Lark Rise to Candleford (4 page)

When the pig was fattened—and the fatter the better—the date
of execution had to be decided upon. It had to take place some time during the
first two quarters of the moon; for, if the pig was killed when the moon was
waning the bacon would shrink in cooking, and they wanted it to 'plimp up'. The
next thing was to engage the travelling pork butcher, or pig-sticker, and, as
he was a thatcher by day, he always had to kill after dark, the scene being
lighted with lanterns and the fire of burning straw which at a later stage of
the proceedings was to singe the bristles off the victim.

The killing was a noisy, bloody business, in the course of which
the animal was hoisted to a rough bench that it might bleed thoroughly and so
preserve the quality of the meat. The job was often bungled, the pig sometimes
getting away and having to be chased; but country people of that day had little
sympathy for the sufferings of animals, and men, women, and children would
gather round to see the sight.

After the carcass had been singed, the pig-sticker would pull
off the detachable, gristly, outer coverings of the toes, known locally as 'the
shoes', and fling them among the children, who scrambled for, then sucked and
gnawed them, straight from the filth of the sty and blackened by fire as they
were.

The whole scene, with its mud and blood, flaring lights and
dark shadows, was as savage as anything to be seen in an African jungle. The children
at the end house would steal out of bed to the window. 'Look! Look! It's hell,
and those are the devils,' Edmund would whisper, pointing to the men tossing
the burning straw with their pitchforks; but Laura felt sick and would creep
back into bed and cry: she was sorry for the pig.

But, hidden from the children, there was another aspect of
the pig-killing. Months of hard work and self-denial were brought on that night
to a successful conclusion. It was a time to rejoice, and rejoice they did,
with beer flowing freely and the first delicious dish of pig's fry sizzling in
the frying-pan.

The next day, when the carcass had been cut up, joints of
pork were distributed to those neighbours who had sent similar ones at their
own pig-killing. Small plates of fry and other oddments were sent to others as
a pure compliment, and no one who happened to be ill or down on his luck at
these occasions was ever forgotten.

Then the housewife 'got down to it', as she said. Hams and
sides of bacon were salted, to be taken out of the brine later and hung on the wall
near the fireplace to dry. Lard was dried out, hogs' puddings were made, and
the chitterlings were cleaned and turned three days in succession under running
water, according to ancient ritual. It was a busy time, but a happy one, with
the larder full and something over to give away, and all the pride and
importance of owning such riches.

On the following Sunday came the official 'pig feast', when
fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, married children and grandchildren
who lived within walking distance arrived to dinner.

If the house had no oven, permission was obtained from an old
couple in one of the thatched cottages to heat up the big bread-baking oven in their
wash-house. This was like a large cupboard with an iron door, lined with brick
and going far back into the wall. Faggots of wood were lighted inside and the
door was closed upon them until the oven was well heated. Then the ashes were
swept out and baking-tins with joints of pork, potatoes, batter puddings, pork
pies, and sometimes a cake or two, were popped inside and left to bake without
further attention.

Meanwhile, at home, three or four different kinds of
vegetables would be cooked, and always a meat pudding, made in a basin. No
feast and few Sunday dinners were considered complete without that item, which
was eaten alone, without vegetables, when a joint was to follow. On ordinary days
the pudding would be a roly-poly containing fruit, currants, or jam; but it
still appeared as a first course, the idea being that it took the edge off the
appetite. At the pig feast there would be no sweet pudding, for that could be
had any day, and who wanted sweet things when there was plenty of meat to be
had!

But this glorious plenty only came once or at most twice a
year, and there were all the other days to provide for. How was it done on ten shillings
a week? Well, for one thing, food was much cheaper than it is to-day. Then, in
addition to the bacon, all vegetables, including potatoes, were home-grown and
grown in abundance. The men took great pride in their gardens and allotments
and there was always competition amongst them as to who should have the
earliest and choicest of each kind. Fat green peas, broad beans as big as a
halfpenny, cauliflowers a child could make an armchair of, runner beans and
cabbage and kale, all in their seasons went into the pot with the roly-poly and
slip of bacon.

Then they ate plenty of green food, all home-grown and
freshly pulled; lettuce and radishes and young onions with pearly heads and
leaves like fine grass. A few slices of bread and home-made lard, flavoured
with rosemary, and plenty of green food 'went down good' as they used to say.

Bread had to be bought, and that was a heavy item, with so
many growing children to be fed; but flour for the daily pudding and an
occasional plain cake could be laid in for the winter without any cash outlay. After
the harvest had been carried from the fields, the women and children swarmed
over the stubble picking up the ears of wheat the horse-rake had missed.
Gleaning, or 'leazing', as it was called locally.

Up and down and over and over the stubble they hurried, backs
bent, eyes on the ground, one hand outstretched to pick up the ears, the other resting
on the small of the back with the 'handful'. When this had been completed, it
was bound round with a wisp of straw and erected with others in a double rank,
like the harvesters erected their sheaves in shocks, beside the leazer's
water-can and dinner-basket. It was hard work, from as soon as possible after
daybreak until nightfall, with only two short breaks for refreshment; but the
single ears mounted, and a woman with four or five strong, well-disciplined
children would carry a good load home on her head every night. And they enjoyed
doing it, for it was pleasant in the fields under the pale blue August sky,
with the clover springing green in the stubble and the hedges bright with hips and
haws and feathery with traveller's joy. When the rest-hour came, the children
would wander off down the hedgerows gathering crab-apples or sloes, or
searching for mushrooms, while the mothers reclined and suckled their babes and
drank their cold tea and gossiped or dozed until it was time to be at it again.

At the end of the fortnight or three weeks that the leazing
lasted, the corn would be thrashed out at home and sent to the miller, who paid
himself for grinding by taking toll of the flour. Great was the excitement in a
good year when the flour came home—one bushel, two bushels, or even more in
large, industrious families. The mealy-white sack with its contents was often
kept for a time on show on a chair in the living-room and it was a common thing
for a passer-by to be invited to 'step inside an' see our little bit o'
leazings'. They liked to have the product of their labour before their own eyes
and to let others admire it, just as the artist likes to show his picture and
the composer to hear his opus played. 'Them's better'n any o' yer
oil-paintin's,' a man would say, pointing to the flitches on his wall, and the
women felt the same about the leazings.

Here, then, were the three chief ingredients of the one hot
meal a day, bacon from the flitch, vegetables from the garden, and flour for
the roly-poly. This meal, called 'tea', was taken in the evening, when the men
were home from the fields and the children from school, for neither could get
home at midday.

About four o'clock, smoke would go up from the chimneys, as
the fire was made up and the big iron boiler, or the three-legged pot, was
slung on the hook of the chimney-chain. Everything was cooked in the one
utensil; the square of bacon, amounting to little more than a taste each; cabbage,
or other green vegetables in one net, potatoes in another, and the roly-poly
swathed in a cloth. It sounds a haphazard method in these days of gas and
electric cookers; but it answered its purpose, for, by carefully timing the
putting in of each item and keeping the simmering of the pot well regulated,
each item was kept intact and an appetising meal was produced. The water in
which the food had been cooked, the potato parings, and other vegetable
trimmings were the pig's share.

When the men came home from work they would find the table
spread with a clean whitey-brown cloth, upon which would be knives and
two-pronged steel forks with buckhorn handles. The vegetables would then be
turned out into big round yellow crockery dishes and the bacon cut into dice, with
much the largest cube upon Feyther's plate, and the whole family would sit down
to the chief meal of the day. True, it was seldom that all could find places at
the central table; but some of the smaller children could sit upon stools with
the seat of a chair for a table, or on the doorstep with their plates on their
laps.

Good manners prevailed. The children were given their share
of the food, there was no picking and choosing, and they were expected to eat
it in silence. 'Please' and 'Thank you' were permitted, but nothing more. Father
and Mother might talk if they wanted to; but usually they were content to concentrate
upon their enjoyment of the meal. Father might shovel green peas into his mouth
with his knife, Mother might drink her tea from her saucer, and some of the
children might lick their plates when the food was devoured; but who could eat
peas with a two-pronged fork, or wait for tea to cool after the heat and flurry
of cooking, and licking the plates passed as a graceful compliment to Mother's
good dinner. 'Thank God for my good dinner. Thank Father and Mother. Amen' was
the grace used in one family, and it certainly had the merit of giving credit
where credit was due.

For other meals they depended largely on bread and butter,
or, more often, bread and lard, eaten with any relish that happened to be at hand.
Fresh butter was too costly for general use, but a pound was sometimes
purchased in the summer, when it cost tenpence. Margarine, then called
'butterine', was already on the market, but was little used there, as most
people preferred lard, especially when it was their own home-made lard
flavoured with rosemary leaves. In summer there was always plenty of green food
from the garden and home-made jam as long as it lasted, and sometimes an egg or
two, where fowls were kept, or when eggs were plentiful and sold at twenty a
shilling.

When bread and lard appeared alone, the men would spread
mustard on their slices and the children would be given a scraping of black
treacle or a sprinkling of brown sugar. Some children, who preferred it, would have
'sop'—bread steeped in boiling water, then strained and sugar added.

Milk was a rare luxury, as it had to be fetched a mile and a
half from the farmhouse. The cost was not great: a penny a jug or can, irrespective
of size. It was, of course, skimmed milk, but hand-skimmed, not separated, and
so still had some small proportion of cream left. A few families fetched it
daily; but many did not bother about it. The women said they preferred their
tea neat, and it did not seem to occur to them that the children needed milk.
Many of them never tasted it from the time they were weaned until they went out
in the world. Yet they were stout-limbed and rosy-cheeked and full of life and
mischief.

The skimmed milk was supposed by the farmer to be sold at a
penny a pint, that remaining unsold going to feed his own calves and pigs. But the
dairymaid did not trouble to measure it; she just filled the proffered vessel
and let it go as 'a pen'orth'. Of course, the jugs and cans got larger and
larger. One old woman increased the size of her vessels by degrees until she had
the impudence to take a small, new, tin cooking boiler which was filled without
question. The children at the end house wondered what she could do with so much
milk, as she had only her husband and herself at home. 'That'll make you a nice
big rice pudding, Queenie', one of them said tentatively.

'Pudden! Lor' bless 'ee!' was Queenie's reply. 'I don't ever
make no rice puddens. That milk's for my pig's supper, an', my! ain't 'ee just about
thrivin' on it. Can't hardly see out of his eyes, bless him!'

'Poverty's no disgrace, but 'tis a great inconvenience' was a
common saying among the Lark Rise people; but that put the case too mildly, for
their poverty was no less than a hampering drag upon them. Everybody had enough
to eat and a shelter which, though it fell far short of modern requirements, satisfied
them. Coal at a shilling a hundredweight and a pint of paraffin for lighting
had to be squeezed out of the weekly wage; but for boots, clothes, illness,
holidays, amusements, and household renewals there was no provision whatever.
How did they manage?

Boots were often bought with the extra money the men earned
in the harvest field. When that was paid, those lucky families which were not in
arrears with their rent would have a new pair all round, from the father's
hobnailed dreadnoughts to little pink kid slippers for the baby. Then some
careful housewives paid a few pence every week into the boot club run by a
shopkeeper in the market town. This helped; but it was not sufficient, and how
to get a pair of new boots for 'our young Ern or Alf' was a problem which kept
many a mother awake at night.

Girls needed boots, too, and good, stout, nailed ones for
those rough and muddy roads; but they were not particular, any boots would do.
At a confirmation class which Laura attended, the clergyman's daughter, after weeks
of careful preparation, asked her catechumens: 'Now, are you sure you are all
of you thoroughly prepared for to-morrow. Is there anything you would like to
ask me?'