Strictly speaking,there is no such thing as an English Peasant.Indeed,the type can only exist in community,so much does it depend on co-operation and common laws.One must not think primarily of a French Peasant;any more than of a German Measle.The plural of the word is its proper form;you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry.The essence of the Peasant ideal is equality;and you cannot be equal all by yourself.
Nevertheless,because human nature always craves and half creates the things necessary to its happiness,there are approximations and suggestions of the possibility of such a race even here.The nearest approach I know to the temper of a Peasant in England is that of the country gardener;not,of course,the great scientific gardener attached to the great houses;he is a rich man's servant like any other.I mean the small jobbing gardener who works for two or three moderate-sized gardens;who works on his own;who sometimes even owns his house;and who frequently owns his tools.This kind of man has really some of the characteristics of the true Peasant--especially the characteristics that people don't like.He has none of that irresponsible mirth which is the consolation of most poor men in England.The gardener is even disliked sometimes by the owners of the shrubs and flowers;because (like Micaiah)he prophesies not good concerning them,but evil.The English gardener is grim,critical,self-respecting;sometimes even economical.Nor is this (as the reader's lightning wit will flash back at me)merely because the English gardener is always a Scotch gardener.The type does exist in pure South England blood and speech;I have spoken to the type.I was speaking to the type only the other evening,when a rather odd little incident occurred.
It was one of those wonderful evenings in which the sky was warm and radiant while the earth was still comparatively cold and wet.But it is of the essence of Spring to be unexpected;as in that heroic and hackneyed line about coming "before the swallow dares."Spring never is Spring unless it comes too soon.And on a day like that one might pray,without any profanity,that Spring might come on earth as it was in heaven.The gardener was gardening.I was not gardening.It is needless to explain the causes of this difference;it would be to tell the tremendous history of two souls.It is needless because there is a more immediate explanation of the case:the gardener and I,if not equal in agreement,were at least equal in difference.It is quite certain that he would not have allowed me to touch the garden if I had gone down on my knees to him.And it is by no means certain that I should have consented to touch the garden if he had gone down on his knees to me.
His activity and my idleness,therefore,went on steadily side by side through the long sunset hours.
And all the time I was thinking what a shame it was that he was not sticking his spade into his own garden,instead of mine:he knew about the earth and the underworld of seeds,the resurrection of Spring and the flowers that appear in order like a procession marshalled by a herald.
