Field and Hedgerow. Richard Jefferies

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      To those who have sat in country churches this circular read as a piece of most refined sarcasm, so bitter because of its truth. Where had been the clerical eye all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence that the clerical eye was opened just at the moment when Hodge became a voter?

      At Bethel Chapel between the services the cottagers, the farmers, and the tradesmen break their bread together, and converse, and actually seem to recognise one another; they do not turn their backs the instant the organ ceases and return each to his house in proud isolation. There is no dining together, no friendly cup of tea at the parish church. This Bethel is, you see, the church of the poor people, most emphatically their church. If the word church means not a building, but a society, then this is the true country church. It is the society of all those who, for want of a better expression, I may term the humble-minded, those who have no aristocratic or exclusive tastes, very simple in their reading and studies even if well-to-do, and simple in their daily habits, rising early and retiring early, and plebeian in their dinner-hour. It is a peculiar cast of mind that I am trying to describe—a natural frame of mind; these are 'chapel people'—perhaps a phrase will convey the meaning better than explanation. This is their church, and whatever the theology may be there is undoubtedly a very strong bond of union among them.

      Not only the old women with their Sunday pennies, but great numbers beside, young and old of both sexes, take their cup of tea, for these people take tea with every meal, dinner and supper as well as breakfast and five o'clock, and if they don't feel well they will rise at two in the morning to get a cup of tea. They are as Russian as the Russians in this particular; they have cheese on the table, too, at every meal. The pastor has, meantime, been entertained with a good dinner at some house adjacent, where he goes every Sunday; by-and-by the flute begins to tune again, the hymns resound, and the labour of the day is resumed. Somewhere about four o'clock the summer-dusty roads are full again of the returning pilgrims, and the crowd gradually sinks away by footpath and stile. The black albatross is still wheeling in the upper atmosphere, the white-barred swallow rushes along the road and dives upwards, the unwearied roses are still opened to the sun's rays, and calm, indifferent Nature has pursued her quiet course without heed of pitch-pipe or organ, or bell or chalice. Perhaps if you chance to be resting by a gate you may hear one of the cottage women telling her children to let the ants alone and not tease them, for 'thaay be God's creeturs.' Or possibly the pastor himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one finger on the palm of his other hand, 'That's their serpentine way; that's their subtlety; that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows less and less between these millstones till he approaches the vanishing-point. The Roman has the broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the chapel has the common people, and the farmers are banding together not to pay tithes. So that his whole soul may well go forth in the apostrophe, 'Good Lord, deliver us!'

      There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. His tall and yet rotund body and his broad red face might easily be mistaken for the outward man of a sturdy farmer, and he likes his pipe and glass. He dines every Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his stoutest upholders. It is said that at such a dinner, after a large plateful of black currant pudding, finding there was still some juice left, he lifted the plate to his mouth and carefully licked it all round; the hostess hastened to offer a spoon, but he declined, thinking that was much the best way to gather up the essence of the fruit. So simple were his manners, he needed no spoon; and, indeed, if we look back, the apostles managed without forks, and put their fingers in the dish. After dinner the cognac bottle is produced, and the pastor fills his tumbler half full of spirit, and but lightly dashes it with water. It is cognac and not brandy, for your chapel minister thinks it an affront if anything more common than the best French liquor is put before him; he likes it strong, and with it his long clay pipe. Very frequently another minister, sometimes two or three, come in at the same time, and take the same dinner, and afterwards form a genial circle with cognac and tobacco, when the room speedily becomes full of smoke and the bottle of brandy soon disappears. In these family parties there is not the least approach to over-conviviality; it is merely the custom, no one thinks anything of a glass and a pipe; it is perfectly innocent; it is not a local thing, but common and understood. The consumption of brandy and tobacco and the good things of dinner, tea, and supper (for the party generally sit out the three meals), must in a month cost the host a good deal of money, but all things are cheerfully borne for the good of the church. Never were men feasted with such honest good-will as these pastors; and if a budding Paul or Silas happens to come along who has scarce yet passed his ordination, the youthful divine may stay a week if he likes, and lick the platter clean. In fact, so constant is this hospitality, that in certain houses it is impossible to pay a visit at any time of the year without finding one of these young brothers reposing amid the fat of the land, and doubtless indulging in pleasant spiritual communion with the daughters of the mansion. Something in this system of household ministers of religion reminds one of the welcome and reverence said to be extended in the East to the priests, who take up their residence indefinitely, and are treated as visible incarnations of the Deity whose appetites it is meritorious to satisfy. Indeed, these young men, who have perhaps been trained as missionaries, often discourse of Buddha with a very long and unctuous 'Boo.'

      The ancient Roman censor who tried by laws and persuasions to induce the inhabitants of Rome to marry, yet could not succeed in inducing them to submit to what they considered a sacrifice for the benefit of the state, would have been delighted with the marrying tendencies of the chapel people. A venerable old gentleman—a great pillar of the body—after the decease of his first wife married her sister, and again, upon her removal, married his cook. Another great prop—elderly indeed, but still upright and iron-grey, a most powerfully made man, who always spoke as if his words were indeed law—rule-of-thumb law—has married three sisters in succession, and has had offspring by all. Their exact degrees of consanguinity I cannot tell you, or whether they call each other brothers and sisters, or cousins. This is certain, however, that whether such marriages be legal or not, they are as such regarded and as such accepted in every sense by the society to which these gentlemen belong. Another gentleman now has his fourth wife, and he, too, is a most strenuous believer, and not his bitterest enemy can rake up the smallest accusation against his character. He, too, is a strong and upright man, fully capable of another wife if time should chance to bring it about. Now, the odd part of it is that, having married four times, and each time in the same village, where all the families are more or less connected, he is more or less related to every single individual in the parish. First, there are his own blood relations and his wives' blood relations, and then there are their relations' relations, and next his sons and daughters have married and introduced a fresh roll, and I really do not think either he or anybody else knows exactly where the list ends. This is nothing uncommon. Though clans and tribes no longer settle under their respective chiefs in villages, the families of the same name and blood still present a very close representation of the clan system. They have all the tribal relationship without any of its feeling. Instead of forming a strong body and helping each other, these people seemed to detest one another, and to lose no opportunity of snatching some little advantage or telling some scandalous tale. In fact, this in-and-in breeding seems one of the curses of village life, and a cause of stagnation and narrowness of mind. This marrying and giving in marriage is not singular to well-to-do leaders of chapel society, but goes on with equal fervour among the lower members. The cottage girls and cottage boys marry the instant they get a chance, and it is not at all uncommon to find comparatively young labourers who have had two wives. There is nothing in this to reproach: it is a peculiarity of the cast of mind which I am endeavouring to describe—a cast of mind perhaps not much marked by sentimentality. Something in this practice reminds one of the Mormons. Certainly the wives are not taken together, but they are sealed as fast as circumstances permit. СКАЧАТЬ