Arch sent a messenger to me a few years later, to ask permission to hold a meeting in Aldington in one of my meadows. I saw at once that opposition would only stimulate antagonism, and consented. The meeting was held, but only a few labourers attended, and no farmers, and agitation, so far as we were concerned, died down. One or two of my men were, I think, members of the Union, but having already obtained the increased wages there was nothing more to be gained for themselves by so continuing, and they soon dropped out of the list. Eventually the organization collapsed. Arch was a labourer himself, and exceedingly clever at "laying" hedges, or "pleaching," as it is still called, and was called by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing:
"Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter."
Pleaching is a method of reducing and renovating an overgrown hedge by which all old and exhausted wood is cut out, leaving live vertical stakes at intervals, and winding the young stuff in and out of them in basket-making fashion, after notching it at the base to allow of bending it down without breakage. Arch was a native of Warwickshire, the home of this art; it takes a skilled man to ensure a good result, but when well done an excellent hedge is produced after two or three years' growth. The quickset or whitethorn (May) makes the strongest and most impervious hedge, and it flourishes amazingly on the stiff clay soils of the Lias formation in that county and its neighbour Worcestershire.
I have often wondered at, and admired, the labourer's resignation and fortitude in adversity; a discontented or surly face is rarely seen among them; they have, like most people, to live lives of self-sacrifice, frugality, and industry, which doubtless bring their own compensation, for the exercise and habit of these very virtues tend to the cheerfulness and courage which never give up. Possibly, too, the open-air life, the vitalizing sunshine, the sound sleep, and the regularity of the routine, endows them with an enviable power of enjoyment of what some would consider trifles. After a long day out of doors in the natural beauty of the country, who shall say that the labourer's appetite for his evening meal, his pipe of tobacco beside his bright fireside, and his detachment from the outside world, do not afford him as great or greater enjoyment than the elaborate luxury of the millionaire, with his innumerable distractions and responsibilities?
The labourer has, as I have said, little appreciation of the invisible or what does not appeal strongly to his senses; he cannot understand, for instance, that a small bag of chemical fertilizer, in the form of a grey, inoffensive powder, can contain as great a potentiality for the nutrition of crops as a cartload of evil-smelling material from the farmyard; nor is he aware that, in the case of the latter, he has to load and unload 90 pounds or thereabouts of worthless water in every 100 pounds with which he deals. Possibly, however, his preference for the natural fertilizer is not wholly misplaced, for there is, no doubt, much still to be learned concerning the relative values of natural and artificial compounds with special reference to the bacterial inoculation of the soil and its influence on vegetable life.
He is not without some aesthetic feeling for the glories of Nature daily before him, and though like Peter Bell, of whom we are told that
"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more,"
and putting aside the metaphysical analogy and the moral teaching which are presented by every tree and plant, he enjoys, I know, the simple beauty of the flower itself, the exhilarating freshness of the bright spring morning, the prodigality of the summer foliage, the ripe autumnal glow of the harvest-field, and the sparkling frost of a winter's day. But he very rarely expresses his enthusiasm in superlatives: "a usefulish lot," and "a smartish few," meaning in Worcestershire "a very good lot," and "a great many," is about the limit to which he will commit himself. His natural reticence in serious situations and calamity, and his reserve in the outlet of feeling by vocal expression, give a wrong impression of its real depth, and may even convey the impression of callousness to anyone not conversant with the working of his mind.
To a nephew of mine who was surprised to see his gardener's little son leaving the garden, the man explained: "That little fellow be come to tell I a middlinish bit of news; 'e come to say as his little sister be dead." Notice the "middlinish bit of news," where a much stronger expression would have been justified, and note the restraint as to his loss, suggesting an unfeeling mind, though in reality very far from the grief he was shy of expressing.
An old woman in a parish adjoining mine, having lost a child, received the condolences of a visitor with, "Yes, mum; we seems to be regular unlucky, for only a few weeks ago we lost a pig."
A lady well known to me, the daughter of the Vicar of a Cumberland parish, was calling on a woman whose husband had died a few days previously, and expressing her sympathy with the widow in her affliction, spoke of the sadness of the circumstances. The widow thanked her visitor, and added: "You know, miss, we was to have killed a pig that week, but there, we couldn't 'ave 'em both about at the same time"!
All these incidents suggest callousness, but in reality they were plain statements of fact from persons with a limited vocabulary and unskilled in the niceties of polished language.
Another incident will illustrate how faulty expression may give an unintended impression. A lady, calling at a cottage, exclaimed with appreciation at the fragrant odour of frying bacon which greeted her. The cottager was busy with it at the fire. "Yes, miss," she said, "it is nice to 'ave a bit of bacon as you've waited on yourself"—of course, referring to the fact that she knew the animal was always fed on really good food, an important and reassuring condition, though a tender heart might have regretted the sacrifice of an intimate creature which some would have regarded almost as a pet.
The cottager does not look upon his pig in that light; it is fed well and comfortably housed with a definite object, and very little love is lost between the pig and his master. Children in some places in Worcestershire were formerly kept at home in order to be present on the great occasion of the pig's obsequies. A woman, asked why her children were absent from school, replied: "Well, sir, you see, we killed our pig that day, and I kept the children at home for a treat; there's no harm in that, sir, I'm sure, for pigs allus dies without malice!"
Villagers accept the novel significations which time or fashion gradually confer upon old words very unreadily. I could see, at first, that they were puzzled by my use of the word "awful," now long adopted generally to strengthen a statement, very much as they themselves make use of "terrible," "desp'rate," or "de-adly." They connect the word "friend" with the signification "benefactor" only; a man, speaking of someone born with a little inherited fortune, said that "his friends lived before him." I told an old labourer that my little daughter considered him a great friend of hers. He looked puzzled, and replied: "Well, I don't know as I ever gave her anything." They still distinguish between two words now carrying the same meaning. I told a man that I was afraid some work he had for me would give him a lot of trouble. He corrected me: "'Twill be no trouble, master, only labour."
The labourer does not appreciate a sudden order or an unreasonable change in work once commenced; he does not like being taken by surprise in such matters: the necessary tool—for farm labourers find their own hand implements—may not be readily available, may be out of order, require grinding, or a visit to the blacksmith's for repair or readjustment. The wise master introduces the subject, whenever possible,