, which had been the home also of their
fathers and grandfathers; but latterly the desire for yearly removal had risen
to a high pitch. With the younger families it was a pleasant excitement which
might possibly be an advantage. The Egypt of one family was the Land of Promise
to the family who saw it from a distance, till by residence there it became in
turn their Egypt also; and so they changed and changed.
    However, all the mutations so increasingly discernible in village life did
not originate entirely in the agricultural unrest. A depopulation was also going
on. The village had formerly contained, side by side with the agricultural
labourers, an interesting and better-informed class, ranking distinctly above
the former - the class to which Tess's father and mother had belonged - and
including the carpenter, the smith, the shoemaker, the huckster, together with
nondescript workers other than farm-labourers; a set of people who owed a
certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact of their being life-holders
like Tess's father, or copyholders, or, occasionally, small freeholders. But as
the long holdings fell in they were seldom again let to similar tenants, and
were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer for his hands.
Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land were looked upon with
disfavour, and the banishment of some starved the trade of others, who were thus
obliged to follow. These families, who had formed the backbone of the village
life in the past, who were the depositaries of the village traditions, had to
seek refuge in the large centres; the process, humorously designated by
statisticians as »the tendency of the rural population towards the large towns,«
being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery.
    The cottage accommodation at Marlott having been in this manner considerably
curtailed by demolitions, every house which remained standing was required by
the agriculturist for his work-people. Ever since the occurrence of the event
which had cast such a shadow over Tess's life, the Durbeyfield family (whose
descent was not credited) had been tacitly looked on as one which would have to
go when their lease ended, if only in the interests of morality. It was, indeed,
quite true that the household had not been shining examples either of
temperance, soberness, or chastity. The father, and even the mother, had got
drunk at times, the younger children seldom had gone to church, and the eldest
daughter had made queer unions. By some means the village had to be kept pure.
So
