"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

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 One of them, which is nearly universal in England and Ireland, is entirely out of date where I live.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.