The Labourer's Lot
MR. FUSSELL'S book on the English labourer is a painstaking account of a subject on which he has read and written much. It is divided into three sections—" Tudor and Stuart Times," "Georgian Times" and "The Victorian Age." In each of these he deals with the same subjects, arranged in the same order—cottages, furniture and clothing, and food. This method of treatment gives the effect of much repeti- tion, an effect which is enhanced by constant reference to his own works on the same subjects. There is also a lack of imagination and hesitation in judgement. The statement that "it had indeed been somewhat the fashion to look back to supposedly better days and Cobbett was not the least of those who did so" would carry more
conviction if more positively stated. Cobbetes views on this kind of statement would give just the salt that is lacking.
In his "conclusions" Mr. Fussell frankly says, "I think I should refrain from discussing the philosophical and abstract question of varying degrees of economic opportunity open tb the different grades of society during some four centuries." Yet it is just such a dis- cussion which would give what is lacking—an original contribution, something of his own deduced from his knowledge. By describing what is general as "abstract" he plays for safety and disappoints his readers.
An air of condescension towards others sometimes creeps in. "His statement of the conditions is quite accurate," he says of Sir John Clapham's Economic History Of Modern Britain, with an air of naive surprise, and there arc some omissions among the later works, notably Flora Thompson's first-hand accounts of cottage life in the eighteen- eighties. The bibliography is copious, but is arranged in a confusing and inconsistent way, and some of the abbreviations are unscholarly. Nevertheless Mr. Fussell has quoted widely from many sources which are difficult of access and, though much of what he writes has been written by him before, it is partially lost in periodicals. His book should prove a quarry for students and an anthology of useful and elegant extracts. The illustrations, either photographs or con- temporary prints, are a valuable addition to the text.
HELEN FITZRANDOLPH.
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