A Poor Man's House.

by Stephen Sydney Reynolds.

PREFACE

The substance of "A Poor Man's House" was first recorded in a journal, kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of the friends to whom the book is dedicated. Fiction, however, showed itself an inappropriate medium. I was unwilling to cut about the material, to modify the characters, in order to meet the exigencies of plot, form, and so on. I felt that the life and the people were so much better than anything I could invent. Besides which, I found myself in possession of conclusions, hot for expression, which could not be incorporated at all into fiction. "A Poor Man's House" consists then of the journal and letters, subjected to such slight re-arrangement as should enable me to draw the truest picture I could within the limits of one volume.

Primarily the book aims at presenting a picture of a typical poor man's house and life. Incidentally, certain conclusions are expressed which--needless to say--are very tentative and are founded not alone on _this_ poor man's house. Of the book as a picture, it is not the author's place to speak. But its opinions, and the manner of arriving at them, do require some explanation; the right to hold such opinions some substantiation.

Educated people usually deal with the poor man's life deductively; they reason from the general to the particular; and, starting with a theory, religious, philanthropic, political, or what not, they seek, and too easily find, among the millions of poor, specimens--very frequently abnormal--to ill.u.s.trate their theories. With anything but human beings, that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do, and leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to possess souls--untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists.

The inductive method--reasoning from the particular to the general--though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. Chained dogs bite worst.

For myself, I can only claim--I only want to claim--that I have lived among poor people without preconceived notions or _parti pris_; neither as parson, philanthropist, politician, inspector, sociologist nor statistician; but simply because I found there a home and more beauty of life and more happiness than I had met with elsewhere. So far as is possible to a man of middle-cla.s.s breeding, I have lived their life, have shared their interests, and have found among them some of my closest and wisest friends. Perhaps I may reasonably antic.i.p.ate one type of criticism by adding that I have felt something of the pinch and hardship of the life, as well as enjoyed its picturesqueness. Since the book was first written, it has fallen to me, on an occasion of illness, to take over for some days all the housekeeping and cooking; and I have worked on the boats sometimes fifteen hours a day, not as an amateur, but for hard and--what is more to the point--badly-needed coin. It took the gilt off the gingerbread, but it didn't spoil the gingerbread!

Would it were possible to check by ever so little the cla.s.s-conceit of those people who think that they can manage the poor man's life better than he can himself; who would take advantage of their education to play ducks and drakes with his personal affairs. For it is my firm belief that in the present phase of national evolution, and as regards the things that really matter, the educated man has more to learn of the poor man than to teach him. Even Nietzsche, the philosopher of aristocracy, went so far as to say that _in the so-called cultured cla.s.ses, the believers in 'modern ideas,' nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet there is more_ relative _n.o.bility of taste, and more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower cla.s.ses of the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading_ demi-monde _of intellect, the cultured cla.s.s_.

S. R.

SEACOMBE, 1908.

_A POOR MAN'S HOUSE_

I

EGREMONT VILLAS, SEACOMBE, _April_.

1

The sea is merely grinding against the shingle. The _Moondaisy_ lies above the sea-wall, in the gutter, with her bottom-boards out and a puddle of greenish water covering her garboard strake. Her hunchbacked Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season.

They are dispirited and lazy, and very likely hungry.

These old lodgings of mine, with their smug curtains, aspidestria plant, china vases and wobbly tables and chairs....

But I can hear the sea-gulls screaming, even here.

2

[Sidenote: _GEORGE GONE TO SEA_]

Yesterday morning I met young George Widger, now grown very lanky but still cat-like in his movements. He was parading the town with a couple of his mates, attired in a creased blue suit with a wonderful yellow scarf around his neck, instead of the faded guernsey and ragged sea-soaked trousers in which he used to come to sea. What was up? I asked his father, and Tony had a long rigmarole to tell me. George had got a sweetheart. Therefore George had begun to look about him for a sure livelihood. George was not satisfied with a fisherman's prospects.

"Yu works and drives and slaves, and don't never get no forarder." So George had gone to the chief officer of coastguards without saying a word to his father and had been found fit. George had joined the Navy.

He was going off to Plymouth that very day at dinner-time.

It is like a knight of romance being equipped by his lady for the wars.

But what must be the difficulty to a young fisherman of earning his bread and cheese, when all he can do for his sweetheart is to leave her forthwith! There's a fine desperation in it.

Tony seemed rather proud. "They 'ouldn't think as I had a son old enough for the Navy, wude they, sir? I married George's mother, her that's dead, when I wer hardly olden'n he is. I should ha' joined the Navy meself if it hadn' been for the rheumatic fever what bent me like.

I am. 'Tis a sure thing, you see--once yu'm in it an' behaves yourself--wi' a pension at the end o'it. But I'm so strong an'

capable-like for fishing as them that's bolt upright, on'y I 'ouldn't ha' done for the Navy. Aye! the boy's right. Fishing ain't no job for a man nowadays; not like what it used to be. They'll make a man of him in the Navy."

In the evening, after dark, I saw Tony again. He was standing outside a brilliantly lighted grocer's shop, his cap awry as usual, and a reefer thrown over his guernsey. Something in the despondency of his att.i.tude haled me across the road. "Well, Tony? George is there by now?"

"Iss ... I-I-I w-wonder what the boy's thinking o'it now...."

The man was crying his heart out. "I come'd hereto 'cause it don' seem 's if I can stay in house. Went in for some supper a while ago, but I cuden' eat nort. 'Tisn' 's if he'd ever been away from home before, yu know."

"Come along down to the Sh.o.r.e Road, Tony."

It seemed wrong, hardly decent, to let his grief spend itself in the lighted-up street. The Front was deserted and dark, for there was rain in the wind, and the sound of the surf had a quick savage chop in it.

Away, over the sea, was a great misty blackness.

As we walked up and down, Tony talked between tears and anger--tears for himself and George, anger at the cussedness of things. He looked straight before him, to where the row of lamps divided the lesser from the greater darkness, the town noises from the chafing surf; it is the only time I have ever seen a fisherman walk along sh.o.r.e without a constant eye on the sea.

"He's taken and gone away jest as he was beginning to be o' some use wi' the boats, an' I thought he wer settling down. _I_ didn' know what wer going on, not till he came an' told me he wer off. But 'tisn'

that, though I bain't so strong as I was to du all the work be meself; 'tis what he's a-thinking now he've a-lef' home an' 'tis tu late to come back if he wants tu. He's ther, sure 'nuff, an' that's all about it."

In the presence of grief, we are all thrown back on the fine old plat.i.tudes we affect to despise. "You mustn't get down over it, Tony,"

I said. "That won't make it a bit the better. If he's steady--woman, wine and the rest--he'll get on right enough. He's got his wits about him; knows how to sail a boat and splice a rope. That's the sort they want in the Navy, I suppose. _He_'ll make his way, never fear. Think how you'll trot him out when he comes home on leave. Why, they say a Devon man's proper place is the Navy."

"Iss, they du. _I_ should ha' been there meself if it hadn' been for the rheumatics--jest about coming out on a pension now, or in the coastguards. I _be_ in the Royal Naval Reserve, but I ain't smart enough, like, for the Navy. The boy...."

"He's as smart and strong as they make 'em."

"Aye! he's smart, or cude be, but he'll hae to mind what he's a-doin'

there. _They_ won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me.

Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey [cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed like he was at home nuther, when us had it."

[Sidenote: _GROG AS A SLEEPING DRAUGHT_]

"Why don't you go to bed and sleep, Tony?"

"How can I sleep wi' me head full o' what the boy's thinking o'it all!"

More walking and he calmed down a little.

"Come and have some hot grog for a sleeping draught, Tony, and then go home to bed."

"Had us better tu?"

"Come along, man; then if you go straight to bed you'll sleep."