Dickens's England (21 page)

William Howitt,
The Rural Life of England
(1840)

HACKING SWEDES

The swede-field in which she and her companion were set hacking was a stretch of a hundred odd acres, in one patch, on the highest ground of the farm, rising above stony lanchets or lynchets – the outcrop of siliceous veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose white flints in bulbous, cusped and phallic shapes. The upper half of each turnip had been eaten off by the livestock, and it was the business of the two women to grub up the lower or earthy half of the root with a hooked fork called a hacker, that it might be eaten also. Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without features, as if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse of skin. The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone. So these two upper and nether visages confronted each other all day long, the white face looking down on the brown face, and the brown face looking up at the white face, without anything standing between them but the two girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies.

Nobody came near them, and their movements showed a mechanical regularity; their forms standing enshrouded in hessian ‘wroppers' – sleeved brown pinafores, tied behind to the bottom to keep their gowns from blowing about – scant skirts revealing boots that reached high up the ankles, and yellow sheepskin gloves with gauntlets. The pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of the two Marys.

They worked on hour after hour, unconscious of the forlorn aspect they bore in the landscape, not thinking of the justice or injustice of their lot. Even in such a position as theirs it was possible to exist in a dream. In the afternoon the rain came on again, and Marian said that they need not work any more. But if they did not work they would not be paid; so they worked on. It was so high a situation, this field, that the rain had no occasion to fall, but raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them like glass splinters till they were wet through. Tess had not known till now what was really meant by that. There are degrees of dampness, and a very little is called being wet through in common talk. But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the creep of rainwater, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then at back, front and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light diminishes and marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum of stoicism, even of valour.

Thomas Hardy,
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(1891)

A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN

6th May 1870

By the Ceau the gold bushes of gorse were creeping down and clothing the old worked-out deserted quarry sides. People had been attempting to burn the gorse trees but had only succeeded in burning the underbrush and charring the long straggling stems of the old gorse trees which still stood up black and naked, crowned with dry withered tufts which the fire had not reached. The fire had, however, had the effect of blackening with scorch and smoke the beautiful silvery bark of some of the lovely birches which form a row down the lane, dividing it from the gorsy field. On one favourite and beautiful silver birch I was almost tempted to carve my name.

When I got out on to the open of the Little Mountain the lapwings were wheeling about the hills by scores, hurtling and rustling with their wings, squirling and wailing, tumbling and lurching on every side, very much disturbed, anxious and jealous about their nests. As I entered the fold of Gil-fach-yr-heol, Janet issued from the house door and rushed across the yard, and turning the corner of the wain house [cart shed] I found the two younger ladies assisting at the castration of the lambs, catching and holding the poor little beasts and standing by whilst the operation was performed, seeming to enjoy the spectacle. It was the first time I had seen clergymen's daughters helping to castrate lambs or witnessing that operation and it rather gave me a turn of disgust at first. But I made allowance for them and considered in how rough a way the poor children have been brought up so that they thought no harm of it, and I forgave them. I am glad however that Emmeline was not present, and Sarah was of course out of the way. Matilda was struggling in a pen with a large stout white lamb, and when she had mastered him and got him well between her legs and knees, I ventured to ask where her father was. She signified by a nod and a word that he was advancing behind us, and turning, I saw him crossing the yard with his usual outstretched hand and cordial welcome. I don't think the elder members of the family quite expected that the young ladies would be caught by a morning caller castrating lambs, and probably they would have selected some other occupation for them had they foreseen the coming of a guest. However they carried it off uncommonly well.

We went indoors and settled about the Sunday and Bettws Chapel where the good parson is to attend on May 22nd and until further notice. Then we had tea. Sarah laid the cloth as usual and she and Emmeline as usual sat opposite me, both looking very pretty, Sarah in her blue shirt and Emmeline in her russet-brown dress.

After tea Sarah and Emmeline were to take to Blaencarde some medicine for a sick parishioner which the good curate had concocted, and he walked with them as far as the village. Emmeline looked very bewitching in her little black hat perched on the top of her fair long curls. . . .

Near a copse between the Ceau and Crowther's Pool, I stopped to listen to a cuckoo. He was so near that his strong deep liquid voice shook the whole air. I never heard a cuckoo so close before.

Revd Francis Kilvert,
Kilvert's Diary,
ed. William Plomer (1938)

MEETING FOR UNION

Oppression, and hunger, and misery made them [farm labourers] desperate, and desperation was the mother of Union. . . .

When I reached Wellesbourne [in Warwickshire; 1872], lo and behold, it was as lively as a swarm of bees in June. We settled that I should address the meeting under the old chestnut tree; and I expected to find some thirty or forty of the principal men there. What then was my surprise to see not a few tens but many hundreds of labourers assembled; there were nearly two thousand of them. The news that I was going to speak that night had been spread about; and so the men had come in from all the villages round within a radius of ten miles. Not a circular had been sent out nor a handbill printed, but from cottage to cottage, and from farm to farm, the word had been passed on; and here were the labourers gathered together in their hundreds. Wellesbourne village was there, every man in it; and they had come from Moreton and Locksley and Charlecote and Hampton Lucy, and from Basford, to hear what I had to say to them. By this time the night had fallen pitch dark, but the men got bean poles and hung lanterns on them, and we could see well enough. It was an extraordinary sight, and I shall never forget it, not to my dying day. I mounted on an old pig-stool, and in the flickering light of the lanterns I saw the earnest upturned faces of those poor brothers of mine – faces gaunt with hunger and pinched with want – all looking towards me and ready to listen to the words that would fall from my lips. These white slaves of England stood there with the darkness all about them, like the Children of Israel waiting for someone to lead them out of the land of Egypt. I determined that, if they made a mistake and took the wrong turning, it would not be my fault, so I stood on my pig-stool and spoke out straight and strong for Union. My speech lasted about an hour, I believe, but I was not measuring minutes then. By the end of it the men were properly roused, and they pressed in and crowded up asking questions; they regularly pelted me with them; it was a perfect hailstorm. We passed a resolution to form a Union then and there, and the names of the men could not be taken down fast enough; we enrolled between two and three hundred members that night. It was a brave start, and before we parted it was arranged that there should be another meeting at the same place in a fortnight's time. I knew now that a fire had been kindled which would catch on, and spread, and run abroad like sparks in stubble; and I felt certain that this night we had set light to a beacon, which would prove a rallying point for the agricultural labourers throughout the country.

Joseph Arch,
Joseph Arch. The Story of his Life
(1898)

MOVING ON

The hiring-fair of recent years presents an appearance unlike that of former times. A glance up the high street on a Candlemas-fair day [2 February] twenty or thirty years ago revealed a crowd whose general colour was whity-brown flecked with white. Black was almost absent, the few farmers who wore that shade hardly discernible. Now the crowd is as dark as a London crowd. This change is owing to the rage for cloth clothes which possesses the labourers of today. Formerly they came in smock-frocks and gaiters, the shepherds with their crooks, the carters with a zone of whipcord round their hats, thatchers with a straw tucked into the brim, and so on. Now, with the exception of the crook in the hands of an occasional old shepherd, there is no mark of specialty in the group, who might be tailors or undertakers' men, for what they exhibit externally . . .

Having ‘agreed for a place', as it is called, either at the fair, or (occasionally) by private intelligence, or (with growing frequency) by advertisement in the penny local papers, the terms are usually reduced to writing; though formerly a written agreement was unknown, and is now, as a rule, avoided by the farmer if the labourer does not insist upon one. The business is then settled, and the man returns to his place of work, to do no more in the matter till Lady Day, Old Style – April 6.

Of all the days in the year, people who love the rural poor of the south-west should pray for a fine day then. Dwellers near the highways of the country are reminded of the anniversary surely enough. They are conscious of a disturbance of their night's rest by noises beginning in the small hours of darkness, and intermittently continuing until daylight – noises as certain to recur on that particular night of the month as the voice of the cuckoo on the third or fourth week of the same. The day of fulfilment has come, and the labourers are on the point of being fetched from the old farm by the carters of the new. For it is always by the waggon and horses of the farmer who requires his services that the hired man is conveyed to his destination; and that this may be accomplished within the day is the reason that the noises begin so soon after midnight. Suppose the distance to be an ordinary one of a dozen or fifteen miles. The carter at the prospective place rises when ‘Charles's wain is over the new chimney', harnesses his team of three horses by lantern light, and proceeds to the present home of his coming comrade. It is the passing of these empty waggons in all directions that is heard breaking the stillness of the hours before dawn. The aim is usually to be at the door of the removing household by six o'clock, when the loading of goods at once begins; and at nine or ten the start to the new home is made. From this hour till one or two in the day, when the other family arrives at the old house, the cottage is empty, and it is only in that short interval that the interior can be in any way cleaned and lime-whitened for the newcomers, however dirty it may have become, or whatever sickness may have prevailed among members of the departed family. . . .

While men do not of their own accord leave a farm without a grievance, very little fault-finding is often deemed a sufficient one among the younger and stronger. Such ticklish relations are the natural result of generations of unfairness on one side, and on the other an increase of knowledge, which has been kindled into activity by the exertions of Mr Joseph Arch. . . .

The result of the agitation, so far, upon the income of the labourers, has been testified by independent witnesses with a unanimity which leaves no reasonable doubt of its accuracy. It amounts to a rise of three shillings a week in wages nearly all over the county. The absolute number of added shillings seems small; but the increase is considerable when we remember that it is three shillings on eight or nine – i.e., between thirty and forty per cent. And the reflection is forced upon everyone who thinks of the matter, that if a farmer can afford to pay thirty per cent more wages in times of agricultural depression than he paid in times of agricultural prosperity, and yet live, and keep a carriage, while the landlord still thrives on the reduced rent which has resulted, the labourer must have been greatly wronged in those prosperous times.

Thomas Hardy, ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer' (1883)

PRINCELY COTTAGES

[On the Prince of Wales's estate, well-built cottages were each let at £3 10
s
yearly rent, producing 1½ per cent return on the investment]

‘The Cottage-homes of England,

How beautiful they stand!'

(So once Felicia Hemans sang)

Throughout the shining land!

By many a shining riverside

These happy homes are seen,

And clustering round the commons wide,

And 'neath the woodlands green.

The Cottage-homes of England –

Alas, how strong they smell!

There's fever in the cess-pool,

And sewage in the well.

With ruddy cheeks and flaxen curls

Though their tots shout and play,

The health of these gay boys and girls

Too soon will pass away.

The Cottage-homes of England!

Where each crammed sleeping-place

Foul air distils, whose poison kills

Health, modesty and grace.

Who stables horse, or houseth kine

As these poor peasants lie,

More thickly in their straw than swine

Are herded in a sty?

The Cottage-homes of England! –

But may they not be made

What Poetess Felicia

In graceful verse portrayed?