They could easily have had the hour altered if all of them had become vocally indignant in unison and refused to be paid at that hour. They did not do so. For lack of cooperation was most emphatic. They never combined. They did not stand by one another nor trust one another. Each of them complained to me about the lack of cooperation of the others, making also some denigrating remarks concerning either the behaviour or ability of so and so. Their unsolidarity was quite remarkable. Neither in small matters nor large did they dream of acting together. And if on a Saturday morning ’E was away they were careful not to knock off a little early lest someone would tell the tale.
There is a tendency amongst some passionate middle-class meliorists to give the working-class man virtues he does not possess. For instance, they emphasize his capacity for ‘warm friendship’. This would be strange if it were true. For friendship rises from developed emotions and developed understanding. But I have not found it to be true. Indeed the very idea of affection almost seemed foreign and uncalled for. And even when a man leaves and goes off somewhere else he seldom bothers to say goodbye to his mates – he just packs up and disappears. No letter communication follows, no answers to letters if written – I have sometimes thought that this attitude amounted to a sort of melancholy sense of the folly of attachments in a shifting world. I was rather amused one day later on, during harvest, when a schoolboy of about seventeen who had joined us was going off next day. He came out into the field in the evening and stood around, wanting to say goodbye to people. But no one knew what he was getting at.
If there was a lack of friendship there was no lack of civility. No matter what anyone might say about anyone else, there was absolutely no open hostility. I was sometimes surprised at their double-facedness. But the same thing in higher circles is called tact and diplomacy. In this capacity I have often thought that my companions displayed the greatest mastery, acting on occasion with a discretion worthy of a Cabinet Minister.
32 Dick and Education; Harold and Village Life
Harold now went off on another job, while Dick and I carried on. When Dick was in the company of ’E he was silent; when in general company he humorously groused; and when alone with me he would give vent to his ambition to see the world and know things and study. He had a terror of becoming like older men on the land he saw around. Desire to see the world is luckily rare amongst agricultural labourers. We were near a beautiful village by the sea, but I met no one here who had ever adventured so far. As for wanting to study – well that is still rare anywhere. Dick did desire it. He used to learn a little German every evening. He was eager to acquire knowledge. Were it not for the existence of Mr H G Wells it would be extremely difficult to know what book to lend such a man; but there is the Outline of History, so I lent him that, which he read twice. Here was the perfect example of the young man for whom there are no educational facilities in the villages. No chance given, no encouragement. He was not talented, not exceptionally gifted at all, and with little will-power and no real passion for learning. He wished to develop himself, that is all – and might quite easily be prevented from doing so by circumstances. In fact he was exactly the kind of person with whom educationalists are concerned. No one need bother about the man of great talent, the man of genius, the man of will. Such men thrive on resistance, on difficulties, on enemies; whether thrown on the rocks or the cushions of life, they triumph in the end. If this is not wholly true, it is truest in the realm of knowledge and literature, when the reading of one good book will set him on fire, and nothing will stop his advance. There is little need to help or encourage him. But the man of small will-power and small talent and mild desire for development needs all the help that can be given, and years of it. Otherwise circumstances prove too much for him, and he gives up. His work stops him, his girl stops him. In Dick’s case, however, his girl was his chief source of encouragement, and it is conceivable that she may keep it up.
The actual handing of the Outline to him was certainly a process demanding discretion. It would never do, we felt, to be seen with the book. And my edition was large enough to fill a big haversack. I brought it out to the field and at the end of the day we went by the side of a hedge to make the transference from my bag to his. Just at that moment Robert passed. He shied slightly at the sight of the volume, rather like a horse alarmed at something. But he was not indignant. ‘You’ve got summat to get on with there, I allow,’ he said in rather a low and hurried manner, and passed on.
Then Dick went off to something else and Harold came back, and I worked with him for some days. He had lived in this village all his life and was content to remain there and bring up his family in the same place. He had no more desire to venture beyond it than into the realms of the mind, and he said, though not boastfully, that he never read anything whatever – and though I believe in the mind I do not forget that such men are the strong pillars of this world. But he was not uncritical of village life as it now is. He spoke of his boyhood, which was not so long ago, when there was a good deal of life in the village, with games and expeditions sponsored by the Squire. For some years that has been a thing of the past, and the lads hang about with nothing to do. It is the old story. In the old days Inequality and Aristocracy, the Lord of the Manor or the Squire considering it his duty to give life to the village: then the ousting of Aristocracy and the trumpeted entrance of Democracy, until the man whose motto had been noblesse oblige in relation to all the villagers, now has the greatest difficulty in getting a single attendant to come in and oblige with a little housework. He is no longer able to think about the life of the village, and the villagers are unable to give life to it themselves. The French revolutionists went in for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Since then a good deal of Liberty and Equality have been established. Has that led to more Fraternity? Do we all now embrace as brothers under the wings of Equality? No. There is less Fraternity. Each man is now out for himself and for higher wages. No doubt it is only a transition stage. We can hope for better days. The moral is clear: the people must have leaders. Every village must have a leader. If the old ones have perished to make way for democracy, then the sooner democracy supplies new ones the sooner we shall get out of this wretched transition stage. But it is clear that leaders cannot be sent into the village from outside. This is something that cannot be planned. You cannot farm from Whitehall, it is reiterated, you cannot cultivate the soil. Neither can you cultivate the soul. It would be as absurd to try and plan a Village Revival as a Religious Rebirth or an Artistic Renaissance. It must be done by the village itself. A village will cohere under a leading personality who belongs to the place. Otherwise it will remain incoherent.
From where we worked we could look down upon the Manor House. One old lady lived in it. She had lived there fifty years. But now it was passing from her hands. It was up for sale. She possessed two outmoded things – goodness and culture. When she passed, would they pass away also? I wondered.
33 Farmers and Incomes; Pleasing Considerations
At length Harold went off again and I carried on alone on this eleven-acre field of kale. Although at first it had seemed a hopeless affair we had managed to make an impression upon it. ’E had told us to leave the charlock and concentrate upon the thistles and mutton-docks. But that was against human nature, it goes too much against the grain to leave part of the weeds like that. For making a good show, apart from any effect upon your employer, has a personal bearing as well, and in a case like this one could not leave in the yellow, thus blurring the work, instead of seeing the green portion which one had done over against the yellow-flagged portion one had not yet tackled. I managed to make quite a considerable impression even by myself, and when ’E appeared he was actually surprised at the progress, and though he had not much hopes in the whole field being finished on account of pressing work elsewhere, he let me carry on – in which I encouraged him, for I liked this job; pardon my inconsistencies about hoeing.
When alone with ’E I always got on with him excel
lently. And if launched into a chat he would often continue on and on for some time, and not necessarily only upon agricultural topics. But I preferred to get him on to agriculture and thus pick up what I could, including such a pleasing item as that cows sometimes do better on poor hay than on very good hay in so far as, instead of stuffing themselves, they are abstemious and thus keep in better condition. Harold and I had amused ourselves, while hoeing by calculating ’E’s profits (quite a favourite pastime on this farm). Taking it piece by piece it had worked out under our hands into a huge sum, for we did not err on the conservative side. And I could not resist the temptation of getting ’E himself on to the subject of financial takings, and learnt, of course, that he had so far made – nothing. Such and such a field had cost him £1,000 to prepare (we had calculated that it should yield £3,000) so how could he hope for a profit? I listened fascinated as I always am by farmers explaining how they have not made and cannot make anything. I do not necessarily doubt their word, I have no head for this sort of thing. No one knows what a farmer’s income is if he chooses to keep it dark. Very often he is quite as poor as he says he is. He may be extremely rich; but on no account must he ever admit it, since if he does he feels he’ll be done down, and his men must not be led to think that he has made a huge profit, for then they might expect a bonus. ’E used to have a small farm, and he said that it paid. So I said, just by way of falling in with his line of talk – ‘There’s no profit in these big farms.’ But he didn’t like that. For while he didn’t want to be thought rich, neither did he wish to be thought poor and unsuccessful. So he said – ‘It does and it doesn’t. It depends.’
I continued here for nearly a fortnight. And very pleasant it was. This was hoeing without tears. The kale was large enough not to be tender, while the thistles, docks, and charlock were easy to snip away, and not so numerous as to make progress discouraging. The situation was pleasant, the view good, and the weather perfect. I rode straight to the field in the morning, without first going to the farmyard to receive orders. This made a much shorter journey, ten minutes less, as well as a far more agreeable way of starting the day – no complicated orders from ’E, which might need a repeat, nor sight of the carter with furious lower lip cursing at a horse as he backed it into a wagon. And if I was a little late I didn’t worry, for no one would see me – on one occasion I overslept a complete hour without anyone being the wiser. Thus my early morning ride was for once unhurried. Also the approach to this field was delightful. I had to pass up the avenue of a Big House (not the Manor House) and along by the garden wall, one of those high, weathered, red-brick walls that recall to mind the spacious days of ancient queens. When I stood beside the kale, hoe in hand, I had a morning view of the quiet fields, the nestling village, and the tree-closed church. And I would think to myself – What better than to be here? What more simple or more sane? Then it seemed strange to me that men are packed in ugly towns. So few here, so many there! What fly they, and what seek? and having sought, what found? What found compared with this? This is our first and foremost home beside God’s footprint and his fountain. We stray from it, we stray indeed: roofed and walled, paved and collared, we shut it out!
I spent many smooth and peaceful days here. There was a battered old straw-rick in this field which served as my armchair for meal times. I am very critical of armchairs and consider them more important to felicity than electric light and indoor sanitation. I am frequently amazed at the ineptly called easy-chairs which I find in the houses of my friends, chairs tilted back at an angle that used to be reserved solely for a dentist’s convenience, so uncomfortable that only an athlete could sit in one, and in which no human being could possibly read or reflect. These chairs always seem to me about the maddest things in the present mad world. I must not expand; but I am free to say that though I do not need a whole straw-stack, it serves admirably as a good working model of what I require. It provides the perfect back and leaves the knees and legs with nothing to do but enjoy themselves. But perhaps I lack backbone; it seems that I do in comparison with my friends who appear quite pleased with their chairs – and also with my friends here, for these latter will often enough sit bolt upright after hours of hard work, with apparent ease, while I look round carefully for something to lean against. They even seem comfortable leaning on their elbows, a position which to me is the extremity of discomfort.
My meal-time breaks were absolute bliss here – perfection in comfort, temperature, and view. In short, true picnic after picnic. Normally picnics are hell – planned pleasure, a seeking after enjoyment. How attain happiness? Only as a by-product. Only by walking smartly in the opposite direction. Then it can come for half an hour. Here the conditions were given. I was tired and hungry and with only a scheduled time for the break. Hence my bliss.
From these favourable dispositions I looked out upon the agricultural world with anything but a jaundiced eye. I passed in review the lives lived by so many thousands of people who are supposed to be better off – the endless number of those who do what is called clerical work, those who sell things on commission, those who type their lives away, those who sit on summer days in electric light, and multitudes of other slaves of slaves of slaves. I thought also of the artistic world, the painters, the writers, the actors and actresses to whom the word Security is unknown, and to whom steady remuneration for work done would seem like heaven, people compared with whom the agricultural labourer knows nothing of insecurity, nothing of poverty, nothing of hardship, nothing of anxiety. If only the land labourers knew the world beyond the field, I reflected, they would be content with their lot. Whatever their wages, they are always at least two pounds to the good on the townsman; they are not plagued by extras (rather given extra), nor by rent (a Civil Servant in London paying for one room as much as the agricultural labourer’s weekly wage), nor by Appearance fees (he spends three pounds a year on clothes for himself). His housing for the most part is extremely good. It seems to me that any further emphasis on wages is less important than on the modification of working hours and educational activity within the villages. Then what an opportunity, what conditions for a sane life!
Another thing about the geographical position of this field was that by taking my bicycle downhill I could reach the village inn. While there is little to be said for beer in the winter, it is really wonderful in the summer combined with dinner after a morning’s work. So I sometimes went down there in the middle of the day, taking my sandwiches and cheese (if I had any) with me. It was a pleasant hour. The pub was more delightfully situated than any other I have ever known, it might have been in a book; on one side was an orchard, on the other a copper-beech, while in front was a row of chestnut trees. As I write these lines I think of the pleasant and obliging couple who ran this place, owned by the old father in the background, upright, fine-faced, puritanical, and completely humourless. His daughter loved the place, loved the trees, and hadn’t ever the slightest desire to go near a town. What’s more – she loved the sun. Thus she stood out, let her stand out here, over against the average white-faced country housewife who has never seen the sun, never heard of it, never sat in it. On a lovely day she itched to close at 2 p.m. in order to get out into the garden and be in the sun. Her husband was the typical independent Englishman with the greatest contempt for BBC blah, and newspaper talk, and official excuses for lost battles and inefficient organization; the kind of man who though a sergeant in the Home Guard was incapable of taking it either with that seriousness or self-importance which would have endangered his good humour and easy-going friendliness.
Very few people went to the pub at this time of day. All were having hot dinners at home. All except Giles Winterdrew. I’m not a novelisty sort of person who looks round for ‘copy’ and sees human beings as ‘characters’. But I must mention Giles Winterdrew before leaving, for I suppose he would qualify as a ‘character’. He was an old soldier, with a Napoleonic Wars look about him. He was tall and upright, but his joints were almost stuck, and hi
s progress slow, as stick in hand, with set sallow face, he made for the pub every day. He arrived at about noon, stayed till closing time, bought several bottles of beer, and returned home with them. He then went to bed with these bottles and remained there till the next morning when he would again go to the pub, have his drinks, buy more bottles, and go home to bed with them. This was his whole life now. Beer got dearer and dearer and worse and worse, but he still bravely stuck to his disciplined routine. At last, for considerable periods, there was no beer at all. The framework of his life was shattered and he died.
But these days of mine were coming to an end, and on ’E’s next appearance I was told to leave off now at this job. I had done about half the field, but there was too much to be done elsewhere, and ’E decided that for me to continue here ‘would not be worth the money’.
34 Strange Job on the Beanfield
Returning to the centre of activity I found most of the staff engaged on a beanfield which was just below the scene of our former operations. It was a peculiar job. In striking and indeed appalling contrast to the beautiful beanfield I had delighted to look at on my neighbour’s land at my first farm, this was a miserable spectacle, the beans being so hopelessly under the dominion of thistles and other weeds that they couldn’t be cut. We had to pull them up by hand. It was a job long remembered on this farm. Though each of us took three rows it was very slow work harvesting a whole field in this manner. But we went at it hard, pulling up the black bean-stalks, which were lower than the thistles, and making bundles of them. We were joined by ’E, and the pace quickened. He was next to me. ‘Pull ’ee!’ he cried, ‘pull ’ee! it don’t do they no harm.’ And he dashed ahead, grabbing them up, both hands snatching out to left and right, as if he were picking up gold. I began to get left behind. ‘Come on, Mr Collis!’ shouted Robert (I was always Mr here with all the men) across from his row, trying to get a rise out of me. ‘You’re too cunning, biding up there on the kale, thee and thy dog. It be harder work on thease field, I allow.’ While Dick, who was working on my left, whispered – ‘Make a show, Mr Collis, make a good show?’ and, imitating the actions of ’E who was just in front of him, grabbed at the beans with unexampled zeal. Thus we proceeded at the good work till tea-time and went on after tea. But on one occasion I was alone on the job for an afternoon and was about to go home when ’E came and said he wanted me to go on after tea. ‘It’s not a one-man job,’ I said. I stayed, and later on the others appeared, and I gathered that my remark ‘it’s not a one-man job’ had been repeated and gone round. I still think it was an absolutely sound remark, a critique of the purest reason.
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 18
