Field and Hedgerow

R >> Richard Jefferies >> Field and Hedgerow

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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 snatching 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 circumstances permit. Something in it has a Mormonite aspect
to an observer, and perhaps the existence of this cast of mind may assist
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 God, 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 coarsely
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 passing;
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 pronounced 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 competition
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 illustrate 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 principal 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 ingratitude.
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 documents
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 trespass 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 assistance 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 passage 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 pronounced 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 amusement
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 cucumber frame out of a church
window, or a church window out of a cucumber 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 nobody, 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 class 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 institute
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!

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