Lark Rise to Candleford Read Online Free Page A

arrangement known in the hamlet was housed
either in a little beehive-shaped building at the bottom of the garden or in a corner
of the wood and toolshed known as 'the hovel'. It was not even an earth closet;
but merely a deep pit with a seat set over it, the half-yearly emptying of
which caused every door and window in the vicinity to be sealed. Unfortunately,
there was no means of sealing the chimneys!
    These 'privies' were as good an index as any to the
characters of their owners. Some were horrible holes; others were fairly
decent, while some, and these not a few, were kept well cleared, with the seat
scrubbed to snow-whiteness and the brick floor raddled. One old woman even went
so far as to nail up a text as a finishing touch, 'Thou God seest me'—most embarrassing
to a Victorian child who had been taught that no one must even see her approach
the door.
    In other such places health and sanitary maxims were scrawled
with lead pencil or yellow chalk on the whitewashed walls. Most of them
embodied sound sense and some were expressed in sound verse, but few were so worded
as to be printable. One short and pithy maxim may pass: 'Eat well, work well,
sleep well, and —— well once a day'.
    On the wall of the 'little house' at Laura's home pictures
cut from the newspapers were pasted. These were changed when the walls were whitewashed
and in succession they were 'The Bombardment of Alexandria', all clouds of
smoke, flying fragments, and flashes of explosives; 'Glasgow's Mournful Disaster:
Plunges for Life from the Daphne ', and 'The Tay Bridge Disaster', with
the end of the train dangling from the broken bridge over a boiling sea. It was
before the day of Press photography and the artists were able to give their
imagination full play. Later, the place of honour in the 'little house' was occupied
by 'Our Political Leaders', two rows of portraits on one print; Mr. Gladstone,
with hawklike countenance and flashing eyes, in the middle of the top row, and
kind, sleepy-looking Lord Salisbury in the other. Laura loved that picture
because Lord Randolph Churchill was there. She thought he must be the most
handsome man in the world.
    At the back or side of each cottage was a lean-to pigsty and
the house refuse was thrown on a nearby pile called 'the muck'll'. This was so situated
that the oozings from the sty could drain into it; the manure was also thrown
there when the sty was cleared, and the whole formed a nasty, smelly eyesore to
have within a few feet of the windows. 'The wind's in the so-and-so,' some
woman indoors would say, 'I can smell th' muck'll', and she would often be
reminded of the saying, 'Pigs for health', or told that the smell was a healthy
one.
    It was in a sense a healthy smell for them; for a good pig
fattening in the sty promised a good winter. During its lifetime the pig was an
important member of the family, and its health and condition were regularly
reported in letters to children away from home, together with news of their
brothers and sisters. Men callers on Sunday afternoons came, not to see the
family, but the pig, and would lounge with its owner against the pigsty door
for an hour, scratching piggy's back and praising his points or turning up
their own noses in criticism. Ten to fifteen shillings was the price paid for a
pigling when weaned, and they all delighted in getting a bargain. Some men
swore by the 'dilling', as the smallest of a litter was called, saying it was
little and good, and would soon catch up; others preferred to give a few shillings
more for a larger young pig.
    The family pig was everybody's pride and everybody's
business. Mother spent hours boiling up the 'little taturs' to mash and mix
with the pot-liquor, in which food had been cooked, to feed to the pig for its evening
meal and help out the expensive barley meal. The children, on their way home
from school, would fill their arms with sow thistle, dandelion, and choice long
grass, or roam along the hedgerows on wet evenings