Change in the Village

by George Sturt

V

DRINK

It will be understood, from what was said on the subject in the first chapter, that the village population has its rough element, and that drunkenness, or at any rate excessive drinking, is very common. It is true that there are very few habitual drunkards in the parish—there are not even many men, perhaps, who frequently take too much; but, on the other hand, the majority are beer-drinkers, and every now and then one or another of them, normally sober, oversteps the limit. Thus, possibly every other family has had its passing experience of what drunkenness means in the temporary lapse of father, or son, or brother. A rainy Bank Holiday invariably leads to much mischief in this way, and so does a sudden coming of hot weather in the summer. The men have too much to do to spare time for the public-house in the ordinary weekdays, but on Saturday and Sunday nights, when the strain is relaxed, they are apt to give way too far.

The evils of drunkenness, however, are well enough known, and I do not propose to dwell on that side of the matter. But there is another aspect of it which must be considered, if only because it is so thoroughly characteristic of the old village outlook. Incidentally, this other aspect may be worth a little attention from temperance reformers.

For the truth is that the average villager's attitude towards drink and temperance is not that of an unrepentant or rebellious sinner; rather, it is the attitude of a man who has sound reasons for adhering to his own point of view. If he grows restive under the admonitions of the pharisaical, if he meets them defiantly, or if he merely laughs, as often as not it is because he feels that his mentors do not understand the situation so well as he does. How should they, who see it wholly from the outside—they who never go near the public-house; they who have no experience either of poverty or of hard work—how should they, who speak from prejudice, be entitled to dictate to him, who has knowledge? He resents the interference, considers it insulting, and goes his own way, supported by a village opinion which is entirely on his side, and certainly has its claims to respect. It is this village opinion which I wish to examine now.

In the eyes of the older villagers or of the more old-fashioned ones mere occasional drunkenness is a very venial fault. The people make a distinction between the habitual drunkard and him who occasionally drinks too much, and they are without compassion for the former. He is a "low blackguard"; they look reproachfully if you talk of trying to help him by giving him a job of work, or at any rate they pity your wasted efforts. But for the occasional defaulter they have a friendly feeling, unless, of course, he turns savage in his cups. As long as he is cheerful he is rather a figure of fun to them than anything, or he is an object of wondering interest. On a certain August Bank Holiday I saw one of our villagers staggering up the hill—a middle-aged man, far gone in drink, so that all the road was none too wide for him. Other wayfarers accompanied and observed him with a philosophically detached air, and between whiles a woman grabbed at his coat between the shoulders, trying to steady him. But by and by, lurching free, he wobbled across the road to within an inch of a perambulator with two children which another man was pushing. The drunken man leant over it, poised like an impending fate, and so hung for a few seconds before he staggered away, and it might be supposed that at least the man with the perambulator would be indignant. But not he. He merely remarked wonderingly: "You wouldn't ha' thought it possible he could ha' done it, would ye?" The other wayfarers laughed lightly, amongst them a young married woman with a refined face.

While the comic side of a man in drink makes its strong appeal to the village folk, they are ready to see excuses for him, too. Anybody, they argue, is liable to be overtaken before he knows, and where is the great disgrace in an accident that may befall themselves, or me, or you? There is at least no superiority in their outlook, no pharisaism. Listen, for proof of it, to a talk of Bettesworth's about a neighbour who had been working with the "ballast-train" on the railway all night. "You," he began—and this first word showed how innocent he was of shame in his own attitude, since he supposed that I must share his amusement—"you'd ha' laughed if you'd ha' sin Isaac yest'day. He was got fair boozed; an' comin' up the gully, thinkin' he was goin' straight for 'ome, he run his head right into they bushes down by ol' Dame Smith's. Then he got up the slope about a dozen yards, an' begun to go back'ards 'till he come to Dame Smith's wall, and that turn'd 'n, and he begun to go back'ards again down the gully. I did laugh. He bin at work all night on the ballast-train, an' come back reg'lar fagged out, an' hadn't had no vittles—an' a feller wants something—and then the fust glass he has do's for 'n. He bin workin' every night for a week, an' Sundays, too. And Alice" ("Alice" is Isaac's wife) "is away hop-tyin' all day, so, of course, Isaac didn't care 'bout goin' 'ome to lop about there by hisself.... I've seed a many go like that. They works all night, an' gets reg'lar fagged out, an' then the fust drop does 'em. When Alice come 'ome, she looked at least to find the kettle boilin'. 'Stead o' that, she couldn't git in. At least, she had to fetch the key from where she put 'n when she went away in the mornin'. I laughed at her when I went down 'ome. 'Where is he now?' I says. 'Ah, you may laugh,' she says, 'but I got to rouse 'n up about ten o'clock an' git 'n a cup o' tea. He got to be at work again at eleven.' That's how they do's. Begins about ten or eleven o'clock, and don't leave off again afore six or seven, or p'raps nine or ten, next mornin'. Makes days an' quarters for three an' ninepence. I've knowed a many like that come 'ome an' git boozed fust glass, like old Isaac. I did laugh, though, and so did Dame Smith when she was a-tellin' of me."

Inheriting from their forefathers such an unimaginative point of view, most of the cottage folk have been, until quite lately, far from regarding the public-house as a public nuisance. It had a distinct value in their scheme of living. That fact was demonstrated plainly in an outburst of popular feeling some years ago. The licensing magistrates of the neighbourhood had taken the extreme, and at that time unprecedented, course of refusing to renew the licenses of several houses in the town. But while the example they had thus set was winning them applause all up and down England, they were the objects, in this and the adjacent villages, of all sorts of vituperation on account of what the cottagers considered a wanton insult to their class. It must be admitted that the action of the justices had some appearance of being directed against the poor. Nobody could deny, for instance, that the houses frequented by middle-class clients, and responsible for a good deal of middle-class drinking, were all passed over, and that those singled out for extinction served only the humblest and least influential. My neighbours entertained no doubts upon the matter. They were not personally concerned—at any rate, the public-houses in this village were left open for them to go to—but the appearance of favouritism offended them. They were as sure as if it had been officially proclaimed that the intention was to impose respectability upon them against their will; their pleasures were to be curtailed to please fanatics who understood nothing and cared less about the circumstances of cottage folk. So, during some weeks the angry talk went round the village; it was not difficult to know what the people were thinking. They picked to pieces the character of the individual magistrates, planning ineffective revenge. "That old So-and-So" (Chairman of the Urban Council)—"they'd bin to his shop all their lives, but he'd find he'd took his last shillin' from 'em now! And that What's-his-Name—the workin' classes had voted for 'n at last County Council election, and this was how he served 'em! He needn't trouble to put up again, when his turn was up!" Then they commiserated the suffering publicans. "Look at poor old Mrs. ——, what kept the house down Which Street—always a most well-conducted house. Nobody couldn't find no fault with it, and 'twas her livin'! Why should she have her livin' took away like that, poor old gal?... They sims to think nobody en't right 'xcep' jest theirselves—as if we poor people could live an' go on same as they do. They can 'ave their drink at 'ome, and their music, but where be we to go to if they shuts up the 'ouses?" Such were the remarks I heard over and over again. It seemed to the poor that there were to be no more cakes and ale, because Malvolio was virtuous, or because their own manners were not refined enough.

In the light of subsequent political events I am prepared to believe that some of this popular indignation was engineered from the public-houses. But I do not think it required much engineering. It sounded spontaneous at the time, and considering how the villagers are placed, their resentment was not unnatural. As I have said, the public-house has its value in their scheme of living. They have no means of enjoying themselves at home, no room in their cottages for entertaining friends, and they may well ask what they are to do if the public-houses are closed to them.