How Dear Is Life Read online

  So the evening came on. As she stood upon the small enclosed cabin-class deck, she noticed, with a sense of premonition, that the planets Mars and Venus were in conjunction, low in the north-west. Did the planets affect human life, indeed all life, upon the inhabited earth, as the Ancients had thought? The moon visibly did so: Diana ruled the tides, some said the seasons of seeding and fertility; and the menstrual life of women, linked to the periods of the moon, was a fact that needed no proof. Mars and Venus together, sinking down to the ocean, their lights a reflection from the sun certainly; but so was the light of the moon.

  Ah, there was the moon, near to the full disc, rising up over unseen England—England, land of her fathers, country of great wealth side by side with abysmal poverty, at war with the country of her mother’s family, cousin nation against cousin nation! She thought of her friends in Austria and France, in Hungary and Greece, in Italy and Germany; of those members of the League of Youth in Vienna, so ardent for beauty to come into the lives of the people, for universal peace in which to build a life based on the age-old dreams of the artists and poets, from the dawn of Hellas and onwards down the centuries of nearly three millennia of great visions of ineffable beauty. Was Europe to suffer the fate of the Greek City States, warring one with another until even the radiance of Hellas was extinguished?

  *

  In the East End of London, Sylvia and Dora found on their return a dilemma which at first very nearly daunted even those dedicated women. Hundreds of reservists had been called to the colours, and their families were left entirely without support. Women were starving, for many of the factories where they had worked were closed, in panic of the unknown. A man earning fourteen to eighteen shillings a week before the war, sole support of wife and half a dozen or more children, had not been able to save. Prices had risen sharply in the shops on the day after war was declared; and they went on rising daily.

  As soon as it was known that Sylvia was back—for she was the leading spirit in the women’s political movement—her premises were thronged with white-faced mothers, some with babies in arms, others in rickety prams and so weak that they had ceased to grizzle. O, the pity of the little discoloured bundles of skin and bone, regarding her with the sad eyes of age, lying helplessly in muted weakness!

  As the hot August days went on, some families were threatened with eviction unless the weekly rent, which had taken up to a third of the former weekly wage, was paid. There was a small unemployment benefit available to a few trades, under the National Insurance; but this affected only about one family in six. Again, Poor Law relief applied only to the crippled, not to the able-bodied; so this could not help the wives whose men had gone.

  Breasts of nursing mothers shrunk bag-like from lack of food. Dora sold some of her few remaining securities, inherited from her father. They were sold far below their peace-time value; still, bread and milk must be bought. Sylvia opened a depot; the news spread swiftly; long queues of mothers, with prams and soap-boxes on wheels—the trollies which had taken piece-work garments to clothing factories and shops—formed outside the old house.

  A letter was sent to The Times. Money came by post, enough to revive hope. A milk centre was established. Sylvia will save us ran the wild, hopeful cry through the streets.

  Old people, as they waited for bread, told of the corn-fields they had known as children, when the old ford was across the stream which was now the canal. Behind the house was a decaying small hall, turned into a meeting room before the war. Its rough interior brick walls were colour-washed. At one end was a platform; at the other a wooden archway with niches wherein stood plaster casts of Greek figures—the Venus de Milo, Homer, the Delphic Apollo among them. Into this hall shuffled the head of the queue, through the house from the open front door: young mothers, lily-pale of face, bearing themselves with such fortitude, she thought. She was inspired by their patience, by their beauty as of twilight before the halls of Aides; their eyes dark-ringed, brow and cheek of Persephone lost to the sun. What pride they had! Tidy clothes, however poor and worn, clean aprons over threadbare shirts, hair closely braided, or twisted tight in curling pins! They were neat, they were presentable even on the brink of collapse, out of respect for themselves and for their adored leader. Sylvia will save us.

  Some of the infants, their legs no thicker than a man’s thumbs, were too ill to digest cow’s milk. What was wanted was albumen water. In Sylvia’s weekly broadsheet appeals were made for eggs. A clinic was formed, a woman doctor gave her services. How could they be found work? “Everything pawned, and nothing coming in.” It was a common statement.

  One woman, expecting a baby, another in her arms, three mites hanging to her skirts, fainted in the queue. Another with six young children, two of them twin babies, said that for nearly three weeks they had been fed only on boiled white bread. Prematurely aged, the young mother lived in dread of eviction from her one tenement room wherein always by day and night arose the whimper of hunger. A third, also with six children, had had no food for four days.

  And yet—and yet——

  “But look what the Germans are doin’ in Belgium, miss!”

  “Alf Burgess dahn our street bin’n lost ’is job, why don’t ’e go for a sojer? A big strong man like ’im, eating food what’s needed for the children, ’t’aint right, miss!”

  Alfred Burgess came to see Sylvia. Before the war he had aided the suffragette movement—and lost several jobs on account of his loyalty. He was white to the lips with starvation. “What do I do, miss? Even the missus says as ’ow I ought to go, miss.” Later that morning Alfred Burgess, his wife’s nerve-thin nagging yet audible in his mind, had gone for a soldier, feeling he had betrayed Sylvia. O for the pen of Euripides!

  “Their minds cannot hold out against hysteria, and the lies of the yellow press, Dora. You see, they will not even save themselves! Their loyalties are divided between our movement, and what they think of as their country. Their country—look at it——” Sylvia pointed at the shabby street, the decaying houses, the melancholy and patient mothers waiting in the queues. What would be the end of i tall? What would happen to Sylvia? Dora saw her as one pre-destined to be crushed by the dark forces. Her mother and sister, both militant sufferers in the cause before the war, had already publicly disclaimed her.

  But the little body known as Grannie Nobbs was of undefeatable stuff. She came to whisper, bonnet nodding, that coppers’ narks had been planted among the mothers. “I’ll mother’m, I will! But look out, Miss Sylvia, don’t say nuffink to strangers abaht th’ war bein’ all wrong, see? If ’ey do arst yer, tell’m vose what arst no questions’ll be to’d no lies, see?” Black tags of her bonnet shaking grimly, Grannie Nobbs, black shawl over black bodice, shuffled away.

  An old man with weary eyes in a face of great beauty and suffering, his white and silky hair giving him the look of an old North Country sheep-dog who had lost his sheep, appeared one day. His eyes brightened when some of the mothers exclaimed, “Gawd bless yer, Mr. Keir Hardie, sir!”

  To Sylvia he said, in private, “I have heard that a lot of our lads have fallen down out there.”

  The old man sat still on a wooden chair for some time; then with a long sigh, as he rose to go he said, “As Jaurès remarked before the hand of the assassin struck him down, ‘Away and seek pardon of God and man’.”

  *

  “You know,” said Dora, “I have a feeling that the corner has been turned, dear Sylvia. The first confused rushing of the unprepared to meet the unimagined is over. Have you read Queen Mary’s Message to the Women of Great Britain? How simply it is worded; I am sure she wrote it herself.”

  In the firm belief that prevention of distress is better than charity, I have inaugurated the ‘Queen’s Work of Women Fund’. Its object is to provide employment for as many as possible of the women of this country who have been thrown out of work by the war.

  I appeal to the women of Great Britain to help their less fortunate sisters through this Fund.


  “That is all very well in so far as it goes,” remarked Sylvia, “but what is it but charity? It is only a sop to us, because we have shown that we refuse to accept the Gadarene Rush to destruction.”

  “A sop to us? It is giving a lead to the entire country, surely? After all, dear Sylvia, it is what you have done here in the East End. Now through the Queen, who has a sense of high duty, the nation will be awakened to its responsibilities.”

  “I have no quarrel with the Queen. She is both gracious and her life is ruled, as you say, by a sense of high duty. But the Crown is, after all, only a figurehead. It is the System that must be changed. I shall continue to oppose the war and the ideas of the entire nation while the continuance of the war is being urged. In this I am with Keir Hardie. Dora, in his eyes when he came here yesterday I saw death. He is stricken in his soul. Now if you will excuse me, I have some work to do.”

  Dora knew that Sylvia was near the point of exhaustion herself. She seldom slept for more than an hour or two at a time. Often her lamp was burning until the small hours, into the dawn and the day, while she sat at her table, papers everywhere, envelopes, pamphlets, articles for her weekly broadsheet, begging letters, letters written to men, called up, on behalf of wives who could not write themselves, or lacked paper and penny stamp. If she was curt at times, was it not the momentary rigidity of one steeling herself for the ‘mental fight’ of William Blake, ‘till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green and pleasant land’?

  Later, when a committee was proposed to look after the district east of Aldgate, and Sylvia was asked to sit on it, Dora received a slight shock to see that the letter came from a Lady Tofield. She must be, she thought, the wife of the son of the man who had bought all the farms but one of her father’s property in Rookhurst. The Tofields were brewers, and wealthy people. Now that war had come, at least farmers would have a good market for their produce, after the long years of Free Trade, which had brought riches to the new industrial classes, but impoverishment to the countryside where there was no wealthy man to act the squire.

  What a pity it was that the family property had had to be sold! Phillip and William should now be at the university, afterwards to set-to and farm the land in partnership; instead, both had become two very young urbanised pawns in what was basically a European Industrialists’ War, for markets, Germany being the latest competitor.

  And having restored the balance of her mind according to her ideas, Dora went to look after her babies in the clinic.

  *

  The War Office announced that separation allowances were to be paid to the wives of men called up or enlisted: one shilling and one penny a day for the wives and an additional two pence a day for boys under fourteen and girls under sixteen. The soldiers might allot to their families, further, up to half their pay, which was a shilling a day. There were inevitably long delays in these payments; while rent of up to six shillings and sixpence a week must be met.

  Lady Tofield’s Committee had not yet been formed, let alone done anything. So Dora sold more of her depressed Consols, and went out among her few remaining friends, begging.

  On Sunday afternoon she visited Hetty, who gave her five pounds.

  “It is out of the little nest-egg Mamma left me, so it is quite all right to give it to you. But you won’t mention it to Dickie, will you, Dora? You see, he thinks I have no idea of the value of money. Perhaps that is so; but I am sure Mamma would be glad to know that the poor little children will be fed because of it.” Hetty was thinking of Phillip, when he had been born, wasting away because she could not find the right food for him.

  She went next door to see Mr. Turney, who wrote her out a cheque for ten pounds, asking her not to make it known.

  “I don’t want to be besieged by beggars, he-he-he!” Then seeing Dora’s face at this unguarded remark, “Things will come right, Dora, don’t you worry over-much. The Government has an immense amount of work on its hands, and it takes time to organise under entirely unforeseen conditions, y’know. This war will make a lot of changes—it has already put my three grandsons into kilts, Scotsmen all, he-he-he! War, like roguery, makes strange bedfellows. Stay to supper, won’t ye? Marian has got some macaroni-cheese baking in the oven, with sliced tomatoes on top: ’twill do you good, I say. Bolton is coming, have ye met him? His boy’s another Scotsman for the duration! Bolton saw them all marching through the Green Park the other afternoon, and a fine sight they were, too, he tells me, pipes skirling and kilts swinging. I’ve just been reading again that passage in Henry the Fifth, before Agincourt. Wonderful stuff, wonderful! The Prince of Wales, now, I wonder what part he will play in the war? M’friend on the Hill, who is reporter to The Morning Post, tells me the Army is in France, but the Prince wasn’t allowed to go with his regiment, the Grenadier Guards.”

  The old man fell into a reverie. When he looked up he said, “Why, bless my soul, surely you were here, Dora, when I read the prologue before Agincourt, the night that Sidney Cakebread and m’boy Hughie were leaving for South Africa? Of course you were, I recollect now. Newman was here, wasn’t he, yes; and Sarah——”

  He took out his red silk handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

  Dora thanked him again for his gift, saying it would bring such happiness to so many; and leaving the room, went into the kitchen to say goodbye to “my dear, dearer, dearest adopted Aunt Marian,” whom she hugged, being hugged in return.

  Mr. Turney called her into the front room as she was about to leave.

  “This bread question will ease up, you know, when the United States grain shipments reach our ports. The Telegraph said some days ago that it was a record wheat crop this year. Competition will bring down prices, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the Government puts on some sort of control, as it has already for bacon, margarine, and sugar.”

  “And a jolly good thing, too, Mr. Turney! The Canadian exporters declared their solidarity with the Mother Country almost as soon as war was declared, but that did not prevent them from substantially putting up their prices, well knowing that they had nothing to fear in competition with the Central European grain harvest!”

  “Ah ha, I know what you are thinking, Dora! But reflect a moment that it was Free Trade that kept the prices down, in the normal course of buying in the cheapest market, before hostilities upset the balance!”

  “The Shop Assistants’ Union has complained, Mr. Turney, that many of their members have been put on half-pay ‘on account of the war’, yet it is noticeable that the shops have also raised their prices.”

  “Supply and demand, Dora, supply and demand! As I said just now, everything is abnormal. No one knows from one minute to the next what is going to happen. Things will settle down. The cry is already, ‘Business as usual.’ I see Kitchener has appealed for another hundred thousand men; their going will further add to the dislocation. People think it is going to be a short war, but I am beginning to doubt it. Both the Germans and ourselves are very strong. As for Russia, I don’t have all the faith in Russia that the papers seem to have. Her industrial strength is not very much, and it will be industrial strength that will tell in the end, you mark my words. Steel!”

  Theodora smiled wanly as she thought of bayonets. “Let us hope that all people will come to their senses, Mr. Turney, very soon.”

  “I wish I could think so, too, Dora, but facts rule this world, you know, my girl, not theories. Are you sure you won’t stay and take some macaroni pie? The Germans will be buying up all they can, I expect, from Italy. Won’t you change your mind?”

  She thanked him once more for his kindness and generosity, and went next door. Unfortunately she allowed herself to be drawn into an argument with Dickie, a foolish thing on her part, as it upset Hetty. Together they went to London to see Phillip.

  *

  The next evening Richard remarked to his wife,

  “Dora had better look out for herself, now that this second Defence of the Realm Bill has become law. It declares here that anyone found
to be spreading ‘reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty’s forces, or among the civil population’—as the act declares—can be arrested and tried in the ordinary course of the law.”

  “Oh, I am sure Dora would never do anything like that, Dickie.”

  “Well, I am not so sure.”

  A few minutes later he found more in The Daily Trident with which to justify himself. “Listen to this, Hetty! It is from an article by Lady Frances Balfour. I think it disposes of Dora’s exaggerated claims for her ‘deserving poor’!”

  “‘Let there be no complaining in our streets. Women can save the situation by accepting it. We have heard of women giving tongue over the counter because the full tale of their goods could not be delivered at the usual price. Such people are as deserving of being treated as deserters as ever any soldier is who runs from the rifle fire of the entrenched position he has to take.’”

  Hetty was saved from reply by a double rat-tat on the front door. She hurried up the stairs; but Doris from the front room got there first.

  “A postcard from Phillip, Dickie! Would you like to read it?”

  “You read it out, old girl. After all, he’s your best boy.”

  “‘Everything all right. Send my campaign clumped brogue shoes as soon as you get them. Great concentration of troops to the coast any moment now. Also post my Civic pipe with brogues. Tell Father to get a pull-through for his rifle. Please don’t join a Ladies’ Rifle Club, the kick would dislocate your shoulder. Hope all are well, including the Girs, Timmy Rat, and Gran’pa. Love to all, Phil’.”