with its spire, overlooks the trees. They attend the brick chapel, being
Independents.
After he had taken me to see his calves and pigs, I asked him what
proportion of the farmers in the neighborhood belonged to the Church of
England.
He answered, “About one-half. I think that is just about the proportion
that voted last year.”
This answer amused me much, but I feared that his wife would not
understand why I laughed.
“You mean to say,” I said, “that large landed proprietors expect those
who rent from them to go to church?”
“Yes,” he said, “or they would not rent to them.”
“Of course,” said I, “it is not put into the leases. But how can they
know how they vote now that you have the secret ballot?”
“They go round and ask them, and if they would not promise, they would
lose their farms. Many a farmer has been turned out because he would not
vote for his landlord’s party.”
On another occasion I spoke to him of the wars which England had lately
waged in Asia and South Africa, and Jackson spoke of the deficit in
the finances when the Liberals came in. He said that he believed
their country has had to smart very severely for unnecessary wars and
bloodshed, and added, “Because it was a smart little country, what
business had we to go and say to other nations, ‘You shall do as we
please’?”
* * * * *
I did not stay many days with the Jacksons. Mrs. J. considered the burden
of a dairy and of young children to be enough without taking lodgers. I
was recommended to the house of Mr. Benton, the principal farmer in the
village, and a friend called with me and introduced me to Mrs. B., who
after an interval for deliberation consented to take me as a boarder at
their family table.
Benton farmed about seven hundred acres, but not all in one tract. He
owned a small part, and rented from various persons. One large farm he
had taken at a heavy rent, and he was worried in these hard times. He
used to follow the plough when a boy, but he cannot now, having so much
to do in walking around and superintending work.
Mr. and Mrs. Benton adhered to the Established Church. He began to
attend Sunday-school early, perhaps at two years, and had attended ever
since, he being fifty, and a teacher. He was church-warden, and the most
considerable parishioner in attendance; but was not on equal visiting
terms with the clergyman.
He was more reserved than his wife; he said that the English did not
incline to make new friends. He seemed to hold to the same opinions that
he cherished in early life; to be of warm and constant attachments,
and not free from prejudice. He said that Ireland should be sunk for
twenty-four hours and repeopled with English and Scotch; that the reason
the poor-rates are so heavy in Ireland is that the people are so lazy. He
declined to tell to which political party he held, saying that the ballot
is secret. He remarked of ourselves that he wished “the Americans would
let our things go in there free, same as we let their things.”
The Bentons had seven children, five of them daughters. The eldest son
was twenty-one, and was actively employed attending to farm operations.
The girls had taken music lessons, and could play upon the piano. The
eldest two were away learning dressmaking, and Mrs. Benton thought that
she might be able to get a place as lady’s-maid for one or more of her
girls.
Mrs. Benton had a large house, kept in good order. She was tall, fair,
good-looking, active, and sprightly. She said that she “would rather have
a penny of her own _hearning_ than tuppence that anybody should give
her.” She did her housework with the help of the young daughters left at
home. She said that, as a general rule, the tenant farmers had brought
up their children too high, had hired servants, and now that these hard
times had come, they had failed.
But Mrs. Benton’s housework is not like that of the wife of a large
farmer in Pennsylvania. She does not board any of the farm hands; the
only thing of the kind that they do now is to give them their beer in
“’aytime.” She hires a woman to help wash. In summer they wash about once
in eight weeks, and in winter more rarely, having plenty of clothes.
The washing is done in two days, Saturday and Monday. Mrs. B. and her
daughters do the ironing, though sometimes she puts out a frilled
petticoat. They iron only the starched things; the others are mangled.
Nor does Mrs. Benton have the labor of milking, for it is done by one
of the hired men. In the care of poultry she has the assistance of
the shepherd’s wife, who raises chickens at their own house. Mrs. B.
furnishes feed, and pays her eight cents for every fowl that she raises,
and four for every twenty eggs that she brings her. She pays her own
daughter a trifle for the eggs which she brings in at the home-place.
As regards the number of meals that she gave her family, we had four
daily; for, in addition to the afternoon tea, we had a late supper. I
noted one. All the young children had gone to bed, for Mrs. Benton was an
excellent house-mother. For supper, we had onions, soft cheese, bread,
cold pork, stout for the mother to drink, and ale for the father. After
supper, Benton read aloud a small portion of the New Testament; the son
of twenty-one before going to bed kissed his mother and bade his father
good-night, and the daughter kissed both parents.
Mrs. Benton asked a blessing at meals: “For what we are about to receive
may the Lord make us thankful, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” Thanks
were returned by the young children. One said, “Thank God, father and
mother, for a very good tea. Amen.”
Mrs. Benton delivers tracts. She takes them to dissenters’ houses; for
the plan on which “the church” acts seems to be that all these are only
stray sheep from their fold. They are indeed parishioners. Jackson, the
carpenter with whom I boarded, as he rented land, was obliged to pay
tithes for the support of the clergyman, although he himself was an
Independent or Congregationalist.
Though she is a church-woman, Mrs. Benton tells me that one of her
uncles is a bitter dissenter. He would not open a prayer-book, and even
objected to the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer at the close of another
supplication.
FARMS AND FARMERS.
This village where the Bentons lived closely adjoins the fenny or swampy
land of the east of England. Said Benton, “Perhaps a hundred years ago
the fens grew nothing but reeds and rushes and produced a quantity of
wild fowl.” “All the geese in Lincoln fens” I had before heard of.
The water is now kept out of the fens by means of steam-engines. This
level land is well fitted for tillage, but bad weather had been very
unfortunate for the wheat farmer. He generally holds more land than
the dairy farmer, but he had been suffering from a succession of wet
harvests. Before the abolition of the corn laws, high prices were kept up
by a duty on foreign grain, but now the farmer cannot compete with our
Western grain. An experienced man told me that the man who held even as
high as one thousand acres was going behind every year.
In the summer of 1881, before the harvest was gathered in, I was told
that there had not been a dry harvest since 1874. Some idea of what an
English summer can be was given to me by Benton, the farmer with whom I
boarded. He said that in 1879, at a Royal Agricultural Show near London,
the farm implements were up to the hub in mud, and boards were spread
for people to walk upon. In meeting, some would get shoved off up to the
knees in mud. Men did not go round offering to black shoes, but with
pails of water to wash off the mud. Yet there were thousands there.
The average of wheat raised in England is much greater than ours. In
this country we do not hoe wheat and then weed it. But the production of
England is scarcely half the amount required for the population. In 1880
the amount raised was sixty-four millions of bushels; the amount needed,
one hundred and seventy-six millions. In 1881 they hoped to get one
hundred millions of their own produce. One of my friends said that they
would have starved the last year or two but for America.
In considering the English climate it is well to remember the high
northern latitude. There is no city on our continent, not even Quebec,
which is so far north as Paris. London lies in the latitude of
Newfoundland and Labrador. Whether wet climates like that of England and
Ireland can successfully compete in wheat-raising in the long run with
our drier ones may well be doubted.
Another acquaintance spoke to me of the depressed condition of this
district. He said that within a radius of six miles, six large farmers,
cultivating three or four hundred acres each, had failed since the
last harvest. “For four years,” he added, “the seasons have seemed to
alter,—snow and rain fell in seed-time; there was little or no sun to
mature the grain at harvest. There were floods of water covering acres of
ground, so that one farmer holding perhaps five hundred or more acres,
that had also been cultivated by his father and grandfather, lost in
three years about twenty thousand dollars. Then he took his remaining
capital and went into other business.”
It was surprising to one accustomed to the small farms of the fertile
district in which I live to find such large farmers as many of the
English. Said one of my acquaintances in Huntingdonshire, “One who farms
fifty acres is scarcely called a farmer. He farms a little land. In
another county I know a farmer who holds fifteen hundred acres.” The
tendency of course is largely to increase the number of farm-laborers,
while diminishing the number of those who farm themselves.
The farmer with whom I boarded employed a large number of hands, forty I
think, in the spring. In July he had four men hoeing turnips, potatoes,
“mangles” (mangel-wurzels?), and kohl-rabi. He had also about eleven
children pulling weeds out of wheat, barley, and oats.
He kept twenty working horses, and with them had eight or ten hands. In
the earlier season he had twenty hands hoeing wheat, barley, oats, beans,
and peas. He had a shepherd to look after about two hundred sheep. He
employs some women, girls, and boys. In the early morning I heard a
peculiar cry as of a boy calling the cows, but he was crying to keep away
the birds that depredate on the wheat,—linnets, sparrows, and blackbirds
in the hedges. Benton also employed hands to go over fields that were to
be planted in potatoes, turnips, buckwheat, and to pick twitch out of
them. This, he said, is a wild and very troublesome grass, that fills the
ground with roots, so that nothing else can grow.
I have just mentioned buckwheat. Benton had about thirty acres in this
grain. It is fed to pigs and other animals; he said that he had never
heard of its being eaten by men.
One of the most surprising things to me was the short number of hours
that the farm-laborers made. That men should quit farm-work in July at
or before six in the evening was novel to me. But all the work that is
possible Benton puts out by the piece.
* * * * *
The price of land in this arable region is differently reported. One told
me that it can be bought in fee simple for from two to three hundred
dollars per acre. Perhaps this is the fen land and more valuable. The
village in which I boarded was at a small distance from the fens. Land
around this village sells at from one hundred to five hundred dollars per
acre, but the latter are nice bits around the village. Land can be rented
in this or the fenny region for farming at about nine dollars per acre.
The tenure on which lands are held it was hard for me to understand. For
instance, I was told that copyhold is nearly as good as freehold. At some
length a friend endeavored to explain to me copyhold fine arbitrary, and
then said that copyhold fine certain is more desirable.
In the depressed condition of farming of which I have spoken, it has been
found that grazing and dairy farms are more profitable than grain. The
abolition of the corn laws, said a friend, made bread cheap and enabled
the mechanic and manufacturer to live, and they can buy more meat than
before, and grazing and dairy farms are very profitable. Grain, which can
readily be transported by sea, comes more closely into competition with
the English grain than meat does.
One of the persons whom I met in Huntingdonshire was a retired farmer,
and must have been a successful one. When he began to farm the fen land,
that which he held had lately been brought under complete drainage,
and was comparatively new. About 1835, on twenty-four acres of land he
had the exceptional crop of sixty-four bushels of wheat to the acre.
He has often grown four hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre on
twenty-five acres, and he thought that his average yield had been three
hundred bushels. He has had potatoes growing to the height of three
feet, level as a floor, and not a weed to be seen. “There should not
be a weed seen in an acre. I have grown,” he continued, “one hundred
and twelve bushels of oats to the acre, and did not think that I had a
crop under eighty-four. However, I did what none of you Americans do.
In the latter part of my time, when I farmed only one hundred acres, I
used six thousand dollars a year (twelve hundred pounds) in fertilizing
my farm. Thus I bought six thousand dollars’ worth of grain and fed
animals, especially pigs. Further, I sold the best of my wheat, oats,
and potatoes, and consumed all the rest of my produce on the farm. I find
no one who has fed so much on one hundred acres.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Benton took me one evening to see a steam-plough or cultivator at
work. It did the ploughing well here when the weather was sufficiently
dry. It was an immense affair. There were two steam-engines, one on each
side of the field, sending the cultivator back and forth. The whole cost
of the machine (including the van for the men to sleep in) was about
ten thousand dollars. The charge for ploughing was three dollars per
acre (twelve shillings), and the farmer furnished coal and perhaps also
one hand. The men who brought the plough boarded themselves. They were
making long days, from four in the morning to nine at night. By working
until ten, they could cultivate twenty acres per day, and in these high
northern latitudes summer days are very long.
* * * * *
During my short stay in the east I heard the price of a few articles,
principally farm products. Mrs. Jackson, wife of the carpenter with whom
I boarded, had prepared for me (in July) a very nice sparerib of pork,
for which she paid eighteen cents per pound. She thought that no mutton
could be bought under twenty. She had understood that meat was dearer
than with us and clothing cheaper. Bread was cheap, she said. But I have
before quoted the saying that they would have starved lately but for
America.
“After midsummer is turned,” said Mrs. Jackson, “butter grows dearer.
The pasture is shorter, and milk will not keep.” It was then selling at
thirty-two cents the pound, but last summer it was dearer. At supper
she and her husband had a large piece of good cheese. I heard that the
best American was bringing sixteen cents (eight pence). Leicester cheese,
which used to cost about twenty-four cents, no longer sells here.
Benton, the farmer, said that American hams are very poor. I endeavored
to inform him how finely swine are fed on corn in Illinois, but he said
that the difficulty is not in the feeding, but in the manner of curing
the meat. For American bacon they thought that they paid thirteen cents.
In conversation, Benton spoke of eleven fat beasts (beeves) that would
have brought two hundred and fifty dollars last year, but had sold much
lower this year, on account of the American beef coming in.
As regards milk, a retired farmer told me that he used to sell it at
about ten cents the imperial gallon in summer and twelve in winter, and
he had to convey it five miles to the railroad station. It had now risen
a penny the gallon.
THE CHURCH AND THE RECTOR.
Two adjacent villages formed here one parish, which may be called
Haddenham cum Stonea, from said villages. The living was a good one,
as the rector received his house and six thousand dollars a year. This
income was principally drawn from tithes, which amounted to about two
dollars per acre on the arable land in the parish, and to near five
thousand five hundred dollars yearly. From glebe land he drew the
remainder of his income. He was, however, bound to keep his house in
repair, and for the last eighteen months he had not drawn his full income.
Benton was the principal parishioner in attendance at church. His family,
however, did not associate on equal terms with that of Mr. Rounce, the
rector. On the occasion of a wedding-breakfast, Mr. Rounce had taken a
meal at the farmer’s, and Benton had dined at the rectory on the occasion
of a church meeting. But Mrs. Benton did not expect the rector and his
daughters to associate with them equally. I heard an intimation that the
rector was originally poor, but no one who attended the church was now on
a social level with himself.
I attended one Sunday afternoon. The congregation was not large, and very
few looked well-to-do. The number of communicants, I was told, was over
sixty. One young man, who came into church, was showy in appearance. He
was neatly dressed, with plenty of large, silvery-looking buttons. He was
the rector’s footman.
The church was a gray stone building. Though plain, its appearance over
the level fields was agreeable. The curtains within were rather shabby.
From one at the end the rector emerged, so I suppose it concealed the
vestry-room. In appearance Mr. Rounce, the rector, was blustering and
brawny. His lungs seemed brazen, but perhaps some of the congregation
were deaf. He wore a white linen robe, and upon his shoulders behind
lay a mantle or hood of black, faced with magenta color. The text of
the sermon was, “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit, serving
the Lord.” I took some brief notes, which I reproduce. They contained
one very happy, and, as adapted to the congregation, one very unhappy,
remark. He said that it is difficult to continue piety amidst the
cares of daily business. “I was going to compare this to tar, to being
surrounded by tar; very dirty, very sticky.
“There are people who shut themselves up in cells with one small bed,
a chair, and a candle. This is the way that many are taking to become
fervent in spirit, forgetting the first part of the text, diligent in
business. In my young days there were but six monasteries and nunneries
in all England, Scotland, and Wales; now they number over six hundred.
“There are some who think that their religious exercises should be
confined to Sunday. There are various things that we shouldn’t do on
Sunday; it’s quite right we shouldn’t read newspapers on Sunday. But
religion has thus been defined: it is the art of being and doing good.”
As we left the church, I asked its age, and the rector said that it
was of the time of Henry VII. (who died in 1509). What is old has a
great attraction to the people of our new country, and I looked in the
churchyard for interesting monumental stones. The oldest that could be
deciphered bore date 1672, and seemed to be that of a great pugilist.
The gravestones were not numerous and showy. Some one told me afterwards
that those who attend the church are the poorest of the poor, and are
generally buried without tombstones.
Concerning the rector, I ventured to draw some conclusions as follows:
Mr. Rounce is a strict Sabbatarian, between two fires,—Dissent on the
one hand and High-Churchdom and Papacy on the other. In the eyes of a
zealous incumbent of the English Church, even of a zealous low-churchman,
all the people living in the parish are his people. But many, very
many of them, are like lost sheep wandering on the barren mountains of
Dissent, and so long have they refused to hear even the church that they
have become to him like heathen men and publicans, and with them he does
not wish to hold intercourse. He employs members of his own church,
however, to distribute tracts among them as regularly as among his chosen
people, even although these dissenters are full communicants in their own
“chapels.”
I was allowed to visit the rectory grounds and afterward to see the house
itself, through the courtesy of an assistant in the National school, who
was also a servant in the rector’s family. The house was not so much
distinguished by the elegance of its carpets and other furniture as by
the number and variety of its cabinets (among them I may reckon a great
carved chest), by the quantity of china displayed, and to some extent
by paintings and natural history collections. The ladies were absent,
but I met the rector for a moment or two, and it seemed to me that he
considered me to need pruning or cutting down. But he was kind enough
to allow the lady’s-maid who conducted me to find for me in the library
one or two works which I wished to consult, and she was sufficiently
intelligent to aid me, and obliging enough to do so.
When we walked through the garden I observed that a net was spread to
protect cherries from the birds, and that currants were trained to the
top of the wall, about eight feet.
Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, received a letter from the former
rector. She said that he had removed to the “’op” country, to Kent. She
described him as a tiny little man, over eighty, a very stanch liberal in
politics; a clever, very learned man.
While I was still in the village, Mr. Rounce’s two daughters had a
lawn-tennis party on their grounds, and the guests could be seen from
the road. Three of the men appeared to be “in their shirt-sleeves.” I
learned at Mr. Benton’s that the guests would be about fifty in number,
the farmer’s young daughters being permitted to look on. It was thought
that the refreshments would be tea, coffee, and cakes, handed round,—Miss
Rounce being a teetotaller.
DISSENTERS.
A rector of the Established Church, whom I met upon a railroad train,
spoke to me of there being here one hundred and fifty different religious
sects, but the number seemed incredible. Afterwards, however, an
acquaintance pointed out to me the list in Whitaker’s Almanac for 1881.
This list is headed
“Religious sects. Places of Worship.
“Places of meeting for religious worship in England and Wales
have been certified to the Registrar-General on behalf of
persons described as follows.”
And the list, instead of numbering one hundred and fifty only, goes up at
least to one hundred and sixty-nine.
The dissenting chapel in the village which I am endeavoring to describe
was a brick edifice, and the yard contained a number of conspicuous
monumental stones. Two prominent sects were united to compose the
congregation, and the number of communicants was one hundred and thirty.
I call the building a chapel, as the English do; nothing is a church, in
fashionable speech, that does not belong to the establishment.
There was within the bounds of the parish a third “meeting-house,”
where the assembly is composed mainly of a few members of a religious
body, generally respected, but declining in numbers. I had a letter of
introduction to one of the members here, and when I spoke of her to Mrs.
Jackson, the carpenter’s wife, Mrs. J. told me that I might be able to
receive an introduction to others by means of her to whom the letter was
addressed, who was a person of education and the wife of a retired farmer.
“Now,” I asked, “how likely shall I be to see the rector?”
“Oh, not at all!” There is such a strong feeling against dissenters is
one reason why I should not meet him.
On the other hand, a dissenting minister, in speaking to me of the
Established Church, remarked that the feeling against it is more
political than religious. There is nothing, he added, in the doctrines of
the Church of England that is repugnant to a vast number of people who
attend dissenting churches; the objection is to a religious denomination
which is elevated by the state over others, and consequently has greater
social power and prestige.
But one whom I met at a neighboring town spoke more strongly. He was a
retired farmer who had travelled in our country. He brought forward the
following objections to an established church. The people have little or
no choice as regards their own clergyman; they have no control over their
own forms of worship; and all spiritual life is destroyed in the church.