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THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ENGLISH LIFE

By Frank Frankfort Moore

Author Of “The Jessamy Bride”

Illustrated in Colour by George Belcher

T. N. Foulis, London & Edinburgh

1913




CHAPTER ONE--THE VILLAGE

ONE MORNING A FEW MONTHS AGO A foreigner under the influence of
an aeroplane descended somewhat hurriedly in a broad and--as he
ascertained--a soft meadow in Nethershire; and while he was picking
up his matches preparatory to lighting his cigarette--he has always a
cigarette in his waistcoat pocket, for a man with a Kodak may be lurking
behind the nearest tree--an agricultural labourer on his way to his work
looked over the hedge at him. The foreign person noticed him, and after
trying him in vain with German, French, and Hungarian, fell back upon
English, and in the few words of that language which he knew, inquired
the name of the place. “Why, Bleybar Lane, to be sure,” replied the man,
perceiving the trend of the question with the quick intelligence of the
agricultural labourer; and when the stranger shook his head and lapsed
into Russian, begging him to be more precise (for the aviator had not
altogether recovered from the daze of his sudden arrival), the man
repeated the words in a louder tone, “Bleybar Lane--everybody knows
Bleybar Lane; and that's Thurswell that you can't see, beyond the
windmill,” and then walked on. Happily our parson, who had watched the
descent of the stranger and was hastening to try if he could be of any
help to him, came up at that moment and explained that he was in
England, where English was, up to that time at least, spoken in
preference to German or, indeed, any other language, and that breakfast
would be ready at the Rectory in an hour.




I--THE ABORIGINES

It was the Rector who told me the story, adding in regard to the
labourer---- “Isn't that just like Thurswell--fancying that a Czech who
had just crossed the Channel, and believed himself to be in Belgium,
should know all about Thurswell and its Bleybar Lane?”

I thought that it was very like Thurswell indeed, and afterwards I made
it still more like by talking to the agricultural labourer himself about
the incident.

“Ay, he spoke gibberish with a foreign accent, and I told him plain
enough, when he had swept his arms and cried 'Where?' or words to that
effect, that he was by Bleybar Lane, and that the place he couldn't see
for the windmill was Thurswell; but it were no use: foreigners be in the
main woeful ignorant for Christian persons, and I could see that he had
no knowledge even of Thurswell when he heard the name.”

[Illustration: 0023]

That is our village down to the ground. You could not persuade one
of the aborigines that there is any place in England or outside it of
greater importance than Thurswell, because there is no place of greater
importance to the Thurswellian. An aged inhabitant was taken by his
son to see the coronation procession, and when he was asked what it was
like, replied, after a suitable pause, that it ran Thurs-well's Day
very hard--Thurswell's Day is the name given to the First Sunday after
Trinity, when the Free Foresters and Ancient Shepherds march to church
in sashes, with a band made up of a fife, three flutes, a drum, a
concertina, and a melodion.

“Ay, neighbours, it ran Thurswell's Day hard,” he affirmed, and did not
flinch from his statement in spite of the incredulous murmur that arose
from the bench nearest the door, which was immediately suppressed by the
landlord, who was apprehensive of a riot.

Thurswell is a village of antiquity. Its name occurs in _Domesday
Book_, where you may look in vain for any mention of Brindlington, that
mushroom town of 60.000 inhabitants, which is nine miles to the north,
or even of Broadminster, the Cathedral town, which is seven miles to the
west. “Broadminster is where the Dean lives,” I was told by the landlord
of the Wheatsheaf at Thurswell when I was making inquiries about the
district, “and Brindlington is where the brewery is; but my father got
his ale at Pipstone, and I get mine there too, though it's a blow to
Brindlington, for in harvest the best part of a cask goes within a
week.”

There are several other villages within a mile or so of Thurswell, and
the inhabitants of some are infatuated enough to believe that they
are on a social, as well as a commercial, level with the people of
Thurswell. This singular hallucination caused a good deal of friction on
all sides in years gone by, and _the rapprochement_ that was eventually
brought about between Thurswell and its neighbours by the thoughtfulness
of a Rector, who preached a sermon on the vision of St. Peter and
enjoined upon his hearers to remember that even though people have not
been born in Thurswell they are still God's creatures, was a purely
sentimental one, and did not last.

Some years ago an article appeared in the _Topographical Gazette_
from the pen of an eminent archaeologist affirming that Thurswell must
originally have been Thor's Well, so that the place dated back to
the time of the worship of the Scandinavian god Thor; but while
this evidence of its antiquity was received by some of us with
enthusiasm--having been a resident in the village for a whole year I was
naturally an ardent Thurswellian--it was, when reproduced in the _East
Nethershire Weekly_, generally regarded as the invention of some
one anxious to give the enemies of the village some ground for their
animosity toward it. For the suggestion that it had a heathen origin was
not one, it was felt, to which its people could tamely submit. There was
some talk of a public meeting to protest against the conclusions come to
by the archaeologist, and the Rector was considered in some quarters to
be but a half-hearted champion of the Faith when he refused to lend the
schoolhouse--sixty people could be crowded into it--for this purpose,
his argument that the more heathen Thurswell had been in the past, the
more marked should be its display of the Christian virtue of charity in
the present, being criticised as savouring of Jesuitry. For months the
matter was the leading topic of the neighbourhood, and the Hearts of Oak
Habitation of the Ancient Shepherds drew up a resolution protesting in
this connection against “archaeology and every form of idolatry.” It was
the misprint in the _Gazette_ that changed “Hearts of Oak” into “Heads
of Oak” in publishing the proceedings that quenched the violence of the
discussion, and now it is considered bad taste to refer to it at all.




II.--THE CENTENARIANS

More recently still another busybody endeavoured to deprive the village
of the reputation which it had long enjoyed as the centre of English
longevity. Now it would be impossible for any one to study the dates
on the tombstones in the churchyard without noticing how great was the
number of centenarians who died within the first fifty years of the
nineteenth century in the parish of Thurswell. There were apparently
eighteen men and fourteen women interred after passing their hundredth
year; indeed, one woman was recorded to have reached her hundred and
twenty-seventh year, which is a good age for a woman. The people were
naturally very proud of the constant references made in print to their
longevity; but one day there came down to the village a member of the
Statistical Society