This is a picture, and not a disputation: as to what they teach or preach inside Bethel, it is nothing to me; this paper has not the slightest theological bias.
You may tell when the service is nearly over by the stray boys who steal out and round the walls to throw stones at the sparrows in the roads; they need a little relaxation; nature gets even into Bethel. By-and-by out come some bigger lads and tie two long hop-poles together with which to poke down the swallows" nests under the chapel eaves. The Book inside, of which they almost make an idol, seemed to think the life of a sparrow--and possibly of a swallow--was of value; still it is good fun to see the callow young come down flop on the hard ground.
When the church doors are thrown open by the noiseless vergers, and patchouli and maca.s.sar, and the overpowering, rich smell of silks and satins rushes out in a volume of heated air, in a few minutes the whole place is vacant. Bethel is not deserted in this manner. All those who have come from a distance have brought with them their dinner in a black bag or basket, and quietly settle themselves down to take their dinner in the chapel. This practice is not confined to the pilgrims who have walked a long way; very many of those who live the other side of the village shut up their cottages, bring their provisions, and spend the whole day at their devotions. Now the old woman spends her Sunday penny. At the back of the chapel there is a large room where a person is employed to boil the kettle and supply cups of tea at a halfpenny each. Here the old lady makes herself very comfortable, and waits till service begins again.
Halfpenny a cup would not, of course, pay the cost of the materials, but these are found by some earnest member of the body, some farmer or tradesman"s wife, who feels it a good deed to solace the weary worshippers. There is something in this primitive hospitality, in this eating their dinners in the temple, and general communion of humanity, which to a philosopher seems very admirable. It seems better than incense and scarlet robes, unlit candles behind the altar, and vacancy. Not long since a bishop addressed a circular to the clergy of his diocese, lamenting in solemn tones the unhappy position of the labourer in the village churches. The bishop had observed with regret, with very great regret, that the labourer seemed in the background. He sat in the back seats behind the columns, and near the door where he could hardly hear, and where he had none of the comfort of the stove in winter. The bishop feared his position was cold and comfortless, that he did not feel himself to be a member of the Church, that he was outside the pale of its society. He exhorted the country clergy to bring the labourer forward and make him more comfortable, to put him in a better seat among the rest, where he would feel himself to be really one of the congregation.
To those who have sat in country churches this circular read as a piece of most refined sarcasm, so bitter because of its truth. Where had been the clerical eye all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence that the clerical eye was opened just at the moment when Hodge became a voter?
At Bethel Chapel between the services the cottagers, the farmers, and the tradesmen break their bread together, and converse, and actually seem to recognise one another; they do not turn their backs the instant the organ ceases and return each to his house in proud isolation. There is no dining together, no friendly cup of tea at the parish church. This Bethel is, you see, the church of the poor people, most emphatically _their_ church. If the word church means not a building, but a society, then this is the true country church. It is the society of all those who, for want of a better expression, I may term the humble-minded, those who have no aristocratic or exclusive tastes, very simple in their reading and studies even if well-to-do, and simple in their daily habits, rising early and retiring early, and plebeian in their dinner-hour. It is a peculiar cast of mind that I am trying to describe--a natural frame of mind; these are "chapel people"--perhaps a phrase will convey the meaning better than explanation. This is _their_ church, and whatever the theology may be there is undoubtedly a very strong bond of union among them.
Not only the old women with their Sunday pennies, but great numbers beside, young and old of both s.e.xes, take their cup of tea, for these people take tea with every meal, dinner and supper as well as breakfast and five o"clock, and if they don"t feel well they will rise at two in the morning to get a cup of tea. They are as Russian as the Russians in this particular; they have cheese on the table, too, at every meal. The pastor has, meantime, been entertained with a good dinner at some house adjacent, where he goes every Sunday; by-and-by the flute begins to tune again, the hymns resound, and the labour of the day is resumed. Somewhere about four o"clock the summer-dusty roads are full again of the returning pilgrims, and the crowd gradually sinks away by footpath and stile. The black albatross is still wheeling in the upper atmosphere, the white-barred swallow rushes along the road and dives upwards, the unwearied roses are still opened to the sun"s rays, and calm, indifferent Nature has pursued her quiet course without heed of pitch-pipe or organ, or bell or chalice. Perhaps if you chance to be resting by a gate you may hear one of the cottage women telling her children to let the ants alone and not tease them, for "thaay be G.o.d"s creeturs." Or possibly the pastor himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one finger on the palm of his other hand, "That"s their serpentine way; that"s their subtlety; that"s their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the ma.s.s, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows less and less between these millstones till he approaches the vanishing-point. The Roman has the broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the chapel has the common people, and the farmers are banding together not to pay t.i.thes. So that his whole soul may well go forth in the apostrophe, "Good Lord, deliver us!"
There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. His tall and yet rotund body and his broad red face might easily be mistaken for the outward man of a st.u.r.dy farmer, and he likes his pipe and gla.s.s. He dines every Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his stoutest upholders. It is said that at such a dinner, after a large plateful of black currant pudding, finding there was still some juice left, he lifted the plate to his mouth and carefully licked it all round; the hostess hastened to offer a spoon, but he declined, thinking that was much the best way to gather up the essence of the fruit. So simple were his manners, he needed no spoon; and, indeed, if we look back, the apostles managed without forks, and put their fingers in the dish. After dinner the cognac bottle is produced, and the pastor fills his tumbler half full of spirit, and but lightly dashes it with water. It is cognac and not brandy, for your chapel minister thinks it an affront if anything more common than the best French liquor is put before him; he likes it strong, and with it his long clay pipe. Very frequently another minister, sometimes two or three, come in at the same time, and take the same dinner, and afterwards form a genial circle with cognac and tobacco, when the room speedily becomes full of smoke and the bottle of brandy soon disappears. In these family parties there is not the least approach to over-conviviality; it is merely the custom, no one thinks anything of a gla.s.s and a pipe; it is perfectly innocent; it is not a local thing, but common and understood. The consumption of brandy and tobacco and the good things of dinner, tea, and supper (for the party generally sit out the three meals), must in a month cost the host a good deal of money, but all things are cheerfully borne for the good of the church. Never were men feasted with such honest good-will as these pastors; and if a budding Paul or Silas happens to come along who has scarce yet pa.s.sed his ordination, the youthful divine may stay a week if he likes, and lick the platter clean. In fact, so constant is this hospitality, that in certain houses it is impossible to pay a visit at any time of the year without finding one of these young brothers reposing amid the fat of the land, and doubtless indulging in pleasant spiritual communion with the daughters of the mansion. Something in this system of household ministers of religion reminds one of the welcome and reverence said to be extended in the East to the priests, who take up their residence indefinitely, and are treated as visible incarnations of the Deity whose appet.i.tes it is meritorious to satisfy. Indeed, these young men, who have perhaps been trained as missionaries, often discourse of Buddha with a very long and unctuous "Boo."
The ancient Roman censor who tried by laws and persuasions to induce the inhabitants of Rome to marry, yet could not succeed in inducing them to submit to what they considered a sacrifice for the benefit of the state, would have been delighted with the marrying tendencies of the chapel people. A venerable old gentleman--a great pillar of the body--after the decease of his first wife married her sister, and again, upon her removal, married his cook. Another great prop--elderly indeed, but still upright and iron-grey, a most powerfully made man, who always spoke as if his words were indeed law--rule-of-thumb law--has married three sisters in succession, and has had offspring by all. Their exact degrees of consanguinity I cannot tell you, or whether they call each other brothers and sisters, or cousins. This is certain, however, that whether such marriages be legal or not, they are as such regarded and as such accepted in every sense by the society to which these gentlemen belong. Another gentleman now has his fourth wife, and he, too, is a most strenuous believer, and not his bitterest enemy can rake up the smallest accusation against his character. He, too, is a strong and upright man, fully capable of another wife if time should chance to bring it about. Now, the odd part of it is that, having married four times, and each time in the same village, where all the families are more or less connected, he is more or less related to every single individual in the parish. First, there are his own blood relations and his wives" blood relations, and then there are their relations" relations, and next his sons and daughters have married and introduced a fresh roll, and I really do not think either he or anybody else knows exactly where the list ends. This is nothing uncommon. Though clans and tribes no longer settle under their respective chiefs in villages, the families of the same name and blood still present a very close representation of the clan system. They have all the tribal relationship without any of its feeling. Instead of forming a strong body and helping each other, these people seemed to detest one another, and to lose no opportunity of s.n.a.t.c.hing some little advantage or telling some scandalous tale. In fact, this in-and-in breeding seems one of the curses of village life, and a cause of stagnation and narrowness of mind. This marrying and giving in marriage is not singular to well-to-do leaders of chapel society, but goes on with equal fervour among the lower members. The cottage girls and cottage boys marry the instant they get a chance, and it is not at all uncommon to find comparatively young labourers who have had two wives. There is nothing in this to reproach: it is a peculiarity of the cast of mind which I am endeavouring to describe--a cast of mind perhaps not much marked by sentimentality. Something in this practice reminds one of the Mormons. Certainly the wives are not taken together, but they are sealed as fast as circ.u.mstances permit. Something in it has a Mormonite aspect to an observer, and perhaps the existence of this cast of mind may a.s.sist in explaining the inexplicable growth of that strange religion. Doubtless they would repudiate the suggestion with loud outcries and indignation, for people are always most vigorous in denouncing themselves unconsciously. These numerous wives (who are quite willing), the marrying of sisters, the primitive gatherings at the chapel, so like the religious camps of the Far West, the general relationship, have a distinct flavour of Salt Lake. Add to this the immense working power of these pluralist giants, for you will generally find that the well-to-do chapeller with his third wife, or more, is a man who has raised himself from very much nothing to very much something. By sheer force of labour and push he has lifted himself head and shoulders above the village--a career, too, conspicuous by strict integrity. Did he live in a London suburb he would be pointed out to the rising generation by anxious fathers as the very model for them to follow. The village ought to be proud of them, but the village secretly and aside hates them, being practical commentaries on the general sloth and stupidity. This energy of work, too, is like the saints of Utah, who have made an oasis and a garden where was a desert.
After labouring from morning till night they like the sound of a feminine voice and the warmth of a feminine welcome in the back parlour of rest.
This four times married elder--what work, what a pyramid of work, his life represents! The young labourer left with his mother and brothers and sisters to keep, learning carpentering, and bettering his wages--learning mason-work, picking up the way to manage machinery, inspiring men with confidence, and beginning to get the leverage of borrowed money, getting a good name at the bank, managing a little farm, contracting for building, contracting for hauling--onwards to a larger farm, larger buildings, big contracts in rising towns, somehow or other grinding money out of everything by force of will, bending everything to his purpose by stubborn sinew, always truthful, straightforward, and genuine. Consider what immense labour this represent! I do not think many such men can be found, rude and unlettered, yet naturally gentleman-like, to work their way in the world without the aid of the Lombard Street financiers; in village life, remember, where all is stagnant and dull--no golden openings such as occur near great towns. On work-days still wearing the same old hat--I wonder what material it was originally?--tough leather probably--its fibres soaked with mortar, its shine replaced by lime, its shape dented by bricks, its rotundity flattened by timber, stuck about with cow"s hair--for a milker leans his head against the animal--sodden with rain, and still the same old hat. The same old hat, that Teniers might have introduced, a regular daub of a hat: pity it is that it will never be painted. On Sundays the high silk hat, the glossy black coat of the elder, but there are no gloves to be got on such hands as those; they are too big and too real ever to be got into the artificiality of kid.
Everything grew under those hands; if there was a rabbit-hutch in the back yard it became a shed, and a stable sprang up by the shed, and a sawpit out of the stable, and a workshop beyond the sawpit, and cottages to let beyond that; next a market garden and a brick-kiln, and a hop-oast, and a few acres of freehold meadow, and by-and-by some villas; all increasing and multiplying, and leading to enterprises in distant, places--such a mighty generation after generation of solid things! A most earnest and conscientious chapel man, welcoming the budding Paul and Silas, steadily feeding the resident apostle, furnishing him with garden produce and a side of bacon when the pig was killed, arranging a vicarage for him at a next-to-nothing rent; lending him horse and trap, providing innumerable bottles of three-star brandy for these men of G.o.d, and continual pipes for the prophets; supplying the chapel fund with credit in time of monetary difficulty--the very right arm and defender of the faith.
Let the drama shift a year in one sentence in true dramatic way, and now imagine the elder and his family proceeding down the road as the Bethel congregation gather. As he approaches they all ostentatiously turn their backs. One or two of the other elders walk inside; being men of some education, they soften down the appearance of their resentment by getting out of the way. Groups of cottage people, on the contrary, rather come nearer the road, and seem to want to make their sentiments coa.r.s.ely visible. Such is the way with that layer of society; they put everything so very very crudely; they do not understand a gentle intimation, they express their displeasure in the rudest manner, without any consciousness that gruffness and brutality of manner degrades the righteous beneath the level of the wicked who is accused. The women make remarks to each other.
Many of them had been visitors at the elder"s house, yet now they will not so much as say good morning to his wife and family; their children look over the wall with stolid stare. Farther down the road the elder meets the pastor on his road to chapel. The elder looks the pastor straight in the face; the pastor shuffles his eyes over the hedge; it is difficult to quite forget the good dinners, the bottles, and the pipes.
The elder goes on, and he and his family are picked up by a conveyance at the cross-ways and carried to a place of worship in a distant village.
This is only a specimen, this is only the Sunday, but the same process goes on all the week. The elder"s house, that was once the resort of half the people in the village, is now deserted; no one looks in in pa.s.sing; the farmers do not stop as they come back from market to tell how much they have lost by their corn, or to lament that So-and-so is going to grub his hops--bad times; the women do not come over of an afternoon with news of births and rumours of marriages. One family, once intimate friends, sent over to say that they liked the elder very much, but they could not call while he was on such terms with their "dear pastor." Two or three of the ministers who came by invitation to preach in the chapel, and who had been friendly, did indeed call once, but were speedily given to understand by the leading members of the congregation that dinners and sleeping accommodation had been provided elsewhere, and they must not do so again. The ministers, being entirely in the power of the congregations, had to obey. In short, the elder and his family were excommunicated, spiritually boycotted, interdicted, and cut off from social intercourse; without any of the magical ceremonies of the Vatican, they were as effectually excommunicated as if the whole seventy cardinals and the Pope in person had p.r.o.nounced the dread sentence. In a great town perhaps such a thing would not be so marked or so much felt; in a little village where everybody knows everybody, where there are no strangers, and where you must perforce come in contact constantly with persons you have known for years, it is a very annoying process indeed. There are no streets of shops to give a choice of butchers and bakers, no compet.i.tion of tea merchants and cheesemongers, so that if one man shows a dislike to serving you, you can go on to the next and get better attention. "Take it or go without it" is village law; no such thing as independence; you must walk or drive into the nearest town, five miles away perhaps, if you wish to avoid a sour face on the other side of the counter. No one will volunteer the smallest service for the excommunicant of the chapel; nothing could more vividly ill.u.s.trate the command to "love one another."
No one can imagine the isolation of a house in a country place interdicted like this. If the other inhabitants could find any possible excuse for not doing anything they were asked they would not do it--not for money: they were out of what was wanted, or they had promised it, or they couldn"t find it, or they were too busy, and so all through the whole course of daily life.
Now the most remarkable part of this bitter persecution was the fact that the elder had lent money to almost all the princ.i.p.al members of the congregation. The bold speculator had never been appealed to in vain by any one in difficulty. Some had had a hundred, some fifty, some twenty, some ten--farmers whose corn had been a loss instead of a profit, whose hops had sold for less than the cost of picking them, little tradesmen who had a bill to meet, handicraft men who could not pay the men who worked side by side with them, cottagers who needed an outhouse built, and others who lacked the means to pay for a funeral. There seemed no one to whom he had not lent money for some purpose, besides the use of his name as security. Fortune had given to him, and he had given as freely to others, so that it was indeed a bitter trial to the heart:--
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man"s ingrat.i.tude.
Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.
In his stern pride he did not condescend to put in motion any revenge against these petty poltroons, but went on his way with absolute indifference to all outward seeming. His family, who were perhaps more nearly touched in the affairs of daily life than he was, consoled themselves with the old country proverb, "Ah, well, we shall live till we die, if the pigs don"t eat us, and then we shall go acorning"--a clear survival of the belief in transmigration, for he who is eaten by a pig becomes a pig, and goeth forth with swine to eat acorns.
There had been some very strong language and straightforward observations at the chapel meetings, the private vestry of the managers; the elder being one of the founders, and his name on the deed could not be excluded--gall and wormwood--without his signature nothing could be done.
Bitterer still, the chapel was heavily in debt to him. Had he chosen, in American phrase, he could have "shut up the shebang in mighty sudden time." The elder was tall; the elder was strong; the elder was grim; the elder was a man who could rule hundreds of the roughest labourers; the elder was a man who would have his say, and said it like throwing down a hod full of bricks. With the irresistible logic of figures and doc.u.ments he demonstrated the pastor to be a liar, and told him so to his face.
With the same engines he proved that two or three of the other managers were hypocrites, and told them so. Neither could pastor nor managers refute it, but stood like sheep. Then he told them what he had done for the chapel and for its minister, and no one could deny him. Indeed, the minister had been heard to weakly confess that the elder had once been a good friend to him. Perhaps his partisans, as is often the case, had taken up the pastor"s cause with more violence than he himself desired, and by their vehemence had driven him into a position which he himself would have avoided. Most likely he would have made peace himself; but the blot on all chapel systems of government is that the minister is but the mouthpiece of his congregation. Having thrown down his load of bricks thump, the elder stalked out with his memoranda and with his cheque-book, leaving them to face the spectre of bankruptcy. At least once a week the elder, out of sheer British determination to claim his rights, stepped into the chapel rooms with his private key, just to walk round. They put another lock which his key did not fit, but he heaved the door open with a crowbar, and their case must have been feeble indeed when they could not even bring an action for trespa.s.s against him.
The historian knoweth not all things, and how this schism arose is hidden from view. Very likely, indeed, it may have arisen out of the very foundation of the chapel itself, such buildings and land being usually held in some manner by a body of managers or trustees--a sort of committee, in fact--a condition which may easily afford opportunities for endless wrangling. In this particular the Established Church has a great advantage, the land and building being dedicated "for ever," so that no dispute is possible. Tales there were of some little feminine disagreement having arisen between the wives of the two men, magnified with the a.s.sistance of a variety of tabbies, a sort of thing by no means impossible among two hundred relations. Such affairs often spring from a grain of mustard seed, and by-and-by involve all the fowls of the air that roost in the branches. Idle tales circulated of a discussion among the ministers (visitors) which happened one evening over the pipes and three-star bottles, when the elder, taking down a celebrated volume of sermons, pointed out a pa.s.sage almost word for word identical with what the pastor had said in his sermon on the previous Sunday--a curious instance of parallel inspiration. Unkind people afterwards spread the gloss that the elder had accused the minister of plagiarism. Mere fiction, no doubt. After a thing has happened people can generally find twenty causes. The excommunication, however, was real enough, and ten times more effectual because the sentence was p.r.o.nounced not by the pastor but by the congregation.
Still nothing disturbed the dignity of the elder. He worked away as usual, always with tools in his hands. He would tear away with a plane at a window-frame or a coffin-lid, and tell the listener his wrongs, and how he had been scorned and insulted by people whom he had helped for years, and how they had reversed the teaching of the gospel in their bearing towards him--heavier blows and longer shavings--as if there were no such thing as true religion. And, indeed, he would say, in his business transactions, he had over and over again found that men who were not "professors"--_i.e._ who did not claim to be "saved"--were more truthful and more to be depended on in their engagements than those who constantly talked of righteousness. For all that--with a tremendous shaving--for all that, the gospel was true.
So he planed and hammered, and got a large contract on a building estate near a great town, busy as busy, where it was necessary to have a tramway and a locomotive, or "dirt-engine," to drag the trucks with the earth from the excavations. This engine was a source of never-failing amus.e.m.e.nt to the steady, quiet farmers whose domains were being invaded; very observant people, but not pushing. One day a part of the engine was tied up with string; another day it was blowing off steam like a volcano, the boiler nearly empty and getting red-hot, while the men rushed to fetch water with a couple of buckets; finally, the funnel rusted off and a wooden one was put up--a merry joke! But while they laughed the contractor pushed ahead in Yankee style, using any and every expedient, and making money while they sighed over the slow plough. They must have everything perfect, else they could do nothing; he could do much with very imperfect materials. He would make a cuc.u.mber frame out of a church window, or a church window out of a cuc.u.mber frame. One of the residents on the new building estate found his cupboard doors numbered on the panels two, six, eight, in gilt figures inside, and in fact they were made of pew doors which the contractor had got out of some old church he had ransacked and turned topsy-turvy to the order of the vicar. He would have run up a new Salt Lake City cheap, or built a new Rome at five per cent. in a few days.
Meantime, at the little village, various incidents occurred; the sternly virtuous cottagers, for one thing, had collected from their scattered homes and held a "Horn Fair." Some erring barmaid at the inn, accused of too lavish a use of smiles, too much kindness--most likely a jealous tale only--aroused their righteous ire. With shawm and timbrel and ram"s-horn trumpet--_i.e._ with cow"s horns, poker and tongs, and tea-trays--the indignant and high-toned population collected night after night by the tavern, and made such fearful uproar that the poor girl, really quite innocent, had to leave her situation. Nothing could be more charitable, more truly righteous, after the model of the Man who would not even so much as _say_ a harsh word to the woman taken in adultery. One poor man shut up his house and went away with his wife and family, and not being heard of for a little while these backbiters told each other that he had not paid his rent, that his furniture was only on loan, and not a single instalment had been met; he owed the butcher half a crown, the baker discovered there was one and twopence on his book, the tavern could show a score, everybody knew the wretch was a drunkard and beat his wife, and many knew his wife was no better than she should be. Nothing was too base to be laid to the charge of the scoundrel who had run away. At the end of a few weeks the wretch and his family returned, looking very healthy and well supplied with money, having been picking in a distant hop-garden. It was common for people to shut their houses and do this at that season of the year, but their blind malice was too eager to remember this. Another person by continually dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign had driven him to commit suicide! So ran their bitter tongues. Backbiting is the curse of village life, and seems to keep people by its effects upon the mind far more effectually in the grip of poverty than the lowness of wages. They become so saturated with littleness that they cannot attempt anything, and have no enterprise. To transplant them to the freer atmosphere of a great city, or of the Far West, is the only means of cure. At this particular village they were exceptionally given to backbiting, perhaps because everybody was more than usually related to everybody; they hated each other and vilified each other with pre-eminent energy. The poorest man, half starving, would hardly do a job for a farmer because--because--because he did not know why, except that nothing was too bad to be said of him; the poorest washerwoman with hungry children would not go and do a day"s work for Mrs. So-and-so, because "she beant n.o.body, she beant no better than we; beant a-going to work for her." This malice was not directed towards strangers, against whom it is natural to heave half a brick, but against their own old neighbours. They tore each other to pieces, they were perfect cannibals with the tongue, perfect Lestrigonians. They never said "good morning" to an equal, or lifted their hats to a lady; a jerk of the head, say about half an inch from the perpendicular, was their utmost greeting; their manners were about as pleasant as those of cattle might be could they be dressed like human beings. True, Bethel was of modern date, but they had had resident vicars for centuries; and where had they been, and where was the humanising tendency of much-vaunted Christianity? Could not three centuries soften a little village? I will do something for them if I can, for the credit of the race at large; they shall not be without an excuse if I can help it. Perhaps it was because there were no resident squires, perhaps because a good many of them had little plots of land; still they were Lestrigonians, and no doubt the row between the elder and the pastor was really due to this malice and uncharitableness. How curious it seems to a philosopher that so much religion should be accompanied by such bitter ill-feeling!--true religion, too, for these Lestrigonians were most seriously in earnest in their chapelling. Yet no doubt they fomented the row, for the pastor himself was much too clever a man to proceed to such extremities. By nature he was a fluent speaker, rising to eloquence as eloquence is understood among that kind of audience. He carried them with him, quite swept them away. They came to hear him from miles round about; there were plenty of other chapels, but no one like the man at Bethel. Once they came they always came. Who can name a country clergyman with university training who can do this? The man at Bethel also possessed a natural talent of personally impressing and gaining the good-will of every person with whom he came in contact; it was astonishing with what tenacity people clung to him, so that there must have been something exceptional in his character. His origin was of the humblest; he was drawn from the same cla.s.s as the apostles, as the great Fisherman, and the great Tentmaker, a man of manual labour lifted entirely by his wit to be a very great power indeed in the community where he was stationed.
Too much credit must not be put upon cottagers" tales: one day they are all so bitter, hanging would not be sufficient, and you would suppose they were going to show a lifelong enmity; in a week or two it is all forgotten, and next month they are taking tea together. Those who know them best say you should never believe anything a cottager tells you.
There is sure to be exaggeration, or they tell you half the story, and they catch up the wildest rumour and repeat it as unquestioned truth. No doubt after a while all this sound and fury signifying nothing will blow off, and there will be a reconciliation; the pastor and the elder will be bosom friends, all the congregation will be calling, and eating and drinking; there will be pipes and three-star bottles, and the elect will be made perfect. If the fourth wife disappears in time there will be a fifth, and Christian Mormonism will flourish exceedingly. Very likely the furious fall-out is over before now; there is no stability in this peculiar cast, the chapel mind.
Another curious reflection suggests itself to any one who has seen the fervour of Bethel. Within an easy walk of each other there are eight chapels and three churches and the Salvation Army barracks; a thinly populated country district, too; no squires, the farmers all depressed and ruined, the cottagers howling about starvation wages. One would have thought all of them together could hardly maintain a single spiritual teacher. All this for chapel and church; but no cottage hospital, either for accidents or diseases. If any one fell ill he had to be content with the workhouse doctor; if they required anything else they must go to the clergyman and get a letter of introduction or some kind of certificate for a London hospital, or any infirmary to which he happened to subscribe. The chapellers made no bones about utilising the clergyman in this way; they considered it their right; as he was the parish clergyman, it was his place to supply them with such certificates. There was no provision for the aged labourer or his wife when strength failed--nothing for them but parish relief. There was no library. There was no inst.i.tute for the teaching of science, or for lectures disseminating the knowledge of the nineteenth century. Every now and then the children died from drinking bad water--ditch water; the women took tea, the men took beer, the children drank water. Good water abounded, but then there was the trouble and expense of digging wells; individuals could not do it, the community did not care. Does it not seem strange? All this fervour and building of temples and rattling of the Salvation Army drum and loud demands for the New Jerusalem, and not a single effort for physical well-being or mental training!
While these pranks are played at Bethel let us glance a moment in another direction down the same green country lane on the same bright summer day.
Let it be late in the afternoon of the Sunday, the swifts still wheeling, the roses still blooming, blue-winged jays slipping in and out of the beech trees. These hazel lanes were once the scene of Puritan marchings to and fro, of Fifth Monarchy men who likened the Seven-hilled City to the Beast; furious men with musket and pike, whose horses" hoofs had defaced the mosaic pavements of cathedral. These hazel lanes, lovely nut-tree boughs, with "many an oak that grew thereby," have been the scene of historic events down from the days of St. Dunstan. In the quiet of the Sunday afternoon, when the clashing of the bells was stilled, there walked in the shade of the oaks a young priest and a lady. His well-shaped form seemed the better shown by his flowing ca.s.sock; his handsome face was refined by its air of late devotion. The lady, dressed in the highest style of aristocratic fashion, that is to say with grace, was evidently a member of good society. A little picture certainly: only two figures, no p.r.o.nounced action, no tragedy, yet what a meaning in that ca.s.sock! It spoke of confession, of ritual, of transubstantiation, of all the great historic romance of Rome ecclesiastical. The great romance of Rome: its holy footsteps of St. Peter, its aerial dome of Michael Angelo, its Vatican of ancient ma.n.u.scripts, of beauteous statue and chariot--the great romance of Rome, its Borgia, its dungeons and flames of the Inquisition. A picture of two figures only, but consider the background.
Consider the thousands of broad English acres that now support great monasteries and convents in quiet country places where one could scarce expect to find a barn. The buildings are there; that is a solid fact, take what view you like of them, or take none at all. There are men about country roads with shaven crown and ca.s.sock whose dark Continental faces have an unmistakable stamp of priesthood; faces that might be pictured with those of the monks of old Spain. Women in long black cloaks, black hoods and white coif, women with long black rosaries hanging from the girdle, go to and fro among the wheat and the clover. One rubs one"s eyes. Are these the days of Friar Laurence and Juliet? Shall we meet the mitred abbot with his sumpter mule? Shall we meet the mailed knights? In some places whole villages belong to English monks, and there is not a man or woman in them who is not a Catholic; there are even small country towns which by dint of time, money, and territorial influence have been re-absorbed, and are now as completely Catholic as they were before Henry VIII. In these half-village half-towns you may chance on a busy market day to come across a great building ab.u.t.ting on the street, and may listen to the organ and the chant; there is incense and gorgeous ceremony, the golden tinkle of the altar-bell. Bow your head, it is the host; cross yourself, it is the ma.s.s. The butcher and the dealer are busy with the sheep, but it is a saint"s day. By-and-by no doubt we shall have a village Lourdes at home, and miracles and pilgrimages and offerings and shrines: the village will be right glad to see the pilgrims, if only they come from the West End and have money in the purse. The village would be very glad indeed of a miracle to bring it a shower of gold.
THE COUNTRY-SIDE: SUSs.e.x.
I
On the wall of an old barn by the great doors there still remains a narrow strip of notice-board, much battered and weather-beaten: "Beware of steel ----" can be read, the rest has been broken off, but no doubt it was "traps." "Beware of steel traps," a caution to thieves--a reminiscence of those old days which many of our present writers and leaders of opinion seem to think never existed. When the strong labourer could hardly earn 7_s_. a week, when in some parishes scarcely half the population got work at all, living, in the most literal sense, on the parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain; the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal the corn, and had to be prevented by steel traps, like rats. To-day wheat is so cheap, it scarcely pays to carry it to market. Some farmers have it ground, and sell the flour direct to the consumer; some have used it for feeding purposes--actually for hogs. The contrast is extraordinary.
Better let the hogs eat the corn than that man should starve. To-day the sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. Up it rises again as the sheaves are cast in--hum, hum, hum; the note rises and resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music--a chant telling of the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow stalks, the list of living things delighting in it--all have departed.
The joyous life of the wheat is ended--not in vain, for now the grain becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. Outwards the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the autumn afternoon! I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower, like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and forcing its way out again through the narrow window. The edge, as it were, of a sunbeam lit up the rude chamber crossed with unhewn beams and roofed above with unconcealed tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A great heap of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from the drying. Up to his waist in a pocket let through the floor a huge giant of a man trod the hops down in the sack, turning round and round, and now his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music.
Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, they look in at the furnace door when the engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze wonderingly at the gauge, and long to turn the bra.s.s taps; then with a shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged from the corn. The mice hide themselves in the petticoats of the women working at the "sheening," and the cottager when she goes home in the evening calls her cat and shakes them out of her skirts. By a blue waggon the farmer stands leaning on his staff. He is an invalid, and his staff, or rather pole, is as tall as himself; he holds it athwart, one end touching the ground beyond his left foot, the other near his right shoulder. His right hand grasps it rather high, and his left down by his hip, so that the pole forms a line across his body. In this way he is steadied and supported and his whole weight relieved, much more so than it would be with an ordinary walking-stick or with one in each hand. When he walks he keeps putting the staff, which he calls a bat, in front, and so poles himself along. There is an invalid boy in the yard, who walks with a similar stick. The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in from the lane in pa.s.sing, and carries a two-spean spud, or Canterbury hoe, with points instead of a broad blade. They are saying that it is a "pretty day," "pretty weather"--it is always "pretty" with them, instead of fine.
Pretty weather for the hopping; and so that leads on to climbing up into the loft and handling the golden scales. The man with the hoe dips his brown fist in the heap and gathers up a handful, noting as he does so how the crisp, brittle, leaf-life substance of the hops crackles, and yet does not exactly break in his palm. They must be dry, yet not too dry to go to powder. They cling a little to the fingers, adhering to the skin, sticky. He looks for rust and finds none, and p.r.o.nounces it a good sample. "But there beant nothen" now like they old Grapes used to be," he concludes. The pair have not long gone down the narrow stairs when a waggon stops outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak with the "drier"--the giant trampling round in the pocket--and to see how the hops "be getting on." In five minutes another waggoner looks in, then a couple of ploughboys, next a higgler pa.s.sing by; no one walks or rides or drives past the hop-kiln without calling to see how things are going on.
The carters cannot stay long, but the boys linger, eagerly waiting a chance to help the "drier," even if only to reach him his handkerchief from the nail. Round and round in the pocket brings out the perspiration, and the dust of the hops gets into the air-pa.s.sages and thickens on the skin of his face. One of the lads has to push the hops towards him with a rake. "Don"t you step on "em too much, that"ll break "em." On the light breeze that comes now and then a little chaff floats in at the open window from the threshing. A crooked sort of face appears in the doorway, the body has halted halfway up--a semi-gipsy face--and the fellow thrusts a basket before him on the floor. "Want any herrings?" "No, thankie--no,"
cries the giant. "Not to-day, measter; thusty enough without they."
Herrings are regularly carried round in hop-time to all the gardens, and there is a great sale for them among the pickers. By degrees the "drier"
rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, through the floor first his shoulders, then his body, and now his knees are visible. This is the ancient way of filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in large kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative of a small garden, the old method is followed.
The steps on which I sit lead up to the door of the cone. Inside, the green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, and the fumes of the sulphur burning underneath come up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface of the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises hollow to the cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be seen. Round the cone a strip of thin lathing is coiled on a spiral; could any one stand on these steps and draw the inside of the cone? Could perspective be so managed as to give the idea of the diminishing hollow and spiral? the side opposite would not be so difficult, but the bit this side, overhead and almost perpendicular, and so greatly foreshortened, how with that? It would be necessary to make the spectator of the drawing feel as if this side of the cone rose up from behind his head; as if his head were just inside the cone. Would not this be as curious a bit of study as any that could be found in the interior of old Continental churches, which people go so many miles to see? Our own land is so full of interest. There are pictures by the oldest Master everywhere in our own country, by the very Master of the masters, by Time, whose crooked signature lies in the corner of the shadowy farmhouse hearth.
Beneath the loft, on the ground-floor, I found the giant"s couch. The bed of a cart had been taken off its wheels, forming a very good bedstead, dry and sheltered on three sides. On the fourth the sleeper"s feet were towards the charcoal fire. Opening the furnace door, he could sit there and watch the blue and green tongues of sulphur flame curl round about and above the glowing charcoal, the fumes rising to the hops on the horsehair high over. The "hoppers" in the garden used to bring their kettles and pots to boil, till the practice grew too frequent, and was stopped, because the constant opening of the furnace wasted the heat. The sulphur comes in casks. A sulphur cask sawn down the middle, with a bit left by the head for cover, is often used by the hoppers as a cradle.
Another favourite cradle is made from a trug basket, the handle cut off.
It is then like half a large eggsh.e.l.l, with cross pieces underneath to prevent it from canting aside. This cradle is set on the bare ground in the garden; when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask them, they will find you a "hop-dog," a handsome green caterpillar marked with black velvet stripes and downy bands between. Their labour usually ends early in the afternoon.
The giant at the kiln must watch and bide his time the night through till the hops are ready to be withdrawn from the cone. He is alone. Deep shadows gather round the farmstead and the ricks, and there is not a sound, nothing but the rustle of a leaf falling from the hollow oak by the gateway. But at midnight, just as the drier is drawing the hops, a thunderstorm bursts, and the blue lightning lights up the red cone without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with stencil plates. For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of the country "stores;" they are not shops, but stores of miscellaneous articles. He must be careful not to fill his pockets too full of hops, not to tread them too closely, else the sharp folk in the market will suspect that unfair means have been resorted to to increase the weight, and will cut the pocket all to pieces to see if it contains a few bricks.
Nor must it be too light; that will not do.
In this district, far from the great historic hop-fields of Kent, the hops are really grown in gardens, little pieces often not more than half an acre or even less in extent. Capricious as a woman, hops will only flourish here and there; they have the strongest likes and dislikes, and experience alone finds out what will suit them. These gardens are always on a slope, if possible in the angle of a field and under shelter of a copse, for the wind is the terror, and a great gale breaks them to pieces; the bines are bruised, bunches torn off, and poles laid prostrate. The gardens being so small, from five to forty acres in a farm, of course but few pickers are required, and the hop-picking becomes a "close" business, entirely confined to home families, to the cottagers working on the farm and their immediate friends. Instead of a scarcity of labour, it is a matter of privilege to get a bin allotted to you. There are no rough folk down from Bermondsey or Mile End way. All staid, stay-at-home, labouring people--no riots; a little romping no doubt on the sly, else the maids would not enjoy the season so much as they do.
But there are none of those wild hordes which collect about the greater fields of Kent. Farmers" wives and daughters and many very respectable girls go out to hopping, not so much for the money as the pleasant out-of-door employment, which has an astonishing effect on the health.
Pale cheeks begin to glow again in the hop-fields. Children who have suffered from whooping-cough are often sent out with the hop-pickers; they play about on the bare ground in the most careless manner, and yet recover. Air and hops are wonderful restoratives. After pa.s.sing an afternoon with the drier in the kiln, seated close to a great heap of hops and inhaling the odour, I was in a condition of agreeable excitement all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music, and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10_s_. a week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest, so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an expensive crop. It costs 50_l_. or 60_l_. to pick a very small garden, and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market will not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a possible duty on foreign hops. The hop farmer should have a lady-bird on his seal ring for his sign and token, for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds (and their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause rust, and a flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as much as a flight of locusts is execrated in other countries.
II.
One of the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our "innerds" (inwards, insides), and how many "boanes" we had, and by-and-by "he told us that we were the only beasts who had the use of our hands." Years since at village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it, then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate the pleura or lodge in the processes. Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit and shakes a bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of it, as Corporal Nym might say. At the late election--the cow election--the candidates were Brown, Conservative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after the polling a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting paper.
"Oh," said he full of the promised cow, "I doan"t care for that there Brown chap, he bean"t no good; zo I jest put a cross agen he, and voted for Stiggins." The dream of life was accomplished, the labourer had a vote, and--irony--he voted exactly opposite to his intent.
Too-whoo! ooo!--the sound of a horn,--the hunt was up; but this was not the hunting season. Looking out of the kiln door I saw a boy running at full speed down the lane with a small drain-pipe tucked under his arm. He stopped, put the pipe to his mouth, and blew a blast on this "dread horn," then jumped through a gap in the hedge and disappeared. They were playing fox and hounds; who but a boy would have thought of using a drain-pipe for a horn? It gave a good note, too. In and about the kiln I learned that if you smash a frog with a stone, no matter how hard you hit him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be careful not to put on any new article of clothing for the first time on a Sat.u.r.day, or some severe punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Sat.u.r.day, and on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe in herbs, and gather wood-betony for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves between slices of dry toast. There is an old man living in one of the villages who has reached the age of a hundred and sixty years, and still goes hop-picking. Ever so many people had seen him, and knew all about him; an undoubted fact, a public fact; but I could not trace him to his lair. His exact whereabouts could not be fixed. I live in hopes of finding him in some obscure "Hole"
yet (many little hamlets are "Holes," as Froghole, Foxhole). What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Sparrows are called "spadgers." The cat wandering about got caught in the rat-clams--_i.e._ a gin. Another cat was the miller"s favourite at the windmill, a well-fed, happy, purring p.u.s.s.y, fond of the floury miller--he as white as snow, she as black as a coal. One day p.u.s.s.y was ingeniously examining the machinery, when the wind suddenly rose, the sails revolved, and she was ground up, fulfilling the ogre"s threat--"I"ll grind his bones to make my bread." This was not so sad as the fate of the innkeeper"s cow. You have read the "Arabian Nights"--that book of wisdom, for in truth the stories are no stories; they are the records of ancient experience, the experience of a thousand years, and some of them are as true and as deeply to be pondered on as anything in the holiest books the world reverences. You remember the Three Calenders, each of whom lost an eye--struck out in the most arbitrary and cruel fashion. The innkeeper had a cow, a very pretty, quiet cow, but in time it came about that her left horn, turning inwards, grew in such a manner that it threatened to force the point into her head. To remedy this the top of the horn was sawn off and a bra.s.s k.n.o.b fastened on the tip, as is the custom. The cow pa.s.sed the summer in the meadows with the rest, till by-and-by it was found that she had gone blind in the left eye. It happened in this way: the rays of the sun heated the bra.s.s k.n.o.b and so destroyed the sight. Unable to call attention to its suffering, the poor creature was compelled to endure, and could not escape. Now the Three Calenders could speak, and had the advantage of human intelligence, and yet each lost an eye, and they were as helpless in the hands of fate as this poor animal.
Down in one of the hamlets there was a forge to which all the workpeople who wanted any tools sharpened carried their instruments, the smith being able to put a better edge on. Other blacksmiths or carpenters, if they required a particularly good edge for some purpose, came to him. This art he had acquired from his grandfather as a sort of heirloom or secret. The grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a dream, why not the way to sharpen a chisel?
When he was tired the drier said he was "dreggy." They were talking of the lambs, and how that dry season they had scarcely any sweetbreads. The sweetbreads were so scanty, the butchers did not even offer them for sale; the lambs had fed on dry food. In seasons when there was plenty of gra.s.s and green food they had good large sweetbreads, white as milk. The character of the food does thus under some circ.u.mstances really alter the condition of an organ. The sweetbread is the pancreas; now a deficient pancreatic action is supposed to play a great part in consumption and other wasting diseases. Have we here, then, an indication that when the pancreas may be suspected plenty of succulent food and plenty of liquid are nature"s remedies? We looked over at the pigs in the sty. They were rooting about in a mess of garbage. "Oh, what dirty things pigs are!"
said a lady. "Yes, ma"am; they"re rightly named," said he. Some scientific gentleman in the district had a large telescope with which he made frequent observations, and at times would let a labouring man look at the moon. "Ah," said our friend, shaking his head in a solemn, impressive way, "my brother, he see through it; he see great rocks and seas up there. He say he never want to see through it no more. He wish he never looked through him at all." The poor man was dreadfully frightened at what he had seen in the moon. At first I laughed at the story and the odd idea of a huge, great fellow being alarmed at a glance through a telescope. Since then, however, on reflection, it seems to me perfectly natural. He was illiterate; he had never read of astronomy; to him it was really like a sudden peep into another world, for the instrument was exceptionally powerful, and the view of the sunlight on the peaks and the shadows in the valleys must have been extraordinary to him. There was nothing to laugh at; the incident shows what a great and wonderful thing it is that rocks and mountains should be whirled along over our heads.