THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS
“The Bottoms” succeeded to “Hell Row”. Hell Row was a block of
thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill
Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two
fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by
these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that
plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. And all over the countryside
were these same pits, some of which had been worked in the time of
Charles II., the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants
into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the
corn-fields and the meadows. And the cottages of these coal-miners, in
blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and homes of
the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of
Bestwood.
Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place, gin-pits were
elbowed aside by the large mines of the financiers. The coal and iron
field of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was discovered. Carston, Waite
and Co. appeared. Amid tremendous excitement, Lord Palmerston formally
opened the company’s first mine at Spinney Park, on the edge of
Sherwood Forest.
About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing old had
acquired an evil reputation, was burned down, and much dirt was
cleansed away.
Carston, Waite and Co. found they had struck on a good thing, so, down
the valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines were sunk,
until soon there were six pits working. From Nuttall, high up on the
sandstone among the woods, the railway ran, past the ruined priory of
the Carthusians and past Robin Hood’s Well, down to Spinney Park, then
on to Minton, a large mine among corn-fields; from Minton across the
farmlands of the valleyside to Bunker’s Hill, branching off there, and
running north to Beggarlee and Selby, that looks over at Crich and the
hills of Derbyshire; six mines like black studs on the countryside,
linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway.
To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. built
the Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of
Bestwood, and then, in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row, they
erected the Bottoms.
The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners’ dwellings, two rows of
three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a
block. This double row of dwellings sat at the foot of the rather sharp
slope from Bestwood, and looked out, from the attic windows at least,
on the slow climb of the valley towards Selby.
The houses themselves were substantial and very decent. One could walk
all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in
the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny
top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little privet
hedges, and dormer windows for the attics. But that was outside; that
was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all the colliers’ wives.
The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back of the house, facing
inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby back garden, and then
at the ash-pits. And between the rows, between the long lines of
ash-pits, went the alley, where the children played and the women
gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual conditions of living in the
Bottoms, that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite
unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens
opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.
Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms, which was already
twelve years old and on the downward path, when she descended to it
from Bestwood. But it was the best she could do. Moreover, she had an
end house in one of the top blocks, and thus had only one neighbour; on
the other side an extra strip of garden. And, having an end house, she
enjoyed a kind of aristocracy among the other women of the “between”
houses, because her rent was five shillings and sixpence instead of
five shillings a week. But this superiority in station was not much
consolation to Mrs. Morel.
She was thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years. A
rather small woman, of delicate mould but resolute bearing, she shrank
a little from the first contact with the Bottoms women. She came down
in the July, and in the September expected her third baby.
Her husband was a miner. They had only been in their new home three
weeks when the wakes, or fair, began. Morel, she knew, was sure to make
a holiday of it. He went off early on the Monday morning, the day of
the fair. The two children were highly excited. William, a boy of
seven, fled off immediately after breakfast, to prowl round the wakes
ground, leaving Annie, who was only five, to whine all morning to go
also. Mrs. Morel did her work. She scarcely knew her neighbours yet,
and knew no one with whom to trust the little girl. So she promised to
take her to the wakes after dinner.
William appeared at half-past twelve. He was a very active lad,
fair-haired, freckled, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him.
“Can I have my dinner, mother?” he cried, rushing in with his cap on.
“’Cause it begins at half-past one, the man says so.”
“You can have your dinner as soon as it’s done,” replied the mother.
“Isn’t it done?” he cried, his blue eyes staring at her in indignation.
“Then I’m goin’ be-out it.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It will be done in five minutes. It is
only half-past twelve.”
“They’ll be beginnin’,” the boy half cried, half shouted.
“You won’t die if they do,” said the mother. “Besides, it’s only
half-past twelve, so you’ve a full hour.”
The lad began hastily to lay the table, and directly the three sat
down. They were eating batter-pudding and jam, when the boy jumped off
his chair and stood perfectly stiff. Some distance away could be heard
the first small braying of a merry-go-round, and the tooting of a horn.
His face quivered as he looked at his mother.
“I told you!” he said, running to the dresser for his cap.
“Take your pudding in your hand—and it’s only five past one, so you
were wrong—you haven’t got your twopence,” cried the mother in a
breath.
The boy came back, bitterly disappointed, for his twopence, then went
off without a word.
“I want to go, I want to go,” said Annie, beginning to cry.
“Well, and you shall go, whining, wizzening little stick!” said the
mother. And later in the afternoon she trudged up the hill under the
tall hedge with her child. The hay was gathered from the fields, and
cattle were turned on to the eddish. It was warm, peaceful.
Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses, one
going by steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs were grinding,
and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful screeching of the
cocoanut man’s rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man, screeches from the
peep-show lady. The mother perceived her son gazing enraptured outside
the Lion Wallace booth, at the pictures of this famous lion that had
killed a negro and maimed for life two white men. She left him alone,
and went to get Annie a spin of toffee. Presently the lad stood in
front of her, wildly excited.
“You never said you was coming—isn’t the’ a lot of things?—that lion’s
killed three men—I’ve spent my tuppence—an’ look here.”
He pulled from his pocket two egg-cups, with pink moss-roses on them.
“I got these from that stall where y’ave ter get them marbles in them
holes. An’ I got these two in two goes-’aepenny a go-they’ve got
moss-roses on, look here. I wanted these.”
She knew he wanted them for her.
“H’m!” she said, pleased. “They are pretty!”
“Shall you carry ’em, ’cause I’m frightened o’ breakin’ ’em?”
He was tipful of excitement now she had come, led her about the ground,
showed her everything. Then, at the peep-show, she explained the
pictures, in a sort of story, to which he listened as if spellbound. He
would not leave her. All the ti