BOOKS.
LITTLE HODGE.* WHEN a book has already reached its thirteenth thousand, it is a little late to call attention to its pages, yet our inadvertent delay in noticing the little volume before us has its advantages, inasmuch as we may hope our readers will be already acquainted with the points on which we wish specially to comment. Little Hodge is decidedly the ablest book Mr. Jenkins has yet produced. Weighted with the responsibility which the reception accorded to Ginx's Baby has thrown upon him, his judgment has matured, and there is an absence of the crude and rash statements which, in spite of its intrinsic merits disfigured the earlier volume, as, for instance, we remember that satire on what the author was pleased to call the
Timbuctoo question,' in which he lashes the English Govern- ment for sending an expedition to punish a Sheikh who had shut 'up an Englishman, and thereby wasted ten millions sterling, one- -tenth of which Mr. Jenkins considered would have saved a hundred thousand people from starvation at home. We think the reference was to the Abyssinian war. Anyway, the author forgot that if his philanthropic schemes, with regard to emigration, &c., were to have any solid foundation at all, the life and property of every Englishman must first be made secure from outrage. The ten millions spent about what Mr. Jenkins was pleased to call one Englishman, has probably secured the safety of more than the hundred thousand about whose welfare he is so careful. But as we have remarked, the present volume is entirely without these shallow statements. Mere theories have a smaller space, and we are brought face to face with a few stern facts, the dark shadows lof which are only made the deeper by the tender humour which lights up almost every page. And yet, in common with so many philanthropists, Mr. Jenkins hardly perceives how wide the ques- tion is he tries to cover with his hand. It is quite as well for the -world, perhaps, that he does not. The men who see farthest are not generally those who accomplish most—Mr. Matthew Arnold, notwithstanding—it is the man of one idea who manages to see some one evil, and maybe stamp it out, while the man who sees a hundred looks on bewildered, or tries to plough very earthly furrows with the horses of the Sun. For the present moment, our author sees only the badness of the Poor-law, the tyranny of Guardians, and the oppression of the labourer, and as anyone who knows any- thing of the facts knows full well, he finds it easy enough to bring in a true bill to prove his case. There is another side,—had Mr. -Jenkins perceived it, his work would have lost half its value. We do not envy the man—cold critic though he be—who could read the story before us unmoved ; yet it is one which comes before some of as continually. How is John Hodge, with nine shillings a week, to maintain a wife and eleven children? Add up all he and his eldest boy will earn in money, add gratuities in kind, and • Little Hodge. By the Author of " Ginx's Baby." London: Henry S. King & Co.
imagine him to live in a house rent free, and we have an estimate of thirty-five pounds a year, upon which to clothe, feed, and if possible, educate this family. The present writer has known great districts in which, till within the last five years, this was the largest income obtainable by the married farm labourer, and was accustomed to hear kindly-disposed people, to whom this sum re- presented scarcely their own household expenses for a week, assert that it was not only possible, but easy for Hodge and his family to maintain themselves upon it, and they would be somewhat sad at " the want of thrift in the poor," if old age or sickness surprised them unprovided for. Of course, we are now dealing with facts, not theories. In theory it would be easy to suggest that an educated John Hodge, brought up with a full acquaintance with all the first principles of political economy, and the foresight of possible calamity which all such knowledge brings, might think twice before he married at twenty on nine shillings a week ; but clearly Hodge as he is will not so forecast, and maybe if he did, would argue with a wisdom not learned in the schools that' Meary would help him to save more, an' she would help him to spend.' As a story, Little Hodge is simply perfect. The diminutive child born in the workhouse, the mother's death, the father's stunned incre- dulity that such a blow could have fallen upon him, " Ee doant zay my Meary's dead, Tummas? Ee doant mean that, Tumrnas ! My Meary dead? Dead, Tummas ? Ee doant zay zo, do e'e ? " The man was bereft. His most expensive luxury was gone." The Board of Guardians, as it sits to decide the fate of the tiny morsel of humanity left under its control—the individuals who form that Board—are admirably described. Perhaps the best touch in the book is the extreme High-Church curate, as he is seen from the Presbyterian's point of view. The man whom the people re- garded with aversion as a Papist, and " whose antics, both in the church and out of it, gave some ground for that suspicion. There were many who thought him duly qualified for the kingdom of heaven in one respect,—he had become a fool for the sake of it," a man of whose visits to his motherless children Hodge hears with a soft of contemptuous gratitude. " Aw, doan't ee mind un, Meary ; 'tain't tha paarson, 'tis tha cureit. Thay do zaay he ain't oaver bright in tha yead, thof a tries to do a dale o' good, so I'm towld." And yet in the days that were to come, this weak man, with his tender, sensitive nature and burning zeal, turned to account by the shrewd, practical Yankee who crosses his path, was the visible providence of the little ones of Coddleton.
The greatest pessimist that lives will hardly deny that the triumph of the new over the old in our rural villages is an almost unmitigated triumph of the good over evil. Take the one question of water. Ten years ago, in the Coddleton of Mr. Jenkins' story, and in hundreds of Coddletons besides, the people's only water supply was from some impure stream, poisoned with the refuse of the village ;—now the worst hamlet in an Essex roding has its " drinking fountain." And though there are still dark corners in the land where such things are unknown, their number is fast diminishing. And the village rector who
neglects these questions finds small heed paid to his other minis- trations. In Farmer Jolly, Mr. Jenkins has given us a coarse but, we fear, over-true sketch of a certain class, of whom it is not too much to say, we trust, a generation hence shall look for it and it shall not be found. There is not, we believe, in the country a man so far removed from "sweetness and light" as the ordinary small tenant-farmer. There are of course exceptions to such a rule as this, but as a class the small tenant-farmers are coarse and ignorant, and when not sober, often cruel. We wish the picture of Jolly thrashing Hodge with the loaded plough-whip were an impossible one, or that Jolly penitent taking charge of Hodge's
children were equally common. But scientific farming, co-operative labour, the actual necessities involved in the very conditions of our present life, are fast changing all this, and we may yet see the day when the ploughman shall take his place by the side of the skilled artisan, with, what he sorely lacks at present, a language and a hope in common. It is that hopelessness that makes the case terrible. Hodge in his despair thinks of a land of which he
has heard, and with those eleven starving and ragged children thinks of the possibilities of helping them by flight. But it is hard to turn his back on the old home :— " 'God bless ee, Meary dear ! How like she do look to her mother ! God knaves it cuts my heart, Meary, to turn my back on ee an' leave ee to thyself wi' sal the rest—'t do, 't do ! But I ken't help it; how ken I? Theer, if I goes, tha Perrish'll taake keer on'em, and naebbe eddicate'em, and give 'em a staart tha worold ; but vor my part, what coed I do vur 'em but staarve 'era? ' He bent over the sleeping girl ' Meary,' said he ' good-hwye. It pricks I terrible to leave ee, Meary, and a drop from his eye fell on her cheek. It disturbed her. She half opened her eyes, but she was heavy with weariness and turned away
her head again, unconscious that she had received a parting tribute of her father's love.—Then John Hodge stood up with his head touching the rafter, and said solemnly—'If so be that Godamitoy do bless me wheer I'm a goin' in furrin pearts, an' I've a luck o' good waagos, an'
sich a living as'Il zuffice to keep us aal comfortable en Benedy, zend hwoam vur oe aal; I wull, so help me God ' said John Hodge, adopting a Court phrase. And then with no ascending or descending angels visible to him, no voice of Bethel ringing in his ears, he went down the stairs, and, how he knew not, laced up the huge clogs, seized the stick and bundle, and driving his old felt hat down tightly over his brow, turned his back on his home, his children, his parish, his parson, his master, the Guardians, and the British Poor-law."
Small wonder that when the Radical young barrister, who knew the minutest circumstances of Hodge's history, saw him brought back as a rogue and a vagabond, and heard him sentenced as a man who had basely abandoned his little ones, and found himself, moreover, powerless to interfere, " he squirmed in his seat." But Hodge's tragic death did what the tragedy of his life had been powerless to accomplish, woke up the slumbering conscience in squire and farmer, and a new day rose on Coddleton, as it has risen on many a village with which we are all acquainted. But the working-out of the Poor-law is still the curse of many a country-side, both where it relieves and where it oppresses. A few days since, the present writer, walking with a country rector through the fields of his parish,—an able-bodied, healthy- looking man, with a downcast expression, or absence of expression, in his eyes, passed them. " One of your bucolic friends," was the remark. " Humph !" was the reply, "something worse than that ; that man has a wife and family, and never does a stroke of work through the winter." " What then ?" " Why they all go into the House for six or seven months, and in the summer do a little odd work. When he came out this spring he went up to —, and asked for a little straw for himself and his wife to sleep on." There is no need to interpret a parable like that., and many such are written just now on the hearth of thinking men up and down the country. There has been enough, perhaps more than enough, of the play of free-thought around the question. The rising generation in our agricultural districts can never be what their fathers have been. The clergy for the last five-and-twenty years, whatever their differences of opinion, have been a law unto themselves, and in almost every
village of many districts the attendance of the children at school has been nearly as compulsory as it can ever be under the " Act." The first result of that fact has been the extensive migration and emigration from all rural districts of the more intelligent part of the population. But improved farming will increase the demand for skilled labour, and skilled labour can always demand a remune- rative rate of wage, so that the prosperity of the country is in
small danger, though fifty farms be merged in one, and the shriek of the engine take the place of the crack of the plough-whip, and Capital be king, a king less tyrannous than poverty, disease, and ignorance. And meanwhile, the men who help to make these things understood are doing good service, and of such is the author of Little Hodge.
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