The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

[8] A mountain over-looking Dent Dale.

[9] The shepherd’s dog.

The smallness of their earnings may be inferred from the price for the knitting of one of these caps being three-pence. But all knit, and knitting is not so much their sole labour as an auxiliary gain. The woman knits when her household work is done; the man when his out-of-door work is done; as they walk about their garden, or go from one village to another, the process is going on. We saw a stout rosy girl driving some cows to the field. She had all the character of a farmer’s servant. Without any thing on her head, in her short bedgown, and wooden clogs, she went on after them with a great stick in her hand. A lot of calves which were in the field, as she opened the gate, seemed determined to rush out, but the damsel laid lustily about them with her cudgel, and made them decamp. As we observed her proceedings from a house opposite, and, amused at the contest between her and the calves, said, “well done! dairymaid!” “O,” said the woman of the house, “that is no dairymaid: she is the farmer’s only daughter, and will have quite a fortune. She is the best knitter in the dale, and makes four bump-caps a day;” that is, the young lady of fortune earned a shilling a day.

The neighbouring dale, Garsdale, which is a narrower and more secluded one than Dent, is a great knitting dale. The old men sit there in companies round the fire, and so intent are they on their occupation and stories, that they pin cloths on their shins to prevent their being burnt; and sometimes they may be seen on a bench at the house-front, and where they have come out to cool themselves, sitting in a row knitting with their shin-cloths on, making the oddest appearance imaginable.

It may be supposed that eccentricity of character is the growth of such a place. A spirit of avarice is one of the most besetting evils. Many of the people are proprietors of their little homesteads; but there is no manufacturing beyond that of knitting, and money therefore is scarce. As it is not to be got very easily, the disposition to hold and save it becomes proportionably strong. They are extremely averse to suffer any money to go out of the dale; and will buy nothing, if they can avoid it, of people who travel the country with articles to sell; that would be sending money out of the dale; but they will go to a shop in the dale, and buy the same thing, not reflecting that the shopkeeper must first purchase it out of the dale, and therefore send money out of the dale to pay for it; and that what goes out of the dale for such articles comes back again by the sale of their horses, cattle, and sheep. A person who had been collector of the taxes in one of these dales, described to us the excessive difficulty he had to collect the money, even from those whom he knew always had it. They would put off payments as long as possible, and when he went and told them it was positively the last time he could call, they would sit doggedly, and declare that Samson was strong and Solomon was wise, but neither could pay money when they had not it. When they saw he would not depart, they would at length get up, go up stairs, where they always kept their cash. There he could hear them slowly open their chest, let down the lid again; open it again in awhile; then shut it again, and walk about the room as if unable to part with it. Then they would come to the top of the stairs, and shout down, saying they would not pay it. Finding him still immovable, they would come slowly down, but still persist—“I’ll nae gie it thee!” Then perhaps soon after, as if relenting, they would come towards him, open their hand with the money in it, extending it towards him; but when he offered to take it, snatch it away, saying—“Nay; tou’st niver hae it!” Finally, they would throw it to him, and with it abundance of angry words.

We met a man of a most gaunt and miserable appearance. A young man not more than thirty years of age. He had all the aspect of a penurious fellow. Dirty, unshaven, with soiled clothes and unwashed linen. He was coming along the lane with a rude tumbrel. This man was a thorough miser as ever existed. He lived totally alone. He suffered no woman to come about his house. If his clothes ever were washed they were done by himself, but he never bought an ounce of soap. He had bought a small property; a house and some adjoining crofts, where he lived. From this place he was called Tony of Todcrofts. This man was never known to part with money except to the tax-gatherer. If he wanted a board put on his cart, or a nail to keep it together, he bargained with the wheelwright or the blacksmith to pay them in peat. He baked his own oatcake, and paid the miller in peat for grinding his oats. He drank milk from his own cow, and made his own clogs, cut from his own alder. He contrived to purchase little, and what he did purchase he still paid for in peat. On the fells he cut peat all summer, making days of uncommon length; and in the autumn he drew it down with a sledge, and on one occasion, having no horse, he carried the sledge, every time he re-ascended the hills, upon his back.

In a neighbouring dale we passed the farm called Barben-park, which we were informed had been held by the family occupying it, on a lease for three lives, now being in the last life; of which the rent is so low that the tenant has oftener, on the rent-day, to receive money, on account of taxes and rates, than to pay any away. The house struck us as one of the most wild and solitary places of abode we had ever seen. It stood on the fell side, and for many miles there appeared no other house, nor any trace of human workmanship, but a few ruinous limekilns. The inhabitants were represented as wild and rude as their location, yet rich, the hills all round being covered with their sheep, ponies, cattle, and geese, which seemed in a great measure to run wild, and increase in a state of complete nature. There were said to be bulls of great savageness amongst them—the bulls of Barben being as awfully famous here as the bulls of Bashan of old; and foxes which the farmers often turned out, and chased with all their men for miles along the hills. A gentleman who had been at this house described the people as living like ancient kings in the rude abundance of earthly plenty. In Wensleydale there is a large farmer who keeps up the primitive custom of two meals a day, from Candlemas to Martinmas, which is the depth of winter. They breakfast at ten o’clock on cold meat, ale, cheese, etc.; and do not go into the house again till six in the evening, by which time they have not only returned from the fields, but have seen all their cattle served for the night, and a hot dinner of meat, puddings, and other good things, awaits them and their servants, who sit eating and drinking till bed-time.

In such a place a man’s appearance is no indication of his actual condition as respects property. Men who have good estates will be seen in a dress not worth three farthings altogether, except it were as a curiosity. They tell a story with great glee, of an old Friend, John Wilkinson, who sate in a patched coat on a large stone by the road-side, knitting, when a gentleman riding by, stopped and fixed his eyes on him as in compassion, and then threw him half-a-crown. He picked it up, told him he was much obliged to him, but added—“May be I’se richer na tou,” and returned him the money, desiring him to give it to some one who had greater need of it. In fact, the old Friend was wealthy; and in this case his pride overcame his acquisitive propensity; but that propensity is unquestionably very powerful here, and another instance may be mentioned which occasioned a good deal of laughter in the dale. An old man of some property having a colt which he wanted breaking, instead of putting it into the hands of the horsebreaker, thought he would break it himself, and save the cost. Having brought it to carry him pretty well, he was desirous of making it proof against starting at sudden alarms. He therefore concerted with his wife that she should stand concealed behind the yard gate, with her cloak thrown over her head, and as he entered on the back of his colt, should pop out, and cry—Boh! Accordingly, in he rode, out popped the good-wife, and cried Boh! so effectually, that the horse made a desperate leap, and flung the old man with a terrible shock upon the pavement. Recovering himself, however, without any broken bones, though sorely bruised and shaken, he said, as he limped into the house—“Ah, Mally! Mally! that was too big a boh! for an old man and a young colt!”

This propensity extends too amongst the women as well as the men: one woman declared she would as lieve part with the skin off her back as with her money. And yet there are things which they will not do for money, as thousands of the poor in other districts do,—they won’t work in a factory. The experiment was tried in this dale; but the people, like the French, would only work just when they pleased, and soon would not work at all. One would have thought that the strong love of gain amongst them, and their industrious habits, would have insured success to such an experiment; but they had too much love for their own firesides, and the enjoyment of the fresh mountain air; the parents had too much love for their children to subject them to the daily incarceration amid heat, and dust, and flue from the cotton. The scheme failed; the factory stands a ruinous monument of the attempt, and these beautiful dales are yet free from the factory system. And yet, peaceful, and far removed as they are from the acts and oppressions by which the strong build their houses, and add field to field out of the toils of the weak, they are not unacquainted with occasional instances of the evils done with impunity in the nooks of the world. I do not mean to represent such spots as Arcadias of purity and perfection. In the former chapter, and in this, I have indicated the vices which flourish, and the depravity which spreads in the shade of secluded life. The worst feature of these dales is the penurious spirit which little opportunity of profit produces; but I do not know that this spirit is a more sordid one than pervades the lower streets and alleys of large towns. There is along with it a strong sense of meum and tuum; a strong and uncorrupted moral principle; and no man is in danger of either being filched of his purse, or if he chanced to lose it by accident, of not regaining it. As the pressure of poverty is not so tremendous, so the extinction of the moral sense is by no means so great as in large towns; and, on the other hand, how much more delightful a view of the social life of these people we have, than of those of similar rank in our large manufacturing towns, and especially amongst the lower classes of the metropolis, where they tread on each other from their multitudes, and yet, from the same cause, pass through life strangers to each other. Here the social sympathies are strongly called forth; a sort of kinship seems to pervade the whole neighbourhood; and they pass their lives, if in a good deal of poverty, yet in mutual confidence, and very pleasant habits of association. Every man and every spot has a name and share of distinction. Every gill and beck have their appellation, as Hacker-gill; Arten-gill; How-gill; Cow-gill; Spice-gill; Thomas O’Harbour-gill; Backstone-gill; Kale-beck; Monkey-beck. Every house has its name;—as Tinkler’s Budget; Clint; Henthwaite-Hall; Coat-Fall; The Birchen Tree; Lile-Town; Riveling; Broad Mere; Hollins; Ellen-ha; Scale-gill-foot; Clinter-Bank; Hollow-Mill,—all names in Dent. Their names for one another are the most familiar possible; and they use the christian names, and attach the christian names of their fathers and mothers in such a manner, that it is difficult to get at many people’s surnames. They themselves know very well John o’ Davits Fletcher, Kit o’ Willie, or Willie o’ Kit o’ Willie; when if the real name of these people were John Davis, Catherine Broadbent, or William Thistlethwaite, they would have to consider awhile who was meant, if asked for by these names.

The dales-people have, therefore, evidently good elements; a strong social feeling; great simplicity of life and character; great honesty;—and the extension of the facility of voting in elections by dividing the counties, and appointing local polling places, has demonstrated that they have a strong love of liberal principles. All that appears wanting is exactly what is wanting in all these nooks, the introduction of more knowledge by the diffusion of sound and cheap publications, which would at once raise the moral tone, and inspire a more adventurous disposition, as is the case with the Scotch; so that those who do not find profitable employment in these pastoral dales, should set out in quest of more promising fields of action. As to crimes of magnitude, if you hear of them here, they are perpetrated by those in a higher class. There was a story ringing through one of the dales when we were there, which if half of it were true, was bad enough; and that we might arrive at as much truth as possible, we visited and conversed with those who were apparently likeliest to know it. It was said, and this too by those who had been in daily intercourse with the parties—that a very wealthy widow lady, who seemed to have been of weak intellect, or at least so unaccustomed to the world, and matters of business, as to become an easy prey to any clever and designing fellow, had entrusted the management of her affairs to a lawyer of a neighbouring town. That this lawyer twenty years ago made her will, in which he had appointed himself one of the executors, and a gentleman of high character, living at a great distance, the other. That he had left in the will ten per cent. on the accumulations of her income to the executors, besides 500l. each, for the trouble of their office. That a man brought up in the house of the lady was left 5000l. That from the original making of the will, it appeared never to have been read over again at any time to the lady; but that she had frequently dictated or written in pencil her instructions for its alteration in many particulars, which instructions or alterations at the final reading of the will after her decease nowhere appeared. That from the time the will was made till that of her death, twenty years, her lawyer-executor had continually tormented her with the fear of poverty. He had told her that her income did not meet her expenses; and through these representations had induced her to curtail her charities, and to lay down her carriage. This, however, did not suffice, and his representations made the poor lady miserable with the constant fear of coming poverty. In an agony of feeling on this subject, she one day sent her confidential servant to the lawyer to order him to sell her West Indian property. The lawyer said, “tell your mistress from me, that her West Indian property is not worth one farthing.” This the servant, whom we took the trouble of seeing, confirmed to us. The poor woman, haunted with the fear of poverty, at length took to her bed, and a few days before her death, when, indeed, her recovery was hopeless, her lawyer appeared at her bedside, and astounded her with the news, that so far from poverty, her West Indian property was very large, and her surplus income had actually accumulated in the funds to the sum of 80,000l.! and the hypocritical monster, with a refinement of cruelty perhaps never paralleled, humbly asked her, “how she would wish it disposed of?” The previous progress of the poor lady’s illness, and this overwhelming intelligence, rendered any present disposal impossible. She was thrown into the most fearful distress of mind,—and continually exclaiming, “O! please God that I might recover, how different things should be!” died on the third day.