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.
[Sidenote: _FAMILIAR ENGLISH LANDSCAPE._]
_31st May._
It was very early this morning when I became gradually aware of the
twittering of house-sparrows, and was soon after brought to more
distinct consciousness of time and place by the long clear note of some
other stranger bird. I stepped from bed and kneeled at a little, low,
latticed window, curtained without by a woodbine. Parting the foliage
with my hands, I looked out upon a cluster of low-thatched cottages,
half overgrown with ivy; a blooming hawthorn hedge, enclosing a field
of heavy grass and clover glistening with dew; a few haystacks; another
field beyond, spotted with sheep; a group of trees; and then some low
hills, over which the dawn was kindling, with a faint blush, the quiet,
smoky clouds in a grey sky. It may seem an uninteresting landscape, but
I gazed upon it with great emotion, so great that I wondered at it.
Such a scene I had never looked upon before, and yet it was in all its
parts as familiar to me as my native valley. Land of our poets! Home of
our fathers! Dear old mother England! It would be strange if I were not
affected at meeting thee at last face to face.
I dressed, and worked my way through the dark, crooked stairs to the
kitchen, where, on the bright steel fender, I found my shoes dry and
polished. I walked through the single short street of the hamlet. The
houses were set closely together, with neat little gardens about them.
They were of every age; one I noticed marked with the date 1630—about
the time of the first settlement in Connecticut. It was of stone,
narrow, with a steep roof covered with very small slates; the windows
much wider than high, and filled with little panes of glass set in
strips of lead. Except in this and the materials of which it was built,
it was not unlike some of the oldest houses that we yet see in our
first Puritan villages, as Hadley and Wethersfield.
[Sidenote: _ROOKS.—VISIT TO A FARM._]
A blackbird hopped before me, but did not whistle, and plenty of little
birds were chirping on the walls and rose-bushes, but there was nothing
like the singing we have at home of a spring morning.[10] At the other
end of the village was another inn—“The Blue Lion,” I believe, and a
tall hostler opening the stable doors was dressed just as I wanted to
see him—jockey-cap, long striped waistcoat, breeches, and boots.
[10] An English friend, now in America, thinks I am wrong in this.
As I returned I saw the farmer that had been at the inn the night
before, and asked him to let me see his cows. He said they were coming
down the lane, and if I went with him I should meet them. Passing
a group of well-built, neat, low buildings, he said they were the
squire’s kennels. They were intended for greyhounds, but he had his
pointers in them now.
“The squire’s! But where’s the squire’s house?”
“Yon’s the hall,” pointing to a distant group of trees, above which a
light smoke was rising straight up in the calm air, and a number of
large black birds were rapidly rising and falling. “Yon’s the hall; ye
see the rooks.”
“The rooks! Then those are rooks, are they?”
“Ay, be they—rooks—do ye not know what rooks be?”
“Yes, but we don’t have them in America.”
“No! not have rooks? They be main good in a pie, sir.”
We met the cows, of which there were about a dozen, driven by a boy
towards the farm-house. Any one of them would have been considered
remarkably fine in America. They were large and in good order; with
soft, sleek skin, and like every cow I have seen in England, look as if
they had just been polished up for exhibition. He could tell nothing of
their breed except of one, a handsome heifer, which he said came partly
of Welsh stock. He took me across a field or two to look at a few cows
of the squire’s. They were finer than any of his, and seemed to be
grade short-horns.
The cows were driven into hovels, which he called _shippens_, and
fastened at their mangers by a chain and ring sliding on an upright
post (the latest fashion with us), eight of them in an apartment,
standing back to back. Three or four of his daughters came out to
milk—very good-looking, modest young women, dressed in long, loose,
grey, homespun gowns. They had those high wooden tubs to milk in
that we see in the old pictures of sentimental milkmaids. It seems
constantly like dreaming to see so many of these things that we have
only known before in poetry or painting.
The dairy-house and all the farm buildings were of brick, interworked
with beams of wood and thatched. They were very small, the farm being
only of fifty acres, and the hay and grain always kept in stacks.
The arrangements for saving manure were poor—much the same as on any
tolerably good farm with us—a hollowed yard with a pool of liquid on
one side. He bought some dung and bones in Liverpool, but not much. He
esteemed bones most highly, and said they did immense good hereabout.
They made a sweeter, stronger, and more permanent pasture. Where he
had applied them twelve years ago, at the rate of a ton to an acre, he
could see their effect yet. He took me into an adjoining field which,
he said, was one of the best pastures in the village. It had been
ploughed in narrow lands, and the ridges left high, when it was laid
down. The sward was thicker, better _bottomed_, than any I ever saw in
America. He sowed about a bushel of grass seeds to the acre, seeding
down with oats. For cheese pasture, he valued white clover more than
any thing else, and had judged, from the taste of American cheese,
that we did not have it. For meadows to be mowed for hay, he preferred
sainfoin and ray-grass. He had lately under-drained some of his lowest
land with good effect. His soil is mostly a stiff clay resting on a
ledge of rocks.
The farm-carts were clumsy and heavy (for horses), with very large
wheels with broad tires and huge hubs, as you have seen the English
carts pictured. The plough was a very long, sharp, narrow one,
calculated to plough about seven inches deep, and turn a slice ten
inches wide, with a single pair of horses. The stilts, of iron, were
long and low, and the beam, also of iron, very high, with a goose-neck
curve. It is a very beautiful instrument, graceful and strong; but
its appearance of lightness is deceptive, the whole being of iron;
and this, with its great length, though adding to its efficiency for
nice, accurate work in perfectly smooth and clear, long fields, would
entirely unfit it for most of our purposes. On the rocky, irregular,
hill-side farms of New England, or the stump lands of the West, it
would be perfectly useless; but I should think it might be an admirable
plough for our New York wheat lands, or perhaps for the prairies after
they had been once broken.
[Sidenote: _THE ENGLISH PLOUGH._]
The harrow used on the farm was also of iron, frame and all, in three
oblong sections, hinged together. These were about all the tools I saw,
and they were left in a slovenly way, lying about the farm-yard and in
the road.
[Illustration: THE ENGLISH PLOUGH (_vertical_ and _horizontal_)]