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.
_Shrewsbury, June 7th._
I have been visiting a gentleman to whom I was introduced by Prof.
Norton. His residence is on the east border of Wales, amidst very
beautiful scenery of round-topped hills, and deep, verdant, genial
dells. He has the superintendence of a large number of mines of coal
and metals, and of several agricultural estates, the extent of which
may be imagined from the fact, that he is preparing to thorough-drain
5000 acres next winter. He is building a tilery, and will employ seven
engineers, each with two foremen to oversee the workmen. The cost, it
is estimated, will be from $23 to $25 an acre; drains, seventeen feet
apart and three feet deep.
[Sidenote: _STONE BUILDINGS.—IVY._]
The house is of stone, and is covered with ivy, which I mention that I
may contradict a common report that ivy upon the wall of a house makes
it damp. The contrary, I have no doubt, is the fact. The ivy-leaves
fall one over another, shedding off the rain like shingles; and it is
well ascertained that in a long storm the inside walls of a house, or
of those rooms in it which are protected by the ivy, are much less damp
than those not so shielded. It is also generally supposed in America
that stone houses are much damper than wood. This _may be_ so with
some kinds of porous stone, but I can testify from my own experience
that it is not so with others. A slight _furring out_ on the inside,
and lath and plaster, will in all cases remove this objection to any
stone. A good stone house is warmer in winter, cooler in summer,[22]
equally dry and healthful, and, if built in convenient and appropriate
style, every way much more satisfactory and comfortable than our
common, slight-framed buildings. As for the ivy, I think it is one of
the most beautiful things God has given us, and the man who can and
does not let it beautify his habitation, is sinfully ungrateful. It is
perfectly hardy, and grows luxuriously on the north side of a house or
wall in the climate of New York. (My experience is with the Irish ivy.)
[22] In a late rapid change of weather, the thermometer on the outside
of my house rose in 18 hours from 19° to 35°, while that within the
walls remained stationary at 20°, not rising even one degree!
[Illustration: OLD ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE
(_the village schoolmaster’s cottage_)]
The cut represents the schoolmaster’s house at Eccleston, and is
inserted here to show the great beauty given by the creeper to that
part of the house which it has grown upon, contrasted, as it is, with
the bare wall of the modern addition. The vine, in this case, is our
Virginian creeper (_ampelopsis quinquefolia_, the common five-leaved
vine of our fences—not the _poison ivy_), a very beautiful plant
certainly, and growing more rapidly than the European ivy, but having
this immeasurable disadvantage, that it is not _evergreen_.
The day after I reached here, my host had occasion to go to a
horse-fair at Welsh Pool, a place some twenty miles distant, and
invited me to accompany him. We went in a dog-cart, a kind of heavy
gig, which here takes the place of our light boat-wagon. It is a box
(large enough to hold a dog or two in driving to sporting ground), hung
low, between two small, heavy wheels, with a seat on the top of it for
two, looking forward, and sometimes another in which two more can sit
looking backward. On the back, to exempt it from the tax upon more
luxurious vehicles, is painted the owner’s name, business, and place of
residence, thus: “John Brown, Farmer, Owestry, Shrops.” All the humbler
class of carriages are thus marked here, including farm-carts.
The landscapes were agreeable in the country we passed through, but the
farming in much of it no better than in some parts of the Connecticut
valley. Coarse, rushy grass, indicating the need of draining, grew in
much of the meadow land, as I think it does to the exclusion of more
valuable grasses in land that is ordinarily dryer than such as would
spontaneously produce it in America. The buildings along the road were
such as I have previously described; but I saw one old shackling board
barn which, but for its thatched roof, would have looked very home-like.
[Sidenote: _WELSH CHARACTER.—RUSTIC DRESS._]
Welsh Pool is a small compact town (population 5,000) with a
market-house, and a single small church, on the tower of which a
union-jack was hoisted, and within which there is a peal of three
bells, that continually, all day long, did ring most unmusically; there
were booths in the main street, in which women sold dry goods, hosiery,
pottery, &c. In another street horses were paraded, and in other places
cows and swine.
There was present a considerable crowd of the country people, which
I observed carefully. I verily believe if five hundred of the common
class of farmers and farm-labouring men, such as would have come
together on similar business—say from all parts of Litchfield county
in Connecticut—had been introduced among them, I should not have known
it, except from some peculiarities of dress. I think our farmers, and
particularly our labourers, would have been dressed up a little nearer
the town fashions, and would have seemed a little more wide awake,
perhaps, and that’s all. I not only saw no drunkenness, except a very
few solitary cases late in the day, no rioting, though there were some
policemen present, but no _gayety_; every body wore a sober business
face, very New England like.
The small farmers and labouring men all wore leggins, buttoning
from the knee to the ankle; heavy hob-nailed shoes; little, low,
narrow-brimmed, round-topped felt hats, and frocks of linen, blue or
white in colour, the skirts reaching below the knee, very short waists,
a kind of broad epaulette, or cape, gathered in, boddice fashion,
before and behind, loose shirt-like sleeves, and the whole profusely
covered with needle-work. I suppose this is the original _smock-frock_.
An uglier garment could not well be contrived, for it makes every
man who wears it appear to have a spare, pinched-up, narrow-chested,
hump-backed figure. The women generally wore printed calico jackets,
gathered at the waist, with a few inches only of skirt, and blue or
grey worsted stuff petticoats, falling to within a few inches of the
ankle—a picturesque, comfortable, and serviceable habit, making them
appear more as if they were accustomed to walk and to work, and were
not ashamed of it, than women generally do. Most incongruously, as a
topping off to this sensible costume, a number of women had crowded
their heads into that _ultima thule_ of absurd invention, a stiff,
narrow-brimmed, high-crowned, cylindrical fur hat. What they did with
their hair, and how they managed to keep the thing on their heads, I
cannot explain. I assert that they did do it, notwithstanding something
of a breeze, as well as the most practised man, and without showing
evidence of any particular suffering.
There were, perhaps, a hundred horses offered for sale; among them one
pair only of fine carriage-horses, one large and fine thorough bred
cart-horse, and a few pretty ponies. All the rest were very ordinary
stout working-horses, much like our Pennsylvania horses. The average
price of them was but a trifle over $100, about what they would bring
at New York.
There were still fewer cattle, and they were all comprised in three
breeds and their intermixtures: first, Hereford, which predominated;
second, Welsh, small, low, black beasts, with large heads and white
faces, black muzzles and long spreading horns; third, _Smutty pates_,
an old Welsh breed hardly to be found in purity now. They are longer
and somewhat larger than Devons, a little lighter red in colour,
with invariably black or brindle faces. They were generally in fair
condition, tolerable _feelers_, and would cut up particularly heavy in
their hind quarters. A Smithfield man told me that he thought a cross
of this breed with the Hereford made the best beef in the world.
[Sidenote: _A REPULSE.—THE MASTIFF._]
After dining with a number of gentlemen, most of whom had come from
a distance to attend the fair, I took a walk out into the country
about the town. The only object of interest that I remember was “Powis
Castle,” the seat of a nobleman, finely situated in a picturesque,
mountain-side park. The castle itself is upon a spur of the mountain
and is entirely hidden among fine evergreen trees. I had toiled up to
within about ten feet of the edge of the plateau upon which it stands,
when I heard a low deep growl, and looking up saw above me a great dog
asking me, with bristling back, curling fangs, and fierce grinning
teeth, what business I had to be there. Considering that I had no
right to be visiting the residence of a gentleman who was a stranger
to me unless I had some business with him, and concluding upon short
reflection that indeed I had none, I determined upon a retrograde
movement, and taking care not to attempt even to apologize to his
dogship for the intrusion until I had brought a few trees between us,
I found that he _backed down_ just about as fast as I did, so that
at a distance of half a dozen rods he appeared a handsome, smooth,
generous-natured mastiff, and I began to consider whether the earl
would not probably be pleased to have an intelligent stranger see the
beauty of his castle; but the moment I stopped, the dog’s lips began
to part and his back to rise again, and I concluded that whatever the
earl’s wishes might be, I could not make it convenient just then to
accommodate him in that way, and returned forthwith to the village.
The true mastiff is a somewhat rare dog in England, and I don’t think
that I ever saw one in America. He is very large and powerful, and
smooth haired.