A Short History of Social Life in England/Introductory

by Margaret Bertha Synge

INTRODUCTORY

THIS sketch of the social life of our forefathers throughout the ages that are past is dedicated to all English-speaking peoples, who are proud to look back to a common ancestry. The race has burst the bounds of its old island home. Far and wide, over the length and breadth of the world, England's children are scattered, but they never forget that the old country is the land of their fathers. Their distant homes are yet English homes—they themselves are yet Englishmen. And there are those, too, across the Atlantic who still to-day claim with us a common fatherhood. America forms no part of our great Empire; her Government and her Constitution are different, but her traditions are the same; and in any review of the past all are alike, one

"Brother with brother,
 Sons of one Mother."

This is no attempt to record the glorious achievements of past ages; there is little concerning governments and kings, religion or literature, science or art. It is merely a sketch of the material conditions in which our ancestors lived and died. It is pre-eminently a book of detail. It presents a brief glimpse of their houses, their food, clothes, manners, punishments, of their wives and children, of their gardens, their education, with some account of the social changes that have taken place throughout the ages. At the end of the book will be found an Appendix of some of the most useful articles introduced into England during each period. Some knowledge of the outlines of English history is presupposed, so that we may transport ourselves in imagination into that vanished past, which no historian can adequately bridge over. We can realise those silent figures, whose names are so familiar, in the outward guise that conveys so much to our material natures, calling up, perhaps, some faint conception of the appearance of our ancestors in the days that are gone.

Thus, from the speechless past to the present day, we have traced evolution from the old stone tool to the modern intricate machinery, from the dark underground cave to the palace of light and air, from the slow jog-trot of the pack-horse to rapid transit by train and motor, from the hopelessness of separation to constant communication. Much is necessarily omitted, but those who can read between the lines will find the evolution of many things that are vital in the life of to-day.

Perhaps one of the most striking points in the study of material progress is the sturdy opposition experienced in every age to inevitable advance—an inability to perceive the true nature of progress. Thus, with the substitution of chimneys for the old hearth fire, we get Holinshed (1571) groaning over the new-fashioned idea which sent smoke up a given channel instead of allowing it to escape through any chance crack in the roof; while Slaney waxed indignant that oak had taken the place of willow, exclaiming in his wrath, "Formerly houses were of willow, and men of oak; nowadays houses are of oak, and men of willow." The sighs of Evelyn are well known. The ideal days were past when men courted and chose their wives for their modesty and homely virtues rather than for their fortune; when the daughter wore the selfsame kirtle, gown, and petticoat in which her mother had been wedded, and a steady mare carried the good knight and his courteous lady behind him to church and to visit in the neighbourhood, instead of in the hell-carts and rattling coaches then coming into fashion; when men of estate studied the public good, serving their generation in honour, and leaving their lands to a hopeful heir, who followed the example of noble and worthy ancestors. Then there came the opposition to steam, when the long ice age of handwork gave way to an age of machine production; the abuse of trains, the revolt against gas-lighting, and to-day the opposition to motors, as yet in their infancy.

But this sketch of social life deals with matters yet more mundane, and the reader can deduce such facts—not wholly uninteresting—as these: that William the Conqueror ate with his fingers and never saw a coal fire, that the two thousand cooks of Richard II. could make neither a plum-pudding nor mince-pies, that Chaucer never saw a printed book, that Queen Elizabeth never heard of tea or saw a newspaper, that George I. had no umbrella, and that Queen Victoria was the first sovereign of our island home who had not to depend on wind and weather to leave her kingdom.

Articles now considered necessities were luxuries to our forefathers, or entirely non-existent Thus they lived without sugar till the thirteenth century, without coal till the fourteenth, without butter on their bread till the fifteenth, without tobacco and potatoes till the sixteenth, without tea, coffee, and soap till the seventeenth, without umbrellas, lamps, and puddings till the eighteenth, without trains,telegrams, gas, matches, and chloroform till the nineteenth.

There was no turning of night into day through the long ages of the past, no artificial light other than candles and lamps till the eighteenth century. Till quite modern times our fathers rose with the sun, dined early, danced, played games, and went early to bed. Nevertheless, the "good old days" had their drawbacks. They were days of roughness and brutality, of injustice and ignorance, when passions ran riot and tempers were uncontrolled; not till the dawn of mercy, pity, and tolerance did civilisation assume any of that refinement which is ours to-day.

The gradual levelling of social distinctions has been amply described in these pages, for there is no more striking development to-day than the rise of the Democracy to power.

But when all is said and done, when carpets have been substituted for rushes, electric light for tallow dips, forks for fingers, railway for coach, mercy for brutality—yet behind these external changes, transitory by reason of the law of progress, lies unchangeable human nature, ever the same with its hopes and fears, its capacity for joy and sorrow. Across the dim ages move the same men and women as to-day; they are clad in different garments, they eat a coarser food, they move amid different surroundings; but through the "enchanted twilights of the Past" we recognise our very selves,

"Till only what is Past and gone doth seem
 To live, and all the Present is a dream."