Fifty Years Ago

by Walter Besant

(Taken from the Drawing in ‘The Graphic’ by permission)

Middle-class life—especially in the country—was dull, far, far duller than modern life even in the quietest country town. The men had their business; the women had the house. Incomes ran small; a great deal was done at home that is now done out of it. There was a weekly washing-day, when the house steamed with hot soap-suds, and the ‘lines’ were out upon the poles—they were painted green and were square—and on the lines hung half the family linen. All the jam was made at home; the cakes, the pies, and the puddings, by the wife and daughters; the bread was home-made; the beer was home-brewed (and better beer than good home-brewed no man need desire); all those garments which are not worn outside were made at home. Everybody dined in the middle of the day. Therefore, in the society of the country town dinner-parties did not exist. On the other hand, there were sociable evenings, which began with a sit-down tea, with muffins and tea-cakes, very delightful, and ended with a hot supper. Tobacco was not admitted in any shape except that of snuff into the better kind of middle-class house; only working men smoked vulgar pipes; the Sabbath was respected; there was no theatre nearer than the county town; the girls had probably never seen a play; every man who respected himself ‘laid down’ port, but there was little drinking of wine except on Sunday afternoons; no one, not even the ladies, scorned the glass of something warm, with a spoon in it, after supper. For the young there was a fair once a year; now and then a travelling circus came along; there was a lecture occasionally on an instructive subject, such as chemistry, or astronomy, or sculpture; there were picnics, but these were rare; if there were show places in the neighbourhood, parties were made to them, and tea was festively taken among the ruins of the Abbey.

John Galt

-JOHN GALT-

Fashion descends slowly; it is now the working man who takes his wife into the country for tea: fifty years ago he took his wife nowhere, and scorned tea. Open-air games and sports there were none; no lawn-tennis, Badminton, or anything of that kind in those days; even croquet, which is now so far lost in the mists of antiquity that men of thirty are too young to remember the rage for it, was actually not yet invented. Archery certainly existed, and the comic writers are always drawing pictures of the young ladies sticking their arrows into the legs of people a hundred feet or so wide of the target. But archery belonged to a class rather above that which we are now considering. There was not much sketching and painting. There was no amateur photography; there was no catching of strange creatures in ponds for the aquarium—a fashion also now happily extinct; there was not, in fact, any single pursuit, amusement, or game which would bring young people together in the open air. There was no travelling; the summer holiday had not yet got down in the country. In London, to be sure, everybody down to Bevis Marks and Simmery Axe went out of town and to the seaside in July or August; but in the country nobody thought of such a thing; not the vicar’s daughters, not the solicitor’s wife, not the family of the general practitioner; the very schoolmaster, who got his four weeks in the summer and his three at Christmas, spent them at home in such joy as accompanies rest from labour. With no outdoor amusements, and with no summer holiday, how much is life simplified! But the simplicity of life means monotony—faciunt vitam, balnea, vina, Venus.

LA PASTOURELLE

In the winter, things were somewhat different. In some towns there was the county ball. At this function one had the pleasure of gazing upon ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank and fashion, and of observing that they kept to themselves like a Hindu caste, danced with each other at the upper end of the room, cast disparaging glances at the dresses of the ladies of the lower end, and sniffed at their manner and appearance. This was true joy. There were also occasional dances at home, but these were rare, because people had not learned how to meet and dance without making a fuss over it, taking up carpets, putting candles in tin sconces, keeping late hours, and having a supper, the preparation of which was mainly done by the ladies of the house, and it nearly killed them, and drove the servants—the genteel middle-class family often got along with only one—to give notice. I think that the dances which had gone out in London still lingered in the country. There were, for instance, the Caledonians as well as the Lancers; there were country dances without end, the very names of which are now lost; the gentlemen performed the proper steps with grace and agility, while the ladies were careful to preserve an attitude supposed the only one possible for a lady while dancing, in which the figure was bent forward, the face was turned up with the chin stuck out, while the hands were occupied in holding up the dress to the regulation height. The elders, meanwhile, played long whist at tables lit by candles which wanted snuffing between the deals. The bashful youth of the party was always covering himself with shame by his clumsiness in snuffing out the candles, or, even if he succeeded in taking off the red-hot ball of burnt thread, he too often neglected to close the instrument with which he effected the operation, and thereby mightily offended the nostrils of the company. When there was no dancing the younger members began with a ‘little music.’ Their songs—how faded and stale they seem now if one tries to sing them!—turned chiefly on the affections, and the favourite poet was Felicia Hemans. After the little music they sat down to a round game, of which there were a great many, such as Commerce, Speculation, Vingt-et-Un, Limited Loo, or Pope Joan. The last was played with a board. I remember the board—it was a round thing, lacquered, and like a punch-bowl, but I think with divisions; as for the game itself, and what was done with the board, I quite forget, but both game and bowl lasted quite into the Fifties. Are there any country circles now where they still play Pope Joan with mother-o’-pearl counters, and after the game have a grand settlement, and exchange the counters for silver and copper, some with chuckles, and others with outward smiles but inward rage?

People were extremely punctilious on the subject of calls—one remembers the call in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ The call was due at regular intervals, so that even the day should almost be known on which it was paid or returned. It was a ceremonial which necessitated a great deal of ritual and make-believe. No one, for instance, was to be surprised in doing any kind of work. There was a fiction in genteel families that the ladies of the house never did anything serious or serviceable after dinner; the afternoon was supposed to be devoted either to walking, or to making calls, or to elegant trifling at home. Therefore, if the girls were at the moment engaged upon any useful work—many of them, poor things, never did anything but useful work—they crammed it under the sofa, and pretended to be reading a book, or painting, or knitting, or to be engaged in easy and fashionable conversation. Why they went through this elaborate pretence I have not the least idea, because everybody knew that every girl in the place was always making, mending, cutting-out, basting, gusseting, trimming, turning, and contriving. How do you suppose that the solicitor’s daughters made so brave a show on Sundays if they were not clever enough to make up things for themselves? Everybody, of course, knew it, and why the girls would not own up at once one cannot now understand. Perhaps it was a sort of suspicion, or a faint hope, or a wild dream, that a reputation for ladylike uselessness might enable them to cross the line at the County Ball, and mingle with the county people.