I’m making it sound miserable, aren’t I? It wasn’t really. It is just that Akenfield is still very close to the old conditions. People weren’t worried about these conditions because they were the only ones they knew. They were natural but bad. There was no main water. We all drank from the ponds or the pump or from some wells. It was nothing for me to nurse where the boiled water was bright green! As for my equipment, well I will tell you. I had a saucepan for boiling up my instruments, a spirit stove and several enamel bowls. I carried all this stuff about from house to house in a huge American cloth bag which I made myself. I used to have to strain all the village water through muslin before I dared use it. As well as these things, I carried plenty of odd pieces of mackintosh and a big bundle of clean rags—torn sheets from the better-off houses mostly. We never had nearly enough dressings. As for drugs, well there was aspirin and little else. People in great pain might be given occasional morphia by the doctor. Nothing much. On the whole, people took pain and illness for granted; they weren’t very frightened. They didn’t worry very much. They supposed they would get better. Nor did they seem fearful of death. They had all worked so hard and so long, I suppose there was a kind of comfort in it.
Mothers worried most. Families were so big that there was nothing restful in lying upstairs with a house full of children. Some families, well you knew that they did not have enough to eat, but they wouldn’t tell you. Nor could you find out. Not the real facts. I had a case on the Myddleton Road—a young mother—I knew perfectly well what the trouble was. She was hungry. So I saw the vicar and he got some of the church charity money, which was lying in the bank from one year to the next, and we bought her some ordinary good food. That was all the medicine she needed. We always tried to get the mothers to come to the village school when the county council doctor examined the children, but when he asked them what they gave these thin boys to eat the answer was always, “porridge, eggs, meat, cake. . . .” You should have heard! All the mothers thought it right to lie. They thought it shameful not to be able to feed their children, not to be able to manage. Yet I knew of quite a few children who came to school without any breakfast and who walked home to dinner after dinner of just potatoes. That was what they ate, potatoes, and for tea, bread and jam. They had meat on Sunday. And suet puddings and jam. It was easier for the children when they were babies for then they came under what we called “infant life protection visits” and a very good committee which saw that they had food and clothes. There was little or no cruelty where children were concerned. The stick was used but it was thought quite normal and nobody took much notice of such punishments, although there was talk about a man in the next village who used to whip his daughters. They were getting big girls and they would walk freely along the roads.
Did you know about our gipsies? They came every November to winter down by the Drift on the lower road. They used to camp there in what I called igloos—half hooped tents. The village didn’t like them a bit, but in those days they didn’t like anyone except themselves. They were always hostile, always suspicious. It is so different now. Looking back, I see this hostility as the worst thing. The least question and they froze. Eventually I found out that I had to get my answers without asking questions. The gipsies were so used to cold faces that they took them for granted. They had lots of babies but in all my nursing years I was only asked to visit them once, and then it was a false alarm. The young father had heated up the water on a tripod and the mother was lying in a glittering, spotless caravan. What a difference to the cottages! An old gipsy, Mr. Martin, died in his caravan and it was burnt on the day of his funeral. This was in 1936. He had several children including a girl named Ocean who was a famous Suffolk pedlar—cottons, buttons, things like that. All Ocean’s children are married and live in houses now. There are eighteen people in Akenfield who are descended from the Drift gipsies. They are the good-looking ones—you can’t miss them.
The village people tend not to look old when they are no longer very young. It is hard to tell their age above fifty. They are strong, quiet people. They endure. Some cannot, of course. There was this middle-aged farmer at Plomesgate, well to see him you wouldn’t think he had a care in the world above a bit of a bad leg—nothing to worry about really. Then came this message to say, “come quick.” It’s his leg, I thought. When I arrived, there was his wife and all the neighbours huddled like hens in the parlour. A woman said, “He’s through there, nurse.” So I went into a shed, with her following, but when I started to pick up a sack she cried, “Oh, don’t do that while I’m here. Don’t! Don’t!” The farmer had slashed his throat in the shed. That morning he had got up and made the tea as usual. Then he took some up to his wife and drank some himself, then he strolled up to the shed with his razor. . . . He had almost cut his head off. “Bind that up, nurse,” said the doctor when he arrived. That nearly finished me for laying-out. I had to put it in my report, you see, and except for mothers and children it was against the rules to lay-out bodies. All the same, I did it and I went on doing it after I retired. When people want help they must have it. What matters more than this? I wash and straighten them for the grave. It is such a small thing and somebody must do it for me. It is such a small thing but people cannot bring themselves to do it. They find it hard to think away from themselves. It is sometimes why they are as they are. They are learning all the time.
Mrs. Tom Cooper · aged forty-one · farmer’s wife and President of the Women’s Institute
One of the rules of the W.I. is that we must be non-political and non-sectarian, so we don’t discuss what you might call the moral questions of the day, which is a good thing. It still leaves us plenty to talk about. Immediately I mention the W.I. the farmers think, “Tweed suits . . . home-made jam . . . a lot of gossipy old women.” Full stop. They don’t really understand what it means to us. We—all the women in the village—feel frightfully bound-in at times. When I am without the car—and some of the women don’t have a car ever—I feel extraordinarily helpless and locked away. I feel stranded. I feel as if I could scream. Yet some women never leave the village at all. They buy at the village shop. They go simply nowhere. Buying things at the village shop is expensive but they put up with it. They have no choice and have to put up with whatever the shop-keeper decides they should have. You get to know his stock backwards. There is never anything different—horrible sliced bread in cellophane, bacon with the rind cut off and wrapped in plastic, processed cheese, frozen stuff and terrible vegetables. It is like it or lump it. They will put up with this sort of thing and yet demand very elaborate cookery demonstrations at the W.I.—continental food, glorious bread and cakes. They like to make things. They say, “I’ve got something to take home to show my husband!” or, “My John will never believe it!”
When we had a Questions Programme, seventy-five per cent of the questions were about the characters in telly adverts and the women knew all the answers. They knew the names of all the people in the Oxo and dog-food and detergent ads. I only switch over to I.T.A. about once a week so I didn’t know what they were talking about. I thought there was something wrong with me. They all came alive during this competition, rushing to shout out things like, “Leslie Fairy Snow!” and “Heinz meanz beanz!”
The women get tired of villagey things. They love travel talks with slides showing Russia and Yugoslavia. They are among their most favourite things. They yearn to go to these places. They don’t want to go to some big Suffolk garden which is open to the public or to Lowestoft, they like going a long way, Coventry or London. They like eating in restaurants whenever they have an outing. This is very important. Hardly any of them are interested in natural history but they adore arranging flowers and they are very competitive about it. Flower-arranging has become a great craze in Suffolk and more and more churches have to hold flower festivals. There is terrific one-upmanship. The women also like to go to the theatre at Ipswich—and have a meal out, of course.
We have quite a bit of difficulty in ge
tting members—television again. Also, we meet after tea and a lot of the husbands won’t stay with the children in the evening. The men like to feel free. They will stay sometimes, of course, but they say, “Don’t count on it.”
I came into the W.I. movement after I had heard how much the women enjoyed hearing about the old country crafts—they are very keen on the Museum of Rural Life at Stowmarket and nearly everybody treasures some ancient family thing. One of these treasures was a corn-dolly about eighty years old. It was a long plaited tube ending in a bunch of ears and with a handle to hang it up by. An old lady then produced her heirloom corn-dolly which was in the form of Mother Earth and dressed in a long cotton frock and bonnet. It was about two feet high and a hundred years old. It had been passed down in the family and she was going to pass it to her daughter, she said. She said she couldn’t give it away because it would be unlucky. About this time I also met a farmer from Framlingham who had to take over a corn-dolly which hung in the kitchen of the farm he had just bought, otherwise his farming would be ruined.
The dolly was made each harvest, kept until the spring and then “released” into the newly-sown seed. A woman of about sixty told me that she could remember her grandfather making them. She could recall him plaiting as he ate his bait at harvest-time. She brought one of his dollies along; it was a kind of goddess and she had wrapped it in a plastic bag. The origins of the dollies are very vague and go right back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. They were made because people were scared of extinction. They could have been a gift of appeasement to the gods or a way of preserving the spirit of the corn. They were made in the shape of Ceres or a horn of plenty, or just a corn cage to keep the fertility symbol in until the next sowing. But eventually people made them into the shapes of things belonging to a certain part of the country. In Essex the dolly is made like a terret which can be worn on a horse collar and the Suffolk emblem is a horseshoe because of the Suffolk Punch and because this was the land of the great horsemen. The Cambridgeshire bell-dolly came from the practice of ringing bells when the last load of corn was brought in off the fields. They have a lantern in Norfolk which they think originated from Rumania. The Roman legions who were stationed in Norfolk came from Rumania and it is believed that they brought their harvest-dolly with them.
Hardly anybody could remember them before I talked about them. Now they are very keen to learn how to make them. Although, when I told the W.I. that they could be turned into attractive decorations for harvest festival an old lady jumped up and cried, “How dare you think of putting a pagan idol in our church!”
You need ripe corn with a hollow stem. You cut it from the field at ground level. When you have brought it home, you cut the ears off at just above the first node and at an angle. Then you strip the flag off. It takes ages and you must use good-grade straw. You then sort the straw into different thicknesses—I use a knitting needle to measure these and to test that each stalk is hollow. You then temper the straw by soaking it for more than an hour in cold water and you keep it moist by wrapping it in a towel. You only have to do this tempering if you cut the corn and keep it. The men—it was always the men who made the dollies—were able to cut corn and make their dollies at once. It is best to use a basic five-straw plait for the Suffolk dolly. You tie the corn at the thin end where you have cut off the ears—and then you start. It is dreadfully difficult to describe and almost impossible to do unless you watch somebody else. Instructions don’t help. All I can say is that you have two straws at two o’clock, one straw at nine o’clock, one at six o’clock and one at four o’clock. You fold the one at three o’clock down to six o’clock, up to midnight and then turn it, so that you’ve always got two at three o’clock. You must treat the straw with respect and hold it at the point of the work, the left hand underneath, the right hand above, otherwise it will bend in the wrong place. It is very easy to do but very hard to describe.
The women are amazed at the shapes which “come out of that old bit of straw” and they say, “But you never made those beautiful things out of straw?” The W. I.s began bringing back the corn-dolly art soon after the last war—it was almost forgotten. I have been demonstrating it for two years but so far I haven’t met anybody who is really interested. I mean not tremendously so. The women say they haven’t got the time to do it and that is that. They say, “We’ve got all this knitting. . . .” They are always knitting. They watch television and they knit, knit, knit.
Mrs. Ferrier · Chairman of the Women’s Institute
You get some W.I.s where everything gets planned beforehand by a small group who use the rest of the members as a tame audience, but not us. We are democratic. Everybody is expected to offer suggestions for getting out a programme. We’re not a bit strict—very informal. We are doing unusually well at the moment—in fact it’s absolutely unbelievable! Young unmarried girls going onto the Committee! You’d never have got them to do such a thing once upon a time. They’re frightfully keen. We do outlandish things. Somebody suggested we all spent the evening in the pub—and we did it. We filled the pub right up. We had toasts—everything. It was very jolly. The men didn’t know where to look.
We’ve got fifty-six members in our branch, so it is a very big Institute, and we are part of a group made up of eleven branches. We meet once a month and we have a big group meeting in Ipswich once a year.
We are bothered about expenses because everything is going up. We have members who can’t afford to go on outings. People are getting poor again. The next two years are going to be a difficult time for our branch. The hire of the hall and the electricity have gone up and we can’t afford the best speakers. So many people will offer to address a W.I. although they have nothing to say—or can’t say it if they have. We’ve just had a policewoman to talk to us. She was very modern. She shocked the two policemen’s widows who live in the village. She said that policewomen had to get hardened. They had to ask these wretched girls who get what they call “molested” exactly what happened. I must say, I’d never be able to answer questions like that! “Did he put his hand down your blouse or up your knickers?” they ask, it seems. The policeman’s widow who was sitting next to me said, “My late husband would never have mentioned such a thing!” All the village women said that the last thing they would want to be was a policewoman. I think they are right. Being a policewoman is a peculiar thing to want to be—even allowing for the uniform. But they’re good with children—less frightening than policemen, I suppose. I’m dead against uniforms. They attract funny people. I don’t even wear my W.I. badge. I feel like cattle when I’m wearing a badge. I’m the only person on the platform who hasn’t got one.
We have a nice lot of power. If we think that something has got to be done, the village has to listen to us. We talk about most things but the Bomb doesn’t come into our conversations, although some of the women believe that the bad weather is caused by Russian and American rockets going to the moon and Venus. They got very worried about that hospital affair which let the cat out of the bag about a yellow label meaning “Don’t bother to resuscitate; patient too old.” It was terrible what damage this did. It was diabolical—the talk of the place. The village was beginning to trust the hospital but now it is all uncertain again. What did happen when one went there? They were extremely shocked. But mostly they go on about the young people they read of in their newspapers. Wild boys. They forget that when I was young I knew of ploughboys who would steal into a house at night where they hadn’t received largess and plough up the lawn. Not to mention the Saturday-night fights behind the pub. Mrs. Enders, who ran the pub then, said to me, “The good old days are gone, my dear. On a Saturday night nobody came out of my front door except on all fours!”
You hear a lot of strange things said about those times, about private service, for example. But people loved being servants. There was so much fun in the servants’ hall. Such laughter. If you got into a bad place it was usually your own fault. You had probably lost your character, or perhaps you
r mother had. If people found themselves in bad service you can be sure there was a reason for it. The ladies maids had a lovely time and they could watch how things were done and become educated. It was lovely. But the young women in the village say they wouldn’t have any of it! They say it was slavery. They don’t understand. They simply can’t imagine the pride which Suffolk village girls used to have. Pride, they say, what is that?
Marian Carter-Edwardes · aged fifty · Samaritan
Classic English lady, kind, energetic, Vice-Chairman of the Women’s Institute, Rural District Councillor. Opens her garden to the public in July. Arranges flowers in the church—and would scrub the whole place out if she found it necessary. Strict Conservative. Three sons, all grown-up. Surrounded by large dogs and good furniture. Nothing too much trouble. Racy, nothing could surprise her. Good-looking and moves with a girlish, tennis-court freedom. Drives a fast car with dogs looking out of the windows. 100 per cent maternalism for anyone who cares to apply. Total lack of self-consciousness. Influential. J.P. Disarming.
* * *
When you begin to take on a few village affairs, all the rest come rushing at you. It is, “She’ll do it.” Or you’ll even get a letter to say that somebody is delighted to inform you that last night you were elected vice-president of some society you’ve never even heard of. It’s a fight to keep a bit of time for yourself. To read the papers you would think all this kind of thing was dead by now but in fact it is worse than it ever was. Not worse, I don’t mean that, do I? More than ever it was. (Bessy is coming on heat, that’s why she’s behaving like that.) But if you live in the country, you have to do these things. Who will if you don’t? For instance, they are going to bring Meals-on-Wheels to the village this spring and I’m the only person who really knows who should have them. So now I’m Meals-on-Wheels as well as everything else. “She’ll do it!” Of course, those that need them won’t always have them. I can think of one person who wouldn’t think of accepting them. I can do nothing with her where this kind of thing is concerned. I must put up with it. I couldn’t get round her—nobody could. She doesn’t accept charity, thank you very much, and that is that. Then there is another cottage where the wife will have the wheel-meal but the husband will not. He doesn’t take anything from anybody. “But, Mr. Drift . . .” I’ll say—you can hear me, can’t you!—and, “Let’s hear no more of it!” he’ll say. Polite, of course.
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