Lady Chatterley’s Lover

they simply rave: who’s she, any better than anybody else! Why doesn’t Swan & Edgar give me one fur coat, instead of giving her six. I wish I’d kept my ten shillings! What’s she going to give me, I should like to know? Here I can’t get a new Spring coat, my dad’s working that bad, and she gets van-loads. It’s time as poor folks had some money to spend, rich ones ’as ’ad it long enough. I want a new Spring coat, I do, an’ wheer am I going to get it!⁠—I say to them, be thankful you’re well fed and well clothed, without all the new finery you want!⁠—And they fly back at me: ’Why isn’t Princess Mary thankful to go about in her old rags, then, an’ have nothing! Folks like her get van-loads, an’ I can’t have a new Spring coat. It’s a damned shame. Princess! bloomin’ rot about Princess! It’s munney as matters, an’ cos she’s got lots, they give her more! Nobody’s givin’ me any, an’ I’ve as much right as anybody else. Don’t talk to me about education. It’s munney as matters. I want a new Spring coat, I do, an’ I shan’t get it, cos there’s no munney⁠—.’ That’s all they care about, clothes. They think nothing of giving seven and eight guineas for a winter coat⁠—collier’s daughters, mind you⁠—and two guineas for a child’s summer hat. And then they go to the Primitive Chapel in their two-guinea hat, girls as would have been proud of a three-and-sixpenny one in my day. I heard that at the Primitive Methodist anniversary this year, when they have a built-up platform for the Sunday School children, like a grandstand going almost up to th’ ceiling, I heard Miss Thompson, who has the first class of girls in the Sunday School, say there’d be over a thousand pounds in new Sunday clothes sitting on that platform! And times are what they are! But you can’t stop them. They’re mad for clothes. And boys the same. The lads spend every penny on themselves, clothes, smoking, drinking in the Miner’s Welfare, jaunting off to Sheffield two or three times a week. Why it’s another world. And they fear nothing, and they respect nothing, the young don’t. The older men are that patient and good, really, they let the women take everything. And this is what it leads to. The women are positive demons. But the lads aren’t like their dads. They’re sacrificing nothing, they aren’t: they’re all for self. If you tell them they ought to be putting a bit by, for a home, they say: That’ll keep, that will, I’m goin’ t’ enjoy mysen while I can. Owt else’ll keep!⁠—Oh, they’re rough an’ selfish, if you like. Everything falls on the older man, an’ it’s a bad lookout all round.”

Clifford began to get a new idea of his own village. The place had always frightened him, but he had thought it more or less stable. Now⁠—?

“Is there much socialism, bolshevism, among the people?” he asked.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Bolton. “You hear a few loud-mouthed ones. But they’re mostly women who’ve got into debt. The men take no notice. I don’t believe you’ll ever turn our Tevershall men into reds. They’re too decent for that. But the young ones blether sometimes. Not that they care for it really. They only want a bit of money in their pocket, to spend at the Welfare, or go gadding to Sheffield. That’s all they care. When they’ve got no money, they’ll listen to the reds spouting. But nobody believes in it, really.”

“So you think there’s no danger?”

“Oh no! Not if trade was good, there wouldn’t be. But if things were bad for a long spell, the young ones might go funny. I tell you, they’re a selfish, spoilt lot. But I don’t see how they’d ever do anything. They aren’t ever serious about anything, except showing off on motorbikes and dancing at the Palais-de-danse in Sheffield. You can’t make them serious. The serious ones dress up in evening clothes and go off to the Pally to show off before a lot of girls and dance these new Charlestons and whatnot. I’m sure sometimes the bus’ll be full of young fellows in evening suits, collier lads, off to the Pally: let alone those that have gone with their girls in motors or on motorbikes. They don’t give a serious thought to a thing⁠—save Doncaster races, and the Derby: for they all of them bet on every race. And football! But even football’s not what it was, not by a long chalk. It’s too much like hard work, they say. No, they’d rather be off on motorbikes to Sheffield or Nottingham, Saturday afternoons.”

“But what do they do when they get there?”

“Oh, hang round⁠—and have tea in some fine tea-place like the Mikado⁠—and go to the Pally or the pictures or the Empire, with some girl. The girls are as free as the lads. They do just what they like.”

“And what do they do when they haven’t the money for these things?”

“They seem to get it, somehow. And they begin talking nasty then. But I don’t see how you’re going to get bolshevism, when all the lads want is just money to enjoy themselves, and the girls the same, with fine clothes: and they don’t care about another thing. They haven’t the brains to be socialists. They haven’t enough seriousness to take anything really serious, and they never will have.”

Connie thought, how extremely like all the rest of the classes the lower classes sounded. Just the same thing over again, Tevershall or Mayfair or Kensington. There was only one class nowadays: moneyboys. The moneyboy and the moneygirl, the only difference was how much you’d got, and how much you wanted.

Under Mrs. Bolton’s influence, Clifford began to take a new interest in the mines. He began to feel he belonged. A new sort of self-assertion came into him. After all, he was the real boss in Tevershall,