THE HEAD CARTER--THE CARPENTER.
"There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and folks
most in general chooses the wrong un."
--TOM G.
Jim was my first head carter, and he dearly loved a horse. He had, as
the saying is, forgotten more about horses than most men ever knew,
and what he didn't know wasn't worth knowing.
He was a cheery man, and when I went to Aldington was about to be
married. Not being much of a "scholard," his first request was that I
would write out his name and that of his intended, for the publication
of the banns. A group of men was standing round at the time, and I
asked him how his somewhat unusual name was spelt. Seeing that he was
puzzled, I hazarded a guess myself, repeating the six letters in order
slowly. He was greatly surprised and pleased to recognize that my
attempt was correct, and, turning to the bystanders, remarked with the
utmost sincerity, "There ain't many as could have done that, mind
you!" I felt that my reputation for scholarship was established.
Jim was a fisherman, and was no representative of "a worm at one end
and a fool at the other." I gave him leave to fish in my brooks; he
was wily, patient, and successful, and one day brought me a nice
salmon-trout, by no means common in these streams. In thanking him, I
made him a standing offer of a shilling a pound for any more he could
catch, but he never got another. Writing of fishing, I cannot forbear
quoting Thomson's lines on the subject, under "Spring," the most vivid
description of the sport I have ever read:
"When with his lively ray the potent sun
Has pierced the streams, and roused the finny race,
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair;
Chief should the western breezes curling play,
And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds.
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills,
And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks;
The next, pursue their rocky-channel'd maze,
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
Their little naiads love to sport at large.
Just in the dubious point, where with the pool
Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly;
And as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing games
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap,
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook:
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some,
With various hand proportion'd to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled captive throw. But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendant trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he following cautious, scans the fly;
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.
At last, while haply yet the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
With sullen plunge. At once he darts along,
Deep-struck, and runs out all the lengthen'd line;
Then seeks the furthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The cavern'd bank, his old secure abode;
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following now
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage:
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandon'd, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize."
Horses were scarce and dear when I went to Aldington, and many French
animals were being imported. I got an old acquaintance in the South of
England to send me four or five; they were all greys, useful workers,
but wanting the spirit and stamina of the English horse; and they
would always wait for the Englishman to start a heavy standing load
before throwing their weight into the collar. Jim told me that they
were "desperate ongain" (very awkward), and, as foreigners, well they
might be, for I myself had some difficulty in understanding the local
words of command, more especially in ploughing, when, with a team of
four, he shouted his orders, addressing the new horses by names with
which they were quite unfamiliar.
I admired Jim's loyalty to his late master, if not his veracity, at
the valuation of the stock, which I took over as it stood. Being aware
that there was a lame one or two among the horses, I warned my valuer
beforehand. We entered the stable, and my valuer, thinking to catch
Jim off his guard, asked casually which they were. Jim was quite ready
for him, and answered without a moment's hesitation, "Nerrun, sir"
(never a one). They were, however, easily detected when trotted out on
the road.
Jim was a capital hand at "getting up" a horse for sale; an extra sack
or two of corn, constant grooming, and rest in the stable, with the
aid of some mysterious powders, which, I think, contained arsenic,
soon brought out the "dapples," which he called "crown-pieces," on
their coats, and in a couple of months' time one scarcely recognized
the somewhat angular beast upon which his labours had wrought a
miracle, and put a ten-pound note at least on the value. We had an
ancient and otherwise doubtful mare, "Bonny," ready for Pershore Fair,
and the previous day Jim wanted to know if I intended to be present. I
told him, "No! I should have to tell too many lies." "Oh!" said he,
"I'll do all that, sir!" He sold the mare to a big dealer for all she
was worth, I think, though not a large figure. Soon afterwards I had
to expostulate with him about some fault. He explained the
circumstances from his point of view, adding, "And that's the truth,
sir, and the truth _is_ the truth, and"--triumphantly--"that's what'll
carry a man through the world!" I could say no more, but could not
help remembering his willingness to testify to Sonny's doubtful merits
at Pershore Fair.
Jim became a widower, but eventually married again; a good woman, who
made a capital wife. Shortly before the wedding, when he came to see
me on some business, my wife happened to be present; she was very
anxious to find out the date in order that we might attend. Jim was
shy, not wishing it to be generally known, and nothing could be got
out of him. On leaving, however, he repented and, looking back over
his shoulder, made the announcement, "Our job comes off next
Thursday," then closing the door quickly, he was gone.
He got my permission to visit his mother and son, both ailing in
Birmingham, and on his return I made inquiries. The boy was better,
but about his mother he said, "I don't take so much notice of she, for
her be regular weared out"--not unkindly or undutifully intended, but
just a plain statement of fact, simply put; for she was a very old
woman, and could not in the course of nature be expected to live much
longer.
That Jim had a tender heart I know, for when we lost a very favourite
horse, one which "you could not put at the wrong job," I found him
weeping and much distressed. Later he said, "When you lose a horse I
reckon it's a double loss, for you haven't got the horse or the
money." My mind being dominated by the unanswerable accuracy of the
latter part of the statement, I did not, for a moment, see that the
first part was fallacious, because, of course, one could not have both
at one and the same time.
He was an excellent ploughman, and considerable skill is demanded to
manage the long wood plough, locally made, and still the best
implement of the sort on the adhesive land of the Vale of Evesham. It
has no wheels, like the ordinary iron plough has, to regulate the
depth and width of the furrow-slice, because in wet weather, if tried
on this almost stoneless land, the wheels become so clogged with mud
and refuse, such as stubble from the previous crop, that they will not
revolve, sliding helplessly involved along the ground. Even the
mould-board is wood, generally pear-tree, to which the mud does not
adhere, as happens with iron. As an old neighbour explained to me,
"You can cut the newest bread with a wooden knife, whereas the doughy
crumb of the bread would stick to a steel one." Pear-tree wood is used
because it wears "slick" (smooth), and does not splinter like wood
which is longer in the grain.
With these long wood ploughs the ploughman himself regulates the depth
and width of the furrow-slice--_i.e.,_ each strip that is severed and
turned over--by holding the handles firmly in the correct position as
the plough travels along, for it cannot be left for a moment to its
own inclination. This entails strict attention and much muscular
effort, and, of course, the latter comes into play also in turning at
each end of the field. The result is very effective; the flat
mould-board offers the least possible resistance to the inversion of
the soil, whereas the iron plough, with a curling mould-board, presses
the crest of the furrow-slice into regularity of form, and gives a
more finished appearance at the expense of much extra friction and
labour for the horses.
A carter-boy accompanies each team, as driver, to keep the horses up
to their work and turn them at the ends. A farmer I knew in Hampshire
would not, if possible, employ a boy unless he could whistle--of
course the ability and degree of excellence is a guide to character,
and indicates to some extent a harmonious disposition; he always said,
"Now whistle," when engaging a new boy.
There are few more pleasant agricultural operations to watch and to
follow than a lusty team, a skilful ploughman, and a whistling boy at
work, on a glowing autumn day, when the stubble is covered with
gossamers gleaming with iridescent colours in the sunshine. The
upturned earth is fragrant, the fresh soil looks rich and full of
promise, there is the feeling that old mistakes and disappointments
are being buried out of sight, and the hope and anticipation of the
future.
On a Lincolnshire farm where I was a pupil, an incident occurred
illustrating the anxiety of a carter for the welfare of his horses, in
combination with no small cunning. The owner, in the stable one Sunday
morning, noticed an open Bible in the manger; having doubts as to the
reliability of the carter, he regarded the Bible, so prominently
displayed, with some suspicion. Looking carefully all round he could
see nothing to find fault with, until he glanced upward at the floor
over the manger, where he discovered a protruding cork. He remembered
that a heap of oats was stored in the loft, from which the bailiff
gave out the rations for their teams to each man weekly. Getting the
key of the loft, he found that the cork was nicely adjusted to a hole
beneath the oats, so that the carter in question could exceed the
recognized ration whenever inclined. The fault was, of course, more
one of disobedience than of robbery, as the corn was consumed by his
master's horses, and the prominence of the Bible was perhaps the worst
feature, evidently a deceptive device to arrest suspicion, though it
proved to have exactly the opposite effect.
Very few of my men suffered from rheumatism, but Jim was an exception.
I think he applied horse embrocation to himself; he would extol its
efficacy, and would tell how, when the pain attacked his shoulder, the
remedy "druv it" to his back; applied to the latter, "it druv it" to
his legs; and so on indefinitely.
I kept about a dozen working horses besides colts; the latter are
broken at two years old, but only very lightly worked, and, when quiet
and handy, they are turned out again till a year older. Our method of
maintaining the full capacity of horse-power on the farm was to breed,
or buy at six months old, two colts, and sell off two of the oldest
horses every year. As two colts could be bought for forty or fifty
pounds at that age, and the two old horses sold for a hundred and
twenty pounds or thereabouts, a good balance was left on the
transaction, while the full strength of the teams was maintained.
Jim had sufficient foresight to view with alarm the gradual dispersion
of most of the oldest and best farmers in the neighbourhood, and the
conversion to grass of the arable land, owing to the unfair and
dangerous competition of American wheat. When we discussed the subject
and foretold the straits to which the country would be reduced in the
event of war with a great European Power, he concluded these
forebodings with the habitual remark, "Well, what I says is, them as
lives longest will see the most." A truism, no doubt, but, as time has
proved, by no means an incorrect view.
There was always plenty of employment for an estate carpenter on my
farms, as I had a vast number of buildings, including four separate
sets of barn, stable, sheds, and yard, away from the village, as well
as those near the Manor House, and many repairs were necessary. There
were, too, very many gates, repairs to fences, hurdle-making, and odd
jobs, to keep a man employed for months at a time. The building of
three hop-kilns, with the necessary storerooms for green and dried
hops, as the hop acreage increased, the preparation of hop-poles, and
the erection of wire-work on larger poles, which gradually superseded
the ordinary pole system, all demanded a great deal of regular work.
I was most fortunate in obtaining the services of a man living in a
neighbouring village, not only as estate carpenter, but as a skilled
joiner, and possessing all the knowledge and efficiency of an
experienced builder. When I first met him, or very soon afterwards,
Tom G. was a teetotaller, and I have always had immense admiration for
the strength of will which enabled him to conquer completely the drink
habit, for he freely admitted that he was entirely mastered by it in
his younger days. He told me, and it proves what a kindly word will
sometimes do, that the Squire of his village, who also employed him
largely, said to him, after praising some of his work, "There's only
one thing the matter with you, Tom, and that's the drink." "I went
home," said Tom, "and I thought to myself, if the drink is all that's
wrong with me, what a fool I must be to continue it. Next day I went
to Evesham and signed the pledge, and I've never touched a drop since,
though the smell and the sight of a public-house have been so sore a
temptation that many a time after a long day's work, and with money in
my pocket, I've gone a mile or two out of my way in order not to pass
a place of the sort."
His training as a carpenter had induced habits of great accuracy,
exact method, and lucid thought, and a chat with him, and watching his
quick and clever workmanship, was an educational opportunity. I have
always been fascinated by such work, and one of my earliest
recollections is of being taken by my father to interview a carpenter
about some small household job. His name was Snewin--I am not sure of
the spelling, for I was only about eight years old at the time--and we
found him in his workshop vigorously using a long plane on some red
deal boards, his feet buried in beautifully curled shavings, and the
whole place redolent of the delicious scent of turpentine. Every time
his plane travelled along the edge, to my childish fancy, the board
said in plaintive tones of remonstrance, _in crescendo_, his name,
"Snewin, _Snewin_," and again, "SNEWIN," and even now the scent and
action of planing a deal board always brings back the scene clearly to
my mind.
I suppose, therefore, it was partly old associations that induced the
fascination of watching Tom G. at his work, but there were other
reasons. With his axe, the edge beautifully ground and sharpened to a
razor-like finish, he could trim a piece of wood, or shape it, so
neatly that it presented almost the appearance of having been planed;
his saw, with no apparent effort, raced from end to end of a board or
across the grain of a piece of "quartering," and his chisels and plane
irons were ground to the correct concave bevel that relieves the
parting of a chip or shaving, and gives what he called "sweetness" to
the cutting action. He was a strong Conservative, good at an argument,
and had many heated discussions with some of my men whose tendencies
leaned to the opposite side; but his sound logic and common sense were
observable in all his ideas, and I think he generally came off best as
a shrewd and clear-headed debater, for from his employment in various
places his horizon was wider than that of the ordinary farm labourers.
Tom G. had considerable knowledge of the Bible, which he sometimes
employed in conversation; alluding to the work that was nearly always
waiting for him at Aldington, he told a friend of mine that there was
"earn (corn) in Egypt"; and when he had a written contract with me for
a special piece of work, and wished to suggest that as time went on we
might think of some improvement, and that there was no necessity to
adhere to the original specifications, he announced that "we bean't
Mades, nor we bean't Piersians" (we're not Medes, nor are we
Persians).
No necessary measurement was ever guessed at, his "rule" was always
handy in a special pocket, but in cases where a rough guess was
sufficient he would hazard it by what he called "scowl of brow"
(intently regarding it). The agricultural labourer is inclined, both
with weights and measures, to be inaccurate, "reckoning it's near
enough." I found soon after I came to Aldington that the weighing
machine which had been in use throughout the whole of my predecessor's
time, and had weighed up hundreds of pounds of wool at 2s. and 2s. 6d.
a pound, cheese at 8d., and thousands of sacks of wheat, barley, and
beans, was about a pound in each hundredweight _against the seller_,
so that he must have lost a considerable sum in giving overweight.
Tom G. was scornful about weather signs, and summed up his doubts in
such matters with sarcasm: "I reckon that the indications for rain are
very similar to the indications for fine weather!" But the best
epigram I ever heard from him was, "There's a right way and a wrong
way to do everything, and folks most in general chooses the wrong un!"
I should like to see those words of wisdom on the title-page of every
school book, and blazoned up in letters of gold on the wall of every
classroom in every school in the kingdom.
I have referred to the hop-kilns I built. Throughout the work of
erecting them, and it was no small one, Tom G. was the leading spirit;
it gave scope for his abilities, I think, on a larger scale than any
building he had previously undertaken. We began with a kiln sufficient
for the first 6 acres planted; it was necessary, with the gradual
extinction of British corn-growing, to find something to supersede it,
and to compensate for the falling off in farm receipts. I had seen
something of hops as a pupil on a large farm near Alton, Hampshire,
where they occupied an area of over a hundred acres, but at that time
I had no intention of growing them myself, and had not been infected
with the glamour, formerly attaching to hops beyond any other crop,
that came to me later.
I visited the old Alton farm, and obtained all particulars of the
latest kind of hop-kiln in the neighbourhood from the inventor, and
instructed him to prepare plans and specifications for the conversion
of an old malthouse close to the Manor. I contracted with Tom G. for
all the carpenter's work, and with an excellent stonemason or
bricklayer for that belonging to his department. They both entered
with enthusiasm upon the job, and we had many interesting discussions
as to improvement, as it proceeded. Tom G. was a man of great
resource, and could always find a way out of every difficulty; he told
me, before we began, that he could see the completed building as if
actually finished, just as a great sculptor once said how easy it was
to produce a statue from a block of marble, for all he had to do was
to cut away the superfluous material!
The alterations entailed a new roof from end to end of the old
building, and a new floor for the upper part, the length being about
70 and the width about 20 feet. The old roof was covered mostly with
stone-slates--flakes of limestone from the Cotswolds--very uneven in
size and rough as to surface, and in part with ordinary blue slates.
The latter lie much more closely on the laths, the stone slates
allowing the passage of more air between them, and it was interesting
to find that while the ancient laths under the stone slates were
fairly well preserved, those beneath the blue slates were much
decayed, evidently from the fact of the damp in an unheated building
remaining longer where the air was excluded, though one would have
expected the close-lying blue slates to be the better protection of
the two.
Much expense was saved by Tom G.'s economical use of materials;
wherever the old oak beams could be used again they were incorporated
with the new work. He never cut sound old or new pieces of timber to
waste; almost every scrap came in somewhere, for he worked with his
head as well as his hands.
The difference in this respect is very noticeable in different men; an
old plumber once told me that he had been employed upon a pump on a
neighbouring farm, where the slot in which the handle works was so
worn on one side that the bolt which carries the handle had given way,
owing to the man, who had used it for years, not keeping it running
truly in the centre. He called the man's attention to the cause of the
damage, and, being a sententious old fellow, asked him why he didn't
think what he was doing. The answer was, "I'm not paid to think."
The hop-kiln was a great success, and later, with the same workmen, I
added two more, as my hopyards extended, on exactly the same lines.
They would probably have been annually in use in the picking season up
to the present time had it not been that the low prices ruling
latterly have rendered a crop which requires so much labour,
knowledge, and supervision, not worth growing.
I hear, however, with much satisfaction, that these old hop-kilns and
storerooms have been of great service during the war for drying
medicinal herbs, chiefly belladonna and henbane, and that in 1917 the
turnover exceeded £6,000.