Change in the Village

by George Sturt

For, as I said, the experience begins early. The children, the young girls, have their share of it. During those earlier years I am recalling, a little girl of the village, who was just beginning domestic service in my household, was, within the space of six months, personally concerned in two accidents to little children. She came from one of half-a-dozen families whose cottages, for a wonder in this village, stood in a row; and amongst scraps of her talk which were repeated to me I heard how her little brother—only five years old, but strong at throwing stones—threw at a girl playmate and knocked out one of her eyes. That happened in the springtime. In the autumn of the same year a mishap, if possible more shocking at the moment, befell another child in that row of cottages. A man there one evening was trimming a low hedge. His tool was a fag-hook—well sharpened, for he was one of the ablest men in the village. And near by where he worked his children were at play, the youngest of them being between three and four years old.

As he reached over the hedge, to chop downwards at the farther side, this little one suddenly came running dangerously near. "Take care, ducky!" he cried. "Don't come so close, 'r else perhaps father'll cut ye."

He gave three more strokes, and again the child ran in. The hook fell, right across the neck. I had these particulars from a neighbour. "If 't had bin another half inch round, the doctor said, 'twould have bin instant death.... The man was covered with blood, and all the ground, too. I was at work when I heared of it, but I couldn't go on after that, it upset me so.... And all this mornin' I can't get it out o' my mind. There's a shiver all up that row. They be all talkin' of it. The poor little thing en't dead this mornin', and that's all's you can say. They bin up all night. Ne'er a one of 'em didn't go to bed."

So far the neighbour. Later the little maidservant, who had gone home that evening, told me: "We was passin' by at the time—me and my older sister.... She run in and wrapped a towel round its neck."

"Where, then, was the mother?"

"She was with its father. He'd fainted. So we went in. We thought p'raps we could run for the doctor. But she went herself, jest as she was," carrying the child down to the town.

As for the girl's sister, who had behaved with some aplomb, "It made her feel rather bad afterwards. She felt sick. All the floor was covered with blood." The little maidservant had a curious look, half horror, half importance, as she said this. She herself was not more than fifteen at the time.

But sickness is commoner by far than accident, and owing to the necessity the cottagers are under of doing everything for themselves they often get into dire straits. Of some of the things that go on one cannot hear with equanimity. The people are English; bone of our bone. But we shut our eyes. I have heard of well-to-do folk in the parish who, giving of their abundance to foreign missions, deny that there is distress here at home. The most charitable explanation of that falsehood is to suppose that across their secluded gardens and into their luxurious rooms, or even to their back-doors, an average English cottager is too proud to go. Yet it is hard to understand how all signs of what is so constantly happening can be shut out. For myself, I have never gone out of my way to look for what I see. I have never invited confidences. The facts that come to my knowledge seem to be merely the commonplaces of the village life. If examples of the people's troubles were wanted, they could be provided almost endlessly, and in almost endless diversity. But there is one feature that never varies. Year after year it is still the same tale; all the extra toil, all the discomfort, or horror, or difficulty, of dealing with sickness falls immediately on the persons of the family where the sickness occurs; and it sets its cruel mark upon them, so that the signs can be seen as one goes about, in the faces of people one does not know. And the women suffer most.

One winter evening a woman came to my door to see if she could borrow a bed-rest. Her sister, she said, had been ill with pleurisy and bronchitis for a week or more, and for the last two days had been spitting a great deal of blood. The woman looked very poor; she might have been judged needlessly shabby. A needle and thread would so soon have remedied sundry defects in her jacket, which was gaping open at the seams. But her face suggested that there were excuses for her.

I have never forgotten her face, as it showed that evening, although I have since seen it looking happier. It was dull of colour—the face of an overworked and over-burdened soul; and it had a sullen expression of helplessness and resentment. The eyes were weary and pale—I fancied that trouble had faded the colour out of them. But with all this I got an impression of something dogged and unbeaten in the woman's temper. She went away with the bed-rest, apologizing for coming to borrow it. "'Tis so bad"—those were her words—"'tis so bad to see 'em layin' there like that, sufferin' so much pain."