Under the sun of summer and the frost of winter; if I lived on hard fare,
and, most powerful of all, if I had no hope for the future, no
improvement to look forward to, I should feel just the same. I would
rather my children shared my crust than fed on roast beef in a stranger's
hall. Perhaps the sentiment in my case might have a different origin, but
in effect it would be similar. I should prefer to see my family about
me - the one only pleasure I should have - the poorer and the more unhappy,
the less I should care to part with them. This may be foolish, but I
expect it is human nature.
English folk don't 'cotton' to their poverty at all; they don't cat
humble-pie with a relish; they resent being poor and despised. Foreign
folk seem to take to it quite naturally; an Englishman, somehow or other,
always feels that he is wronged. He is injured; he has not got his
rights. To me it seems the most curious thing possible that well-to-do
people should expect the poor to be delighted with their condition. I
hope they never will be; an evil day that - if it ever came - for the
Anglo-Saxon race.
One girl prided herself very much upon belonging to a sort of club or
insurance-if she died, her mother would receive ten pounds. Ten pounds,
ten golden sovereigns was to her such a magnificent sum, that she really
appeared to wish herself dead, in order that it might be received. She
harped and talked and brooded on it constantly. If she caught cold it
didn't matter, she would say, her mother would have ten pounds. It seemed
a curious reversal of ideas, but it is a fact that poor folk in course of
time come to think less of death than money. Another girl was describing
to her mistress how she met the carter's ghost in the rickyard; the
waggon-wheel went over him; but he continued to haunt the old scene, and
they met him as commonly as the sparrows.
'Did you ever speak to him?'
'Oh no. You mustn't speak to them; if you speak to them they'll fly at
you.'
In winter the men were allowed to grub up the roots of timber that had
been thrown, and take the wood home for their own use; this kept them in
fuel the winter through without buying any. 'But they don't get - paid -
for that work.' She considered it quite a hardship that they were not
paid for taking a present. Cottage people do look at things in such a
curious crooked light! A mother grumbled because the vicar had not been
to see her child, who was ill. Now, she was not a church-goer, and cared
nothing for the Church or its doctrines - that was not it; she grumbled so
terribly because 'it was his place to come.'
A lady went to live in a village for health's sake, and having heard so
much of the poverty of the farmer's man, and how badly his family were
off, thought that she should find plenty who would be glad to pick up
extra shillings by doing little things for her. First she wanted a stout
boy to help to draw her Bath chair, while the footman pushed behind, it
being a hilly country. Instead of having to choose between half a dozen
applicants, as she expected, the difficulty was to discover anybody who
would even take such a job into consideration. The lads did not care
about it; their fathers did not care about it; and their mothers did not
want them to do it. At one cottage there were three lads at home doing
nothing; but the mother thought they were too delicate for such work. In
the end a boy was found, but not for some time. Nobody was eager for any
extra shilling to be earned in that way. The next thing was somebody to
fetch a yoke or two of spring water daily. This man did not care for it,
and the other did not care for it; and even one who had a small piece of
ground, and kept a donkey and water-butt on wheels for the very purpose,
shook his head. He always fetched water for folk in the summer when it
was dry, never fetched none at that time of year - he could not do it.
After a time a small shopkeeper managed the yoke of water from the spring
for her - - his - boy could carry it; the labourer's could not. He was
comparatively well-to-do, yet he was not above an extra shilling.
This is one of the most curious traits in the character of cottage
folk - they do not care for small sums; they do not care to pick up
sixpences. They seem to be - afraid of obliging people - - as if to do so,
even to their own advantage, would be against their personal honour and
dignity. In London the least trifle is snapped up immediately, and there
is a great crush and press for permission to earn a penny, and that not
in very dignified ways. In the country it is quite different. Large
fortunes have been made out of matches; now your true country cottager
would despise such a miserable fraction of a penny as is represented by a
match. I heard a little girl singing -
Little drops of water, little grains of sand.
It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is pennies that make
millionaires. But this the countryman cannot see. Not him alone either;
the dislike to little profits is a national characteristic, well marked
in the farmer, and indeed in all classes.
