Part 12

Of course, after reading Thoreau’s _Walden_, whatever simplifications I may have effected in my own household management seemed very negligible and unimportant. Still I felt that some move in that direction, and some propaganda on the subject, was really needed. I tried hard to get some lady friend or other—who would probably understand household affairs much better than I—to write about the subject; but tried in vain. None would take it up. And so ultimately I was reduced to writing on the question myself—in _England’s Ideal_ and elsewhere.

To-day I feel the importance of the subject as much as—perhaps more than—I did then. I certainly often wish that our household life, plain as it is, was even more plain. But I find that Time—mere Time—has a sinister effect in complicating life. Things arrive, and cannot so easily be got rid of again. Presents are made by well-meaning people, and cannot very well be returned to the donors; new habitudes of life are grafted on the old ones without actually displacing the latter; the wheel of life turns one way, like a ratchet, but will not turn back again; and so the complications grow and the embarrassments multiply—often to such a degree that they become almost unendurable; and one realizes at last why Death came into the world, and how necessary as a Deliverer of souls and a loosener of mortal knots he is. For myself I can truly say that the Waste Paper Basket stands as a signal of one of my greatest pleasures; and that when I feel depressed (which is not very often) I go about the house and hunt up things to destroy or give away—after which ritual act I feel ever so much better and happier.

Simplicity and plainness of life are necessary, on account of the frightful waste of time and strength which the opposite policy entails—a waste which is obviously becoming daily worse and worse. Nor is it necessary to point out that if you employ _servants_ to keep all these beggarly elements of life in order for you, instead of looking after them yourself, you still only waste your time and strength in securing (or appropriating in some way) the money with which you pay those servants, as well as in the extra labour and anxiety of looking after the said servants—a state of affairs probably worse than the first.

Plainness again is necessary from foundation considerations of humanity and democracy. To live in opulent and luxurious surroundings is to erect a fence between yourself and the mass-world which no selfrespecting manual worker will pass. It is consequently to stultify yourself and to lose some of the best that the world can give.

Thirdly, from mere considerations of health the thing is necessary. My Japanese friend, Sanshiro Ishikawa, calls our houses _prisons_. Plain food, the open air, the hardiness of sun and wind, are things practically unobtainable in a complex ménage.

And lastly, and most important, the complexity of material possessions and demands all around one almost inevitably has the effect of stifling the life of the heart and of the spirit. “The thorns sprang up and choked them.” The endless distraction of material cares, the endless temptation of material pleasures, inevitably has the effect of paralysing the great free life of the affections and of the soul. One loses the most precious thing the world can give—the great freedom and romance of finding expression and utterance for one’s most intimate self in the glorious presence of Nature and one’s fellows.

X MILLTHORPIANA

What I have just said might seem to suggest a sort of perpetual garden-party going on at Millthorpe. But this of course was by no means the case, and for weeks at a time we would often be quiet enough. A distance of four miles from the nearest railway-station is a good defence; especially in winter with snow on the ground; also the general rule of not seeing visitors till the afternoon. Still we were liable to incursions. To Job are ascribed the pregnant words (xxxi. 35) “O that mine adversary had written a book!” And I am afraid that I had in some such way laid myself open to attack. The ubiquitous American who (to adopt the style of Bernard Shaw) only stayed in England to visit Millthorpe and Stratford-on-Avon, was much in evidence. And faddists of all sorts and kinds considered me their special prey. I don’t know what I had done to deserve this—but so it was. Vegetarians, dress reformers, temperance orators, spiritualists, secularists, anti-vivisectionists, socialists, anarchists—and others of very serious mien and character—would call and insist in the most determined way on my joining their crusades—so that sometimes I had almost to barricade myself against them. A friend suggested (and the idea was not a bad one) that I should put up at the gate a board bearing the legend “To the Asylum” on it. Then the real lunatics would probably avoid the neighborhood.

Nevertheless on the whole we got a good deal of fun out of these incursions, and occasionally some real and solid advance.

On one occasion—it was when the Fearnehoughs were living with me—we were sitting quietly at our humble dinner of carrots or what-not, in the middle of the day, when I saw two young ladies pass the window. There came a knock at the door, and I opened it. There stood a very good-looking elegantly dressed girl of twenty-three or twenty-four, with terracotta frock and gainsborough hat, rather Londony in style; with a less showy companion beside her. Said number one: “Does Mr. Carp——” and then breaking off, “Oh! I see you are Mr. Carpenter. You know, I heard you once speak at the Fabian Society. I belong to the Fabian Society. And my cousin and I were near here, and thought perhaps we might call.”

“Very glad to see you, I’m sure.”

“And is this _really_ where you carry on your Simplification of Life? Oh! Madge! isn’t it interesting” (this last thrown in as an interjection).

“I don’t know about that; but won’t you come in and sit down?”

“Thank you so much, I should be glad of a rest.”

“Will you have a bit of cake and a glass of milk?”

“Oh no! but I _should_ like a piece of dry bread.”

“Well, you need not ‘simplify’ so much as that.”

“Oh! but I am so _fond_ of dry bread!”

Then it came out that the Uncle and Aunt were waiting outside, so they had to be got in, and ultimately the party were all safely landed in my study—where after the simplification trouble had been got over, we made a reasonable acquaintance with each other.

But I never afterwards quite forgot that expression “Is this where you _carry on_ your?” etc.—as if one hung a flag out of the window.

On another occasion, it being summer-time, a party of forty Spiritualists came over from Manchester to spend Sunday at a neighboring farmhouse, and with the intention of digging me out in the course of the afternoon. Providence however interposed and sent _pelting_ rain all day, and the poor things having to walk several miles from the station arrived at their farmhouse simply drenched; and when they had had their dinner, and partially dried their clothes, were naturally in no mood or condition to turn out again—with the exception of ten or twelve of the more heroic, who came on and called on me. What I had done to merit this honour I do not know, as I had had very little experience of Spiritualism; but they sat round and told me all sorts of wonderful stories. In the middle of it all, a plashing was heard outside in the rain, a knock at the door, and a young lady _sandal_-enthusiast arrived. She was a neatlooking well-made girl, in sandals, with bare, unstockinged feet, and she wore a simple navy blue serge dress; but of course she was wringing wet. We had not seen her before; her name was Swanhilda Something (somehow it sounded appropriate); she had set out to walk all the way from Sheffield (nine miles). On the way the rain had come on, and the sandals had nearly come off. She had no umbrella or waterproof; and she was decidedly more than damp. Mrs. Adams, who was then in charge of our ménage, took her upstairs and gave her a change, and she presently joined the Spiritualist party, looking it must be confessed somewhat like a ghost; but full of spirit and pluck. Her pluck (as I found afterwards) as a dress-reformer was really splendid. On this occasion, after tea, she refused all offers of a bed for the night, donned her still damp clothes and her sandals, and joining the forty Spiritualists, they all splashed back across the hills to the station.

One of the pathetic things of the Socialist movement is the way in which it has caused not a few people of upper class birth and training to try and leave their own ranks and join those of the workers, when—by their very birth and training being unable to bridge the gulf—the result has been that they, belonging neither to one class nor the other, outcasts from one, and more or less pitied or ridiculed by the other, have fallen into a kind of limbo between. I have known several cases of young men of this kind. One of them I may describe under the name of ‘Bryan.’ His father, being a country squire, wanted Bryan to go into the army. The boy had ideas of his own about the matter, and simply refused. Differences ensued, and ultimately the father offered him £100 a year for three years, and told him to find his _own_ way into life. The youth drifted to London, fell in with the Socialists at a street corner, became inspired with their ‘cause,’ and sought to identify himself thenceforth with the working class. He came and spent a year or more in our neighborhood at Millthorpe. He was a good fellow—his heart, as they say, in the right place; but whether owing to the wretched character of his training, or to native want of skill or perseverance, he never could or would shape himself to do any solid work. He would dabble a little at the joiner’s bench, or in the garden, or with the woodmen in the woods—but only a little. When we urged him to learn some one trade thoroughly—if only cobbling or cabinet-making—he would always say “Ah! but things will be different when the Revolution comes—we shall all go barefoot, or these things will be done by machinery”; and so one got no nearer any practical result. On one occasion being in the neighborhood of his family home, I went and called on his father, thinking I might be of some use, but found him in a state of despair.

“Oh, Bryan,” he said, “I don’t know what has taken the boy. Why the other day he came to see us in our London house, and the first thing he said was ‘Father, all these houses ought to be burnt down.’

“‘Burnt down,’ I replied; ‘are you mad?’

“‘Well, they _ought_ to be,’ he said, ‘and the people made to do some honest work instead of idling their lives away on other folk’s labour.’

“‘And pray what sort of work would you set them to, young man?’

“‘Oh, anything,’ he said, ‘any straightforward work like mending the roads or breaking stones.’

“‘Then I suppose you Socialists would take an old man like me, seventy years of age, and turn me out of house and home, and set me to break stones on the roads—nice “saviours of society” you are!’

“‘Well,’ he replied, ‘of course there would be exceptions—I daresay we should allow you a pension, say £100 a year, on account of your age and infirmity!’

“Think of that, Mr. Carpenter, think of your own son offering you £100 a year, and in the name of these rascally Socialists!”

Needless to say I deeply sympathized—(I don’t think in fact he suspected me of being a Socialist)—but I saw that nothing useful could be done, and at an early opportunity I retired.

Bryan drifted out to Topolobampo, a socialist colony on the Gulf of California; and when that broke up he floated about the borders of Mexico and California, living on chance luck and occasional remittances until family changes brought him finally home.

Another case of a somewhat similar kind was that of a young R.E. captain, Captain Peterson, let us call him, who had read Tolstoy and convinced himself that a military life was wrong, and that he must leave the Army. Being at the time Adjutant of Volunteers in a neighboring town, he used to come up to Millthorpe to discuss these questions and as to how he should ordain his life when once free. I admired his enthusiasm, but felt obliged to warn him not to be in too great a hurry; for it was easy to see that in practical matters he was a mere babe. Certainly the Army was not the place for him. Anything but ‘correct’ in dress, with generally a large gap between his waistcoat and his trousers, and again another between his trousers and his boots, with projecting schoolboy ears and red nose, he was just the man who would be unmercifully chaffed or even ‘ragged’ by his fellow-officers. But on the other hand his capacity for battling his way in the world, or for earning his own living, was evidently of the smallest; and his schemes for the future were of the most wild-cat kind. He was going to build a house—but as he would have no money to pay for it, he should get together a little group of workmen (who desired to improve their minds) on the condition that he should teach them elementary mathematics, surveying, etc., during one half of the day, while they should set bricks and mortar for him during the other half! (A charming scheme! but I think I see the British workman agreeing to it!) His house, according to the plan which he drew out of his pocket, was more like a greenhouse than anything else—with walls and roof largely glass; and when I suggested that it might prove rather hot in summer (!) he seemed to have no difficulty in imagining plentiful vines trailing overhead, with foliage and hanging bunches of grapes, to ward off the sun’s rays. For the floor of his room he had a device of which he was quite proud. “It is often convenient,” he said, “to have _two_ carpets—a rough one for ordinary use, and a better one for special occasions.”

I assented to this rather dubious premise, for the sake of seeing what would follow!

“Well” he continued “my idea is to sew these two carpets together like a roller towel, and have them passing over rollers at the two opposite ends of the room, so that one carpet should be _on_ the floor, and the other _underneath_. Then, you know, when you saw visitors coming, all you would have to do would be to turn the crank (suiting the action to the word), and you would have your best carpet on in a jiffey!”

Too amazed and speechless to make any objection, I could only see with my mind’s eye, a cottage piano and a table and an armchair or two gaily sailing across the room, as the crank was being turned.

“Meanwhile” he went on “as carpets are always wanting brushing I intend to have brushes _fixed_ underneath the floor, so that every time the carpet is changed it will be automatically brushed. Nothing could be simpler.”

It would have been cruel to make further objections to schemes so indeed transparently simple. But they will give the reader an idea of the difficulties and dangers attending the metamorphosis from the condition of an army officer to that of a private in the peaceful regiments of humanity. What has become now of our friend Peterson I cannot certainly say. That he nobly and consistently abandoned his life in the army I know; but whether he succeeded in getting a house built on the Principles of Euclid is doubtful.

Peterson was also connected with an occurrence which at the time was rather mysterious, and caused us some puzzlement. My friend George Merrill had come to live with me, and we two were occupying the house alone. One evening, late in the summer, we had just returned from Sheffield, and tired had thrown ourselves for a moment into chairs, when almost at once a knock came at the door—so soon indeed that we wondered how the visitor could have been so close behind. George went to the door and then turning to me said “A lady wants to see you.” At once a voice from outside said very distinctly, “A _woman_, if you please.” Roused to a sense of serious events impending, I went forward, and saw, as well as the falling dusk would allow, what appeared to be a fairly pleasant-looking woman of about thirty-five, but somewhat dishevelled and untidy in dress; and said—

“Can I do anything for you?”

“You can,” she replied, “I’m lost, I’m an outcast from the world, will you befriend me?”

“I will if I can,” I said, “but tell me first about yourself—what is your name? do you come from Sheffield?”

“You,” she exclaimed, “Mr. Carpenter, the author of _Towards Democracy_—and you won’t help me, till you know my name and all about me!”

I looked at George with a wild surmise. “Certainly,” I said, “I can’t very well help you till I know what is the matter.”

“I tell you,” she rejoined with increasing emphasis, “I’m lost, I’m an outcast, I can never go back to the world again. Ah!” (pointing to the garden and the rising moon) “if I could only live here in this beautiful scene, with you, far away from the town and all its belongings. Mr. Carpenter, will you befriend me?”

What an appeal to a lone bachelor! Luckily I resisted the temptation to a too ready sympathy, and leaning forward said again, “But still you have not told me anything about yourself and your troubles.”

As I did so I caught a distinct and strong waft of liquor.

“Is it not enough that I am lost?” she replied.

The situation was really embarrassing. At last I said:—

“Well, you know, I and my friend have only just come back from Sheffield, and are very tired; will you come again to-morrow, or any day you like to name, when we shall have more time, and tell me your whole story.”

At this she threw up her head with a kind of snort, and said: “And you are Mr. Carpenter! and you say come to-morrow—and to-morrow perhaps I shall be _dead_!” And thus saying she strode off to the gate with the air of a tragedy queen.

Nevertheless for some days we could not help feeling a little uncomfortable. The people at the neighboring inn told us that she had come from the Sheffield direction during the afternoon, and had been hanging about waiting for our return for some hours, doubtless had been in the garden on our arrival—which accounted for her sudden appearance—but no one knew who she was; nor did tidings of her, or of any mischance to her, reach us for some weeks—till at last the memory of the incident died out.

Then one afternoon, the said Captain Peterson having turned up and being engaged in expounding his theories over a cup of tea—my attention (which had quite wandered from his conversation) was suddenly caught by the words “and there’s that woman, she gets drunk, and then comes to my house, and won’t go away—it’s very awkward!—and she has read your _Towards Democracy_ too.”

“That’s the woman,” I exclaimed, “tell me about her!” and a few explanations soon disclosed the fact that my mysterious visitor was the wife of Peterson’s colour-sergeant—a decent sort of body apparently, and all right except for occasional drinking-bouts, when she became liable to these vespertinal excursions!

During the first year or so after Merrill’s arrival, and for a year or two before that, we had a young Russian, or Russian Jew, staying in the house. Invalided with consumption he had somehow taken refuge with us. He went by the name of Max Flint. He was of that fine and delicate type of Jew (somewhat perhaps like Mordecai in George Eliot’s _Daniel Deronda_) which one associates with Polish origin—a sensitive face with slender nose (not the Jewish proboscis), arched fine eyebrows and brown pensive eyes, well-formed features on the whole, and hands the same—something refined and almost womanly about him. He was handy in a house, and skilful with a needle; for indeed he was a tailor by trade. His history is worth relating if only because typical of hundreds and thousands of similar cases.

His father, who was a Jewish butcher by trade, “very religious” according to Max “and always lending money and always losing it,” lived at Slobodka across the river from Kovno, and not far from the German frontier. Slobodka was the Jewish quarter and consisted of small wooden houses, two stories at most, but even so not unfrequently each occupied by more than one family. Noah Flynck however and his wife and the eight children were proud to have a house all to themselves. The mother died early but Max remembered her telling stories in which she recalled the subjugation of Poland. How Polish ‘gentlemen,’ landowners, took refuge in Slobodka, were hunted down by the Russian soldiers and _hanged_, and their lands appropriated—especially one well-known old story of a Polish noble who concealed himself in the interior of a haystack. The troops surrounded and searched his house and farmyard, but could not find him, till at last his little dog (who had smelt him out) was seen scratching and routing on the top of the stack, and he was betrayed!

When Max was about sixteen or seventeen the terror of the Russian conscription came upon him. Few people realize what this nightmare is to the Russian peasantry. Even in the late Japanese war, villages were surrounded at midnight by Cossacks and police, houses if not opened immediately were broken into, men roused from sleep, and all between the ages of twenty-one and forty-three taken away, in most cases never to be heard of again! In Max’s time it was as bad, if not worse. The same thing went on. At any moment, at dead of night, the home might be broken into and plundered—the young men snatched away for ever. Bribes might defer your fate for a time—but only for a time. As to passports, you could not move without a passport—even to go from one village to another.

Max determined—even against old Noah’s wish—to get away to England; and he managed to effect the escape. There are of course professional smugglers who undertake this business for you; and Max often told the story of how he paid three roubles to one of these for the job. He was instructed to be at a certain village close to the river Memel on a certain evening. He gave his family the slip, and arrived there to time; met the agent all right, and with twenty others bound on the same errand was packed in a stable for the night. Half of the company went off in the small hours of the morning, but Max and the remaining half had to remain there all the next day and night till 2 a.m., when the man came and gave them the signal to follow. They crept through the deserted street and along the road till they came to the bridge which alone divided them from Germany. But how to cross this in face of the Russian sentinel keeping watch at the near end? Needless to say it was a question of bribes. Of the three roubles the soldier was to have one. And Max with a kind of glee used to describe how he saw the man sitting there in his box as they crept by, and pretending to be asleep, yet visibly peeping with one eye through his fingers to see that _only the bargained number got through_. Once on the German side they were all right, and could breathe again freely. They met at an inn, counted up their remaining monies, and went on in parties together.

Max came to Leeds. Of the hundreds of Russian Jews there he knew a little about some. He changed his name from Flynck to Flint, to suit the English ear, and soon settled down into sweated work in a Jewish tailors’ den.