by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #19 (08 May 1847).
I have often thought, amongst many other things, that the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, though hackneyed to satiety as far as parrot words from parrot lips go, is pervaded by a philosophy, sublime and touching, because speaking great universal truth, whose harmony is only limited by the capacity of him who listens. Gray knew, as most great natures know as if by intuition, how much of universal power flows on to waste and to decay; and how little has yet been done to conserve all the great elements fashioned and given for the exaltation and happiness of man both spiritually and materially. But the divine part of progress is, that it is and will be one grand conservation of all that is good and beautiful! How many sunsets there have been that, sinking on the mountain-tops and on the ocean pathway, have been lost to thousand eyes; how many summer winds have been one great breath of flowers, and yet have wasted under the great sweep of heaven, lost to the sense of man; how many summer days have passed away in all their glory unenjoyed by million men; how many flowers have drooped to earth unreverenced by the eyes of man; how many fruits, luscious, grateful, and tempting, have rotted from the clustering branch and weltered on the ground; how many an acre wide of indigenous fruitfulness has grown sear and rustled in the autumn winds, uncropped and unregarded; how many fountains have flowed on and yet untasted; how many rivers have for ages swept onward to the ocean, bearing on their bosoms green pastoral slips of islands, winding through rich savannahs, and darkened here with sylvan roof of broad branched trees, and yet all lost to man; how many leagues of earth, savannah, prairie, mountain and forest, are yet waste, uninhabited, and drear; and in their soil how much force of nature perishes and is latent—and yet what are all these to the great tragedy of what is lost and waste of man! Man, the greatest wonder-work of nature! How many elements of his divinity have sunk to earth unknown; how much of his great poetry of heart, how much of noble honesty, how much of truth, how much disregard of self, how much of charity, how much of angel-service, gone, unknown, and all without a sign—unless it be that heaven keeps register of excellence! And yet—and yet—these are not so much tragedy, as that man, with capacity for thought, with capacity for knowledge, with capacity for truth, should sink with these sublime elements to earth untaught. This is indeed EARTH'S WORST TRAGEDY!
Of all the baby children in a far off country village, none was ruddier, or had a braver heart, than little Joe Beech, the child of a poor clod-hopping ploughman. In fact all were clod-hoppers in this district, which was a genuine English agricultural one, made up of a few large farms, one great estate belonging to an absent country squire, and about five hundred acres of the richest arable land in the county, called the "school-gift," given years before by some old yeoman, that the children of this, his parish, should be taught grace towards God and man; and the residue, if there were any, to become the right of a certain great college, as a reward for "their clerkly care and trusteeship of this land." But by some odd sort of management or another, these five hundred broad acres, though they now produced tenfold what they did in the days of the testator, were only just profitable enough to prop up and thatch every dozen years or so the old school-house, allow a few buns every Easter to the breeched and unbreeched urchins, give twenty pounds a year to the schoolmaster, who for the last century had been usually some outworn servant or dependant of the squire, and allow the churchwardens once a year, at what was called the "school dinner," to get roaring drunk at the village ale-house. But possibly this was right, for the certain college above mentioned had through this century sent forth editions of the most learned of the Greek fathers, correct in flexion and voice; whilst the clodhoppers, scant in A B C, progressed nevertheless in the arts of poaching, drunkenness, and other profanity, that met with due record in the rural magistrates' books. The Greek fathers gloried in vellum and gold: the people of this district perished to God and man!
Well, with all the drunkenness and immorality peculiar to this district, Joe Beech's father was a decent man, though nothing more than a poor ploughman on the "school-gift," receiving, as the case might be, his nine or ten shillings every Saturday night from one of the churchwardens. His garden was the most thriving in the village; for he dug, and cropped, and worked, whilst many of his neighbours roared round the smithy fire, or brawled in the ale-house; and he had a cow, and kept a few ducks and geese in the village pool. But then there were seven young children, and these made the loaf a scanty one. So as soon as little Joe, for he was the eldest, could take care of himself, he was off all summertime with the cow in the lanes, letting it pasture under the broad hedgerows, whilst he cut for fodder the grass above its reach, and filled an old bag which his father fetched at night.
Many a summer morning, whilst the ploughman trod the "school acres," thinking of the large harvests they yielded for that great "place of learning" far away, there would be sure to come up some thought about little Joe as well. So as soon as the next little lad was able to herd the cow, and fill the bag, Joe was put down in the churchwarden's books, and sent to school. For the first week he did not like school a bit; all was so dull and irksome there; but by chance hearing a travelling pedlar read some scrap of news out of an old newspaper to his father, he took to the old thumbed schoolbook, and in a week was up at the top of the ABC class. It was observable that most of the village lads got on pretty sharply, till they reached the Testament-class. In that they all stuck fast, for the truth was, the Testament was the fullest extent of the master's learning; and over this he so hesitated, droned, and often fell asleep, that as sure as a boy began to spell out the Gospel of St. Matthew, or St. John, he took to playing the truant out of school, or the tyrant in it. However, Joe got on so sharply, that by harvest he could spell words of two syllables, and might soon have reached the sticking-fast place of the Testament, but that his father met with a severe accident, was confined to his bed, and little Joe, after a six weeks' schooling, had to help the common funds by herding cattle for a farmer. It was a sad sorrow to the little lad; he had hoped by winter time to read as well as the pedlar. So from day to day he was solitary on the uplands with his cattle, and time seemed very weary, and the hours very long. One day as he was herding within range of a coppice, his eyes wearily ranging round the horizon, sometimes following the flight of a bird or the shadows of the sun, he saw a bunch of hazel-nuts dipping from their leaves. He looked, and looked again—not caring to pluck, but rather seeing beauty in their shape and hue. Next day he brought a piece of old wood, and carved a rude copy of the bunch. Then on another piece of wood he carved it with its foliage; very rude to be sure, but this was better than idleness. So on from the hazel-nuts to other things, a bird, a cow, a dog, till Joe Beech's "knife work" was quite in request among the village lads. After along illness, that made a heavy doctor's bill, Joe's father got to work again; and when in a year or two the few debts were lessened, the lad went back to school. His narrow earnings could be ill spared; but then Joe had been so good, that his father could not keep from his wish of letting Joe read as well as the pedlar, or even cipher as well as the exciseman. So Joe went back to school, and into the A B C class; for what little he had learnt had been long forgotten. Yet he went on bravely now, till the Testament was begun; then, like the others, he stuck fast, for what the master could not teach, the scholars could not learn; and this the lad, ignorant as he was, pretty soon knew. So he played truant with the rest, and of this the old man never complained, he could sleep the longer. One day the exciseman coming his rounds, crossed the church-yard, and stopped at the school-house.
"Well, schoolmaster," says he, putting his head in at the door, "how dost thee get on, and how the lads?"
"Why, I'm. pretty sharp," he answers, "considering the times. And the lads, why, bless ye, they get on surprising. Hallo, boys, you fourth class, get up and show Mr. Tapp your learning. Now—be quiet—spell goose—goose I say."
"G—Go—G-u-s-e," spelt a boy.
"Very good, Jack, go to the top of the class. I see you'll know goose when you taste it. Now you third boy, spell apple-pudding." And the old man rubbed his hands and looked triumphantly at the exciseman.
"H-a—"
"Hallo you there, Ned," Ned was abashed, so the expert boy took up the word.
"Ap-el," very good, "p-u-ed-en—pudding."
"Very good boy, very good boy.[1] Well Mr. Tapp, getting on nicely, ain't they?"
"Well, I don't know," roared the exciseman, till he was red in the face, "in my time, they spelt goose and apple-pudding differently."
"Ay! ay!" interrupted the old man, "people's got a new way for most things, and for spelling in the bargain, I reckon."
The exciseman roared himself out of the school-house, and the whole way up the village street. And the wrong spelling and the right spelling were matter for gossip that night by the smithy fire, and on the ale-house bench. And here the exciseman went so far as to expostulate with the churchwardens.
"Why, after all," they argued, "what do lads want with larning? They're bad enough already, maister. And it don't do to say a word agin the squire's and the college people's 'pinions."
Whether Joe would have played the truant and blotted paper after this I do not know; for his father getting wet, had a relapse, and died a few weeks after this circumstance. Here was an end to all Joe's prospects of learning, even had there been teachers; for he went forthwith to the plough, and to farm drudgery; it was the only chance there was of saving his mother from the parish. As he boarded at home, there was the patch of garden ground and the cow to see after, even when the day's work was over; still, with all this, there was often a spare half-hour that might have been better spent than in the village street, or by the smithy fire, had there been a school one degree above insult to common sense, or one individual, recognising the lofty destinies of man, willing to raise this miserable population out of its brutishness and ignorance.
It was a hard and dreary winter after the poor ploughman's death, and want and sorrow were in his widow's household. One night of it, as young Joe was returning home late from helping to plough a distant field of the "school gift," a wealthy farmer of the neighbourhood overtook him. He was so intoxicated that he could hardly guide his horse, and evidently without exactly recognising the lad he stopped him, and bid him return up the lane half a mile or so as he had dropped his purse.
"And mind, my lad," he roared, "thee pick'st it all up, for though I dunna know how much there war in't, some on't may 'a dropped out."
Back young Joe trudged, carefully exploring the miry road as he went on, and found the canvass bag, just where the farmer had reckoned. No money could have dropped out, for a string was tied tightly round it; but it felt heavy, and Joe's first impulse was to open it, just as any one of the village boys would have done. "But no," thought the lad, "I won't even untie the string, I won't even look, for that'll be half way to stealing, and I'll be all honest." So he grasped the purse tight in his hand, and trudged his way back, thinking, however, as he went along, how one of the pounds within would save the pig at home from being sold to pay the rent, and make his poor mother's wan face look glad. Joe's reward for the safe delivery of the purse was a lump of bread and cheese; but better was his lightness of heart all that week, ay, and many weeks after.—The temptation withstood was a great lesson learnt—these lessons are always our divinest and most lasting ones!
The very next Sunday, instead of casting down his eyes abashed upon the ground, he looked straight up into the squire's lady's face as she walked haughtily up the church aisle; for the squire had lately returned to England, bringing with him several sons older than the plough lad. These boys, as village gossip said, "were mighty learned;" though the squire himself, as the exciseman had reported, intended to vote, when he got into parliament, against the nation educating clod-hoppers, but if it would like to grant a million or two to the colleges, he'd say something.
Be this as it may, one of these youths, said to be the most learned of the squire's sons, and the one he destined for his three sinecure livings, was usually he who spoke roughest and haughtiest to poor lads like Joe.
One glorious spring morning, as Joe was ploughing a lonely upland field, the young squire rode up to a gate, by which the lad was turning his plough, and shouted out, "Hallo you fellow, throw open the gate;" and before the lad could move round his plough, there came a threat that the whip should be laid about him if he did not make haste. Joe obeyed, for it had been part of his servile teaching, to reverence all belonging to the parson or the squire; but once more alone, he stood in moody silence by his plough, for nature taught him that his was the nobler spirit, crushed by what?—the want of learning. For say what you will, nature never yet endowed with her nobility, without consciousness of the investiture. And in that minute as he stood, the lowlands stretching far away in all their beauty, the power of words, from that great scorn, seemed to have birth; and the daisy at his feet, the skylark above, the river like a silver thread winding round the landscape, were things that filled his heart, and not with sadness. And from this hour, the new want of book learning, the circumstances to bestow it, could not close wholly the ever fresh book of nature. He was a poet, and could tell of the daisy in verse though he could not have read its little history.
A dull round of years went by, chequered for the poor ploughboy with many cares and sorrows. Even great faculties like his were paralyzed by daily intercourse with one monotony of ignorance; whereas had there been the least cherishing power to act upon what nature had so kindly given, these same faculties might have broadened out, not merely into possible meditation, but into action humanitary and divine. Noble honesty thus perished; noble faculties were negative, and why?—because knowledge was denied. The beer-shop and the smithy were the only schools! As for the parson of the parish he only came now and then to preach; few of the farmers around could read; and the only learned people, those up at the hall, considered the parish schoolmaster, then enjoying the fruits of his sinecure office, quite equal to the intellectual necessities of "clod-hoppers."
Yet with all these drawbacks, Joe was known to be a clever fellow by the villagers. He could make them up a song on any occasion of a wedding, a christening, or a burial; could carve the head of a spinning wheel, or grandame's chair, and even outrival the fine oak corbels and spandrels in the village church; for nothing so pleased him, on such rare holidays as he had, as sitting in the old vestry to carve out angel's wings, or knots of drooping corn, or groups of leaves on pieces of old oak, whilst eager village children clustered round. The circumstance, however, above all others, which preserved these great faculties through the deadening influence of surrounding ignorance, was his love for a village girl, for whom he carved a choice work-box, and the head of her spinning-wheel, and repeated, so that she might remember it, all his best poetry, about daisies and birds and flowers; and this was very beautiful, for nature was its largest element.
Well, with all this natural ability, Joe's learning got on slowly enough; not exactly because he could not read—for he now and then picked up a stray lesson from a travelling pedlar, or the exciseman as he came his rounds—but because he had no books; and out of his scanty wages, with his mother dependent on him, it was impossible to save. He had tried, but it was useless. All this too, whilst golden harvests waved upon the "school-gift," whilst the Fathers rested in gold and vellum, whilst inflexions and voices were weighed in the grammarian's fractional scale; all this injustice and greatest of earth's wrongs, that human faculties should rust untaught.
One summer day, when Joe Beech was about eighteen, some errand took him up to the hall. As he was returning, he stopped before an open window to look into the old library, filled with books, but empty of all readers. Someone spoke hastily, for the window looked on to the garden terrace, and turning round, Joe to his consternation beheld the squire's lady and one of her sons; he who had called Joe "fellow" the very day his heart had been first filled with the music of God—poetry—and its first harmony had rung round the petals of the daisy.
"Well! what are you doing?" was the lady's question.
Poor Joe stammered out something about the "mighty lot of books."
"And what should you know about books, my fellow?" asked the young squire, with a grin; "I should think a rasher of bacon rather more in your way,eh? Ha! ha!"
Joe moved onward and made no answer, though when he thought of all his ignorance, and this bitter scorn of it, the tears rained down upon his horny hands. Yet one good effect arose out of it;—it set him to think; and after several days' meditation, he resolved to carve a choice bit of wood he had at home, so that whenever he had a holiday, he could carry it to the far off town and try to sell it. This exquisite piece of work was accomplished sooner than the holiday came, which was not before Christmas; and then with it tied in his pocket handkerchief he set off on his great journey. After much bargaining, the labour of weeks was sold for a dozen shillings to a picture-dealer; and Joe, after purchasing a few second-hand books that the exciseman long before had noted down for him, took his way home very proud and happy, with his bundle tucked beneath his smock frock. After his long day's walk the night came on dark, rainy, and tempestuous, so that he could hardly find his way along the well-known miry lanes. Still he got on so bravely that scarcely a mile of his journey remained, though there yet lay between him and the village a broad and rapid brook, passed over by a narrow hand-bridge, whilst a few yards further down was a ford for waggons and horses, When Joe reached the bridge, he found her who knew his songs so well waiting for him with a lantern; and he had just stopped to speak and take her hand, and tell her of the joy of his heart, and how, presently, on the bright hearth they would untie the wondrous bundle, when some one rode rapidly down to the ford, and spurred the unwilling horse into the rapid water. In a moment there was a man's wild cry, the floundering and snortings of the horse, and the girl's scream that it was the young squire. And what did Joe, untaught "eater of bacon" and "clod-hopper" as he was? he disengaged himself from the clinging and terrified girl, forgot the precious bundle, which dropped from the narrow bridge into the rapid stream below, and, though he could not swim, plunged in. The horse was out of its depth, and the young man having lost his seat, had fallen with his foot entangled in the stirrup, and dragged by the horse, was rapidly sinking. Joe clutched him, bore him up, and clinging to the branch of an overarching tree, held on, till some people from a few neighbouring cottages came rushing to the spot, and rescued both from their perilous position, The young squire was insensible; but Joe it was that could not stand upright when they lifted him on to the steep and slippery bank. The horse, in its fearful plunges, had kicked him fatally; and Joe, instead of carrying home with buoyant heart his little mine of happiness and knowledge, was borne to a bed of death, though a lingering one of weeks, long hours of which he knew not a face around him. But in that interval haughty pride knelt by that bed remorsefully subdued; for here lay perishing those grand and noble elements that had prompted the magnificent heart of nature to save her child. Who, despising ignorance, can know the angel nature it despises? And pray God give me power to tell mankind this truth; and ever make it one great hymn sovereign in the ears of humanity! By that poor bed knelt pitying villagers, telling some story of his kindly heart; by that poor bed knelt little children, telling of vestry-hours when leaves were carved, and sheaves of drooping corn; by that poor bed knelt his broken-hearted mother, telling of love and duty and years of sufferance for her sake; and by that poor bed knelt the village girl, long loved, and to astonishing and listening ears whispered, soft and low, the rude but natural poetry of a heart so magnificent and divine by its great qualities. That such a nature perished untaught, this was indeed "EARTH'S WORST TRAGEDY," for here were elements of nature waste and lost!
The hand of the poor ploughboy rested in that of the young squire before he died. "Oh, sir," he said, "never despise ignorance, however lowly, for all of us have something of beauty and good within to be made better by merciful words and gentle teaching."
The grass waves long over the grave of the ploughboy, though pathways are made to it by many feet, the lightest and oftenest of which are children's, who now in the young squire's new, well-taught school, learn poor Joe's poetry of the daisy and the cowslip, and in the summer evenings, when the angels in the tinted church window look glowingly on them, they say it over soft and slow, and think perhaps the waving grass keeps time with the recital. And travellers come, too, to see the grave of one, who, had he been taught, would have equalled Grinling Gibbons.—As time goes on, and justice is done by Government in these matters, this "school-gift," with thousand others like it in broad England, will become what it is, the heritage of the people. And when this justice is done, when all qualities of good are conserved by education, when the national elements of a great people are not allowed to waste, then crime shall sink into sempiternal abeyance; but till then, every capacity for truth and knowledge left untaught makes up indeed the worst of all earth's tragedies!
1. A literal and unexaggerated fact, known in a certain village of Shropshire, that must be nameless.