MISCELLANEOUS.
Ways of living in England differ from those I am accustomed to in points before mentioned, such as the large number of meals, and the short hours of farm labor. A Lancashire youth complained that they clemmed or starved him in America on three meals a day. In this rural region those who can afford it take four, tea being in the afternoon and supper before going to bed.
Of articles of furniture I especially noticed two. One of them, which is nearly universal in England and Ireland, is entirely out of date where I live. It is the old-fashioned dressing-glass, which swings in a frame and stands upon a table. I do not remember its absence in any house that could afford it. Another article that I saw more rarely, but in both England and Ireland, was the canopy over the head of the bed. Of one I saw the framework was of heavy wood, with curtains at the side running on rings. A straight piece of the same material hung down behind the head of the bed. At my hotel in Cork this canopy was of faded blue damask; at the carpenter’s in the village, of faded red, and above trimmed with heavy woollen fringe. A handsomer one was on my bed in London. Perhaps this canopy is all that remains of curtains that formerly surrounded the bed.
I have spoken of mangling as used in England. Mrs. Jackson, the carpenter’s wife, hired a woman to come to the house once a month to wash. It took them both two days to do it, and Mrs. Jackson paid regularly about twenty-four cents a day; or if the woman made a long day, twenty-eight. In harvest she must pay higher. (When Benton, the farmer with whom I boarded, heard me speak of our paying washer-women here seventy-five cents or a dollar, he said that before he would pay so much he would turn his shirt or throw it into a pool and give it a slop wash.)
After Mrs. Jackson’s clothes were dried she took them to a neighbor’s to be mangled. The mangle is not unlike a great wringer with rollers; and if the clothes are damp, it rolls them smooth. Mrs. Jackson’s neighbor allowed people to do their own mangling at “tuppence ha’penny or thruppence,” according to the size of the basket. This is a great saving of fuel, and Mrs. Jackson said that they look just as well.
Active sports seem to have more prominence in England than in our own country. At Haddenham I called toward evening at the teacher’s, and found that he had gone to play cricket. And young Benton, son of the farmer, had gone too. He seemed actively engaged in business, but one morning he was up early, as he wished to go that day to a cricket-match, eleven miles distant. At Benton’s, mention was made of one of their relatives, who had been much given to cricket and other sports, and who had gone to Canada. He said that if he had worked as hard in England as he did in America, he would have got on there.
Yet Benton, the farmer, thinks it strange that I do not want to see the races in their county town.
Skating is a favorite amusement. On a meadow near by, which is always covered with water in the winter, they have skating-matches. On the fens are great skaters, I hear, and people come from all parts to compete with them.
One of the strongest evidences of a higher state of civilization than ours (and perhaps of a different climate) is that Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, told me that she had never seen a man without stockings in her life. All the children in the British school (I think in both schools) wore both shoes and stockings, and some woollen stockings, though the month was July. However, the teacher said that in the north of England children go barefoot; and I had just come from Ireland, where I had heard of laborers’ children that passed the winter without stockings or shoes.
In our own country I had read or heard of English farmers who rode in handsome vehicles, who wore silk hats, who occasionally drank champagne. But great farmers, cultivating hundreds of acres, must be capitalists. Of course there will be less luxury in straitened times. I heard, however, that a respectable farmer would never go to church, or especially to a funeral, places where he wished to show respect, without a silk hat. At market he might wear one of felt or straw.
Other matters being equal, the retired farmer is more nearly one of the gentry than the retired tradesman. In the parish of Haddenham cum Stonea, where I dwelt, perhaps the only person that came within that charmed circle, the nobility and gentry, was the rector of the church, and he did not stand high in it. I heard of the daughters of one clergyman who invited another to dine, and told him that it would be a nice party, “nobody who did not keep a footman or lady’s-maid.” If a distinguished dissenting minister like Spurgeon should come to a country town to lecture, in all probability he would not be socially noticed by the nobility and gentry.
A young Englishwoman told me that her sister, who lived in our country, said that the Americans are more polite than the English; and two Englishmen who had travelled here spoke of the many attentions which they had received.
In this region of eastern England villages are found bearing names derived from the Saxon. I have called this parish Haddenham cum Stonea. The syllable ham comes from the Saxon, and means a dwelling, hence our word home. The syllable ea, in Stonea, means water.
Said the dissenting minister, “There is no part of England where the people are freer and more independent in thought than in these eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon, and parts of Cambridge and Lincoln.” And he inferred that from these counties our Pilgrim fathers must have sprung. About fifty miles from the parish I describe lies the city of Boston, from which came Mr. Cotton, the preacher in whose honor our own city of Boston was named.
“The last struggles of the Anglo-Saxons against the Normans were in these counties,” said one. “At Ely, then an island in the centre of the fens, Hereward fortified himself for a while, and made the last struggles against the Normans.”
An acquaintance who had visited America remarked to me that the district of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, where we were, is typically agricultural; that there are very few resident gentry; therefore the social life of this region more resembles that of the United States than does that of most other sections of England.
In this county of Huntingdonshire was born Oliver Cromwell, and at its town of St. Ives he lived. In this section he probably raised his celebrated soldiers called Ironsides. But the conservatives of England do not admire Cromwell. About twenty years ago in his native county it was found impossible to raise means to erect his statue.[169]
On this side of the county are no county families bearing the title Esquire. ⸺ Farrar, Esq., north of us, is a great landed proprietor, with an income of about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. The Earl of S. and the Duke of M. are also large landed proprietors. The Duke of Bedford owns an estate in Thorny Fen of perhaps ten to fifteen thousand acres. My friend who tells me this thinks that the estate, however, is in another county from this. He understands that the duke expects each tenant to take one thousand acres and to keep a hunter. The duke is a liberal in politics.
The subject of politics was alluded to in the opening of this article, in the remarks of Jackson, the carpenter. Another acquaintance said, “If you go to a nobleman or great landed proprietor to rent a farm, you must be deferential and, as a general thing, you must vote on his side. If a man is a liberal, he must go under a liberal landlord; and if a tory, under a tory. Perhaps one-third of the House of Lords are liberals,” he added.
Benton, the farmer, did not tell me his political opinions. He said that the ballot is secret. But he added that a man’s political opinions have not now anything to do with renting the land.
But a person whom I afterward met in Manchester said that the agricultural districts were in the main thoroughly tory, the farmers being dependent on the landlords. He added that the late Lord Derby used to say, “Tell me what the landlords are and I will tell you what the vote will be.”
Haddenham cum Stonea has declined in population. In 1840 the parish had nearly one thousand four hundred inhabitants. It now has about one thousand. Many went to America; now many go north into the manufacturing regions. Nor are these two villages alone in this. Jackson, the carpenter, told me of one where he had lived which, at the last census, had three hundred and thirty people. Twenty years back, he said, it had over five hundred.
Public-houses are numerous in these villages. They are mostly simple ale-houses, with such titles as the Three Horse-Shoes, the Rose and Crown, the Three Jolly Butchers. I counted at least eleven in a village of less than seven hundred people.
The wages of a farm-laborer here are under two dollars and seventy-five cents a week, and he boards himself. The cottagers on the farm where I boarded got their houses free and a rood of ground in which to plant potatoes. While at Haddenham I visited a friend in a near village, who took me to ride upon the fens, and her husband particularly desired her to show me some cottages, or laborers’ houses, that he had built. The point that I was especially to observe was the rooms provided for sleeping, there being a bedroom down-stairs and two or more above. On this subject I spoke to Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, who said that the laborers here have generally a kitchen, I believe a better room, and two chambers. She admitted that the boys and girls have to sleep in the same room.
Mrs. Benton said that if the laborer’s wife, who has a number of young children, is kind and considerate of her husband, she will try to provide him a bit of meat daily, but it will be but a little bit; and the children will not taste meat oftener than once a week.
As I have before intimated, hours of labor are easy,—farm hands getting half an hour for lunch, and an hour for dinner. (But I cannot say whether this lunch-time is allowed at other than harvest.) In hay and harvest they work overtime, and are paid for overwork.
Fruit-picking was going on while I was at Haddenham. In fruit-gathering times, when the wives and boys get out a little, meat may be more plentiful in laborers’ houses. There is a great press at fruit-gathering. The people go out in gangs about six or seven o’clock, and return about seven. The wages are about thirty-two cents a day. A market for the fruit is furnished by the manufacturing regions, where farm produce is more scarce.
At Haddenham I heard that after harvest they have a thanksgiving festival. There is a village flower-show in the rectory grounds and a public tea. They deck the church with wheat, barley, oats, beans, grapes, apples, and pears, and have a service in the evening. A collection is taken up for the county hospital, which is supported almost entirely by voluntary subscription.
To return once more to education. It is now compulsory, as I have said; but a friend estimated that of the people over thirty, a large proportion could not read and write.