Lark Rise to Candleford (23 page)

Usually, the girls only showed their 'pin-a-sights' to each
other; but sometimes they would approach one of the women, or knock at a door, singing:

A pin to see a pin-a-sight,

All the ladies dressed in white.

A pin behind and a pin before,

And a pin to knock at the lady's door.

They would then lift the flap and show the 'pin-a-sight', for
which they expected to be rewarded with a pin. When this was forthcoming, it
was stuck with any others that might be received on the front of the pinafore.
There was always a competition as to who should get the longest row of pins.

After they reached school-going age, the boys no longer
played with the girls, but found themselves a separate pitch on which to play
marbles or spin tops or kick an old tin about by way of a football. Or they
would hunt in couples along the hedgerows, shooting at birds with their catapults,
climbing trees, or looking for birds' nests, mushrooms, or chestnuts, according
to the season.

The birds'-nesting was a cruel sport, for not only was every
egg taken from every nest they found, but the nests themselves were demolished
and all the soft moss and lining feathers were left torn and scattered around
on the grass and bushes.

'Oh, dear! What must the poor bird have felt when she saw
that!' was Laura's cry when she came upon that, to her, saddest of all sad
sights, and once she even dared to remonstrate with some boys she had found in the
act. They only laughed and pushed her aside. To them, the idea that anything so
small as a mother chaffinch could feel was ridiculous. They were thinking of
the lovely long string of threaded eggshells, blue and speckled and pearly
white, they hoped to collect and hang up at home as an ornament. The tiny
whites and yolks which would come from the eggs when blown they would make
their mothers whip up and stir into their own cup of tea as a delicacy, and
their mothers would be pleased and say what kind, thoughtful boys they had, for
they, like the boys, did not consider the birds' point of view.

No one in authority told them that such wholesale robbery of
birds' nests was cruel. Even the Rector, when he called at the cottages, would admire
the collections and sometimes even condescend to accept a rare specimen.
Ordinary country people at that time, though not actively cruel to animals,
were indifferent to their sufferings. 'Where there's no sense there's no
feeling,' they would say when they had hurt some creature by accident or
through carelessness. By sense they meant wits or understanding, and these they
imagined purely human attributes.

A few birds were sacred. No boy would rob a robin's or a
wren's nest; nor would they have wrecked a swallow's nest if they could have
reached one, for they believed that:

The robin and the wrens

Be God Almighty's friends.

And the martin and the swallow

Be God Almighty's birds to follow.

And those four were safe from molestation. Their cruelty to
the other birds and to some other animals was due to an utter lack of
imagination, not to bad-heartedness. When, a little later; country boys were
taught in school to show mercy to animals and especially to birds, one egg only
from a clutch became the general rule. Then came the splendid Boy Scout movement,
which has done more than all the Preservation of Wild Birds Acts to prevent the
wholesale raiding of nests, by teaching the boys mercy and kindness.

In winter in the 'eighties the youths and big boys of the
hamlet would go out on dark nights 'spadgering'. For this a large net upon four
poles was carried; two bearers going on one side of a hedge and two on the other.
When they came to a spot where a flock of sparrows or other small birds was
roosting, the net was dropped over the hedge and drawn tight and the birds
enclosed were slaughtered by lantern light. One boy would often bring home as
many as twenty sparrows, which his mother would pluck and make into a pudding.
A small number of birds, or a single bird, would be toasted in front of the
fire. Many of the children and some of the women set traps for birds in their
gardens. This was done by strewing crumbs or corn around and beneath a sieve or
a shallow box set up endways. To the top of the trap as it stood, one end of a
length of fine twine was attached and the other end was held by some one
lurking in a barn doorway or behind a hedge or wall. When a bird was in a favourable
position, the trap was jerked down upon it. One old woman in particular
excelled as a bird-trapper, and, even in snowy weather, she might often have
been seen sitting in her barn doorway with the string of a trap in her hand.
Had a kindly disposed stranger seen her, his heart would have bled with pity
for the poor old soul, so starving that she spent hours in the snow snaring a
sparrow for her supper. His pity would have been wasted. She was quite
comfortably off according to hamlet standards, and often did not trouble to
pluck and cook her bag. She was out for the sport.

In one way and another a bird, or a few birds, were a regular
feature of the hamlet menu. But there were birds and birds. 'Do you think you
could fancy a bird, me dear?' a man would say to his ailing wife or child, and if
they thought they would the bird would appear; but it would not be a sparrow,
or even a thrush or a lark. It would be a much bigger bird with a plump breast;
but it would never be named and no feathers would be left lying about by which
to identify it. The hamlet men were no habitual poachers. They called poaching
'a mug's game' and laughed at those who practised it. 'One month in quod and
one out,' as they said. But, when the necessity arose, they knew where the game
birds were and how to get them.

Edmund and Laura once witnessed a neat bit of poaching. They
had climbed a ladder they had found set against the side of a haystack which
had been unthatched, ready for removal, and, after an exciting hour of sticking
out their heads and making faces to represent gargoyles on a tower, they were
lying, hidden from below, while the men on their way home from work passed
along the footpath beneath the rick.

It was near sunset and the low, level light searched the path
and the stubble and aftermath on either side of it. The men sauntered along in twos
and threes, smoking and talking, then disappeared, group by group, over the
stile at the farther side of the field. Just as the last group was nearing the
stile and the children were breathing a sigh of relief at not having been seen
and scolded, a hare broke from one of the hedges and went bounding and capering
across the field in the headlong way hares have. It looked for a moment as if
it would land under the feet of the last group of men, who were nearing the
stile; but, suddenly, it scented danger and drew up and squatted motionless
behind a tuft of green clover a few feet from the pathway. Just then one of the
men fell behind to tie his bootlace: the others passed over the stile. The moment
they were out of sight, in one movement, the man left behind rose and flung
himself sideways over the clover clump where the hare was hiding. There was a
short scuffle, a slight raising of dust; then a limp form was pressed into a
dinner-basket, and, after a good look round to make sure his action had not
been observed, the man followed his workmates.

A stranger coming to Lark Rise would have looked in vain for
the sweet country girl of tradition, with her sunbonnet, hay-rake, and air of rustic
coquetry. If he had, by chance, seen a girl well on in her teens, she would be
dressed in town clothes, complete with gloves and veil, for she would be home
from service for her fortnight's holiday, and her mother would insist upon her wearing
her best every time she went out of doors, in order to impress the neighbours.

There was no girl over twelve or thirteen living permanently
at home. Some were sent out to their first place at eleven. The way they were pushed
out into the world at that tender age might have seemed heartless to a casual
observer. As soon as a little girl approached school-leaving age, her mother
would say, 'About time you was earnin' your own livin', me gal,' or, to a
neighbour, 'I shan't be sorry when our young So-and-So gets her knees under
somebody else's table. Five slices for breakfast this mornin', if you please!'
From that time onward the child was made to feel herself one too many in the
overcrowded home; while her brothers, when they left school and began to bring
home a few shillings weekly, were treated with a new consideration and made
much of. The parents did not want the boys to leave home. Later on, if they
wished to strike out for themselves, they might even meet with opposition, for their
money, though barely sufficient to keep them in food, made a little more in the
family purse, and every shilling was precious. The girls, while at home, could
earn nothing.

Then there was the sleeping problem. None of the cottages had
more than two bedrooms, and when children of both sexes were entering their
teens it was difficult to arrange matters, and the departure of even one small girl
of twelve made a little more room for those remaining.

When the older boys of a family began to grow up, the second
bedroom became the boys' room. Boys, big and little, were packed into it, and the
girls still at home had to sleep in the parents' room. They had their own
standard of decency; a screen was placed or a curtain was drawn to form a
partition between the parents' and children's beds; but it was, at best, a poor
makeshift arrangement, irritating, cramped, and inconvenient. If there happened
to be one big boy, with several girls following him in age, he would sleep
downstairs on a bed made up every night and the second bedroom would be the
girls' room. When the girls came home from service for their summer holiday, it
was the custom for the father to sleep downstairs that the girl might share her
mother's bed. It is common now to hear people say, when looking at some little old
cottage, 'And they brought up ten children there. Where on earth did they
sleep?' And the answer is, or should be, that they did not all sleep there at
the same time. Obviously they could not. By the time the youngest of such a
family was born, the eldest would probably be twenty and have been out in the
world for years, as would those who came immediately after in age. The
overcrowding was bad enough; but not quite as bad as people imagine.

Then, again, as the children grew up, they required more and
more food, and the mother was often at her wits' end to provide it. It was no wonder
her thoughts and hopes sprang ahead to the time when one, at least, of her
brood would be self-supporting. She should not have spoken her thoughts aloud,
for many a poor, sensitive, little girl must have suffered. But the same mother
would often at mealtimes slip the morsel of meat from her own to her child's
plate, with a 'I don't seem to feel peckish to-night. You have it. You're growing.'

After the girls left school at ten or eleven, they were
usually kept at home for a year to help with the younger children, then places
were found for them locally in the households of tradesmen, schoolmasters, stud
grooms, or farm bailiffs. Employment in a public house was looked upon with horror
by the hamlet mothers, and farm-house servants were a class apart. 'Once a
farm-house servant, always a farm-house servant' they used to say, and they
were more ambitious for their daughters.

The first places were called 'petty places' and looked upon
as stepping-stones to better things. It was considered unwise to allow a girl
to remain in her petty place more than a year; but a year she must stay whether
she liked it or not, for that was the custom. The food in such places was good
and abundant, and in a year a girl of thirteen would grow tall and strong
enough for the desired 'gentlemen's service', her wages would buy her a few
clothes, and she would be learning.

The employers were usually very kind to these small maids. In
some houses they were treated as one of the family; in others they were put into
caps and aprons and ate in the kitchen, often with one or two of the younger
children of the house to keep them company. The wages were small, often only a
shilling a week; but the remuneration did not end with the money payment.
Material, already cut out and placed, was given them to make their underwear,
and the Christmas gift of a best frock or a winter coat was common. Caps and
aprons and morning print dresses, if worn, were provided by the employer. 'She
shan't want for anything while she is with me' was a promise frequently made by
a shopkeeper's wife when engaging a girl, and many were even better than their
word in that respect. They worked with the girls themselves and trained them;
then as they said, just as they were becoming useful they left to 'better themselves'.

The mothers' attitude towards these mistresses of small
households was peculiar. If one of them had formerly been in service herself,
her situation was avoided, for 'a good servant makes a bad missis' they said.
In any case they considered it a favour to allow their small untrained
daughters to 'oblige' (it was always spoken of as 'obliging') in a small
household. They were jealous of their children's rights, and ready to rush in
and cause an upset if anything happened of which they did not approve; and they
did not like it if the small maid became fond of her employer or her family, or
wished to remain in her petty place after her year was up. One girl who had
been sent out at eleven as maid to an elderly couple and had insisted upon
remaining there through her teens, was always spoken of by her mother as 'our
poor Em'. 'When I sees t'other girls and how they keeps on improvin' an' think
of our poor Em wastin' her life in a petty place, I could sit down an' howl
like a dog, that I could', she would say, long after Em had been adopted as a daughter
by the people to whom she had become attached.