Part 14

Among his clients (for that is a more fitting word for them than "employers") there are two or three residents with villa gardens, and also two of those "small-holders" who, more fortunate than himself (though not more happy, I fancy), have managed to cling to the little properties which their fathers owned. Turner, therefore, comes in for a number of jobs extraordinarily diverse. Thus, during last summer I knew him to be tending two gardens, where his work ranged from lawn-cutting (sometimes with a scythe) to sowing seeds, taking care of the vegetable crops, and trimming hedges. But this occupied him only from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. In the margin outside these hours--starting at five or earlier and keeping on until dark--he was helping the two small-holders, one after the other, to make their hay and get the ricks built. Then the ricks required thatching, and Turner thatched them. In the meantime he was getting together a little rick of his own for his donkey's use, carrying home in bags the longer grass which he had mowed in the rough places of people's gardens or had chopped off in hedgerows near his home. A month later he was harvesting for the small-holders, and again there was rick-thatching for him to do. "That's seven I've done," he remarked to me, on the day when he finished the last one. "But didn't the rain stop you this morning?" I asked, for rain had begun heavily about nine o'clock. He laughed. "No.... We got'n covered in somehow. Had to sramble about, but he was thatched afore the rain come."

Later still he was threshing some of this corn with a flail. I heard of it with astonishment. "A flail?" "Yes," he said; "my old dad put me to it when I was seventeen, so I _had_ to learn." He seemed to think little of it. But to me threshing by hand was so obsolete and antiquated a thing as to be a novelty; nor yet to me only, for a friend to whom I mentioned the matter laughed, and asked if I had come across any knights in armour lately.

One autumn, when he was doing some work for myself, he begged for a day or two away in order to take a job at turf-cutting. When he returned on the third or fourth day, he said: "Me and my nipper" (a lad of about sixteen years old) "cut sixteen hundred this time." Now, lawn-turfs are cut to a standard size, three feet by one, wherefore I remarked: "Why, that's nearly a mile you have cut." "Oh, is it?" he said. "But it didn't take long. Ye see, I had the nipper to go along with the edgin' tool in front of me, and 'twan't much trouble to get 'em up."

He could not keep on for me regularly. The thought of Mr. S----'s work waiting to be done fidgeted him. "When I was up there last he was talkin' about fresh gravellin' all his paths. I said to'n, 'If I was you I should wait anyhow till the leaves is down--they'll make the new gravel so ontidy else.' So they would, sure. I keeps puttin' it off. But I shall ha' to go. I sold'n a little donkey in the summer, and he's hoofs'll want parin' again. I done 'em not so long ago...."

So his work varies, week after week. From one job to another up and down the valley he goes, not listlessly and fatigued, but taking a sober interest in all he does. You can see in him very well how his forefathers went about their affairs, for he is plainly a man after their pattern. His day's work is his day's pleasure. It is changeful enough, and calls for skill enough, to make it enjoyable to him. Furthermore, things on either side of it--things he learnt to understand long ago--make their old appeal to his senses as he goes about, although his actual work is not concerned with them. In the early summer--he had come to mow a little grass plot for me--I found him full of a boyish delight in birds and birds'-nests. A pair of interesting birds had arrived; at any time in the day they could be seen swooping down from the branch of a certain apple-tree and back again to their starting-place without having touched the ground. "Flycatchers!" said Turner exultantly. "I shall ha' to look about. They got their nest somewhere near, you may be sure o' that! A little wisp o' grass somewhere in the clunch (fork) of a tree ..." (his glance wandered speculatively round in search of a likely place) "that's where they builds. Ah! look now! There he goes again! Right in the clunch you'll find their nest, and as many as ten young 'uns in'n.... Yes, I shall be bound to find where he is afore I done with it."

The next day, hard by where he was at work, an exclamation of mine drew him to look at a half-fledged bird, still alive, lying at the foot of a nut-tree. "H'm: so 'tis. A young blackbird," he said pitifully. The next moment he had the bird in his hand. "Where can the nest be, then? Up in that nut? Well, to be sure! Wonders I hadn't seen that afore now. That's it though, 'pend upon it; right up in the clunch o' that bough." Before I could say a word he was half-way up amongst the branches, long-legged and struggling, to put the bird back into its nest.

As he has always lived in the valley, he is full of memories of it, and especially early memories; recalling the comparative scantiness of its population when he was a boy, and the great extent of the common; and the warm banks where hedgehogs abounded--hedgehogs which his father used to kill and cook; and the wells of good water, so few and precious that each had its local name. For instance, "Butcher's Well" (so-called to this day, he says) "was where Jack Butcher used to live, what was shepherd for Mr. Warner up there at Manley Bridge." At eight years old he was sent out on to the common to mind cows; at ten he was thought big enough to be helpful to his father, at piece-work in the hop-grounds; and in due time he began to go "down into Sussex" with his father and others for the harvesting. His very first experience there was of a wet August, when the men could earn no money and were reduced to living on bread and apples; but other years have left him with happier memories of that annual outing. "Old Sussex!" he laughed once in appreciative reminiscence--"Old Sussex! Them old hills! I did use to have a appetite there! I could eat anything.... You could go to the top of a hill and look down one way and p'raps not see more'n four or five places (houses or farmsteads), and look t'other way and mebbe not be able to see e'er a one at all. Oh, a reg'lar wild, out-o'-th'-way place 'twas." On this farm, to which his gang went year after year, the farmer "didn't _pay_ very high--you couldn't expect'n to. But he used to treat us very well. Send out great puddin's for us two or three times a week, and cider, and bread-an'-cheese.... Nine rabbits old Fisher the roadman out here says 'twas, but I dunno 'bout that, but I _knows_ 'twas as many as seven, the farmer put into one puddin' for us. There was a rabbit for each man, be how 'twill. In a great yaller basin...." Turner held out his arms to illustrate a large circumference.

In the time of his prosperity the main of his work was with his own horse and cart, so that I know him to have had considerable experience in that way; and I recollect, too, his being at plough in one of the slanting gardens of this valley, not with his horse--the ground was too steep for that--but with two donkeys harnessed to a small plough which he kept especially for such work. Truly it would be hard to "put him out," hard to find him at a loss, in anything connected with country industry. He spoilt some sea-kale for me once, admitting, however, before he began that he was not very familiar with its management; but that is the only matter of its kind in which I have proved him inefficient. To see him putting young cabbage-plants in rows is to realize what a fine thing it is to know the best way of going to work, even at such a simple-seeming task as that; and I would not undertake to count in how many such things he is proficient.

One day he was telling me an anecdote of his taking honey from an old-fashioned straw beehive; another day the talk was of pruning fruit-trees. I had shown him an apple--the first one to be picked from a young tree--and he at once named it correctly as a "Blenheim Orange," recognizing it by its "eye," whereupon I asked a question or two, and, finally, if he understood pruning. There came his customary laugh, while his eyes twinkled, as if the question amused him, as if I might have known that he understood pruning. "Yes, I've done it many's a time. Grape vines, too." Who taught him? "Oh, 'twas my old uncle made me do that. He was laid up one time--'twas when I was eighteen year old--and he says to me: 'You'll ha' to do it. Now's your time to learn....' Of course he showed me _how_. So 'twas he as showed me how to thatch.... My father never knowed how to do thatchin', nor anythink else much. He was mostly hop-ground. He done a little mowin', of course." Equally of course, the father had reaped and harvested, and kept pigs and cows, and a few odd things besides; nevertheless, being chiefly a wage-earner, "he never knowed much," and it was to the uncle that the lad owed his best training.

From talk of the uncle, and of the uncle's cows, of which he had charge for a time, he drifted off to mention a curious piece of old thrift connected with the common, and practised apparently for some time after the enclosure. There was a man he knew in those now remote days who fed his cows for a part of the year on furze, or "fuzz," as we call it here. Two acres of furze he had, which he cut close in alternate years, the second year's growth making a fine juicy fodder when chopped small into a sort of chaff. An old hand-apparatus for that purpose--a kind of chaff-cutting box--was described to me. The same man had a horse, which also did well on furze diet mixed with a little malt from the man's own beer-brewing.

To the lore derived from his uncle and others, Turner has added much by his own observation--not, of course, intentional observation scientifically verified, but that shrewd and practical folk-observation, if I may so call it, by which in the course of generations the rural English had already garnered such a store of mingled knowledge and error. So he knows, or thinks he knows, why certain late-bearing apple-trees have fruit only every other year, and what effect on the potato crop is caused by dressing our sandy soil with chalk or lime; so he watches the new mole-runs, or puzzles to make out what birds they can be that peck the ripening peas out of the pods, or estimates the yield of oats to the acre by counting the sheaves that he stacks, or examines the lawn to see what kinds of grass are thriving. About all such matters his talk is the talk of an experienced man habitually interested in his subject, and yet it is never obtrusive. The remarks fall from him casually; you feel, too, that while he is telling you something that he noticed yesterday or years ago his eyes are alert to seize any new detail that may seem worthy of attention. Details are always really his subject, for the generalizations he sometimes offers are built on the flimsiest foundation of but one or two observed facts. But I am not now concerned with the value of his observations for themselves; the point is that to him they are so interesting. He is a man who seems to enjoy his life with an undiminished zest from morning to night. It is doubtful if the working hours afford, to nine out of ten modern and even "educated" men, such a constant refreshment of acceptable incidents as Turner's hours bring to him.

He is perhaps the best specimen of the old stock now left in the valley; but it must not be thought that he is singular. Others there are not very unlike him; and all that one hears of them goes to prove that the old cottage thrift, whatever its limitations may have been, did at least make the day's work interesting enough to a man, without his needing to care about leisure evenings. Turner, for his part, does not value them at all. In the winter he is often in bed before seven o'clock.

XVI

THE OBSTACLES

Keeping this old-fashioned kind of life in mind as we turn again to the modern labourer's existence, we see at once where the change has come in, and why leisure, from being of small account, has become of so great importance. It is the amends due for a deprivation that has been suffered. Unlike the industry of a peasantry, commercial wage-earning cannot satisfy the cravings of a man's soul at the same time that it occupies his body, cannot exercise many of his faculties or appeal to many of his tastes; and therefore, if he would have any profit, any enjoyment, of his own human nature, he must contrive to get it in his leisure time.

In illustration of this position, I will take the case--it is fairly typical--of the coal-carter mentioned in the last chapter. He is about twenty-five years old now; and his career so far, from the time when he left school, may be soon outlined. It is true, I cannot say what his first employment was; but it can be guessed; for there is no doubt that he began as an errand-boy, and that presently, growing bigger, he took a turn at driving a gravel-cart to and fro between the gravel-pits and the railway. Assuming this, I can go on to speak from my own knowledge. His growth and strength came early; I remember noticing him first as a powerful fellow, not more than seventeen or eighteen years old, but already doing a man's work as a gravel-digger. When that work slackened after two or three years, he got employment--not willingly, but because times were bad--at night-work with the "ballast-train" on the railway. Exhausting if not brutalizing labour, that is. At ten or eleven at night the gangs of men start off, travelling in open trucks to the part of the line they are to repair, and there they work throughout the night, on wind-swept embankment or in draughty cutting, taking all the weather that the nights bring up. This man endured it for some twelve months, until a neglected chill turned to bronchitis and pleurisy, and nearly ended his life. After that he had a long spell of unemployment, and was on the point of going back to the ballast-train as a last resource when, by good fortune, he got his present job. He has been a coal-carter for three or four years--a fact which testifies to his efficiency. By half-past six o'clock in the morning he has to be in the stables; then comes the day on the road, during which he will lift on his back, into the van and out of it, and perhaps will carry for long distances, nine or ten tons of coal--say, twenty hundredweight bags every hour; by half-past five or six in the evening he has put up his horse for the night; and so his day's work is over, excepting that he has about a mile to walk home.

Of this employment, which, if the man is lucky, will continue until he is old and worn-out, we may admit that it is more useful by far--to the community--than the old village industries were wont to be. Concentrated upon one kind of effort, it perhaps doubles the productivity of a day's work. But just because it is so concentrated it cannot yield to the man himself any variety of delights such as men occupied in the old way were wont to enjoy. It demands from him but little skill; it neither requires him to possess a great fund of local information and useful lore, nor yet takes him where he could gather such a store for his own pleasure. The zest and fascination of living, with the senses alert, the tastes awake, and manifold sights and sounds appealing to his happy recognition--all these have to be forgotten until he gets home and is free for a little while. Then he may seek them if he can, using art or pastimes--what we call "civilization"--for that end. The two hours or so of leisure are his opportunity.

But after a day like the coal-carter's, where is the man that could even begin to refresh himself with the arts, or even the games, of civilization? For all the active use he can make of them those spare hours of his do not deserve to be called leisure; they are the fagged end of the day. Slouching home to them, as it were from under ten tons of coal, he has no energy left for further effort. The community has had all his energy, all his power to enjoy civilization; and has paid him three shillings and sixpence for it. It is small wonder that he seems not to avail himself of the opportunity, prize it though he may.

Yet there is still a possibility to be considered. Albeit any active use of leisure is out of the question, is he therefore debarred from a more tranquil enjoyment? He sits gossiping with his family, but why should the gossip be listless and yawning? Why should not he, to say nothing of his relations, enjoy the refreshment of talk enlivened by the play of pleasant and varied thoughts? As everyone knows, the actual topic of conversation is not what makes the charm; be what it may, it will still be agreeable, provided that it goes to an accompaniment of ideas too plentiful and swift to be expressed. Every allusion then extends the interest of it; reawakened memories add to its pleasure; if the minds engaged are fairly well furnished with ideas, either by experience or by education, the intercourse between them goes on in a sort of luminous medium which fills the whole being with contentment. Supposing, then, that by education, or previous experience, the coal-carter's mind has been thus well furnished, his scanty leisure may still compensate him for the long dull hours of his wage-earning, and the new thrift will after all have made amends for the deprivation of the old peasant enjoyments.

But to suppose this is to suppose a most unlikely thing. Previous experience, at any rate, has done little for the man. The peasants themselves were better off. Compare his chances, once more, with those of a man like Turner. From earliest childhood, Turner's days and nights have been bountiful to him in many-coloured impressions. At the outset he saw and had part in those rural activities, changeful, accomplished, carried on by many forms of skill and directed by a vast amount of traditional wisdom, whereby the country people of England had for ages supported themselves in their quiet valleys. His brain still teems with recollections of all this industry. And then to those recollections must be added memories of the scenes in which the industry went on--the wide landscapes, the glowing cornfields, the meadows, woods, heaths; and likewise the details of barn and rick-yard, and stable and cow-stall, and numberless other corners into which his work has taken him. To anyone who understands them, those details are themselves like an interesting book, full of "idea" legible everywhere in the shapes which country craftsmanship gave to them; and Turner understands them through and through. Nor is this all. If not actual adventure and romance, still many of the factors of adventure and romance have accompanied him through his life; so that it is good even to think of all that he has seen. He has had experience (travelling down to Sussex) of the dead silence of country roads at midnight under the stars; has known the August sunrise, and the afternoon heat, and the chilly moonlight, high up on the South Downs; and the glint of the sunshine in apple-orchards at cider-making time; and the grey coming of the rain that urges a man to hurry with his thatching; and the thickening of the white winter fog across the heaths towards night-fall, when wayfarers might miss the track and wander all night unless they knew well what they were about. Of such stuff as this for the brain-life to feed upon there has been great abundance in Turner's career, but of such stuff what memories can the coal-carter have?

Already in his earliest childhood the principal chances were gone. The common had been enclosed; no little boys were sent out to mind cows there all day, and incidentally to look for birds'-nests and acquaint themselves with the ways of the rabbits and hedgehogs and butterflies and birds of the heath. Fenced-in property, guarded by the Policeman and the Law, restricted the boy's games to the shabby waste-places of the valley, and to the footpaths and roads, where there was not much for a child to do or to see. At home, and in the homes of his companions, the new thrift was in vogue; he might not watch the homely cottage doings, and listen to traditional talk about them, and look up admiringly at able men and women engaged upon them, for the very good reason that no such things went on. Men slaving at their gardens he might see, and women weary at their washing and mending, amid scenes of little dignity and much poverty and makeshift untidiness; but that was all. The coherent and self-explanatory village life had given place to a half blind struggle of individuals against circumstances and economic processes which no child could possibly understand; and it was with the pitiful stock of ideas to be derived from these conditions that the coal-carter passed out of childhood, to enter upon the wage-earning career which I have already outlined.