The Toilers of the Field Part 2

The hedge next the road is usually only elder, and this, once the leaves are off, is the thinnest, most miserable of shelters. The rain comes through the hole in the thatch (we are speaking of the large cla.s.s of poor cottages), the mud floor is damp, and perhaps sticky. If the floor is of uneven stones, these grow damp and slimy. The cold wind comes through the ill-fitting sash, and drives with terrible force under the door. Very often the floor is one step lower than the ground outside, and consequently there is a constant tendency in rainy weather for the water to run or soak in. The elm-tree overhead, that appeared so picturesque in summer, is now a curse, for the great drops fall perpetually from it upon the thatch and on the pathway in front of the door. In great storms of wind it sways to and fro, causing no little alarm, and boughs are sometimes blown off it, and fall upon the roof-tree. The thatch of the cottage is saturated; the plants and gra.s.ses that almost always grow on it, and the moss, are vividly, rankly green; till all dripping, soaked, overgrown with weeds, the wretched place looks not unlike a dunghill. Inside, the draught is only one degree better than the smoke. These low chimneys, overshadowed with trees, smoke incessantly, and fill the room with smother. To avoid the draught, many of the cottages are fitted with wooden screens, which divide the room, small enough before, into two parts, the outer of which, towards the door, is a howling wilderness of draught and wet from under the door; and the inner part close, stuffy, and dim with smoke driven down the chimney by the shifting wind. Here the family are all huddled up together close over the embers. Here the cooking is done, such as it is. Here they sit in the dark, or in such light as is supplied by the carefully h.o.a.rded stock of fuel, till it is time to go to bed, and that is generally early enough. So rigid is the economy practised in many of these cottages that a candle is rarely if ever used. The light of the fire suffices, and they find their beds in the dark. Even when a labourer has risen in the scale, and has some small property, the enforced habits of early life cling to him; and I have frequently found men who were really worth some little money sitting at eight o'clock on a dark winter's night without a candle or lamp, their feet close to a few dying embers. The older people especially go to bed early. Going to some cottages once for a parish paper that had been circulated for signature, I rapped at the closed door. This was at half-past seven one evening in November. Again and again I hammered at the door; at last an old woman put her head out of window, and the following colloquy ensued:--

"What do 'ee want?"

"The paper; have you signed it?"

"Lor, I doan't know. He's on the table--a bin ther ever since a come.

Thee's can lift th' latch an' take 'un. _We bin gone to bed this two hours._"

They must have gone upstairs at half-past five. To rise at five of a summer's morning, and see the azure of the sky and the glorious sun, may be, perhaps, no great hardship, although there are few persons who could long remain poetical on bread and cheese. But to rise at five on a dark winter's morning is a very different affair. To put on coa.r.s.e nailed boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up above the knee, a short greatcoat of some heavy material, and to step out into the driving rain and trudge wearily over field after field of wet gra.s.s, with the furrows full of water; then to sit on a three-legged stool, with mud and manure half-way up the ankles, and milk cows with one's head leaning against their damp, smoking hides for two hours, with the rain coming steadily drip, drip, drip--this is a very different affair.

The "fogger" on a snowy morning in the winter has to encounter about the most unpleasant circ.u.mstances imaginable. Icicles hang from the eaves of the rick, and its thatch is covered with snow. Up the slippery ladder in the dark morning, one knee out upon the snow-covered thatch, he plunges the broad hay-knife in and cuts away an enormous truss--then a great p.r.o.ng is stuck into this, a p.r.o.ng made on purpose, with extra thick and powerful handle, and the truss, well bound round with a horse-hair rope, is hoisted on the head and shoulders. This heavy weight the fogger has to carry perhaps half-a-mile through the snow; the furrows in the field are frozen over, but his weight crashes through the ice, slush into the chilly water. Rain, snow, or bitter frost, or still more bitter east winds--"harsh winds," as he most truly calls them--the fogger must take no heed of either, for the cows must be fed.

A quart of threepenny ale for breakfast, with a hunch of bread and cheese, then out to work again in the weather, let it be what it may.

The cowyards have to be cleaned out--if not done before breakfast--the manure thrown up into heaps, and the heaps wheeled outside. Or, perhaps, the master has given him a job of piece-work to fill up the middle of the day with--a hedge to cut and ditch. This means more slush, wet, cold, and discomfort. About six or half-past he reaches home, thoroughly saturated, worn-out, cross, and "dummel." I don't know how to spell that word, nor what its etymology may be, but it well expresses the dumb, sullen churlishness which such a life as this engenders. For all the conditions and circ.u.mstances of such a life tend to one end only--the blunting of all the finer feelings, the total erasure of sensitiveness.

The coa.r.s.e, half-cooked cabbage, the small bit of fat and rafty bacon, the dry bread and pint of weak tea, makes no very hearty supper after such a day as this. The man grows insensible to the weather, so cold and damp; his bodily frame becomes crusted over, case-hardened; and with this indifference there rises up at the same time a corresponding dulness as regards all moral and social matters.

Generally the best conditions of cottage life are to be found wherever there are, say, three or four great, tall, strong, unmarried sons lodging in the house with their aged parents. Each of these pays a small sum weekly for his lodging, and often an additional sum for the bare necessaries of life. In the aggregate this mounts up to a considerable sum, and whatever is bought is equally shared by the parents. They live exceedingly well. Such young men as these earn good wages, and now and then make extra time, and come home with a pocketful of money. Even after the inevitable alehouse has claimed its share, there still remains enough to purchase fresh meat for supper; and it is not at all unusual in such cottages to find the whole family supping at seven (it is, in fact, dining) on a fairly good joint of mutton, with every species of common vegetables. In one case that was brought under my notice three brothers lived with their aged mother. They were all strong, hard-working men, and tolerably steady. In that cottage there were no less than four separate barrels of beer, and all on tap. Four barrels in one cottage seems an extraordinary thing, yet it resolved itself very simply. The cottage was the mother's; they gave her so much for lodging, and she had her own barrel of beer, so that there should be no dispute.

The three brothers were mowers--mowers drink enormous quant.i.ties of liquor--and with the same view to prevent dispute each had his own especial barrel. Families like this live fairly well, and have many little comforts. Still, at the best, in winter it is a rough and uncomfortable existence.

In the life of the English agricultural labourers there is absolutely no poetry, no colour. Even their marriages--times when if ever in life poetry will manifest itself--are sober, dull, tame, clumsy, and colourless. I say sober in the sense of tint, for to get drunk appears to be the one social pleasure of the marriage-day. They, of course, walk to church; but then that walk usually leads across fields full of all the beauties of the spring or the summer. There is nothing in the walk itself to flatten down the occasion. But the procession is so dull--so utterly ungenial--a stranger might pa.s.s it without guessing that a wedding was toward. Except a few rude jests; except that there is an attempt to walk arm-in-arm (it is only an attempt, for they forget to allow for each other's motions); except the Sunday dresses, utterly devoid of taste, what is there to distinguish this day from the rest?

There is the drunken carousal, it is true, all the afternoon and evening. There are no fete days in the foreign sense in the English labourer's life. There are the fairs and feasts, and a fair is the most melancholy of sights. Showmen's vans, with pictures outside of unknown monsters; merry-go-rounds, nut stalls, gingerbread stalls, cheap Jacks, and latterly photographic "studios"; behind all these the alehouse; the beating of drums and the squalling of pigs, the blowing of horns, and the neighing of horses trotted out for show, the roar of a rude crowd--these const.i.tute a country fair. There is no colour--nothing flowery or poetical about this festival of the labourer.

The village feasts are still less interesting. Here and there the clergyman of the parish has succeeded in turning what was a rude saturnalia into a decorous "fete," with tea in a tent. But generally the feasts are falling into rapid disuse, and would perhaps have died away altogether had not the benefit societies often chosen that day for their annual club-dinner. A village feast consists of two or three gipsies located on the greensward by the side of the road, and displaying ginger-beer, nuts, and toys for sale; an Aunt Sally; and, if the village is a large one, the day may be honoured by the presence of what is called a rifle-gallery; the "feast" really and truly does not exist.

Some two or three of the old-fashioned farmers have the traditional roast beef and plum-pudding on that day, and invite a few friends; but this custom is pa.s.sing away. In what the agricultural labourer's feast nowadays consists no one can tell. It is an excuse for an extra quart or two of beer, that is all.

This dulness is not, perhaps, the fault of the labourer. It may be that it is the fault of the national character, shown more broadly in the lower cla.s.s of the population. Speaking nationally, we have no fete days--there is no colour in our mode of life. These English agricultural labourers have no pa.s.sion plays, no peasant plays, no rustic stage and drama, few songs, very little music. The club dinner is the real fete of the labourer; he gets plenty to eat and drink for that day. It is this lack of poetical feeling that makes the English peasantry so uninteresting a study. They have no appreciation of beauty.

Many of them, it is true, grow quant.i.ties of flowers; but barely one in a thousand could arrange those flowers in a bouquet.

The alehouse forms no inconsiderable part of the labourer's life. It is at once his stock exchange, his reading-room, his club, and his a.s.sembly rooms. It is here that his benefit society holds its annual dinner. The club meetings take place weekly or monthly in the great room upstairs.

Here he learns the news of the day; the local papers are always to be found at the public-house, and if he cannot read himself he hears the news from those who can. In the winter he finds heat and light, too often lacking at home; at all times he finds amus.e.m.e.nt; and who can blame him for seizing what little pleasure lies in his way? As a rule the beerhouse is the only place of amus.e.m.e.nt to which he can resort: it is his theatre, his music-hall, picture-gallery, and Crystal Palace. The recent enactments bearing upon the licensed victuallers have been rather hard upon the agricultural labourer. No doubt they are very excellent enactments, especially those relating to early closing; but in the villages and outlying rural districts, where life is reduced to its most rude and simple form, many of the restrictions are unjust, and deprive the labourer of what he feels to be his legitimate right. Playing at nine-pins, for instance, is practically forbidden, so also dominoes.

Now, it was a great thing to put down skittle-sharping and cheating at gambling generally--a good thing to discourage gambling in every form--but in these thinly-populated outlying agricultural parishes, where money is scarce and wages low, there never existed any temptation to allure skittle-sharpers and similar cheaters to the spot. The game at skittles was a legitimate game--a fair and honest struggle of skill and strength. Nine times out of ten it was played only for a quart of ale, to be drunk by the loser as well as the winner in good fellowship. Why deprive the man who labours all day in wet and storm of so simple a pleasure in the evening? The conditions are very different to those existing in large manufacturing towns, and some modification of the law ought to be made. The agricultural labourer has no cheap theatre at which he can spend an hour, no music-hall, no reading-room; his only resource is the public-house. Now that he is practically deprived of his skittles and such games, he has no amus.e.m.e.nt left except to drink, or play at pitch and toss on the quiet, a far worse pastime than skittles.

Skittles, of course, are allowed provided the players play for love only; but what public-house keeper cares to put up the necessary arrangements on such terms? The labourer will have his quart in the evening, and, despite of all "cry" to the contrary, I believe it to be his right to have that quart; and it is better, if he must have it, that his whole thoughts should not be concentrated on the liquor--that he should earn it by skill and strength. There is an opprobrium about the public-house, and let us grant that it is at least partially deserved--but where else is the labourer to go? He cannot for ever work all day and sit in his narrow cabin in the evening. He cannot always read, and those of his cla.s.s who do read do so imperfectly. A reading-room has been tried, but as a rule it fails to attract the _purely agricultural labourer_. The shoemaker, the tailor, the village post-master, grocer, and such people may use it; also a few of the better-educated of the young labourers, the rising generation; but not the full-grown labourer with a wife and family and cottage. It does good undoubtedly; in the future, as education extends, it will become a place of resort. But at present it fails to reach the adult genuine agricultural labourer. For a short period in the dead of the winter the farmers and gentry get up penny readings in many places, but these are confined to at most one evening a week. What, then, is the labourer to do? Let any one put himself in his place, try to realise his feelings and circ.u.mstances. At present, till education extends, he must go to the public-house. Is he to be punished and deprived of his game of skill because in large towns it bears evil fruit? Surely the law could be somewhat modified, and playing permitted under some restrictions.

The early closing has been an unalloyed good in these rural districts.

The labourer is a steady drinker. He does not toss down gla.s.ses of stiff brandy and whisky. His beer requires time to produce an effect. The last hour does the mischief. Since the earlier closing the village streets have been comparatively free from drunken men. In any case, the agricultural labourer is the most lamb-like of drunkards. He interferes with no one. He unhinges no gates, smashes no windows, does no injury.

He either staggers home or quietly lies on the gra.s.s till the liquor pa.s.ses off. He is not a quarrelsome man. He does not fight with knuckle-dusters or kick with his heavy boots. His fights, when he does fight, are very harmless affairs. No doubt his drunkenness is an offence; but it is comparatively innocuous to the general public.

Religious feeling does not run high among the labourers. A large proportion of them are Nonconformists--princ.i.p.ally Methodists. But this is not out of any very decided notion as to the difference of ceremony or theological dogma; it arises out of a cla.s.s feeling. They say, or rather they feel, that this is _their_ church. The parish church is the church of the farmers and the gentry. There is no hostility to the clergyman of the parish, no bitter warfare of sect against sect, or of Methodist against Churchman. But you see very few of the farmers go to chapel. The labourer goes there, and finds his own friends--his cousins and uncles--his wife's relations. He is among his own cla.s.s. There is no feeling of inferiority. The religion taught, the service, the hymns, the preacher, all are his. He has a sense of proprietorship in them. He helps to pay for them. The French peasant replied to the English tourist, who expressed surprise at the fanatic love of the populace for the first Napoleon--"he was as much a tyrant as King Louis was." "Ah, but Napoleon was _our_ king." So the labourers feel that this is their religion. Therefore it is that so many of them gather together (where there are no chapels) in the cottage of some man who takes the lead, and sit, with doors and windows shut, crammed together to pray and listen to others pray. Any of them who wishes can, as it were, ascend the pulpit here. This is why in so many parishes the pews of the parish church are comparatively empty so far as agricultural labourers are concerned. The best of clergymen must fail to fill them under such disadvantages.

It is very difficult not only for the clergyman, but for others who wish to improve the condition of the labourer, to reach him. Better cottages are, of course, a most effectual way, but it is not in the power of every one to confer so substantial a benefit. Perhaps one of the best means devised has been that of cottage flower-shows. These are, of course, not confined to flowers; in fact, the princ.i.p.al part of such shows consists of table vegetables and fruit. By rigidly excluding all gardeners, and all persons not strictly cottage people, the very best results have often been arrived at in this way. For if there is one thing in which the labourer takes an interest it is his garden and his allotment. To offer him prizes for the finest productions of his garden touches the most sensitive part of his moral organisation. It is wonderful what an amount of emulation these prizes excite--emulation not so much for the value of the prize as for the distinction. These compet.i.tions tend besides to provide him with a better cla.s.s of food, for he depends largely upon vegetables.

There is nothing connected with the condition of the agricultural poor that is better worth the attention of improvers than the style of cookery pursued in these cottages. A more wretched cookery probably does not exist on the face of the earth. The soddened cabbage is typical of the whole thing. Since higher wages have come in it has become possible for the labourer in many cases to provide himself with better food, such as mutton--the cheap parts--more bacon, pork, and so on; but the women do not know how to make the most of it. It is very difficult to lay down a way in which this defect may be remedied; for there is nothing a man, let him be never so poor, so deeply resents as an inspection of the contents of his pot. He would sooner eat half-raw bacon than have the teaching forced on him--how to make savoury meals of the simple provisions within his reach; nor can he be blamed for this st.u.r.dy independent feeling. Possibly the establishment of schools of cookery in villages might do much good. They might be attached to the new schools now building throughout the country. The labourer, from so long living upon coa.r.s.e, ill-cooked food, acquires an artificial taste. Some men eat their bacon raw; others will drink large quant.i.ties of vinegar, and well they may need it to correct by its acidity the effects of strong unwholesome cabbage. The cottage cook has no idea of those nutritious and pleasant soups which can be made to form so important a feature in the economy of daily life.

The labourer is in a lower degree of the same cla.s.s as the third-rate working farmer of the past. He is the old small dairy farmer in a coa.r.s.er shape. With a little less education, ruder manners, with the instincts of eating, drinking, and avarice more prominently displayed, he presents in his actual condition at this day a striking a.n.a.logy to the agriculturist of a bygone time. In fact, those farmers of twenty or thirty acres, living in cottage-like homesteads, were barely distinguishable as far as _personnel_ went from the labourers among whom they lived. This being the case, it is not surprising to find that the labourer of this day presents in general characteristics a marked affinity in ideas and sentiments to those entertained by the old farmer. He has the same paternal creed in a more primeval form. He considers his children as his absolute property. He rules them with a rod of iron, or rather of ground-ash. In fact, the ground-ash stick is his social religion. The agricultural labouring poor are very rough and even brutal towards their children. Not that they are without affection towards them, but they are used to thrash them into obedience instead of leading them into it by the gentle means of moral persuasion.

Bystanders would call the agricultural labourer cruel. Carters, for instance, had till lately a habit of knocking the boys under their control about in a brutal manner. But I do not think that in the ma.s.s of cases it arose from deliberate cruelty, but from a species of stolid indifference or insensibility to suffering. Somehow they do not seem to understand that others suffer, whether this arises from the rough life they lead, the endless battle with the weather, the hard fare--whether it has grown up out of the circ.u.mstances surrounding them. The same unfeeling brutality often extends to the cattle under their care. In this there has been a decided improvement of late years; but it is not yet extinct.

These are some of the lights and shades of the labourer's daily life impartially presented.

_FIELD-FARING WOMEN._

If a thoughtful English peasant-woman rejoiced that in her house a son was born, it would be, not because "she had gotten a man from the Lord,"

but a thanksgiving that it was not a girl. That most natural thanksgiving of the Hebrew woman is too rarely heard in the rural cottage, situated though it may be in the midst of meadows and fields abounding with the fat of the earth. The fact that a fresh being has entered upon life, with all its glorious possibilities, is not a subject for joy.

"Well, John," the farmer says to his man, "your wife has been confined, hasn't she? How's the young one?"

"Aw, sir, a' be main weak and picked, an' like _to go back_--thank G.o.d!"

replies the labourer with intense satisfaction, especially if he has two or three children already. "Picked" means thin, sharp-featured, wasted, emaciated. "To go back" is to die. The man does not like to say "die,"

therefore he puts it "to go back"--_i.e._, whence it came; from the unknown. Yet, with all this hard indifference, the labourer is as fond of his children as any one else. The "ego" that utters those apparently heartless words is not the real man, it is the "ego" produced by long experience of the hardships of poverty; of coa.r.s.e fare, rude labour, exposure. After all, it is in a spirit of tenderness towards the infant that the parent half desires it to die. The real "ego," the true man, delights as all humanity does in watching the growth of the tiny limbs, the expansion of the instincts into mind, and the first employment of that mind. He feels as Marguerite in _Faust_ felt, tending the babe--"the holiest of all joys." But life is very, very hard, and circ.u.mstances push him out of himself. Still more do these hardships tell upon his wife; and so it is, knowing what her s.e.x have to go through, that she welcomes a boy more than a girl. An aged agricultural woman said she would sooner have seven boys than one girl; for the former, when they became lads, went out and earned their own living, but the girls you never knew when they were got rid of--they were always coming back. This expressed the practical view of the matter. But supposing that the child should prove a girl; it must not be imagined that it receives any ruder treatment in mere infancy than a boy would have had. In early infancy children have no s.e.x. But the poor mother has her trials. Though in the midst of a country teeming with milk, it is often with the utmost difficulty that she can obtain any for her babe, if Nature shall have rendered her dependent upon artificial supply. This has become especially the case of late years, now that so much milk is sent to London, instead of being retained in the dairy for the manufacture of b.u.t.ter and cheese. So that it actually happens that the poor mother in the courts of the metropolis can obtain milk easier than her far-away sister in those fabulous fields which the city woman has never seen, and, perhaps, never will. Often in arable districts there are scarcely any cows kept. No one cares to retail a pennyworth of milk.

It is only by favour, through the interest taken by some farmer's wife, that it can be got.

Very few agricultural women have a medical man present at their confinement; they usually entrust themselves to the care of some village nurse, who has a reputation for skill in such matters, but no scientifically acquired knowledge--who proceeds by rule of thumb. The doctor--almost always the parish doctor, though sometimes the club officer--is not called in till after the delivery. The poor woman will frequently come downstairs on the fourth day; and it is to this disregard of proper precautions that the distortions of figure and many of the illnesses of poor agricultural women are attributable. Nothing but the severe training they have gone through from childhood upwards--the exposure to all kinds of weather--the life in the open air, the physical strength induced by labour, can enable them to support the strain upon the frame caused by so quickly endeavouring to resume their household duties. It is probably this reserve of strength which enables them to recover from so serious a matter so quickly. Certain it is that very few die from confinement; and yet, from the point of view of the middle cla.s.s of society, almost every precaution and every luxury by them deemed necessary is omitted. Of course, in some instances, agricultural women whose husbands have, perhaps, worked for one master from boyhood, receive much more attention than here indicated--wines, jellies, meat, and so on--but the majority have to rely upon the tender mercies of the parish. It has been often remarked that the labourer, let him be in receipt of what wages he will, makes no provision for this, the most serious and interesting of all domestic events. Though it can be foreseen for months, he does not save a single sovereign. He does not consider it in the least shameful to receive parish relief on these occasions; he leaves his partner entirely to the mercy of strangers, and were it not for the clergyman's wife, she would frequently be without sympathy. There are no matters in which so much practical good is accomplished by the wives of the rural clergy as in these confinements of the poor women in their parishes. It is a matter peculiarly within their sphere, and, to their honour be it spoken, one which they carry out to the utmost of their ability.

A cottage is at best a wretched place to be ill in. It is a marvel how many poor women escape at all, from the close atmosphere of the low-pitched holes in which they are confined. It is a wonder that, among the many schemes of philanthropy which have attracted attention of late years, something has not been done for these poor creatures. Why should not every large village or cl.u.s.ter of villages--there are often three or four within a mile or two--have their lying-in hospitals, on the cottage hospital system? Scarcely any parish but has its so-called charities--money left by misguided but benevolent persons, for the purpose of annual distribution in small doles of groats, or loaves, or blankets. Often there is a piece of land called "Poor's Mead," or some similar name, which has been devised like this, the annual rent from it to be applied for the poor. As it is, the benefit from these charities is problematical. If they were combined, and the aggregate funds applied to maintain a lying-in hospital for the district, a real and efficient good would be arrived at. But of all places, villages are neglected. Let it be drainage, water supply, allotments--anything and everything--the villages go on as they may, the fault being the absence of local authority. There are plenty of gentlemen ready and willing to take part in and advance such schemes, but there is no combination. Spontaneous combination is uncertain in its operation. If there were some system of village self-government, these wants would be soon supplied. It is true that there is the Union Workhouse. A poor woman can go to the workhouse; but is it right, is it desirable from any point of view, that decent women should be driven to the workhouse at such times? As a matter of fact, it is only the unfortunates who have illegitimate children that use the workhouse lying-in wards. Such an inst.i.tution as has been suggested would be gladly welcomed by the agricultural poor. Most cottages have but two bedrooms, some only one; a better cla.s.s of cottage is now being gradually erected with three, but even in these the third is very small. Now, take the case of a labouring man with seven or eight children, and living in a cottage with two bedrooms, and whose wife is confined; and let it be remembered that large families are common amongst this cla.s.s. The wife must certainly have one room to herself and her attendant. The father, then, and his children must crowd into the other, or sleep as they can on the ground-floor. In the case of nearly grown-up children the overcrowding is a serious matter. The relief afforded by a lying-in hospital would be immense; and the poor woman herself would be restored to her family with her health firmly re-established, whereas now she often lingers in a sickly state for months.

In the soft, warm summer-time, when the midsummer hum of the myriads of insects in the air sheds a drowsy harmony over the tree-tops, the field-faring woman goes out to haymaking, and leaves her baby in the shade by the hedge-side. A wooden sheepcage, turned upside down and filled with new-made hay, forms not at all a despicable cradle; and here the little thing lies on its back and inhales the fresh pure air, and feels the warmth of the genial sun, cheered from time to time by visits from its busy mother. Perhaps this is the only true poetry of the hayfield, so much talked of and praised. The mother works with her rake, or with a shorter, smaller p.r.o.ng; and if it is a large farm, the women are kept as much as possible together, for their strength and skill will not allow them to work at the same pace as the men, and if they work in company the one hinders the other. A man can do the work of two women, and do it better in every way, besides being capable of the heavier tasks of pitching, c.o.c.k-making, &c., which the women cannot manage. Before the haymaking machines and horse-rakes came into vogue, it was not uncommon to see as many as twenty women following each other in _echelon_, turning a "wallow," or shaking up the green swathes left by the mowers. Farmers were obliged to employ them, but were never satisfied with their work, which was the dearest they paid for. Somehow, there was no finish to it. Large numbers of women still work in the hayfield, but they are not used in gangs so much as formerly, but distributed about to do light jobs for which a man cannot be spared, and in these they are useful. The pay used to be tenpence a day; now it is one shilling and a pint of beer per day, and in some places fifteenpence. The Arcadian innocence of the hayfield, sung by the poets, is the most barefaced fiction; for those times are the rural saturnalia, and the broadest and coa.r.s.est of jokes and insinuations are freely circulated; nor does it always stop at language only, provided the master be out of sight. Matrons and young girls alike come in for an equal share of this rude treatment, and are quite a match for the men in the force of compliment. The women leave work an hour or so before the men, except when there is a press, and the farmer is anxious to get in the hay before a storm comes. It is not that the hayfield itself originates this coa.r.s.eness but this is almost the only time of the year when the labouring cla.s.ses work together in large numbers. A great deal of farm-work is comparatively solitary; in harvest droves of people are collected together, and the inherent vulgarity comes out more strongly.

At the wheat-harvest the women go reaping, and exceedingly hard they work at it. There is no harder work done under the sun than reaping, if it is well followed up. From earliest dawn to latest night they swing the sickles, staying with their husbands, and brothers, and friends, till the moon silvers the yellow corn. The reason is because reaping is piece-work, and not paid by the day, so that the longer and the harder they work the more money is earned. In this a man's whole family can a.s.sist. His wife, his grown-up sons and daughters cut the corn, the younger ones can carry it and aid in various ways.

It is wonderful how the men stand the excessive and continuous labour; it is still more wonderful how the women endure it, trying as it is to the back. It is the hottest season of the year--the early autumn; the sun burns and scorches, and the warm wind gives no relief; even the evenings are close and sultry. The heated earth reflects the rays, and the straw is dry and warm to the touch. The standing corn, nearly as high as the reaper, keeps off the breeze, if there is any, from her brow. Grasping the straw continuously cuts and wounds the hand, and even gloves will hardly give perfect protection. The woman's bare neck is turned to the colour of tan; her thin muscular arms bronze right up to the shoulder. Short time is allowed for refreshment; right through the hottest part of the day they labour. It is remarkable that none, or very few, cases of sunstroke occur. Cases of vertigo and vomiting are frequent, but pa.s.s off in a few hours. Large quant.i.ties of liquor are taken to sustain the frame weakened by perspiration.

When night does arrive, even then the task is not over, for they have to carry home on their heads the bundle of wheat gleaned by the smaller children, and perhaps walk two miles to the cottage. This is indeed work for a woman still suckling her child. It is not easy to calculate what a woman earns at such seasons, because they rarely work on their own account: either the father or the husband receives the wages in a lump with his own; but it cannot be much less than that earned by a man; for at these times they work with a will, and they do not at the haymaking.

While reaping the baby is nestled down on a heap of coats or shawls under the shelter of the shocks of corn, which form a little hut for it, and, as in the hayfield, is watched by one of the children. Often three or four women will place their babies close together, and leave one great girl in charge of the whole, which is an economy, releasing other children for work; for the hayfield and the corn-harvest are the labourer's gold-mine. There is not so much rough joking in the corn-field; they do not work so close together, and the husband or father is near at hand; neither is there time nor inclination in the midst of such severe labour, to which haymaking is play.

Harvest-homes are going out of fashion. After one of these feasts there was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect sticks, and a fire is made in a corner of the field, and the kettle boiled; and about four o'clock they take a cup in company--always weak tea, with a little brown sugar and no milk, and usually small pieces of bread sopped in it, especially by the elder women. Tea is largely used by the agricultural labourers, though it does not by any means prevent them from indulging in beer. Snuff is not taken by the women half so much as formerly, though some of the old ones are very fond of it.

As soon as ever the child is old enough to crawl about, it is sure to get out into the road and roll in the dust. It is a curious fact that the agricultural children, with every advantage of green fields and wide open downs, always choose the dusty hard road to play in. They are free to wander as they list over mead and leaze, and pluck the flowers out of the hedges, and idle by the brooks, all the year round, the latter part of the spring, when the gra.s.s is nearly fit for mowing, only excepted.

Yet, excepting a few of the elder boys birdnesting, it is the rarest thing to meet a troop of children in the fields; but there they are in the road, the younger ones sprawling in the dust, their naked limbs kicking it up in clouds, and the bigger boys clambering about in the hedge-mound bounding the road, making gaps, splashing in the dirty water of the ditches. Hardy young dogs one and all. Their food is of the rudest and scantiest, chiefly weak tea, without milk, sweetened with moist sugar, and hunches of dry bread, sometimes with a little lard, or, for a treat, with treacle. b.u.t.ter is scarcely ever used in the agricultural labourer's cottage. It is too dear by far, and if he does buy fats, he believes in the fats expressed from meats, and prefers lard or dripping. Children are frequently fed with bread and cheap sugar spread on it. This is much cheaper than b.u.t.ter. Sometimes they get a bit of cheese or bacon, but not often, and a good deal of strong cabbage, soddened with pot-liquor. The elder boys get a little beer; the young girls none, save perhaps a sip from their mother's pint, in summer. This is what they have to build up a frame on capable of sustaining heat and cold, exposure, and a life of endless labour. The boys it seems to suit, for they are generally tolerably plump, though always very short for their age. Frequently teams of powerful horses drawing immense loads of hay or straw may be seen on the highway, in the charge of a boy who does not look ten years old judged by the town standard, but who is really fifteen. These short, broad, stout lads, look able to stand anything, and in point of fact do stand it, from the kick of a carter's heavy boot to the long and bitter winter. If it is wished to breed up a race of men literally "hard as nails," no better process could be devised; but, looked at from a mental and moral point of view, there may be a difference of opinion.

The girls do not appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot, and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not only to mind the baby, but to nurse it; she carries it about with her in her arms; and really the infant looks almost as large as herself, and its weight compels her to lean backwards. She is left at home all day in charge of the baby, the younger children, and the cottage. Perhaps a little bread is left for them to eat, but they get nothing more till the mother returns about half-past four, when, woe be to the girl if the fire is not lit, and the kettle on. The girl has to fetch the water--often a hard and tedious task, for many villages have a most imperfect supply, and you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the operation till sufficient has been acquired; and when her mother is washing, or, still worse, is a washerwoman by profession, this is her weary trudge all day. Of course there are villages where water is at hand, and sometimes too much of it. I know a large village where the brook runs beside the highway, and you have to pa.s.s over a "drock," or small bridge, to get to each of the cottages; but such instances are rare. The girl has also to walk into the adjacent town and bring back the bread, particularly if her mother happens to be receiving parish pay. A little older--at ten or eleven, or twelve--still more skinny and bony now as a rule, she follows her mother to the fields, and learns to pick up stones from the young mowing gra.s.s, and place them in heaps to be carted away to mend drinking places for cattle. She learns to beat clots and spread them with a small p.r.o.ng; she works in the hayfield, and gleans at the corn-harvest. Gleaning--poetical gleaning--is the most unpleasant and uncomfortable of labour, tedious, slow, back-aching work; picking up ear by ear the dropped wheat, searching among the p.r.i.c.kly stubble.

Notwithstanding all her labour, and the hardship she has to endure--coa.r.s.e fare, and churlish treatment at the hands of those who should love her most--the little agricultural girl still retains some of that natural inclination towards the pretty and romantic inherent in the s.e.x. In the spring she makes daisy chains, and winds them round the baby's neck; or with the stalks of the dandelion makes a chain several feet in length. She plucks great bunches of the beautiful bluebell, and of the purple orchis of the meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip, and after playing with them a little while, they are left to wither in the dust by the roadside, while she is sent two or three miles with her father's dinner. She chants s.n.a.t.c.hes of rural songs, and sometimes three or four together, joining hands, dance slowly round and round, singing slowly rude rhymes describing marriage--and not over decent some of these rhymes are. She has no toys--not one in twenty such girls ever have a doll; or, if they do, it is but some stick dressed in a rag. Poor things! they need no artificial dolls; so soon as ever they can lift it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an outsider it seems unnecessarily rough, and even brutal. Her mother shouts at her in a shrill treble perpetually; her father enforces his orders with a harsh oath and a slap.

The pressure of hard circ.u.mstances, the endless battle with poverty, render men and women both callous to others' feelings, and particularly strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even a slap on the ear, is really the counterpart of the frown and emphasised words of a father in a more fortunate cla.s.s of life; and the children do not feel it, or think it exceptionally cruel, as the children of a richer man would. Undoubtedly, however, it does lessen the bond between child and parent. There is little filial affection among these cottagers--how should there be? The boy is driven away from home as early as possible; the girl is made day by day to feel her fault in being a girl; to neither can the poor man give any small present, or any occasional treat. What love there is lasts longest between the mother and her daughter. The only way in which a labourer exhibits his affection is when another labourer in authority, as a carter, ill-treats his boy--a too common case--and then he speaks loudly, and very properly. But even in most serious matters there is a strange callousness. I have known instances in which a father, aware that a criminal a.s.sault has been attempted by another labourer upon a tender child of twelve, has refused to prosecute, and the brutal offender would have escaped without the slightest punishment had not the clergyman heard of the story.

The slow years roll by--they are indeed slow in an agricultural village--and the girl, now fifteen, has to go regularly to work in the fields; that is, if the family be not meantime largely increased. She has in this latter case plenty of work at home to a.s.sist her mother.

Cottagers are not over-clean, but they are not wilfully dirty in their houses; and with a large family there is much washing and other domestic matters to attend to, which the mother, now fast growing feeble, cannot get through herself. In harvest the women get up at four or earlier, and do their household work before starting for the fields. But, perhaps, by this time another girl has grown up sufficiently to nurse baby, mind the young ones, and do slave's work generally. Then the elder daughter goes to the fields daily when there is work to be had. In arable districts the women do much work, picking couch gra.s.s--a tedious operation--and hoeing. They never or rarely milk now. In the dead of winter there is nothing for women to do. At this age--fifteen or sixteen--the girl perhaps goes out to service at some farmhouse. If she is fortunate enough to enter the house of one of the modern cla.s.s of farmers, it is a lucky day for her when she begins indoor labour. It is to be feared that the life of a girl of this kind in the old time, and not so long ago, in the houses of the poorer order of farmers, was a rough one indeed. But much of that is past, never to return, and our business is with the present. Where they have a dairy she has to clean the buckets and milk-cans and other utensils, to help turn the cheeses, and a.s.sist the dairymaid (a most important personage this last) in all kinds of ways.

The work is coa.r.s.e and rude, but it only lasts a portion of the day, and she has regular and ample meals. The bacon and cheese soon begin to tell upon her. The angular bones disappear, the skinny arms grow round, and presently enormously fat--not much the prettier, perhaps, but far more pleasant to look at. Her face loses the pinched expression; her cheeks become full, and round, and rosy; in every way her physical frame improves. It is wonderful what a difference a few months in a good farmhouse makes to a girl of this kind. She soon begins to dress better, not from her wages, for these are small enough, and may commence as low as 4; but her mistress gives her many things, and, if she is a good girl, buys her a dress now and then; and with the shilling or two she asks in advance, she purchases cheap ornaments of the pedlar at the door. Her life is low enough socially--it is almost an annual round of working, eating, and sleeping (no one sleeps like a farm-wench); but it is an infinite improvement upon the struggle for existence at the cottage. She has no trouble, no thought, no care now. Her mistress may snap occasionally, her master may grumble, and the dairymaid may snarl; but there are no slaps on the ear, no kicks, no going to bed supperless.

In summer she goes out in the afternoon haymaking as an extra hand, but only works a few hours, and it is really only a relaxation. She picks up some knowledge of cooking, learns how to make herself useful in the house, and in the course of a year or two, if moderately sharp, is capable of rising a degree, and obtaining a better salary as a maid-servant, having nothing to do with a dairy. The four or five pounds with which she commences may seem a very low sum, but the state of her domestic education at the time must be taken into consideration. She has to learn everything. All the years spent in working in the cottage at home have to be unlearnt--all the old habits replaced by new ones. After the first year or so her value rises considerably; she may continue in the house at a higher salary, or go into the town as maid-servant in a tradesman's family. A large proportion of servant-girls thus find their way from the country into the town. With these we have nothing further to do--they are no longer field-farers. A few after several years learn the art and mystery of b.u.t.ter and cheese, and become dairymaids; and then, if they are clever, earn good wages--indeed, fabulous prices are asked by them. There are not, however, so many dairymaids as formerly, for the small dairies are getting amalgamated and made into larger ones, and then the farmer, if he makes b.u.t.ter and cheese, employs a dairyman in preference. This rise to be maid-servant, or to be dairymaid, is the bright side of the girl's career. There are darker shades which must be mentioned.

The overcrowding in cottages leads to what may be called an indifference to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coa.r.s.eness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is an open question whether she will or will not succ.u.mb. If she goes into a farmhouse as servant, the chances are in favour of her escaping temptation. But in farmhouses she may also sometimes run into the very jaws of danger. It is not uncommon in some districts for young labourers to sleep in the house, one or two who milk and have to be on the spot early. These take their supper in the kitchen or the brewhouse, and, despite the strictest precautions on the part of the mistress, enjoy plenty of opportunities for flirting with the girl. Young, full of animal spirits, giddy and ignorant, she thinks no harm of a romp, and finally falls, and has to leave her service. If a little may be said in favour of the poor girls, not a word can be said in favour of the agricultural men, who are immoral almost without exception, and will remain so until a better-educated generation with more self-respect arises. The number of poor girls, from fifteen to five-and-twenty, in agricultural parishes who have illegitimate offspring is extremely large, and is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that, out of the marriages that take place--and agricultural poor are a marrying cla.s.s--scarcely any occur until the condition of the girl is too manifest to be any longer concealed. Instances could be mentioned where the clergyman's wife, with a view to check the immorality around her, has offered a reward of a piece of furniture to the first married woman who does not bear a child till nine months after marriage; the custom being within three months.

The frequency of the appeals to the petty sessions in rural districts for orders of contribution, by young unmarried girls, also ill.u.s.trates the prevalent immorality. Of late the magistrates have taken the line of ordering contributions on a higher scale, on the grounds that the labourer earns larger wages, and that the cost of living has risen, and also as a check upon the men. This well-intentioned step has had the precisely opposite effect to what was wished. The labourer with higher wages feels the demand upon his pocket but very little more. The cost of living in rural outlying districts has risen only to a very trifling degree--barely perceptibly, in fact. Bread is cheap--that is the staple--rents are the same, and there are more allotments than ever, making vegetables more easy to obtain. The result, therefore, is this, that the girl feels she can sin with comparative immunity. She is almost sure to get her order (very few such appeals are refused); let this be supplemented with some aid from the parish, and she is none the worse off than before, for there is no prejudice against employing her in the fields. Should her fall take place with some young farmer's son from whom she may get a larger contribution in private, or by order of the magistrates, she is really and truly in a pecuniary sense better off than she was before, for she has a certain fixed income. The evil is aggravated by the new law, which enables the order to be extended over a longer term of years than formerly, so that for fifteen years is a common thing. If it is decided to recognise immorality, and to provide against the woman being unduly injured by it, then these orders are certainly the correct procedure; but if it is desired to suppress it, then they are a total failure. The girl who has had an illegitimate child is thought very little the worse of by her friends and her own cla.s.s, especially if her seducer is a man who can afford to pay for it--that is the grand point. If she is fool enough to yield to a man who is badly off, she may be jeered at as a fool, but rarely reprimanded as a sinner, not even by her own mother. Such things are not looked upon by the rural poor as sins, but as accidents of their condition.

It is easy to be hard upon the poor girls, but consider their training.

Many of them cannot read or write; how many even can sew well? The cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a higher cla.s.s of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart young men coa.r.s.er and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what wonder is it if the natural result takes place? The fairs have been credited with much of the mischief, and undoubtedly they are productive of evil; but if they were abolished, the average would in all probability remain about the same. The evil is inherent, and does not depend upon circ.u.mstances. It is the outcome of a long series of generations; it cannot be overcome in a decade. Education will do much, but not all.

Youth is always led by the tone of the elder people. Until the tone of the parent is improved, the conduct of the young will remain much the same. The more distant a parish from a town, the more outlying and strictly agricultural, and therefore stagnant, the greater the immorality. It is the one blot upon the character of the agricultural poor. They are not thieves, they are not drunkards; if they do drink they are harmless, and it evaporates in shouting and slang. They are not riotous; but the immorality cannot be gainsaid. No specific cure for this state of things can be devised: it must slowly work itself out under the gradual pressure of an advancing social state. It will be slow; for, up to the present, the woman has had but a small share of the benefit that has befallen the labourer through higher wages. If higher wages mainly go for drink, the wife at home is not much the better. The women say themselves they are no better off.