Part One
Now, without pretending to sum up the influence of the time-spirit on the social activities of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. What is clear is that upon me—in 1883, a woman of twenty-five—it led to a definite conclusion. From the flight of emotion away from the service of God to the service of man, and from the current faith in the scientific method, I drew the inference that the most hopeful form of social service was the craft of a social investigator. And some such conclusion seems to have been reached by many of my contemporaries. For detailed description of the life and labour of the people in all its various aspects, sensational or scientific, derived from personal observation or statistical calculation, become a characteristic feature of the publications of this period, whether newspapers or magazines, plays or novels, the reports of philanthropic organisations or the proceedings of learned societies. It may be said that this novel concentration on the social condition of the people was due neither to intellectual curiosity nor to the spirit of philanthropy, but rather to a panic fear of the newly enfranchised democracy. But this is looking at the same fact from another standpoint. For even the most fanatical Socialist asserted that his hopes for the future depended on a deliberately scientific organisation of society, combined with the growth among the whole body of the people of the desire and capacity for disinterested social service.
It was in the autumn of 1883 that I took the first step as a social investigator, though I am afraid the adventure was more a sentimental journey that a scientific exploration. What had been borne into me during my book studies was my utter ignorance of the manual-working class, that is, of four-fifths of my fellow-countrymen. During the preceding London season I had joined a Charity Organisation committee and acted as one of its visitors in the slums of Soho; but it was clear to me that these cases of extreme destitution, often distorted by drink and vice, could no more be regarded as a fair sample of the wage-earning class than the “sporting set” of London society could be considered representative, either in conduct or in intelligence, of the landed aristocracy and business and professional class, out of which its individual members had usually sprung. How was I to get an opportunity of watching, day by day, in their homes and in their workshops, a sufficient number of normal manual-working families to enable me to visualise the class as a whole; to understand what was meant by chronic poverty and insecurity of livelihood; to ascertain whether such conditions actually existed in any of a small fraction of the great body of the people? Were the manual workers what I was accustomed to call civilised? What were their aspirations, what was their degree of education, what their capacity for self-government? How had this class, without administrative training or literary culture, managed to initiate and maintain the network of Nonconformist chapels, the far-flung friendly societies, the much-abused Trade Unions, and that queer type of shop, the Co-operative store?
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
The romantic note in this adventure arose from finding, among my own kith and kin, my first chance of personal intimacy, on terns of social equality, with a wage-earning family. For out of the homesteads of the “domestic manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire had sprung the Heyworths, my mother’s family. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century some few of these master craftsmen had risen to be mill-owners and merchants, the greater number being merged in the new class of factory hands. My grandfather, Lawrence Heyworth, belonged to the master-class; but he married a pretty cousin, who had been born and bred in the home of a power-loom weaver. This unknown grandmother—she died of tuberculosis when my mother was yet a child—was, however, not the nearest tie with the humble folk of Bacup. There was the beloved old nurse and household saint, Martha Mills, nicknamed Dada, who had been selected by my grandfather at the age of eighteen to accompany my mother and her brother on their continental journey, meeting at Rome my father and his sister; she watched the coming of the marriage, and she had remained my mother’s inseparable companion until death parted them. With this explanation I fall back on entries in my diary and letters to my father during my visit to Bacup.
I have listened many a time to mother’s old stories of Bacup life as we paced up and down the walks of the Standish gardens or along the Rusland lanes.
The last time, I think, was on a March morning at Standish [a few weeks before her sudden death]. I remember well the sensation of the southwest wind and of the sweet sights and sounds of the coming spring, as I listened dreamily to those well-known tales mother loved to tell—of her grandfather who would put on his old clothes to go to the Manchester market if the times were good, and call on his wife to bring him his new hat and best coat if he felt his credit shaky; of the old grandmother sitting bolt upright in her wooden stays in her straight-backed chair, giving sage advice to her four sons; or kneeling by her bed in the midnight hours praying to her God, watched in the dim light of the moon or coming dawn by the awe-struck little Laurencina.
And the sweet old tale of mother’s first visit to Bacup.
Father and daughter arriving late after a long coach journey.
“I want my supper,” cried little Miss Heyworth as her father tried to carry her to bed. “I want my supper; I won’t go to bed without my supper.” The idea of bed supperless associated in the little woman’s mind with disgrace and punishment.
“Let be, Lawrence,” called out the tall nightcapped figure over the banister; “let the child have its supper if it will. Here, Sarah, take the child and give it some milksop, the fire will soon be blown up a bit.” So dignified little Miss Heyworth was led into the kitchen by sleepy Sarah and placed in a chair by the table, and the fire blown up a bit. But having saved her dignity, little Laurencina, dazed by the light and strangeness of the place, burst out into sobs, between which the willing Sarah distinguished “I want to go to bed, I want to go to Papa.”
Eighteen months had passed away since that March morning. Rosebud [my youngest sister], Dada, and I were sitting by the firelight in the cosy little sitting room at the Argoed [our Monmouthshire home]. I was listening again to old stories of Bacup life. Not the same old stories, but descriptions of chapel and Sunday school and long walks along dirty lanes to prayer meetings in weavers’ cottages.
“Surely, Da,” said I, turning my eyes for a moment from the fascinating scenes in a coal fire, “some of the Akeds must be our kin.” “Well, let’s see,” says our old nurse, putting her hands on her knees and meditating; “there’s John Aked, he’s a reed-maker, now out o’ work, nephew of Mrs. Heyworth. Then he’s got two brothers, James, manager of the waterworks, and William, who is, I fancy, rather queer; I don’t think he does much. Then there’s Mrs Ashworth, Miss Aked that was. I was apprenticed to her in the dressmaking line before I went to Miss Heyworth. She married James Ashworth, a mill-owner, a rich man; she’s a widow now, and what you call rather close with her money. I don’t think there’s any other of your grandmother’s relations left besides them as I have mentioned; at least I am not aware of it.
“Da,” said I, as I watched a narrow bridge of coal give way, tumble into the red-hot mass below and burst into flame; “I should dearly love to go to Bacup next time you go.” “Well, you know I can always go; there’s no occasion to wait for that,” answered the dear old woman, “but my friends up there would be astonished to see a Miss Potter coming along with me; they are not accustomed to such grand folk. I think they would be what they call ‘flayed’ by you.” “Oh!” cried I, jumping up with the delightful consciousness of an original idea, “I wouldn’t be Miss Potter, I would be Miss Jones. farmer’s daughter, near Monmouth.”
Somewhat to my surprise, the God-fearing Martha Mills eagerly agreed to carry out the “pious fraud”.
Part Two
It was a wet November evening 1883, when Mrs. Mills and Miss Jones picked their way along the irregularly paved and badly lighted back-streets of Bacup. The place seemed deserted. There was that curious stillness in the air that overtakes a purely manufacturing town when the mills with their noise and their lights are closed—the mill-hands with their free loud voices are “cleaning up” or enjoying ‘Biffin’ by their own fireside.
“There, m’am, there’s Irwell Terrace,” said Mrs. Mills as they stood for a moment on a little stone bridge, under which the small river Irwell splashed as merrily as it could, considering its free mountain descent, over bits of broken crockery, old boots and pieces of worn-out machinery; “and there’s the chapel-house adjoining it,” continued she, “where John Ashworth the chapel-keeper lives, him as we we’re going to stay with.” “Da,” said Miss Jones in an emphatic tone, “you really mustn’t call me m’m; now wait a bit and summon up your courage to tell that little lie, and remember the words of the Apostle Paul, Whatever ye do, do heartily.”
Here follow letters to my father dated November 1833:
[First letter]. We arrived at Bacup around 6:30 and found our way along very ill-lighted back-streets to this old-fashioned house at the back of the chapel. We were received by a regular old Puritan and his daughter (a mill-hand) in the most hearty fashion; prayers being offered up for our safety and spiritual well-being while under their roof. After we had enjoyed some delicious tea and home-made bread and butter, various of the elders dropped in to welcome Mrs. Mills, to whom they are evidently devoted, and who is evidently a great lady amongst them. She introduced me with the most bare-faced effrontery as “Miss Jones, farmer’s daughter who had come here to see town life and manufactures,” and they all showed themselves anxious to “lighten my ignorance” on things material and spiritual. I have been quite received into the charmed circle of artisan and small bourgeois life, and have made special friends will John Aked, a meek, gentle-hearted man who suffers from the constitutional melancholy of the Aked family. I hear that a brother and sister of Grandmamma Heyworth committed suicide, and two or three of the family have been threatened by suicidal mania. Perhaps it is from that quarter that we get our “Weltschmerz.” This morning he escorted us through Bacup, and I saw Rose Cottage and Willow Cottage, where our grandmama lived and died. Also Bankside and Fern Hill, the houses of the great Heyworth and Ormerod families. We dined with John Wooded, his wife and only son (cousins of Da’s) and I have been listening to one kind-hearted gossip interspersed with pious ejaculations and shrewd remarks on the most likely method of getting the good things of this world. Certainly, the way to see industrial life is to live amongst the workers and I am surprised at the complete way they have adopted me as one of their own class. I find it less amusing and much more interesting than I expected; and I am heartily glad that I made the venture.
[Second letter]. am going on most satisfactorily. I find a diary out of the question; one has neither the time nor the place for writing. These folk live all day in “company”; there are always some mill-hands [cotton-weavers] out of work who spend their days chatting in each other’s houses. This house, too, is the centre of chapel-goers, and is used by the relieving officer to distribute the poor-rate.
Bacup is quite a small manufacturing town. The “old gentry,” “them as really was gentry,” have disappeared, and the present manufacturers are self-made men, “who are much more greedy than the old lot.” The Whitakers still own the land, but they come only to drain the land of money, to the evident indignation of the inhabitants. The Ormerods and Heyworths were looked upon “as real gentry.” John Aked told me yesterday in a six-miles walk with him across the country (he is out of work) that “Lawrence Heyworth was one of those men who married his servant, and she was my aunt; but I’ve heard tell by those who’ve seen her, she was a bonny one to look at.” I asked him what had become of the family, and he said, I have no heard much of them, save Mrs. Potter, and people say she was an able, stirring body; you’ve a look of that, Miss Jones, far more like a male than a female to talk wi’.”
They have not as yet the slightest suspicion: the old hands look at me with admiration, “as a right useful sort of body as would be a comfort to my father,” and the young men with a certain amount of* amazement and fear. One shrewd old man smelt a rat and asked me whether my father was not a Lord, and when I told him he was just an honest farmer, he strained all my knowledge of farming by cross-questions as to stock etc.; but at last he was disarmed, and remarked that if he came south he would “coom un ‘ave a chat wi’ ye father,” and he would like to see these Welsh lasses “*if they’d all got sich white teeth and glistening ‘air” as I; but he thought we had it middling snod (smooth) wi’ ye, e’en warty (even on weekdays). The same shrewd old man told me a lot about the failure of the company mills owned by the working men; how the managers were invariably tipped to take worse goods for the same money, and how the committees of working men “got talkin’ like”.
Many of these are shut up; in fact, trade here is worse now than it has ever been but there is comparatively little poverty, and those who remain out of work move to the big towns where there are more “odd jobs.” The wife of the old man with whom we were talking was a jolly fat woman who talked such broad Lancashire that I could scarce understand her; but in the course of the evening she bashfully admitted that she “summat took a bit of backy,” whereupon I produced my cigarette case and offered the company some “Welsh cigars”. You would have laughed, father, to see me sitting among four or five millhands smoking quietly, having been voted “good company,” “interesting like” to talk wi’. Under the benign influence of tobacco the elder ones came out with the history of their lives, gave me a list of their various successive occupations, and some of them of a series of their wives. I was surprised at their fairmindedness, and at the kindliness of their view of men and things; now they all recognise that men get on from having certain qualities and that “na makin’ of laws can alter that.” This class of respectable working man takes little or no interest in politics (they have no votes); their thoughts are set on getting on in this world and the next; their conversation consists chiefly of personalities and religion. The old man and his daughter with whom we were staying are a veritable study in puritan life on its more kindly side; worth a dozen history books on the subject. We always have prayers in the evening, and I have been constituted the reader as I pronounce “so distinct like.” It is curious how completely at home I feel with these people, and how they open their hearts to me and say that I’m “the sort of woman they can talk straight away with.” I can’t help thinking that it would be as well if politicians would live among the various classes they legislate for and find out what are their wishes and ideas. It seems to me we stand the chance, in our so-called representative government, of representing and working out the wishes of the idler sort of people, who, because they have no quiet occupation absorbing their time and energy, have time and energy to make a row, and wish to alter things because they don’t fit themselves. Of course it would be absurd to generalise from such a narrow basis; but much that one sees and hears whilst living with the working men and women as one of them, sets one thinking that a little more patient observation might be advisable before carrying out great organic changes, which may or may not be right. Mere philanthropists are apt to overlook the existence of an independent working class, and when they talk sentimentally of the “people” they mean really the “ne’er-do-wells.” It is almost a pity that the whole attention of this politician should be directed toward the latter class.
(Third letter). I have just received your letter. I will certainly meet you at Manchester Monday, but don’t on any account come here; Da says they would never forgive her if they found out!
The dear people have accepted me so heartily and entertained me so hospitably as one of themselves that it would be cruel to undeceive them.
We dined the morning in a most comfortable cottage, owned by a millhand with three sons, mill-hands. The afternoon I spent in going over two or three mills, introduced by my friends to their managers, and finished up by going through the Co-op stores with their manager. I told him I had been sent by my father to enquire into the management of Co-ops, as you wanted to start one; and he took me into his counting house, showed me his books and explained the whole thing. It is entirely owned and managed by working men. Membership entails spending a certain amount there; and the dividend is paid according to the amount spent per quarter, though it is not paid out until the share is paid up through accumulation. In this way there is a double check on the management; the shareholder requiring his dividend, and the consumer requiring cheap and good articles, and, as the manager remarked, “Females look pretty sharp after that.” It has been established twenty years or more and has never paid less than 12 percent; the working expenses only come to 5 percent, on capital turned over. No member can have more than 100 pounds in stock, and any one can become a member on the payment of three shillings and sixpence entrance fee, and on the original terms. The manager gave me a graphic account of his trouble with the committee of working men; and interested me by explaining the failure of most of the Co-op mills, all of which I will tell you over our cigarettes.
We went to tea in another cottage and have just been listening to a somewhat dreary “spiritual oration” from our religiously minded host. A miner by profession, he finished up by saying that “God almighty did all things right; that ‘e’d buried the coal sa deep ‘cause if it ‘ud ben o’ the top the women would ‘ave ta’en all the cobs and left all the small.” You would be amused at my piety, dear father; yesterday, in one of the Sunday schools, I came to the rescue of a meek elderly teacher who was being pertly questioned by a forward young woman as to Adam’s responsibility for our sin. I asked here whether “she did not ‘favour’ her parents” and made her draw the rather far-fetched inference. The meek elderly man shook me warmly by the hand as we left and enquired if “he could do aught for me while I was in Bacup.” But the only way to understand these people is, for the time, to adopt their faith, and look at things in their light; then one gets a clear picture (undisturbed by any critical antagonistic spirit) of their life, both material and mental. And to me, there is a certain charm and restfulness in their simple piety and absolute ignorance of the world.
As regards the “material life” I am sometimes rather hard up for meat, and my diet is principally oatcake and cheese, with the butter that we brought with us. Every evening I have my cigarette in a rocking-chair by the kitchen fire, having persuaded my friends that all Welshwomen smoke. My host accepts a cigarette the first night, saying, “I main ’ave a bit but a bitter ull go a long wa’”; so after puffing once or twice he snuffs it out and puts it carefully on the corner of the mantelpiece for the next night: “on musna; tak too mich o’ a gude thing, fur mooney is a slattering thing (easily spent). Their income is only 1 pound a week, so that without the hospitality of neighbours we would not have much to live on. We go to Mrs. Ashworth’s tomorrow. She is universally disliked, being very rich and very close-fisted; and nobody receiving aught from her now or knowing where it will go at her death, in order to avoid paying the tax on her carriage, she has taken it off the wheels, and has some arrangement by which it is mounted when wanted: (so say her cousins). I expect a good deal of condescension from her, as when we met her the other day in the butcher’s shop, where we were paying a friendly visit, she gave me the slightest nod and did not shake hands…
[Later insertion JKH]. Two memories arise out of the above-mentioned visit to Mrs. Ashworth. In order to impress the Welsh farmer’s daughter, my purse-proud cousin brought out the photographs of her much honoured relatives, my grandfather Heyworth and his brothers and his sons and their children; luckily for me, she had no photographs of the family. And her death in 1892 without a will led to a rare example of unworldliness and moral fastidiousness on the part of these Bacup cotton operatives. No less than eighty thousand pounds was divided, according to the law of intestacy, in equal portions among her next-of-kin, who happened to be two groups of surviving first cousins; on the one hand, of eleven wage-earners, one earning less than twenty shillings a week, and, on the other, of the relatively wealthy sons of Grandmother Heyworth, the only daughter my mother, being dead. The eleven wage-earners met together, and, after prayer, decided that it was against Christian brotherhood and natural equity to monopolise this unexpected heritage, to the exclusion of the deceased first cousins; and they proceeded to divide their share in equal amounts, among themselves and some thirty of the younger generation, whose parents, being also first cousins of Mrs. Ashworth, were dead. Thus the eleven legal heirs found themselves possessed, not of thousands, but of hundreds of pounds each. they naively notified their action to the Heyworth brothers in order that these also might share out their portion with their dead sister. Needless to say, these “men of property” refused to follow suit, on the common-sense ground that “law was laws, and property was property”; and that there was no reason for them to share their own windfall with well-to-do nephews and nieces than that they should give it away to charity, which no one would expect of them.