FARMING
My years of schooling having come to an end, I was back in Ireland in
full enjoyment of youth, high spirits, and thoughtless carelessness.
These holiday times were delightful. I could be in the saddle all day if
I liked, was free to shoot or bathe as I pleased, had dogs at my
disposal, could pass the time of day with all sorts and conditions of
men--a thing which I have relished all my life--and in fact led the gay
existence of the younger offshoot of an Irish squire.
In those days things were not so impecunious in Ireland as they
subsequently became, but there was always a vivacious Hibernian scorn
for false pretension, and a determination to have the best possible
time, such as you can read in Lever's novels of old, and the capital
tales of those two clever ladies, Miss Martin and Miss Somerville,
to-day.
It is perfectly true that there are many Irish landlords in sporting
counties who cannot have three hundred a year, and yet all their sons
and daughters manage to hunt four days a week.
This would be impossible out of Ireland, and is absolutely
incomprehensible even there; but the fact remains that it is done, and
all one can remark is to echo the patter of the conjuror:--
'Wonderful, isn't it?'
I, however, was not destined to be left a derelict at home, as falls to
the hapless lot of far too many good fellows in Ireland.
There were a good many family counsels, and the authorities could not
make up their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was
the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession--an idea
hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble
of racking their brains about me.
Personally, I have often regretted that what in modern phrase may be
called the 'Stevenson boom' did not coincide with my search for a
career. Big posts were in due time going for engineers; and those young
men who had the stamp of apprenticeship to, or association with, the
great man could get almost anything in the days of the fever for railway
construction.
Even later than the period I am now recalling, the journey from Dublin
to Dingle would take more than two days, and, so far as I can recollect,
it certainly took five from Dingle to London. Those coaching journeys
were terrible experiences in wet weather, for you were drenched outside
and suffocated inside, whilst you paid more than three times the present
railway fare for the miserable privilege of this uncomfortable means of
transit.
The old posting hotels used to be uncommonly good and comfortable,
whilst they did a thriving trade. The coach purported to give you ample
time to breakfast and dine at certain capital hostels, but by a private
arrangement between mine host and the guard and driver, the meals used
to be abruptly closured in order to save the landlord's larder.
On the way down from Dublin, a thirty minutes' pause was allowed at Naas
for breakfast; but on the occasion of my story, as well as on every
other, after a quarter of an hour the waiter announced the coach was
just starting.
Everybody ran out to regain their seats, except one commercial
traveller, who picked up all the teaspoons and put them in the teapot
before calmly resuming his meal.
Back came the waiter with:--
'Not a moment to spare, sir.'
'All right,' said the traveller; 'which of the passengers has taken the
teaspoons?'
The waiter gave one glance of horror, and then proceeded to have every
one on the coach examined for the missing articles.
By the time that the commercial traveller had calmly finished a hearty
meal there was nearly a riot, and then he emerged from the coffee-room,
and suggested that the waiter had better look in the teapot.
By the way, I don't fancy that he regularly travelled on that road, for
he would have been a marked man at Naas for years to come.
I was seventeen at the time when I had decided, with parental
acquiescence, to be a farmer, and I was sent to learn my profession to
the south of Scotland, to a farmer named Bogue.
I there acquired, at all events, one curious fact, which has stuck in my
head ever since, and it is thus:--
Scotland and Ireland are governed by the same Sovereign, Lords, and
Commons. Scotland is the best farmed country in Europe, and Ireland
about the worst.
One pair of horses in Scotland were then supposed to cultivate fifty
acres of tillage, and in Ireland the average was one horse to five
acres. Indeed it is in both cases much the same to-day.
In reality a farm is a workshop from which you turn out as much produce
as possible. But on an Irish farm it is the habit to squeeze out the
last possible ounce without putting anything in, for it is not run with
an eye on future years, but only in a hand-to-mouth, beggar-the-soil
kind of way, without a thought beyond contemporary exigencies.
There were several other pupils with Bogue, but I stuck to the business
more than the rest, who were perpetually gallivanting into Kelso, or
even going up to Edinburgh, where they learnt nothing which taught them
their trade or put money into their pockets. Therefore it happened that
I was selected by Bogue to have an excellent practical demonstration of
farming, after this wise. He had a pretty sharp illness, and left me for
a short time full management of all his six hundred acres, and that bit
of responsibility made a man of me once and for all. I stepped out of
boyhood instantly, and became an adult in feelings and bearing; but to
this day I hope my sense of fun is only keener than it was as a lad.
I acquired a good deal of common sense in Scotland, and learnt to
observe for myself, a thing many men never acquire, and on their
deathbeds they will never be able to enumerate the opportunities they
have consequently lost.
As I was to be a farmer, I thought it was no use to confine my attention
to the one I was on, but contracted the habit, when work was at all
slack, of going about to pick up what wrinkles I could from other
proprietors, as well as to make observations on my own account.
Subsequently I have made two agricultural tours through Scotland for the
same purpose, getting as far north as Sutherland, in order to find out
how the Highland farmer dealt with more barren soil under a less
propitious climate. I have noted more improvement in farming in Ayrshire
in the interval than in any other county. Yet there is a letter in
existence by Burns in which he observes that Ayrshire lairds are getting
English and East Lothian notions about rents, and raising them so high
that it will soon be a wilderness.
The fact is that the Scotsman is a farmer by nature, but the Irishman is
a farmer by inclination.
An Irishman tries to exist on land cultivated by the minimum amount of
labour, and does not farm a bit better if his land is cheaper.
Every farmer in Scotland and England is laying down his land in grass,
and giving up tillage as fast as he can. It is notorious that Ireland is
more suitable for pasture than tillage, and yet the Government have
constituted a Board to break up the rich grazing lands in Ireland and
divide them into small tillage farms, on which the tenants could not get
a decent living even if they had it free of rent and taxes.
Old Bogue was a bachelor by profession, and his polygamistic tendencies
were duly concealed, though pretty generally known, as most things are
in the country. He had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you
feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her
appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly
congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did not relish her
parsimonious economies.
There was one thing none of us might shirk, and that was regular
attendance at kirk on Sunday. I have been a church-going man all my
life--in my late years in London I have especially appreciated the
beautiful services at St. Anne's, Soho--but the kirk has always been the
breaking of precious ointment over an unworthy head, so far as I am
concerned. The improvised prayer, that is always so carefully prepared,
and is often one delivered in regular rotation, always seems to me
rather humbugging for that reason, and the tremendously long sermons,
which have a minimum of three quarters of an hour, no matter what the
text or the ability of the preacher, are to me a vexation of spirit. I
have occasionally heard good sermons in kirk, but I think the standard
of Scottish preaching has always been overrated.
Moreover, I agree in the main with the American critic of sermons, who
said if a preacher can't strike ile in ten minutes he has got a bad
organ, or he is boring in the wrong place. It is always unfair to bore
in the pulpit, because the congregation have no means of retaliation
except by subsequently staying away, and in the country that is not
compatible with the public worship of their Maker.
We have all heard the traditional stories about the divines who, having
found the sand of the hour-glass exhausted, calmly reversed it and
continued for a second spell, to the complete satisfaction of the
congregations. But in my experience only one preacher could have done
that without unendurably provoking me, and he was Archbishop Magee, of
whom I shall have something to say when I am dealing with County Cork.
For the Scots in character I conceived much respect and little
enthusiasm. If there is anything more remarkable than the hard-working
powers of the Scottish farmer it is his capacity for hard drinking. But
that only makes him offensive in his brief conviviality and morose in
the long subsequent sulkiness. Whereas I defy you to be seriously angry
with a drunken Irishman, if you have a due sense of humour--and without
that you have lost the salt of life. To my mind there is something
austere in the better characteristics of the Scot, and also something
hypocritical about his morality. You always hear that professed in
Scotland, and never in Ireland. But in the latter fewer illegitimate
children are born than in any other country in Europe, and in
Scotland--notably Glasgow--the high percentage has become sadly
proverbial. Yet, despite these adverse points, the Scottish character
has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, though all my
warmth of feelings goes to my own oft-erring countrymen.
I returned to Ireland in 1843 with the intention of farming in Kerry on
the scientific system I had learned in Berwickshire. However, I found
the land so subdivided that it was not only difficult, but impossible,
to obtain a farm of sufficient size to return a reasonable percentage on
the necessary outlay. The population of Kerry was then 293,880, and the
land was divided into 25,848 farms, the holders of which, I may say,
entirely depended for existence on 26,030 acres of potatoes. To give an
example of the intense love of subdivision, I knew a case where one
horse was the property of three 'farmers,' and as they differed as to
who was to pay for the fourth shoe, they sold the horse, which was
bought by an uncle of mine.
Few farmers ate meat except at Christmas. They wore homespun flannel and
frieze, and their only luxury, whisky, was obtainable at a quarter of
its present price. A young couple were considered ready to start in
married life when they had obtained a 'farm,' consisting of a couple of
acres for potatoes and a mud hovel for themselves; and thus a
population, dependent on a precarious root, increased very rapidly. It
was thicker near the sea coast than inland. The rents then were about
double what they are now (though half what they had been at the
beginning of the nineteenth century), yet, with good potato crops,
people seemed content and times were fairly good. I should say there was
not such general drunkenness as in later times, and very little porter
was consumed in those days--at all events outside Dublin. What schools
there were were shockingly bad, and reading, not to say writing, was an
exceptional accomplishment, not only among the labouring classes, but
among those who held their heads much higher. This of course impressed
me coming straight from Scotland, where a really grand education has
been the national birthright for generations.
I began to farm about sixty acres near Dingle, and gave my entire time
to it, an assiduity I have compared in my mind to that of the Norwegian
reclaiming the little arable spots on the mountain. We both worked
pretty hard for very scanty results. I did not even live on my tiny
property, but with my mother--my father had died after I returned from
my English schools and before I went to Kelso.
Still matters were not long satisfactory, owing to the failure of the
potato crop in 1845, when the mortality became fearful in consequence.
So at the very end of the year I migrated from Kerry to become an
assistant land agent in Cork, and thus really embarked on the profession
of my life--one which, on the whole, I have most thoroughly and heartily
enjoyed.
I hoped then that I had not done with my beloved Kerry, and my
association with that great kingdom has indeed been lifelong. I have
always understood the feeling of the Irish emigrants who have had sods
of their native earth sent out to them to the New World. _Heimweh_ is
after all a good thing, and Kerry to me would always seem to be
appealing, however far I had roamed.