The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

And such, thought I, is a specimen of the populace of the mighty and enlightened London! Truly the schoolmaster has work enough yet before him.

It was a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on land are crammed;
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
All noisy, and all damned!

Our fair friends wished to see the character of the common people in their Sunday recreations, and they saw here a specimen that, I feel persuaded, will satisfy them for life. One, at least, saw this; for the other stood stoically silent upon deck, and saw nothing but rain! rain! rain! O the weary time of that voyage! amid oaths and clamour, vulgarity in all its shapes of swaggering, or maudlin foolishness, riot of action, and indecorum of speech, drinking, smoking, crushing, laughing, swearing,—a confusion carried along the fair Thames, and into the heart of London, worse than that of Babel, and worthy of Pandemonium. How many thousands of such Sunday revellers, steeped in drink, and roystering vulgarity, were pouring into that mighty heart of civilization and Christian knowledge, at the moment we joyfully skipped up Westminster-stairs, and thanked heaven that the Goethe experiment was over.

What London exhibits on its own great scale, all our populous manufacturing towns exhibit, each in its own degree. It is curious to observe from the earliest hour of a Sunday morning, in fine weather, what groups are pouring out into the country. There are mechanics who, in their shops and factories,—while they have been caged up by their imperious necessities during the week, and have only obtained thence sights of the clear blue sky above, of the green fields laughing far away, or have only caught the wafting of a refreshing gale on their fevered cheek as they hurried homeward to a hasty meal, or back again to the incarceration of Mammon,—have had their souls inflamed with desires for breaking away into the free country. These have been planning, day after day, whither they shall go on Sunday. To what distant village; to what object of attraction. There have come visions of a neat country alehouse to them; its clean hearth, sanded floor; its capital ale, and aromatic pipe after a long walk; its pure unadulterated fare, sweet bread, savoury rashers of bacon, beef steaks and onions, and all with most mouth-watering odours. Others have seen clear hurrying trout-streams, or deep still fish-ponds, lying all along wild moors, or amid tangled woods; and they have determined to be with them. They will take angle and net; they will strip off clothes, and take the trout with their hands, from under the grassy banks of their little swift streams. They will have a dash at the squire’s carp, when he and all his people are at church. And, in other seasons, mushroom gathering, and nutting, and all kinds of what is called Sabbath-breaking, come before them with an unconquerable impetus. For to their minds—neglected, but full of strong desires and pent-up energies—nature’s delights, wild pursuits, bodily refreshments, and the enjoyment of one day’s full freedom from towns, red walls, dry pavements, shops, masters, and even wives and children, are mixed up into a strange, but wonderfully bewitching excitement. These are going off, before the world in general is awake, at four, five, or six o’clock in a morning, in clusters of twos and threes, sixes and sevens, with long and eager strides, stout sticks in their hands, and faces set towards the country with a determined expression of fresh-air hungriness. And there, again, are going the bird-catchers; two or three of them, with two or three children with them, perhaps. They have some far-off green lane, or furzy common, or airy down in their mind, to which they are hastening with their cages, carried under a piece of green baize, or blinded with a handkerchief. All the way will they stalk on at a four-mile rate, and these little lads—the least not more than five years old—will go on trotting after them, and never think of weariness till all the sport is over, and they are making their way homeward in the evening. Then shall you see them dragged along by one of their father’s hands; for the men will not slacken pace for them, but pull them along with them; and you will see those little legs go on, trot, trot, trot, till you think they will actually be worn to the stumps before they reach home. These men and eager lads you will find in some solitary spot seven or eight miles off, if you go out so far, seated silently under a tall hedge or old tree, or in some moorland thicket, watching their apparatus, which is placed at a distance; their tame bird, of the species they are seeking to take, chained by its leg to a crossed stick, or a bough thrust into the ground. There it is, hopping about and chirping in the sunshine; and around stand cages containing other decoy birds, and other cages ready to receive the unsuspicious birds, that, attracted by the hopping and chirping of their captive kinsmen, will presently come and alight near them, and speedily get entangled in the limed twigs that are disposed about, or will find the net that is ready spread for them, come swoop over them. Every person who has walked the streets of London, has seen the crowds of these little captives, larks, woodlarks, linnets, goldfinches, nightingales, etc., in the shops, which have been thus caught on all the great heaths and downs, for twenty miles round the metropolis, by fowlers, who are nearly always thus employed there.

Then, again, you see another Sunday class; tradesmen, shopkeepers, and their assistants and apprentices,—all those who have friends in the country,—on horseback or in gigs, driving off to spend the day with those that come occasionally and pay them a visit at markets and fairs. The faces of these are set for farm and other country-houses within twenty miles round. There is not a horse or gig to be had for love or money at any of the livery-stables on a Sunday. These hebdomadal rusticators,—these good dinner-eaters, fruit-devourers, curd-and-cream-consumers, pipe-smokers, and loungers in gardens, garden-arbours, crofts, orchards,—these soi-disant judges of cattle, crops, dogs, guns, game,—these haunters of country-houses, complimenters of country beauties, and lovers of good country fare,—have got them all. Yes, yes, many a pleasant Sunday in the country do these men spend after their fashion,—none of the worst, if none of the holiest; and yet they go to the village church too sometimes, and wonder that so fine a preacher should be hidden in such a place. Towards nine or ten o’clock in the evening, they will be pouring back into the town as blithely as they rolled out in the morning, being now primed with all those good things that lured them away so sharply after breakfast.

And, when they were gone, how sunnily and cheerily passed the day in the town; the merry bells all ringing, the gay people all abroad, streaming along the smooth pavements to church or chapel, or for the forenoon and evening promenade, in their fresh and handsome attire. Such troops of lovely women, such counterpoising numbers of goodly and well-dressed men: all squalor, and poverty, and trouble, and distress, shrunk backward into the alleys and dens out of sight; all cares and tradesmanship shut up in the closed shops and warehouses; and nothing but ease, leisure, bravery of equipment, and shew of wealth, walking in the face of the sun, as if there was no reason why they should not walk there for ever. The very beggars are gone, like swallows in autumn—not one to be seen, except in the secret rendezvous where they pass one long day of luxurious idleness. The barrack has sent forth its troop of soldiers in their rich full-dress. They have marched with sounding music to the great church, with their usual crowd of boys and idle men after them. And then, morning, noon, or evening, you have seen a group of people collect in the market-place, or some open street, that has grown and grown into a large, dense crowd; and then you have seen a man suddenly appear, with bare head, and book in hand, in the centre. This is some field-preacher; one of many hundreds that on this day, in towns, villages, rural lanes, or on heaths and commons, go out to preach to them who are too indifferent, or too shabby, to come into a respectable place of worship.

We often think how strange it would have been to have lived in the days of the Reformation, or of the Puritans, when men full of zeal went to and fro, through the length and breadth of the land, to denounce the dominant form of religion, and preach repentance and salvation from the Bible. We have not the opposition and the persecution now, or we should have just such men and such scenes. There is such freedom for every man to choose his own mode of worship, and the religiously inclined have so many modes to choose from, and to associate them with a circle of people so much after their own hearts, that they have no impulse to seek further; no, not to seek after those who have no particular desire to be found; they think it enough that they have chapel-room and open doors for those who will come. It is chiefly, therefore, the poor that are left to seek after the poor; that feel it incumbent to “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.” The mechanic, who has been labouring hard all the week in his worldly vocation, now shaves and washes, and dresses the best he may, and goes forth, fearing not the sneers and the scorn of the great and learned, of the worldly-wise and genteel, but comes into the very face of them, and before their gay windows in the open square; often before the lofty church and majestic cathedral, whose organ-tones are deeply pealing in his ears. There he lifts up his homely features, his rudely clipped head; there he lifts up his horny hand, that has for many a year dealt sturdy strokes to inanimate matter, and now deals, with tenfold zeal, strokes as hard to hearts as hard. There he lifts up his voice in no finely modulated or practised tones, but with earnest pleadings and awful threatenings and unfoldings of God’s judgments on the wicked and careless; and then, with as earnest and affectionate expositions of his mercies, arrests, terrifies, melts, and fills with new sensations and desires the hearts of his fellows in the lowest regions of human life, who have lived beyond the sound of heavenly promises, and of God’s love and fear in a great measure, “because no one cared for their souls.”

The wise may wonder; the learned may curl the lip of classical pride; the gay and the happy, who live in splendid houses, and worship in splendid pews and beneath high and arched roofs, may pass by, and not even glance on the poor illiterate preacher and his spell-bound audience; but that man is, after all, a patriot and a scholar; a good subject of the realm—a good servant of heaven; and will probably effect more real benefit in one day, than a dozen of us, who think sufficiently well of our services to the commonwealth, shall effect in all our lives: and till some comprehensive plan is adopted, by which the Sabbath may lay all its advantages, all its holy peace, all its knowledge and heavenly fruition, before every man, woman and child, in this great empire, he must and shall do what he can to supply the deficiency. With all his ignorance,—and he has much,—he has learned what is necessary for the good of his own spirit, and the strength of natural sympathy has taught him the way to communicate it to the hearts of his fellows. He knows the language, the style, the tone of sentiment and the species of argument that the soonest reaches them. He knows their besetments and their wants, for he has been pursued by the same needs, tainted by the same corruptions, baptized into the same distresses; he has an experimental knowledge that no man of another class can have. With all his extravagance,—and he has much,—he has not half the amount that we daily see in more dignified places; and for the wildness, the error, the eccentricity of his doctrines, ah! how much more readily could we match them in those after whom carriages roll, and the world runs, and on whom honours and wealth are heaped as an inadequate reward. See there, how he extends his arms! how he beats the air! how he strains every muscle, and exerts every fibre of his frame, till the perspiration rolls from his heated brow; how he thunders, and makes the whole great area ring with the outbreak of his terrors, his adjurations, and his appeals! And yet, from the simple table on which he is mounted shall no folly proceed, that has not its counterpart in the most dignified pulpit, wholly freed—and that is a world of advantage—from the freezing indifference that fills thousands with its torpidity.

For the seamen, London and Liverpool, and other ports, offer their floating or seamen’s chapels, where they may hear the gospel preached in a language that goes straight to their hearts and understandings, but which a landsman would attempt in vain. Like the lower orders in general, they have a language and an experience of their own, and the man who preaches to them in another language, and with other imagery, cannot keep alive their attention, however eloquent, or however learned; and he who attempts their language without a practical knowledge of their life, only excites their ridicule. It is even necessary, occasionally, to accommodate the language of Scripture to their ideas and experience. A very popular preacher once requested permission to address the sailors in their floating chapel at Liverpool, and, attempting seamen’s language, told them that he who secured an interest in Christ, cast anchor on a rock! At once all eyebrows were elevated in amazement, and broad grins overspread every face. “Hear him! Hear him!” they cried, one to another, “he talks of casting anchor on a rock!” Yet there was no uncommon hardness, or propensity to scoffing in these men; on the contrary, it was admirable to see, when Captain Scoresby, the well-known northern voyager, addressed them, how they kindled with interest, and melted down in emotion: when he told them how Christ preached in a ship, how he loved the mariners of his days, the tears started from their eyes, and rolled over scores of hardy cheeks that had faced the fiercest gales, and been tanned by the hottest suns. It was, and is still, I doubt not, delightful to see such an audience. There was the smart sailor and his smart lass; others with their wives and families; and old men who had spent the greatest portion of a long life on the seas. Such a collection of black and curly heads, of bushy whiskers, of the thin and white hair of age, of eyes gleaming with youth and life, or dimmed by the extremity of years!—such an intent and childlike throng of listeners! all so little accustomed to artifice,—to conceal or feel shame for their emotions,—that the changes of their expressions were as rapid and striking as those of the sun and wind on their own element. There sate some happy fathers, with their children on their knees, as though they saw so little of them, had found them so lately, or must leave them so soon, that they could not have them near enough. There sate strong men, touched to the depth of their hearts by the pathos of the preacher, leaning against the side of the cabin, and weeping unrestrained tears, or listening, with lips apart, in breathless attention; and there sate women, who, when winds and tempests were mentioned, turned a fond, anxious look to some dear one sitting by them; and others, who when the voyagers at sea were prayed for, clasped their hands, and looked to heaven unutterable things. Great must be the comfort and the blessing of thus bringing Christianity to the knowledge of our seafaring men. Great has been its effect amongst the fishermen of Cornwall, as any one may see, who will visit the crowded chapels of St. Ives, and other places.

But there is still another class of preachers that may be encountered on Sundays: the disciples of Irving. None of your simple mechanics, but gentlemen—gentlemen in appearance, in manners, in education. You will see such a one pulling out his pocket Bible, in some public situation, and beginning to address the two or three that happen to stand near. The singularity of the thing soon attracts others; there begins to be a moving from all parts towards that spot, till there is at length a large and dense crowd. There, in the midst of this wondering and promiscuous circle, in the most cultivated tones, with the most proper action, and in the purest language, you hear, perhaps, the Honourable and Reverend —— himself, “dealing damnation round the land;” depicting his audience in the most fearful colours, as fallen, utterly corrupt, blackened with every imaginable sin, and wandering blindfold on the very brink of hell. In the opinion of some of these preachers, all the world is lying in ignorance and sin; all other preachers of all other creeds are blind leaders of the blind; to him and his few coadjutors alone has the mystery of godliness been revealed; “they are the men, and wisdom shall die with them.” I must confess that to me, this cold Calvinism, this abusive and declamatory zeal, though coming from very gentlemanly mouths, is not a thousandth part so attractive as the warm-hearted, liberal, and affectionate addresses of the illiterate mechanic. Nay, to me it is excessively repulsive; and I would much rather find myself in some far-off village, in some green lane, or on the heath, where such are holding their summer camp-meeting.