PHYSICAL EDUCATION.—A RUSTIC VILLAGE.—FARM-HOUSE KITCHEN.—AN
ORCHARD.—STABLES.—LEOMINSTER.—A TROUT BROOK.—FRUIT CULTURE.
_Monday, June 10th._
[Sidenote: _A FARM-HOUSE KITCHEN._]
After breakfasting with the Independent minister, (the term clergyman
is never applied in England except to those of the established church,)
he walked with us for six miles out of town upon our road. Three little
boys and girls, the youngest six years old, also accompanied us. They
were romping and rambling about all the while, and their morning’s walk
must have been as much as fifteen miles; but they thought nothing of
it, and, when we parted, were apparently as fresh as when they started,
and very loath to return.
After looking at several objects of interest near the road, we were
taken by a narrow, crooked lane to a small hamlet of picturesque
old cottages, in one of which a farmer lived who was a parishioner
of our friend’s. It was a very pretty, many-gabled, thatched-roofed
timber-house, almost completely covered with vines and creepers. We
were sorry to find the farmer not at home; his wife, an elderly,
simple-minded dame, received us joyfully, however. In entering the
house, as we have noticed to be usual in old buildings, whatever
their purpose, we found that the stone floor of the narrow hall was a
step below the street and general surface of the ground outside. The
kitchen, to which we were at once conducted, was a large square room,
lighted by a single broad window, and having a brilliant display of
polished metal utensils upon and about a great chimney, all as neat and
nice as a parlour.
“The huge oak table’s massy frame
Bestrode the kitchen floor;”
a linen cloth was spread upon it, and coarse but excellent wheat bread,
butter, and cheese, brought from the pantry, and cider and perry from
the cellar. The cider was “hard” enough; the perry, (fermented juice
of pears,) a beautiful, bright, golden liquid, tasted much like weak
vinegar and water. We had entered the district of cider and apple
trees, for these liquors were home-made, and the first extensive
orchard that we have seen adjoined the rear of the house: during the
rest of our day’s walk the road was frequently lined with them for long
distances.
The trees, in a considerable part of this orchard, were of every age,
and stood very irregularly at various distances from each other. It
appeared as if when an old tree was blown down, or became worthless
from age and decay, and an unshaded space was thus left, or likely to
be, two young trees were planted at a little distance on each side
of it, and thus perhaps the orchard had been renovated and continued
on the same ground for several generations. Two hundred years ago it
was considered that “the best way to plant an orchard is to set some
kernels of the best and soundest apples and pears, a finger deep, and
at a foot distance, and to leave the likeliest plants only in the
natural place, removing the others only as time and occasion shall
require.” The orchards of the Rhine, at the present day, in which
apple, pear, cherry, and nut-trees are intermingled, seem to have been
planted with as little regard to regularity of distance. The grafts
were commonly inserted at from six to eight feet from the ground,
and the limbs trimmed so as to allow free passage to cattle beneath
them. The land was in an old weedy sward, and was pastured by horses
and cows. It had not been in any way drained, and was in some parts
boggy. In these, willows, and sallows or osiers, (basket willows,) were
growing. The trees all appeared to me unhealthy, mossy, and stunted. A
few pear trees grew here and there, indiscriminately, among the apples.
The cider-mill was just like the old-fashioned ones, with a stone
wheel, common in New England.
After seeing the orchard in such condition, I was surprised to find
excellent, neat, and well-ordered stables. The horse-stalls were large,
with iron racks and mangers, and a grating and drain to carry off the
liquid. The manure in the yard was piled up in a large, oblong heap,
covered with earth, to prevent evaporation, with a space of clean
pavement, wide enough for a cart to pass all around it. The liquid
overflow of the yard was conducted off by a drain, so as to flow over
the orchard pasture.
* * * * *
We reached Leominster at noon, after a few miles further of walking
through a pleasant country, remarkable for its pretty old cottages. At
Leominster, (pronounced _Leminster_,) there are also more than usually
quaint old houses, grotesquely carved; and on the market-house, an odd
old building, there are some singular inscriptions. I recollect only
one, which runs in this way: “_As columnes do pprope up_” a house, so
do a gentry support a state.
[Sidenote: _A TROUT BROOK._]
In the afternoon we walked for some distance on the banks of a trout
brook, in which a good many ladies and gentlemen were angling, with but
poor success. The trout were small, and, if I recollect rightly, rather
lighter coloured than ours, and not so prettily mottled. Some of the
anglers called the stream “the Arrow,” and some “the Harrow,” and I do
not now remember which way it is printed on the map.
The field-bean is a common crop here; it is now in blossom, and a
peculiarly sweet scent from it, every now and then, comes in a full,
delicious flood over the hedges.
The country over which we walked in the afternoon, between Leominster
and Hereford, was in some parts extremely beautiful: considerable
hills, always, when too steep or rocky or sterile for easy cultivation,
covered with plantations of trees; the lesser hills and low lands
shaded by frequent orchards. These were generally of apples, sometimes
with pears intermixed—somewhat rarely entirely of pears. Many of them
appeared much like the one I have described, and occasionally there was
a regularly planted one of fine, thrifty trees. In the poorer orchards,
where the trees were of all ages, they frequently were planted not
more than fifteen feet apart, and when so, as far as I observed, were
invariably small in size and unhealthy. In the better ones, the trees
stood oftenest thirty feet apart one way, and twenty another; rarely at
much greater distance than this, but sometimes as much as forty.