ROYSTON AND ITS SPECIALITIES--ENTERTAINMENT IN A SMALL VILLAGE--ST.
IVES--VISITS TO ADJOINING VILLAGES--A FEN-FARM--CAPITAL INVESTED IN
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN AGRICULTURE COMPARED--ALLOTMENTS AND GARDEN
TENANTRY--BARLEY GROWN ON OATS.
From Chrishall Grange I went on to Royston, where I found very quiet
and comfortable quarters in a small inn called "The Catherine
Wheel," for what reason it is not yet clear to my mind, and the
landlady could not enlighten me on the subject. I have noticed two
inns in London of the same name, and have seen it mounted on several
other public houses in England. Why that ancient saint and the
machinery of her torture should be alone selected from the history
and host of Christian martyrs, and thus associated with houses of
entertainment for man and beast, is a mystery which I will not
undertake to explore. To be sure, the head of a puncheon of rum is
round like a wheel, and if the liquor were not too much diluted with
water, it might make a revolving illumination quite interesting, if
set on fire and rolled into the gutter. It may possibly suggest
that lambent ignition of the brain which the fiery drinks of the
establishment produce, and which so many infatuated victims think
delightful. Both these inferences, and all others I could fancy,
are so dubious that I will not venture further into the meaning of
this singular appellation given to a tavern.
Royston is a goodly and comfortable town, just inside the eastern
boundary of Hertfordshire. It has its full share of half-legible
and interesting antiquities, including the ruins of a royal palace,
a cave, and several other broken monuments of the olden time, all
festooned with the web-work of hereditary fancies, legends, and
shreds of unravelled history dyed to the vivid colors of variegated
imagination. It also boasts and enjoys a great, breezy common,
large enough to hold such another town, and which few in the kingdom
can show. Then, if it cannot cope with Glastonbury in showing, to
the envious and credulous world, a thorn-tree planted by Joseph of
Arimathaea, and blossoming always at Christmas, it can fly a bird of
greater antiquity, which never flapped its wings elsewhere, so far
as I can learn. It may be the lineal descendant of Noah's raven
that has come down to this particular community without a cross with
any other branch of the family. It is called "The Royston Crow,"
and is a variety of the genus which you will find in no other
country. It is a great, heavy bird, larger than his colored
American cousin, and is distinguished by a white back. Indeed, seen
walking at a distance, he looks like our Bobolink expanded to the
size of a large hen-hawk. To have such a wild bird all to
themselves, and of its own free will, notwithstanding the length and
power of its wings, and the force of centrifugal attractions, is a
distinction which the good people of this favored town have good
reason to appreciate at its proper value. Nor are they insensible
to the honor. The town printer put into my hands a monthly
publication called "THE ROYSTON CROW," containing much interesting
and valuable information. It might properly have embraced a chapter
on entomology; but, perhaps, it would have been impolitic for the
personal interests of the bird to have given wide publicity to facts
in this department of knowledge. For, after all, there may exist in
the neighborhood certain special kinds of bugs and other insects
which lie at the foundation of his preference for the locality.
The next day I again faced northward, and walked as far as Caxton, a
small, rambling village, which looked as if it had not shaved and
washed its face, and put on a clean shirt for a shocking length of
time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles
after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the
town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into
the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived
by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers;
nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers.
The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was
evidently limited to the tap-room. Indeed, this and the great, low-
jointed and brick-floored kitchen opening into to it, seemed to
constitute all the living or inhabited space in the building. I
saw, at a glance, that the chance for a bed was faint and small; and
I asked Landlord Rufus for one doubtingly, as one would ask for a
ready-made pulpit or piano at a common cabinet-maker's shop. He
answered me clearly enough before he spoke, and he spoke as if
answering a strange and half-impertinent question, looking at me
searchingly, as if he suspected I was quizzing him. His "No!" was
short and decided; but, seeing I was honest and earnest in the
inquiry, he softened his negative with the explanation that their
beds were all full. It seemed strange to me that this should be so
in a building large enough for twenty, and I hesitated hopefully,
thinking he might remember some small room in which he might put me
for the night. To awaken a generous thought in him in this
direction, I intimated how contented I would be with the most
moderate accommodation. But it was in vain. The house was full,
and I must seek for lodging elsewhere. There were two or three
other public houses in the village that might take me in. I went to
them one by one. They all kept plenty of beer, but no bed. They,
too, looked at me with surprise for asking for such a thing.
Apparently, there had been no demand for such entertainment by any
traveller since the stage-coach ceased to run through the village.
I went up and down, trying to negotiate with the occupants of some
of the best-looking cottages for a cot or bunk; but they had none to
spare, as the number of wondering children that stared at me kindly,
at once suggested before I put the question.
It was now quite dark, and I was hungry and tired; and the prospect
of an additional six miles walk was not very animating. What next?
I will go back to Landlord Rufus and try a new influence on his
sensibilities. Who knows but it will succeed? I will touch him on
his true character as a Briton. So I went back, with my last chance
hanging on the experiment. I told him I was an American traveller,
weary, hungry, and infirm of health, and would pay an extra price
for an extra effort to give me a bed for the night. I did not say
all this in a Romanus-civus-sum sort of tone. No! dear, honest Old
Abe, you would have done the same in my place. I made the great
American Eagle coo like a dove in the request; and it touched the
best instincts of the British Lion within the man. It was evident
in a moment that I had put my case in a new aspect to him. He would
talk with the "_missus_;" he withdrew into the back kitchen, a short
conference ensued, and both came out together and informed me that
they had found a bed, unexpectedly vacant, for my accommodation.
And they would get up some tea and bread and butter for me, too.
Capital! A sentiment of national pride stole in between every two
feelings of common satisfaction at this result. The thought would
come in and whisper, not for your importunity as a common fellow
mortal were this bed and this loaf unlocked to you, but because you
were an American citizen.
So I followed "the missus" into that great kitchen, and sat down in
one corner of the huge fire-place while she made the tea. It was a
capacious museum of culinary curiosities of the olden time, all
arranged in picturesque groups, yet without any aim at effect.
Pots, kettles, pans, spits, covers, hooks and trammels of the
Elizabethan period, apparently the heirlooms of several intersecting
generations, showed in the fire-light like a work of artistry; the
sharp, silvery brightness of the tin and the florid flush of
burnished copper making distinct disks in the darkness. It was with
a rare sentiment of comfort that I sat by that fire of crackling
faggots, looked up at the stars that dropped in their light as they
passed over the top of the great chimney, and glanced around at the
sides of that old English kitchen, panelled with plates and platters
and dishes of all sizes and uses. And this fire was kindled and
this tea-kettle was singing for me really because I was an American!
I could not forget that--so I deemed it my duty to keep up the
character. Therefore, I told the _missus_ and her bright-eyed niece
a great many stories about America; some of which excited their
admiration and wonder. Thus I sat at the little, round, three-
legged table, inside the out-spreading chimney, for an hour or more,
and made as cozy and pleasant a meal of it as ever I ate. Besides
all this, I had the best bed in the house, and several "Good
nights!" on retiring to it, uttered with hearty good-will by voices
softened to an accent of kindness. Next morning I was introduced
into the best parlor, and had a capital breakfast, and then resumed
my walk with a pleasant memory of my entertainment in that village
inn.
I passed through a fertile and interesting section to St. Ives, in
Huntingdonshire. Here I remained with some friends for a week,
visiting neighboring villages by day and returning at night. St.
Ives is a pleasant, well-favored town, just large enough to
constitute a coherent, neighborly, and well-regulated community. It
is the centre-piece of a rich, rural picture, which, without any
strikingly salient features, pleases the eye with lineaments of
quiet beauty symmetrically developed by the artistry of Nature. The
river Ouse meanders through a wide, fertile flat, or what the Scotch
would call a strath, which gently rises on each side into pleasantly
undulating uplands. Parks, groves, copses, and hedge-row trees are
interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields
seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated
cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting
as you contemplate it. And this placid locality, with its peaceful
river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows,
was the scene of Oliver Cromwell's young, fiery manhood. Here,
where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises of
the mind, he trained the latent energies of his will for action in
the great drama that overturned a throne and transformed a nation.
Here, till very lately, stood his "barn," and here he drilled the
first squadron of his "Ironsides."
My friend and host drove me one day to see a fen-farm a few miles
beyond Ramsey, at which we remained over night and enjoyed the old-
fashioned English hospitality of the establishment with lively
relish. It was called "The Four-Hundred-Acre-Farm," to distinguish
it from a hundred others, laid out on the same dead level, with
lines and angles as straight and sharp as those of a brick. You
will meet scores of persons in England who speak admiringly of the
great prairies of our Western States--but I never saw one in
Illinois as extensive as the vast level expanse you may see in
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. In fact, the space of a large
county has been fished up out of a shallow sea of salt water by
human labor and capital. I will not dwell here upon the expense,
process, and result of this gigantic operation. It would require a
whole chapter to convey an approximate idea of the character and
dimensions of the enterprise. The feat of Cyrus in turning the
current of the Euphrates was the mere making of a short mill-race
compared with the labor of lifting up these millions of acres bodily
out of the flood that had covered and held them in quiescent
solution since the world began.
This Great Prairie of England, generally called here the Fens, or
Fenland, would be an interesting and instructive section for the
agriculturists of our Western States to visit. They would see how
such a region can be made quite picturesque, as well as luxuriantly
productive. Let them look off upon the green sea from one of the
upland waves, and it will be instructive to them to see and know,
that all the hedge-trees, groves, and copses that intersect and
internect the vast expanse of green and gold were planted by man's
hands. Such a landscape would convince them that the prairies of
Illinois and Iowa may be recovered from their almost depressing
monotony by the same means. The soil of this district is apparently
the same as that around Chicago--black and deep, on a layer of clay.
It pulverises as easily in dry weather, and makes the same inky and
sticky composition in wet. To give it more body, or to cross it
with a necessary and supplementary element, a whole field is often
trenched by the spade as clean as one could be furrowed by the
plough. By this process the substratum of clay is thrown up, to a
considerable thickness, upon the light, black, almost volatile soil,
and mixed with it when dry; thus giving it a new character and
capacity of production.
Everything seems to grow on a Californian scale in this fen
district. Although the soil thus rescued from the waters that had
flooded and half dissolved it, was at first as deep, black, and
naturally fertile as that of our prairies, those who commenced its
cultivation did not make the same mistake as did our Western
farmers. They did not throw their manure into the broad draining
canals to get rid of it, trusting to the inexhaustible fertility of
the alluvial earth, as did the wheat growers of Indiana and Illinois
to their cost; but they husbanded and well applied all the resources
of their barn-yards. In consequence of this economy, there is no
deterioration of annual averages of their crops to be recorded, as
in some of our prairie States, which have been boasting of the
natural and inexhaustible fertility of their soil even with the
record of retrograde statistics before their eyes. The grain and
root crops are very heavy; and a large business is done in growing
turnip seed for the world in some sections of this fen country. A
large proportion of the quantity we import comes from these low
lands.
Our host of the Four-Hundred-Acre Farm took us over his productive
occupation, which was in a very high state of cultivation. The
wheat was yellowing to harvest, and promised a yield of forty-two
bushels to the acre. The oats were very heavy, and the root crops
looked well, especially a field of mangel-wurzel. He apportions his
land to different crops after this ratio:-- Wheat, 120 acres; oats,
80; rye-grass and clover, 50; roots, 60. His live stock consisted
of 300 sheep, 50 to 60 head of cattle, and 70 to 80 hogs. His
working force was from 10 to 12 men, 14 farm horses, and 4 nags. It
may interest some of my American readers to know the number,
character, and cost of the implements employed by this substantial
English farmer in cultivating an estate of 400 acres. I noted down
the following list, when he was showing us his tool-house:--
l. $ l. $
6 Ploughs at 4 each = 20 24 = 120
6 Horse-carts, at 14 each = 70 84 = 420
1 Large Iron Roller and Gearing, 13 = 65
1 Cambridge Roller 14 = 70
1 Twelve-Coulter Drill 46 = 230
3 Harrows at 3 each = 15 9 = 45
2 Great Harrows at 3 each = 15 6 = 30
--- ---
Total cost of these Implements 196l.$980
These figures will represent the working forces and implemental
machinery of a well-tilled farm of 400 acres in England. They will
also indicate the amount of capital required to cultivate an estate
of this extent here. Let us compare it with the amount generally
invested in New England for a farm of equal size. Thousands that
have been under cultivation for a hundred years, may be bought for 5
pounds, or $25, per acre, including house, barn, and other buildings
and appurtenances. It is a very rare thing for a man with us to buy
400 acres at once; but if he did, it would probably be on these
conditions:-- He would pay 400 pounds, or $2,000, down at the time
of purchase, giving his notes for the remaining 1,600 pounds, or
$8,000, at 6 per cent. interest payable annually, together with the
yearly instalment of principal specified in each note. He would
perhaps have 200 pounds, or $1,000, left of his capital for working
power and agricultural implements. He would probably divide it
after the following manner:--
l. l. $
2 Yokes of Oxen, at 25 = 50 = 250
1 Horse 20 = 100
2 Ox-carts, at 15 = 30 = 150
1 Waggon 20 = 100
2 Ox-sleds, at 1 = 2 = 10
2 Ox-ploughs, at 2 = 4 = 20
1 Single Horse-plough 1 = 5
2 Harrows 2 = 4 = 20
Cradles, scythes, hoes, rakes, flails, etc. 4 = 20
Fanning-mill, hay-cutter, and corn-sheller. 4 = 20
15 Cows, steers, and heifers 45 = 225
6 Shoats, or pigs, six months old 10 = 50
These figures would indicate a large operation for a practical New
England farmer, who should undertake to purchase and cultivate an
estate of 400 acres. Indeed, not one in a hundred buying such a
large tract of land would think of purchasing all the implements on
this list at once, or entirely new. One of his carts, sleds, and
harrows would very probably be "second-handed," and bought at half
the price of a new one. Thus, a substantial farmer with us would
think he was beginning on a very satisfactory and liberal footing,
if he had 200 pounds, or $1,000, in ready money for stocking a
holding of 400 acres with working cattle and implemental machinery,
cows, pigs, etc. Now, compare this outlay with that of our host of
the Four-Hundred-Acre Farm in Lincolnshire. We will begin with his-
-
l. l. $
14 Farm horses, at the low figure of 20 each = 280 = 1,400
4 Nags, or saddle and carriage horses 2O each = 8O = 400
300 Stock sheep 1 each = 300 = 1,500
7O Pigs, of different ages 2 each = 140 = 900
5O Head of cattle (cows, bullocks, etc.) 12 each = 600 = 3,000
Carts, drills, rollers, ploughs and other implements 1,000 = 5,000
----- -----
2,400 $12,200
The average rent of such land in England must be at least 1 pound
10s. per acre, and the tenant farmer must pay half of this out of
the capital he begins with; which, on 400 acres, would amount to 300
pounds. Then, if he buys a quantity of artificial manures equal to
the value of 10s. per acre, he will need to expend in this
department 200 pounds. Next, if he purchases corn and oil-cake at
the same ratio for his cattle and sheep as that adopted by Mr.
Jonas, of Chrishall Grange, he will want 1,000 pounds for his 60
head of cattle and 300 sheep. In addition to these items of
expenditure, he must pay his men weekly; and the wages of ten, at
10s. per week, for six months, amount to 130 pounds. Add an
economical allowance for family expenses for the same length of
time, and for incidental outgoes, and you make up the aggregate of
4,000 pounds, which is 10 pounds to the acre, which an English
farmer needs to have and invest on entering upon the cultivation of
a farm, great or small. This amount, as has been stated elsewhere,
is the rule for successful agriculture in this country.
These facts will measure the difference between the amounts of
capital invested in equal spaces of land in England and America. It
is as ten to one, assuming a moderate average. Here, a man would
need 1,500 pounds, or more than $7,000, to begin with on renting a
farm of 150 acres, in order to cultivate it successfully. In New
England, a man would think he began under favorable auspices if he
were able to enter upon the occupancy of equal extent with 100
pounds, or about $500.
On returning from the Fens, I passed the night and most of the
following day at Woodhurst, a village a few miles north of St. Ives,
on the upland rising gently from the valley of the Ouse. My host
here was a farmer, owning the land he tilled, cultivating it and the
moral character and happiness of the little community, in which he
moved as a father, with an equally generous heart and hand, and
reaping a liberal reward from both departments of his labor. He
took me over his fields, and showed me his crops and live stock,
which were in excellent condition. Harvesting had already
commenced, and the reapers were at work, men and women, cutting
wheat and barley. Few of them used sickles, but a curved knife,
wider than the sickle, of nearly the same shape, minus the teeth. A
man generally uses two of them. With the one in his left hand he
gathers in a good sweep of grain, bends it downward, and with the
other strikes it close to the ground, as we cut Indian corn. With
the left-hand hook and arm, he carries on the grain from the inside
to the outside of the swath or "work," making three or four strokes
with the cutting knife; then, at the end, gathers it all up and lays
it down in a heap for binding. This operation is called "bagging."
It does not do the work so neatly as the sickle, and is apt to pull
up many stalks by the roots with the earth attaching to them,
especially at the last, outside stroke.
I was struck with the economy adopted by my host in loading, carting
and stacking or ricking his grain. The operation was really
performed like clock-work. Two or three men were stationed at the
rick to unload the carts, two in the fields to load them, and
several boys to lead them back and forth to the two parties. They
were all one-horse carts, and so timed that a loaded one was always
at the rick and an empty one always in the field; thus keeping the
men at both ends fully employed from morning until night, pitching
on and pitching off; while boys, at 6d. or 8d. a day, led the
horses.
On passing through the stables and housings for stock, I noticed a
simple, yet ingenious contrivance for watering cattle, which I am
not sure I can describe accurately enough, without a drawing, to
convey a tangible idea of it to my agricultural neighbors in
America. It may be called the buoy-cock. In the first place, the
water is brought into a cistern placed at one end of the stable or
shed at a sufficient elevation to give it the necessary fall in all
the directions in which it is to be conducted. The pipe used for
each cow-box or manger connects each with the cistern, and the
distributing end of it rests upon, or is suspended over, the trough
assigned to each animal. About one-third of this trough, which was
here a cast-iron box, about twelve inches deep and wide, protrudes
through the boarding of the stable. In this outside compartment is
placed a hollow copper ball attached to a lever, which turns the
axle or pivot of the cock. Now, this little buoy, of course, rises
and falls with the water in the trough. When the trough is full,
the buoy rises and raises the lever so as to shut off the water
entirely. At every sip the animal takes, the buoy descends and lets
on again, to a drop, a quantity equal to that abstracted from the
inside compartment. Thus the trough is always kept full of pure
water, without losing a drop of it through a waste-pipe or overflow.
Where a great herd of cattle and a drove of horses have to be
supplied from a deep well, as in the case of Mr. Jonas, at Chrishall
Grange, this buoy-cock must save a great amount of labor.
I saw also here in perfection that garden allotment system which is
now coming widely into vogue in England, not only adjoining large
towns like Birmingham, but around small villages in the rural
districts. It is well worthy of being introduced in New England and
other states, where it would work equally well in various lines of
influence. A landowner divides up a field into allotments, each
generally containing a rood, and lets them to the mechanics,
tradespeople and agricultural laborers of the town or village, who
have no gardens of their own for the growth of vegetables. Each of
these is better than a savings-bank to the occupant. He not only
deposits his odd pennies but his odd hours in it; keeping both away
from the public-house or from places and habits of idleness and
dissipation. The days of Spring and Summer here are very long, and
a man can see to work in the field as early as three o'clock in the
morning, and as late as nine at night. So every journeyman
blacksmith, baker or shoemaker may easily find four or five hours in
the twenty-four for work on his allotment, after having completed
the task or time due to his employer. He generally keeps a pig, and
is on the qui vive to make and collect all the manure he can for his
little farm. A field of several acres, thus divided and cultivated
in allotments, presents as striking a combination of colors as an
Axminster carpet. As every rood is subdivided into a great variety
of vegetables, and as forty or fifty of such patches, lying side by
side, present, in one coup d'oeil, all the alternations of which
these crops and colors are susceptible, the effect is very
picturesque.
My Woodhurst friend makes his allotment system a source of much
social enjoyment to himself and the poor villagers. He lets forty-
seven patches, each containing twenty poles. Every tenant pays
10s., or $2 40c., annual rent for his little holding, Mr. E. drawing
the manure for each, which is always one good load a year. Here,
too, these little spade-farmers are put under the same regime as the
great tenant agriculturists of the country. Each must farm his
allotment according to the terms of the yearly lease. He must dig
up his land with spade or pick, not plough it; and he is not allowed
to work on it upon the Sabbath. But encouragements greatly
predominate over restrictions, and stimulate and reward a high
cultivation. _Eight_ prizes are offered to this end, of the
following amounts:--10s., 7s. 6d., 5s., 4s., 3s., 2s. 6d., 2s. and
1s. Every one who competes must not have more than half his
allotment in potatoes. The greater the variety of vegetables the
other half contains, the better is his chance for the first prize.
The appraiser is some disinterested person of good judgment, perhaps
from an adjoining town, who knows none of the competitors. To
prevent any possible favoritism, the allotments are all numbered,
and he awards prizes to numbers only, not knowing to whom they
belong. Another feature, illustrating the generous disposition of
the proprietor, characterises this good work. On the evening
appointed for paying the rents, he gets up a regular, old-fashioned
English supper of roast beef and plum-pudding for them, giving each
fourpence instead of beer, so that they may all go home sober as
well as cheerful. To see him preside at that table, with his large,
round, rosy face beaming upon them with the quiet benevolence of a
good heart, and to hear the fatherly and neighborly talks he makes
to them, would be a picture and preaching which might be commended
to the farmers of all countries.
I saw also a curious phenomenon in the natural world on this farm,
which perhaps will be regarded as a fiction of fancy by many a
reader. It was a large field of barley grown from _oats_! We have
recently dwelt upon some of the co-workings of Nature and Art in the
development of flowers and of several useful plants. But here is
something stranger still, that seems to diverge from the line of any
law hitherto known in the vegetable world. Still, for aught one can
know at this stage of its action, it may be the same general law of
development which we have noticed, only carried forward to a more
advanced point of progress. I would commend it to the deep and
serious study of naturalists, botanists, or to those philosophers
who should preside over the department of investigation to which the
subject legitimately belongs. I will only say what I saw with my
own eyes and heard with my own ears. Here, I repeat, was a large
field of heavy grain, ready for harvest. The head and berry were
_barley_, and the stalk and leaves were _oat_! Here, certainly, is
a mystery. The barley sown on this field was the first-born
offspring of oats. And the whole process by which this wonderful
transformation is wrought, is simply this, and nothing more:--The
oats are sown about the last week in June; and, before coming into
ear, they are cut down within one inch and a half of the ground.
This operation is repeated a second time. They are then allowed to
stand through the winter, and the following season the produce is
_barley_. This is the plain statement of the case in the very words
of the originator of this process, and of this strange
transmutation. The only practical result of it which he claims is
this: that the straw of the barley thus produced is stouter, and
stands more erect, and, therefore, less liable to be beaten down by
heavy wind or rain. Then, perhaps, it may be added, this oat straw
headed with barley is more valuable as fodder for live stock than
the natural barley straw. But the value of this result is nothing
compared with the issue of the experiment as proving the existence
of a principle or law hitherto undiscovered, which may be applied to
all kinds of plants for the use of man and beast. If any English
reader of these notes is disposed to inquire more fully into this
subject, I am sure he may apply without hesitation to Mr. John
Ekins, of Bruntisham, near St. Ives, who will supply any additional
information needed. He presented me with a little sample bag of
this oat-born barley, which I hope to show my agricultural neighbors
on returning to America.