



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Settlers at Home, by Harriet Martineau.

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This shortish novel first appeared in 1841, and was published in a
collection of the author's four short 1841 novels, "The Playfellow".

The scene is set in Lincolnshire, a part of England much of which is
flat and prone to flooding by the sea.  It was drained in the 1600s by
Dutch engineers by the creation of drains and sea defences.  To this day
part of the county is called Holland.  After the draining the land was
leased by the King to various settlers from overseas, among whom were
the Linacres, the hero-family of this book.  The King's enemies break
down the sea defences, and the land is flooded, with haystacks, mills
and barns floating away, farm animals drowning, and everyone in great
peril.  By various mishaps the three Linacre children and a boy from a
roguish nomadic family, are deprived of the Linacre mother and father
just when they most need them, and find themselves in the care of
Ailwin, the strong and sturdy maid-of-all-work.  Before they can get
reunited with the parents, Geordie, the weakly two-year-old, dies, and
they have various struggles for survival, with foul water killing many
of the animals they would rely on for food.  At last help comes in the
form of the local pastor, who has enlisted the aid of some men to row
him to wherever he is needed.

This book is pretty strong reading, and probably more of a tragedy than
any other category.

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THE SETTLERS AT HOME, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE SETTLERS AT HOME.

Two hundred years ago, the Isle of Axholme was one of the most
remarkable places in England.  It is not an island in the sea.  It is a
part of Lincolnshire--a piece of land hilly in the middle, and
surrounded by rivers.  The Trent runs on the east side of it; and some
smaller rivers formerly flowed round the rest of it, joining the Humber
to the north.  These rivers carried down a great deal of mud with them
to the Humber, and the tides of the Humber washed up a great deal of
sea-sand into the mouths of the rivers; so that the waters could not for
some time flow freely, and were at last prevented from flowing away at
all: they sank into the ground, and made a swamp of it--a swamp of many
miles round the hilly part of the Isle of Axholme.

This swamp was long a very dismal place.  Fish, and water-birds, and
rats inhabited it: and here and there stood the hut of a fowler; or a
peat-stack raised by the people who lived on the hills round, and who
obtained their fuel from the peat-lands in the swamp.  There were also,
sprinkled over the district, a few very small houses--cells belonging to
the Abbey of Saint Mary, at York.  To these cells some of the monks from
Saint Mary's had been fond of retiring, in old times, for meditation and
prayer, and doing good in the district round; but when the soil became
so swampy as to give them the ague as often as they paid a visit to
these cells, the monks left off their practice of retiring hither; and
their little dwellings stood empty, to be gradually overgrown with green
moss and lank weeds, which no hand cleared away.

At last a Dutchman, having seen what wonders were done in his own
country by good draining, thought he could render this district fit to
be inhabited and cultivated; and he made a bargain with the king about
it.  After spending much money, and taking great pains, he succeeded.
He drew the waters off into new channels, and kept them there by
sluices, and by carefully watching the embankments he had raised.  The
land which was left dry was manured and cultivated, till, instead of a
reedy and mossy swamp, there were fields of clover and of corn, and
meadows of the finest grass, with cattle and sheep grazing in large
numbers.  The dwellings that were still standing were made into
farm-houses, and new farmhouses were built.  A church here, and a chapel
there was cleaned, and warmed, and painted, and opened for worship; and
good roads crossed the district into all the counties near.

Instead of being pleased with this change, the people of the country
were angry and discontented.  Those who lived near had been long
accustomed to fishing and fowling in the swamp, without paying any rent,
or having to ask anybody's leave.  They had no mind now to settle to the
regular toilsome business of farming,--and to be under a landlord, to
whom they must pay rent.  Probably, too, they knew nothing about
farming, and would have failed in it if they had tried.  Thus far they
were not to be blamed.  But nothing can exceed the malignity with which
they treated the tenants who did settle in the isle, and the spiteful
spirit which they showed towards them, on every occasion.

These tenants were chiefly foreigners.  There was a civil war in England
at that time: and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire people were so much
engaged in fighting for King Charles or for the Parliament, that fewer
persons were at liberty to undertake new farms than there would have
been in a time of peace.  When the Dutchman and his companions found
that the English were not disposed to occupy the Levels (as the drained
lands were called), they encouraged some of their own countrymen to come
over.  With them arrived some few Frenchmen, who had been driven from
France into Holland, on account of their being Protestants.  From first
to last, there were about two hundred families, Dutch and French,
settled in the Levels.  Some were collected into a village, and had a
chapel opened, where a pastor of their own performed service for them.
Others were scattered over the district, living just where their
occupations required them to settle.

All these foreigners were subject to bad treatment from their
neighbours; but the stragglers were the worst off; because it was
easiest to tease and injure those who lived alone.  The disappointed
fishers and fowlers gave other reasons for their own conduct, besides
that of being nearly deprived of their fishing and fowling.  These
reasons were all bad, as reasons for hating always are.  One excuse was
that the new settlers were foreigners--as if those who were far from
their own land did not need particular hospitality and kindness.
Another plea was that they were connected with the king, by being
settled on the lands which he had bargained to have drained: so that all
who sided with the parliament ought to injure the new tenants, in order
to annoy the king.  If the settlers had tried to serve the king by
injuring his enemies, this last reason might have passed in a time of
war.  But it was not so.  It is probable that the foreigners did not
understand the quarrel.  At any rate, they took no part in it.  All they
desired was to be left in peace, to cultivate the lands they paid rent
for.  But instead of peace, they had little but persecution.

One of these settlers, Mr Linacre, was not himself a farmer.  He
supplied the farmers of the district with a manure of a particular kind,
which suited some of the richest soils they cultivated.  He found, in
the red soil of the isle, a large mass of that white earth, called
gypsum, which, when wetted and burnt, makes plaster of Paris; and which,
when ground, makes a fine manure for some soils, as the careful Dutchmen
well knew.  Mr Linacre set up a windmill on a little eminence which
rose out of the Level, just high enough to catch the wind; and there he
ground the gypsum which he dug from the neighbouring patch or quarry.
He had to build some out-houses, but not a dwelling-house; for, near his
mill, with just space enough for a good garden between, was one of the
largest of the old cells of the monks of Saint Mary's, so well built of
stone, and so comfortably arranged, that Mr Linacre had little to do
but to have it cleaned and furnished, and the windows and doors made
new, to fit it for the residence of his wife and children, and a
servant.

This building was round, and had three rooms below, and three over them.
A staircase of stone was in the very middle, winding round, like a
corkscrew,--leading to the upper rooms, and out upon the roof, from
which there was a beautiful view,--quite as far as the Humber to the
north-east, and to the circle of hills on every other side.  Each of the
rooms below had a door to the open air, and another to the staircase;--
very unlike modern houses, and not so fit as they to keep out wind and
cold.  But for this, the dwelling would have been very warm, for the
walls were of thick stone; and the fire-places were so large, that it
seemed as if the monks had been fond of good fires.  Two of these lower
rooms opened into the garden; and the third, the kitchen, into the
yard;--so that the maid, Ailwin, had not far to go to milk the cow and
feed the poultry.

Mrs Linacre was as neat in the management of her house as people from
Holland usually are; and she did not like that the sitting-room, where
her husband had his meals, and spent his evenings, should be littered by
the children, or used at all by them during her absence at her daily
occupation, in the summer.  So she let them use the third room for their
employments and their play.  Her occupation, every summer's day, was
serving out the waters from a mineral spring, a good deal frequented by
sick people, three miles from her house, on the way to Gainsborough.
She set off, after an early breakfast, in the cool of the morning, and
generally arrived at the hill-side where the spring was, and had
unlocked her little shed, and taken out her glasses, and rinsed them,
before any travellers passed.  It was rarely indeed that a sick person
had to wait a minute for her appearance.  There she sat, in her shed
when it rained, and under a tree when it was fine, sewing or knitting
very diligently when no customers appeared, and now and then casting a
glance over the Levels to the spot where her husband's mill rose in the
midst of the green fields, and where she almost fancied sometimes that
she could see the children sitting on the mill-steps, or working in the
garden.  When customers appeared, she was always ready in a moment to
serve them; and her smile cheered those who were sick, and pleased those
who came merely from curiosity.  She slipped the halfpence she received
into a pocket beneath her apron; and sometimes the pocket was such a
heavy one to carry three miles home, that she just stepped aside to the
village shop at Haxey, or into a farm-house where the people would be
going to market next day, to get her copper exchanged for silver.  Since
the times had become so troubled as they were now, however, she had
avoided showing her money anywhere on the road.  Her husband's advice
was that she should give up attending the spring altogether; but she
gained so much money by it, and it was so likely that somebody would
step into her place there as soon as she gave it up, so that she would
not be able to regain her office when quieter times should come, that
she entreated him to allow her to go on while she had no fears.  She
took the heavy gold ear-rings out of her ears, wore a plainer cap, and
left her large silver watch at home; so that she looked like a poor
woman whom no needy soldier or bold thief would think of robbing.  She
guessed by the sun what was the right time for locking up her glasses
and going home; and she commonly met her husband, coming to fetch her,
before she had got half-way.

The three children were sure to be perched on the top of the quarry
bank, or on the mill-steps, or out on the roof of the house, at the top
of the winding staircase.  Little George himself, though only two years
old, knew the very moment when he should shout and clap his hands, to
make his mother wave her handkerchief from the turn of the road.  Oliver
and Mildred did not exactly feel that the days were too long while their
mother was away, for they had plenty to do; but they felt that the best
part of the day was the hour between her return and their going to bed:
and, unlike people generally, they liked winter better than summer,
because at that season their mother never left them, except to go to the
shop, or the market at Haxey.

Though Oliver was only eleven, and Mildred nine, they were not too young
to have a great deal to do.  Oliver was really useful as a gardener; and
many a good dish of vegetables of his growing came to table in the
course of the year.  Mildred had to take care of the child almost all
day; she often prepared the cabbage, and cut the bacon for Ailwin to
broil.  She could also do what Ailwin could not,--she could sew a
little; and now and then there was an apron or a handkerchief ready to
be shown when Mrs Linacre came home in the evening.  If she met with
any difficulty in her job, the maid could not help her, but her father
sometimes could; and it was curious to see Mildred mounting the mill
when she was at any loss, and her father wiping the white plaster off
his hands, and taking the needle or the scissors in his great fingers,
rather than that his little girl should not be able to surprise her
mother with a finished piece of work.  Then, both Oliver and Mildred had
to learn their catechism, to say to Pastor Dendel on Sunday; and always
a copy or an exercise on hand, to be ready to show him when he should
call; and some book to finish that he had lent them to read, and that
others of his flock would be ready for when they had done.

Besides all this, there was an occupation which both boy and girl
thought more of than of all others together.  Among the loads of gypsum
that came to the mill, there were often pieces of the best kind,--lumps
of real, fine alabaster.  Alabaster is so soft as to be easily worked.
Even a finger-nail will make a mark upon it.  Everybody knows how
beautiful vases and little statues, well wrought in alabaster, look on a
mantelpiece, or a drawing-room table.  Oliver had seen such in France,
where they are very common: and his father had carried one or two
ornaments of this kind into Holland, when he had to leave France.  It
was a great delight for Oliver to find, on settling in Axholme, that he
could have as much alabaster as he pleased, if he could only work it.
With a little help from Pastor Dendel and his father, he soon learned to
do so; and of all his employments, he liked this the best.  Pastor
Dendel brought him a few bowls and cups of pretty shapes and different
sizes, made of common wood by a turner, who was one of his flock; and
Oliver first copied these in clay, and then in alabaster.  By degrees he
learned to vary his patterns, and at last to make his clay models from
fancies of his own,--some turning out failures, and others prettier than
any of his wooden cups.  These last he proceeded to carve out of
alabaster.

Mildred could not help watching him while he was about his favourite
work, though it was difficult to keep little George from tossing the
alabaster about, and stamping on the best pieces, or sucking them.  He
would sometimes give his sister a few minutes' peace and quiet by
rolling the