Lark Rise to Candleford (15 page)

To go from the homes of the older people to those of the
besieged generation was to step into another chapter of the hamlet's history.
All the graces and simple luxuries of the older style of living had disappeared.
They were poor people's houses rich only in children, strong, healthy children,
who, in a few years, would be ready to take their part in the work of the world
and to provide good, healthy blood for the regeneration of city populations;
but, in the meantime, their parents had to give their all in order to feed and
clothe them.

In their houses the good, solid, hand-made furniture of their
forefathers had given place to the cheap and ugly products of the early machine
age. A deal table, the top ribbed and softened by much scrubbing; four or five
windsor chairs with the varnish blistered and flaking; a side table for the
family photographs and ornaments, and a few stools for fireside seats, together
with the beds upstairs, made up the collection spoken of by its owners as 'our
few sticks of furniture'.

If the father had a special chair in which to rest after his
day's work was done, it would be but a rather larger replica of the hard
windsors with wooden arms added. The clock, if any, was a cheap, foreign timepiece,
standing on the mantelshelf—one which could seldom be relied upon to keep
correct time for twelve hours together. Those who had no clock depended upon
the husband's watch for getting up in the morning. The watch then went to work
with him, an arrangement which must have been a great inconvenience to most
wives; but was a boon to the gossips, who could then knock at a neighbour's
door and ask the time when they felt inclined for a chat.

The few poor crocks were not good enough to keep on show and
were hidden away in the pantry between mealtimes. Pewter plates and dishes as ornaments
had gone. There were still plenty of them to be found, kicked about around
gardens and pigsties. Sometimes a travelling tinker would spy one of these and
beg or buy it for a few coppers, to melt down and use in his trade. Other
casual callers at the cottages would buy a set of handwrought, brass
drop-handles from an inherited chest of drawers for sixpence; or a corner
cupboard, or a gate-legged table which had become slightly infirm, for half a
crown. Other such articles of furniture were put out of doors and spoilt by the
weather, for the newer generation did not value such things; it preferred the
products of its own day, and, gradually, the hamlet was being stripped of such
relics.

As ornaments for their mantelpieces and side tables the women
liked gaudy glass vases, pottery images of animals, shell-covered boxes and plush
photograph frames. The most valued ornaments of all were the white china mugs
inscribed in gilt lettering 'A Present for a Good Child', or 'A Present from
Brighton', or some other sea-side place. Those who had daughters in service to
bring them would accumulate quite a collection of these, which were hung by the
handles in rows from the edge of a shelf, and were a source of great pride in
the owner and of envy in the neighbours.

Those who could find the necessary cash covered their walls
with wall-paper in big, sprawling, brightly coloured flower designs. Those who
could not, used whitewash or pasted up newspaper sheets. On the wall space near
the hearth hung the flitch or flitches of bacon, and every house had a few pictures,
mostly coloured ones given by grocers as almanacks and framed at home. These
had to be in pairs, and lovers' meetings lovers' partings, brides in their
wedding gowns, widows standing by newly made graves, children begging in the
snow or playing with puppies or kittens in nurseries were the favourite
subjects.

Yet, even out of these unpromising materials, in a room which
was kitchen, living-room, nursery, and wash-house combined, some women would contrive
to make a pleasant, attractive-looking home. A well-whitened hearth, a
home-made rag rug in bright colours, and a few geraniums on the window-sill
would cost nothing, but make a great difference to the general effect. Others despised
these finishing touches. What was the good of breaking your back pegging rugs
for the children to mess up when an old sack thrown down would serve the same
purpose, they said. As to flowers in pots, they didn't hold with the nasty,
messy things. But they did, at least, believe in cleaning up their houses once
a day, for public opinion demanded that of them. There were plenty of bare, comfortless
homes in the hamlet, but there was not one really dirty one.

Every morning, as soon as the men had been packed off to
work, the older children to school, the smaller ones to play, and the baby had
been bathed and put to sleep in its cradle, rugs and mats were carried out of doors
and banged against walls, fireplaces were 'ridded up', and tables and floors were
scrubbed. In wet weather, before scrubbing, the stone floor had often to be
scraped with an old knife-blade to loosen the trodden-in mud; for, although
there was a scraper for shoes beside every doorstep, some of the stiff, clayey
mud would stick to the insteps and uppers of boots and be brought indoors.

To avoid bringing in more during the day, the women wore
pattens over their shoes to go to the well or the pigsty. The patten consisted
of a wooden sole with a leather toepiece, raised about two inches from the ground
on an iron ring.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
over the stones, and
Slush!
Slush! Slush!
through the mud went the patten rings. You could not keep
your movements secret if you wore pattens to keep yourself dry shod.

A pair of pattens only cost tenpence and lasted for years.
But the patten was doomed. Vicarage ladies and farmers' wives no longer wore them
to go to and fro between their dairies and poultry yards, and newly married
cottagers no longer provided themselves with a pair. 'Too proud to wear pattens'
was already becoming a proverb at the beginning of the decade, and by the end
of it they had practically disappeared.

The morning cleaning proceeded to the accompaniment of
neighbourly greetings and shouting across garden and fences, for the first sound
of the banging of mats was a signal for others to bring out theirs, and it would
be 'Have 'ee heard this?' and 'What d'ye think of that?' until industrious
housewives declared that they would take to banging their mats overnight, for
they never knew if it was going to take them two minutes or two hours.

Nicknames were not used among the women, and only the aged
were spoken of by their Christian names, Old Sally or Old Queenie or sometimes Dame—Dame
Mercer or Dame Morris. The other married women were Mrs. This or Mrs. That,
even with those who had known them from their cradles. Old men were called
Master, not Mister. Younger men were known by their nicknames or their Christian
names, excepting a few who were more than usually respected. Children were carefully
taught to address all as Mr. or Mrs.

Cleaning began at about the same time in every house, but the
time of finishing varied. Some housewives would have everything spick-and-span and
themselves 'tidied up' by noon; others would still be at it at teatime. 'A
slut's work's never done' was a saying among the good housewives.

It puzzled Laura that, although everybody cleaned up every
day, some houses looked what they called there 'a pictur' and others a muddle.
She remarked on this to her mother.

'Come here,' was the answer. 'See this grate I'm cleaning?
Looks done, doesn't it? But you wait.'

Up and down and round and round and between the bars went the
brush; then: 'Now look. Looks different, doesn't it?' It did. It had been passably
polished before; now it was resplendent. 'There!' said her mother. 'That's the
secret; just that bit of extra elbow-grease after some folks would consider a
thing done.'

But that final polish, the giving of which came naturally to
Laura's mother, could not have been possible to all. Pregnancy and nursing and continual
money worries must have worn down the strength and energy of many. Taking these
drawbacks into account, together with the inconvenience and overcrowding of the
cottages, the general standard of cleanliness was marvellous.

There was one postal delivery a day, and towards ten o'clock,
the heads of the women beating their mats would be turned towards the allotment
path to watch for 'Old Postie'. Some days there were two, or even three, letters
for Lark Rise; quite as often there were none; but there were few women who did
not gaze longingly. This longing for letters was called 'yearning' (pronounced
'yarnin''); 'No, I be-ant expectin' nothin', but I be so yarnin'' one woman
would say to another as they watched the old postman dawdle over the stile and
between the allotment plots. On wet days he carried an old green gig umbrella
with whalebone ribs, and, beneath its immense circumference he seemed to make
no more progress than an overgrown mushroom. But at last he would reach and usually
pass the spot where the watchers were standing.

'No, I ain't got nothin' for you, Mrs. Parish,' he would
call. 'Your young Annie wrote to you only last week. She's got summat else to
do besides sittin' down on her arse writing home all the time.' Or, waving his
arm for some woman to meet him, for he did not intend to go a step further than
he was obliged: 'One for you, Mrs. Knowles, and, my! ain't it a thin-roed 'un!
Not much time to write to her mother these days. I took a good fat 'un from her
to young Chad Gubbins.'

So he went on, always leaving a sting behind, a gloomy,
grumpy old man who seemed to resent having to serve such humble people. He had
been a postman forty years and had walked an incredible number of miles in all weathers,
so perhaps the resulting flat feet and rheumaticky limbs were to blame; but the
whole hamlet rejoiced when at last he was pensioned off and a smart, obliging
young postman took his place on the Lark Rise round.

Delighted as the women were with the letters from their
daughters, it was the occasional parcels of clothing they sent that caused the greatest
excitement. As soon as a parcel was taken indoors, neighbours who had seen Old
Postie arrive with it would drop in, as though by accident, and stay to admire,
or sometimes to criticise, the contents.

All except the aged women, who wore what they had been
accustomed to wearing and were satisfied, were very particular about their
clothes. Anything did for everyday wear, as long as it was clean and whole and could
be covered with a decent white apron; it was the 'Sunday best' that had to be
just so. 'Better be out of the world than out of the fashion' was one of their
sayings. To be appreciated, the hat or coat contained in the parcel had to be
in the fashion, and the hamlet had a fashion of its own, a year or two behind
outside standards, and strictly limited as to style and colour.

The daughter's or other kinswoman's clothes were sure to be
appreciated, for they had usually already been seen and admired when the girl
was at home for her holiday, and had indeed helped to set the standard of what was
worn. The garments bestowed by the mistresses were unfamiliar and often
somewhat in advance of the hamlet vogue, and so were often rejected for
personal wear as 'a bit queer' and cut down for the children; though the
mothers often wished a year or two later when that particular fashion arrived
that they had kept them for themselves. Then they had colour prejudices. A red
frock! Only a fast hussy would wear red. Or green—sure to bring any wearer bad
luck! There was a positive taboo on green in the hamlet; nobody would wear it
until it had been home-dyed navy or brown. Yellow ranked with red as immodest;
but there was not much yellow worn anywhere in the 'eighties. On the whole,
they preferred dark or neutral colours; but there was one exception; blue had nothing
against it. Marine and sky blue were the favourite shades, both very bright and
crude.

Much prettier were the colours of the servant girls' print
morning dresses—lilac, or pink, or buff, sprigged with white—which were cut down
for the little girls to wear on May Day and for churchgoing throughout the
summer.

To the mothers the cut was even more important than the
colour. If sleeves were worn wide they liked them to be very wide; if narrow,
skin tight. Skirts in those days did not vary in length; they were made to touch
the ground. But they were sometimes trimmed with frills or flounces or bunched
up at the back, and the women would spend days altering this trimming to make
it just right, or turning gathers into pleats or pleats into gathers.

The hamlet's fashion lag was the salvation of its wardrobes,
for a style became 'all the go' there just as the outer world was discarding
it, and good, little-worn specimens came that way by means of the parcels. The Sunday
garment at the beginning of the decade was the tippet, a little shoulder cape
of black silk or satin with a long, dangling fringe. All the women and some of
the girls had these, and they were worn proudly to church or Sunday school with
a posy of roses or geraniums pinned in front.

Hats were of the chimney-pot variety, a tall cylinder of
straw, with a very narrow brim and a spray of artificial flowers trained up the
front. Later in the decade, the shape changed to wide brims and squashed crowns.
The chimney-pot hat had had its day, and the women declared they would not be
seen going to the privy in one.

Then there were the bustles, at first looked upon with
horror, and no wonder! but after a year or two the most popular fashion ever
known in the hamlet and the one which lasted longest. They cost nothing, as
they could be made at home from any piece of old cloth rolled up into a cushion
and worn under any frock. Soon all the women, excepting the aged, and all the
girls, excepting the tiniest, were peacocking in their bustles, and they wore
them so long that Edmund was old enough in the day of their decline to say that
he had seen the last bustle on earth going round the Rise on a woman with a
bucket of pig-wash.