Lark Rise - Flora Thompson (read more books .TXT) 📗

because churchgoing qualified

them for the Christmas blankets and coals; and a few to worship. There

was at least one saint and mystic in that parish and there were several

good Christian men and women, but the majority regarded religion as

something proper to extreme old age, for which they themselves had as

yet no use.

 

‘About time he wer’ thinkin’ about his latter end,’ they would say of

one who showed levity when his head and beard were white, or of anybody

who was ill or afflicted. Once a hunchback from another village came to

a pig feast and distinguished himself by getting drunk and using bad

language, and, because he was a cripple, his conduct was looked upon

with horror. Laura’s mother was distressed when she heard about it. ‘To

think of a poor afflicted creature like that cursing and swearing,’ she

sighed. ‘Terrible! Terrible!’ and when Edmund, then about ten, looked up

from his book and said calmly, ‘I should think if anybody’s got a right

to swear it’s a man with a back like that,’ she told him he was nearly

as bad to say such a thing.

 

The Catholic minority at the inn was treated with respect, for a

landlord could do no wrong, especially the landlord of a free house

where such excellent beer was on tap. On Catholicism at large, the Lark

Rise people looked with contemptuous intolerance, for they regarded it

as a kind of heathenism, and what excuse could there be for that in a

Christian country? When, early in life, the end house children asked

what Roman Catholics were, they were told they were ‘folks as prays to

images’, and further inquiries elicited the information that they also

worshipped the Pope, a bad old man, some said in league with the Devil.

Their genuflexions in church and their ‘playin’ wi’ beads’ were

described as ‘monkey tricks’. People who openly said they had no use for

religion themselves became quite heated when the Catholics were

mentioned. Yet the children’s grandfather, when the sound of the Angelus

bell was borne on the wind from the chapel in the next village, would

take off his hat and, after a moment’s silence, murmur, ‘In my Father’s

house are many mansions.’ It was all very puzzling.

 

Later on, when they came to associate more with the other children, on

the way to Sunday school they would see horses and traps loaded with

families from many miles around on their way to the Catholic church in

the next village. ‘There go the old Catholics!’ the children would cry,

and run after the vehicles shouting: ‘Old Catholics! Old lick the cats!’

until they had to fall behind for want of breath. Sometimes a lady in

one of the high dogcarts would smile at them forbearingly, otherwise no

notice was taken.

 

The horses and traps were followed at a distance by the young men and

big boys of the families on foot. Always late in starting, yet always in

time for the service, how they legged it! The children took good care

not to call out after them, for they knew, whatever their haste, the boy

Catholics would have time to turn back and cuff them. It had happened

before. So they let them get on for quite a distance before they started

to mock their gait and recite in a snuffling sing-song:

 

‘O dear Father, I’ve come to confess.’

‘Well, my child, and what have you done?’

‘O dear Father. I’ve killed the cat.’

‘Well, my child, and what about that?’

‘O dear Father, what shall I do?’

‘You kiss me and I’ll kiss you.’

 

a gem which had probably a political origin, for the seeds of their

ignorant bigotry must have been sown at some time. Yet, strange to say,

some of those very children still said by way of a prayer when they went

to bed:

 

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

Bless the bed where I lie on.

Four corners have I to my bed;

At them four angels nightly spread.

One to watch and one to pray

And one to take my soul away.

 

At that time many words, phrases, and shreds of customs persisted which

faded out before the end of the century. When Laura was a child, some of

the older mothers and the grandmothers still threatened naughty children

with the name of Cromwell. ‘If you ain’t a good gal, old Oliver

Crummell’ll have ‘ee!’ they would say, or ‘Here comes old Crummell!’

just as the mothers of southern England threatened their children with

Napoleon. Napoleon was forgotten there; being far from the sea-coast,

such places had never known the fear of invasion. But the armies of the

Civil War had fought ten miles to the eastward, and the name still

lingered.

 

The Methodists were a class apart. Provided they did not attempt to

convert others, religion in them was tolerated. Every Sunday evening

they held a service in one of their cottages, and, whenever she could

obtain permission at home, it was Laura’s delight to attend. This was

not because the service appealed to her; she really preferred the church

service; but because Sunday evening at home was a trying time, with the

whole family huddled round the fire and Father reading and no one

allowed to speak and barely to move.

 

Permission was hard to get, for her father did not approve of ‘the

ranters’; nor did he like Laura to be out after dark. But one time out

of four or five when she asked, he would grunt and nod, and she would

dash off before her mother could raise any objection. Sometimes Edmund

would follow her, and they would seat themselves on one of the hard,

white-scrubbed benches in the meeting house, prepared to hear all that

was to be heard and see all that was to be seen.

 

The first thing that would have struck any one less accustomed to the

place was its marvellous cleanliness. The cottage walls were whitewashed

and always fresh and clean. The everyday furniture had been carried out

to the barn to make way for the long white wooden benches, and before

the window with its drawn white blind stood a table covered with a linen

cloth, on which were the lamp, a large Bible, and a glass of water for

the visiting preacher, whose seat was behind it. Only the clock and a

pair of red china dogs on the mantelpiece remained to show that on other

days people lived and cooked and ate in the room. A bright fire always

glowed in the grate and there was a smell compounded of lavender,

lamp-oil, and packed humanity.

 

The man of the house stood in the doorway to welcome each arrival with a

handshake and a whispered ‘God bless you!’ His wife, a small woman with

a slight spinal curvature which thrust her head forward and gave her a

resemblance to an amiable-looking frog, smiled her welcome from her seat

near the fireplace. In twos and threes, the brethren filed in and took

their accustomed places on the hard, backless benches. With them came a

few neighbours, not of their community, but glad to have somewhere to

go, especially on wet or cold Sundays.

 

In the dim lamplight dark Sunday suits and sad-coloured Sunday gowns

massed together in a dark huddle against the speckless background, and

out of it here and there eyes and cheeks caught the light as the

brethren smiled their greetings to each other.

 

If the visiting preacher happened to be late, which he often was with a

long distance to cover on foot, the host would give out a hymn from

Sankey and Moody’s Hymn-Book, which would be sung without musical

accompaniment to one of the droning, long-drawn-out tunes peculiar to

the community. At other times one of the brethren would break into

extempore prayer, in the course of which he would retail the week’s news

so far as it affected the gathering, prefacing each statement with ‘Thou

knowest’, or ‘As thou knowest, Lord’. It amused Laura and Edmund to hear

old Mr. Barker telling God that it had not rained for a fortnight and

that his carrot bed was getting ‘mortal dry’; or that swine fever had

broken out at a farm four miles away and that his own pig didn’t seem

‘no great shakes’; or that somebody had mangled his wrist in a turnip

cutter and had come out of hospital, but found it still stiff; for, as

they said to each other afterwards, God must know already, as He knew

everything. But these one-sided conversations with the Deity were

conducted in a spirit of simple faith. ‘Cast your care upon Him’ was a

text they loved and took literally. To them God was a loving Father who

loved to listen to His children’s confidences. No trouble was too small

to bring to ‘the Mercy Seat’.

 

Sometimes a brother or a sister would stand up to ‘testify’, and then

the children opened their eyes and ears, for a misspent youth was the

conventional prelude to conversion and who knew what exciting

transgressions might not be revealed. Most of them did not amount to

much. One would say that before he ‘found the Lord’ he had been ‘a

regular beastly drunkard’; but it turned out that he had only taken a

pint too much once or twice at a village feast; another claimed to have

been a desperate poacher, ‘a wild, lawless sort o’ chap’; he had snared

an occasional rabbit. A sister confessed that in her youth she had not

only taken a delight in decking out her vile body, forgetting that it

was only the worm that perishes; but, worse still, she had imperilled

her immortal soul by dancing on the green at feasts and club outings,

keeping it up on one occasion until midnight.

 

Such mild sins were not in themselves exciting, for plenty of people

were still doing such things and they could be observed at first hand;

but they were described with such a wealth of detail and with such

self-condemnation that the listener was for the moment persuaded that he

or she was gazing on the chief of sinners. One man, especially, claimed

that pre-eminence. ‘I wer’ the chief of sinners,’ he would cry; ‘a real

bad lot, a Devil’s disciple. Cursing and swearing, drinking and

drabbing, there were nothing bad as I didn’t do. Why, would you believe

it, in my sinful pride, I sinned against the Holy Ghost. Aye, that I

did,’ and the awed silence would be broken by the groans and ‘God have

mercy’s of his hearers while he looked round to observe the effect of

his confession before relating how he ‘came to the Lord’.

 

No doubt the second part of his discourse was more edifying than the

first, but the children never listened to it; they were too engrossed in

speculations as to the exact nature of his sin against the Holy Ghost,

and wondering if he were really as thoroughly saved as he thought

himself; for, after all, was not that sin unpardonable? He might yet

burn in hell. Terrible yet fascinating thought!

 

But the chief interest centred in the travelling preacher, especially if

he were a stranger who had not been there before. Would he preach the

Word, or would he be one of those who rambled on for an hour or more,

yet said nothing? Most of these men, who gave up their Sunday rest and

walked miles to preach at the village meeting houses, were farm

labourers or small shopkeepers. With a very few exceptions they were

poor, uneducated men. ‘The blind leading the blind,’ Laura’s father said

of them. They may have been unenlightened in some respects, but some of

them had gifts no education could have given. There was something fine