became inspired with their ‘cause,’ and sought to identify himself
thenceforth with the working class. He came and spent a year or more in
our neighborhood at Millthorpe. He was a good fellow—his heart, as they
say, in the right place; but whether owing to the wretched character of
his training, or to native want of skill or perseverance, he never could
or would shape himself to do any solid work. He would dabble a little at
the joiner’s bench, or in the garden, or with the woodmen in the
woods—but only a little. When we urged him to learn some one trade
thoroughly—if only cobbling or cabinet-making—he would always say “Ah!
but things will be different when the Revolution comes—we shall all go
barefoot, or these things will be done by machinery”; and so one got no
nearer any practical result. On one occasion being in the neighborhood
of his family home, I went and called on his father, thinking I might be
of some use, but found him in a state of despair.
“Oh, Bryan,” he said, “I don’t know what has taken the boy. Why the
other day he came to see us in our London house, and the first thing he
said was ‘Father, all these houses ought to be burnt down.’
“‘Burnt down,’ I replied; ‘are you mad?’
“‘Well, they _ought_ to be,’ he said, ‘and the people made to do some
honest work instead of idling their lives away on other folk’s labour.’
“‘And pray what sort of work would you set them to, young man?’
“‘Oh, anything,’ he said, ‘any straightforward work like mending the
roads or breaking stones.’