ENGLISH.
I spent a few weeks in England in 1881, and visited three agricultural regions in the east, the north, and the south. An article on the last is to appear in Harpers’ Magazine. The following is drawn principally from my visit to the east. Some account of my stay in the north and of a few days in a manufacturing county may appear hereafter.
My authority for the statements in the following article is almost entirely notes taken at the time, assisted in a small degree by recollections. But it cannot be assumed that this essay is without faults.
With regard to another country, I was advised to tell what I saw and how it impressed my mind, and not to endeavor to draw conclusions. But what a traveller sees and hears is greatly influenced by his own opinions. He goes to a foreign land, and if of different religious institutions from his own, he inquires on this point; of a different form of government, he asks political questions. He notices, also, differences in dress, food, and manner of living.
The first family with whom I boarded in Huntingdonshire was that of Mr. Jackson, a carpenter, who, besides working at his trade, rented a few acres. His wife, who was a farmer’s daughter, had a small dairy of three cows. Jackson appeared to have a splendid constitution. He was short and somewhat thick-set. He began his trade at eighteen, and was an apprentice five years and a journeyman three, when, having put by some money, he married at twenty-six. His wife was near thirty. One of them said that they had prospered with the help of the Lord.
Mrs. Jackson also had been able to save something wherewith to furnish a house. She learned a trade, and was also companion or lady’s-maid to sick ladies and those going to Brighton. One of them made her a wedding present of neat china.
Jackson and his wife have four children,—the eldest about six, or as she says, “Four little children, not one of them able to put on a shoe nor a stocking.” She attends to her dairy, boards the apprentice, and has no servant.
Their children are sweet and clean. Three of them go to the public school in the village. It is called the national school. Mrs. Jackson gave the eldest three pence to pay for their instruction for a week; which is at the rate of about twenty-four cents a quarter for each of them. The penny is a trifle over two cents, the shilling a little under a quarter of a dollar; but in turning sterling money into our own, it will avoid repetition to consider the English penny as two cents, and four shillings as a dollar.
The Jacksons’ house seemed a perfect palace compared to that of any working farmer that I saw in Ireland. Coming freshly from that country, I thought it must be the gem of the village, but I was mistaken. The busy activity of the Jacksons, who have a young family to keep, was more like what I have seen at home than what I saw in Ireland.
The house has a peculiar name placed on the front, something like Hallelujah House. Doubtless it was built by a dissenter. I saw another bearing title Bunyan Lodge.
A lodging-room was assigned to me, and I ate by myself in one of the front rooms below. (Thus to take lodgings is very common in England.) Jackson and his wife ate in the kitchen. When they had finished, she gave the apprentice what she chose. My room had strips of carpet on the floor, neat white curtains at the window, a suitable toilet service, linen sheets and pillow-cases. There stood in it a neat red chest with iron bands at the corners, and a white fringed cloth covering the top. It was locked, expressive of thrifty housekeeping.
Jackson and his wife do not go to the gray Church of England, which, with its spire, overlooks the trees. They attend the brick chapel, being Independents.
After he had taken me to see his calves and pigs, I asked him what proportion of the farmers in the neighborhood belonged to the Church of England.
He answered, “About one-half. I think that is just about the proportion that voted last year.”
This answer amused me much, but I feared that his wife would not understand why I laughed.
“You mean to say,” I said, “that large landed proprietors expect those who rent from them to go to church?”
“Yes,” he said, “or they would not rent to them.”
“Of course,” said I, “it is not put into the leases. But how can they know how they vote now that you have the secret ballot?”
“They go round and ask them, and if they would not promise, they would lose their farms. Many a farmer has been turned out because he would not vote for his landlord’s party.”
On another occasion I spoke to him of the wars which England had lately waged in Asia and South Africa, and Jackson spoke of the deficit in the finances when the Liberals came in. He said that he believed their country has had to smart very severely for unnecessary wars and bloodshed, and added, “Because it was a smart little country, what business had we to go and say to other nations, ‘You shall do as we please’?”
I did not stay many days with the Jacksons. Mrs. J. considered the burden of a dairy and of young children to be enough without taking lodgers. I was recommended to the house of Mr. Benton, the principal farmer in the village, and a friend called with me and introduced me to Mrs. B., who after an interval for deliberation consented to take me as a boarder at their family table.
Benton farmed about seven hundred acres, but not all in one tract. He owned a small part, and rented from various persons. One large farm he had taken at a heavy rent, and he was worried in these hard times. He used to follow the plough when a boy, but he cannot now, having so much to do in walking around and superintending work.
Mr. and Mrs. Benton adhered to the Established Church. He began to attend Sunday-school early, perhaps at two years, and had attended ever since, he being fifty, and a teacher. He was church-warden, and the most considerable parishioner in attendance; but was not on equal visiting terms with the clergyman.
He was more reserved than his wife; he said that the English did not incline to make new friends. He seemed to hold to the same opinions that he cherished in early life; to be of warm and constant attachments, and not free from prejudice. He said that Ireland should be sunk for twenty-four hours and repeopled with English and Scotch; that the reason the poor-rates are so heavy in Ireland is that the people are so lazy. He declined to tell to which political party he held, saying that the ballot is secret. He remarked of ourselves that he wished “the Americans would let our things go in there free, same as we let their things.”
The Bentons had seven children, five of them daughters. The eldest son was twenty-one, and was actively employed attending to farm operations. The girls had taken music lessons, and could play upon the piano. The eldest two were away learning dressmaking, and Mrs. Benton thought that she might be able to get a place as lady’s-maid for one or more of her girls.
Mrs. Benton had a large house, kept in good order. She was tall, fair, good-looking, active, and sprightly. She said that she “would rather have a penny of her own hearning than tuppence that anybody should give her.” She did her housework with the help of the young daughters left at home. She said that, as a general rule, the tenant farmers had brought up their children too high, had hired servants, and now that these hard times had come, they had failed.
But Mrs. Benton’s housework is not like that of the wife of a large farmer in Pennsylvania. She does not board any of the farm hands; the only thing of the kind that they do now is to give them their beer in “’aytime.” She hires a woman to help wash. In summer they wash about once in eight weeks, and in winter more rarely, having plenty of clothes. The washing is done in two days, Saturday and Monday. Mrs. B. and her daughters do the ironing, though sometimes she puts out a frilled petticoat. They iron only the starched things; the others are mangled.
Nor does Mrs. Benton have the labor of milking, for it is done by one of the hired men. In the care of poultry she has the assistance of the shepherd’s wife, who raises chickens at their own house. Mrs. B. furnishes feed, and pays her eight cents for every fowl that she raises, and four for every twenty eggs that she brings her. She pays her own daughter a trifle for the eggs which she brings in at the home-place.
As regards the number of meals that she gave her family, we had four daily; for, in addition to the afternoon tea, we had a late supper. I noted one. All the young children had gone to bed, for Mrs. Benton was an excellent house-mother. For supper, we had onions, soft cheese, bread, cold pork, stout for the mother to drink, and ale for the father. After supper, Benton read aloud a small portion of the New Testament; the son of twenty-one before going to bed kissed his mother and bade his father good-night, and the daughter kissed both parents.
Mrs. Benton asked a blessing at meals: “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us thankful, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” Thanks were returned by the young children. One said, “Thank God, father and mother, for a very good tea. Amen.”
Mrs. Benton delivers tracts. She takes them to dissenters’ houses; for the plan on which “the church” acts seems to be that all these are only stray sheep from their fold. They are indeed parishioners. Jackson, the carpenter with whom I boarded, as he rented land, was obliged to pay tithes for the support of the clergyman, although he himself was an Independent or Congregationalist.
Though she is a church-woman, Mrs. Benton tells me that one of her uncles is a bitter dissenter. He would not open a prayer-book, and even objected to the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer at the close of another supplication.