CHAPTER V 



EARLY MANHOOD conimued)-LETTERS TO THE 'TIMES' 

 — MAGAZINE ARTICLES ON AGRICULTURE AND 

 CURRENT EVENTS 



Jefferies' nearest approach as yet to self-expression in 

 written words was in his three letters to the Times in 

 November, 1872. In February of that year Joseph Arch 

 mounted his pigstool under the chestnut at Wellesbourne, 

 and the Warwickshire agricultural labourers resolved to 

 form a Union. They struck work, asking unsuccessfully 

 for sixteen instead of twelve shillings a week. The men 

 of Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, 

 Norfolk, Essex, and Northamptonshire stood up for the 

 Union ; and at the Agricultural Labourers' Congress at 

 Leamington there were representatives from Wiltshire. 

 Jefferies took the occasion to write a long letter on the 

 condition of the labourers, which, after being rejected by 

 another paper, was printed in the Times. 



He described the Wiltshireman as an average specimen 

 of his class, in wages as in intelligence. He is strong, but 

 slow, feeding chiefly on bread, cheese, bacon, and cabbage, 

 and pot-liquor — the water in which even potatoes have 

 been boiled. There is no ingenuity in their cookery. 

 They eat immensely at the annual club dinner, and in the 

 hay and harvest-fields drink a great deal of poor beer. 

 They are better clothed than formerly, corduroy and 

 slops, with ' really good clothes ' and chimney-pot on 

 Sundays, superseding smocks. The women, especially 

 the young, must dress in the style of the day. As to 



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