XVIII
A Religious Picnic
Occasionally, in the summer months, Tanner’s Lane indulged in a picnic; that is to say, the principal members of the congregation, with their wives and children, had an early dinner, and went in gigs and four-wheel chaises to Shott Woods, taking hampers of bread, cake, jam, butter, ham, and other eatables with them. At Shott Woods, in a small green space under an immense oak, a fire was lighted and tea was prepared. Mr. Broad and his family always joined the party. These were the days when Dissenters had no set amusements, and the entertainment at Shott mainly consisted in getting the sticks for the fire, fetching the water, and waiting on one another; the waiting being particularly pleasant to the younger people. Dancing, of course, was not thought of. In 1840 it may safely be said that there were not twenty Independent families in Great Britain in which it would have been tolerated, and, moreover, none but the rich learned to dance.
No dancing-master ever came into Cowfold; there was no music-master there; no concert was ever given; and Cowfold, in fact, never “saw nor heard anything;” to use a modern phrase, save a travelling menagerie with a brass band. What an existence! How did they live? It’s certain, however, that they did live, and, on the whole, enjoyed their life.
The picnics were generally on a Monday, as a kind of compliment to Mr. Broad, who was supposed to need rest and change on Monday, and who was also supposed not to be able to spare the time on any other day. About a month after the conversation recorded in the previous chapter Tanner’s Lane was jogging along to Shott on one of its excursions. It was a brilliant, blazing afternoon towards the end of August. The corn stood in shocks, and a week with that sun would see it all stacked. There was no dreary suburb round Cowfold, neither town nor country, to shut out country influences. The fields came up to the gardens and orchards at the back of half the houses, and flowed irregularly, like an inundation, into the angles of the streets. As you walked past the great gate of the Angel yard you could see the meadow at the bottom belonging to Hundred Acres. Consequently all Cowfold took an interest in agriculture, and knew a good deal about it. Every shopkeeper was half a farmer, and understood the points of a pig or a horse. Cowfold was not a town properly speaking, but the country a little thickened and congested. The conversation turned upon the crops, and more particularly upon turnips and drainage, both of them a new importation. Hitherto all the parishes round had no drainage whatever, excepting along the bottoms of the ridges, and the now familiar red pipes had just made their appearance on a farm belonging to a stranger to those parts—a young fellow from Norfolk. Everybody was sceptical, and called him a fool. Everybody wanted to know how water was going to get through fifteen inches of heavy land when it would lie for two days where a horse trod. However, the pipes went in, and it so happened that the first wet day after they were laid was a Sunday. The congregation in Shott Church was very restless, although the sermon was unusually short. One by one they crept out, and presently they were followed by the parson. All of them had collected in the pouring rain and were watching the outfall in the ditches. To their unspeakable amazement the pipes were all running! Shott scratched its head and was utterly bewildered. A new idea in a brain not accustomed to the invasion of ideas produces a disturbance like a revolution. It causes giddiness almost as bad as that of a fit, and an extremely unpleasant sensation of having been whirled round and turned head over heels. It was the beginning of new things in Shott, the beginning of a breakdown in its traditions; a belief in something outside the ordinary parochial uniformities was forced into the skull of every man, woman, and child by the evidence of the senses; and when other beliefs asked, in the course of time, for admittance they found the entrance easier than it would have been otherwise.
The elderly occupants of the Tanner’s Lane gigs and chaises talked exclusively upon these and other cognate topics. The sons and daughters talked about other things utterly unworthy of any record in a serious history. Delightful their chatter was to them. What does it signify to eighteen years what is said on such an afternoon by seventeen years, when seventeen years is in a charming white muslin dress, with the prettiest hat? Words are of importance between me and you, who care little or nothing for one another. But there is a thrice blessed time when words are nothing. The real word is that which is not uttered. We may be silent, or we may be eloquent with nonsense or sense—it is all one. So it was between George Allen and Miss Priscilla Broad, who at the present moment were sitting next to one another. George was a broad, hearty, sandy-haired, sanguine-faced young fellow of one and twenty, eldest son of the ironmonger. His education had been that of the middle classes of those days. Leaving school at fourteen, he had been apprenticed to his father for seven years, and had worked at the forge down the backyard before coming into
