IGNORANCE OF ENGLAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Your view of Miss Betham-Edwards's book makes me wish to follow her footsteps to these newly discovered regions where she has been wandering. And yet I share your sus- picion that she has something still to learn about peasant-life in France. But what a very little she appears to know about village life in England ! I hope this accomplished lady is not as old as I am, but she writes as if she were a great deal older. I do indeed just remember the days when the English labourer in some favoured districts " existed on 9s. a week, and Christmas doles of beef and flannel petticoats from the Hall." Alas ! that is more than fifty years ago. If there is any able- bodied villager in England whose average weekly earnings are no more than 9s. a week now, he must be a queer customer; and if he is to be met with in East Anglia, I should like to know the reason why. So should I like to know where those happy villages are where the labourers, and presumably their wives, get the " Christmas doles of beef and flannel petticoats from the Hall."
I live in the very middle of Norfolk, and taking this house as my centre, and sweeping a circle with a radius of six miles (i.e., over an area, say, of a hundred square miles), I only know• of three " Halls " occupied by their respective owners, and I know of no one where there are these fabulous " doles of beef and flannel." Miss Betham-Edwards has read of these things in story-books : so have I. But they are things of the
past, matters of ancient history. There is no fear of their reviving very speedily. The squire of romance is almost as extinct as the bustard; so is the " down-trodden serf " and,the " ragged and emaciated wife, helping out her starving husband by picking up stones at sixpence a day ;" so are the beery tenant-farmers, " stupid as their own men," who voted as they were bidden, and trembled at their landlord's name. Why will ladies go on writing as their grandmothers might have written, and while they wander over all the world for information about foreign lands, start with the firmest conviction that they have nothing to learn about the change that has been going on at home ? Some fifty years ago, a good lady of ample means was living in this parish, and at Christmas-time she did send to every labourer's cottage a Christmas pudding. As time went by, this was changed into a " dole " of beef. At her death, some twenty or thirty years • ago, her surviving daughter, then no longer resident, changed it again into the gift of a shilling sterling,—clearly a very degrading form of bribery, though with what object it is somewhat difficult to discover. But we may take comfort now at last, for mother and daughter are both in their graves, and there are no more shillings. Likewise, about thirty-five years ago or so, the largest landowner in this parish sent £5 annually at Christmas-time to the parson, to spend in blankets or clothing for poor widows and others in the receipt of parish relief; and this demoralising gift still goes on, and it gives a lady of my acquaintance a great deal of trouble when the winter-time comes round, and many an anxious calculation as to how to make it go furthest, and how to spend it most wisely. Well, what then ? What I want to know is—and I really do want to know it—who is the worse for such " doles " as these ? The poor old souls who want the blankets and the petticoats, or the shilling and the beef ? or the people who give such gifts ? or the other people who don't get them ? or the people who have the trouble of distributing them ? or the paupers in the workhouse ? or the ratepayers ? or the world at large ?
Are we never going to get rid of this silly cant about the enormity of giving " doles "? Is it always to be considered in eertain circles a proof of wit and wisdom to sneer at bestowing a flannel petticoat upon a poor old woman ? Is there some- thing shocking about giving an old fellow a Christmas dinner of beef whose weekly " relief " from the parish is eighteen- pence and half-a-stone of flour ? Is there some occult hypo- crisy or manifest self-righteousness in giving beef, when pork would do as well ? As the orators say, " I pause for a reply." —I am. Sir, &c.,
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