In a Green Shade | Page 8

parson
used to hold, and does still when he takes the trouble to qualify for it. If
I can't always tell them what to do I may be able to put them in the way
of the man who can. One learns how to make a dictionary of life as one
gets on in it. Another use which they can have of me: I can tell them
how to put their requests or demands. They have no sense whatever of
a written language.
I must not betray confidences, or I could relate some curious matters on
this head. I know, for instance, a farmer who is worth a couple of
hundred thousand at the least, and who can neither write nor read. He
has learned somehow a cross between a scratch and a blot which is
accepted as a signature to cheques--but no more than that. And there is
no harm in saying that I often need an interpreter. I had a case the other
night when a man I know brought in a friend for consultation--a youth
of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type, rather rare here, who came
from a village still more remote from the world than this one. Not one
word of his fluent and frequent speeches could I understand. It was
largely a question of intonation I believe--but there it was.
He had the wild, inspired look of a savage. He again could neither read
nor write, though he must have been at school within the last ten or
twelve years; but, as I think I have said elsewhere, it is not uncommon
for boys to go through the school course and fail to pass the standards.
There are here two families in particular, admirable workmen, who for
two generations have left school without having acquired either writing
or reading. One wonders deeply what kind of processes go on in the
minds of these fine young men, steady workmen, as they are, good
husbands, kind fathers, useful citizens oftener than not. What is their
conception of God, of human destiny? How does Religion get at them?
Or does it? Shall we ever know? Not if Mr. Hardy cannot tell us. No
other poet of peasant origin has done so--neither Clare, nor Blomfield,
nor even Burns. Mr. Hardy has told us something, and might have told
us a good deal more if by the time he had learned his craft, he had not

learned to be chiefly interested in himself. That is the way of poets.
Then there's The Shropshire Lad, a fake perhaps, since its author was
not a peasant, but a divine little book. The Shropshire Lad is morbid,
unless lads are so in Shropshire--in which case they, too, are morbid;
but it is a golden book of whose beauty and felicity I never tire.
Technically it is by far the most considerable thing since _In
Memoriam_: "Loveliest of trees, the Cherry," makes me cry for sheer
pleasure. But it is haunted by the fear of death and old age; it is afraid
of love; it is sometimes cynical--none of which things are true of youth
in Salop or Salonika. The young peasant is a fatalist to the core; but
fatalists are not afraid of death. Youth is ephemeral and so is the young
peasant. He is always happy when the sun is out.
As for love, it is truly the hot-and-cold disease with him. He is himself
his "own fever and pain," like the rest of us; but I think love is a
physical passion, until marriage. After marriage it may grow into
something very beautiful indeed, and the more beautiful for being
incapable of bodily utterance. I have a pair often under my eye down
here who are, I know, all in all to each other; yet their conversation is
that of two old gossips. But at fortunate moments I may induce one of
them to tell of the other, and then you find out. My Village Wife was no
imagination of mine. She lives and suffers not so many miles from
where I write. Indeed, you may say of our peasantry very much what
French people will tell you of their marriage custom, that love at its
best follows that ceremony. It is not bred by romance, but by intimacy.
The romantic attachment flames up, and satiety quenches it. The other
kind glows red-hot but rarely breaks into a flame. You may have which
you choose: you are lucky indeed if you get both.
To return, however, to dialect, intonation, as I say, has much to do with
it. It is attractive, and in poetry can be very touching. I have had the
advantage of hearing Barnes's poems read by a lady who has the accent
perfectly. One does not know Barnes or