Much other work besides preventing poaching falls upon the keeper, such
as arranging for the battue, stopping fox "earths" when the hounds are
coming, feeding the young birds and often the old stock in severe
weather, and even some labour of an agricultural character.
A successful battue requires no little _finesse_ and patience exercised
beforehand; weeks are spent in preparing for the amusement of a few
hours. The pheasants are sometimes accustomed to leave the wood in a
certain direction chosen as specially favourable for the sport--some
copses at a little distance are used as feeding places, so that the
birds naturally work that way. Much care is necessary to keep a good
head of game together, not too much scattered about on the day fixed
upon. The difficulty is to prevent them from wandering off in the early
morning; and men are stationed like sentinels at the usual points of
egress to drive them back. The beaters are usually men who have
previously been employed in the woods and possess local knowledge of the
ground, and are instructed in their duties long before: nothing must be
left to the spur of the moment. Something of the skill of the general
is wanted to organise a great battue: an instinctive insight into the
best places to plant the guns, while the whole body of sportsmen,
beaters, keepers with ammunition, should move in concert.
The gamekeeper finds his work fall upon him harder now than it used to
do: first, sportsmen look for a heavier return of killed and wounded;
next, they are seldom willing to take much personal trouble to find the
game, but like it in a manner brought to them; and, lastly, he thinks
the shooting season has grown shorter. Gentlemen used to reside at home
the greater part of the winter and spread their shooting over many
months. Now, the seaside season has moved on, and numbers are by the
beach at the time when formerly they were in the woods. Then others go
abroad; the country houses now advertised as "to let" are almost
innumerable. Time was when the local squire would have thought it
derogatory to his dignity to make a commodity of his ancient mansion;
now there seems quite a competition to let, and absenteeism is a reality
of English as well as Irish country life. At least, such is the
gamekeeper's idea, and he finds a confirmation of it in the sudden rush,
as it were, made upon his preserves. Gentlemen who once spent weeks at
the great house, and were out with him every day till he grew to
understand the special kind of sport which pleased them most, and could
consequently give them satisfaction, are now hardly arrived before they
are gone again. With all his desire to find them game he is often
puzzled, for game has its whims and fancies and will not accommodate
itself to their convenience.
Then the keeper thinks that shooting does not begin so early as it once
did. Partridges may be found in the market on the morning of the
glorious First of September; but if you ask him how they get there, your
reply is a pod and a wink. Nobody gets up early enough in the morning
for that now: very often the first day passes by without a single shot
being fired. The eagerness for the stubble and its joys is not so
marked. This last season the late harvest interfered very much with
shooting; you cannot walk through wheat or barley, and while the crops
are standing the partridges have too much cover.
Many gentlemen again keep their pheasants till nearly Christmas: October
goes by frequently without a bird being brought down in some preserves.
Early in the new year, if the weather be mild, as it has been so often
latterly, the birds begin to show signs of a disposition to pair off,
and in consequence the guns are laid aside before the certificates
expire. So that the keeper thinks the actual shooting season has grown
shorter and the sport is more concentrated, and taken in rushes, as it
were. This causes additional work and anxiety. If the family are away
they still require a regular and sometimes a large supply of game for
the table, which he has to keep up himself--assistants could hardly be
trusted: the opportunity is too tempting.
Though a loyal and conscientious man, in his secret heart he does not
like the hounds: and though of course he gets tipped for stopping the
earths, yet it is a labour not exactly to his taste. The essence of
game preserving is quiet, repose; the characteristic of the hunt is
noise, horn, whoop, whip, the cry of the hounds, and the crash of the
bushes as the field takes a jump. Students and bookworms like the quiet
dust which settles in their favourite haunts--the housemaid's broom is
fatal to retrospective thought: so the gamekeeper views the squadrons
charging through his cherished copses, "poaching" up the greensward of
the winding "drives," breaking down the fences, much as the artist views
the sacrilegious broom "putting his place to rights." Pheasant, and
hare, and rabbit all are sent helter-skelter anywhere, and take a day or
two to settle down again.
Yet it is not so much the real genuine hunt that he dislikes: it is the
loafers it brings together on foot. Roughs from the towns, idle fellows
from the villages, cobblers, tinkers, gipsies, the nondescript
"residuum," all congregate in crowds, delighted at the chance of
penetrating into the secret recesses of woods only thrown open two or
three times a year. It is impossible to stay the inroad--the gates are
wide open, the rails pulled down, and trespass is but a fiction for the
hour. To see these gentry roaming at their ease in his woods is a
bitter trial to the keeper, who grinds his teeth in silence as they pass
him with a grin, perfectly aware of and enjoying his spleen. Somehow or
other these fellows always manage to get in the way just where the fox
was on the point of breaking cover; if he makes a clear start and heads
for the meadows, before he has passed the first field a ragged jacket
appears over the hedge, and then the language of the huntsman is not
always good to listen to.
The work of rearing the young broods of pheasants is a trying and
tedious one. The keeper has his own specific treatment, in which he has
implicit faith, and laughs to scorn the pheasant-meals and
feeding-stuffs advertised in the papers. He mixes it himself, and likes
no one prying about to espy his secret, though in reality his success is
due to watchful care and not to any particular nostrum. The most
favourable spot for rearing is a small level meadow, if possible without
furrows, which has been fed off close to the ground and is situated high
and dry, and yet well sheltered with wood all round. Damp is a great
enemy of the brood, and long grass wet with dew in the early morning
sometimes proves fatal if the delicate young birds are allowed to drag
themselves through it.
Besides the coops, here and there bushes, cut for the purpose, are piled
in tolerably large heaps. The use of these is for the broods to run
under if a hawk appears in the sky; and it is amusing to watch how soon
the little creatures learn to appreciate this shelter. In the spring
the greater part of the keeper's time is occupied in this way: he spends
hours upon hours in the hundred and one minutiae which ensure success.
This breeding-time is _the_ great anxiety of the year: on it all the
shooting depends. He shakes his head if you hint that perhaps it would
save trouble to purchase the pheasants ready for shooting from the
dealers who now make a business of supplying them for the battue. He
looks upon such a practice as the ruin of all true woodcraft, and a
proof of the decay of the present generation.
In addition to the pheasants, the partridges, wild as they are, require
some attention--the eggs have to be looked after. The mowers in the
meadows frequently lay their nests bare beneath the sweep of the scythe:
the old bird sometimes sits so close as to have her legs cut off by the
sharp steel. Occasionally a rabbit, in the same way, is killed by the
point of the blade as he lingers in his form. The mowers receive a
small sum for every egg they bring, the eggs being placed under brood
hens, kept for the purpose. But as a partridge's egg from one field is
precisely like one from another field, the keeper may find, if he does
not look pretty sharp after the mowers on the estate, that they have
been bribed by a trifle extra to carry the eggs to another man at a
distance. A very unpleasant feeling often arises from suspicions of
this kind.
His agricultural labour consists in superintending the cultivation of
the small squares left for the growth of grain in the centre of the
copses, to feed and attract the pheasants, and to keep them from
wandering. These have to be dug up with the spade--there would be no
room for using a plough--and spade-husbandry is rather slow work. An
eye has therefore to be kept on the labourers thus employed lest they
get into mischief. The grain (on the straw) is sometimes given to the
birds laid across skeleton trestles, roughly made of stout ash sticks,
so as to raise it above the ground and enable them to get at it better.
Ash woods are cut every year, or rather they are mapped out into so many
squares, the poles in which come to maturity in succession--while one is
down another is growing up, and thus in a fixed course of years the
entire wood is thrown and renovated. A certain time has, of course, to
be allowed for purchasers to remove their property, and, as the roads
through the woods are often axle-deep in mud, in a wet spring it has
frequently to be extended. So many men being about, the keeper has to
be about also: and then when at last the gates are nailed up, the cattle
turned out to grass in the adjacent fields often break in and gnaw the
young ash-shoots. In this way a trespassing herd will throw back acres
of wood for a whole year, and destroy valuable produce. Properly
speaking, this should come under the attention of the bailiff or steward
of the demesne; but as the keeper and his men are so much more likely to
discover the cattle first, they are expected to be on the watch.
After spending so many years of his life among trees, it is natural that
the keeper should feel a special interest, almost an affection for them.
A branch ruthlessly torn down, a piece of bark stripped from the trunk
with no possible object save destruction, a nail driven in--perhaps to
break the teeth of the saw when at last the tree comes to be cut up into
planks--these things annoy him almost as much as if the living wood were
human and could feel. For this reason, he too, like the members of the
hunt, cordially detests the use of wire for fencing, now becoming so
frequent. It cuts into the trees, and checks their growth and spoils
their symmetry, if it does not actually kill them.
Sometimes the wire, which is stout and strong, is twisted right round
the stem of a young oak, say a foot or more in diameter, which is thus
made to play the part of a post. A firmer support could not be found;
but as the tree swells with the rising sap, and expands year by year,
the iron girdle circling about it does not "give" or yield to this slow
motion. It bites into the bark, which in time curls over and so
actually buries the metal in the growing wood. Now this cannot but be
injurious to the tree itself, and it is certainly unsightly.
One wire is seldom thought enough. Two or three are stretched along,
and each of these causes an ugly scar. If allowed to remain long
enough, the young wood will solidify and harden about the wire, which
then cannot be withdrawn; and in consequence when taken finally to the
sawpit, some three or four feet of the very "butt" and best part of the
trunk will be found useless. No sawyer will risk his implement--which
requires some hours' work to sharpen--in wood which he suspects to
contain concealed iron. So that, besides the injury to the appearance
of the tree, there is a pecuniary loss. Even when the wires are not
twisted round, but merely rub against one side of the bark, the same
scars are caused there, though not to such an extent. Rough and strong
as the bark seems to the touch, it speedily abrades under the constant
pressure of the metal.
The keeper thinks that all those owners of property who take a pleasure
in their trees should see to this and prevent it. There is nothing so
detestable as this wire fencing in his idea. You cannot even sit upon
it for rest, as you can on the old-fashioned post and rails. The
convenient gaps which used to be found in every hedge at the corner are
blocked now with an ugly rusty iron string stretched across, awkward to
get over or under; while as for a horseman getting by, you cannot pull
it down as you could "draw" a wooden rail, and if you try to uncoil it
from the blackthorn stem to which it is attached the jagged end is
tolerably certain to scrape the skin from your fingers.
The keeper looks upon this simply as another sign of the idleness and
dislike of taking trouble characteristic of the times. To set up a line
of posts and rails requires some little skill; a man must know his
business to stop a gap with a single rail or pole, fixing the ends
firmly in among the underwood; even to fit thorn bushes in properly, so
as to effectually bar the way, needs some judgment: but anybody can
stretch a wire along and twist it round a tree. Hedge-carpentering was,
in fact, a distinct business, followed by one or two men in every
locality; but iron now supplants everything, and the hedges themselves
are disappearing.
When the hedgers and ditchers were put to work to cut a hedge--the turn
of every hedge comes round once in so many years--they used to be
instructed, if they came across a sapling oak, ash, or elm, to spare it,
and cut away the bushes to give it full play. But now they chop and
slash away without remorse, and the young forest-tree rising up with a
promise of future beauty falls before the billhook. In time the
full-grown oaks and elms of the hedgerow decay, or are felled; and in
consequence of this careless destruction of the saplings there is
nothing to fill their place. The charm of English meadows consisted in
no small degree in the stately trees, whose shadows lengthened with the
declining sun and gave such pleasant shelter from the heat. Soon,
however, if the rising generation of trees is thus cut down, they must
become bare, open, and unlovely.
There is another mistake, often committed by owners of timber, who go to
the other extreme, and in their intense admiration of trees refuse to
permit the felling of a single one. Now in the forest or the woodlands,
away from the park or pleasure-grounds, the old hollow trees are things
of beauty, and to cut them down for firewood seems an act of vandalism.
But it is quite another thing with an avenue or those groups which dot
the surface of a park. Here, if a tree falls and there is no other to
take its place, a gap is the result, which cannot be filled up, perhaps,
under fifty or sixty years.
Let any one stroll along beneath a stately avenue of elm or beech, such
as are not difficult to find in rural districts, and are the pride and
boast--and justly so--of this country, and, examining the trees with
critical eye, what will he see? Three or four elms, I will say, are
passed, and are evidently sound; but the fifth--a careless observer
might go by it without remarking anything unusual--is really rotten to
the centre. At the foot of the huge trunk, and growing out of it, is a
bunch of sickly-looking fungi. Thrust your walking-stick sharply
against the black wood there and it penetrates easily, and with a little
pushing goes in a surprising distance; the tree seems undermined with
rottenness. This decay really runs up the trunk perpendicularly: look,
there are signs of it above at the knot-hole, thirty feet high, where
more fungus is flourishing, as it always does in dead damp wood. The
rain soaks in there, and filtrates slowly down the trunk, whose very
heart as it were is eaten away, while outside all is fair enough.
Presently there arises a mighty wind, the tree snaps clean off twenty
feet above the ground, and the upper part falls, a ponderous ruin,
carrying with it one of the finest boughs of its nearest companion, and
destroying its symmetry also. When examined, it appears that the trunk
is totally useless as timber: this noble-seeming elm is fit for nothing
but fuel. Or, perhaps, if there be water meadows on the estate, the
farmers may be glad of it to act as a huge pipe to convey the
fertilising stream across a ditch, or over a brook lying at a lower
level. For this purpose, of course, the rotten part is scooped out:
often the trunk is sawn down the middle, so as to make a double length.
But what a gap it has left in the great avenue! In a minute the growth
of a century gone, the delight of generations swept away, and no living
man, hardly the heir in his cradle, can hope to see that unsightly gap
filled up.
The keeper does not hesitate to say that of the great trees in the
avenues numbers stand in constant danger of such overthrow; and so it is
that by slow degrees so many of the kings of the forest have disappeared
without leaving successors. No care is taken to plant fresh saplings,
no care is taken to select and remove the trees which have passed the
meridian of their existence, and the final result is the extinction of
the avenue or group. Perhaps the temper of the times is to blame for
this neglect: men look only to the day and live fast. There is a sense
of uncertainty in the atmosphere of the age: no one can be sure that the
acorns he plants will be permitted to reach their prime, the hoofs of
the "iron horse" may trample them down as fresh populations grow. So
the avenues die out, and the keeper mourns to think that in the days to
come their place will be vacant.
Suddenly he pauses in his walk, stoops, and points out to me in the
grass the white, smooth, round knob-like tops of several young mushrooms
which are pushing their way up. He carefully covers these with some
pieces of dead bark and desiccated dung, so that none of "them lurching
fellows as comes round shan't see 'em"--with a wink at his own cunning--
so as to preserve them till they have grown larger. He advises me never
to partake of mushrooms unless certain that they have not grown under
oak trees: he will have it that even the true edible mushroom is hurtful
if it springs beneath the shadow of the oak. And he is not singular in
this belief.
Chatting about trees, he points out one or two oaks, not at all rotten,
but split half-way up the trunk--the split is perfectly visible--yet
they have not been struck by lightning; and he cannot explain it.
Looking back upon the wood as we leave it with intense pride in his
trees, he gives me a rough version of the old story: how a knight of
ancient days, who had done the king some great service, was rewarded
with a broad tract of land which he was to hold for three crops. He
sowed acorns, and thus secured himself and descendants a tenure of
almost 3,000 years, at least, according to Dryden:--
The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees,
Shoots, rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state, and in three more decays.
The keeper wishes he had such an opportunity. The knight, in his idea,
reached the acme of wisdom with his three crops of nearly a thousand
years each.
His own kingdom may be said to begin with the park, and the land "in
demesne" to quote the quaint language of the Domesday Book: a record not
without its value as an outline picture of English scenery eight
centuries ago, telling us that near this village was a wood, near that a
stretch of meadow and a mill, here again arable land and corn waving in
the breeze, and everywhere the park and domain of the feudal lords. The
beauty of the park consists in its "breadth" as an artist would say--the
meadows with their green frames of hedges are cabinet pictures, lovely,
but small; this is life size, a broad cartoon from the hand of Nature.
The sward rises and rolls along in undulations like the slow heave of an
ocean wave. Besides the elms there is a noble avenue of limes, and
great oaks scattered here and there, under whose ample shade the cattle
repose in the heat of the day.
In summer from out the leafy chambers of the limes there falls the
pleasant sound of bees innumerable, the voice of whose trembling wings
lulls the listening ear as the drowsy sunshine weighs the eyelid till I
walk the avenue in a dream. It leads out into the park--no formal
gravel drive, simply a footpath on the sward between the flowering
trees: a path that becomes less and less marked as I advance, and
finally fades away, where the limes cease, in the broad level of the
opening "greeny field." These honey-bees seem to fly higher and to
exhibit much more activity than the great humble-bee: here in the limes
they must be thirty feet above the ground. Wasps also frequently wing
their way at a considerable elevation, and thus it is that the hive-bee
and the wasp so commonly enter the upper windows of houses. When its
load of honey is completed, the bee, too, returns home in a nearly
straight line, high enough in the air to pass over hedges and such
obstacles without the labour of rising up and sinking again.
The heavy humble-bee is generally seen close to the earth, and often
goes down into the depths of the dry ditches, and may there be heard
buzzing slowly along under the arch of briar and bramble. He seems to
lose his way now and then in the tangled undergrowth of the woods; and
if a footstep disturbs and alarms him, it is amusing to see his
desperate efforts to free himself hastily from the interlacing
grass-blades and ferns.
When the sap is rising, the bark of the smaller shoots of the lime-tree
"slips" easily--i.e. it can be peeled in hollow cylinders if judiciously
tapped and loosened by gentle blows from the back of a knife. The
ploughboys know this, and make whistles out of such branches, as they do
also from the willow, and even the sycamore in the season when the sap
comes up in its flood-tide.
It is difficult to decide at what time of the year the park is in its
glory. The may-flower on the great hawthorn trees in spring may perhaps
claim the pre-eminence, filling the soft breeze with exquisite odour.
These here are trees, not bushes, standing separate, with thick gnarled
stems so polished by the constant rubbing of cattle as almost to shine
like varnish. The may-bloom, pure white in its full splendour, takes a
dull reddish tinge as it fades, when a sudden shake will bring it down
in showers. A flowering tree, I fancy, looks best when apart and not
one of a row. In the latter case you can only see two sides and not all
round it. Here tall horse-chestnut trees stand single--one great
silvery candelabrum of blossom. Wood-pigeons appear to have a liking
for this tree. Nor must the humble crab-tree be forgotten; a crab-tree
in bloom is a lovely sight.
The idea of a park is associated with peace and pleasure, yet even here
there is one spot where the passions of men have left their mark. As
previously hinted, the gamekeeper, like most persons with little
book-learning and who take their impressions from nature, is somewhat
superstitious, and regards this place as "unkid"--i.e. weird, uncanny.
One particular green "drive" into the wood opening on the park had
always been believed to be a part of a military track used many ages
ago, but long since ploughed up for the greater part of its length, and
only preserved here by the accident of passing through a wood. At last
some labourers grubbing trees near the mouth of the drive came upon a
number of human skeletons, close beneath the surface, and in their
confused arrangement presenting every sign of hasty interment, as if
after battle. Since then the keeper avoids the spot; nor will he, hardy
as he is, go near it at night; not even in the summer moonlight, when
the night is merely a prolongation of the day.
There is nothing unusual in such a discovery: skeletons are found in all
manner of places. I recollect seeing one dug out from the bank of a
brook within two feet of the stream. The place was perhaps in the olden
time covered with forest (traces of forest are to be found everywhere,
as in the names of hamlets), and therefore more concealed than at
present. Or, possibly, the stream, in the slow passage of centuries,
may have worn its way far from its original bed.
It is strange to think of, yet it is true enough, that, beautiful as the
country is, with its green meadows and graceful trees, its streams and
forests and peaceful homesteads, it would be difficult to find an acre
of ground that has not been stained with blood. A melancholy reflection
this, that carries the mind backwards, while the thrush sings on the
bough, through the nameless skirmishes of the Civil War, the cruel
assassinations of the rival Roses, down to the axes of the Saxons and
the ghastly wounds they made. Everywhere under the flowers are the
dead.
Not this park in particular, but others as well form pages of history.
The keeper, in fact, can claim an ancient origin for his office, dating
back to the forester with a "mark" a year and a suit of green as his
wages, and numbering in his predecessors Joscelin, the typical keeper in
Scott's novel of "Woodstock," who aided the escape of King Charles.
Ever since the days of the Norman King who loved the tall deer as if he
were their father--in the words of his contemporary--and set store by
the hares that they too should go free, the keeper has not ceased out of
the land.
There are always more small birds at the edge or just outside a wood
than inside it; so that after leaving a meadow with blackbird, thrush,
and finches merry in the hedges, the wood seems quite silent and
deserted save by a solitary robin. This is speaking of the smaller
birds. The great missel-thrush especially delights in the open space of
the park dotted with groups of trees. The missel-thrush is a lonely
bird, and somehow seems like an outlaw--as if, though not precisely
dangerous, he was looked upon with suspicion by the other birds, which
will frequently quit a bush or tree directly he alights upon it. Yet he
builds near houses, and year after year in the same spot. I knew a
large yew-tree which stood almost in front and within a few yards of a
sitting-room window in which the missel-thrush had regularly built its
nest for twelve successive years. These birds are singularly bold in
defence of the nest, flying round and chattering at those who would
disturb it.
In the ha-ha wall of the park, which is made of loose stones or without
mortar, the tomtit, or titmouse, has his nest. He creeps in between the
stones, following the crannies for a surprising distance. Near here the
partridges roost on the ground; they like an open space far from hedges,
afraid, perhaps, of weasels and rats. On the other side, where the wood
comes up, if you watch quietly, the pheasants step in lordly pride out
into the grass; so that there is no place without its especial class of
life.
Perhaps with the exception of our parks and hills, there is scarcely any
portion of southern England now where a grand charge of cavalry could
take place--scarcely any open champaign country fit for operations of
that kind with horse. In the Civil War even, how constantly we read of
"lining the hedge with match," and now with enclosures everywhere the
difficulty would apparently be great, despite good roads.
Park-fed beef is thought by many to be superior, because the cattle run
free--almost wild--the entire year through, winter and summer, and have
nothing but their natural food, grass and hay: in strong contrast with
the bullocks shut up in stalls and forced forward with artificial food.
A great number of parks have been curtailed in size as land became more
valuable--the best ground being selected and hedged off for purely
agricultural purposes; so that it not uncommonly happens that the actual
park is the poorest soil in the district, having for that reason
remained longest in a condition nearly resembling the original state of
the country. So that when agitators of Communistic views lay stress
upon the waste of land used for pleasure purposes they frequently
declaim in utter ignorance of the facts, which are in exact opposition
to their theories.
Like animals and birds, plants have their favourite haunts: violets love
a bank with a southern aspect, especially if there be a hedge at the
back for further shelter. Where you have by chance lighted upon a wild
flower once you may generally reckon upon finding it again next year--
such as the white variety of the bluebell or wild hyacinth, for which,
unless you mark the place, you may search in vain amid the crowded blue
bloom of the commoner sort. The orchis, with its purple flower and dark
green spotted leaf, in the virtue of whose roots as a love-potion the
old people still believe, the strange-looking adder's tongue, the modest
wild strawberry, with its tiny but piquant flavoured fruit, all have
their special resorts. Even the cowslips have their ways: by brooks
sometimes a larger variety grows; nor is there a sweeter flower than its
delicate yellow with small velvety brown spots, like moles on beauty's
cheek.
In autumn, when the leaves turn colour, the groups of trees in the park
are more effective in an artistic point of view than those in the woods
(unless overlooked from a hill close by, when it is like glancing along
a roof of gold), because they stand out clear, and are not confused or
lost in the general glow. But it is evening now; and see--yonder the
fox steals out from the cover, wending his way down into the meadows,
where he will follow the furrows along their course, mousing as he goes.