with the name and address of a lady typist, furnished by a bookseller
of the town, to look for her in the Camden Road. A long road it proved.
Like Pope’s wounded serpent it dragged its slow length along to the
distant horizon and beyond it. It also reminded me of Upper Wigmore
Street, as it seemed to poor dying Sydney Smith, except that Camden
Road was about a thousand times longer. At length, a mile or so short
of the far end, I came to the number I was looking for on the door of
a small, pretty, old-looking vine-clad cottage set well back from the
road with trees and flowers about it, and there I found my typist and
her sister--two little unmarried ladies, no longer young, who in their
gentle subdued manner, low soft speech, and quiet movements appeared to
harmonise very well with the old-world little house they lived in. They
were, I fancy, somewhat startled at the apparition of so big a man in
their small interior--one whose head came within an inch or two of the
low ceiling: they seemed timid and troubled and anxious in their minds
when I gave them my scrawl to decipher and copy.
One day, wanting a good long walk, I paid them a second visit, to
find them less shy and reticent than at first; and afterwards I went
again on several occasions, until we became quite friendly, and they
gratified my De Quincey-like craving to know everything about the life
of every person I meet from its birth onwards, by telling me all about
themselves.
They had been left with very little to live on, and one was an invalid;
yet they had to do something, and typewriting at home was the only
thing, as this enabled them to keep together, so that the invalid would
always have her sister with her. The work they had done hitherto, they
said, was copying tradesmen’s circulars, also some copying for two of
the local clergy and for an attorney of the town. My work had come as a
relief to them. The very first thing I had given them was a paper about
the sheldrake. What a strange subject--they could hardly believe their
eyes when they saw it. The sheldrake!--that bird about which they had
so many memories, pleasant, and some not quite pleasant. It was all
very wonderful. Before they came to Bath they lived with a bachelor
brother who had come into a small farm, left him by a distant relation,
on the Welsh coast. As he had nothing else in the world he went to live
on it and work it himself, and kindly took them to keep house and do
the indoor work. The farm was on a very wild, lonely spot, close to the
sea, and abounded in birds of many kinds--sea and shore and land--they
had never seen before. And though it was a rough place they loved it
because of the sea and woods and hills and the birds, and they wished
they had never had anything to do with the birds except just to see and
admire them. But there was their brother, who was a great sportsman and
who had some very strange ideas. One was that most birds were good to
eat, and he was always shooting some queer-looking bird and bringing
it in to them to dress and cook it for dinner. And the sheldrake was
one he often shot. He said it was a sort of duck, and therefore just as
good to eat as a mallard, or widgeon, or teal, and that it was nothing
but a silly prejudice which prevented people from eating them. And
though they never had one on the table that wasn’t tough and dry and
fishy-tasted he would still bring them in and argue that they were
very good. “We loved,” they said, “to see the sheldrakes flying about
on the coast, but how we hated to see them brought in to be cooked for
dinner! But he was always very masterful with us and we never dared to
go against his wishes.”
One day he brought in a heron, and they were quite startled at the
sight of such a huge, lank, grey, loose-feathered creature with such
immense legs and such a dreadful beak. But when he said it would be a
grand experience for them to eat heron they thought he must be joking,
although it was not a common thing for him to say anything in fun. He
was a very serious sort of man. Finally they ventured to ask him if he
really meant that this upsetting bird was to be eaten? He was quite
indignant: of course it was to be eaten, he said; did they imagine that
he killed birds just for the pleasure of killing them! He said it would
be a grand day for them when they sat down to a heron on the table.
Didn’t they know that it was one of the most famous birds of the old
time--that the heron was regarded as a noble, a royal bird, that it was
a great dish at the feast in baronial halls; and that’s how he went on
until they were quite ashamed of their ignorance of the old days and
humbly promised to cook the bird. Very well, he said, he was going to
hang it in the big empty room next the dairy and let it remain until
fit to cook. The longer it hung the more tender it would be.
There was an iron hook in the central beam of the big vacant room he
had spoken of, and on this hook he suspended the heron by its legs, its
long pointed beak nearly touching the tiled floor, and hanging there
with nothing else in the room it looked bigger than ever. It troubled
them greatly to have to go through this room many times a day, but it
was far worse at night. They were accustomed, especially on moonlight
nights, to go that way to the dairy without a candle; and they
sometimes forgot about the bird, and then the sight of it in its pale
grey plumage would startle them as if they had seen a ghost. How awful
it looked, with its wings like great arms half-open as if to scare them!
Days and weeks went by, and still the heron was suspended in the big
vacant room to make their life on the farm a burden to them, then
one morning after finishing his breakfast their brother said that he
had been looking at the heron and found it was just about in perfect
condition to be cooked, and that they would have it for dinner that
day. Then he added: “I don’t mean at our twelve o’clock dinner. There
would be no time to prepare it and it would not be proper to eat it at
such an hour. To-day we must have a real eight o’clock dinner so as to
do honour to the heron.”
Then he went out and left them staring into each other’s pale face.
However, the painful task had to be performed, and they loyally went
to work and plucked it, but in cleaning it received a shock at finding
a trout about a foot in length in a semi-decomposed condition in its
gullet. After refreshing themselves with sal-volatile and half an
hour in the garden, they finished the hateful business by singeing it
and pumping many gallons of water over its carcase, and then towards
evening put it in the oven to roast or bake. The smell of it was very
trying and not only made the kitchen atmosphere almost not to be borne
but pervaded the whole house, causing them to look forward more and
more apprehensively to the evening dinner. Still, they were determined
to do everything to please their brother, and got out their best
table-cloth and silver, flowers for decoration, and wine and coloured
glasses; and the brother when he sat down smiled on them approvingly.
Then the heron on a big dish was brought in, and the brother rose to
carve it, and heaped their plates with generous slices of the lean
black flesh, and helped himself even more generously. They having been
helped first had to begin, but to put even the smallest morsel into
their mouths was more than they could do. They pretended to cut and
eat it while confining themselves to the vegetables on their plates.
Their brother was not affected with such squeamishness and straightway
started operations, and did honour to the heron by taking a tremendous
mouthful. The sisters exchanged frightened glances and watched him
furtively, wondering at his courage--wondering, too, if he would be
able to keep it up and consume the whole monstrous plateful. Then
something happened: a change came over his face, he turned pale, and
stopped chewing; then, with mouth still full, he suddenly rose and fled
from the room.
That was the end of their gorgeous dinner! Feeling pretty sure that
he would not call for the cold remains of the bird next morning for
breakfast they took it out and buried it in the garden, then threw
all the doors and windows in the house open to get rid of the savour.
It was late that evening when they next saw their brother; he was
looking pale as if but lately recovering from a serious illness; but he
sauntered in with an air of not knowing anything about it, and remarked
casually that he had been for a stroll and didn’t know it was so late.
But never a word about the heron he had dined on, nor did he ever after
allude to the subject.
XI
THE MOLE QUESTION
As to whether the mole is injurious or not, the farmer appears not yet
to have made up his mind. Mole clubs flourish throughout the country,
which fact may be taken by some as proof that the creature is regarded
as an enemy. Is it so? There are many farmers who subscribe to the
local mole club, and occasionally have their grounds cleared, yet they
say that they do not know that they are doing themselves any good, some
are even inclined to think that it would perhaps be better to leave the
moles alone. They go on subscribing to clubs in the same way that so
many of us give our crowns or half-guineas year by year for objects we
care nothing about, and do not know whether they are good or bad. All
the other farmers in the place have paid their subscriptions, and Jones
gives his so as not to be set down as a mean or singular person, and
because it would be a bother to have any controversy over the subject.
The others have probably subscribed for the same poor reason.
Occasionally we meet a farmer who is quite positive on one side or
the other; he knows all about it, and is angry with his neighbours
either because they do or do not kill their moles. There are always a
few extremists. Every one has heard of Mr. Joseph Nunn, who maintains
that the sparrow is the farmer’s best feathered friend, and is carried
by his zeal to the length of declaring that all those who shoot the
sparrow ought themselves to be shot. I hear of another farmer who buys
moles from mole-catchers to put on his land; he is convinced that their
presence is wholly beneficial, that when those inhabiting the lands
adjoining his farm have been killed off, his own moles flow out into
these depleted grounds to enjoy the greater abundance of food they
find there; and it is to make good this loss inflicted on him by the
ignorance and stupidity of his neighbours that he is obliged to act as
he does.
Recently I was with a man who takes the opposite view; one who revolves
schemes and projects for the suppression of the mole. This enemy of
the mole is in possession of three or four water-meadows, infested by
these animals to an extraordinary degree. As he is partly dependent
for a livelihood on a few milch-cows he keeps, the condition of this
meadow land is a matter of importance to him; and he has come to the
conclusion that he loses a large portion (a fourth, he imagines) of his
grass crop on account of the uneven condition of the surface caused by
the moles. It is true that he could roll the ground, and it would then
probably be in a sufficiently level state at the next grass-cutting
for the scythe, but by the following season it would again be in a
hummocky condition, and repeated rollings would be a serious item in
his expenses. He considers that if the damage thus inflicted on him
in these small meadows where the scythe is used is sufficient to be
seriously felt, the loss must indeed be great on large farms where the
machine is used for mowing, and the ground must be kept in a smooth
condition at considerable expense.
Pondering over these things, and fighting the moles, which, not content
with making a sort of physical geography raised map of his little grass
meadows, nightly invade his garden to spoil his work there, he has
come to look upon it as a tremendously important question. It is his
conviction that he who invents a means of suppressing the mole will
be a great benefactor to the country, and he has set himself to find
out the means, and he has even strong hopes of success. So long (he
argues) as we continued to fight the moles with the traps now in use,
made to take one mole at a time, the very utmost we can do is to keep
their numbers down with a great deal of trouble and at a considerable
expense. They increase rapidly, and no sooner are our efforts relaxed
than they again become abundant. We want a trap that will not take a
single mole but as many moles as are accustomed to use the run in which
it is placed. That a large number do constantly use the same main road
by which they migrate from one hunting-ground to the other is to him
a settled fact. One of his neighbours took thirty-two moles, one by
one, in the course of a few days in a single trap placed at the same
place in a run--a proof that all the moles in the place that range any
day over an area of many acres have roads that are free to the colony.
All we have got to do, then, is to find one of these principal roads,
usually at the side of a hedge, and to place a trap capable of holding
as many moles as may come into it, and the thing is done.
To inform my rural friend that he was not the first person to have
great dreams anent the mole question, I related to him the history
of the famous Henri le Court, described by Bell in his _British
Quadrupeds_ as “a person, who having held a lucrative situation about
the Court at the epoch of the French Revolution, retired from the
horrors of that fearful period into the country, and there devoted the
remainder of his life to a study of the habits of the mole, and of the
most efficient means for its extirpation.”
It surprised him to hear that men of brains had begun to occupy
themselves with this question as long ago as the eighteenth century;
but the thought that nothing important had resulted from their efforts
in so long a time did not discourage him: it was simply the case that,
brains or no brains, he had been so lucky as to hit upon the one
efficacious means for the extirpation of the mole, which all before
him had missed--to wit, _his_ trap.
This frightful engine of destruction is not yet perfected, and perhaps
the moles need not be in a hurry to say their prayers. In the meantime,
while the farmers are waiting to be delivered from their subterranean
enemy, I cannot help thinking that it is not much to the credit of the
science of agriculture, and the Royal Agricultural Society, that some
practical steps have not been taken before now to ascertain whether
or not the mole is an injurious beast; or, to put it differently,
whether the direct loss he causes by throwing up hills in meadows and
grass-lands exceeds any benefit that may result from his presence in
draining and ventilating the soil and in clearing it of grubs.
With gardens and lawns we are not concerned; moles are a nuisance when
they come too near, and if some one could devise a means to inflict
sudden death on every underground intruder into such places it would be
a great advantage. Experiments in a small way could be made at a very
slight cost. For instance, take a meadow, like one of those belonging
to my friend, very much infested with moles; divide it in two equal
portions, one half to be open to moles, the other half to be strictly
protected from them by means of a fence of fine wire-netting sunk to a
proper depth in the soil. Then let the grass crops of the two portions
be compared as to weight and quality for a period of four or five
years. Such an experiment carried out by a number of farmers at the
same time in different parts of the country would probably result in
the settlement of this old vexed question.
XII
CRISTIANO: A HORSE
A gaucho of my acquaintance, when I lived on the pampas and was a very
young man, owned a favourite riding-horse which he had named Cristiano.
To the gaucho “Christian” is simply another word for white man: he
gave it that name because one of its eyes was a pale blue-grey, almost
white--a colour sometimes seen in the eyes of a white man, but never
in an Indian. The other eye was normal, though of a much lighter brown
than usual. Cristiano, however, could see equally well out of both
eyes, nor was the blue eye on one side correlated with deafness, as
in a white cat. His sense of hearing was quite remarkable. His colour
was a fine deep fawn, with black mane and tail, and altogether he was
a handsome and a good, strong, sound animal; his owner was so much
attached to him that he would seldom ride any other horse, and as a
rule he had him saddled every day.
Now if it had only been the blue eye I should probably have forgotten
Cristiano, as I made no notes about him, but I remember him vividly to
this day on account of something arresting in his psychology: he was
an example of the powerful effect of the conditions he had been reared
in and of the persistence of habits acquired at an early period after
they have ceased to be of any significance in the creature’s life.
Every time I was in my gaucho friend’s company, when his favourite
Cristiano, along with other saddle horses, was standing at the
_palenque_, or row of posts set up before the door of a native rancho
for visitors to fasten their horses to, my attention would be attracted
to his singular behaviour. His master always tied him to the _palenque_
with a long cabresto, or lariat, to give him plenty of space to move
his head and whole body about quite freely. And that was just what he
was always doing. A more restless horse I had never seen. His head
was always raised as high as he could raise it--like an ostrich, the
gauchos would say--his gaze fixed excitedly on some far object; then
presently he would wheel round and stare in another direction, pointing
his ears forward to listen intently to some faint far sound, which had
touched his sense. The sounds that excited him most were as a rule the
alarm cries of lapwings, and the objects he gazed fixedly at with a
great show of apprehension would usually turn out to be a horseman on
the horizon; but the sounds and sights would for some time be inaudible
and invisible to us on account of their distance. Occasionally, when
the bird’s alarm cries grew loud and the distant rider was found to be
approaching, his excitement would increase until it would discharge
itself in a resounding snort--the warning or alarm note of the wild
horse.
One day I remarked to my gaucho friend that his blue-eyed Cristiano
amused me more than any other horse I knew. He was just like a child,
and when tired of the monotony of standing tethered to the _palenque_
he would start playing sentinel. He would imagine it was war-time or
that an invasion of Indians was expected, and every cry of a lapwing
or other alarm-giving bird, or the sight of a horseman in the distance
would cause him to give a warning. But the other horses would not
join in the game; they let him keep watch and wheel about this way
and that, spying or pretending to spy something, and blowing his loud
trumpet, without taking any notice. They simply dozed with heads down,
occasionally switching off the flies with their tails or stamping a
hoof to get them off their legs, or rubbing their tongues over the bits
to make a rattling sound with the little iron rollers on the bridle-bar.
He laughed and said I was mistaken, that Cristiano was not amusing
himself with a game he had invented. He was born wild and belonged
to a district not many leagues away but where there was an extensive
marshy area impracticable for hunting on horseback. Here a band of wild
horses, a small remnant of an immense troop that had formerly existed
in that part, had been able to keep their freedom down to recent years.
As they were frequently hunted in dry seasons when the ground was not
so bad, they had become exceedingly alert and cunning, and the sight of
men on horseback would send them flying to the most inaccessible places
in the marshes, where it was impossible to follow them. Eventually
plans were laid and the troop driven from their stronghold out into
the open country, where the ground was firm, and most of them were
captured. Cristiano was one of them, a colt about four or five months
old, and my friend took possession of him, attracted by his blue eye
and fine fawn colour. In quite a short time the colt became perfectly
tame, and when broken turned out an exceptionally good riding-horse.
But though so young when captured the wild alert habit was never
dropped. He could never be still: when out grazing with the other
horses or when standing tied to the _palenque_ he was perpetually on
the watch, and the cry of a plover, the sound of galloping hoofs, the
sight of a horseman, would startle him and cause him to trumpet his
alarm.
It strikes me as rather curious that in spite of Cristiano’s evident
agitation at certain sounds and sights, it never went to the length of
a panic; he never attempted to break loose and run away. He behaved
just as if the plover’s cry or the sound of hoofs or the sight of
mounted men had produced an illusion--that he was once more a wild
hunted horse--yet he never acted as though it was an illusion. It was
apparently nothing more than a memory and a habit.
XIII
MARY’S LITTLE LAMB
This is the history of a pet lamb that differed mentally from other
lambs I have known. One does not look for anything approaching to
marked individuality in that animal, yet sheep do show it on occasions
though not in the same degree as cats and dogs. Goats exhibit more
character than sheep, probably because we do not compel them to
live in a crowd. Indeed, when we consider how our poor domesticated
sheep is kept we can see that they have little chance of developing
individuality of mind. A sheep cannot “follow his own genius,” so to
speak, without infringing the laws we have made for his kind. His
condition in this respect is similar to that of human beings under a
purely socialistic form of government: for example, like that of the
ancient civilised Peruvians. In that state every man did as he was
told: worked and rested, got up and sat down, ate, drank, and slept,
married, grew old and died in the precise way prescribed. And I daresay
if he tried to be original or to do something out of the common he was
knocked on the head. So with our sheep. The shepherd, assisted by his
dog, maps out his whole life for him, from birth to death, and he is
not permitted to stray from the path in which he is made to walk. But
if a lamb be taken from the flock and reared at a farm and given the
same liberty that cats and dogs and even many goats enjoy, he will in
almost every case develop a character of his own.
I remember a tame sheep we once had at my home on the pampas who in
thieving could give points to many thievish dogs, not excepting the
pointer himself, the most accomplished thief in the entire canine
gang. Tobacco and books were the objects this mischievous beast was
perpetually foraging for when she could get into the house. Tobacco
was hard to come at even when she had a good long time to look for it
before some one came on the scene to send her about her business with a
good whack or a kick. But books were often left lying about on tables
and chairs and were easily got at. She knew very well that it was wrong
and that if detected she would have to suffer, but she was exceedingly
cunning, and from a good distance would keep an eye on the house, and
when she saw or cunningly guessed that no person was in the sitting- or
dining-room or any other room with the door standing open, she would
steal quietly in and finding a book would catch it hastily up and make
off with it. Carrying it off to the plantation she would set it down,
put her hoof on it, and start tearing out the leaves and devouring
them as expeditiously as possible. Once she had got hold of a book she
would not give it up--not all the shouting and chasing after her would
make her drop it. Away she would rush until fifty yards or more ahead
of her hunters; then she would stop, set it down and begin hurriedly
tearing out the leaves; then when the hunt drew near with loud halloo
she would snatch it up and rush on with it flapping about her face, and
leave us all far behind. Eventually, when her depredations could no
longer be tolerated, she was sent away to the flock.