Every afternoon when the weather was bright, an erect old man used to
ride round the Fisher Row on a stout cob. If the men happened to be
sitting in the sun, on the benches, he would stop and speak to them, in
sharp, ringing accents, and he always had a word for the women as they
sat baiting their lines in the open air. He called the men by their
Christian names, and they called him by the name of his estate. None of
the fishermen ever ventured to be familiar with him; but he often held
long talks with them about commonplace matters. They considered that
they had a proprietary interest in him, and they always inquired about
his family affairs. He would tell them that Mr. Harry had gone with his
regiment to India, or that Miss Mabel had gone to stay with her aunt at
the West Moor, or, that Miss Ella was coming home from school for
altogether next month. All this cross-questioning was carried on without
the least vulgarity. The people were really anxious to hear news of the
boys and girls who had grown up amongst them, and they thought it would
please the Squire if they treated him as a sort of Patriarch.
The old man lived for nearly a century in the one place. It may be said
that not long before he died he wagered that he would reach his
hundredth year, but he missed that by three years. His whole energy and
thought were devoted to improving his estate. He had no notion of art or
things of that kind, yet he managed to make his village and its
surroundings very beautiful by long years of care. The sleepy place
where he lived was right away from the currents of modern life. If you
walked over a mile of moorland, then through five miles of deep wood,
where splendid elms and fine beeches made shade for you, you would come
at last to some rising ground, and, if you waited, you might see far
away the trailing smoke of a train. But there are men now, on the
Squire's estate, who have never seen an engine, and there must be a
score or so of the population who have never slept one night away from
their native place. While Mr. Pitt was breaking his heart over
Austerlitz; while Napoleon was playing his last throw at Waterloo; while
the Birmingham men were threatening to march on London, the Squire was
riding peacefully day by day, in the lanes and spinneys of his lovely
countryside. He never would allow a stranger to settle on his property,
and he was never quite pleased if any of the fisher girls married
pitmen. He did not mind when the hinds and the fishers intermarried, but
anything that suggested noise and smoke was an abhorrence to him, and
thus he disliked the miners. A splendid seam of coal ran beneath his
land. This coal could have been easily won; in fact, at the place where
the cliffs met the sea, a two-foot seam cropped out, and the people
could go with a pickaxe and break off a basketful for themselves
whenever they chose; but the Squire would never allow borings to be
made. He did not object to the use of coal on abstract grounds, but he
was determined that his property should not be disfigured. Once, when a
smart agent came to make proposals respecting the sinking of a pit, the
Squire took him by the shoulders and solemnly pushed him out of his
study. He fancied that a colliery would bring poachers and squalor and
drunkenness, and many other bad consequences, so he kept his fields
unsullied and his little streams pure. Without knowing it, the Squire
was a bit of a poet. For example, he had one long dell, which ran
through his woods, planted with hyacinths and the wild pink geranium.
These flowers came in bloom together, and the effect of the great sheet
of blue and pink was indescribable. He was very proud of this piece of
work, and he always looked happy as he went down the path in the spring
time.
The Squire had the most intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of
every man, woman, and child on his property. If he rode out at two in
the afternoon and heard that a fisherman was suffering with rheumatism,
it was almost certain that the fat man-servant from the Hall would call
at the sick man's house before the day was out with blankets and wine,
and whatever else might be needed. Yet the Squire was by no means
lavish. In making a bargain with a tenant he never showed the least
generosity. On one occasion he set a number of gardeners to work in a
very large orchard where the trees were beginning to feel the effects of
time. The men were likely to be employed for at least three years, so
each of them was fixed by a formal engagement. The married men were
paid fifteen shillings a week, but on coming to a young man, the Squire
said, "Now I am going to give you a shilling a week less than the others
because you live with your mother." This sounds like the speech of a
very stingy person; but in spite of the apparent hardness of the great
landlord, poverty was never known on his estate. The hinds had to eat
barley bread, and beef and mutton were not plentiful, for the butcher's
visit only came once in the week. Yet nevertheless the men were healthy
and powerful, and the women and children were neatly and decently
dressed.
Once every year the Squire met the whole of his tenants. As Michaelmas
came round he drew his rents, and then the dandy agent, the solid
farmers, and the poor cottiers sat down at one table for the rent
dinner. The strict discipline of ordinary life was relaxed, and the
Squire allowed even the fishermen to make jokes in his presence. When
the company broke up in the evening it often happened that various
members were obliged to lie down in the hedge-sides, and once the Squire
had to ride his cob right over his own head mason. The mason happened to
be thinking about nautical affairs when the grey cob swept down upon
him, and just as the Squire cleared him he cried "Ship ahoy." This
occurrence supplied the Squire with a joke which lasted nearly forty
years.
All the sayings which the Squire dropped at the rent dinner were
carefully treasured, and formed the subject of occasional conversation
on the benches until the year went round again.
The good man did not like newspapers. When he began his life as a
landlord, at the end of the last century, the folk who lived on the
estate managed perfectly well without journals, and he did not see why a
change should be made. He never could understand why a man could not be
content with his own life, and his own sensations, instead of wanting to
know what other people in other parts of the world were saying and
doing.
About the time of the Reform agitation of 1867 he rode round to the
masons' shed. The men were having their eleven o'clock meal, and as they
ate their bread and cheese, Fat Jack, the stone-cutter, read to them one
of Mr. John Bright's speeches. The Squire did not exactly know, or care
to know, who Mr. John Bright might be, but he gathered enough from Fat
Jack's guttural elocution to cause uneasiness. He declared that if ever
the postman brought such a thing into the village again he would never
allow a letter to be delivered on his estate. But with all this bluster,
the common people knew that their landlord wished them well, and they
were ready to do anything for him.
One night, while he was dragging his trout stream, he fell into the
ugliest part of the water. He had hardly had time to come to the surface
when six men were in after him, and he had to thank each one of the six
in the same formal terms before any of them would consent to resign the
whole credit of the rescue.
His eldest son was killed in battle. Before departing for the fatal
campaign, the young officer had dragged the burn, and placed all the
brown trout that he caught in a great tarn that lay amongst the low
hills on the moor. The fish increased and multiplied until the little
lake was swarming. Big fat trout used to roll easily round on summer
evenings, and make lazy lunges at the flies. It would have been easy to
have taken twenty dozen out of the lake in a day; but the Squire said he
did not want the pond fished because his boy had stocked it. So no
native ever cast a line there, although the temptation was almost
unbearable.
A very smart young person came from the neighbouring market town once,
and tried the pond with the fly. He had just reached his third dozen
when he was caught by old Sam, the gamekeeper, and three fishermen. They
tied a cart-rope round his waist and threw him into the pond; they then
pitched the whole of the trout back into the water, and after that they
dragged the trespasser out, floured him carefully, and sent him on his
road.
These incidents are not idyllic, but they serve to show what kind of a
hold a strong, just man may obtain upon simple people if he only shows
that he is ready to work for them. The whole of the tenantry and the
villagers knew that their stern old master gave up his life for their
sake. They knew that he worked like a common bailiff; they knew that he
drank nothing but water; they knew that he put by money every year with
the sole object of making improvements which might better their
condition, and they respected him accordingly.
When he reached the age of ninety-six years he was no longer capable of
guiding his pony: the pony guided him. On one afternoon the beast turned
just at the end of the Fisher Row and walked the old man quietly back
to the stables. He could not dismount without assistance, and he had to
wait in the stall, while Matchem munched his oats, until one of the
stable boys came and released him. From that day the Squire rode no
more, and the occasion was memorable, alike for fishers and hinds.
When the old man died he was followed to his grave by the entire
population from nine farms and two fishing villages. Old men of eighty,
who remembered him when he was a bright young fellow in George the
Third's time, went and stood round his grave. Everybody wanted some
remembrance of him, but this could not be attained until the clever
national schoolmaster of the village suggested that an engraving should
be made from a photograph. You cannot go into one cottage or one
farm-house on the whole of the estate without finding an engraved
portrait of the splendid old man hung in a place of honour.