Of course Janet never thinks of herself as a romantic. It is doubtful if the word would mean anything to her. She is a committed Wesleyan, and it is not in her welkin to see that Wesleyanism is the Romantic Movement as it manifested itself in religion. I know about the Romantic Movement. Is not my father a professor of English Literature in a fine Canadian university where, the syllabus decrees, the Romantic Movement is a successor to the Augustan Age, and a precursor of Modern Lit.? Romanticism: the subordination of logic and strict reason to feeling, and the elevation of emotion to a dominant place in forming judgements and dictating action, and the source of so much of our finest poetry.
Was not Wesleyanism romantic in its bias? Not, certainly, for that fine classicist John Wesley, but he spoke to people who had no classic restraint on their thinking, and who delighted in the exuberance and refreshment of their unleashed feeling. Theirs was not the coolly reverential tone of Addison, who could write, and mean, of the heavenly bodies –
In reason’s ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
“The Hand that made us is Divine.”
Wesleyans wanted, and found, a deeply personal faith that the Established Church of England no longer gave. The tone of their worship was –
He left His Father’s throne above –
So free, so infinite His grace –
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy, all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me!
It found out me, it placed me in direct touch with God, it made me and my salvation the driving force in life.
How wonderful, how infinitely fulfilling, to know that in God’s hand the Earl and the Vicar are no more than I! Erring children, all of us. Here is democracy in religion, and democracy, once the philosophers slacken their hold on it, is a recklessly Romantic idea. The Classic notion of society presupposes a hierarchy, and hierarchy cannot be wholly rooted out of a world where some men are, indisputably, superior to others. Had not Samuel Gilmartin become the first Nonconformist Mayor of a Welsh Borough? That was, when all the heavy broadcloth and meals of boiled mutton are forgotten, a Romantic achievement. Religion and Romance combined – there was an explosive mixture!
(16)
AH, BUT hierarchy cannot be rooted out. Drive it forth in the Chapel and it will rise again in the shop, and the family dwelling over the shop. Elaine and Maude know it, and feel it when, during the shooting season, the Earl’s brake drives through the streets leaving a brace of pheasants at the home of every faithful Tory tradesman and tenant, but passing by the door of the Gilmartins. Elaine and Maude are never asked to the summer lawn-party, or the winter Christmas party, at the Vicarage, where Tory girls rejoice sedately and respectfully in their excellent, but not fashionable, party frocks. It is not easy at eleven and thirteen to take solace in the certainty that Jesus loves them just as he presumably loves the Tories and the Castle hangers-on. It takes some gritting of teeth, and gritted teeth sometimes give rise to a spiritual pride.
For the boys, things are a little easier. They attend Mr. Timothy Hiles’s school in the Oldford Road, and have occasional fights with the lesser boys of the National School where the teachers do not teach in cap and gown, as Mr. Hiles does, as he lathers a little Latin into them. Enough Latin, anyhow, to enable them to call their parents “the Pater” and “the Mater,” which is swanky and a cut above the National School. To wear the cap of Oldford School, and to know the scant French that poor Monsieur Boué attempts to teach, amid the clamour of boys who think Frenchmen and their language just silly, is to be educationally a Cut Above. But Lancelot and Rhodri never fail to lift their caps when the Castle landau passes, because the beautiful Countess is Romance personified. She is the even younger wife of the Young Earl, who has succeeded his childless uncle; the Countess is a great London beauty, the loveliest of her “Season. ” It is rumoured that she is a mighty gambler, and that a lot of the Earl’s huge rent-roll goes to pay her debts. That is certainly Romance, as the Chapel never provides Romance. Boys are never very good at resisting either Romance or spiritual pride.
As I look on I wonder how so many people can be accommodated in that little shop and the rooms above it. From the street one enters the front shop; it is not a large room and it is dominated by a round mahogany table on which the bolts of cloth from the shelves may be unrolled, displayed and consideringly thumbed. Behind it is the larger workroom, where the five tailors sit on the board, smoking their stinking pipes and amusing themselves with indecent stories when Walter is not there to check them; a little charcoal stove keeps hot the goose-necked tailor’s pressing-irons; the apprentice rushes a goose as soon as anyone calls for one, because every seam is pressed as soon as it is sewn, on the ironing-board the tailor keeps across his folded legs. These, and the big table for the cutter, crowd the room to its uttermost.
The dwelling over the shop is reached by a discreet private door, into a tiny hallway, with a twisting stair. Above the shop a living-room occupies the whole of the front, overlooking the street; behind it are bedrooms, one for parents, one for girls; above is a room with a low ceiling, little more than a loft, where the boys sleep, and family luggage and unused furniture are stored.
The kitchen, of course, is in the basement, a damp, flagged hole where Liz Duckett, the slavey, prepares all the meals, serves breakfast and luncheon to the children, and from which she scrambles up two flights of stairs to the living-room, with food for the parents. She also carries water to the bedrooms, and brings the slops downstairs, to empty them in the brick privy in the yard behind the workroom. Great ingenuity is demanded of Janet and her daughters when they wish to visit this retreat, lest the evil-minded tailors should suspect them of unmentionable physical functions. Their usual device is to bring in something from the line that stretches from house to back wall, and on which clothes are always hanging out to dry, without ever quite doing so. Liz makes no such pretence; she is too humble to afford shame. She usually has a black eye, the consequence of her Saturday night rejoicing in Puzzle Square, or up the shut where she lives in the few hours that are her own. But I see that one must not pity Liz; she is a working woman, and has her own pride.
I innocently imagine that the house is full, but visitors are frequent. Charity – Wesleyan charity – cannot turn anyone who needs food or drink from the door – within reason, that is to say, and reason is extensile, like a concertina. An evangelist, visiting the chapel on one of his tours of preaching, may pass a night or two. He usually sleeps on a shakedown in the living-room, and is glad to get it. From time to time, when he is in a sober – or soberish – period, Uncle David stays for a month or two, until he falls again from grace, and sleeps God knows where and with God knows whom. He shares the bed of the two boys, or with Rhodri when Lancelot has gone to boarding-school in Llanfyllin.
Uncle David is not an easy bedfellow, because he insists on the middle of the bed, where he lies reading the County Times, with an oil lamp balanced on his broad chest. There is constant danger that he will fall asleep and overturn the lamp, but somehow he never does so. He regales the sleepy boys with bits of news, upon which he offers comment greatly at variance with what the paper says, for he is privy to all the underworld gossip of Trallwm, and is ribald. He is also a dreamer, and shouts in his sleep.
(17)
ALL OF THIS can be borne, until Auntie Polly arrives from Llanrwst for a long stay, because she is “lying up,” which is the local term for pregnancy. She brings little Olwen with her, because the child is not yet two, and needs her mother. Her other four children have remained in Llanrwst, presumably under the cloud that now hangs over the fate of John Jethro Jenkins. He has retired to that modest village until certain disagreeable affairs are put right in Aberystwyth, where the Import and Export languishes in the current depressed state of trade. Nothing positively dishonest is
imputed to him, but a certain fine carelessness has brought about embarrassment and hard words from coarse-minded men who do not understand shades of guilt, and see everything in black and white, and pounds and pence.
A woman who is lying up has to be protected from such slights. “Oh, Janno, you’ll never know what I’ve been through in Llanrwst!” Polly says, rather oftener than is needful. Janno’s tender heart responds eagerly, and the patient Walter is resigned to moving himself and his wife into the girls’ room, because a woman who is lying up clearly needs the best bed.
Elaine and Maude are somewhat restless under the necessity to sleep on a shakedown, hidden away every day, in the living-room, but Janet explains to them about Christian obligation. However, they find it necessary to intrude frequently into their parents’ room, once their own, to fetch clothes from the press. This can be inconvenient for Walter and Janet, but the girls feel that Christian obligation requires that inconvenience should be shared. They have the inconvenience of having to take little Olwen for walks in her baby-carriage. Little Olwen is not an appealing child; she whinges a great deal and obtrudes herself amazingly for one so young.
Worse is to come. A general depression has seriously slowed all business activity in the British Isles; there are great numbers of people who have no money, and those who have money are determined to keep it. Walter feels the pinch. The pinch grows more painful when John Jethro Jenkins and his four sons arrive from Llanrwst, which he has decided to leave to its mean-spirited inhabitants, and to “bivouac” as he expresses it, with his brother-in-law and sister for a time, until his new venture is transformed from a dream into a reality.
“It is an extraordinary thing, Walter, how blind people can be to opportunity, when it is staring them in the face. Now, you know me. You know my views. Utilitarian – that sums it up. Whatever provides the greatest advantage for the greatest number. But somebody has to take the bull by the horns, and bring the advantage into focus, and that demands two things – Vision and Capital. The one without the other is unavailing. Utterly unavailing. I have Vision, and I am confronted by Opportunity – such Opportunity as comes rarely even into the life of an exceptionally fortunate person, like myself. Capital’s the problem. Now, I don’t know how you are fixed personally, but I should imagine you were pretty snug. Fine situation, fine shop, a large surrounding district to draw from – if you’re not doing very well, something must be radically wrong. How do you stand, if I may ask?”
“John, you’ll have heard that there is a depression across the whole country. Times are difficult. And clearing up after the Pater’s trouble has consumed a lot of money. In dibs and dabs, but it all adds up to a surprising sum.”
“Ah, but don’t you see, Walter – no, of course you don’t see, because you have let little Trallwm blind you – these so-called depressions are passing things. But to the man with Vision, they spell opportunity. Anybody can strike while the iron is hot. It’s the man of Vision who strikes just before it cools, and astounds all those who have been alarmed by a fleeting recession. You say you can’t raise any capital?”
“Not a sixpence.”
“That’s what you think. But you’re wrong, Walter, you’re wrong. You have immense capital. You have your good name, your credit, your reputation as a man of exceptional probity. You can borrow. When you tell your banker what I’m going to tell you now, he’ll overwhelm you with offers. Bankers aren’t stupid, you know.”
“Not more than most people, certainly.”
“Now listen. And please, I beg you, regard this for the present as sub rosa. On the q.t., you know.”
“I have a little Latin, John.”
“Of course you have. It’s another aspect of your Capital that you don’t put to use. Now pay close attention to what I am about to say: I have a business associate – I haven’t known him long but he is one of the most impressive, far-seeing men I have ever encountered – and he has just come back from Canada. A golden land. The opportunities there are staggering, and men of all kinds are rushing to seize them. The big chances are going fast, but there is still time to do very great things. Now, Walter, think carefully: what is it that the world needs most at the present moment?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You do know. Think. Coal! That’s what’s wanted! Coal! The black diamond! Industry is grinding to a standstill for want of coal. Canada is absolutely chock-a-block with coal, and very little has so far been done about it. Now this man – can’t tell you his name, because he insists on the strictest confidentiality – is acting as agent for a very big interest, situated in Liverpool, and he is offering large tracts of coalfields in northern Manitoba at a laughable price per acre. He can let me have five hundred acres of an immensely rich coalfield in a northern area which is remarkable because the coal lies so near the surface. You can almost pick it up. Mining ceases to be a costly job of excavation. And the coal, when it has been assembled – assembled, look you, not laboriously mined – can be shipped south down the Nelson River to the thriving settlement of Winnipeg, whence it can be easily dispersed all over the world. Not just Great Britain, you see, but to the whole world which is craving for coal. This is one of those astounding circumstances where Opportunity and Vision await only the quickening touch of Capital to create vast fortunes. It’s stupendous! Now, what do you say?”
“I have learned that I am not a capitalist, John.”
“But you will be! You’ll come round. You’re prudent, but you’re no fool. Meanwhile, I’m going to see who can be got to come in with me around the county. I think of trying some of the big Liberal county families, as a starter. Men of vision. I assume I may mention your name?”
“I’d rather you didn’t, John. For your own sake. Since the Pater’s trouble the Gilmartin name doesn’t ring quite as clear as it did. But I wish you well. You know that.”
“It’s very big, Walter. Huge. I’ll go farther-it’s overwhelming. I stand in awe of what Canada will mean to us.”
Meanwhile, John will “bivouac” until the time comes for him to take Polly and the children to Canada – to the New World, where he will be forever quit of the petty-mindedness and social restrictions of Great Britain. John Jethro is, all the family agree, a man of remarkable, dauntless spirit. This is all the more praiseworthy as he is known to be somewhat “touched” in his lungs. Just a hint of tuberculosis, the scourge of Wales, and in the nineteenth century a scourge every bit as alarming as is AIDS in my time. One of its characteristics is the ebullience it often brings with it – a quickening of the mental faculties. I see John Jethro in the little sitting-room, carolling with true Welsh rhetoric about the fortunes that await them all. Walter listens with the sad reserve of a man who does not know how to meet his bills, and whose debtors are slow to pay what they owe him. Maude and Elaine yawn behind their hands, wondering when they can put up their shakedown and go to bed. Only Polly and Janet listen enraptured, with the confidence that girls of the nineteenth century grew up to repose in their wonderful brothers and husbands.
Even I, with my poor command of geography, know that if the coal were any good – which it is not – the Nelson River, so turbulent and fraught with rapids, is quite impossible as a route for heavy barges. Anyhow, it flows the wrong way, and how do you portage a coal barge up rapids on a river that has no locks? I am watching one of those scenes, so common in the history of Canada, where high hopes soar on the wings of ignorance, and high adventure leads to disaster.
John Jethro naturally shares the bed of Polly, who grows huge much sooner than most women who are pregnant. The softness and generosity of her nature find a physical counterpart in this swelling. Little Olwen sleeps in a basket on the floor. Sleeps, that is to say, when she is not howling, as she cuts her teeth. But in the best bedroom John Jethro and Polly sleep the sound sleep of the confident and the trusting.
The boys – Albert, Thomas, Harry, and Lloydie – cannot be accommodated in the premises above the tailor shop. They have to be boarded down
the street with Mrs. Joe Davies, a cousin in the fourth degree; Walter pays the few shillings that keep them in Mrs. Joe’s garret, for John Jethro, the entrepreneur, is temporarily embarrassed, and cannot quite run to such expense. But of course all seven Jenkinses eat at the Gilmartin table, three times a day, and growing boys are prodigious eaters. Janet laughs at their monstrous appetites, even as she stretches the shillings to find food to put on the crowded table.
(18)
DEAR JANET! I find myself falling in love with her – yes, with my own great-grandmother – as I watch these scenes, where her bravery and sweet temper keep afloat this household of raving optimist brother, dispirited mathematician-turned-tailor husband, her sister-in-law Polly – a soft machine for replenishing the earth and not much else – and nine children, clamorous and egotistical as children are and must be if they are to save their souls in an adult world. Janet is not especially intelligent, not physically strong, not of the Joan of Arc mould, but through her faith and her simple goodness – a quality not much in evidence in the world as it was when I so hastily quitted it a few days before seeing this film – she somehow keeps them all afloat, and frequently laughing.
She can be a strict teacher, look you – there I am, falling into the cajoling Welsh trope – but she is a loving teacher, and her children heed her. She teaches faith and goodness, in so far as she comprehends them. She has a store of lessons, and some of them are songs. One favourite, from a Christmas Supplement of The Leisure Hour, runs thus:
There’s an excellent rule
I have learned in life’s school,
And I’m ready to set it before you.
When you’re heavy at heart