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WALKS AND TALKS
OF AN
AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND.
[Illustration: The School-House]
NEW YORK:
GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY.
M.DCCC.LII.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852,
BY GEORGE P. PUTNAM,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District
of New York.
STEREOTYPED BY
BILLIN & BROTHERS,
NO. 10 NORTH WILLIAM-ST., N. Y.
J. F. TROW, PRINTER,
ANN-STREET.
TO
GEORGE GEDDES,
Late of the Senate of New York,
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY,
PRESIDENT OF THE ONONDAGA COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY,
ETC., ETC., ETC.,
THIS VOLUME IS MOST RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLY
Inscribed.
PREFACE.
I do not deem it necessary to apologize for this memoir of a farmer’s
visit to England. Every man in travelling will be directed in peculiar
paths of observation by his peculiar tastes, habits, and personal
interests, and there will always be a greater or less class who will
like to hear of just what he liked to see. With a hearty country
appetite for narrative, I have spent, previous to my own journey, a
great many long winter evenings in reading the books so frequently
written by our literary tourists, upon England; and although I do not
recollect one of them, the author of which was a farmer, or whose
habits of life, professional interests, associations in society, and
ordinary standards of comparison were not altogether different from
my own, I remember none from which I did not derive entertainment and
instruction.
Notwithstanding, therefore, the triteness of the field, I may presume
to think, that there will be a great many who will yet enjoy to follow
me over it, and this although my gait and carriage should not be very
elegant, but so only as one farmer’s leg and one sailor’s leg with the
help of a short, crooked, half-grown academic sapling, for a walking
stick, might be expected to carry a man along with a head and a heart
of his own.
And as it is especially for farmers and farmers’ families that I have
written, I trust that all who try to read the book, will be willing to
come into a warm, good-natured, broad country kitchen fireside relation
with me, and permit me to speak my mind freely, and in such language
as I can readily command on all sorts of subjects that come in my way,
forming their own views from the facts that I give them, and taking my
opinions for only just what they shall seem to be worth.
Some explanation of a few of the intentions that gave direction to my
movements in travelling may be of service to the reader.
The wages, and the cost and manner of living of the labouring men, and
the customs with regard to labour of those countries and districts,
from which foreign writers on economical subjects are in the habit of
deriving their data, had been made a subject of more than ordinary and
other than merely philanthropical interest to me, from an experience
of the difficulty of applying their calculations to the different
circumstances under which work must be executed in the United States.
My vocation as a farmer, too, had led me for a long time to desire
to know more of the prevailing, ordinary, and generally accepted
practices of agriculture, than I could learn from Mr. Coleman’s book,
or from the observations of most of the European correspondents of our
agricultural periodicals, the attention of these gentlemen having been
usually directed to the exceptional improved modes of cultivation which
prevail only among the amateur agriculturists and the bolder and more
enterprising farmers.
The tour was made in company with two friends, whose purposes somewhat
influence the character of the narrative. One of them, my brother,
hoped by a course of invigorating exercise, simple diet, and restraint
from books and other in-door and sedentary luxuries, to re-establish
his weakened health, and especially to strengthen his eyes, frequent
failures of which often seriously annoyed and interrupted him in the
study of his profession. The other, our intimate friend from boyhood,
desired to add somewhat to the qualifications usually inquired after in
a professed teacher and adviser of mankind, by such a term and method
of study as he could afford to make, of the varying developments of
human nature under different biases and institutions from those of his
own land.
We all considered, finally, that it should be among those classes which
form the majority of the people of a country that the truest exhibition
of national character should be looked for, and that in their
condition should be found the best evidence of the wisdom of national
institutions.
In forming the details of a plan by which we could, within certain
limits of time and money, best accomplish such purposes as I have
indicated, we were much indebted to the information and advice given by
Bayard Taylor in his “Views a-Foot.”
The part now published contains the narrative of the earlier, and to
us most interesting, though not the most practically valuable, part of
our journey. I was in the habit of writing my diary usually in the form
of a letter, to be sent as occasion offered to friends at home. It is
from this desultory letter-diary, with such revision and extension and
filling up of gaps, as my memory and pocket-book notes afford, that
this volume has been formed. I have most desired to bring before my
brother farmers and their families such things that I saw in England as
have conveyed practical agricultural information or useful suggestions
to myself, and such evidences of simply refined tastes, good feelings,
and enlarged Christian sentiments among our English brethren, as all
should enjoy to read of. It was my design to have somewhat extended
this volume, that it might contain a greater proportion of more
distinctly rural matter, but the liberal proposal of Mr. Putnam to
include it in the excellent popular Series he is now publishing, makes
a limit to its length necessary. Should I have reason to believe,
however, that I have succeeded in the purposes which led me to write
for the public, I shall be most happy at another time to continue my
narrative.
FRED. LAW OLMSTED.
_Tosomock Farm, Southside, Staten Island._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Emigrant Passenger Agents.—Second Cabin.—Mutiny.—Delay.—Departure. 9
CHAPTER II.
At Sea.—Incidents.—Sea Sociability.—A Yarn.—Sea Life.—Characters.—
English Radicals.—Skeptics.—Education.—French Infidelity.—Phrenology.—
Theology. 14
CHAPTER III.
Sailors.—“Sogers.”—Books.—Anecdotes. 37
CHAPTER IV.
On Soundings.—English Small Craft.—Harbour of Liverpool. 41
CHAPTER V.
The first of England.—The Streets.—A Railway Station.—The Docks at
Night.—Prostitutes.—Temperance.—The Still Life of Liverpool.—
A Market. 50
CHAPTER VI.
The People at Liverpool.—Poverty.—Merchants.—Shopkeepers.—
Women.—Soldiers.—Children.—Donkeys and Dray Horses. 60
CHAPTER VII.
Irish Beggars.—Condition of Labourers.—Cost of Living.—Prices.—
Bath House.—Quarantine.—The Docks.—Street Scene.—“Coming Yankee”
over Nonsense.—Artistic Begging. 65
CHAPTER VIII.
Birkenhead.—Ferry-Boats.—Gruff Englishman.—The Abbey.—Flour.—
Market.—The Park.—A Democratic Institution.—Suburban Villas, &c. 74
CHAPTER IX.
A Railway Ride.—Second Class.—Inconvenient Arrangements.—First
Walk in the Country.—England itself.—A Rural Landscape.—Hedges.—
Approach to a Hamlet.—The old Ale-House and the old John Bull.—
A Talk with Country People.—Notions of America.—Free Trade.—The
Yew Tree.—The old Rural Church and Graveyard.—A Park Gate.—A Model
Farmer.—The old Village Inn.—A Model Kitchen.—A Model Landlady. 85
CHAPTER X.
Talk with a Farmer.—With a Tender-Hearted Wheelwright.—An Amusing
Story.—Notions of America.—Supper.—Speech of the English.—Pleasant
Tones.—Quaint Expressions.—The twenty-ninth of May.—Zaccheus in the
Oak Tree.—Education.—Bed-chamber.—A Nightcap and—a Nightcap. 92
CHAPTER XI.
The Break of Day.—A Full Heart.—Familiar Things.—The Village at
Sunrise.—Flowers.—Birds.—Dog Kennels.—“The Squire” and “The Hall.”—
Rooks.—Visit to a Small Farm.—The Cows.—The Milking.—The Dairy-Maids.—
The Stables.—Manure.—Bones.—Pasture.—White Clover.—Implements.—Carts.—
The English Plough and Harrow. 99
CHAPTER XII.
Breakfast at the Inn.—A Tale of High Life.—The Garden of the Inn.—An
old Farm-House.—Timber Houses.—Labourer’s Cottages.—Wattles and Noggin
Walls.—A “Ferme Ornée.”—A Lawn Pasture.—The Copper-Leaved
Beech.—Tame Black Cattle.—Approach to Chester. 104
CHAPTER XIII.
Chester without.—A Walk on the Walls.—Antiquities.—Striking
Contrasts. 111
CHAPTER XIV.
Chester within.—Peculiarities of Building.—The Rows.—The old
Sea-Captain.—Romancing.—An Old Inn.—Old English Town Houses.—
Timber Houses.—Claiming an Inheritance.—A Cook Shop.—One of the
Alleys.—Breaking into the Cathedral.—Expulsion.—The Curfew. 119
CHAPTER XV.
Chester Market.—The Town Common.—Race-Course.—The Yeomanry Cavalry,
and the Militia of England.—Public Wash-House.—“Mr. Chairman.” 128
CHAPTER XVI.
Visit to Eaton Hall.—The largest Arch in the World.—The Outer
Park.—Backwoods’ Farming.—The Deer Park.—The Hall.—The Parterre.—
The Lawn.—The Fruit Garden.—Stables. 133
CHAPTER XVII.
Gamekeeper.—Game Preserves.—Eccleston, a Pretty Village.—The School-
House.—Draining.—Children Playing.—The River-side Walk.—Pleasure
Parties.—A Contrasting Glimpse of a Sad Heart.—Saturday Night.—Ballad
Singer.—Mendicants.—Row in the Tap-Room.—Woman’s Feebleness.—Chester
Beer, and Beer-Drinking. 140
CHAPTER XVIII.
Character of the Welsh.—The Cathedral; the Clergy, Service, Intoning,
the Ludicrous and the Sublime.—A Reverie.—A Revelation.—The Sermon.—
Communion.—Other Churches.—Sunday Evening.—Character of the
Townspeople. 150
CHAPTER XIX.
Clandestine Architectural Studies.—A Visit to the Marquis of
Westminster’s Stud.—Stable Matters. 162
CHAPTER XX.
The Cheshire Cheese District and English Husbandry Upon Heavy
Soils.—Pastures.—Their Permanence.—The Use of Bones as a Manure in
Cheshire.—A Valuable Remark to Owners of Improved Neat Stock.—Breeds
of Dairy Stock.—Horses. 169
CHAPTER XXI.
Tillage.—Size of Farms.—Condition of Labourers.—Fences.—Hedges.—
Surface Drainage.—Under Drainage.—Valuable Implements for Stiff Soils,
not used In the United States. 177
CHAPTER XXII.
The General Condition of Agriculture.—Rotation of Crops.—
Productiveness.—Seeding down to Grass.—Comparison of English and
American Practice.—Practical Remarks.—Rye-Grass, Clover.—Biennial
Grasses.—Guano.—Lime.—The Condition of Labourers, Wages, etc.—
Dairy-Maids.—Allowance of Beer. 183
CHAPTER XXIII.
Remarks on the Cultivation of Beet and Mangel-Wurzel. 191
CHAPTER XXIV.
Delightful Walk by the Dee Banks, and through Eaton Park.—Wrexham.—A
Fair.—Maids by a Fountain.—The Church.—Jackdaws.—The Tap-Room and
Tap-Room Talk.—Political Deadness of the Labouring Class.—A Methodist
Bagman. 194
CHAPTER XXV.
Morning Walk through a Coal District.—Ruabon.—An Optimist with a Welsh
Wife.—Graveyard Notes.—A Stage-Wagon.—Taxes.—Wynstay Park.—Thorough
Draining.—A Glimpse of Cottage Life.—“Sir Watkins Williams
Wyn.” 199
CHAPTER XXVI.
Stone Houses.—Ivy.—Virginia Creeper.—A Visit to a Welsh Horse-Fair.—
English Vehicles.—Agricultural Notes.—Horses.—Breeds of Cattle;
Herefords, Welsh, and Smutty Pates.—Character of the People.—Dress.—
Powis Park. 206
CHAPTER XXVII.
English Vehicles.—A Feudal Castle and Modern Aristocratic Mansion.—
Aristocracy in 1850.—Primogeniture.—Democratic Tendency of Political
Sentiments.—Disposition towards the United States.—Combativeness.—
Slavery. 212
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Paintings.—Cromwell.—Pastoral Ships.—Family Portraits and Distant
Relations.—Family Apartments.—Personal Cleanliness.—The Wrekin. 224
CHAPTER XXIX.
Visit to a Farm.—Farm-House and Farmery.—Fatting Cattle.—Sheep.—
Vetches.—Stack Yard.—Steam Threshing.—Turnip Sowing.—Excellent
Work.—Tram-Road.—Wages. 228
CHAPTER XXX.
Visit to two English Common Schools. 232
Appendix A. 235
Appendix B. 246
LIST OF CUTS,
DRAWN ON WOOD BY A. FIELD.
_FROM SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR._
PAGE
1. THE SCHOOL-HOUSE (_vignette, title page_).
2. THE ENGLISH COASTER (_calm_), 45
3. THE ENGLISH COASTER (_squalls_), 47
4. THE ENGLISH PLOUGH (_vertical_), 103
5. THE ENGLISH PLOUGH (_horizontal_), 103
6. THE TIMBER HOUSE (_old farm-house_), 107
7. OLD ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE (_Chester, 16th century_), 124
8. OLD ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE (_Chester, 16th century_), 149
9. THE CLOD CRUSHER, 180
10. THE ULEY CULTIVATOR, 182
11. THE STAGE WAGON, 202
12. OLD ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE (_the village schoolmaster’s
cottage_), 207
Walks and Talks
OF AN
AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
EMIGRANT PASSENGER AGENTS.—SECOND CABIN.—MUTINY.—DELAY.—DEPARTURE.
We intended, if we could be suited, to take a second-cabin state-room
for our party of three, and to accommodate me my friends had agreed to
wait till “after _planting_.” While I therefore hurried on the spring
work upon my farm, they in the city were examining ships and consulting
passenger agents. The confidence in imposition those acquire who are
in the habit of dealing with emigrant passengers, was amusingly shown
in the assurance with which they would attempt to _lie down_ the most
obvious objections to what they had to offer; declaring that a cabin
disgusting with filth and the stench of bilge-water was sweet and
clean, that darkness in which they would be groping was very light (a
trick, certainly, not confined to their trade), that a space in which
one could not stand erect, or a berth like a coffin, was very roomy,
and so forth.
Finally we _were_ taken in by the perfect impudence and utter
simplicity in falsehood of one of them, an underling of “a respectable
house”—advertised passenger agents of the ship—which, on the lie being
represented to _it_, thought proper to express _its_ “regret” at the
young man’s error, but could not be made to see that it was proper for
them to do any thing more,—the error not having been discovered in time
for us to conveniently make other arrangements.
We had engaged a “family-room” exclusively for ourselves, in the very
large and neatly-fitted cabin of a new, clean first-class packet. We
thought the price asked for it very low, and to secure it beyond a
doubt, had paid half the money down at the agent’s desk, and taken a
receipt, put some of our baggage in it, locked the door, and taken
the key. The ship was hauling out from her pier when we went on board
with our trunks, and found the spacious second cabin had been stored
half full of cotton, and the remaining space was lumbered up with ship
stores, spare sails, &c. The adjoining rooms were occupied by steerage
passengers, and the steward was trying keys to let them into ours. The
mate cursed us for taking the key, and the captain declared no one had
been authorized to make such arrangements as had been entered into with
us, and that he should put whom he pleased into the room.
[Sidenote: _PASSENGER AGENTS.—MUTINY._]
We held on to the key, and appealed first to the agents and then to the
owners. Finally we agreed to take a single room-mate, a young man whom
they introduced to us, and whose appearance promised agreeably, and
with this compromise were allowed to retain possession. The distinction
between second cabin and steerage proved to be an imagination of the
agents—those who had asked for a steerage passage were asked a little
less, and had berths given them in the second-cabin state-rooms, the
proper _steerage_ being filled up with freight. The captain, however,
directed the cook to serve us, allowed us a light at night in our
room, and some other extra conveniences and privileges, and generally
treated us after we got to sea as if he considered us rather more of
the “gentleman” class than the rest;—about two dollars apiece more, I
suppose.
After the ship had hauled out into the stream, and while she lay in
charge of the first mate, the captain having gone ashore, there was a
bit of mutiny among the seamen. Nearly the whole crew refused to do
duty, and pledged each other never to take the ship to sea. Seeing that
the officers, though prepared with loaded pistols, were not disposed
to act rashly, we offered to assist them, for the men had brought up
their chests and were collecting handspikes and weapons, and threatened
to take a boat from the davits if they were not sent on shore. It was
curious to see how the steerage passengers, before they had any idea
of the grounds of the quarrel, but as if by instinct, almost to a man,
took sides against the lawful authority.
Having had some experience with the ways of seamen, I also went forward
to try to pacify them. (Like most Connecticut boys, I knocked about the
world a few years before I _settled down_, and one of these I spent in
a ship’s forecastle.) The only thing the soberest of them could say
was, that a man had been killed on the ship, and they knew she was
going to be unlucky; and that they had been shipped in her when too
drunk to know what they were about. Perceiving that all that the most
of them wanted was to get ashore, that they might have their spree
out, and as there was no reasoning with them, I advised the mate to
send them a fiddle and let them get to dancing. He liked the idea, but
had no fiddle, so as the next most pacifying amusement, ordered the
cook to give them supper. They took to this kindly, and after using
it up went to playing _monkey shines_, and with singing, dancing, and
shouting kept themselves in good humour until late in the evening, when
they, one by one, dropped off, and turned in. The next morning they
were all drunk and sulky, and contented themselves with refusing to
come on deck when ordered.
When the captain came on board and learned the state of things, he
took a hatchet, and with the officers and carpenter jumped into the
forecastle, and with a general knocking down and kicking out, got them
all on deck. He then broke open their chests and took from them six
jugs of grog which they had concealed, and threw them overboard. As
they floated astern, a Whitehall boatman picked them up, and after
securing the last, took a drink and loudly wished us good luck.
Two or three of the most violent were sent on shore (not punished, but
so rewarded), and their places supplied by others. The rest looked
a little sour, and contrived to meet with a good many _accidents_
as long as the shore boats kept about us; but when we were fairly
getting clear of the land, and the wind hauled a bit more aft, and
the passengers began to wish she would stop for just one moment,
and there came a whirr-rushing noise from under the bows—the hearty
_yo-ho—heave-o-hoii_—with which they roused out the stu’n-sails was
such as nobody the least bit sulky could have begun to have found voice
for.
A handsome Napoleonic performance it was of the captain’s:—the more
need that I should say that in my mind he disgraced himself by it;
because, while we lay almost within hail of the properly constituted
officers of the law, and under the guns of a United States fortress
such dashing violence was unnecessary and lawless;—only at sea had he
the right, or could he be justified in using it.
I suppose that some such difficulties occur at the sailing of half the
ships that leave New York. I have been on board a number as they were
getting under way, and in every one of them there has been more or less
trouble arising from the intoxicated condition of the crew. Twice I
have seen men fall overboard, when first ordered aloft, in going down
the harbour.
[Sidenote: _THE START._]
The ship did not go to sea until three days after she was advertised
to sail, though she had her crew, stores, and steerage passengers on
board all that time. I do not know the cause of her detention; it
seemed unnecessary, as other large ships sailed while we lay idle;
and if unnecessary, it was not honest. The loss of three days’ board,
and diminution by so much of the stores, calculated to last out the
passage, and all the other expenses and inconveniences occasioned by it
to the poor steerage passengers, may seem hardly worthy of notice; and
I should not mention it, if such delays, often much more protracted,
were not frequent, sometimes adding materially to the suffering always
attending a long passage.
At noon on the 3d of May we passed out by the light-ship of the outer
bar, and soon after eight o’clock that evening the last gleam of
Fire-Island light disappeared behind the dark line of unbroken horizon.