In the Factory by Maude Egerton Hine

From Maude's collection, Poems (Hine, Maude Egerton, Privately Printed, 1885), this one in particular stands out, and indicates that Maude was thinking about looms and their sociological impact on the worker a few years before she published this poem aged 18.  It also reminds of her sister, Ethel Blount, and husband, Godfrey Blount's later association with the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union.

Lancashire Victorian factories

"[This poem was suggested by a notice which appeared in one of the papers a few years ago, the gist of which was, that in consequence of the great demand for foreign materials, the Bradford looms were standing still and the people were starving.]

There is quiet in the place, and the silent looms,
Stand useless and grim in the empty rooms;
But the hush of the quiet with trouble is rife
For the people who wearily wait without;
Their rest means starving, their work means life.

Their faces are hopeless, their clothing is torn,
And the heart of the bravest is bruised and forlorn,
For these hundreds here starve by one foolish whim,
For Fashion and Folly of Riches born
Have crushed the people, and made them mourn!

They pray in their need for the smallest task,
And see - at the answer to what they ask,
The desperate tears will gain their way,
Though never a sob may be heard aloud!
Then they push back through the silent crowd.

There is quiet in the place, and the silent looms
Stand useless and grim in the empty rooms;
And the people without may wait and starve,
Their hearts may weary, their hearts may ache
Their hearts may madden until they break!
For Fashion has willed it shall be so,
And Fashion rules fools, and fools abound
On too many breadths of English ground!
Let them look to the horror that they have wrought,
The sin and the heart-ache, by lack of thought,
And then just for once let Fashion go,
For Fashion weighs lighter than human woe;
- O shame! to be told of a civilised age
Counted as Christian, counted as sage,
That it left the toilers that clothe the land
To read their doom from a fashion-page!"

A Song of Spring by Maude Egerton Hine

From Poems (Hine, Maude Egerton, Privately Printed, 1885), a collection of poems printed when Maude was just 18 years old.

Old bramley tree, in what was once Foundry Meadow, Haslemere

"It is the time of all things gay and green,

A-down the sun-rays slips a showeret clear,

And twigs and stalks and most bare things are seen

To bud beneath the young sun o' the year.

And on the hill a light wind is at play,

Kissing the young-eyed daisies here and there;

And far above the dear Earth in her May

A raptured bird thrills the ecstatic air."

Poems by Maude Egerton Hine, 1885

Town or Country? The Rustic Renaissance by Godfrey Blount

Following on from my previous post, Rustic Renaissance, the book (Blount, G., Rustic Renaissance, The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London, 1905) begins with a chapter titled 'Town or Country':

"Few prophets of "The Simple Life" will deny that the revival of Handicrafts is an integral factor in the larger Revival of the Future, and must be advocated, if with no anticipation of its becoming an immediate and general means of livelihood, yet as an educational influence of the greatest importance even at a time like the present, when our boasted industrial development has made it almost impossible for the Handworker to compete with the factory in the production of anything useful, and in which the art of every old-fashioned industry threatens to become lost.

A.C. Fifield advert for
The Rustic Renaissance by Godfrey Blount

"We are certainly beginning to realise how deeply our characters must be modified by the conditions under which our work is done, and that no amount of apparent economic advantage, whether to employer, employed, or the public at large, under the regime of the machine, can compensate for the loss of that true dignity and general intelligence which are only possible when the worker is free in the truest sense of the word.  In other words, the question at issue, the question of Hand Labour as opposed to Machinery, does not so much relate to the Labour as to the Labourer, not so much to Capital, which is merely the tool, as to those who handle it.  But few will take so serious a view of the case as myself.  We live in an age in which the most desperate views of life jostle with anticipations of the most triumphant future.  I am of neither party, because I am of both.  I dare to criticise the present because I trust to the future; but I do not forget that the good times coming, for which I hope, must be the fruit of thought and action born of to-day.

"Simple woven border from the lower part of a linen or cotton apron"
from Art Workers' Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 2, April 1902 p.53

"The Handicraft movement is then to my mind intensely significant.  That organised efforts to popularise handwork should be made in these days of triumphant mechanism is in itself a wonder-worthy paradox; for how could anyone in his senses advocate a return to a practise diametrically opposed to what he honestly believed to be the path of progress, unless he recognised in it the first symptom of a revulsion of feeling which heralds a change in public opinion and conduct?  If the finger of true civilisation pointed unmistakably to the greater elaboration and the more extensive use of machinery, what excuse could be found for childish tinkering with discarded tools?  It is true that the promoters of Handicraft among our Peasantry adduce poor enough arguments to explain their purpose, such as its counteracting attraction to the public-house, the supplementing of exiguous wages, the occupation of winter evenings with the ingenious manufacture of useless knickknacks which it is not worth the machines's while to exploit.  These are some of the inadequate arguments used to defend and explain the first signs of a wave of feeling which is probably all the stronger because it has grown spontaneously out of the nation's instinct for greater social health, and not in answer to a distinct appeal or for an isolated reason.

"Piece of strong tapestry fabric,
designed and produced by Luther Hooper, Haslemere"
from Art Workers' Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 2, April 1902 p.53

"This way of answering an unvoiced but none the less strong demand has been, it seems to me, characteristic of most great movements.  If we do not, for instance, after nearly 2,000 years, realise the exact want which Christianity supplied, and the exact message it has for us, still we instinctively feel that it did and does supply both, and will do so more and more as we learn to understand its principles, so that my only fear is not that I shall exaggerate, but that I may underrate, the motives of a movement in which we ought all to be deeply interested; not as a new method which one or two here and there can adopt to escape the cruel and vicarious sacrifice of the many for the few, which our civilization demands, but the very solution and conqueror of this un-christian civilisation itself, which, unless we soon solve it, will crush everybody in its indiscriminating grasp.

"Vine Border.  Woven in a Linen Cloth by the Haslemere Weaving Industry,
from Design by Godfrey Blount"
from Art Workers' Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 2, April 1902 p.53

"I maintain then that the Handicraft movement is much more serious and far-reaching than has yet been guessed, in spite of the amateurishness with which a great deal of it may certainly be charged.  The ordinary conception of Handicraft in a mechanical age like the present involves two ideas: the idea of making things by hand, and the idea of making them pretty.  This appears to me a fairly accurate definition of the movement's quite laudable ambition, and a definition, too, which hides in it more than meets the eye, as I think we shall soon discover."

Rustic Renaissance by Godfrey Blount, The Introduction

I have recently got a copy of Godfrey Blount's Rustic Renaissance (The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London, 1905), and I have found that this small book excellently conveys the values of Godfrey Blount and with that the Peasant Arts movement itself.  It looks like the tree motif of A.C. Fifield's The Simple Life Series was designed by Godfrey Blount.

The Rustic Renaissance
(Blount, G., The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London 1905)

The Rustic Renaissance begins with a Preface which shows a remarkable self-awareness of their cause:

"My object in the following pages is to adduce sundry arguments in defence of what is beginning to be known as "The Simple Life," in which, if I have not succeeded in rescuing it from that position of ideal impracticability with which it is usually regarded - and indeed no advocate of simplicity ever expects his gospel to be eagerly welcomed by those who do not desire it - I have at least endeavoured to cope with some of the less recognised, but none the less formidable, difficulties in the way of attaining it, and to reason over their details.

"There are immense practical difficulties to be surmounted before any general or popular return to country life is possible, but I have avoided all reference to the Land question, not because I am ignorant how urgently reform in this direction is required, but because its need is admitted on all hands, and I am unwilling to commit myself to any particular plan of reform in this matter.  We must also acknowledge that till there is a more wide-spread desire on the part of our population to "inherit the earth" again, it is futile to tilt the dragons of monopoly.

"But neither is this little book intended to instruct the fugitive from modern industrialism how best to build a cottage, and cultivate the narrow strip of ground which public or private enterprise may have secured him from the grasp of the monopolist; nor is it designed to teach the would-be eremite how to sleep in the open air, grow carrots or eat grass.  These are subjects which deserve and have met with their worthy specialists.  My humble desire is rather to save "The Simple Life" on the one hand from that stigma of Bohemian savagery and want of culture for which the advocates of strange and extreme methods of living are responsible; and on the other hand, from the no less certain extinction that will overtake it, as it overtakes every good cause, as soon as it becomes the plaything of fashionable faddists.

"My object is to appeal for simplicity by identifying it with a revival of true culture, the culture which condemns alike an unsanctified asceticism and the refinements of epicurean luxury.  It insists, instead, firstly on the appreciation and then on the reproduction of those simple crafts and sciences which lie at the root of all civilisation, and are as superior to its superficial culture as a folk-story is to a popular novel."

Detail of Blount, G., The Rustic Renaissance,
The Simple Life Series No. 21, A.C. Fifield, London 1905

Vegetarianism in Haslemere c.1900

I've been wondering how popular vegetarianism was in 1893 when Maude Egerton King published 'Vegetarianism' (King, M.E,, My book of songs and sonnets, Percival & Co., London, 1893).  The impression I get from The Vegetarian Society, is that whilst the Society was formed in 1885 (from two previous groups that were established in 1849 and 1877), the movement was not that popular in 1893.

Gandhi at the 1891 Portsmouth Vegetarian Federal Union Conference
from gandhiserve.org

Interestingly Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw are both cited as being members of the Society.  Both having tentative links to the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement, with Gandhi citing in Hind Swaraj (Gandhi, M.K., c.1909) Godfrey Blount's New Crusade as recommended further reading, "some testimonies by eminent men", as discussed in my October 2011 post.  Bernard Shaw had links with Joseph King as discussed in my November 2010 post and honeymooned in Haslemere, staying in Haslemere around 1898 to 1900.

It appears that Godfrey and Ethel Blount were also vegetarians, as shown in Therese La Chard’s memoirs A Sailor Hat in the House of the Lord (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1967) where she reminisces about living in a bungalow in the Blounts' garden in Weydown Road, Haslemere c.1910, "The meals seemed to consist largely of salads and haricot beans eaten with horn spoons off heavy pottery plates laid on handwoven strips."

From this I would conclude that Maude's 1893 poem did not reflect a passing fad for her but that vegetarianism was part of the Haslemere Peasant Arts lifestyle.  

Vegetarianism by Maude Egerton King

From My book of songs and sonnets (King, M., Percival & Co., London, 1893), this poem is cited as "dedicated to a very gentle friend", I wonder who that was?  It covers five pages, here is the beginning:

"When I tell how sad a thing

    Wears my heart out year by year,

Sight of creatures suffering,

    Martyrdoms of service here,

Seldom paying wrong for wrong,

   Dumb before a human rage,

Toiling hard and toiling long

  To be slain in useless age,

Elaborate diaper,
from Arbor Vitae, Blount, G.,
A.C. Fifield, London, 3rd edition, 1910

Never sacred from abuse,

  While a breath of helpless life

Holds them fit for slavish use,

  Or for science with her knife,

You will never ask again

   Why I made my view, and chose

Ne'er to add by death or pain

   To a cup that overflows

See the little god of self,

  Custom waiting on his greed;

Craves he feast of flesh or pelf,

  All is sanctioned by his need.

Ceaseless toil of men and beasts

  Is his worship's heavy price;

And the cities teem with priests

  Slaying hourly sacrifice.

No such load of death and toil

  Can my single life redress,

But at least I need not spoil

  Any live thing's happiness...."

Frieze from
Arbor Vitae, ibid

The Influence of Handicraft upon the Workers, 1918 Part 2

I decided to look at The Influence of Handicraft upon the Workers (Blount, E. and King, M.E., The Peasant Arts Fellowship Papers No. 10, Vineyard Press, Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1918) after finding that Clara Pammenter, one of the executors of the Peasant Arts works in 1896, was a neighbour of Maude Egerton King.  She was just 14 years old when she produced the works for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.  Whilst I have found a reasonable amount of writing about of writing about the works produced by the Haslemere Peasant Industries, there is little describing the impact upon Haslemere residents of the movement.  The tales within The Influence therefore seem a unique and heart warming record of the Peasant Arts movement's success:

Inside The Weaving House, Kings Road, Haslemere
from Studio International, Vol. 43, 5 Feb 1908

"Perhaps one of our happiest examples of the charm and help of handicraft, is an elderly married woman who had reached middle age by a path of patiently performed home duties, before ever she had come into touch with imaginative work of any kind.  She entered the Industries at first as an embroideress, and was immediately happy among the gay colours and designs.

Weavers at St Cross, Weydown Road, Haslemere
from Studio International, Vol. 43, 5 Feb 1908

"But the absolutely beatific life only began for her when was required to put her embroidery needle by and to take up the making of homespun - from the first unscoured wool, through all the processes of spinning, dyeing, and weaving to the shrinking  and perfecting of the cloth itself!  A sudden and wonderful enthusiasm filled her for this work and has never left her, nor ever will.  When at her wheel she says that it is almost impossible to keep from singing- "singing and spinning seem to belong together."  She goes about her daily duties, uplifted, radiant, dreaming daydreams of indigo, madder, fustic, and crottal; the murmur of the spinning-wheel is in her ear, she walks to the rhythm of the weaver's beam, and if her days pass swifter than the weaver's shuttle, they pass as profitably too!  She pretends to spin and weave for necessity and duty, but she doesn't- she does it for pure joy - for she is right in the secret which underlies all real work, and has become, in a humble degree, a creative artist."

 Studio International, Vol. 43, 5 Feb 1908