Chapter 19

Grannie Pinn's song was the event of the evening. Excited by her efforts to the point of hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, she told us we were 'a pack o' gert fules,' and went. The other visitors followed after.

"Don' know what yu feels like," said Tony when they were all gone. "I feels more-ish. 'N hour agone I wer fit for bed, now I feels 's if I cude sing for hours on end...."

[Sidenote: _THE NEW YEAR_]

"May as well welcome in the New Year now 'tis so late as 'tis," said Mrs Widger, taking from one of her store-places a bottle of green ginger-wine and another of fearful and wonderful 'Invalid Port' which, as she remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.' Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their reckless best--the desperation that the treacherous sea itself engenders.

At a minute or two before twelve by the clock, the three of us went out to the back door. When the cats had scuttled away, the narrow walled-in garden was very still. By the light of the stars, shining like points in the deep winter heavens, I could see the beansticks, the balks of wood and the old masts and oars. I could also smell the drain. Tony, in his stockinged feet, leant on his wife's shoulder while he raised first one foot from the cold stones, and then the other. We were a little hushed, with more than expectancy. So we waited; to hear the church clock strike and to welcome in the New Year.

And we waited until Tony said that his feet were too cold to stay there any longer. The church clock struck--_ting-tang, ting-tang_--in the frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all the while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.

We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door and began putting away the supper things.

"If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift," said Tony, "they can gie me a thousand a year."

"And then yu'd be done for," I said. "Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done. We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both got only the workhouse or the road."

"Iss," said Mam Widger, "an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than Tony. He _cude_ get somebody to work his boats--for a time. An' I cude work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees way, an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it."

"Be damn'd if yu shan't!" said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot at the moment). "Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it ourselves for to give 'ee."

* * * * *

So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free myself from a suspicion of its being too good.

It has given me home.

X

POSTSCRIPT

SEACOMBE.

I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people, and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who, on the whole, are one's superiors.

It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more trouble.

It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.

It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life, lived with a will, is play enough, and closer acquaintance with life's sterner realities renders one singularly impatient with the literature of life's frillings. I do not notice, however, that it makes one less susceptible to the really fine and strong things of literature and art.

It is true that one drops into dialect when excited; that one's manners suffer in conventional correctness. I suppose I know how to behave fairly correctly; I was well taught at all events; but my manners never have been and never will be so good, so considerate as Tony's. 'Tisn't in me.

It is true that one becomes much coarser. One acquires a habit of talking with scandalous freedom about vital matters which among the unscientific educated are kept hid in the dark--and go fusty there. But I do not think there is much vulgarity to be infected with here. Coarseness and vulgarity are incompatibles. It was well said in a book written not long ago, that "Coarseness reveals but vulgarity hides." Vulgarity is chiefly characteristic of the non-courageous who are everlastingly bent on climbing up the social stairs. Poor people are hardly ever vulgar, until they begin to 'rise' into the middle class.

[Sidenote: _WISDOM_]

It is true that, so far as knowledge goes, one is bound to be cock o' the walk among uneducated people--which, alone, is bad for a man. But knowledge is not everything, nor even the main thing. Wisdom is more than knowledge: it is _Knowledge applied to life, the ability to make use of the knowledge well_. In that respect I often have here to eat a slice of humble-pie. For all my elaborate education and painfully gained stock of knowledge, I find myself silenced time after time by the direct wisdom of these so-called ignorant people. They have preserved better, between knowledge and experience, that balance which makes for wisdom. They have less knowledge (less mental dyspepsy too) and use it to better purpose. It occurs to one finally that, according to our current standards, the great wise men whom we honour--Christ, Plato, Shakespeare, to name no more--were very ignorant fellows. Possibly the standards are wrong.

[Sidenote: _DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION_]

To live with the poor is to feel oneself in contact with a greater continuity of tradition and to share in a greater stability of life. The nerves are more annoyed, the thinking self less. Perhaps the difference between the two kinds of life may be tentatively expressed--not necessarily accounted for--in terms of Differential Evolution,[23] somewhat thus:

(1) The first, the least speculative, evolutionary criterion of an animal is its degree of adaptation to its environment.

(2) Man exhibits a less degree of adaptation to environment than any other animal; principally because (_a_) he consists, roughly speaking, incomparably more than any other animal, of three interdependent parts--body, thinking brain, and that higher mental function that we call spirit--the development of any one of which, beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other two; and because (_b_) he is able possibly to control directly his own evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying the environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in his own evolution.

(3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such as it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been kept in closer contact with the primary realities--birth, death, risk, starvation;--in closer contact, that is to say, with those sections of human environment which are not of human making and which are common to all classes. He has fewer mistakes to go back upon.

[23] Evolution is at present the last refuge of unscientific minds which think they have explained a process when they have given it a new name, just as chemists used to call an obscure chemical action _catalytic_ and then assume that its nature was plain. _Evolution_ means an _unfolding_. In that sense it is an observed fact, though exactly how the unfolding is brought about is still conjectural. But it does not matter for the purposes of my argument whether human beings evolve by the transmission to offspring of acquired characteristics, or by bequeathing to them as birthright an environment that their fathers had to make. The material for constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and physical evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than speculate. It may be noted, however, that acquired mental characteristics appear to be more transmissible, and less stable, than acquired physical characteristics; and that mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster and collapses more readily than physical evolution.

It might be said, of course, that mal-adaptation at any given moment is more than counterbalanced by greater evolutional potentialities, or by greater inducement to evolve; and that the above chain of reasoning simply goes to prove that the poor man is more of an animal--less evolved. On the other hand, from an evolutionary standpoint, the animal faculties are the most basic of all. A sound stomach is more necessary than a highly developed brain, and good reproductive faculties are essential; because the first demand of evolution is plenty of material. It does not follow that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is less evolved, or has a smaller potentiality to evolve, because he has preserved better the animal faculties which lie at the basis of evolution.

Furthermore:

(4) There is a reasonable probability that an interior balance, between body, brain, and spirit, is more needful for realising the potentialities of evolution than rapidity of development in any single respect. _Mens sana in corpore sano--animaque integra_ is an ideal as sound as it is unachieved. More haste less speed, is probably true of human evolution. A healthy baby is more hopeful than a mad adult.

(5) The typical poor man does, now, exhibit a better balance between these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways, he is on the whole, and for that reason, more forward. His evolution is proceeding with greater solidity. It is more stable, and more likely to realise its potentialities.

* * * * *

That is a speculation among probabilities and possibilities; an attempt to go in a bee-line across fields that are mainly hidden ditches; a first spying out of a country that wants mapping; a course over a sea that can never perhaps be buoyed, where bearings must be taken afresh from the sun for each voyage that is made. In any case, my belief grows stronger that the poor have kept essentially what a schoolboy calls the better end of the stick; not because their circumstances are better--materially their lives are often terrible enough--but because they know better how to make the most of what material circumstances they have. If they could improve their material circumstances and continue making the most of them.... That is the problem.

Good Luck to us all!