The interior of the cottage is exquisitely clean; it has that bright
pleasant appearance which is only possible when the housewife feels a
pride in her duties, and goes about them with a cheerful heart. Not a
speck of dust can be seen upon the furniture, amongst which is a large
old-fashioned sofa: the window panes are clear and transparent--a
certain sign of loving care expended on the place, as on the other hand
dirty windows are an indication of neglect, so much so that the
character of the cottager may almost be guessed from a glance at her
glass. The keeper's wife is a buxom vivacious dame, whose manners from
occasional contact with the upper ranks--the ladies from the great house
sometimes look in for a few minutes to chat with so old a servant of the
family--are above what are usually found in her station. She receives
her callers--and they are many--with a quiet, respectful dignity:
desirous of pleasing, yet quite at her ease.
Across the back of the sofa there lies a rug of some beautiful fur which
catches the eye, but which at first the visitor cannot identify. Its
stripes are familiar, and not unlike the tiger's, but the colour is not
that of the forest tyrant. She explains that this rug comes within her
special sphere. It is a carriage-rug of cat-skin; the skins carefully
selected to match exactly, and cured and prepared in the same way as
other more famous furs. They have only just been sewn together, and the
rug is now spread on the sofa to dry. She has made rugs, she will tell
you, entirely of black cat skins, and very handsome they looked; but not
equal to this, which is wholly of the tabby. Certainly the gloss and
stripe, the soft warmth and feel to the hand, seem to rival many foreign
and costly importations. Besides carriage-rugs, the gamekeeper's wife
has made others for the feet--some many-coloured, like Joseph's coat.
All the cats to which these skins belonged were shot or caught in the
traps set for vermin by her husband and his assistants. The majority
were wild--that is, had taken up their residence in the woods, reverting
to their natural state, and causing great havoc among the game.
Feasting like this and in the joys of freedom, many had grown to a truly
enormous size, not in fat, as the domestic animal does, but in length of
back and limb. These afforded the best skins; perhaps out of eight or
nine killed but two would be available or worth preserving.
This gives an idea of the extraordinary number of cats which stray
abroad and get their living by poaching. They invariably gravitate
towards the woods. The instance in point is taken from an outlying
district far from a town, where the nuisance is comparatively small; but
in the preserves say from ten to twenty miles round London the cats thus
killed must be counted by thousands. Families change their homes, the
cat is driven away by the new comer and takes to the field. In one
little copse not more than two acres in extent, and about twelve miles
from Hyde Park Corner, fifteen cats were shot in six weeks, and nearly
all in one spot--their favourite haunt. When two or three wild or
homeless animals take up their abode in a wood, they speedily attract
half a dozen hitherto tame ones; and, if they were not destroyed, it
would be impossible to keep either game or rabbits.
She has her own receipts for preserving furs and feathers, and long
practice has rendered her an adept. Here are squirrels' skins also
prepared; some with the bushy tail attached, and some without. They
vary in size and the colour of the tail, which is often nearly white, in
others more deeply tinged with red. The fur is used to line cloaks, and
the tail is sometimes placed in ladies' hats. Now and then she gets a
badger-skin, which old country folk used to have made into waistcoats,
said to form an efficacious protection for weak chests. She has made
rugs of several sewn together, but not often.
In the store-room upstairs there are a few splendid fox-skins, some with
the tails tipped with white, others tipped with black. These are used
for ladies' muffs, and look very handsome; the tail being occasionally
curled round the muff. This sounds a delicate matter, and dangerously
near the deadly sin of vulpecide. But it is not so. In these extensive
woods, with their broad fringes of furze and heath, the foxes now and
then become inconveniently numerous, and even cub-hunting will not kill
them off sufficiently, especially if a great "head" of game is kept up,
for it attracts every species of beast of prey.
Besides the damage to game, the concentration of too many foxes in one
district is opposed to the interest of the hunt--first, because the
attendant destruction of neighbouring poultry causes an unpleasant
feeling; next, because when the meet takes place the plethora of foxes
spoils the sport. The day is wasted in "chopping" them at every corner;
the pack breaks up into several sections, despite whip, horn, and voice;
and a good ran across country cannot be obtained. So that once now and
then a judicious thinning-out is necessary; and this is how the skins
come into the hands of the keeper's wife. The heads go to ornament
halls and staircases; so do the pads and occasionally the brush. The
teeth make studs, set in gold; and no part of Reynard is thrown away,
since the dogs eagerly snap up his body.
Once or twice she has made a mole-skin waistcoat for a gentleman. This
is a very tedious operation. Each little skin has to be separately
prepared, and when finished hardly covers two square inches of surface.
Consequently it requires several scores of skins, and the work is a year
or more about. There is then the sewing together, which is not to be
accomplished without much patience and skill. The fur is beautifully
soft and glossy, with more resemblance to velvet than is possessed by
any other natural substance; and very warm. Mittens for the wrists are
also made of it, and skull-caps. Mole-skin waistcoats used to be
thought a good deal of, but are now only met with occasionally as a
curiosity.
The old wooden mole-trap is now almost extinct, superseded by the modern
iron one, which anybody can set up. The ancient contrivance, a cylinder
of wood, could only be placed in position by a practised hand, and from
his experience in this the mole-catcher--locally called "oont-catcher"--
used to be an important personage in his way. He is now fast becoming
extinct also--that is, as a distinct handicraftsman spending his whole
time in such trapping. He was not unfrequently a man who had once
occupied a subordinate place under a keeper, and when grown too feeble
for harder labour, supported himself in this manner: contracting with
the farmers to clear their fields by the season.
Neither stoats' nor weasels' skins are preserved, except now and then
for stuffing to put under a glass case, though the stoat is closely
allied to the genuine ermine. Polecats, too, are sometimes saved for
the same purpose; in many woods they seem now quite extinct. The otter
skin is valuable, but does not often come under the care of the keeper's
wife. The keeper now and then shoots a grebe in the mere where the
streamlet widens out into a small lake, which again is bordered by water
meadows. This bird is uncommon, but not altogether rare; sometimes two
or three are killed in the year in this southern inland haunt. He also
shoots her some jays, whose wings--as likewise the black-and-white
magpie--are used for the same decorative purposes. Certain feathers
from the jay are sought by the gentlemen who visit the great house, to
make artificial flies for salmon-fishing. Of kingfishers she preserves
a considerable number for ladies' hats, and some for glass cases. Once
or twice she has been asked to prepare the woodpecker, whose plumage and
harsh cry entitle him to the position of the parrot of our woods.
Gentlemen interested in natural history often commission her husband to
get them specimens of rare birds; and in the end he generally succeeds,
though a long time may elapse before they cross his path. For them she
has prepared some of the rare owls and hawks. She has a store of
peacocks' feathers--every now and then people, especially ladies, call
at the cottage and purchase these things. Country housewives still use
the hare's "pad" for several domestic purposes--was not the hare's foot
once kept in the printing-offices?
The keeper's wife has nothing to do with rabbits, but knows that their
skins and fur are still bought in large quantities. She has heard that
geese were once kept in large flocks almost entirely for their feathers,
which were plucked twice a year, she thinks; but this is not practised
now, at least not in the south. She has had snakes' skins, or more
properly sloughs, for the curious. It is very difficult to get one
entire; they are fragile, and so twisted in the grass where the snake
leaves them as to be generally broken. Some country folk put them in
their hats to cure headache, which is a very old superstition; but more
in sport than earnest. There are no deer now in the park. There used
to be a hundred years ago, and her husband has found several cast
antlers in the wood. The best are up at the great house, but there is
one on her staircase. Will I take a few chestnuts? It is winter--the
proper time--and these are remarkably fine. No tree is apparently so
capricious in its yield as the chestnut in English woods: the fruit of
many is so small as to be worthless, or else it does not reach maturity.
But these large ones are from a tree which bears a fine nut: her
husband has them saved every year. Here also are half-a-dozen truffles
if I will accept them: most that are found go up to the great house; but
of late years they have not been sought for so carefully, because coming
in quantities from abroad. These truffles are found, she believes, in
the woods where the soil is chalky. She used to gather many native
herbs; but tastes have changed, and new seasonings and sauces have come
into fashion.
Out of doors in his work the assistant upon whom the gamekeeper places
his chief reliance is his own son--a lad hardly taller than the gun he
carries, but much older than would be supposed at first sight.
It is a curious physiological fact that although open-air life is so
favourable to health, yet it has the apparent effect of stunting growth
in early youth. Let two children be brought up together, one made to
"rough" it out of doors, and the other carefully tended and kept within;
other things being equal, the boy of the drawing-room will be taller and
to all appearance more developed than his companion. The labourer's
children, for instance, who play in the lonely country roads and fields
all day, whose parents lock their cottage doors when leaving for work in
the morning so that their offspring shall not gain entrance and get into
mischief, are almost invariably short for their age. In their case
something may be justly attributed to coarse and scanty food; but the
children of working farmers exhibit the same peculiarity, and although
their food is not luxurious in quality, it is certainly not stinted in
quantity. Some of the ploughboys and carters' lads seem scarcely fit to
be put in charge of the huge cart-horses who obey their shouted orders,
their heads being but a little way above the shafts--mere infants to
look at. Yet they are fourteen or fifteen years of age. With these,
and with the sons of farmers who in like manner work in the field, the
period of development comes later than with town-bred boys. After
sixteen or eighteen, after years of hesitation as it were, they suddenly
shoot up, and become great, hulking, broad fellows, possessed of immense
strength. So the keeper's boy is really much more a man than he
appears, both in years and knowledge--meaning thereby that local
intelligence, technical ability, and unwritten education which is the
resultant of early practice and is quite distinct from book-learning.
From his father he has imbibed the spirit of the woods and all the
minutiae of his art. First he learned to shoot; his highest ambition
being satisfied in the beginning when permitted to carry the
double-barrel home across the meadow. Then he was allowed occasionally
to fire off the charges left in after the day's work, before the gun was
hung against the beam. Next, from behind the fallen trunk of an oak he
took aim at a sitting rabbit which had raised himself on his
hind-quarters to listen suspiciously--resting the heavy barrels on the
tree, and made nervous by the whispered instructions from the keeper
kneeling on the grass out of sight behind, "Aim at his shoulder, lad, if
he be sitting sidelong; if a' be got his back to 'ee aim at his poll."
From this it was but a short step to be trusted with the single-barrel,
and finally with the double; ultimately having one of his own and
walking his own distinct rounds.
He is now a keen shot, even better than his father; for it is often
observed that at a certain age young beginners in most manual arts reach
an excellence which in later years fails them. Perhaps the muscles are
more elastic, and respond instantaneously to the eye. This mere boy at
snap-shooting in the "rough" will beat crack sportsmen hollow. At the
trap with pigeons he would probably fail; but in a narrow lane where the
rabbits, driven out by the ferrets, just pop across barely a yard of
open ground, where even a good shot may miss repeatedly, he is "death"
itself to the "bunnies." So, too, with a wood-hare--i.e. those hares
that always lie in the woods as others do in the open fields and on the
uplands. They are difficult to kill. They slip quietly out from the
form in the rough grass under the ashstole, and all you have for
guidance is the rustling and, perhaps, the tips of the ears, the body
hidden by the tangled dead ferns and "rowetty" stuff. When you try to
aim the barrel knocks against the ash-poles, which are inconveniently
near together, or the branches get in the way, and the hare dodges round
a tree, and your cartridge simply barks a bough and cuts a tall dead
thistle in twain. But the keeper's lad, who had waited for your fire,
instantly follows, as it seems hardly lifting his gun to his shoulder,
and the hare is stopped by the shot.
Rabbit-shooting, also, in an ash wood like this is trying to the temper;
they double and dodge, and if you wait, thinking that the brown rascals
must presently cross the partially open space yonder, lo! just at the
very edge up go their white tails and they dive into the bowels of the
earth, having made for hidden burrows. There is, of course, after all,
nothing but a knack in these things. Still it is something to have
acquired the knack. The lad, if you ask him, will proudly show off
several gun tricks, as shooting left-handed, placing the butt at the
left instead of the right shoulder and pulling the trigger with the left
finger. He will knock over a running rabbit like this; and at short
distances can shoot with tolerable certainty from under the arm without
coming to the "present," or even holding the gun out like a pistol with
one hand.
By slow degrees he has obtained an intimate acquaintance with every
field on the place, and no little knowledge of natural history. He will
decide at once, as if by a kind of instinct, where any particular bird
or animal will be found at that hour.
He is more bitter than his father against poachers, and would like to
see harder measures dealt out to them; but his chief use is in watching
or checking the assistants, who act as beaters, ferreters, or keep up
the banks and fences about the preserves, etc. Without a doubt these
men are very untrustworthy, and practise many tricks. For instance,
when they are set to ferret a bank, what is to prevent them, if the
coast is clear, from hiding half a dozen dead rabbits in a burrow?
digging has frequently to be resorted to, and thus they can easily cast
earth over and conceal the entrance to a hole. Many a wounded hare and
pheasant that falls into the hands of the beaters never makes it
appearance at the table of the sportsman; and doubtless they help
themselves to the game captured in many a poacher's wire before giving
notice of the discovery to the head man.
Some of these assistants wear waistcoats of calfskin with the hair on
it. The hair is outside, and the roan-and-white colour has a curious
appearance: the material is said to be very warm and durable. Such
waistcoats were common years ago; but of late the looms and spindles of
the manufacturing districts have reduced the most outlying of the
provinces to a nearly dead uniformity of shoddy.
One pair of eyes cannot be everywhere at once; consequently the keeper,
as his son grew up, found him a great help in this way: while he goes
one road the lad goes the other, and the undermen never feel certain
that some one is not about. Perhaps partly for this reason the lad is
not a favourite in the village, and few if any of the other boys make
friends with him. He is too loyal to permit of their playing trespass--
he looks down on them as a little lower in the scale. Do they ever
speak, even in the humblest way, to the proprietor of the place? In
their turn they ostracise him after their fashion; so he becomes a
silent, solitary youth, self-reliant, and old for his years.
He is a daring climber: as after the hawk's nest, generally made in the
highest elms or pines--if that species of tree is to be found--taking
the young birds to some farmhouse where the children delight in living
creatures. Some who are not children, or are children of "a larger
growth," like to have a tame hawk in the garden, clipping the wings so
that it shall not get away. Hawks have most amusing tricks, and in time
become comparatively tame, at least to the person who feeds them. The
beauty of the hawk's eye can hardly be surpassed: full, liquid, and
piercing. In this way the keeper's boy often gets a stray shilling;
also for young owls, which are still kept in some country houses, in the
sheds or barns, to destroy the mice. When the corn was threshed with
the flail, and was consequently exposed to the ravages of these
creatures (if undisturbed they multiply in such numbers as would
scarcely be credited) owls were almost domestic birds, being domiciled
in every barn. Now they are more objects of curiosity, though still
useful when large teams of horses are kept and require grain.
The keeper's boy sells, too, young squirrels from time to time, and the
eggs of the rarer birds. In short, he has imbibed all the ways of the
woods, and is an adept at everything, from "harling" a rabbit upwards.
By-the-bye, what is the etymology of "harling," which seems to have the
sense of entangling? It is done by passing the blade of the knife
between the bone of the thigh and the great sinew--where there is
nothing but skin--and then thrusting the other foot through the hole
thus made. The rabbit or hare can then be conveniently carried by the
loop thus formed, or slung on a stick or the gun-barrel across the
shoulder. Of course the "harling" is not done till the animal is dead.
The book-learning of the keeper's boy is rather limited, for he was
taught by the parish clerk and schoolmaster before the Education Acts
were formulated. Still, he can read, and pores over the weekly paper of
rural sports, etc, taken for the guests at the great house and when out
of date sent down to the keeper's cottage. In fact, he shows a little
too much interest in the turf columns to be quite satisfactory to his
father, who is somewhat anxious about his acquaintance with the jockeys
from the training-stables on the downs hard by--an acquaintance he
discourages as tending to no good. Like his father, he is never seen
abroad without a pair of leathern gaiters, and, if not a gun, a stout
gnarled ground-ash stick in his hand.
The gamekeeper's calling naturally tends to perpetuate itself and become
hereditary in his family. The life is full of attraction to boys--the
gun alone is hardly to be resisted; and, in addition, there are the
animals and birds with which the _office_ is associated, and the
comparative freedom from restraint. Therefore one at least of his lads
is sure to follow in his father's steps, and after a youth and early
manhood spent out of doors in the woods it is next to impossible for him
ever to quit the course he has taken. His children, again, must come
within reach of similar influences, and thus for a lengthened period
there must be a predisposition towards this special occupation.
Long service in one particular situation is not so common now as it used
to be. Men move about from place to place, but wherever they are they
still engage in the same capacity; and once a gamekeeper always a
gamekeeper is pretty nearly true. Even in the present day instances of
families holding the office for more than one or two generations on the
same estate may be found; and years ago such was often the case.
Occasionally the keeper's family has in this way by the slow passage of
time become in a sense associated with that of his employer; many years
of faithful service sensibly abridging the social gulf between master
and servant. The contrary holds equally true; and so at the present day
short terms of service and constant changes are accompanied by a sharp
distinction separating employer and employe.
In such cases of long service the keeper holds a position more nearly
resembling the retainer of the olden time than perhaps any other
"institution" of modern life. Pensioned off in his old age in the
cottage where he was born, or which, at any rate, he first entered as a
child, he potters about under his own vine and fig-tree--i.e. the pear
and damson trees he planted forty years before--and is privileged now
and then to give advice on matters arising out of the estate. He can
watch the young broods of pheasants still, and superintend the mixing of
their food: his trembling hand, upon the back of which the corded sinews
are so strongly marked now the tissue has wasted, and over which the
blue veins wander, can set a trap when the vermin become too
venturesome.
He is yet a terror to evil-doers, and in no jot abates the dignity of
more vigorous days; so that the superannuated ancients whose task it is
to sweep the fallen leaves from the avenue and the walks near the great
house, or to weed the gravel drive in feeble acknowledgment of the
charitable dole they receive, fall to briskly when they see him coming
with besom and rusty knife wherewith to "uck" out the springing grass.
He daily gossips with the head gardener (nominal), as old or older than
himself; but his favourite haunt is a spot on the edge of a fir
plantation where lies a fallen "stick" of timber. Here, sheltered by
the thick foliage of the fir and the hawthorn hedge at his back from the
wind, he can sit on the log, and keep watch over a descending slope of
meadow bounding the preserves and crossed by footpaths, along which
loiterers may come. His sturdy son now sways the sceptre of ash over
the old woods, and other descendants are employed about the place.
Sometimes in the great house there may be seen the counterfeit
presentment of such a retainer limned fifty years ago, with dog and gun,
and characteristic background of trees. His wife has perhaps survived
till recently--strong and hale almost to the last; the most voluble
gossip of the hamlet, full of traditions relating to the great house and
its owners; a virago if crossed. It is recorded that upon one occasion
in her prime she confronted a couple of poachers, and, by dint of tongue
and threats of assistance close at hand, forced them to retire. It was
at night that, her husband being from home and hearing shots in the
wood, she sallied forth armed with a gun, faced the poachers, and
actually drove them away, doubtless as much from fear of recognition as
of bodily injury, though even that she was capable of inflicting, being
totally fearless.
Nothing can be more natural than that when a man has shown an earnest
desire to give satisfaction and proved himself honest and industrious,
his employer should exhibit an interest in the welfare of his family.
Now and then a small farm may be found in the hands of a man descended
from or connected with a keeper. To successfully work a tenancy of such
narrow limits it is necessary that the occupier should himself labour in
the field from morn till dewy eve--the capacity to work being even more
essential than capital; and so it happens that the smaller farms are
occasionally held by men who have risen from the lower classes. The
sons of keepers also become gentlemen's servants, as grooms, etc, in or
out of the house.
A proposal was not long since made that gentlemen who had met with
misfortune or were unable to obtain congenial employment should take
service as gamekeepers--after the manner in which ladies were invited to
become "helps." The idea does not appear to have received much
practical support, nor does it seem feasible looking at the altered
relations of society in these days. A gentleman "out of luck," and with
a taste for outdoor life and no objection to work, could surely do far
better in the colonies, where he could shoot for his "own hand," and in
course of time achieve an independence, which he could never hope to
attain as a gamekeeper.
In the olden times, no doubt, younger brothers did become, in fact,
gamekeepers, head grooms, huntsmen, etc, to the head of the family.
There was less of the sense of servitude and loss of dignity when the
feeling of clanship was prevalent, when the great house was regarded as
the natural and proper resource of every cadet of the family. But all
this is changed. And for a man of education to descend to trapping
vermin, filling cartridges, and feeding pheasants all his life would be
a palpable absurdity with Australia open to him and the virgin soil of
Central Africa eager for tillage.
Neither is every man's constitution capable of withstanding the wear and
tear of a keeper's life. I have delineated the more favourable side
already; but it has its shadows. Robust health, power of bearing
fatigue, and above all of sustaining constant exposure in our most
variable climate, are essential. No labourer is so exposed as the
keeper: the labourer does not work in continued wet, and he is sure of
his night's rest. The keeper is often about the best part of the night,
and he cannot stay indoors because it rains.
The woods are lovely in the sunshine of summer; they are full of charm
when the leaves are bursting forth in spring or turning brown with the
early autumn frosts; but in wet weather in the winter they are the most
wretched places conceivable in which to stroll about. The dead fern and
the long grass are soaked with rain, and cling round the ankles with
depressing tenacity. Every now and then the feet sink into soddened
masses of decaying leaves--a good deal, too, of the soil itself is soft
and peaty, being formed from the decomposed vegetation of years; while
the boughs against which the passer-by must push fly back and send a
cold shower down the neck. In fog as well as in rain the trees drip
continuously; the boughs condense the mist and it falls in large drops--
a puff of wind brings down a tropical shower.
In warm moist weather the damp steam that floats in the atmosphere is
the reverse of pleasant. But a thaw is the worst of all, when the snow
congealed on the branches and against the trunks on the windward side,
slips and comes down in slushy, icy fragments, and the south-west or
south-east wind, laden with chilling moisture, penetrates to the very
marrow. Even Robin Hood is recorded to have said that he could stand
all kinds of weather with impunity, except the wind which accompanies a
thaw. Wet grass has a special faculty for saturating leather. The very
boots with which you may wade into a stream up to your ankles in perfect
comfort are powerless to keep out the dew or raindrops on the
grass-blades. The path of the keeper is by no means always strewn with
flowers.
Probably the number of keepers has much increased of recent years, since
the flood-tide of commercial prosperity set in. Every successful
merchant naturally purchases an estate in the country, and as naturally
desires to see some game upon it. This necessitates a keeper and his
staff. Then game itself--meaning live game--has become a marketable
commodity, bought and sold very much as one might buy a standing crop of
wheat.
Owners of land, whose properties are hardly extensive enough to enable
them to live in the state which is understood by the expression "country
seat," frequently now resort to certain expedients to increase their
incomes. They maintain a head of game large in comparison with the
acreage: of course this must be attended to by a resident keeper; and
they add to the original mansion various attractive extra buildings--
i.e. a billiard-room, conservatories, and a range of modern stabling.
The object, of course, is to let the house, the home farm, and the
shooting for the season; including facilities for following the hunt.
The proprietor is consequently only at home in the latter part of the
spring and in the summer--sometimes not even then.
Again, there are large properties, copyhold, or held under long leases
from corporate bodies, the tenants having the right to shoot. Instead
of exercising the power themselves, they let the shooting. It consists
mainly of partridges, hares, and rabbits; and one of their men looks
after the game, combining the keeping a general watch with other duties.
Professional men and gentlemen of independent income residing in county
towns frequently take shooting of this kind. The farmers who farm their
own land often make money of their game in the same way.
Gentlemen, too, combine and lease the shooting over wide areas, and of
course find it necessary to employ keepers to look after their
interests. The upper class of tradesmen in county and provincial towns
where any facilities exist now sometimes form a private club or party
and rent the shooting over several farms, having a joint-stock interest
in one or more keepers. Poor land which used to be of very little value
has, by the planting of covers and copses and the erection of a cottage
for the keeper and a small "box" for temporary occupation, in many cases
been found to pay well if easily accessible from towns. Game, in short,
was never so much sought after as at present; and the profession of
gamekeeping is in no danger of falling into decay from lack of demand
for the skill in woodcraft it implies.