Under this he generally wears a coarse blue jacket, a red or yellow shag waistcoat, stout blue worsted stockings, tall laced ankle-boots, and corduroy breeches or trowsers. A red handkerchief round his neck is his delight, with two good long ends dangling in front. In many other parts of the country, he wears no slop at all, but a corduroy or fustian jacket, with capacious pockets, and buttons of giant size.
That is his every-day, work-a-day style; but see him on a Sunday, or a holiday—see him turn out to church, wake, or fair—there’s a beau for you! If he has not his best slop on, which has never yet been defiled by touch of labor, he is conspicuous in his blue, brown, or olive-green coat, and waistcoat of glaring color—scarlet, or blue, or green striped—but it must be showy; and a pair of trowsers, generally blue, with a width nearly as ample as a sailor’s, and not only guiltless of the foppery of being strapped down, but if he find the road rather dirty, or the grass dewy, they are turned up three or four inches at the bottom, so as to show the lining. On those days, he has a hat of modern shape, that has very lately cost him four-and-sixpence; and if he fancy himself rather handsome, or stands well with the women, he cocks it a little on one side, and wears it with a knowing air. He wears the collar of his coarse shirt up on a holiday, and his flaming handkerchief round his neck puts forth dangling ends of an extra length, like streamers. The most troublesome business of a full-dress day is to know what to do with his hands. He is dreadfully at a loss where to put them. On other days, they have plenty of occupation with their familiar implements, but to-day they are miserably sensible of a vacuum; and, except he be very old, he wears no gloves. They are sometimes diving into his trowser-pockets, sometimes into his waistcoat-pocket, and at others into his coat-pockets behind, turning his laps out like a couple of tails.
The great remedy for this inconvenience is a stick, or a switch; and in the corner of his cottage, between the clock-case and the wall, you commonly see a stick of a description that indicates its owner. It is an ash-plant, with a face cut on its knob; or a thick hazel, which a woodbine has grown tightly round, and raised on it a spiral, serpentine swelling; or it is a switch, that is famous for cutting off the heads of thistles, docks, and nettles, as he goes along.
The women, in their paraphernalia, generally bear a nearer resemblance to their sisters of the town; the village dressmaker undertaking to put them into the very newest fashion which has reached that part of the country; and truly, were it not for the genuine country manner in which their clothes are thrown on, they might pass very well, too, at the market.
But the old men and old women, they are of the ancient world, truly. There they go, tottering and stooping along to church! It is now their longest journey. The old man leans heavily on his stout stick. His thin white hair covers his shoulders; his coat, with large steel buttons, and square-cut collar, has an antique air; his breeches are of leather, and worn bright with age, standing up at the knees, like the lids of tankards; and his loose shoes have large steel buckles. By his side, comes on his old dame, with her little, old-fashioned black bonnet; her gown, of a large flowery pattern, pulled up through the pocket-hole, showing a well-quilted petticoat, black stockings, high-heeled shoes, and large buckles also. She has on a black mode cloak, edged with old-fashioned lace, carefully darned; or if winter, her warm red cloak, with a narrow edging of fur down the front. You see, in fancy, the oaken chest in which that drapery has been kept for the last half century; and you wonder who is to wear it next. Not their children—for the fashions of this world are changed; they must be cut down into primitive raiment for the grandchildren.
But who says the English peasant is dull and unvaried in his character? To be sure, he has not the wild wit, the voluble tongue, the reckless fondness for laughing, dancing, carousing, and shillalying of the Irish peasant; nor the grave, plodding habits and intelligence of the Scotch one. He may be said, in his own phraseology, to be “betwixt and between.” He has wit enough when it is wanted; he can be merry enough when there is occasion; he is ready for a row when his blood is well up; and he will take to his book, if you will give him a schoolmaster. What is he, indeed, but the rough block of English character? Hew him out of the quarry of ignorance; dig him out of the slough of everlasting labor; chisel him, and polish him; and he will come out whatever you please. What is the stuff of which your armies have been chiefly made, but this English peasant? Who won your Cressys, your Agincourts, your Quebecs, your Indies, East and West, and your Waterloos, but the English peasant, trimmed and trained into the game-cock of war? How many of them have been carried off to man your fleets, to win your Camperdowns and Trafalgars? and when they came ashore again, were no longer the simple, slouching Simons of the village; but jolly tars, with rolling gait, quid in mouth, glazed hats, with crowns of one inch high, and brims of five wide, and with as much glib slang, and glib money to treat the girls with, as any Jack of them all.
Cowper has drawn a capital picture of the ease and perfection with which the clownish chrysalis may be metamorphosed into the scarlet moth of war. Catch the animal young, and you may turn him into any shape you please. He will learn to wear silk stockings, scarlet plush breeches, collarless coats, with silver buttons; and swing open a gate with a grace, or stand behind my lady’s carriage with his wand, as smoothly impudent as any of the tribe. He will clerk it with a pen behind his ear; or mount a pulpit, as Stephen Duck, the thresher, did, if you will only give him the chance. The fault is not in him, it is in fortune. He has rich fallows in his soul, if any body thought them worth turning. But keep him down, and don’t press him too hard; feed him pretty well, and give him plenty of work; and, like one of his companions, the cart-horse, he will drudge on till the day of his death.
So in the north of England, where they give him a cottage and his food, and keep no more of his species than will just do the work, letting all the rest march off to the Tyne collieries; he is a very patient creature; and if they did not show him books, would not wince at all. So in the fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdon, and on many a fat and clayey level of England, where there are no resident gentry, and but here and there a farm-house, you may meet, the English peasant in his most sluggish and benumbed condition. He is then a long-legged, staring creature, considerably “lower than the angels,” who, if you ask him a question, gapes like an Indian frog, which, when its mouth is open, has its head half off; and neither understands your language, nor, if he did, could grasp your ideas. He is there a walking lump, a thing with members, but very little membership with the intellectual world; but with a soul as stagnant as one of his own dykes. All that has been wanted in him has been cultivated, and is there—good sturdy limbs, to plow and sow, reap and mow, and feed bullocks; and even in those operations, his sinews have been half-superseded by machinery. There never was any need of his mind; and, therefore, it never has been minded.
This is the English peasant, where there is nobody to breathe a soul into the clod. But what is he where there are thousands of the wealthy and the wise? What is he round London—the great, the noble, and the enlightened? Pretty much the same, and from pretty much the same causes. Few trouble themselves about him. He feels that he is a mere serf, among the great and free; a mere machine in the hands of the mighty, who use him as such. He sees the sunshine of grandeur, but he does not feel its warmth. He hears that the great folks are wise; but all he knows is, that their wisdom does not trouble itself about his ignorance. He asks, with “The Farmer’s Boy,”
Whence comes this change, ungracious, irksome, cold?
Whence this new grandeur that mine eyes behold?—
The widening distance that I daily see?
Has wealth done this? Then wealth’s a foe to me!
Foe to my rights, that leaves a powerful few
The paths of emulation to pursue.