CHAPTER XIII: THE VILLAGE REVEL
At dusk that same evening the two had started for the village fair.
A velveteen shooting-jacket, a pair of corduroy trousers, and a waistcoat, furnished by Tregarva, covered with flowers of every imaginable hue, tolerably disguised Lancelot, who was recommended by his conductor to keep his hands in his pockets as much as possible, lest their delicacy, which was, as it happened, not very remarkable, might betray him. As they walked together along the plashy turnpike road, overtaking, now and then, groups of two or three who were out on the same errand as themselves, Lancelot could not help remarking to the keeper how superior was the look of comfort in the boys and young men, with their ruddy cheeks and smart dresses, to the worn and haggard appearance of the elder men.
"Let them alone, poor fellows," said Tregarva; "it won"t last long.
When they"ve got two or three children at their heels, they"ll look as thin and shabby as their own fathers."
"They must spend a great deal of money on their clothes."
"And on their stomachs, too, sir. They never lay by a farthing; and I don"t see how they can, when their club-money"s paid, and their insides are well filled."
"Do you mean to say that they actually have not as much to eat after they marry?"
"Indeed and I do, sir. They get no more wages afterwards round here, and have four or five to clothe and feed off the same money that used to keep one; and that sum won"t take long to work out, I think."
"But do they not in some places pay the married men higher wages than the unmarried?"
"That"s a worse trick still, sir; for it tempts the poor thoughtless boys to go and marry the first girl they can get hold of; and it don"t want much persuasion to make them do that at any time."
"But why don"t the clergymen teach them to put into the savings banks?"
"One here and there, sir, says what he can, though it"s of very little use. Besides, every one is afraid of savings banks now; not a year but one reads of some breaking and the lawyers going off with the earnings of the poor. And if they didn"t, youth"s a foolish time at best; and the carnal man will be hankering after amus.e.m.e.nt, sir--amus.e.m.e.nt."
"And no wonder," said Lancelot; "at all events, I should not think they got much of it. But it does seem strange that no other amus.e.m.e.nt can be found for them than the beer-shop. Can"t they read? Can"t they practise light and interesting handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry do?"
"Who"ll teach "em, sir? From the plough-tail to the reaping-hook, and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir, they are not like us Cornish; they are a stupid pigheaded generation at the best, these south countrymen. They"re grown-up babies who want the parson and the squire to be leading them, and preaching to them, and spurring them on, and coaxing them up, every moment. And as for scholarship, sir, a boy leaves school at nine or ten to follow the horses; and between that time and his wedding-day he forgets every word he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a heathen savage at heart as those wild Indians in the Brazils used to be."
"And then we call them civilised Englishmen!" said Lancelot. "We can see that your Indian is a savage, because he wears skins and feathers; but your Irish cottar or your English labourer, because he happens to wear a coat and trousers, is to be considered a civilised man."
"It"s the way of the world, sir," said Tregarva, "judging carnal judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes; always looking at the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much deeper. But as for reading, sir, it"s all very well for me, who have been a keeper and dawdled about like a gentleman with a gun over my arm; but did you ever do a good day"s farm-work in your life? If you had, man or boy, you wouldn"t have been game for much reading when you got home; you"d do just what these poor fellows do,--tumble into bed at eight o"clock, hardly waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you must turn up again at five o"clock the next morning to get a breakfast of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire"s dripping, and then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week after week, year after year, without a hope or a chance of being anything but what you are, and only too thankful if you can get work to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over."
"But do you mean to say that their labour is so severe and incessant?"
"It"s only G.o.d"s blessing if it is incessant, sir, for if it stops, they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than the thieves in gaol. And as for its being severe, there"s many a boy, as their mothers will tell you, comes home night after night, too tired to eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to bed in the same foul shirt which they"ve been working in all the day, never changing their rag of calico from week"s end to week"s end, or washing the skin that"s under it once in seven years."
"No wonder," said Lancelot, "that such a life of drudgery makes them brutal and reckless."
"No wonder, indeed, sir: they"ve no time to think; they"re born to be machines, and machines they must be; and I think, sir," he added bitterly, "it"s G.o.d"s mercy that they daren"t think. It"s G.o.d"s mercy that they don"t feel. Men that write books and talk at elections call this a free country, and say that the poorest and meanest has a free opening to rise and become prime minister, if he can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in practice he can"t; for one who gets into a gentleman"s family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty know that they"ve no chance before them, but day-labourer born, day-labourer live, from hand to mouth, sc.r.a.ping and pinching to get not meat and beer even, but bread and potatoes; and then, at the end of it all, for a worthy reward, half-a-crown a-week of parish pay--or the workhouse. That"s a lively hopeful prospect for a Christian man!"
"But," said Lancelot, "I thought this New Poor-law was to stir them up to independence?"
"Oh, sir, the old law has bit too deep: it made them slaves and beggars at heart. It taught them not to be ashamed of parish pay-- to demand it as a right."
"And so it is their right," said Lancelot. "In G.o.d"s name, if a country is so ill-const.i.tuted that it cannot find its own citizens in work, it is bound to find them in food."
"Maybe, sir, maybe. G.o.d knows I don"t grudge it them. It"s a poor pittance at best, when they have got it. But don"t you see, sir, how all poor-laws, old or new either, suck the independent spirit out of a man; how they make the poor wretch reckless; how they tempt him to spend every extra farthing in amus.e.m.e.nt?"
"How then?"
"Why, he is always tempted to say to himself, "Whatever happens to me, the parish must keep me. If I am sick it must doctor me; if I am worn out it must feed me; if I die it must bury me; if I leave my children paupers the parish must look after them, and they"ll be as well off with the parish as they were with me. Now they"ve only got just enough to keep body and soul together, and the parish can"t give them less than that. What"s the use of cutting myself off from sixpenny-worth of pleasure here, and sixpenny-worth there. I"m not saving money for my children, I"m only saving the farmers" rates."
There it is, sir," said Tregarva; "that"s the bottom of it, sir,-- "I"m only saving the farmers" rates. Let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we die!""
"I don"t see my way out of it," said Lancelot.
"So says everybody, sir. But I should have thought those members of parliament, and statesmen, and university scholars have been set up in the high places, out of the wood where we are all struggling and scrambling, just that they might see their way out of it; and if they don"t, sir, and that soon, as sure as G.o.d is in heaven, these poor fellows will cut their way out of it."
"And blindfolded and ignorant as they are," said Lancelot, "they will be certain to cut their way out just in the wrong direction."
"I"m not so sure of that, sir," said Tregarva, lowering his voice.
"What is written"? That there is One who hears the desire of the poor. "Lord, Thou preparest their hearts and Thine ear hearkeneth thereto, to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the man of the earth be no more exalted against them.""
"Why, you are talking like any Chartist, Tregarva!"
"Am I, sir? I haven"t heard much Scripture quoted among them myself, poor fellows; but to tell you the truth, sir, I don"t know what I am becoming. I"m getting half mad with all I see going on and not going on; and you will agree, sir, that what"s happened this day can"t have done much to cool my temper or brighten my hopes; though, G.o.d"s my witness, there"s no spite in me for my own sake.
But what makes me maddest of all, sir, is to see that everybody sees these evils, except just the men who can cure them--the squires and the clergy."
"Why surely, Tregarva, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of clergymen and landlords working heart and soul at this moment, to better the condition of the labouring cla.s.ses!"
"Ay, sir, they see the evils, and yet they don"t see them. They do not see what is the matter with the poor man; and the proof of it is, sir, that the poor have no confidence in them. They"ll take their alms, but they"ll hardly take their schooling, and their advice they won"t take at all. And why is it, sir? Because the poor have got in their heads in these days a strange confused fancy, maybe, but still a deep and a fierce one, that they haven"t got what they call their rights. If you were to raise the wages of every man in this country from nine to twelve shillings a-week to-morrow, you wouldn"t satisfy them; at least, the only ones whom you would satisfy would be the mere hogs among them, who, as long as they can get a full stomach, care for nothing else."
"What, in Heaven"s name, do they want?" asked Lancelot.
"They hardly know yet, sir; but they know well what they don"t want.
The question with them, sir, believe me, is not so much, How shall we get better fed and better housed, but whom shall we depend upon for our food and for our house? Why should we depend on the will and fancy of any man for our rights? They are asking ugly questions among themselves, sir, about what those two words, rent and taxes, mean, and about what that same strange word, freedom, means. Eight or wrong, they"ve got the thought into their heads, and it"s growing there, and they will find an answer for it. Depend upon it, sir, I tell you a truth, and they expect a change. You will hear them talk of it to-night, sir, if you"ve luck."
"We all expect a change, for that matter," said Lancelot. "That feeling is common to all cla.s.ses and parties just now."
Tregarva took off his hat.
""For the word of the Lord hath spoken it." Do you know, sir, I long at times that I did agree with those Chartists? If I did, I"d turn lecturer to-morrow. How a man could speak out then! If he saw any door of hope, any way of salvation for these poor fellows, even if it was nothing better than salvation by Act of Parliament!"
"But why don"t you trust the truly worthy among the clergy and the gentry to leaven their own ranks and bring all right in time?"
"Because, sir, they seem to be going the way only to make things worse. The people have been so dependent on them heretofore, that they have become thorough beggars. You can have no knowledge, sir, of the whining, canting, deceit, and lies which those poor miserable labourers" wives palm on charitable ladies. If they weren"t angels, some of them, they"d lock up their purses and never give away another farthing. And, sir, these free-schools, and these penny- clubs, and clothing clubs, and these heaps of money which are given away, all make the matter worse and worse. They make the labourer fancy that he is not to depend upon G.o.d and his own right hand, but on what his wife can worm out of the good nature of the rich. Why, sir, they growl as insolently now at the parson or the squire"s wife if they don"t get as much money as their neighbours, as they used to at the parish vestrymen under the old law. Look at that Lord Vieuxbois, sir, as sweet a gentleman as ever G.o.d made. It used to do me good to walk behind him when he came over here shooting, just to hear the gentle kind-hearted way in which he used to speak to every old soul he met. He spends his whole life and time about the poor, I hear. But, sir, as sure as you live he"s making his people slaves and humbugs. He doesn"t see, sir, that they want to be raised bodily out of this miserable hand-to-mouth state, to be brought nearer up to him, and set on a footing where they can shift for themselves. Without meaning it, sir, all his boundless charities are keeping the people down, and telling them they must stay down, and not help themselves, but wait for what he gives them.
He fats prize-labourers, sir, just as Lord Minchampstead fats prize- oxen and pigs."
Lancelot could not help thinking of that amusingly inconsistent, however well-meant, scene in Coningsby, in which Mr. Lyle is represented as trying to restore "the independent order of peasantry," by making them the receivers of public alms at his own gate, as if they had been middle-age serfs or vagabonds, and not citizens of modern England.
"It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age," thought Lancelot, "to make the people constantly and visibly comprehend that property is their protector and their friend, but I question whether it will suit the people themselves, unless they can make property understand that it owes them something more definite than protection."
Saddened by this conversation, which had helped to give another shake to the easy-going complacency with which Lancelot had been used to contemplate the world below him, and look on its evils as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there. But there did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home; a booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their b.u.t.ton-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a tambourine, and the ba.s.s one of grumbled oaths and curses within-- these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria, had devised and made possible for the English peasant!
"There seems very little here to see," said Lancelot, half peevishly.
"I think, sir," quoth Tregarva, "that very thing is what"s most worth seeing."