I allowed myself to order this subchapter under the big chapter "Ottoman Working Habits" because Barkley constantly compares the natives with his countrymen.
The Englishmen who worked with Barkley were not of particular interest to him. They were his fellow countrymen and belonged to his culture. Their behaviour and habits were predictable, which is why the civil engineer does not speak of the British navvies very often. What he found curious was how they managed to communicate and work together with the natives, i.e., to solve the everyday problems he also had to face.
They [the English navvies] had all of them worked for years in different parts of Europe, so had learnt a little tact, and also not to think themselves so very, very superior to all.' (Barkley, Bulgaria, 85.)
But Barkley admits that the different ethnic groups kept separate as much as possible. So observations of this kind are also rare. The passages in his books concerning his fellow citizens chiefly describe individuals with strong personalities. Unlike the portraits of the Ottomans, who are normally represented in their typical occupations and characteristic behavioural patterns, the English navvies are depicted in their singularity and extraordinariness, i.e., as individuals.
One of the most memorable people was the general foreman Jack Striver.
[He was] one of the most useful men that handled a pick, and one of the quaintest characters. […] He was never known to be idle in his life, and never even seen to walk leisurely, but was just an incarnation of energy and restlessness. By disposition he was cheerful and friendly, and was liked by all, both Englishmen and foreigners. […] He was a good scholar, a sober man, and one of the most obliging in the world. (Barkley, Danube, 109-10.)
Jack was a mixture of rowdiness and Victorian industriousness and thrift. This special combination made him an excellent foreman. He worked harder than anybody else and was so hard-headed that ' should he be hit on the head with a pickaxe, the tool would be spoilt as if you had struck it on iron' (Barkley, Danube, 110.). His restless personality regularly involved him in rows, and his fists gained him the respect of his subordinates. But his most distinguishing feature was his piercing eye:
There was no getting away from it, and it was so restless that it even moved the Turks, and while it was near them they worked with feverish excitement! […] From the moment ' the eye' was on the works new life sprung up, and the work went on like magic -- yet there was more cheerfulness among the men and everyone looked pleased when Jack made his appearance. (Barkley, Danube, 110-11.)
The reason why Barkley devotes so much space to aquaint the reader with Jack Striver is obvious: he admired him for the way in which he got along with the men and for the efficiency with which he led them.
Efficiency was a key word in the value system of the engineer. It points to his main problem with the drowsy Empire: Barkley had to fight with unproductiveness, delays and indifference. That is why he was so preoccupied with making the line construction more effective. The English navvies enjoyed a supreme reputation, they were regarded as the finest labour force, but in Barkley' s texts they are not praised for the quality of their work or their qualifications but for their efficiency:
I was soon joined at Varna by a most efficient staff of Englishmen. (Barkley, Bulgaria, 23.)
The scarce references to the English navvies also allow a further observation. Although they came from all over the world, ' from Spain, Italy, and Austria, indeed from any country where English companies had been constructing railways and public works' (Barkley, Bulgaria, 86.), they seemed to have two problems typical of the Victorian working class. Poverty, although relative, was the first one. Barkley again discusses it in relation with the possibility of earning good money that the line construction gave. A typical example would be the story of a subcontractor whose great aim in life was to save enough money to return to England and buy a small house with sufficient land to support him. ' He had nearly obtained enough to gratify his wish' (Barkley, Bulgaria, 91.), is Barkley' s satisfied comment.
Drink was the second problem. Some of Barkley' s subordinates spent every penny they earned on drink even before they had received it. To a certain extent a reason for that was the lack of other pleasures for the workers' spare time. Secondly, drink offered an escape from the hard living conditions. And a third explanation was formulated by McLaurin in his article "Reworking ' work' in some Victorian writing and visual art": drinking for the sake of drinking. The article contains the following statement by a coalbacker, which, judging from some remarks of Barkley' s, was also a common argument among the English navvies:
I' ll tell you what it is, Sir. […] one must rest sometimes. Now if you sit down to rest without something to refresh you, the rest does you harm instead of good, for your joints seem to stiffen; but a good pull at a pot of beer backs up the rest, and we start lightsomer. (McLaurin, 37.)
The affinity of the English navvies for alcohol stands in direct relation to the dispute of contemporary scholars about the Victorian work ethic. At the time of Barkley's stay in Bulgaria crime, poverty, and drunkenness in England, which had reached their peak about 1842, were dropping year by year. This had to do with the material improvements now available to the lower strata of society. Some critics nowadays see this as a victory of Victorian values. But there are others who insist that the numerous examples of Victorian attempts to encourage thrift, hard work, and sobriety are responses to contemporary problems and difficulties and not expressions of Victorian achievement. (Walvin, 142.) Whatever the solution of this contemporary dispute, Barkley does not help us very much. It is a fact that he considered abstinence one of his virtues. But he did not think further of the drunkenness on the line as long as the labourers were working hard.
Barkley, Henry C., Between the Danube and the Black Sea or Five Years
in Bulgaria
(London: Murray, 1877).
Barkley, Henry C., Bulgaria before the War during Seven Years' Experience
of European
Turkey and Its Inhabitants (London: Murray, 1877).
McLaurin, Allen, "Reworking ' work' in some Victorian writing and visual art", in: Sigsworth, Eric M. (ed.), In Search of Victorian Values. Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Thought and Society (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1988), p. 37.
Walvin, J. Victorian Values (London: André Deutsch, 1987), p. 142.
Last modified 2001