As the sun to the planets so stands the manor-house to the farms
on the manor; that is to say, so far as the relations of dignity
and dependence go. But the sun gives to its satellites and receives
nothing, whereas from the lord of the manor come the loan of land,
of house, and of farm-buildings, for which loan the tenant pays a
rent, that is to say, so much interest on so much capital placed at
his disposal. An old English farmhouse that has not been meddled with
is a very interesting study. It represents to us the type of our
manor-houses before the reign of the Tudors. Owing to the prosperity
which England enjoyed at the cessation of the Wars of the Roses our
gentry rebuilt their houses, and rebuilt yet again, as fashions
changed, so that we have very few of the manor-houses left that were
erected before Tudor times.
The old farmhouse in England is in plan very much what the old _manoir_
was in France. I will take a plan and give a drawing of that of
Anseremme on the Meuse near Dinant. This has the parish church attached
to it, as it not infrequently was to the manor-house in England.
The dwelling-house forms one side of the courtyard. The other sides are
occupied by farm-buildings, stables, cart-sheds, granaries, etc.
To reach the front door of the house one must wade through straw
trampled by cattle and oozing with manure. Our forefathers did not mind
that. Our farmers of the right sort love it. A farmer whose heart does
not glow at stable and cowstall manure has missed his vocation. But
everything in its place, and the unfortunate feature of this paving
of manure was that it adhered to boots and entered the house. This
mattered little when halls were strewn with rushes. But when polished
oak boards and next carpets came in, the entrance to the house had to
be altered, so that at least the women-kind need not tread over ankles
in manure before entering the house.
Where there is a farmhouse there must be a court in which the cattle
can run, and where better than under the eye of the master and mistress.
But there was, and is, another, and more serious, drawback. Wells have
been sunk close to the houses, and very generally in intimate relation
to the courtyard. The result is that in a great many cases the water in
the wells becomes contaminated. It is really amazing how many centuries
have rolled by without people discovering the fact that such proximity
produces contamination, and such contamination leads to diphtheria, or
typhoid fever. But stupidity is ever with us, so I do not wonder. Here
is a fact. In a certain village of over a thousand inhabitants, that I
knew, there is a National School, which having an endowment commands
the services of a first-class schoolmaster.
[Illustration: PLAN OF BUILDING AT ANSEREMME]
Now it fell out that water from a beautiful spring among the hills was
brought into this village, and a tap placed outside the schoolmasters
residence.
Said the village schoolmaster to himself, "If I use this water I shall
have to pay the rate. If I don't I cannot be called upon for it. I will
get all my water from the well in the adjoining farmyard." He did so,
and his young wife and child died of diphtheria.
Now, if a man like a cultured schoolmaster at the close of the
nineteenth century will act like this, is it a marvel that our
forefathers, who were without the means of knowing better, should have
made such mistakes?
A merciful Providence must have brooded over our ancestors and
protected them; how else is it possible that they were not all swept
away, and none left to be the progenitors of our own enlightened selves?
I suppose that systems adapted themselves to their surroundings and to
what they assimilated, and our forbears got into the way of fattening
and thriving on bacilli, germs, and all like horrors.
But to return to the farmhouse.
In one that is well-conducted, the court in which pigs wallow, bullocks
poach the litter, ducks waddle, and find nutriment in what would be
death to all other creatures, is the nucleus and treasury, the cream
of the whole farm. Having considered the plan of the Walloon Manoir,
look at a plan of an old English farm congeries of buildings. Is it not
clear that--omitting the church--the type is the same?
The old-fashioned farmer, like the old-fashioned squire, did not ask to
have a view of distant horizons from his windows, but sought to look
upon his stock and see that it throve.
It was, may be, more riskful to leave cattle about in the fields in
former days, though I am not very sure of that. England was always a
quiet, law-abiding, well-conducted country. And perhaps the cattle at
one time may have been driven into the pen for the night, about the
masters house. His court was his kraal. But that was long, long ago,
when there were wolves and cattle-lifters in the land. In ordered
times only ewes at lambing time, and cows about to calve, and young
bullocks were kept in the courtyard; and the calves that the dairymaid
had to feed, by dipping her hand in milk and then giving it to the
long-legged, silly creatures to suck.
[Illustration: ANSEREMME ON THE MEUSE]
The cows were milked in the fields, and milked by the dairymaids. Then
that fashion was abandoned, and cows were driven to the stables to be
there milked, and these cowhouses were so deep in manure as to dirty
the skirts and white stockings of the maids, so they withdrew from the
task, and now only men milk the cows.
Alas for the dairymaid! That charming, merry, innocent ideal of a
country girl. Indeed to be a milkmaid and to be merry were almost
synonymous in the olden time. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his "Character
of a Milkmaid," says: "She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the
night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet, to say
truth, she is never alone: she is still accompanied with old songs,
honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones."
In the "Character of a Ballad-monger," in _Whimzies_, 1631, we find:
"Stale ballad news, cashiered the city, must now ride fast for the
country, where it is no less admired than a giant in a pageant: till at
last it grows so common there, too, as every poor milkmaid can chant
and chirp it under her cow, which she useth as a harmless charm to make
her let down her milk."
In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, _The Coxcomb_, Nan, the Milkmaid, says:
"Come, you shall e'en home with me, and be our fellow;
Our home is so honest!
And we serve a very good woman, and a gentlewoman;
And we live as merrily, and dance o' good days
After evensong. Our wake shall be on Sunday:
Do you know what a wake is?--we have mighty cheer then."
Who does not remember old Isaac Walton and his merry ballad-singing
dairymaid?
Pepys, in his Diary, 13th October, 1662, writes: "With my father took
a melancholy walk to Portholme, seeing the country-maids milking their
cows there, they being there now at grass; and to see with what mirth
they come all home together in pomp with their milk, and sometimes they
have music go before them."
"When cold bleak winds do roar,
And flowers can spring no more,
The fields that were seen
So pleasant and green
By winter all candied o'er:
Oh! how the town lass
Looks, with her white face
And lips so deadly pale.
But it is not so
With those that go
Through frost and snow,
With cheeks that glow,
To carry the milking pail."
On May-day was the festival of the milkmaids. I can remember, in 1845,
seeing Jack in the Green and Maid Marian parading in the Strand.
Pepys, in his Diary, on the 1st May, 1667, enters--"To Westminster; on
the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails,
dancing with a fiddler before them."
In a set of prints called "Tempest's Cryes of Lon'on," one is called
"The Merry Milkmaid," whose proper name was Kate Smith. She is dancing
with her milk-pail on her head, decorated with silver cups, tankards,
and salvers, borrowed for the purpose, and tied together with ribbands,
and ornamented with flowers. "Of later years, the plate, with other
decorations, were placed in a pyramidical form, and carried by two
chairmen upon a wooden horse. The milkmaids walked before it, and
performed the dance without any encumbrance."
In a curious German account of London and London life, written by Otto
Von Rosenberg, and published at Leipzig in 1834, is a picture of a
milkmaids' May dance; but in London it had become a chimney-sweeps'
performance in place of one of milkmaids. In the country it maintained
its character as a festival of dairymaids. Rosenberg thus describes it:
"A hobbledehoy youth leads the procession with a three-cornered cocked
hat on his head, pasted over with gilt paper. Eyebrows and cheeks are
strongly marked with paint. A coat of gay colour flaps about his body,
and this coat is imitated from the uniform of a French field-marshal,
and is sown over with flowers and ornaments of gilt paper. Over his
right shoulder hangs a red silk band, to which a wooden sword is
attached. His knee-breeches and stockings are white. He is followed by
a figure from head to toe buried under a conical structure, which is
woven round with fresh may, and at the summit has a crown. This object
has no other purport than to hobble after the rest.
"To complete the trefoil is a girl who stands in no way behind
Netherland damsels in beauty and lively movements. Her hair, which in
the morning had been carefully done up in braids, becomes disengaged by
the action and heat, and her incessant leaps and twirls, and finally
falls about her shoulders like that of a fury. She wears a low dress
and short sleeves of white very transparent texture reaching to her
calves, and exposing below rather massive feet, which are wound about
with green. In her hand she waves a great wooden spoon, and this she
extends to the windows for gratuities. But as she dances through the
streets she brandishes this great spoon above her head, like a witch
who is invoking a spirit."[6]
Alack-a-day! The milkmaid is a creature of the past. Now in farmhouses
there is great difficulty in getting any girl to work. They want to go
to the towns, or consider themselves too highly educated to do menial
work.
And the sower, the mower, the reaper and thrasher are also extinct.
I remember as a boy repeatedly watching a sower pacing up and down a
field strewing the corn to right and left from the wooden seed-lap
carried in front, and thinking what a picture it made. Now corn is sown
with a drill.
In the very early morning, as the sun rose and the dew was on the
grass, it was pleasant of old to hear the musical whetting of the
scythe, and then the hiss as the blade swept through the herb and shore
it down. That is no more. The grass is mown in the meadows by the
mechanical mower, and on the lawn by a contrivance whose movements are
anything but musical. In former days also the harvesting was a real
delight. The reapers, with their hooks, worked their way along in rows.
It cannot be better described than in the Harvest Song, well known in
the south-west of England:
"The corn is all ripe, and the reapings begin,
The fruits of the earth, O we gather them in;
At morning so early the reap-hooks we grind,
And away to the fields for to reap and to bind;
The foreman goes first in the hot summer glow,
And he sings with a laugh, my lads, all of a row.
Then, all of a row! then all of a row!
And to-night we will sing boys All of a row!
"We're in, says the catchpole, behind and before,
We'll have a fresh edge and a sheaf or two more.
The master stands back for to see us behind;
Well done, honest fellow's, bring the sheaves to the bind.
Well done, honest fellows, pare up your first brink,
You shall have a fresh edge, and a half pint to drink.
Then, all of a row! etc.
"And so we go through the heat of the day,
Some reaping, some binding, all merry and gay.
We'll reap and we'll bind, we will whistle and sing,
Unflagging until the last sheaf we bring in.
It's all our enjoyment wherever we go,
To work and to sing, Brothers, all of a row.
Then, all of a row! etc.
"Our day's work is done, to the farmhouse we steer,
To eat a good supper and drink humming beer;
We wish the good farmer all blessings in life,
And drink to his health, and as well to his wife.
God prosper the grain for next harvest we sow,
When again in the arrish we'll sing, Boys, hallo!
Then, all in a row! etc."
When the reapers had cut nearly the whole field they reached a portion
that had been purposely left, and this, instead of attacking in row,
they surrounded, shouting "A neck! a neck!" and of this the last sheaf
was fashioned, and on top of it was a little figure formed of plaited
corn, and this was conveyed in triumph to the garner.
My old coachman, who had served three generations of my family and
had seen four, was the last man who made these corn-men in our
neighbourhood, and long after the custom had been abandoned, he was
wont on every harvest thanksgiving to produce one of these comical
figures for suspension in the church. The head was made of a tuft of
barley, and flowers were interwoven with the rest.
[Illustration: AN ESSEX FARMHOUSE]
All this is of the past, and so also is the throb of the flail. There
are not many labourers now who understand how to wield the flail. The
steam thrasher travels from farm to farm and thrashes and winnows,
relieving man of the labour. The flail is only employed for the making
of "reed," _i.e._, straw for thatching the rick.
What a robust, rubicund, hearty fellow is our old English farmer. The
breed is not extinct, thank God! At one time, when it was the fashion
to run two and three farms into one, and let this conglomerate to a man
reputed warm and knowing, then it did seem as if the "leather pocketed"
farmer was doomed to extinction. But it is the gentleman farmer who
has gone to pieces, and the simple old type has stood the brunt of the
storm, and has weathered the bad times.
What a different man altogether he is from the French paysan and the
German bauer! The latter, among the mountains, is a fine specimen,
his wealth is in oxen and cows. But the bauer, on arable land in the
plains, is an anxious, worn man, who falls into the hands of the Jews,
almost inevitably. Our farmers, well fed, open-hearted, hospitable,
yet close-fisted over money, would do well to learn a little thrift
from the continental peasant. On market days, if they sell and buy,
they also spend a good deal at the ordinary and in liquor.
At a tythe dinner I gave, in another part of England from that I now
occupy, the one topic of conversation and debate was whether it were
expedient on returning from market to tumble into the ditch or into the
hedge, and if it should happen that the accident happened in the road,
at what portion of the highway it was "plummest" to fall.
On market days is the meeting of the Board of Guardians, and on that
Board the farmer exercises authority and rules.
An old widow in receipt of parish relief once remarked: "Our pass'n
hev been preachin' this Michaelmas a deal about the angels bein' our
guardgins. Lork a biddy! I've been in two counties, in Darset and
Zummerset, as well as here. Guardgins be guardgins whereiver they be.
And I knows very well, if them angels is to be our guardgins in kingdom
come--it'll be a loaf and 'arf a crown and no more for such as we."
In North Devon there was a farmer, whom we will call Tickle, who was on
a certain Board of Guardians, of which Lord P. was chairman. Now Mrs.
Tickle died, and so for a week or two the farmer did not take his usual
seat. The chairman got a resolution passed condoling with Mr. Tickle on
his loss.
Next Board day, the farmer appeared, whereupon Lord P. addressed him:
"It is my privilege, duty, and pleasure, Mr. Tickle, to convey to you,
on behalf of your brother guardians, an expression of our sincere and
heartfelt and profound regret for the sad loss you have been called
on to endure. Mr. Tickle, the condolence that we offer you is most
genuine, sir. We feel, all of us, that the severance which you have
had to undergo is the most painful and supreme that falls to man's lot
in this vale of tears. Mr. Tickle, it is at once a rupture of customs
that have become habitual, a privation of an association the sweetest,
holiest, and dearest that can be cemented on earth, and it is--it
is--in short--it is--Mr. Tickle, we condole with you most cordially."
The farmer addressed looked about with a puzzled and vacant expression,
then rubbed his chin, then his florid cheeks, and seemed thoroughly
nonplussed. Presently a brother farmer whispered in his ear, "Tes all
about the ou'd missus you've lost."
"Oh!" and the light of intelligence illumined his face, "that's it, es
it. Well, my lord and genl'men, I thank y' kindly all the same, but my
ou'd woman--her wor a terr'ble teasy ou'd toad. It hev plased the Lord
to take 'er, and plase the Lord he'll keep 'er."
The ordinary farmer is not a reader--how can he be, when he is out of
doors all day, and up in the morning before daybreak? We complain that
he does not advance with the times; but he is a cautious man, who makes
quite sure of his ground before he steps.
The County Council, at the expense of the ratepayers, send about
lecturers, who are well paid, to hold forth in village schoolrooms
on scientific agriculture, the chemistry of the soil, and scientific
dairying.
No one usually attends these lectures except a few ladies, but on
one occasion a farmer was induced by the rector or the squire, as a
personal favour, to listen to one on the chemistry of common life.
He listened with attention when the lecturer described the constituents
of the atmosphere, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen. At the close he stood
up, stretched himself, and said: "Muster lecturer! You've told us a
terr'ble lot about various soorts o' gins, oxegen and so on, I can't
mind 'em all, but you ha'nt mentioned the very best o' all in my 'umble
experience, and that's Plymouth gin. A drop o' that with suggar and
water--hot--the last thing afore you go to bed, not too strong nor too
weak neither, is the very first-ratedst of all. I've tried it for forty
years."
And then he went forth, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "That chap,
he's traveller for some spirit merchants, as have some new-fangled
gins--but I'll stick to Plymouth gin, I will."
A friend of mine was Mayor for a year in a town, the name of which
is unimportant. Being of a hospitable and kindly turn, he sent
invitations to all the farmers in the neighbourhood who were within the
purlieu of the borough to dine with him on a certain evening, and at
the bottom of the invitation put the conventional R. S. V. P.
To his surprise he received no answers whatever. The invitation,
however, was much discussed at the ordinary, and the mysterious letters
at the close subjected to scrutiny and debate.
"Now what do you makes 'em out to mane?" asked one farmer.
"Well, I reckon," answered he who was addressed, "tes what we're to ate
at his supper. Rump Steak and Veal Pie."
"Git out for a silly," retorted the first, "muster bain't sach a vule
as to have two mates on table to once. Sure enough them letters stand
for Rump Steak and Viggy (plum) Pudden'."
"Ah! Seth! you have it. That's the truth," came in assent from the
whole table.
But what a fine man the old farmer is--the very type of John Bull. That
he is being driven out of existence by foreign colonial competition
I cannot believe. He is a slow man to accommodate himself to changed
circumstances, but he can turn himself about when he sees his way; and
he has a shrewd head, and knows soil and climate.
In George Coleman's capital play, "The Heir at Law," Lady Daberly says
to her son Dick, "A farmer!--and what's a farmer, my dear?"
To which Dick replies, "Why, an English farmer, mother, is one who
supports his family, and serves his country by his industry. In this
land of commerce, mother, such a character is always respectable."
[Illustration: COTTAGES]