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

garments on loan were all good quality and nicely trimmed

with embroidery and hand tucking. The clergyman’s daughter also kept two

christening robes to lend to the mothers, and made a new frock, as a

gift, for every baby’s ‘shortening’. Summer or winter, these little

frocks were made of flowered print, blue for the boys and pink for the

girls, and every one of the tiny, strong stitches in them were done by

her own hands. She got little credit for this. The mothers, like the

children, looked upon the small garments, both loaned and given, as a

provision of Nature. Indeed, they were rather inclined to criticize. One

woman ripped off the deep flounce of old Buckinghamshire lace from the

second-best christening robe and substituted a frill of coarse,

machine-made embroidery, saying she was not going to take her child to

church ‘trigged out’ in that old-fashioned trash. As she had not troubled

to unpick the stitches, the lace was torn beyond repair, and the gown

ever after was decidedly second-best, for the best one was the old

Rectory family christening robe and made of the finest lawn, tucked and

inserted all over with real Valenciennes.

 

When the hamlet babies arrived, they found good clothes awaiting them,

and the best of all nourishment—Nature’s own. The mothers did not fare

so well. It was the fashion at that time to keep maternity patients on

low diet for the first three days, and the hamlet women found no

difficulty in following this r�gime; water gruel, dry toast, and weak

tea was their menu. When the time came for more nourishing diet, the

parson’s daughter made for every patient one large sago pudding,

followed up by a jug of veal broth. After these were consumed they

returned to their ordinary food, with a half-pint of stout a day for

those who could afford it. No milk was taken, and yet their own milk

supply was abundant. Once, when a bottle-fed baby was brought on a visit

to the hamlet, its bottle was held up as a curiosity. It had a long,

thin rubber tube for the baby to suck through which must have been

impossible to clean.

 

The only cash outlay in an ordinary confinement was half a crown, the

fee of the old woman who, as she said, saw the beginning and end of

everybody. She was, of course, not a certified midwife; but she was a

decent, intelligent old body, clean in her person and methods and very

kind. For the half-crown she officiated at the birth and came every

morning for ten days to bath the baby and make the mother comfortable.

She also tried hard to keep the patient in bed for the ten days; but

with little success. Some mothers refused to stay there because they

knew they were needed downstairs; others because they felt so strong and

fit they saw no reason to lie there. Some women actually got up on the

third day, and, as far as could be seen at the time, suffered no ill

effects.

 

Complications at birth were rare; but in the two or three cases where

they did occur during her practice, old Mrs. Quinton had sufficient

skill to recognize the symptoms and send post haste for the doctor. No

mother lost her life in childbed during the decade.

 

In these more enlightened days the mere mention of the old, untrained

village midwife raises a vision of some dirty, drink-sodden old hag

without skill or conscience. But not all of them were Sairey Gamps. The

great majority were clean, knowledgeable old women who took a pride in

their office. Nor had many of them been entirely without instruction.

The country doctor of that day valued a good midwife in an outlying

village and did not begrudge time and trouble in training her. Such a

one would save him many a six or eight mile drive over bad roads at

night, and, if a summons did come, he would know that his presence was

necessary.

 

The trained district nurses, when they came a few years later, were a

great blessing in country districts; but the old midwife also had her

good points, for which she now receives no credit. She was no superior

person coming into the house to strain its resources to the utmost and

shame the patient by forced confessions that she did not possess this or

that; but a neighbour, poor like herself, who could make do with what

there was, or, if not, knew where to send to borrow it. This Mrs.

Quinton possessed quite a stock of the things she knew she would not

find in every house, and might often be met with a baby’s little round

bath in her hand, or a clothes-horse, for airing, slung over her arm.

 

Other days, other ways; and, although they have now been greatly

improved upon, the old country midwives did at least succeed in bringing

into the world many generations of our forefathers, or where should we

be now?

 

The general health of the hamlet was excellent. The healthy, open-air

life and the abundance of coarse but wholesome food must have been

largely responsible for that; but lack of imagination may also have

played a part. Such people at that time did not look for or expect

illness, and there were not as many patent medicine advertisements then

as now to teach them to search for symptoms of minor ailments in

themselves. Beecham’s and Holloway’s Pills were already familiar to all

newspaper readers, and a booklet advertising Mother Siegel’s Syrup

arrived by post at every house once a year. But only Beecham’s Pills

were patronized, and those only by a few; the majority relied upon an

occasional dose of Epsom salts to cure all ills. One old man, then

nearly eighty, had for years drunk a teacupful of frothing soapsuds

every Sunday morning. ‘Them cleans the outers,’ he would say, ‘an’

stands to reason they must clean th’ innards, too.’ His dose did not

appear to do him any harm; but he made no converts.

 

Although only babies and very small children had baths, the hamlet folks

were cleanly in their persons. The women would lock their cottage doors

for a whole afternoon once a week to have what they called ‘a good clean

up’. This consisted of stripping to the waist and washing downward; then

stepping into a footbath and washing upward. ‘Well, I feels all the

better for that; some woman would say complacently. ‘I’ve washed up as

far as possible and down as far as possible,’ and the ribald would

inquire what poor ‘possible’ had done that that should not be included.

 

Toothbrushes were not in general use; few could afford to buy such

luxuries; but the women took a pride in their strong white teeth and

cleaned them with a scrap of clean, wet rag dipped in salt. Some of the

men used soot as a tooth-powder.

 

After a confinement, if the eldest girl was too young and there was no

other relative available, the housework, cooking, and washing would be

shared among the neighbours, who would be repaid in kind when they

themselves were in like case.

 

Babies, especially young babies, were adored by their parents and loved

and petted and often spoilt by the whole family until another arrived;

then, as they used to say, its ‘nose was put out of joint’; all the

adoration was centred on the newcomer, and the ex-baby was fortunate if

it had a still devoted elder sister to stand by it.

 

In the production of their large families the parents appeared reckless.

One obvious method of birth control, culled from the Old Testament, was

known in the hamlet and practised by one couple, which had managed to

keep their family down to four. The wife told their secret to another

woman, thinking to help her; but it only brought scorn down on her own

head. ‘Did you ever! Fancy begrudging a little child a bit o’ food, the

nasty greedy selfish hussy, her!’ was the general verdict. But, although

they protested so volubly, and bore their own frequent confinements with

courage and cheerfulness, they must have sometimes rebelled in secret,

for there was great bitterness in the tone in which in another mood they

would say: ‘The wife ought to have the first child and the husband the

second, then there wouldn’t ever be any more.’

 

That showed how the land lay, as Laura’s mother said to her in later

life. She herself lived to see the decline in the birth-rate, and, when

she discussed it with her daughter in the early 1930s, laughed heartily

at some of the explanations advanced by the learned, and said: ‘If they

knew what it meant to carry and bear and bring up a child themselves,

they wouldn’t expect the women to be in a hurry to have a second or

third now they’ve got a say in the matter. Now, if they made it a bit

easier for people, dividing it out a bit, so to speak, by taking over

some of the money worry. It’s never seemed fair to my mind that the one

who’s got to go through all a confinement means should have to scrape

and pinch beforehand to save a bit as well. Then there’s the other child

or children. What mother wants to rob those she’s already got by

bringing in another to share what there’s too little of already?’

 

None of the unmarried hamlet girls had babies in the ‘eighties, although

there must have been quite a crop of illegitimate births a few years

earlier, for when the attendance register was called out at school the

eldest children of several families answered to another surname than

that borne by their brothers and sisters and by which they themselves

were commonly known. These would be the children of couples who had

married after the birth of their first child, a common happening at that

time—and little thought of.

 

In the ‘eighties a young woman of thirty came from Birmingham to have

her illegitimate baby at her sister’s home in the hamlet, and a widow

who had already three legitimate children and afterwards married again

managed to produce two children between her two marriages. These births

passed without much comment; but when a young girl of sixteen whose home

was out in the fields near the hamlet was known to be ‘in trouble’

public feeling was stirred.

 

One evening, a few weeks before the birth, Emily passed through the

hamlet with her father on their way to interview the young man she had

named as responsible for her condition. It was a sad little sight.

Emily, who had so recently been romping with the other children, going

slowly, unwillingly, and red-eyed from crying, her tell-tale figure

enveloped in her mother’s plaid shawl, and her respectable, grey-headed

father in his Sunday suit urging her to ‘Come on!’ as though longing to

be through with a disagreeable business. Women came to their cottage

gates and children left their play to watch them pass by, for every one

knew or guessed their errand, and much sympathy was felt towards them on

account of Emily’s youth and her parents’ respectability.

 

The interview turned out even more mortifying than the father could have

expected, for Emily had named the young son of the house where she had

been in service, and he not only repudiated the charge, but was able to

prove that he had been away from home for some time before and after the

crucial date. Yet, in spite of the evidence, the neighbours still

believed Emily’s version of the story and treated her as a wronged

heroine, to be petted and made much of. Perhaps they made too much of

her, for what should have been an episode turned into