The Village Carpenter: The Classic Memoir of the Life of a Victorian Craftsman
By Walter Rose
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The Village Carpenter - Walter Rose
INTRODUCTION
There is for half the world a deep-rooted association of domestic modesty, frugality, and wholesomeness about a carpenter’s shop. We may smile to ourselves to observe the innocence which made a medieval painter portray the holy land as very like his own; but do not we also construct a private image of the home of Joseph and Mary out of free memories of our own homes and what we remember of some village carpenter’s shop? And so, by an inverse association, the carpenter’s shop has come by its familiar gentle repute: carpentry seems quite at home in the best known domestic story in the world, and it cannot help gathering a little saintliness by it: we are more christian than we admit.
Not that carpentry itself has nothing to contribute. It would have been harder to domesticate bellows and forge and anvil, had Christ been born a blacksmith. But he was not, and so, whether by chance or a natural orientation of spirit, what was fact was also fitting, a natural-born allegory.
For who has not some pleasant memory of a carpenter: his clean-smelling work, the musical sounds of his tools, his slow, kind, but masterly hands? As Mr Walter Rose points out in this intimate book, carpentry has a very near connection with home life; cupboard and shelf, wainscot and window, table and footstool, are all either creation or patients (or both) of the village carpenter.
When the sweep came, or the plumber, or painter we kept out of the way—they made the house unhomely and we took our things out of the reach of their grime. But a child can watch a carpenter at work without risk of soiling; sawdust is cleaner than snow and not unlike it, and the long curling crinkled shavings, that come off sweetly (as clean as a whistle) are lovelier than any manufactured fabric. Wood is tender stuff, too; you must not bang it about as you must bang iron about, and, handling it gently, carpenters as a race are gentle. They seldom shout; they never leave their tools about.
Mr Rose’s book, as it goes on, shows a great deal of the carpenter’s social character. When he says that a man would look at the ends of the chisel handles (the part you hit) to see what sort of a workman owned them, he is giving not a custom of the trade so much as an insight into a carpenter’s character. ‘The difference between you and me is that I happen to be the one who will have to use this tool’, was my remark
(he writes) to a salesman who extolled the merits of the saws on the counter to avoid taking the one that I wanted from the window. The saw, eventually purchased, was of marvellous quality, a delight to use. But I took it to work on a new house, it was borrowed by the labourers for cutting firewood, and on my return I found it in my basket broken in two.
This simple story is quoted from Mr Rose’s chapter on tools (p. 59). If it was the only speech at the only entrance of an actor in a play, it would (it seems to me) convey the whole character of a carpenter. The tragedy, oddly enough, seems to happen not to Mr Rose, but to the saw. That the saw is broken is the accepted source of emotion; a regretful grief, and not a righteous anger, is the theme. It may be objected that to make much of so slight and casual a quotation is ridiculous. But only think of the difference had this story been told, of one of his tools, by a morose plumber or an irascible blacksmith. The world would have heard something, then, of the character and antecedents of the labourers! In words, too, not so mild as old Enoch’s notable Blam-me
.
Carpenters are not the only craftsmen—it may be true of a motor mechanic that the last wipe-over with a greasy rag is half a caress for a job done to an inward satisfaction—but if anyone wants a type of what is best in all craftsmen, ten to one he will choose a carpenter. Have you seen him run his plane first along the edge of the plank, then tilt the plank to test its straightness with the eye, and then (for no purpose but unexpressive affection, that I can see) run the soft pad of his hand down its length, approving its smooth warmth? This is not done to verify that it will function, it is an excess of mild pleasure, it is done because the senses are delighted with wood well worked.
No gaslight ever lit his shop;
He had no wheels to start and stop;
No hot, metallic engines there
Disturbed the shaving-scented air;
His hands were engines, and his eye
His gauge to measure beauty by …
How gently time went by for him
Up in that workshop! which grew dim
At sunset time: and then he’d lay
His chisels down, and sweep away
The chips and shavings of the day;
But left upon the bench no less
Than that day’s gain in comeliness;
Then shut the door, and slowly went
Under the rose to bed, content.
A tool working well rings a song to a carpenter, and one ill-sharped or badly set, jibbing at its work and forcing the delicate fibres, gives him pain as discord hurts a musician.
Psychologists say that of all occupations carpentry is the most perfectly balanced between the aesthetic, mental, and physical faculties. How this applies to-day when much of the work that was once done laboriously by hand is done to standard by machines, I do not know; but even the machine-minders in a woodworking shop show susceptibilities about the products of their work that metal-workers seem to lack, and one believes there may be some truth in the virtue of material. Ruskin gave general advice to employ as little fire as possible, and to give preference to methods which do not need to employ it. Wood is alive (Mr Rose is keenly aware of this), and iron is dead; a carpenter who takes no notice of the run of the grain or of the individual qualities of a piece of wood is only a botcher, and I suspect that something of the prejudice against plywood which many older carpenters express, is due to the way that plywood can be treated—wholesale, so much stuff to fill openings with. It baulks carpenters of half their accumulated experience, like a woman who behaves in an unexpectedly mannish manner.
But Mr Rose says nothing of plywood. His memories go back to a time when even veneers were cut at the saw-pit from the log; cut, too, for a job in hand, and cherished accordingly. Yet he is no idoliser of the past for its lostness. He says plainly that he is glad that saw-pits have been replaced by machines, and still he has plenty of hope in his last chapter that carpentry in some degree will continue to exist as a craft. The reader must go there for his reasons and his argument. They are sound; but here is one which he does not, I think, explicitly mention anywhere. It is said that baskets can never be made by machinery. The stitch
of baskets found buried with Egyptian mummies is the very same as one of the common stitches in use to-day. The impossibility of machinery is not, however, due to the basket-maker’s excellent skill, but to the fact that the withies they work in are live stuff that cannot be standardised; and machines, of course, in their ultimate development, can only handle standardised stuff. The same, in its degree, is true of the material that carpenters work in. Mr Rose, it is to be noticed, begins with wood and the untellable secret of its various characters. He can never forget for long that his chisels are turning trees into things
, and he knows that the carpenter, at least by proxy of the woodcutter, has roots in the soil. This sense of being part of the life which is part of the land is constantly with him and is one secret, for example, of the charm of the too brief chapters on mills and farm carpentry.
Wind-mills have gone; even gates are going. Mr Rose writes of much that has vanished or will soon be past record. Yet one hopes that his book will not be read only for its antiquities. The need to do work and be work-satisfied about it (no easy thing in these days, and therefore an ideal for all kinds of men besides carpenters) will go on into the new world that must and shall be spared for our sons. Mr Rose has written, not only a record of carpenter’s work, but a record of a kind of life that is essentially satisfied, a kind of work that men sing at. When we learn at last that fear of one’s neighbour (even one’s neighbour nation) is destructive and makes insecurity, but that patience and forbearance and a respect for the run of the grain are peaceable and productive, it may not be that we shall all become carpenters (though that would be less calamity!) but certainly with loss of fever we shall regain our sense of proportion: we shall not only see the beauty of doing things, we shall, indeed, do them again (when we can) for ourselves. Secure, we should find the duration of our seventy years by nature doubled; we should fill our days, and be richer every moment, though only with Izaak Walton’s virtue, content.
FRANK KENDON
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The reminiscences recorded in this book are nearly all those of our old carpentry business prior to my grandfather’s death in the year 1893. For some of them I am indebted to others who remembered it in its more active days before I was born.
An outstanding feature is, that, throughout the whole of its history, its scope was confined to woodwork only. Its allied craft of the Masoner
—now called bricklayer—was carried on by one of grandfather’s brothers as another business, in separate premises. A third business combining plumbing, glazing and decorating was in the hands of two of my father’s brothers, one of whom died shortly before I commenced work.
In all building and repair work the three separate concerns acted together in unison. Similar division and unison were formerly general in other places also but had been discarded. Both father and his brothers recognised that the system was inconvenient and out-of-date, but the two elder men were too long accustomed to the arrangement to entertain a change.
My great-uncle, the masoner, died six weeks before grandfather’s death occurred; the way was then open for my father and myself to reconstruct the old carpentry business, which, from that date, was changed to general building, and we then undertook all that came within the meaning of that term. With the change what remained of its original character rapidly disappeared. Paint, putty and glass invaded the old workshop, much to the disgust of the old joiners that remained. Cement, lime, bricks and tiles were stored in buildings hitherto reserved only for wood. Outside influences were also at work, slowly but surely breaking down the age-long prestige of each craft; their separate exclusiveness was disappearing. Machine-made panel doors came along at a cheaper price than we could make them: mouldings and prepared sash bars and rails made their preparation by hand expensive in contrast. Each of such changes tended to discount the skill of the joiner. In like manner, the wholesale supply of prepared varnishes, paints, stains, and distemper washes rendered the secrets of their preparation of little further value to the old decorators. It soon ceased to be an offence for the carpenter to use the paint brush or to insert a square of glass in a window, or for the decorator to do an odd job of carpentry. The rigid separation of the crafts had been inconvenient on small jobs requiring but a slight contribution from each; the Jack of all trades
who could turn his hand to either became a man valued in preference to the specialised craftsman whose pride was excellence on one line only. We felt that we were in a new era but did not realise its portent.
There was much competition for the work that was going, most of it being undertaken by contract at fixed prices, often several tenders being given for a small job. The village was passing through its latest transition, the land was ceasing to maintain it as formerly and the present influx of town residents had not commenced. No one had money to spare; the estates that formerly were the backbone of my grandfather’s business were impoverished. By sheer necessity the amount of work was reduced to a minimum at the least possible cost. If one did not give a close price another firm was at hand to do so.
Nothing so destroys craft spirit as the knowledge of a possible loss on work undertaken; to avoid such and, if possible, make a profit became my chief consideration. Many jobs were miles apart, so that adequate supervision was impossible. No one could have had more faithful workmen; nevertheless I found it to be a continual gamble to undertake works by contract and have them executed by day-work with the uncertain elements of the weather to contend with. It may be that a smarter man would have proved a success under such conditions. I know now that, in contrast with the present, the period was unfortunate; it is generally admitted that building was a sweated industry for both employer and employed in those pre-war days. Enough to say that, by the time of my father’s death, work and worry had reduced my ardour, and white lead had damaged my health. The division of his small estate left me in the position of not being able to carry on as formerly, even had I wished to do so. Another career offered, which I accepted, thinking that I had said good-bye to craft and building work.
Of the succession of experiences that eventually led me back to woodcraft it is not necessary to write here in detail; save that the outbreak of the war made my calling as a commercial traveller—in which I had fully regained health and strength—no longer possible, and that as a temporary expedient I reverted to woodcraft, finally handing over my connection on the road
to my son.
Thus it followed that in the glorious summer of 1921, I was in a Buckinghamshire wood, amid the tall bracken, carving the stop chamfers of large oak beams for a new house. The rude ornaments shaped by my carpenter’s chisels and gouges caught the attention of an architect—Mr Pinchard of Staple Inn—who straightway offered me the execution of a large reredos and chancel fittings for a Bromley church, an experience that constituted