Lark Rise, Flora Thompson [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

or toddlers playing ‘bo-peep’ with their

aprons, and others would have sewing or knitting in their hands. They

were pleasant to look at, with their large clean white aprons and

smoothly plaited hair, parted in the middle. The best clothes were kept

folded away in their boxes from Sunday to Sunday, and a clean apron was

full dress on weekdays.

 

It was not a countryside noted for feminine good looks and there were

plenty of wide mouths, high cheekbones, and snub noses among them; but

they nearly all had the country-bred woman’s clear eyes, strong, white

teeth and fresh colour. Their height was above that of the average

working-class townswoman, and, when not obscured by pregnancy, their

figures were straight and supple, though inclining to thickness.

 

This tea-drinking time was the women’s hour. Soon the children would be

rushing in from school; then would come the men, with their loud voices

and coarse jokes and corduroys reeking of earth and sweat. In the

meantime, the wives and mothers were free to crook their little fingers

genteely as they sipped from their teacups and talked about the, to

them, latest fashion, or discussed the serial then running in the

novelette they were reading.

 

Most of the younger women and some of the older ones were fond of what

they called ‘a bit of a read’, and their mental fare consisted almost

exclusively of the novelette. Several of the hamlet women took in one of

these weekly, as published, for the price was but one penny, and these

were handed round until the pages were thin and frayed with use. Copies

of others found their way there from neighbouring villages, or from

daughters in service, and there was always quite a library of them in

circulation.

 

The novelette of the ‘eighties was a romantic love story, in which the

poor governess always married the duke, or the lady of title the

gamekeeper, who always turned out to be a duke or an earl in disguise.

Midway through the story there had to be a description of a ball, at

which the heroine in her simple white gown attracted all the men in the

room; or the gamekeeper, commandeered to help serve, made love to the

daughter of the house in the conservatory. The stories were often

prettily written and as innocent as sugared milk and water; but,

although they devoured them, the women looked upon novelette reading as

a vice, to be hidden from their menfolk and only discussed with fellow

devotees.

 

The novelettes were as carefully kept out of the children’s way as the

advanced modern novel is, or should be, to-day; but children who wanted

to read them knew where to find them, on the top shelf of the cupboard

or under the bed, and managed to read them in secret. An ordinarily

intelligent child of eight or nine found them cloying; but they did the

women good, for, as they said, they took them out of themselves.

 

There had been a time when the hamlet readers had fed on stronger food,

and Biblical words and imagery still coloured the speech of some of the

older people. Though unread, every well-kept cottage had still its

little row of books, neatly arranged on the side table with the lamp,

the clothes brush and the family photographs. Some of these collections

consisted solely of the family Bible and a prayerbook or two; others

had a few extra volumes which had either belonged to parents or been

bought with other oddments for a few pence at a sale—_The Pilgrim’s

Progress, Drelincourt on Death_, Richardson’s _Pamela, Anna Lee: The

Maiden Wife and Mother_, and old books of travel and sermons. Laura’s

greatest find was a battered old copy of Belzoni’s Travels propping

open somebody’s pantry window. When she asked for the loan of it, it was

generously given to her, and she had the, to her, intense pleasure of

exploring the burial chambers of the pyramids with her author.

 

Some of the imported books had their original owner’s book-plate, or an

inscription in faded copperplate handwriting inside the covers, while

the family ones, in a ruder hand, would proclaim:

 

George Welby, his book:

Give me grace therein to look,

And not only to look, but to understand,

For learning is better than houses and land

When land is lost and money spent

Then learning is most excellent.

 

Or:

 

George Welby is my name,

England is my nation,

Lark Rise is my dwelling place

And Christ is my salvation.

 

When I am dead and in my grave

And all my bones are rotten,

Take this book and think of me

And mind I’m not forgotten.

 

Another favourite inscription was the warning:

 

Steal not this book for fear of shame,

For in it doth stand the owner’s name,

And at the last day God will say

‘Where is that book you stole away?’

And if you say, ‘I cannot tell;

He’ll say, ‘Thou cursed, go to hell.’

 

All or any of these books were freely lent, for none of the owners

wanted to read them. The women had their novelettes, and it took the men

all their time to get through their Sunday newspapers, one of which came

into almost every house, either by purchase or borrowing. The _Weekly

Despatch_, Reynolds’s News, and Lloyd’s News were their favourites,

though a few remained faithful to that fine old local newspaper, the

Bicester Herald.

 

Laura’s father, as well as his Weekly Despatch, took the _Carpenter

and Builder_, through which the children got their first introduction to

Shakespeare, for there was a controversy in it as to Hamlet’s words, ‘I

know a hawk from a handsaw’. It appeared that some scholar had suggested

that it should read, ‘I know a hawk from a heron, pshaw!’ and the

carpenters and builders were up in arms. Of course, the hawk was the

mason’s and plasterer’s tool of that name, and the handsaw was just a

handsaw. Although that line and a few extracts that she afterwards found

in the school readers were all that Laura was to know of Shakespeare’s

works for some time, she sided warmly with the carpenters and builders,

and her mother, when appealed to, agreed, for she said ‘that heron,

pshaw!’ certainly sounded a bit left-handed.

 

While the novelette readers, who represented the genteel section of the

community, were enjoying their tea, there would be livelier gatherings

at another of the cottages. The hostess, Caroline Arless, was at that

time about forty-five, and a tall, fine, upstanding woman with flashing

dark eyes, hair like crinkled black wire, and cheeks the colour of a

ripe apricot. She was not a native of the hamlet, but had come there as

a bride, and it was said that she had gipsy blood in her.

 

Although she was herself a grandmother, she still produced a child of

her own every eighteen months or so, a proceeding regarded as bad form

in the hamlet, for the saying ran, ‘When the young ‘uns begin, ‘tie time

for the old ‘uns to finish.’ But Mrs. Arless recognized no rules,

excepting those of Nature. She welcomed each new arrival, cared for it

tenderly while it was helpless, swept it out of doors to play as soon as

it could toddle, to school at three, and to work at ten or eleven. Some

of the girls married at seventeen and the boys at nineteen or twenty.

 

Ways and means did not trouble her. Husband and sons at work ‘brassed

up’ on Friday nights, and daughters in service sent home at least half

of their wages. One night she would fry steak and onions for supper and

make the hamlet’s mouth water; another night there would be nothing but

bread and lard on her table. When she had money she spent it, and when

she had none she got things on credit or went without. ‘I shall feather

the foam,’ she used to say. ‘I have before an’ I shall again, and what’s

the good of worrying.’ She always did manage to feather it, and usually

to have a few coppers in her pocket as well, although she was known to

be deeply in debt. When she received a postal order from one of her

daughters she would say to any one who happened to be standing by when

she opened the letter, ‘I be-ant goin’ to squander this bit o’ money in

paying me debts.’

 

Her idea of wise spending was to call in a few neighbours of like mind,

seat them round a roaring fire, and despatch one of her toddlers to the

inn with the beer can. They none of them got drunk, or even fuddled, for

there was not very much each, even when the can went round to the inn a

second or a third time. But there was just enough to hearten them up and

make them forget their troubles; and the talk and laughter and scraps of

song which floated on the air from ‘that there Mrs. Arless’s house’ were

shocking to the more sedate matrons. Nobody crooked their finger round

the handle of a teacup or ‘talked genteel’ at Mrs. Arless’s gatherings,

herself least of all. She was so charged with sex vitality that with her

all subjects of conversation led to it—not in its filthy or furtive

aspects, but as the one great central fact of life.

 

Yet no one could dislike Mrs. Arless, however much she might offend

their taste and sense of fitness. She was so full of life and vigour and

so overflowing with good nature that she would force anything she had

upon any one she thought needed it, regardless of the fact that it was

not and never would be paid for. She knew the inside of a County Court

well, and made no secret of her knowledge, for a County Court summons

was to her but an invitation to a day’s outing from which she would

return victorious, having persuaded the judge that she was a model wife

and mother who only got into debt because her family was so large and

she herself was so generous. It was her creditor who retired

discomfited.

 

Another woman who lived in the hamlet and yet stood somewhat aside from

its ordinary life was Hannah Ashley. She was the daughter-in-law of the

old Methodist who drove the breast plough, and she and her husband were

also Methodists. She was a little brown mouse of a woman who took no

part in the hamlet gossip or the hamlet disputes. Indeed, she was seldom

seen on weekdays, for her cottage stood somewhat apart from the others

and had its own well in the garden. But on Sunday evenings her house was

used as a Methodist meeting place, and then all her weekday reserve was

put aside and all who cared to come were made welcome. As she listened

to the preacher, or joined in the hymns and prayers, she would look

round on the tiny congregation, and those whose eyes met hers would see

such a glow of love in them that they could never again think, much less

say, ill of her, beyond ‘Well, she’s a Methody’, as though that

explained and excused anything strange about her.

 

These younger Ashleys had one child, a son, about Edmund’s age, and the

children at the end house sometimes played with him. When Laura called

at his home for him one Saturday morning she saw a picture which stamped

itself upon her mind for life. It was the hour when every other house in

the hamlet was being turned inside out for the Saturday cleaning. The

older children, home from school, were running in and out of their

homes, or quarrelling over their games outside. Mothers were scolding

and babies were crying