Part 23

The burden of supporting the poor, while much lighter than in Ireland, must be far heavier than in our country. Huntingdonshire is one of the smallest counties in England. In 1871 it contained less than seventy thousand people, and at the time of my visit had four unions or poor-houses. But this does not altogether represent the amount of poverty. In another farming region, I understood that the farm-laborer, even though he be sober, honest, and industrious, seldom or never lays by enough to support his family in his age, but becomes partially or entirely dependent on parish relief. But out-door relief in the parish I have been describing, and perhaps in England generally, is granted only to the aged; young people must go into “The House.” There they pick oakum and work garden ground. Children are put out at fourteen or earlier, if they have passed in the school “the fourth standard.” No child is allowed during the period that school is open to go to work under the age of ten.

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Tithes in this parish of Haddenham cum Stonea average about one dollar and eighty cents to the acre. If there were sufficient land attached to the rectory for the income to support Mr. Rounce there would be no tithes, but there are only sixty acres of glebe land, and the living is worth, as I have stated, about six thousand dollars yearly. The sixty acres of glebe land bring in about five hundred dollars, hence the remainder is to be raised by tithes.

I have spoken of Jackson, the carpenter with whom I boarded. He was a dissenter, and they attended the chapel. He rented, however, six acres of land, and his tithes to the English Church were about ten dollars yearly.

Formerly Quakers resisted the payment of tithes. A friend told me that his father, uncle, and grandfather were imprisoned in the county jail for non-payment. When he himself farmed three hundred and twenty-two acres, he paid five hundred and twenty pounds rent and one hundred and twenty pounds for tithes. This money was generally seized from him. He had land in three parishes, and numerous warrants were out against him. The officers would come with cart or wagon, and seize his grain while he was threshing. In his father’s time they would have green boughs, and stick one into every tenth shock of grain or hay. But Friends have now given up this contest, and pay tithes quietly. Apparently he did not think them burdensome.

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Tolls on roads were abolished in England only a few years ago, and the expense now falls on the landholder. We do not often see in our country such a road as connects the two villages which I describe under the name Haddenham and Stonea. It is a highway in splendid form and order, with a wide grassy margin and a ditch on each side. On one is a wide, gravelled footpath, and fine green hedges separate the road from the fields.

SCHOOLS.

There are three schools in these two villages. One of them is a Dame school, or an unpretending private one, which I did not visit; but the two principal ones deserve attention from the students of our institutions and of English ones. They are public schools, although people pay for tuition. That in Haddenham is a National school, that in Stonea a British school. In the former, Mr. Rounce, the rector, is manager, and the doctrines of the Church of England are taught. The other, the British school, is under charge of a board, or of a committee, of which several members are dissenters.

I first visited the National or Church of England school. Eighty-one names were upon the roll and fifty in attendance at one of my visits. (Some little ones were at work in the fields, weeding, or perhaps hay-making.) Pupils may enter at two years. The printed form issued by government asks, “How many have you under three?” And by the obligatory law the schools can claim them at five.

Upon the walls of the school were several maps, a large printed copy of the Creed, large tablets of the Commandments, and little pictures from the Bible, with perhaps a few from natural history. The blackboard was an insignificant one, about four feet square. I observed the small amount of blackboard surface provided, and the youngest teacher said that in the British schools there is blackboard on the sides of the room.

There was in the school a little picture of the royal family. “We teach them loyalty to the queen,” said one of the teachers.

Connected with the school was an infant department. Here the blackboard measured about one foot by eighteen inches. There were a few objects upon the walls, but there seemed to me a general bareness of appliances for instruction.

This school is an endowed one, having fourteen acres of land; it has always been a National school, or one where the principles of the Church of England are taught. Five years ago it became a government school,—_i.e._, it has become an “efficient elementary school” under the government; it is examined by a government inspector, and for children coming up to the government standard the school receives a small sum in payment on each. These “results,” as they are called, all pass into the rector’s hands, as manager of the school, to be appropriated either toward the payment of teachers or for school apparatus. Here all apparatus is paid for from this fund.

For instruction of children farmers pay four cents a week for each child; others two. The parish pays for pauper children. The amount of the endowment and the government grant are not even enough, I am told, to pay the principal; and the two assistants are paid by the rector.

National or, in other words, Church of England schools are also visited by a diocesan inspector, appointed by the bishop to report their progress in “Holy Scripture, Prayer-Book, and Catechism.” This school having been reported very good last year, a gift of about seven dollars was made to the teacher and monitor.

Instruction must be given for four hundred sessions yearly, equivalent to two hundred days.

Some teachers in government schools receive pensions, but as the number of pensions in England and Scotland is limited to two hundred and seventy, there are not enough for all. Before leaving this school, I may mention that I made some inquiry about the chapel, which stood not far off. One of the teachers answered, “I know nothing about dissent; I never go into those places.”

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The school in the other village of Stonea (Haddenham cum Stonea) was called the British school, and was much larger, having one hundred and forty pupils. The room was large and well lighted, and there was an appearance of thrift and animation in the scholars. It is not under the control of the Church of England; neither are members of that church excluded from its management. It is managed by a committee of seven, of whom two or three are members of the church. The services of the committee, including the secretary, are gratuitous. The school has an income of three hundred dollars, drawn from a gift in land, made many years ago for the free education of village-born children. This sum is supplemented by subscription. This school also is visited by the government inspector, and a certain sum is paid, according to the attainments of the children, called, as I have said, “the results.” The committee decides what shall be done with this sum.

The school funds are further supplemented thus: In the village the children pay two cents a week. Those out of the village pay, if laborers, four cents for the first child, and two for each of the others. Persons of means pay twelve cents a week, but there are very few such.

Members of the Society of Friends, “who have always been active in education,” raised a general subscription for building a new school-house, and the government added a grant; “the government would always thus assist to build a public school.”

Religious instruction is not obligatory here as in the National school; it is at the option of the committee, who have decided to have Bible instruction for the first hour in the morning. The government allows any one who brings a written request from his father to absent himself from this instruction. No such case has ever arisen here. It may in towns where there are Free-thinkers and Catholics.

This school is plentifully supplied with blackboards. The principal difference that I observed in instruction between this and some public ones I have known at home was in arithmetic. A series of six small practical arithmetics was in use. At the close of each were examination questions. Here is the last in Standard 6, the highest: “If 27 men build 54 roods of garden wall in 26 days, how many roods will 32 men, working equally well, build in 39 days?” Perhaps twice in a week they have mental arithmetic. Here is the last question in Standard 5, mental: “A yard at half a guinea an inch?”

These elementary schools in villages are mixed, or for both sexes; in towns they are not. By the act of 1870, a pupil must enter school at five (education being obligatory), and remain until thirteen. There are, however, six standards in the school, and a pupil who wishes to go to work sooner may demand a certificate if he has finished the fourth standard, and is not obliged to finish the term.

I asked of one of the teachers or monitors in this British school whether she had ever visited the other, the National school. She replied that she would not like to go there. She seemed to fear that she would be thought a spy. The rector does not visit this British school. “Unfortunately,” said one to me, “in our country the Church of England people think themselves above everybody else, and unless they can have the management of affairs will have nothing to do with them. The rector feels that he ought to have the management of the school, and is sore on that point; but it has been a successful school for forty years, and nothing that the rector can do can injure it.”

I asked, “Has the teacher of the National school ever visited this one?”

“No; where the rector does not go, his people may not. We have tried every means to unite with them, but without effect. All the exertions here are for the good of the school, but in the other village for the good of the church. They want a teacher who will serve them in the school, the Sunday-school, and the choir.”

But on this parish controversy a few words were spoken to me by a diligent member of the Established Church. He said, “The rector thinks he ought to be one of the trustees of the British school, as a bequest upon which it is in part founded says that the clergyman of the parish shall be one of the trustees, but they say that they will wait until the trusteeship is vacant.” The place was filled, I understood, by the former rector, who, as I have said, was described as a tiny little man; a clever, very learned man; a stanch liberal in politics, over eighty years of age.

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Afterwards, in Manchester, I met a person who spoke further on the subject of public schools. I give what he said, as drawn from my notes, on his own authority; for although it does not especially concern the parish of Haddenham cum Stonea, yet it does the general subject of English schools.

He said that the members of the Church of England support National or Church of England schools. The Roman Catholics support their own. The dissenters support unsectarian British schools, which receive all denominations. There is yet another class of elementary ones, namely, School Board schools. These boards are elected by the rate- or tax-payers. The schools are established in districts where there are not enough others to educate the children. It not unfrequently happens that a Church school or a British one which is unable to support itself, in spite of the government assistance before described, is turned over by its conductors to the school board. In Manchester this board has now in its schools about two-fifths of the children.

If the board wishes to establish a new school it has first to obtain leave from the committee on education of the Privy Council, belonging to the general government or to the ministry for the time being. The policy of the government is to prevent school boards from supplanting the sectarian schools; they are only allowed to supplement them, and no matter how poor the sectarian school may be, there is no way of getting it closed so long as Her Majesty’s inspector pronounces it efficient. The reports of the inspectors show that Board schools are improving more rapidly than others.

When by the act of 1870 these schools were first established they were regarded by the conductors of the others with contempt, especially by those of the Roman Catholic and Church schools; but such has been their progress within this brief period that they are now regarded with jealousy.

As to the prices charged by the Board schools, they must submit the payment of their proposed fees to the committee of Privy Council. The others mentioned may charge up to eighteen cents a week for instruction.

If a private school be inefficient, the school board may prosecute the parents of the children. But this applies to schools which teach pupils at less than eighteen cents per week; such as the old “Dame schools,” now nearly extinct, at least in Manchester.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Ways of living in England differ from those I am accustomed to in points before mentioned, such as the large number of meals, and the short hours of farm labor. A Lancashire youth complained that they clemmed or starved him in America on three meals a day. In this rural region those who can afford it take four, tea being in the afternoon and supper before going to bed.

Of articles of furniture I especially noticed two. One of them, which is nearly universal in England and Ireland, is entirely out of date where I live. It is the old-fashioned dressing-glass, which swings in a frame and stands upon a table. I do not remember its absence in any house that could afford it. Another article that I saw more rarely, but in both England and Ireland, was the canopy over the head of the bed. Of one I saw the framework was of heavy wood, with curtains at the side running on rings. A straight piece of the same material hung down behind the head of the bed. At my hotel in Cork this canopy was of faded blue damask; at the carpenter’s in the village, of faded red, and above trimmed with heavy woollen fringe. A handsomer one was on my bed in London. Perhaps this canopy is all that remains of curtains that formerly surrounded the bed.

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I have spoken of mangling as used in England. Mrs. Jackson, the carpenter’s wife, hired a woman to come to the house once a month to wash. It took them both two days to do it, and Mrs. Jackson paid regularly about twenty-four cents a day; or if the woman made a long day, twenty-eight. In harvest she must pay higher. (When Benton, the farmer with whom I boarded, heard me speak of our paying washer-women here seventy-five cents or a dollar, he said that before he would pay so much he would turn his shirt or throw it into a pool and give it a slop wash.)

After Mrs. Jackson’s clothes were dried she took them to a neighbor’s to be mangled. The mangle is not unlike a great wringer with rollers; and if the clothes are damp, it rolls them smooth. Mrs. Jackson’s neighbor allowed people to do their own mangling at “tuppence ha’penny or thruppence,” according to the size of the basket. This is a great saving of fuel, and Mrs. Jackson said that they look just as well.

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Active sports seem to have more prominence in England than in our own country. At Haddenham I called toward evening at the teacher’s, and found that he had gone to play cricket. And young Benton, son of the farmer, had gone too. He seemed actively engaged in business, but one morning he was up early, as he wished to go that day to a cricket-match, eleven miles distant. At Benton’s, mention was made of one of their relatives, who had been much given to cricket and other sports, and who had gone to Canada. He said that if he had worked as hard in England as he did in America, he would have got on there.

Yet Benton, the farmer, thinks it strange that I do not want to see the races in their county town.

Skating is a favorite amusement. On a meadow near by, which is always covered with water in the winter, they have skating-matches. On the fens are great skaters, I hear, and people come from all parts to compete with them.

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One of the strongest evidences of a higher state of civilization than ours (and perhaps of a different climate) is that Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, told me that she had never seen a man without stockings in her life. All the children in the British school (I think in both schools) wore both shoes and stockings, and some woollen stockings, though the month was July. However, the teacher said that in the north of England children go barefoot; and I had just come from Ireland, where I had heard of laborers’ children that passed the winter without stockings or shoes.

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In our own country I had read or heard of English farmers who rode in handsome vehicles, who wore silk hats, who occasionally drank champagne. But great farmers, cultivating hundreds of acres, must be capitalists. Of course there will be less luxury in straitened times. I heard, however, that a respectable farmer would never go to church, or especially to a funeral, places where he wished to show respect, without a silk hat. At market he might wear one of felt or straw.

Other matters being equal, the retired farmer is more nearly one of the gentry than the retired tradesman. In the parish of Haddenham cum Stonea, where I dwelt, perhaps the only person that came within that charmed circle, the nobility and gentry, was the rector of the church, and he did not stand high in it. I heard of the daughters of one clergyman who invited another to dine, and told him that it would be a nice party, “nobody who did not keep a footman or lady’s-maid.” If a distinguished dissenting minister like Spurgeon should come to a country town to lecture, in all probability he would not be socially noticed by the nobility and gentry.

A young Englishwoman told me that her sister, who lived in our country, said that the Americans are more polite than the English; and two Englishmen who had travelled here spoke of the many attentions which they had received.

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In this region of eastern England villages are found bearing names derived from the Saxon. I have called this parish Haddenham cum Stonea. The syllable ham comes from the Saxon, and means a dwelling, hence our word home. The syllable _ea_, in Stonea, means water.

Said the dissenting minister, “There is no part of England where the people are freer and more independent in thought than in these eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon, and parts of Cambridge and Lincoln.” And he inferred that from these counties our Pilgrim fathers must have sprung. About fifty miles from the parish I describe lies the city of Boston, from which came Mr. Cotton, the preacher in whose honor our own city of Boston was named.

“The last struggles of the Anglo-Saxons against the Normans were in these counties,” said one. “At Ely, then an island in the centre of the fens, Hereward fortified himself for a while, and made the last struggles against the Normans.”

An acquaintance who had visited America remarked to me that the district of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, where we were, is typically agricultural; that there are very few resident gentry; therefore the social life of this region more resembles that of the United States than does that of most other sections of England.

In this county of Huntingdonshire was born Oliver Cromwell, and at its town of St. Ives he lived. In this section he probably raised his celebrated soldiers called Ironsides. But the conservatives of England do not admire Cromwell. About twenty years ago in his native county it was found impossible to raise means to erect his statue.[169]

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On this side of the county are no county families bearing the title Esquire. ⸺ Farrar, Esq., north of us, is a great landed proprietor, with an income of about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. The Earl of S. and the Duke of M. are also large landed proprietors. The Duke of Bedford owns an estate in Thorny Fen of perhaps ten to fifteen thousand acres. My friend who tells me this thinks that the estate, however, is in another county from this. He understands that the duke expects each tenant to take one thousand acres and to keep a hunter. The duke is a liberal in politics.

The subject of politics was alluded to in the opening of this article, in the remarks of Jackson, the carpenter. Another acquaintance said, “If you go to a nobleman or great landed proprietor to rent a farm, you must be deferential and, as a general thing, you must vote on his side. If a man is a liberal, he must go under a liberal landlord; and if a tory, under a tory. Perhaps one-third of the House of Lords are liberals,” he added.

Benton, the farmer, did not tell me his political opinions. He said that the ballot is secret. But he added that a man’s political opinions have not now anything to do with renting the land.

But a person whom I afterward met in Manchester said that the agricultural districts were in the main thoroughly tory, the farmers being dependent on the landlords. He added that the late Lord Derby used to say, “Tell me what the landlords are and I will tell you what the vote will be.”

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Haddenham cum Stonea has declined in population. In 1840 the parish had nearly one thousand four hundred inhabitants. It now has about one thousand. Many went to America; now many go north into the manufacturing regions. Nor are these two villages alone in this. Jackson, the carpenter, told me of one where he had lived which, at the last census, had three hundred and thirty people. Twenty years back, he said, it had over five hundred.

Public-houses are numerous in these villages. They are mostly simple ale-houses, with such titles as the Three Horse-Shoes, the Rose and Crown, the Three Jolly Butchers. I counted at least eleven in a village of less than seven hundred people.

The wages of a farm-laborer here are under two dollars and seventy-five cents a week, and he boards himself. The cottagers on the farm where I boarded got their houses free and a rood of ground in which to plant potatoes. While at Haddenham I visited a friend in a near village, who took me to ride upon the fens, and her husband particularly desired her to show me some cottages, or laborers’ houses, that he had built. The point that I was especially to observe was the rooms provided for sleeping, there being a bedroom down-stairs and two or more above. On this subject I spoke to Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, who said that the laborers here have generally a kitchen, I believe a better room, and two chambers. She admitted that the boys and girls have to sleep in the same room.

Mrs. Benton said that if the laborer’s wife, who has a number of young children, is kind and considerate of her husband, she will try to provide him a bit of meat daily, but it will be but a little bit; and the children will not taste meat oftener than once a week.

As I have before intimated, hours of labor are easy,—farm hands getting half an hour for lunch, and an hour for dinner. (But I cannot say whether this lunch-time is allowed at other than harvest.) In hay and harvest they work overtime, and are paid for overwork.